A satirical take from Tairāwhiti on the coronation.

Anyone who has spent a summer evening swatting away mosquitoes, or a summer day scratching mosquito bites, can agree: Mosquitoes stink. But the smells produced by humans are an important part of what draws mosquitoes to us.

In a scientific report, scientists helped pinpoint the different chemicals in body odour that attract these insects by building an ice-rink size testing arena and pumping in the scents of different people.

Mosquitoes are part of the fly family, and most of the time, they feed on nectar.

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However, females preparing to produce eggs need a meal with extra protein: blood.

Best-case scenario, getting bitten will just leave you with an itchy red bump.

But mosquito bites often turn deadly, thanks to parasites and viruses the insects transmit.

One of the most dangerous of these diseases is malaria.

Malaria is a blood-borne disease caused by microscopic parasites that take up residence in red blood cells.

When a mosquito bites a person infected with malaria, it sucks up the parasite along with the blood.

After developing in the mosquito's stomach, the parasite "will migrate to the salivary glands and then be spat back out into the skin of another human host when the mosquito blood-feeds again," said Conor McMeniman, an assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute in Baltimore, United States.

Malaria has been eradicated in the US in the past century thanks to window screens, air conditioning and improvements to drainage systems where mosquitoes' aquatic larvae can grow, but the disease remains a danger to much of the world.

"Malaria still accounts for more than 600,000 deaths per year, mostly in children under the age of five years, and also pregnant women," said McMeniman, the senior author of the new study published in the journal Current Biology.

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"It inflicts a lot of suffering around the world, and part of the motivation for this study was to try and really understand how mosquitoes that transmit malaria are finding humans."

McMeniman, along with Bloomberg postdoctoral researchers and the study's first authors, Diego Giraldo and Stephanie Rankin-Turner, focused on Anopheles gambiae, a species of mosquito found in sub-Saharan Africa.

They partnered with Zambia's Macha Research Trust, led by scientific director Edgar Simulundu.

"We were really motivated to try and develop a system where we could study the behavior of the African malaria mosquito in a naturalistic habitat, reflective of its native home in Africa," McMeniman said.

The researchers also wanted to compare the mosquitoes' smell preferences across different humans, to observe the insects' ability to track scents across distances of 20 metres, and to study them during their most active hours, between 10pm and 2am.

To tick all these boxes, the researchers created a screened facility the size of a skating rink. Dotting the perimeter of the facility were six screened tents where study participants would sleep.

Air from their tents, carrying the participants' unique breath and body odour scents, was pumped through long tubes to the main facility onto absorbent pads, warmed and baited with carbon dioxide to mimic a sleeping human.

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Hundreds of mosquitoes in the main 20m-by-20m facility were then treated to a buffet of the sleeping subjects' scents.

Infrared cameras tracked the mosquitoes' movement to the different samples. (The mosquitoes used in the study were not infected with malaria, and they couldn't reach the sleeping humans.)

The researchers found what many who have been on a picnic would attest to: Some people attract more mosquitoes than others.

What's more, chemical analyses of air from the tents revealed the odor-causing substances behind the mosquitoes' attraction, or lack thereof.

The mosquitoes were most attracted to airborne carboxylic acids, including butyric acid, a compound present in "stinky" cheeses such as Limburger.

These carboxylic acids are produced by bacteria on human skin and tend not to be noticeable to us.

While carboxylic acids attracted the mosquitoes, the insects seemed to be deterred by another chemical called eucalyptol, which is present in plants.

The researchers suspected that one sample with a high eucalyptol concentration might have been related to the diet of one of the participants.

Simulundu said that finding a correlation between the chemicals present in different people's body odour and the mosquitoes' attraction to those scents was "very interesting and exciting."

"This finding opens up approaches for developing lures or repellents that can be used in traps to disrupt the host-seeking behavior of mosquitoes, thereby controlling malaria vectors in regions where the disease is endemic," said Simulundu, a coauthor of the study.

Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist and vice president and chief scientific officer of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the US who was not involved with the study, was similarly enthusiastic.

"I think it's a super exciting study," she said.

"It's the first time that an experiment of this type has been done at this scale outside the lab."

Vosshall researches another mosquito species that spreads dengue fever, Zika and Chikungunya. In a study published last year in the journal Cell, she and her colleagues found that this mosquito species also seeks out the scent of carboxylic acids produced by bacteria on human skin.

The fact that these two different species respond to similar chemical cues is a good thing, she said, because that could make it easier to create repellents or traps for mosquitoes across the board.

The research might not have any immediate implications for avoiding bug bites at your next barbecue. (Vosshall said that even scrubbing with unscented soap doesn't get rid of the natural scents that attract mosquitoes.)

However, she noted that the new paper "gives us some really good clues about what mosquitoes are using to hunt us, and understanding what that is, is essential for us to come up with the next steps."

It occured just hours before she spoke on a panel about anti-Asian racism and xenophobia.

Analysis times for three months of video could be cut down from six weeks to two hours.

Police are on the hunt for a man accused of glassing another football fan at the Melbourne Cricket Ground during last night's AFL match.

Investigators have been told the pair were involved in a verbal dispute before one smashed a glass on top of the head of the other shortly before 10pm.

The offender left the scene on foot and is yet to be found.

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A 36-year-old man from Queensland was provided medical treatment for his injury.

The incident happened during the Dreamtime at the 'G match between Essendon and Richmond.

Police said investigations remain ongoing and anyone with information that could help police should lodge a report at Crime Stoppers or call 1800 333 000.

