Demetrius Pairama, 17, was tortured and forced to hang herself five years ago.

High Court decision tells Veterans’ Affairs to aim for justice and don’t sweat the detail.

US tech giant Microsoft has axed more Australian jobs after the company made major staffing cuts across the globe earlier in the year.

About 50 Australian employees are believed to have lost their jobs this month, Nine newspaper the Australian Financial Review reports.

Microsoft confirmed "recent redundancies" to 9news.com.au but did not detail the number of job losses.

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"Organisational and workforce adjustments are a necessary and regular part of managing our business," the spokesperson said.

"We will continue to prioritise and invest in strategic growth areas for our future and in support of our customers and partners."

The Australian redundancies come as it is reported by US media that Microsoft has cut 1000 jobs in the US since the start of this financial year.

It's believed the job losses have come on top of 10,000 Microsoft employees around the world being laid off earlier in the year.

The company said in a US regulatory filing in January those layoffs were a response to "macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities".

The layoffs represented "less than five per cent of our total employee base, with some notifications happening today", CEO Satya Nadella said in an email to employees in January.

Microsoft's workforce expanded by about 36 per cent in the two years following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, growing from 163,000 workers at the end of June 2020, to 221,000 in June 2022.

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A Chinese surveillance ship has been confirmed to be sailing off the east coast of Australia as the Talisman Sabre war games are underway.

The photo confirmed by the Australian Defence Force shows a RAAF P-8A Poseidon Maritime Patrol aircraft passing a Chinese Navy Dongdiao Class Auxiliary Intelligence ship in the Coral Sea off the coast of Queensland.

The ADF is expected to release a more detailed statement on the surveillance ship later today.

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It comes as the Talisman Sabre war games are underway with 13 nations participating in "high end, multi-domain warfighting" across sea, land, air, cyber and space.

The military exercise is to improve relationships between military forces through various operations.

More than 30,000 military personnel are involved in the war games.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Saturday in regards to reports of the foreign surveillance vessel that "there is always" a Chinese ship watching the war games.

"That's fine. They're acting in accordance with international law, and so this is to be completely expected," he said.

"For us, it's really about our capability and our capacity, and it is very much about our ability to work with other countries, our friends and our allies, and particularly the United States."

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Two Canberra men will face court in Brisbane accused of importing 247kg of cocaine hidden in the hull of a yacht.

The yacht was seized by Border Force and federal police officers when it arrived in Townsville from Vanuatu in April and was later revealed to contain the drugs with a street value of more than $61 million.

It's alleged the men, aged 55 and 44, travelled to Townsville from Canberra in May intending to recover the drugs from the boat.

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The men, both from Griffith in the ACT, were arrested at their apartment on Thursday.

Police say one of the men threw a backpack containing $290,000 cash in a vacuum sealed bag from the apartment balcony when the AFP knocked on the door and announced they had a search warrant.

Both men were due to appear in Brisbane Magistrates Court today charged with importing a commercial quantity of drug and dealing in the proceeds of crime.

They face a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

AFP Detective Superintendent Adrian Telfer said the cocaine trade fuelled violence on Australian streets and increased the power of organised crime.

"Every time someone buys cocaine they are lining the pockets of organised crime gangs who are responsible for violence here in Australia and around the world," he said.

"This amount of cocaine has an estimated street value of $61,750,000.

"That's money which criminal groups would use to buy weapons, corrupt officials and governments overseas and turn the Pacific into an illicit drug superhighway."

"The AFP and our partners, through the Queensland Joint Organised Crime Task Force (QJOCTF) work to stop drugs, like cocaine, hitting our shores because illicit drugs contribute to the road toll, child neglect and domestic violence."

He said the investigation is ongoing and police have not ruled out making further arrests.

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Sharks have scared us a lot this year, primarily for suspected attacks on humans – however, humans are a larger threat to sharks than sharks are to us.

The 35th official Shark Week takes place from July 23 to July 29 on the Discovery Channel and aims to increase conversation and education about these ancient marine predators that are key to the health of the ocean.

There are more than 500 species of shark.

