Skiers and snowboarders are delighted snowfields in the Australian Snowy Mountains are opening early this snow season thanks to snowfalls and blizzards.

Perisher, located south of Canberra in the Snowy Mountains, will open on Friday, a week earlier than expected.

The area has had blizzard-like conditions this week, seeing 75cm of early snowfall.

Cook’s Picture Palace, Fortitude Valley’s first movie theatre, will be transformed into a restaurant and rooftop bar.

The restaurant and bar will be opened by Signature Hospitality Group and Gurner in June.

Founder, Tim Gurner says this is an opportunity to regenerate this piece of Brunswick Street to bring it in line with the new face of the Fortitude Valley.

The Record on US measles patients could make them lose the diseases elimination status.

With 60 new cases on the past week and a total of 971 cases in 26 states, it’s the highest number since 1994.

The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention says the loss of elimination state means erasing the hard work done by all levels of public health.

Papua New Guinea's former finance minister James Marape has been elected as the Pacific nations new Prime Minister.

After weeks of political unrest, Mr Marape received an overwhelming majority of 101 votes to eight.

Mr Marape declared his desire to make  PNG “the richest black Christian nation” in the world and is committed to reviewing resource laws.

More than a hundred senior doctors from a Sydney hospital in Randwick have voted to leave the city’s Children Hospital Network over ongoing disputes.

Doctors at the Randwick hospital say tensions escalated when the network continued to send their patients requiring heart surgery to another Sydney Children’s Hospital.

Randwick surgeon Angus Grey says their hospital needs to be offering heart surgery services for the customer’s sake otherwise ‘blood will be on [the Health Minister’s] hands’

Northern Territories’ Social Policy Scrutiny Committee report that every child in detention in the territory is Aboriginal.

Almost three years after the royal commission in to the Don Dale Detention Centre, Department officials told the committee on Thursday that there are 22 boys and two girls, in detention, all of whom are Aboriginal.

A member from Territory Families said they were still “not ready” to implement some of the changes recommended by the royal commission, including raising the criminal responsibility age from 12 to 14 years old.

High rates of Brisbane youth and older women are becoming homeless due to the rising cost of rent and lack of entry-level jobs.

Gentrification of inner-city areas is forcing them further out into the suburbs.

Support workers in Brisbane say the issues that lead to homelessness are shifting from substance abuse and mental health issues to an inability to pay rent or find work.  

A 15-metre-long humpback whale skeleton is hanging at Point Lookout in North Stradbroke Island as a tourism project.  

The whale platform is one of the key projects in the island’s economic transition from mining to tourism.

Chief executive of the Quandamooka Yooloooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation Cameron Costello says the whale platform will give visitors and locals a greater understanding of humpback whales in Quandamooka culture.