Principal says students involved had ‘brought embarrassment to our school’.

More than 50 countries have confirmed they are attending the conference in Lake Lucerne.

Police are searching for a man who allegedly defaced three parts of the Australian War Memorial with graffiti in Canberra this morning.

About 1am, the man allegedly graffitied three areas of the memorial with pro-Palestinian slogans, police said.

"The vandalism is both inappropriate and offensive," a spokesperson from the Australian War Memorial said of the graffiti.

READ MORE: Sharon tried to pay for a hotel room with cash. Staff wouldn't let her

One message seen on the walls read: "In 100 years do you want there to be a Gaza memorial?"

The graffiti has since been covered by a tarpaulin after the damage was discovered.

The spokesperson said they were "saddened by graffiti which desecrated the heritage building at the Australian War Memorial overnight".

"The Memorial's purpose is to commemorate the sacrifice of those Australians who have died in war or on operational service," they said.

In CCTV footage from around the time of the alleged incident, a man was seen wearing a black hoodie, a mask, and khaki pants with dark knee patches.

READ MORE: Key seat to be scrapped in major blow to independents

Returned and Services League (RSL) National President Greg Mellick also condemned the alleged act of vandalism.

"People are entitled to protest, but the defilement of a memorial to those who served, suffered and died in the service of the Australian nation and to protect the freedoms and way of life of all Australians is disgusting and to be deplored," he said.

"On behalf of the RSL and all who have served and continue to serve our nation, we condemn the actions of the protester or protesters in the strongest possible terms."

Mellick said the alleged vandalism did nothing to enhance the cause of those suffering in the Middle East.

He said it "offended not only veterans and service personnel, but all fair-minded and freedom-loving Australians".

The Australian Federal Police released images of a man in an attempt to locate the person they allege committed the criminal damage.

"Police are very disappointed this morning to see a national institution which holds a special significance to many being vandalised," ACT Policing's Acting Inspector Lisa Broomhall said. 

"We would like to remind the community that while peaceful protest is part of healthy democracy, criminal acts will not be tolerated." 

Anyone with information about the alleged incident has been asked to contact Crime Stoppers.

The number of incidents is on the rise and advocates want a law change.

‘For him to be gone this long without accessing any money is very worrying for us.’

Seventy-five years ago today, a rhesus money was launched into space. He wasn't the last to leap into the void.

Five cities have been ranked impossibly or severely unaffordable in a new report examining 94 international markets.

A New South Wales woman has shared the perils of trying to pay for a Sydney hotel room with cash after she attempted to check-in to the Holiday Inn at Parramatta last weekend.

Albury grandmother Sharon Walsh, 60, had reserved a $209 room for Sunday night at the four-star hotel through online accommodation platform Booking.com.

Walsh told 9news.com.au she arrived at the hotel around 7.30pm that evening, after driving down from Nelson Bay where she attended two family baby showers.

READ MORE: Australian research shows spending rises with cashless payments

The grandmother said she told staff at the check-in desk she needed to pay for the room with cash, as her bank account had been recently hacked and she was waiting on a replacement card. 

"I said, 'I am paying by cash, that is all I have' and I pulled the money out," she said.

However, Walsh said she was shocked when hotel staff requested a $300 bond on top of the price for the room.

As Walsh was only carrying $375 in cash, she didn't have enough money to cover it.

"I offered to pay for the room in advance and the car park fee, which was an extra $20," she said. 

"I had an iPad and iPhone so I didn't want to watch any movies. And basically, I didn't need anything else that would require a room fee." 

Walsh said she wasn't able to put the bond on her credit card as she had reached her limit after splashing out on family dinners during her trip to Nelson Bay.

"I had money in my bank account, which I transferred to my credit card, but it takes 1-2 business days to transfer," she said.

Walsh said she did not feel comfortable asking a family member to use their credit card because, under the hotel's policy, their card details needed to be sent to the hotel by email, along with a copy of their photo ID.

"This all started because I got hacked. So I was very conscious about security and I don't know what the hotel's security is like," she said.

With hotel staff refusing to budge, Walsh said she was left with no option but to try to find somewhere else to stay the night.

"I was feeling very vulnerable, being a lone, female traveller from the country, where was I to go?" she said.

