Two passengers went overboard while a Carnival cruise ship was sailing off the east coast of Australia, officials said on Thursday.

A vast area of sea was being scoured by aircraft and boats in an attempt to find the missing 30-year-old man and  26-year-old woman.

They were reported missing when the Carnival Spirit docked at Sydney Overseas Passenger Terminal at 11:30 a.m. Thursday local time (9:30 p.m. Wednesday ET) after 10 days at sea, New South Wales Police said in a statement.

They had been traveling with family and friends, according to the cruise ship firm. 

Police said surveillance camera footage determined the two missing people went overboard at about 8:50 p.m. Wednesday local time (6:50 a.m. ET Wednesday), more than 14 hours before the alarm was raised.

William West / AFP - Getty Images

Two police officers check for fingerprints on the balcony of the cabin of the two passengers who went overboard.

“Officers are investigating the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the pair and, in these early stages, are focused on the search efforts,” the police statement said.

Police said a “thorough search” was made of the ship after staff contacted officers. Police then looked through the surveillance camera footage and established that the missing people had gone overboard.

New South Wales Police Superintendent Mark Hutchings told reporters that investigators were having the video enhanced in a bid to determine whether the couple had jumped or had fallen by accident, according to The Associated Press. No life preservers were missing, he added.

The incident is not considered suspicious, according to The Austrailian.

"This is a tragic event at the moment, but we're holding out hope we might be able to find these people alive," Hutchings added.

Police aircraft and boats were involved the search and the Australian Maritime Safety Authority also sent a plane to look for them.

A spokeswoman for the authority said they were searching an area of 120 square nautical miles. “People can survive in the water for quite some time,” she added.

The couple had been among 2,680 passengers on a South Pacific cruise.

Peter Taylor, spokesman for the ship's operator, Carnival Cruise Lines, said in a statement on Thursday that "the guests in question were traveling with family and friends, and initial reports indicated that the couple was last seen on board the vessel last night,” the AP reported.

"The ship immediately initiated standard missing person procedures, including a full search of the vessel, as per protocol," he added.

Carnival Cruise Lines is a subsidiary of Miami-based Carnival Corp., the world's largest cruise operator, the AP said. 

Slideshow: Luxury cruise ship runs aground

/

The Costa Concordia, carrying more than 4,200 passengers, ran aground Jan. 13 off the coast of Italy killing 32 people - including two Americans.

Launch slideshow

Last year, the Costa Concordia ran aground off the coast of Italy, killing 32 people. Costa is a division of Carnival Corp.

Also last year, the Costa Allegra caught fire and lost power in the Indian Ocean, leaving passengers without working toilets, running water or air conditioning for three days.

In February, passengers aboard the Carnival Triumph spent five days without power in the Gulf of Mexico after an engine-room fire disabled the vessel. Those on board complained of squalid conditions, including overflowing toilets and food shortages.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related:

• High-seas safety in spotlight a year after deadly Costa Concordia crash
• Coast Guard finds fuel leak caused engine fire on Carnival Triumph
• More trouble for Carnival: One ship stuck as a second limps home

Andrew Taylor / Attorney General's Dept. via AP

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard called the inquiry into sexual abuse a "moral moment" for the country and warned of "very uncomfortable truths."

The Catholic Church in Australia is one of several institutions in the country being investigated by a "royal commission" that is looking into allegations of child sex abuse.

At the start of proceedings on Wednesday, the commission's chairman, Justice Peter McClellan, said it was likely that at least 5,000 people would want to give evidence to the government-backed inquiry. It will investigate allegations of abuse and cover-up that could date back decades. The commission will be focusing on religious organizations, state care providers such as orphanages and not-for-profit groups such as the Girl Guides and Scouts.

Groups representing alleged victims of abuse say the proceedings will finally reveal Australia's history of widespread physical and sexual abuse of vulnerable children.

As tearful campaigners gathered outside the court in Melbourne, McClellan said he wanted to hear the personal accounts of those abused and those who may have been witnesses to crimes.

"For the individuals who have been traumatized, giving an account of their experiences and telling their story can be an important part of their own recovery process," he said. "The bearing of witness by another can break the silence over the abuse that a person experienced, in many cases, years ago."

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the commission in November after allegations of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in the Hunter Valley region, north of Sydney. A serving police officer called for a national inquiry, alleging the church had protected pedophile priests and tried to stop investigations.