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They are as diverse as the dwarf lantern shark, which is smaller than a human hand, and the whale shark, which can grow as long as a school bus, marine biologist Michael Heithaus, professor and dean of the College of Arts, Sciences & Education at Florida International University in Miami

Given that there are a large number of unique species, some characteristics may be true for one species, but not another.

Sharks have been around for hundreds of millions of years, and while they continue to evolve, they are also in grave danger.

Largely due to overfishing, shark and ray populations fell by 71.1 per cent between 1970 and 2018, according to a 2021 study published in the journal Nature.

Sharks can live for hundreds of years

Sharks have one of the longest life spans compared with other animals.

The Greenland shark is the longest-living known vertebrate on Earth, according to a 2016 study published in the journal Science.

Researchers using radiocarbon dating determined that the North Atlantic species likely lives an average of at least 272 years, and often doesn't reach maturity until 150 years of age.

Greenland sharks can live for at least 400 years, scientists have estimated.

Sharks are older than trees and dinosaurs

The earliest evidence of shark fossils dates back as far as 450 million years, which means these creatures have been around at least 90 million years before trees and 190 million years before dinosaurs.

Sharks have been around since before Pangea broke apart, said Catherine Macdonald, director of Field School and lecturer at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science. (There was one single gigantic continent called Pangea some 250 million years ago.)

Additionally, sharks have survived five mass extinctions, one of which wiped out around 96 per cent of all marine life.

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Sharks may be helpful for our environment

Tiger sharks, one of Australia's primary predators, may help ecosystems respond to extreme climate events.

The species' prey, including green turtles, seabirds and stingrays, avoid shallow water, often areas with seagrass.

As a result, the seagrass is able to grow to be bushlike and create a safe-haven nursery area for juvenile fish, shrimp and crabs, Heithaus said.

Seagrass absorbs the carbon that is in the atmosphere and uses it to build its body.

When the seagrass dies, the dead material gets buried in sediment on the ocean floor, and the carbon is taken out of circulation, Heithaus added.

Researchers are currently trying to determine whether other shark species play a role in this phenomenon and whether it occurs in other places such as coral reefs.

"It seems like it's more than just tiger sharks," Heithaus said.

"It's probably these bigger species that play an outsized role in helping shape the ecosystems they're a part of."

Shark pregnancies can last longer than three years

Reproduction patterns in sharks vary.

On average, sharks give birth after 11 or 12 months of pregnancy, but some sharks, such as the frilled shark and basking shark can be pregnant for over three years.

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Some sharks, like mako sharks and bull sharks, give live birth, while other sharks, like cat sharks, lay eggs, said Jasmin Graham, president and CEO of Minorities in Shark Sciences, based in Bradenton, Florida.

Long pregnancy terms, and the fact that some sharks take 10 to 12 years to reach sexual maturity, like the great white, further impact populations decimated by unsustainable fishing practices.

Sharks do not vocalise

Sharks are primarily silent creatures, as they don't have organs for producing sound.

Instead of speaking, sharks communicate through body language, such as zigzagging, shaking and moving their jaws.

Sharks can sense electricity

Sharks have a sixth sense — they can pick up nanoscopic electromagnetic currents. This extra sense can help them navigate the ocean and find prey, or even a mate.

"The minute electrical impulse that a prey's brain sends to its heart to tell it to beat is detectable to sharks, so they can find hidden prey quite effectively," Macdonald said.

With this finely attuned sense, sharks hunt sick and weak animals, playing a crucial role in keeping the marine ecosystem healthy.

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When US customs officials encountered a pickup truck transporting four large wheels of cheese from Mexico into the Presidio Port of entry in Texas, they had a hunch something was off.

An X-ray scan of the cheese revealed "anomalies," which upon further inspection turned out to be 8 kilograms of cocaine concealed inside the wheels, Customs and Border Protection said in a statement.

Officials seized the drugs and the truck. The 22-year-old driver, a US citizen who legally declared the cheese, will face charges for the failed smuggling attempt, the agency said.

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"Smugglers will sometimes try to conceal contraband in items that appear innocent to deflect suspicion," Daniel Mercado, director of Customs and Border Protection at the Presidio Port said. "The thorough and extensive inspections performed by CBP officers stopped this unusual drug load from reaching its intended destination."

