Germany equality commissioners are calling for the national anthem to represent gender balance.

Equality commissioner, Kristin Rose-Moehring, is campaigning for the stanzas containing the word ‘fatherland’ to be changed to ‘homeland’.

Officials from the Christian Democratic Party have expressed their disapproval for the change to two hundred and twenty two year old song, with women in the party saying they have never felt excluded by the anthems wording.

Revelers are still coming down from the high that was last weekend’s Mardi Gras.

The 40th anniversary of the festival was a massive celebration with celebrity appearances and a wedding.

The parade also gave pause for thought as attendees reflected on how far equal rights have come since the festival started.

Less than a third of young Australian women believe they are treated equally to men according to a new university survey.

The University of Sydney survey has revealed far more women are holding off having children or giving up on starting families to safeguard their careers.

The survey also stated one in ten women surveyed have, or are experiencing sexual harassment in their workplace.

A Far North Queensland council is looking into setting up a breeding facility for their local icon - the endangered cassowary.

With less than 1,500 cassowaries in the wild, the Mayor of the Douglas said his council is firmly dedicated to preserving the dwindling population from car accidents and predator attacks.

90% of local residents surveyed believe that wild pigs are the biggest threat to cassowaries, and many suggested efforts could be better spent in pig hunting or baiting pigs with contraceptives or poison.

A shipping container has been discovered floating in the ocean off the sunshine coast.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has been trying to hunt down the boating hazard since it was first sighted on Friday.

The area has been labelled high risk, and fishermen are being warned to remain vigilant of the slow-moving but damaging runaway cargo.

Conservationists and locals were concerned with a Thai businessman’s plans to build a highway through endangered black leopard territory in Myanmar.

Premchai Karnasuta, the president of Italian-Thai Development, was previously caught poaching the black leopard, which led to protests in Bangkok.

The director of the Dawei Development Association, an advocacy group in Myanmar, said that he was worried  if Mr Premchai cannot follow the laws in his own country he will not follow the laws in Myanmar.

A year long medical trial and research into the viability of transplanting diseased organs has reported positive results.

Ten willing patients were given kidneys infected with hepatitis-C, quickly followed by medication to treat the infection, after which all ten organ-recipients remained healthy and disease-free.

The researched was aimed at utilising the large amount of organs that were ordinarily discarded from young people who had died from drug-overdoses.

Child protection authorities from the Northern Territory were overwhelmed by the amount of under-reported sexual abuses involving children.

According to data compiled by a royal commission, only 5 sex abuse victims had been taken into temporary protective custody between 2012 and 2016 despite there being 232 abuse cases.

Former Northern Territory Children’s commissioner, Howard Bath, said the rise in sexual abuse cases was not a result of more nasty predators running around, but the easy access and lack of supervision in the area.

A third person died from eating a melon infected with listeria bacteria, following fifteen others that were affected by the potentially deadly bacteria.

The 15 people diagnosed with the infection had all consumed rockmelon before falling ill, which left authorities to warn the elderly, pregnant, and infants against consuming rockmelon which has been pre-sliced.

The contamination has been traced back to a farm near the city of Griffith in New South Wales, with Rockmelons having been withdrawn from supermarket shelves across Australia.