NASA has declared the Mars rover Opportunity dead after 15 years on the planet, and more than eight months after its final communication with Earth.

The space agency has tried to reconnect more than 1,000 times before finally giving up, having made “every reasonable engineering effort” to recover the longest-lasting lander.

Opportunity has been an icon in the field of planetary exploration, teaching NASA about Mars’ past as a wet, potentially habitable planet, and unveiling Martian landscapes.

Dolphin-hunting season is at its peak in Japan and Australian, and Japanese environmentalists have launched legal action in an attempt to end the internationally-condemned slaughters in Taiji.

Every year Japanese fishermen have permission to kill up to 20,000 dolphins and small whales as part of what they say are centuries-old traditions.

Australian environmental group Action for Dolphins has teamed up with a Japanese animal rights organisation, Life Investigation Agency, to challenge the legality of the killings.

Embattled Whitsundays council MP Jason Costigan has been banned from visiting schools in the region after a motion was passed by the Whitsundays council.

Whitsundays councillor Mike Brunker says he does not want Mr Costigan attending schools.

The move comes after harassment allegations were made against the member, allegations which he has repeatedly denied.

Students are more likely to rate male university teachers higher than their female counterparts in some areas of STEM and Business, according to Australia’s largest review of student experience surveys.

The study examined almost 525,000 individual student experience surveys from Sydney students from 2010 to 2016 across five faculties and found a male teacher from an English-speaking background was more than twice as likely to get a higher score on a student evaluation than a female teacher from a non-English speaking background.

Following the Minister for Housing and Public Works announcement yesterday to waive rents for flood affected public housing tenants, Tenants Queensland is calling on agents and owners in Townsville to treat private renters fairly.

Tenants Queensland (TQ) is urging estate real agents and owners in the private market to negotiate rent reductions with tenants living in flood affected rental properties and maintain usual rental costs for properties being offered on the market.

A Queensland woman claims she was shamed by airline staff over the clothing she wore on board a Jetstar flight last week.

The passenger was boarding a flight to the Gold Coast for a family medical emergency when she was humiliated by a staff member for wearing a black crop-top and three-quarter-length loose pants.

Jetstar confirmed they have apologised to the passenger and are investigating the incident.

The world’s biggest Muslim Nation, Indonesia has had an Instagram account removed for posting comic strips depicting the struggles of gay Muslim characters.

The Ministry of Communications said the account under the username Alpatuni was pornographic, which violated the law on information and electronic transactions.

The government frequently threatens to block Western social media and internet companies for content deemed illegal but has never taken such measures.

There are calls to the CEOs of Apple and Google Play to remove a Saudi government app from their platforms.

US Senator and Ron Wyden and human rights groups say the Absher app is a tool to for Saudi men to track and control the movements of Saudi women.

Human rights group Amnesty International have asked tech giants to investigate the app and assess the risks it poses for human rights abuses on women.

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