The Catholic Church has said it will cooperate fully with the commission and has formed a "Truth, Justice and Healing Council." Its head, Francis Sullivan, said in a statement that the church was ready and willing to assist. "It is essential that the Commission's process contribute to the healing of the victims, and that institutions develop best-practice processes to address child sexual abuse."

Giving a sense of the scale of the inquiry, McClellan said the commission might not be able to meet its deadline of late 2015. It has already received around 1,200 telephone calls before starting. The allegations are likely to be so harrowing that staff members will be limited in how much testimony they can listen to each day.

Gillard called it a "moral moment" for the country. She told Australia's ABC News Radio, "When I established this royal commission I understood that it was going to require our whole country to stare some very uncomfortable truths in the face."

Related:

Britain's top Catholic cleric resigns

Ronen Zvulun / Reuters

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has restricted reporting in Israel on the case, which is overshadowing his victory in a national election held last month.

JERUSALEM - Israeli lawmakers announced plans on Sunday to investigate the 2010 jailhouse death of a reported Australian immigrant recruit to the Mossad spy agency.

The statement by Parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee followed calls by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a cabinet meeting to dim a growing media spotlight on the affair he saw as at risk of jeopardizing national security.

The case kept under wraps for two years then publicized by Australian television last Tuesday involves a 34-year-old immigrant, Ben Zygier, said to be a Mossad operative held on suspicion of security offences, who died of what has been labeled an apparent suicide behind bars.

In a terse communique, the legislative panel's subcommittee on intelligence said it has "decided to conduct an intensive examination of all aspects of the incident involving the prisoner found dead in his (prison) cell in December 2010."

While unlikely to have any immediate political consequences the investigation may lead to a wider inquiry with potentially broader repercussions.

Netanyahu's government has restricted reporting in Israel on the case, now overshadowing his victory in a national election held last month, using court gag orders, military censorship and direct requests to news editors.

Such steps have done little to douse demands for the authorities to come clean about the circumstances of Zygier's imprisonment and how he was able to kill himself in a highly-supervised isolation cell.

Without citing the case specifically, Netanyahu said on Sunday he "absolutely trusts" Israel's security services and what he described as the independent legal monitoring system under which they operated.

"We are an exemplary democracy," Netanyahu said in remarks aired by Israeli broadcasters.

"But we are also more threatened, more challenged, and therefore we have to ensure the proper operation of our security branches," Netanyahu also said.

"Therefore I ask over everyone: Let the security services continue working quietly so that we can continue to live in safety and tranquility in the State of Israel."

The few Israeli officials who have spoken of Zygier's case have not denied that he was linked to Mossad, which in early 2010 was accused by Dubai of using Australian passport-holders to assassinate a Palestinian arms procurer in the Gulf emirate.

Media reports have speculated that Israel suspected the Melbourne-born Jew of betraying or threatening to divulge Mossad missions, perhaps to Australia's security services, as they probed passport fraud.

Civil liberties groups and some Israeli lawmakers have demanded to know whether Zygier's rights were violated by his months of incarceration under alias.

'Grave charges'
In an apparent reversal from previous statements, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr said on Thursday his ministry had known about Zygier's jailing as early as February 2010. On Wednesday he said Australian diplomats in Israel only found out about the detention after his death in custody later that year.

Avigdor Feldman, an Israeli lawyer with whom Zygier consulted in Ayalon prison, said last week that that meeting was arranged by a "Mossad liaison" and that his client had denied "grave charges" for which he awaited trial.

Feldman also said that Zygier's family, which has declined all comment on the affair, knew about his detention. The incarceration was approved by several Israeli courts.

Two senior cabinet members, Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon, told Israeli media on Saturday the case was rare but lawful.

"There are extreme situations...to do with our security and even the need to preserve human life, when we need to take an extreme step such as this," Yaalon told Channel Two television.

Meridor said that publishing the prisoner's identity would have risked "serious harm to security." He did not elaborate.

Tzachi Hanegbi, a lawmaker from Netanyahu's conservative Likud party said he had never been informed of Zygier's arrest as chairman of the parliamentary defence panel at the time.

"This requires explanation," Hanegbi said. "Usually, every significant subject, whether it is impressive achievements or embarrassing failures, is laid out before the subcommittee."

Former Mossad director Danny Yatom told Reuters the agency was under no legal obligation to brief oversight lawmakers in such circumstances.

