The federal Minister for Drought and Water Resources David Littleproud has announced a new $15 million waterway fencing program to help protect riverbanks and native finish.

The project will see funding available to local Landcare services, natural resource management groups and indigenous organisations and will involve fencing off environmentally sensitive areas northern Basin waterways from livestock.

The announcement comes after a severe decline in the health of rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin.

The State and Federal Environment Ministers have released a joint statement acknowledging climate change as the greatest existential threat to the Great Barrier Reef.

The two environment ministers, Sussan Ley, and Leanne Enoch, met in Townsville yesterday part of the Great Barrier Reef Ministerial Forum to discuss the progress of policies set over the past five years to protect the Reef. 

Samoa has declared a national medical emergency crisis, following the deaths of 16 residents due to an outbreak of measles on the island

More than 1700 cases have been confirmed by the Samoan National Emergency Operation Centre, a high proportion of which are children, who are particularly susceptible to the disease.

All travellers to Samoa have been urged to ensure their vaccinations are up to date.

Two American federal guards responsible for keeping watch over convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while he was detained in a prison cell, have been charged with falsfying records claiming that they had performed mandatory half-hour checks on the American financier.

The two officers allegedly browsed the internet and slept for two hours on the night that Epstein was found dead in his cell. 

Both officers have pleaded not guilty.

Australian scientists have developed a new technology to recycle all types of plastics to help solve the world’s waste problem.

Sydney University professor Thomas Maschmeyer’s Catalytic Hydrothermal Reactor (Cat-HTR) can reuse stockpiled plastic as fuel or remake it into new plastic through a form of chemical recycling that changes plastic at a molecular level using hot water at a high pressure to turn it back into oil.

The company, Licella, is opening its first commercial recycling plant in the UK.

AUSTRAC has accused Westpac of failing to report more than 19.5 million international funds transfer instructions to it over a period of five years, for money moving into and out of Australia.

The bank is alleged to have breached the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act on more than 23 million occasions.

Three more homes have been destroyed in southeast Queensland's bushfire crisis, as fire crews brace for a heatwave and tricky winds today

Authorities confirmed this morning that the three homes had been burnt at Ravensbourne near Toowoomba on the Darling Downs, taking the total number of homes lost in the recent fires to 19.

Fire crews spent Monday and Tuesday strengthening containment lines ahead of today's heatwave, which will see temperatures soar up to the mid-to-high 30s near some of the major fires.

A 17-year-old girl from Brisbane could be charged after she was filmed posing for photographs outside the balcony of a Gold Coast high-rise building amid schoolies week, according to police. 

The footage was captured on Monday and shows the young woman walking along the balcony ledge before posing for photographs. 

Gold Coast Police District Acting Chief Superintendent, Craig Hanlon, said the police are aware of who the person is and management has evicted her, the incident is currently investigated.