Too tired to make the five-hour plus drive back home to Albury, Walsh said she was worried she would have to sleep in her car.

"I was thinking, will I have to stay in my car and where do I stay where I am safe? And then I will have to be on guard," she said.

Luckily, Walsh ended up being able to book a room at the nearby Novotel Sydney Hotel at Parramatta.

"I rang (the Novotel) and asked if they were happy to accept cash and they were.

"They were amazing and they even waived my parking fee. I think they just felt sorry for me," she said.

Walsh said she was disappointed with the lack of empathy shown by staff at the Holiday Inn.

To make matters worse, Booking.com had not accepted her cancellation for the hotel room, and had attempted to charge to her credit card for $209, Walsh said. 

"I am telling friends not to stay at Holiday Inn and I am boycotting them now," she said.

Holiday Inn Parramatta general manager Anurag Sharma said his hotel was happy to take cash payments from guests.

"Our hotel does accept cash and there is no problem with that whatsoever," he said. 

However, the hotel's rules required the payment of a refundable bond, which was also mentioned in the information about the hotel provided by Booking.com, Sharma said.

"If anyone is paying $200 for accommodation, they are required to pay a $300 bond to cover any kind of extras in the hotel; your car parking, your food and beverage bill, your in-room dining bill, movie watching in the room," he said.

"That money we refund at the time of checkout.

"If the guest doesn't provide enough cash then we can't check in the guests. That's our very simple hotel policy."

As Australia moves toward a cashless society, many customers have become more vocal about their desire for businesses to keep cash as payment option, or stop making it more difficult to pay by cash.

Recently, debate has turned to whether Australia should introduce laws which require businesses to accept cash.

Last week, independent federal MPs Andrew Gee, Bob Katter and Dai Le introduced a bill to parliament which includes hefty fines for businesses that refuse to accept or don't carry physical money. 

However, businesses argue cash payments are increasingly unpopular with customers and come with extra security concerns for staff, as well as transport difficulties and costs.

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), cash accounted for just 13 per cent of all payments made in 2022.

Contact reporter Emily McPherson at em********@******om.au

There's been a massive upset among the world's richest companies as computer chip company Nvidia continues it's meteoric rise.

Australia has faced bushfires seasons even more devastating than the catastrophic Black Summer fires and likely will again, a new study on the nation's weather patterns stretching back 2000 years has shown.

Thirty-three people died in the Black Summer bushfires of 2019/2020, more than 3000 homes were destroyed and more than 20 million hectares of farm, bush and forest were scorched.

As far as Australian records go, the fires were unprecedented in their scale and ferocity.

READ MORE: Cold snap for south-east Australia follows city's coolest day in five years

But these records only date back to 1950.

Now, a team of climate scientists has examined Antarctic sea ice to reveal new insights into Australia's weather patterns over the past 2000 years.

The size of weather systems that cause extreme bushfire weather in Australia are so big, they also impact Antarctic weather at the same time.

This "weather bridge" between the two continents is preserved in the ice core record as changes in sea salt concentration, scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes found.

A drop in sea salt concentrations in the Law Dome ice core signal increased bushfire weather in south-east Australia.

The ice core data showed that bushfire weather in south-east Australia was as bad or worse than during Black Summer at least seven times over the past 2000 years.

READ MORE: G7 agrees to loan Ukraine billions funded by frozen Russian assets

"We know how devastating the 2019/20 Black Summer bushfires were but these new findings show natural climate variability can produce even more severe bushfire weather," climate scientist and lead author of the study, Dr Danielle Udy, said.

"On top of that, climate change is further adding to the intensity and frequency of severe bushfire weather."

"Buried in the ice is a warning: this isn't just a future risk. We need to plan for bushfire seasons worse than the Black Summer."

While the Black Summer fires were caused by a combination of factors aligning, including drought and natural climate variability, the effects of climate change will bring more frequent weather extremes in the coming decades.

"Prior to this study we had limited insights into how bad bushfires can really be due to natural climate variability alone," Hydroclimatologist at the University of Newcastle, Associate Professor Anthony Kiem, said.

"This work emphasises the need for Australia's bushfire risk estimation and planning to consider the full range of plausible natural variability in Australia's bushfire weather, as well as projected impacts of climate change."