Related:

Controversy erupts on two continents over Israel's 'Prisoner X'

Israel confirms jailing mystery foreigner

This story was originally published on Sun Feb 17, 2013 8:30 PM EST

Israel broke its official silence on Wednesday over the reported suicide in jail of an Australian immigrant recruited to its spy service Mossad, giving limited details on a closely guarded case.

After appeals by local media chafing at Israeli censorship of a story broken by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), a district court near Tel Aviv allowed publication of six paragraphs of sanctioned text - a de-facto preliminary account by the state.

The text said that an Israeli with an unspecified dual nationality had been secretly imprisoned "out of security considerations", only to be found dead in his cell two years ago in what was eventually ruled a suicide.

The district court did not confirm or deny ABC's unsourced findings that the dead man was 34-year-old Ben Zygier, an Australian who moved to Israel and may have been jailed in isolation over suspected misconduct while spying for Mossad.

Social media records showed that Zygier, who died in late 2010 and was buried in Melbourne, had been married with children. His relatives have declined all comment on the case.

The Israeli district court said the unnamed detainee had been held under the supervision "of the most senior officials of the Justice Ministry" and that his family had been informed of his arrest immediately after it took place.

After citing other legal monitoring mechanisms in the case, the district court said: "Beyond this no details can be published about the affair, for reasons of national security."

Prisoner X
Israeli media had earlier quoted the ABC and other foreign reports about Zygier, dubbed "Prisoner X", some of which suggested he had been under investigation by Australia's security services on suspicion of using his native passport for Mossad missions in countries hostile to the Jewish state.

The possibility that a Mossad officer had been treated so harshly drew comparisons to known previous cases when Israel jailed turncoat spies under blanket secrecy, sometimes lasting years.

Israeli intelligence veterans said such measures reduced the risk of enemy countries where the detainees had served learning of their true identities and then tracing their activities in order to expose other spies still under cover.

Mossad is widely reputed to have stepped up its shadow war in recent years against Iran's nuclear program, Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas, suspected nuclear procurement by Syria and arms smuggling to Palestinians through Dubai, Sudan and Egypt.

Yet the official secrecy over the Zygier report, reinforced by military censors, caused an outcry in Israel, where reporters noted that their compatriots were but a mouse-click away from learning about the case from foreign media on the internet.

In a highly unusual move within hours of the ABC broadcast, Israeli editors were summoned to an emergency meeting in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office on Tuesday and asked not to publish a story "that is very embarrassing to a certain government agency," Israel's liberal Haaretz newspaper reported.

Haaretz ridiculed the gag order as outmoded and counter-productive, but one of the editors who attended the meeting, Yinon Magal of the Walla news-site, was more circumspect.

The explanation he had received for the secrecy, Magal told Israel's Channel 10 television, "persuaded me, overall, that there is a certain logic, albeit small, that there are considerations of national security and of human life here."

Related:

Controversy erupts on two continents over Israel's 'Prisoner X'

Julian Smith / Australian Associated Press via EPA

Is this the last resting place of "Prisoner X"? The tombstone of Ben Zygier at the Chevra Kadisha Jewish Cemetery in Melbourne, Australia. EDITOR'S NOTE: This image was manipulated by the Australian Associated Press to obscure the names of children on the tombstone for privacy reasons.

A storm of controversy erupted on two continents Wednesday after a television station claimed to have identified the inmate of a high-security Israeli jail previously known only as "Prisoner X."

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported Tuesday that the inmate was Ben Zygier, 34, also known as Ben Alon and Ben Allen. It described him as a married father of two who was originally from Australia but who later moved to Israel.

It said he was found hanged in his cell --  originally built for Yigal Amir, who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin -- in 2010, and that he had been buried in Melbourne, Australia, a few weeks later. 

The report said Zygier had been recruited by Israeli spy agency Mossad, but it did not cite a source for this information. NBC News was unable to independently verify the report.

In 2010, the prisoner’s case was highlighted by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which wrote to the country’s attorney-general saying it was “alarming” that someone was being detained “incommunicado and we know nothing about him,” the broadcaster reported.

But the attorney-general’s assistant replied that a “gag order” imposed by the Israeli government preventing media reports about the case was “vital for preventing a serious breach of the state’s security, so we cannot elaborate about this affair,” it added.

The case of the prisoner, also known as "Mr. X," first came to public attention when a story appeared briefly on the Ynet news website in 2010, according to the U.K.'s Telegraph newspaper. "He is simply a person without a name and without an identity who has been placed in total and utter isolation from the outside world," a prison official reportedly said.

