CANBERRA (Reuters) - Severe storms and thousands of lightning strikes knocked out power to the entire state of South Australia on Wednesday, authorities said, leading to port closures and commuter chaos.
South Australia is the country's fifth most populous state, with 1.7 million people and Adelaide as its capital, and is a major wine producer and traditional manufacturing hub.
The Bureau of Meteorology said a vigorous cold front was moving across the state with an intense low pressure system due on Thursday.
"We'll have gale force winds and large seas (across the south of the country); also heavy rain and thunderstorms, which will lead to renewed river rises," it said on its website.
SA Power Networks said repairs to its transmission network were underway.
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 TEHRAN (FNA) - The United States intends to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea "as soon as possible," a senior U.S. official said.
"Given the accelerating pace of North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea)'s missile tests, we intend to deploy on an accelerated basis -- I would say as soon as possible," Daniel Russel, U.S. assistant secretary of state, told a hearing held by the Asia Pacific subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Xinhua reported.
The senior official did not provide the timeline of the deployment, saying that "perhaps our colleagues in the Defense Department and the Republic of Korea" can comment on the timeline.
Russel also said that the THAAD system is "a defensive measure aimed not at China, but at North Korea (DPRK)."
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COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) - The families of two black males fatally shot by Columbus, Ohio, police called on Tuesday for independent investigations by federal officials of the separate incidents.
The police shootings of 13-year-old Tyre King on Sept. 14 and Henry Green, 23, on June 6 in Columbus, along with recent fatal police shootings in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, have added to the broad debate on race relations and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
"Enough is enough," a sobbing Adrienne Hood, Green's mother, said at a news conference in Columbus attended by family members and friends of both victims. "There is a culture in our police department that needs to change."
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TEHRAN (FNA) - Pakistani journalist Karim Khan sued the U.S. government for the death of his son and brother, claiming that the CIA killed them both in a New Year’s Eve drone strike in 2009, in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal region.
Khan’s son, 16-year-old Zahinullah, was a 10th grade student, and Asif Iqbal, his brother, was a local schoolteacher who had a Master’s degree in modern languages. Neither had any ties to terrorist groups, Sputnik reported.

"We would show their tyrannous face to the whole world…that’s all. They cannot bring back my brother or my son…but I will fight against them as far as I can," Khan told Al Jazeera.