Smugglers have gone to bizarre lengths to bring drugs into the US using everyday objects, car batteries, gas tanks, drones and more, according to Customs and Border Protection.

Customs officers in El Paso seized 66 kilograms of cocaine hidden in an ice cream maker last month. Officials at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport found $670,000 (US$450,000) worth of cocaine inside the wheels of a woman's wheelchair last November.

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Combined by weight, seizures of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, fentanyl, and marijuana increased 7 percent from May to June, according to Customs and Border Protection.

The agency says it is ramping up efforts to disrupt the movement of drugs into the US, in part by surging resources to points of entry, where drugs are often smuggled in through vehicles.

Under a new operation launched in June, officials have seized more than 680 kilograms pounds of fentanyl and over 10,400 kilograms of other narcotics like cocaine, methamphetamines, and heroin, the agency said.

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Latin America is taking Barbie mania to an extreme, with everything from pink tacos and pastries, commercial planes bearing the Barbie logo, political ads and even Barbie-themed protests.

But it's not all high heels and pom-poms: Barbie mania in the region has taken on a darker, macabre tone.

In Peru, anti-government demonstrators this week dressed up two women in pink and put them in giant Barbie boxes in the main square of Lima, the capital, to protest current President Dina Boluarte, under whose administration police have often clashed with protesters.

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One actress, whose box was labeled "Barbie Dictator", held a pink gun. The doll, according to the box legend, "includes tear gas and dum-dum bullets". Another protester's box was labeled "Genocidal Barbie".

Meanwhile, stores, street vendors and restaurants throughout Latin America are offering up all sorts of Barbie-themed goodies.

In Mexico, there are Barbie tortillas (the corn dough is coloured pink with beet juice, with some imprinted with an edible-dye pony-tailed Barbie silhouette); Barbie pastries and Barbie tacos (marinated pork meat served in pink tortillas and accompanied by a strawberry milkshake).

An entire Barbie-themed restaurant opened this week in Guayaquil, Ecuador; it is — of course — built to resemble Barbie's house.

Volaris, a Mexican airline, has painted one of its jets with a Barbie logo and, according to a promotional video, the plane will be piloted by Barbie, not Ken.

The pink craze in the region is such that Barbie mania has now spread into politics.

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In Guatemala, presidential candidate Sandra Torres shared a musical TikTok video pitching her as a Barbie who "wants prosperity for all".

Mexican street sellers are peddling a Barbie doll modelled on presidential hopeful Claudia Sheinbaum, a real-life scientist-turned-politician whose own (real) ponytail has become her branding trademark.

The office of Colombian President Gustavo Petro recently raised hackles with a Barbie-theme video — including clips from the film's trailer — to promote an independence day tour of the country. His office quickly removed the poorly made video.

Beyond the ponytails and fun food, there is a darker undercurrent.

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In Mexico, a Barbie homage doll sparked controversy when a sister of one of Mexico's 111,000 missing people began sewing Barbie outfits to costume the doll as a "Searching Mother" — a member of a group of volunteers who fan out across Mexico's dusty plains to search for gravesites that might contain their children's remains. Most of the missing appear to have been abducted — and killed — by drug cartels or kidnapping gangs.

This Barbie is clad in a wide-brimmed hat and a sun hood, wears a T-shirt bearing the photo of a missing man and camouflage pants and comes equipped with a shovel.

Her creator, volunteer searcher Delia Quiroa, hopes to publicise the plight of mothers who have to carry out the searches and investigations police won't do, and at the same time raise money to continue searching.

One group of volunteer searchers in the western state of Jalisco — the state with the highest number of missing people — questioned whether casting Barbie as the victim of a horrible crime is appropriate.

Barbie "has evolved into a representation of strong, independent women who can do what they want and chase their dreams", the volunteer search group Light of Hope wrote in a statement.

"Nobody who is searching for a missing child, spouse or a sibling is doing what they want to do, much less chasing a dream."

"It seems to us an abomination that girls see being a Searching Mother as something normal," the group added.

