In local news, the University of Queensland are continuing negotiations with the Ramsey Centre to introduce a major in Western Civilisation.

There are also staff concerns including academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and a potential clash with the Reconciliation Action Plan.

Academics have rejected the framing of the program, saying it is an “explicitly elitist venture, which will disproportionately confer benefits on a small and privileged group of students”.

Space tourism company Virgin Galactic hopes to send tourists to space as early as the end of this year, after SpaceShipTwo reached space for the second time in three months last Friday.

The spaceship can carry six passengers up to 100 kilometres above sea level, where they experience weightlessness, at the price of $350 000 per passenger.

Now in international news, NASA is currently monitoring an iceberg roughly the size of New York City that is set to break away from an Antarctic ice shelf.

The iceberg is at least 660 square miles and expected to breakaway sometime within the next couple of weeks.

If the melting of Antarctic ice sheets continue at the current record-breaking rate, scientists estimate the global sea level will rise by over 25 centimetres by the year 2070.

The Royal Australian Air Force and the Defence Department have collaborated to develop a large drone designed for electronic welfare which could eventually carry bombs.

The yet-to-be named unmanned system has the primary purpose of being used to conduct electronic warfare and missions where it is too unsafe to send a manned aircraft.

It is set to be publicly unveiled today at the Avalon aerospace trade show outside Melbourne by Defence Minister Christopher Pyne.

Looking across the nation, Prime Minister Scott Morrison will travel to Tasmania this week to bolster support for his “battery of the nation” proposal.

The trip to garner commonwealth support follows a promise of $56m earlier this week for a second interconnector to deliver Tasmania’s renewable energy to the mainland.

Morrison says the proposal will “help cut power prices and put an end to the sorts of recent blackouts that families and businesses have had to suffer through”.

A survey has revealed more than one third of school principals have been attacked by a student or parent in 2018.

The survey, run by the Australian Catholic University, has determined that in Queensland, violence against principals increased from 27.9 per cent in 2011 to 36 per cent in 2018.

ACU psychologist Associate Professor Philip Riley, says, “The steadily increasing levels of offensive behaviour in schools of all types is a disgrace and it needs to stop.”

A bauxite mine on the remote island of Rennell in the Solomon Islands had a major oil spill in early February when attempting to load the sedimentary rock on a bulk carrier ship.

Australia’s High Commissioner Rod Brazier is concerned about the scale of the disaster with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority estimating 60 tonnes of oil has been spilled and is not contained.

LNP members of Brisbane City Council have criticized a proposed state plan for compulsory preferential voting in local government elections.  

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said the reforms are not such, rather they are “election strategies”, criticising the state government for proposing reforms in a time of emergency for many local councils dealing with natural disasters.