Two hazard reduction burns being conducted by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service have created a smokey start to Thursday for Brisbane.

Burns at Freshwater National Park near North Lakes, and on North Stradbroke Island began on Wednesday evening in a bid to reduce the amount of fuel on the ground at both locations and help with forest regeneration.

Residents affected by smoke were advised to keep asthma medication close by and close doors and windows.

A Russian woman has been arrested and charged with conspiring to act as an agent of Russia in the US “by developing relationships with US persons and infiltrating organisations having influence in American politics.”

The Department of Justice said the woman carried out her activities in the US at the direction of the “Russian official”.

In a statement, the women’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, said she was not an agent of the Russian Federation but was instead in the US on a student visa, graduating from an American University.

An operation launched by government-backed paramilitary groups in Masaya has left at least ten people dead.

Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights head Alvaro Leiva says four riot police and six civilians, including a ten-year-old girl, during the operation to clear protesters’’ barricades.

The political unrest in Nicaragua has lead to the deaths of more than 280 people in the past three months, the vast majority of them civilians.

Camp dogs have become part of the landscape, a part of family life, and Aboriginal communities in many remote towns in the Northern Territory, but it can be tricky to control overpopulation of these animals.

Animal Management in Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities have developed a census tool to better track and treat camp dogs and cats in the area, offering the animals medicine and desexing services.

Three Indigenous men from Albury-Wodonga closed local NAIDOC Week celebrations with the region’s first LGBT+ Aboriginal event, Dragioke.

‘Dragioke’ gained local sponsorship and sold out within two weeks without promotion, which the performers say is encouraging and indicated acceptance.

Performer Mitch Hibbens, a Wiradjuri man, says access to similar when he was younger and grappling with being a gay Indigenous man would have greatly helped his well-being.

A proposed underwater graveyard could soon find Gold Coast residents spending their after-life underwater.

The city is seeking solutions to a shortage of burial plots, examining the construction of a site under the Broadwater or the Spit where cremated remains would rest.

The plan has been under investigation since January, with a site of a similar approach off the coast of Miami seems to be inspiration for the council.

The Brisbane-based company Microba has developed a new testing protocol for a range digestive problems.

The test involves taking a faecal sample and mailing it to a laboratory which can use DNA sequencing to reveal the state of gut microorganisms.

Senior scientist Dr Alena Pribyl says the process, which is an Australian-first, is similar to bowel cancer screening test, but though it is informative, it is not medically diagnostic.