Quiroa, from the northern border state of Tamaulipas, said her creation is almost an anti-Barbie.

"Barbie is everything a person wants to be, but this is a Barbie who doesn't want to be," she said.

"She is what nobody wants to be. Nobody wants to be a searcher, nobody wants to be looking for a family member."

Quiroa has been looking for her brother Roberto since he was kidnapped by drug cartel gunmen in March 2014. Despite carrying out its own searches and pressuring authorities to investigate, the family knows nothing about his whereabouts.

"I think of this as a doll more directed to women, to us, not for girls to play with," Quiroa said.

Vanessa Munguía, widely regarded as Latin America's leading Barbie collector — she numbers her collection in the thousands — says Barbie is particularly popular in Latin America because, until a couple of decades ago, most girls' toys here depicted maternal, home-maker roles.

"Barbie was the only toy I found that told me that there were a million other possibilities. I could be an astronaut, I could be a teacher," said Munguía, who became a lawyer.

Asked about depicting Barbie as a "Searching Mother" or any of the other incarnations of the doll, Munguía says she finds it a very valid expression.

"I think that's exactly what what we like in Barbie, that we can make her out to be whatever we need her to be at that moment," she said.

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Some 19,000 people have been evacuated from the Greek island of Rhodes as bushfires continued burning for a sixth day on three fronts, Greek authorities say.

The Ministry of Climate Change and Civil Protection said on Sunday it was "the largest evacuation from a wildfire in the country".

Local police said 16,000 were evacuated by land and 3000 by sea, from 12 villages and several hotels, with no casualties. Six people were briefly hospitalised with respiratory problems and were later released.

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On Sunday morning (Sunday evening AEST), 266 firefighters and 49 engines on the ground were joined by five helicopters and 10 planes — seven Greek, two Turkish and one Croatian — to help put out the fire, authorities said. A further 15 engines were expected later in the day.

In the mountainous part of Rhodes, an active front of the bushfire, firefighters have been trying to stop the blaze from spreading to nearby dense forests.

South-west of the resort of Kiotari, the main focus of Saturday's evacuations, a trench was being dug to keep the fire from crossing a creek and threatening another seaside village, Gennadi.

The weather remains hot in the Mediterranean country on Sunday. Before midday, temperatures had already reached 38 degrees. Winds were low but are notoriously variable in Rhodes, as in other Greek islands.

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Some of the evacuated, including tourists, are being accommodated in other hotels, gyms and a conference centre. A shipping company has offered one of its ships for accommodation.

Managers from the evacuated hotels are seeking their former clients to get them in touch with their tour operators, authorities said.

Other island visitors have headed to the airport to try to fly home. Greece's ministry of foreign affairs announced it was coordinating with embassies to assist those who might have left their travel documents behind during the evacuation.

Authorities on Sunday designated an unprecedentedly large part of the mainland, the whole eastern part of central and southern Greece, plus the islands of Evia and Rhodes as well as large swaths of the south-west, as category five, the highest for risk of fire outbreaks.

A further chunk of Greece has been designated category four, very high risk.

Temperatures were expected to reach 43 degrees in the capital, Athens, on Sunday and 45 degrees in the interior plains of central Greece.

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Brian Boswell and his wife have lived in their home for 30 years. 

The Victorian couple entered retirement with a mortgage, and they feared they'd have to sell – but then looked in their own backyard.

So they moved to unlock its value, by sub dividing their garden.

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Mary Mizzi from Cash For Your Backyard buys spare land from people like the Boswells and then takes care of everything else like driveways, fences and drainage.

"This is a great way for them to keep their home the value of the home is very much retained whether it's with the backyard or not," Mizzi said.

"Their only out-of-pocket expense would be a solicitor to look after their interests.

"Their solicitor actually prepares the contract."

Demand for such services has increased as interest rates have risen.

While everyone's circumstances are different, requiring specific financial and legal advice, it's worked for the Boswells.

Mr Boswell, 75, said it paid the mortgage off.

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"So now we're debt free," he said.

There's also an added bonus to having no backyard

"I don't have to cut the grass any more. The dogs have all gone and it was just sitting there and it was getting hard to maintain," he said.

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