The Ynet report was taken down after a few hours, the Telegraph said.

'Very embarrassing'
Within hours of Tuesday's report surfacing, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office summoned editors to ask them not to publish a story "that is very embarrassing to a certain government agency," Israel's Haaretz newspaper said.

"The emergency meeting was called following a broadcast outside Israel regarding the incident in question," Haaretz added, giving no further information.

Shortly afterwards, all reference to the Australian report vanished from Israeli news websites, Reuters reported.

However, Israeli politicians then began asking about the case in the Knesset, the country's parliament, prompting media reports about the case.

“Are there people in prisons whose incarceration is kept secret? What are the supervision mechanisms on this kind of imprisonment?” lawmaker Dov Henin asked Tuesday, according to The Jerusalem Post. “What are the possibilities for parliamentary supervision on such incarcerations?”

Another lawmaker, Zehava Gal-On, expressed concern about the involvement of the media in keeping quiet about Prisoner X, the Post reported. “Today, we hear that in a country that claims to be a civilized democracy, journalists cooperate with the government, and that anonymous prisoners, who no one knew existed, commit suicide,” she said.

Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman told the Knesset that more details about the case would eventually be made known, the Post reported.

Trained as lawyer
The case is also raising questions in Australia.

In an emailed statement Wednesday, a spokesperson for Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said that “an internal review of the department’s handling of this consular case” had begun.

In a follow-up to its original story, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation quoted a spokeswoman for Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr as saying that “some officers of the department were made aware of Mr. Allen's detention at the time in 2010 by another Australian agency.”

Writing in The Australian Financial Review, Patrick Durkin said he had trained as a lawyer with Zygier in 2001.

“I remember drinking with Ben one night in 2001 when he recounted his famous story of taking a bullet in the posterior during his military service in Israel, which he served shortly before joining our group,” Durkin wrote. “He described in vivid detail patrolling the front line and backtracking across war-torn countryside while gunfire peppered the ground.”

“He was proud of his time in the military, despite our endless teasing about the wound we never asked to see,” he added.

Durkin also said he remembered “passionately debating the finer points of the Israel-Palestine conflict with Ben, who was obviously deeply engaged with the issue.”

On Wednesday, the Australian broadcaster quoted his uncle Willy Zygier as saying he had “no idea what is true, what isn't true.”

“All I know is there’s a family tragedy.  Every suicide is a tragedy. That’s all I’ve got to say,” he said. “Ben’s parents are in mourning. I don’t know if they’ll talk. And I’m a humble musician. I don’t know anything.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

Fatah, Hamas hold reconciliation talks ahead of possible peace talks with Israel

UN panel's report: Israel must withdraw all settlers from West Bank

Rights group: Israel using deadly force against unarmed protesters

Leon Neal / AFP - Getty Images file

In this file picture taken on Dec. 20, 2012 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange addresses members of the media and supporters from the window of the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge, west London.

Julian Assange Tuesday took the first step toward a Senate run in the Australian state of Victoria as a member of the newly formed WikiLeaks Party, Australian daily The Age reported.

Assange, an activist and founder of the non-profit organization WikiLeaks, which publishes classified information and news leaks from anonymous sources, is poised to run in the Sept. 14 federal election.

According to The Age, Assange's electoral enrollment application was submitted to the Australian Electoral Commission in Melbourne by WikiLeaks supporters, including Assange's father, John Shipton.

Shipton said the enrollment was ''a first step'' in a political campaign that would focus on ''the democratic requirement of truthfulness from government.''

This first step in the process Assange initiated is the equivalent of voter registration in the United States. Becoming the WikiLeaks candidate will require the party's nomination, Graeme Orr, professor at the University of Queensland and an Assange adviser, told Mashable. 

The WikiLeaks party is not yet registered with the country's electoral commission. Registration would require that 500 members who are listed on the electoral roll be confirmed, according to The Age.

Australian citizens living overseas may register to vote -- and, implicitly, run for office at home -- if they left Australia within the past three years prior to the election and plan to return within six years of their departure, The Age reported.

Assange put down his mother's home as his last address in Australia, where he allegedly lived until June 2010.

But the WikiLeaks founder has been living at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for more than six months — eluding Swedish authorities, who have an outstanding arrest warrant for him in connection to a sexual assault investigation.

