US President Donald Trump has held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Brussels, hours after he criticised German policy on defence spending and gas imports from Russia.

Earlier, President Trump claimed a pipeline project had made Germany "totally controlled" by and "captive to Russia".

Ms Merkel said she had discussed migration and trade with Mr Trump and looked forward to further exchanges as the US remained a partner of Germany.
 

Social workers in Tennant Creek are regularly seeing children out on the streets after midnight, and often eat their main meal of the day at the Barkly Regional Council's After Hours Youth Centre.

Children are often bussed between the homes of family members until social workers find a house with a family member that is not intoxicated.

Each night the centre feeds around 70 children, where they also play sports and music, and create art projects before they are given a lift home.

A program to reintroduce eastern quolls to mainland Australia has achieved success with 15 babies found in the pouches of three adult females.

Twenty eastern quolls bred in a wildlife park in Tasmania were released into the Booderee National Park on the NSW South Coast in March.

At first there were serious concerns the repopulation program would not succeed as a number of the marsupials became roadkill, or fell prey to foxes.

In the last six years, six babies have died in Queensland from syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease that was nearly eradicated in the early 2000s.

In 2008, two cases were diagnosed in Queensland, and in the decade since, more than 1,100 other cases have been recorded in the north of the state, with about 200 new presentations each year.

Around 160,000 bees now call West End home, with the yellow buzzing insects housed on a building rooftop.

Bee One Third founder Jack Stone installed four beehives on the top of the Westpac Bank building on Boundary Street.

The bees are part of a "green installation" at the $1 billion West Village development.

Two people have died and three Australians, including two experienced Qantas pilots, have been injured in a plane crash in South Africa.

Video from the airport shows the 64-year-old plane, with 19 people on board, barely lift off the runway, with smoke pouring from one of its engines, crashing shortly after.

A South African technician on board was killed in the impact, and three people were injured on the ground, one later succumbing to their injuries.

Baptist churches in North America are fundraising for a baptist pastor facing deportation to New Zealand after being charged for confronting worshipers at a mosque in Brisbane’s south this year.

Logan Robertson, who is in detention and fighting charges of public nuisance, had a GoFundMe page with ten thousand dollars in donations until it was shut down on Wednesday, earmarked for legal fees.

The Churches from Vancouver and California are trying to match the donations, as they believe Mr Robertson was “Telling the truth about Islam”.

Scientists from ANU have discovered the oldest surviving biological colours from rocks retrieved under the West Sahara Desert.

The 1.1 billion-year-old pigments have a bright pink hue, but range from blood red to deep purple in their concentrated form. The pigments are fossilised molecules of chlorophyll produced by sea organisms.

“Imagine you could find a fossilised dinosaur skin that still has its original colour, green or blue... that is exactly the type of discovery that we've made," Associate Professor Jochen Brocks said.