The largest of the wildfires wreaking havoc across New South Wales was started by the Australian military, investigators have found.

One man has died and more than 200 homes destroyed in the country's most populous state since Thursday as a result of more than 100 different fires.

Investigators were called after reports that the biggest of them, near the city of Lithgow to the west of Sydney, started at around the same time as the army was performing training exercises.

Today, the Rural Fire Service issued a statement which said the blaze "was started as a result of live ordnance exercises" at an army range.

Though it has not caused any deaths or injuries, as the single biggest fire it has burned through 47,000 hectares (180 square miles) of land and destroyed a number of homes. It was only downgraded from the highest emergency category this morning.

The Australian Defence Department said it would not comment further on the fire service investigators' findings, but it had previously confirmed it was engaged in exercises at the time and has been carrying out its own inquiries.

The U.S. Navy is being rocked by a bribery scandal that federal investigators say has reached high into the officer corps and exposed a massive overbilling scheme run by an Asian defense contractor that provided prostitutes and other kickbacks.

Among those arrested on corruption charges are a senior agent for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and a Navy commander who escaped Cambodia's "killing fields" as a child only to make a triumphant return to the country decades later as the skipper of a U.S. destroyer. The investigation has also ensnared a Navy captain who was relieved of his ship's command this month in Japan.

The chief executive of the Singapore-based defense contractor, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, and another company official were arrested last month at a San Diego harborside hotel after federal investigators lured them to the United States by arranging a sham meeting with Navy officials, according to court records and people involved in the case.

The unfolding investigation is shaping up as the biggest fraud case in years for the Navy. Federal prosecutors allege that Glenn Defense Marine, which has serviced and supplied Navy ships and submarines at ports around the Pacific for a quarter-century, routinely overbilled for everything from tugboats to fuel to sewage disposal.

Investigators are still assessing the scope of the alleged fraud, but federal court records filed in San Diego cite a handful of episodes that alone exceeded $10 million. Since 2011, Glenn Defense Marine has been awarded Navy contracts worth more than $200 million. The company also services ships from several navies in Asia.

The U.S. military has never been immune from contracting scandals, but it is extremely rare for senior uniformed commanders to face corruption charges.

New Canaan -- Police in New Canaan are trying to solve a gruesome mystery. Someone there has been beheading animals and pets and leaving the heads on people's property.

It's happened at least a couple of times over the last few days.

"Normally we are putting up signs for neighbors who are missing animals, not torturing them," said Lillian Worthley.

Police say two animals have been decapitated. A third killed and left in the backseat of a neighbor's car.

It happened last week in three different neighborhoods in New Canaan.

The cat was the neighborhood pet that went missing.

"We are not 100%, we believe that is the same cat. The cat goes missing and the head turns up a day later in the vicinity of where the cat went missing," said Sgt. Carol Ogrinc, New Canaan Police.

Lakewood - Lakewood police are investigating the discovery of possible human bones and items which, they say, may have been used in "occult" religious ceremonies.

The bones were found in a tool shed outside a vacant home on Kline Street.

They were discovered by a cleaning crew hired by the realtor, to help prepare the property for possible sale or rent. That cleaning crew called police.

A student at a Nevada middle school opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun on campus just before the starting bell Monday, wounding two 12-year-old boys and killing a math teacher who was trying to protect children from their classmate.

The unidentified shooter killed himself with the gun after a rampage that occurred in front of 20 to 30 horrified students who had just returned to school from a weeklong fall break. Authorities did not provide a motive for the shooting, and it's unknown where the student got the gun.

Teacher Michael Landsberry was being hailed for his actions during the shooting outside Sparks Middle School.

"In my estimation, he is a hero. ... We do know he was trying to intervene," Reno Deputy Police Chief Tom Robinson said.

A teenage bully was forced to apologise to his victim after 100 Facebook users staged a rally outside his school.

Halsey Parkerson, who had been taunted and verbally abused by the unnamed bully, has his aunt to thank after she arranged the meet-up at South Salem High School in Oregon.

She had gone to meet Halsey for lunch last Thursday when she witnessed another student telling him that he 'didn't have any friends and no one cares'.

After taking to Facebook to rally support from her local car club, the word quickly spread, with impressive results.

Around 100 people, in around 50 cars, turned up outside the school on Friday, with one person even making the journey from Vancouver in Canada - over 350 miles away.

Speaking at daily Mass last Thursday, Pope Francis warned Christians against turning their faith into a rigid ideology.

"The faith passes, so to speak, through a distiller and becomes ideology," he said, according to Radio Vatican. "And ideology does not beckon [people]. In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid.

"And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought... For this reason Jesus said to them: 'You have taken away the key of knowledge.' The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements."

The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research on March 27 announced a population estimate for Japan in 2040. As expected, what emerges out of this is a nation with an unprecedented rapidly aging and declining population. The implications of the estimate must be taken very seriously and preparations made to ameliorate the impact of this situation.

The estimate shows population trends in 2040 for each municipality. It is imperative that both the central and local governments design a sustainable social security system in time as well as to consider ways to secure a sufficient number of workers to prevent a decline in industrial capability. Local governments also need to work out measures aimed at maintaining and stabilizing people's lives in local communities by foreseeing what will happen to their industries, social services, transportation and so on.

The estimate shows that Japan's population in 2040 will stand at 107.276 million, a decline of about 20 million from 2010′s 128.057 million. A January 2012 estimate by the same institute had shown that in 2060, Japan's population will number 86.737 million, about 30 percent less from the 2010 level.

The Conservative government is seeking to give victims of crime a more active role in the legal process.

A bill will be put forward this fall that extends victim involvement "from the time of the offence to the final disposition of the sentence," Justice Minister Peter MacKay said in an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail. A new victims' bill of rights would attempt to include them "at all levels and at all points in the process."

It would put "victims in a better place, their more rightful place, which is at the heart of the system," he said. "They're not just another Crown witness. They want a more effective voice."

In June, Canada's Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, Sue O'Sullivan, suggested giving victims the right to a speaking role in the plea-bargaining process - a system already in place in Arizona. Mr. MacKay would not say whether this would be part of his bill. What he did say was that it would have substantive and wide-ranging meaning for victims.

Nine blackened tankers are scattered around the site. Part of the rail is mangled, warped, and burned black.

A train carrying propane and crude that crashed in the hamlet of Gainford, Alta., early Saturday morning is once again raising questions about the safety of moving oil by rail in Canada, particularly in the wake of July's fatal rail disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Que. No one was hurt in Gainford, but it was Canadian National Railway Co.'s third notable derailment in the past month involving hazardous materials, and it caused explosions and fire on both sides of a four-line highway.

Alberta's oil industry is a key reason rail has become a popular shipping method. As oil-sands production climbs, the amount of available space on North America's pipeline network declines. The province's energy industry could stall if shipping by rail came off the table.

"The system is safe," Federal Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said in an interview Saturday. "Although we will see derailments, we've never seen an accident or an incident like Lac-Mégantic, that's for sure. But the system is safe.