While police said they were pleased with the behaviour of most fans at the MCG last night, 10 people were evicted from the stadium, including a man who ran onto the field in the dying stages of the game.

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The brothers have an inseparable bond and support each other, but are also competitive.

A man has suffered wounds to the hands and forearms after he was allegedly stabbed by another man in Adelaide who had barricaded himself into a unit.

The 40-year-old victim was taken to hospital by paramedics yesterday after emergency services were called to the apartment at Sandison Terrace in Glenelg West at about 5.30pm.

Police arrested the suspect, a 47-year-old Adelaide man, after forcing their way into the barricaded property.

Officers said the victim's injuries were non-life-threatening.

After being arrested, the suspect was taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital for assessment.

Police said that they expect to charge the man, once he is returned to custody, with aggravated assaulting causing harm and possessing a knife in a public place.

Officers said both men are known to each other, and that investigations are ongoing.

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The pedestrian was hurt this afternoon outside New World.

The chief of the Russian private military group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has claimed his forces have taken complete control of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after months of brutal fighting.

"The operation to capture Bakhmut lasted 224 days," he said in a video posted to Telegram, seeking to claim a final victory in the city.

CNN could not independently verify Prigozhin's claim, but an initial response from the Ukrainian side disputed it.

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Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar, in a Telegram post less than an hour after the Russian mercenary's claim was published, admitted the situation in Bakhmut was "critical" but said Ukrainian troops were still "holding the defence" in a district on Bakhmut's western-most edge.

"As of now, our defenders control certain industrial and infrastructure facilities in the area and the private sector," she said.

Prigozhin added that his forces will hand the control of Bakhmut to the Russian military on May 25.

"Until May 25, we will completely inspect it, create the necessary defence lines and hand it over to the military so that they can continue to work, and we ourselves will go to field camps," he said.

Wagner also received a message of praise from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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"Vladimir Putin congratulates the Wagner assault detachments, as well as all units of the Russian Armed Forces, which confirmed the presence and closure of the flanks, on the completion of the operation to liberate Artemovsk," Russian state news agency TASS reported the Kremlin as saying, using the Soviet-Russian name for Bakhmut.

While Russian forces have continued their slow street-by-street advance in the city itself for many months, over the last two weeks Ukrainian forces have managed to recapture small pockets of territory held by Russian troops to the northwest and southwest of the city.

If confirmed, for Russia Bakhmut's capture would mark the country's first gain in months, but the city's symbolism always outweighed its strategic importance.

Russian forces, bolstered by members of the Wagner mercenary group, have taken heavy losses trying to capture the city.

There are no official casualty figures, but earlier this year a NATO source told CNN they estimated that for every Ukrainian soldier killed defending Bakhmut, Russia lost five.

The battle has also highlighted an extraordinary rift among Russian forces, with Prigozhin at one point accusing a Russian brigade of abandoning its position in the city and railing several times at the Defence Ministry over a lack of ammunition.

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How the battle unfolded

Over the early part of 2023, the routes into Bakhmut had gradually come under the control of Russian forces and the battle for the city turned into an inch-by-inch grind, with Ukrainian forces repelling dozens of assaults each day.

Rather than drive directly towards the city centre, Wagner troops sought to encircle the city in a wide arc from the north.

In January they claimed the nearby town of Soledar, and later took a string of villages and hamlets north of Bakhmut, making Ukraine's defence of the city increasingly perilous.

But even as Moscow's troops closed in and most residents fled through dangerous evacuation corridors, a small group of Ukrainian civilians remained in the ruined city. Before the war, around 70,000 people lived in Bakhmut. As of March it stood at less than 4,000.

The battle has been likened to the kind of fighting seen in World War I.

Pictures from the area showed soldiers wading through mud with trees mangled by artillery fire.

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Jim Robertson was driving home on a quiet Queensland street last night when a "bright beaming light" suddenly flashed across the sky.

His dashcam captured the moment the sky lit up as he was driving on University Road in Towsnville, about 9.22pm.

People from across Queensland have reported seeing bright blue and green flashes in the sky, followed by a boom.

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Born and bred in Towsnville, Robertson said he had never seen anything like it before.

"There it was, it was a couple of seconds," he told 9news.com.au.

"We just thought, 'What the hell is that? Are we being evaded, was it a plane crash, was it space junk?'

He added the streaking light was "quite large". 

"It's something you don't expect driving home," Robertson said.

"This thing was so huge and the light was just so bright. There was a plane coming in at the same time, so those pilots would have had a great view.

"It was a fluke experience that we were lucky enough to get on the dashcam." 

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In another video shared with 9News, Marcello Avolio captured what he called a "fire ball" in the sky.

The still quiet of the night was suddenly disrupted with a blinding flash. 

Australian National University Astrophysicist Dr Brad Tucker confirmed the item was "definitely" a meteor."

"This was a bit of space rock essentially, probably broken off an asteroid in the asteroid belt, the area between Mars and Jupiter," he said.

"As it hit the earth's atmosphere, it created this bright flash and show in the sky."

Tucker said the meteor was travelling anywhere between 100,000 and 150,000 km/h.

"The blue-green colour is iron and nickel on the meteor heating up," he said.

"It breaks apart and as it breaks apart, that's what gives us that flash and sonic boom that people heard and saw.

"Light travels faster than sound, so when the meteor hits, you see the bright flash – but what people don't realise is that this thing is probably nowhere near them."

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