Assange spoke of his political ambitions in December, when he said he was interested in running for Senate, adding that "a number of very worthy people admired by the Australian public" had signaled they'd be willing to join him on a party ticket.

According to The Age, opinion polls conducted last year suggest Assange would be a competitive candidate.

A representative for the Australian Electoral Commission said the application for electoral enrollment is a private matter between the applicant and the commission, so he would not discuss individual cases.

Updated at 9:40 a.m. ET: At least five people were killed on Wednesday after a strong earthquake in the South Pacific generated a 3 foot tsunami that aid workers said washed away homes and wiped out remote island communities.

A tidal surge moved houses by up to 30 feet, and there were reports of people and fishing boats being washed out to sea, according to local volunteers for humanitarian charity, World Vision.

The magnitude 8.0 quake struck Wednesday about 3 miles under the Santa Cruz Islands, a thinly-populated part of the Solomon Islands that lie east of Papua New Guinea and northeast of Australia, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

A 3 foot wave hit near the town of Lata, swamping some villages and the town's main airport as people fled to safety on higher ground, Reuters reported.

There was no tsunami threat to Hawaii, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said. 

According to Reuters, Lata hospital's director of nursing, Augustine Pilve, told New Zealand television that five people had been killed, including a boy aged about ten. Pilve added that more casualties were possible as officials were making their way to villages that may have been hit.

It was not immediately clear if the deaths were caused by the tremor or the tidal surge.

World Vision said two communities in the province of Temotu had been "almost entirely wiped out by a one metre sea surge."

In the town of Venga, with a population of about 750, the surge shifted homes by up to 30 feet, damaging around 90 percent of them, the charity added. Nela, with a population of almost 200 people, saw 95 percent of its homes washed away, the charity said.

"I am currently walking through one community [in Lata], and I'm knee-deep in water," Jeremiah Tabua, World Vision's emergency response coordinator in the Solomon Islands, said in a statement released by the charity. "I can see a number of houses that have been swept away by the surge."

Solomon Islands police commissioner John Lansley told Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the worst hit area was around Lata.

"We understand a part of the airstrip has been damaged, which is going to cause some issues in respect to getting relief aid out there, but that is being assessed at this moment," he said.

The quake struck at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday local time (8:23 p.m. Tuesday ET) and was followed by dozens of aftershocks including a 6.3 magnitude tremor at 5:35 p.m. local time (1:35 a.m. ET) Wednesday. A magnitude-6.0 quake struck at 12:55 a.m. Thursday local time.

USGS officials said the later shocks were "not at all surprising."

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued and later cancelled a tsunami warning for the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, New Caledonia, Kosrae, Fiji, Kiribati, Wallis and Futana.

A tsunami watch was issued and later cancelled for Samoa, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia and Guam. 

Daniel Munoz / Reuters, file

A train loaded with iron ore travels toward the Rio Tinto Parker Point iron ore facility as an empty train leaves, in Dampier in the Pilbara region of western Australia, in this file picture taken April 20, 2011.

SYDNEY -- A tropical storm intensifying off Australia's northwest coast brought nearly half the world's iron ore trade to a halt Tuesday, closing huge ports used by mining firms Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton.

Port Hedland, Dampier and Cape Lambert ports were in the process of closing on Tuesday as the tropical storm gathered strength in the Indian Ocean, sending dozens of vessels in search of safe harbors.

Iron ore prices have gained support from concerns that Australia's cyclone season, which runs from November until April, will reduce supplies.

Most of the iron ore mined in Australia is contracted by Chinese steel mills, with Japanese and South Korean mills also big buyers.

The region between Port Hedland and Dampier is known among mariners as "cyclone alley," with at least half a dozen cyclones hitting from November to April each season.

The current storm is forecast to intensify to a Category 1 cyclone -- the weakest on a scale of one to five -- early on Wednesday.

Gales of up to 60 mph could develop between Pardoo and Dampier, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said.

Oil and gas producers in the area were also bracing for the storm. Apache Energy said it had suspended operations at the Stag and Van Gogh oil fields due to the cyclone threat.

A separate tropical storm in Australia's remote northeast briefly reached cyclone strength and forced China's MMG Ltd to temporarily halt shipments of zinc concentrate from its Century mine, the second-largest zinc mine in the world.

The storm crossed the Queensland state coast with heavy rain and wind gusts of up to 60 mph. It is forecast to move further inland before tracking south on Wednesday.