Australia

Aviation fuel sniffing prompts warning in Australia

Security camera footage shows children breaking into the remote Elcho Island Airport and siphoning fuel from planes.

Petrol sniffing is not a new challenge to hit remote communities, but aviation fuel is even more dangerous because it contains lead, local officials said.

Lead exposure can badly damage the brain and nervous system.

Are fresh vegies always healthier than frozen?

There's a common belief fresh is best and buying frozen vegies is a cop out.

But certainly on the nutrition front, frozen veg aren't necessarily inferior, says Melanie McGrice, a spokesperson for the Dietitians Association of Australia.

"Whether fresh is better [than frozen] depends on how fresh the vegies actually are," Ms McGrice said.

Sick of fast fashion? Here are five ways to make your wardrobe more sustainable

Clare Press, fashion writer and editor, described this as her "canary in the coalmine moment" — the point at which she decided to become a passionate advocate of slow fashion.

She cites a study from 2006 that found British women were consuming four times as many clothes as their 1980 counterparts, and sending 30kg of textiles and clothing to landfill annually.

Aussie hip-hop sisterhood is breaking down barriers

"I'm having a visual of, like, people walking in the street for a cause," Akimera Burckhardt-Bedeau tells a group of women sitting around her.

"We are building a community out there, of women, who are out there doing it in hip-hop," she told News Breakfast later on.

Ms Burckhardt-Bedeau is lead facilitator at Sisters on the Mic — a program for women learning the hip-hop ropes — but she prefers to go with just Akimera on stage.

Australian top IS recruiter Neil Prakash 'to be extradited'

Prakash, a senior recruiter for so-called Islamic State, was arrested in Turkey last year and placed in jail.

Earlier last year, Australia incorrectly announced that Prakash - who has been linked to foiled terror attacks - had died in a US air strike.

The Melbourne-born man will now face trial in Australia, Mr Turnbull said.

"We have an extradition treaty with Turkey," Mr Turnbull said on the local Seven Network on Friday.

Australian politician becomes first to breastfeed in parliament

Ms Waters, from the left-wing Greens party, fed two-month-old daughter Alia Joy during a vote on Tuesday.

The lower house last year joined the Senate in allowing breastfeeding, but no MPs in either house had done so.

It followed a backlash in 2015 when Kelly O'Dwyer, a government minister, was asked to consider expressing milk to avoid missing parliamentary duties.

"We need more women and parents in Parliament," Ms Waters said on Facebook.

Rare flowers destroyed in Australia after paperwork error

A box of rare daisies from the 1850s had been sent to Brisbane from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

But the pressed plant samples were incinerated because accompanying documents were filled out incorrectly.

Australian quarantine authorities have ordered a review into the incident.

The plants were destroyed in March because of missing information such as details of the specimens, they said.

 

'Highly valuable'

Revenge porn hits 'one in five' Australians

The national survey of more than 4,200 people found that men and women were equally likely to be targeted.

But men were more likely to be perpetrators, while women held more safety fears, said Australia's first comprehensive research on the subject.

The findings showed that the abuse was more widespread than previously thought, researchers said.

A fifth of respondents had a sexual or nude image taken without their consent, according to the RMIT University and Monash University study.

Does Australia want Turnbull to save the relationship with Donald Trump?

Three months into his presidency, Trump's sternly nationalistic and isolationist rhetoric has Australia questioning whether it can continue to count on the US, testing one of the world's closest alliances.

"There's a great sense of loss about the America that we thought underpinned the security order (and) that the America we relied on might not be there," Mathew Davies, head of the international Relations Department at the Australian National University, told CNN.

Australia interested in 2022 Commonwealth Games

David Grevemberg, CEO of the Commonwealth Games Federation, has confirmed Australia is one of four nations interested in hosting the 2022 event, which was recently made available after Durban was stripped of its right to stage the event.

It comes as western Sydney emerges as a challenger for country Victoria's bid for the 2030 Commonwealth Games.