A unique coral reef at the mouth of the Amazon River has been discovered by a Greenpeace ship, but is set to be the new oil drilling location of French company, Total.

The unexplored undersea environment has experts saying the area could contain vital research opportunities to potentially treat cancer and infectious diseases.  

This would be majorly disrupted if Total’s drilling licence is approved as operations could begin this year.

Queensland and Western Australia will come into line with Southern States when single use plastic bags are banned on July 1.

Heavy duty plastic bags will still be available and if people continue their one-use habits with these bags, it will be much worse for the environment.

These bags will have to be used at least four times for them to be beneficial and Professor Sami Kara from the University of New South Wales says “It’s better in the long term that we don’t use [plastic bags] at all.”

A new study suggests that young couchsurfers could have worse mental health and greater risk of suicide than those sleeping on the streets.

Preliminary results from the research project suggest that Brisbane couchsurfers are twice as likely to describe their mental health as “poor”.
 

Couchsurfers remain a hidden form of homelessness for young australians with over 20,000 reporting to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare between 2013-2014.

A storage centre in Ipswich has leaked water soluble toxins into a nearby creek.

The liquid is believed to have been Wala Gel which is an additive to explosives.

The gel is potentially toxic to animals and was leaked in the area that flows onto Ipswich’s Six Mile Creek environmental zone.

Starbucks is closing more than eight thousand branches in the US in the afternoon next month to carry out “racial bias” training.

This comes after the company apologised over the arrest of two black men who were waiting for a friend at a Starbucks in Philadelphia.

Outrage against the company for the arrest has gone viral and Starbucks chief executive Kevin Johnson says they are learning what they did wrong and are taking steps to fix it.

China’s version of Twitter, has reversed a ban on gay content after a backlash by LGBTI activists accusing the company of smearing homosexuality by lumping it in with other banned content.

Weibo had been on a three-month campaign to remove pornographic and violent content as well as gay videos.

The official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, the People’s Daily, encouraged tolerance towards gay people, and said that vulgar content will be removed regardless of sexual orientation.

Reporters without Borders is calling for a full investigation into the death of Russian Investigative Journalist Maxim Borodin.

Borodin had reported on bodies, believed to be those of Russian mercenaries, being moved to a regional village, some speculate this incident is closely linked to the Russian government.

Borodin was found, having fallen from his fifth floor apartment, the cause remains unclear.