Jon Stewart speaking in Washington DC, has criticised lawmakers for not funding health care for 9/11 first responders.

Mr Stewart was met with empty seats as he spoke on Tuesday to a House Judiciary subcommittee about a bill to secure funding for ailing 9/11 victims.

He criticised  members of Congress for skipping the hearing by saying  it was an embarrassment to the country and they should be ashamed of themselves.

An arthritis drug owned by Pfizer may reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's according to a report by the Washington Post.

However the pharmaceutical giant has decided not to develop the drug, Enbrel, for Alzheimer's.

Critics say this is because the patent on the drug will soon expire and Alzheimer’s trials are long and expensive because the disease progresses slowly.

Police say two men shot by officers near the Victoria-NSW border are on a counter-terrorism watchlist.

The men aged 19 and 30 are believed to have links to outlaw motorcycle gangs, rammed the police car and lunged at the officers with a knife and a tomahawk.

Both men were shot by police and taken to Albury Hospital with serious injuries. The 30-year-old was later flown to Melbourne.

An Australian Institute for Health and Welfare study proves there is a direct relationship between trauma and poverty between the stolen generations and their descendants.

CEO of the Healing Foundation, Richard Weston says the report provides genuine evidence, children living in households with members or descendants of the stolen generations experience greater levels of social and economic disadvantage.

The report comes amid increasing calls for the government to fund a National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples.

Legal Aid Queensland is urging people to stay on top of their superannuation insurance ahead of the change on 1 July.

Senior Lawyer Paul Holmes says after the changes on 1 July, inactive super accounts with low balances will be closed and either rolled into other accounts, or potentially the government-operated fund.

Gas royalties will increase from 10 per cent to 12.5 percent from July 1st  to raise $476 million over four years to plug revenue shortfalls elsewhere.

Opponents of Queensland's gas royalty hike have labelled the move a kick in the guts for the resources sector, but Treasurer Jackie Trad says it's time for the industry to pay more.

Treasurer Trad says the gas sector is established and growing at a rapid rate and now is the time for it to pay a bit more to the people of Queensland.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has pledged to use profits from the sale of his presidential plane to fund efforts to curb illegal migration.

The move comes after Mexico and the US reached a deal to avoid US tariffs in exchange for Mexico doing more to halt Central American migration to the US.

The President says he will fly commercially instead and use the profits from the sale of the plane to help the poorer communities.

The average level of global peacefulness has improved for the first time in five years, but the world still remains less peaceful than a decade ago, having deteriorated by nearly four percent since 2008.

The Global Peace Index report, produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace, shows eighty-six countries are more peaceful than last year, with Iceland remaining the most peaceful country in the world.

There is growing support for a parliamentary inquiry into press freedom in response to federal police raids on a newspaper journalist and the ABC's Sydney headquarters.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher says if data shows that the laws need to be changed, then the government wouldn’t rule out changing the laws.

Labor also wants to see a joint parliamentary committee review of press freedom and its interaction with national security and other laws.

Aboriginal Artwork discovered in the Blue Mountains was reportedly created by non-Indigenous teenagers 50 years ago, according to a local newspaper.

The handprint artwork was discovered in April in the process of removing a boulder which threatened railway tracks west of Sydney.

Sydney Trains said it was verified as "culturally significant" by an independent archaeologist specialising in Aboriginal heritage, but according to the Blue Mountains Gazette, the rock art was created by non-Indigenous teenage brothers in the 1960s.