Meet the new Speaker of the House of Representatives.

We’ve rounded up all the latest stories from Australia and around the world – so you don’t have to go searching.

1. New Speaker elected.

Victorian Tony Smith has been officially elected as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives.

ABC News reports Liberal lower house members conducted a secret ballot to make the selection this morning. That ballot included four nominees: Ross Vasta, Andrew Southcott, Tony Smith and Russell Broadbent, according to Guardian Australia. Smith reportedly prevailed by 51 votes to 22.

Mr Smith, the member for Casey, Victoria, was then officially elected when Parliament returned from its winter recess at 10:00am today (AEST).

Former incumbent Bronwyn Bishop resigned a week ago in the midst of an expenses scandal.

2. Canberra airport lit by rainbows.

Canberra Airport was awash in colour last night as pollies returned to work after a seven-week break.

Lighting their way were the words “We can do this” in support of the expected cross-party bill to support gay marriage thought to be introduced in the next fortnight.

Owners of Canberra Airport, the Snow family have joined about 500 other businesses in the campaign, #wecandothis.

The campaign also features a series of new advertisement that hit Australian television screens last night with actors, footballers, comedians and chefs calling for marriage equality.

3. Voters want PM to take climate change more seriously.

63 per cent of Australians believed the Abbott government should take climate change more seriously says a poll out today.

The Climate Institute research shows that among those aged 18 to 34 this jumps to 70 per cent.

The research comes in the face of Federal cabinet discussions to take place today on the post-2020 emissions reduction target Australia will take to the UN Paris talks in December.

The poll shows though that at same time, almost half those surveyed (47%) think Labor’s carbon policies will “just increase electricity prices and not do much about pollution”.

Climate Institute chief executive John Connor said the research showed the government was “increasingly out of touch with mainstream views”.

He said the emissions announcement was “a critical opportunity for the Abbott government to better reflect public sentiment on climate action, renewables and pollution reduction”.

4. Police appeal for help in identifying clothing found with girls’ body in suitcase.

Police in South Australia have released the image of five children’s clothing tags hoping the public can help identify the little girl whose skeletal remains were dumped in a suitcase on the side of a highway.

Yesterday detectives said there were around 50 items of children’s clothing in the suitcase with the remains.

These five brands remain unidentified.

The five brands are Gaf, H.F., Miss X Australia, Sally and Haolailh or a similar name.

The last is the brand of the Dora the Explorer top police released an image of a fortnight ago.

We hope either a retailer or member of the public may be able to identify where the items have been or still are sold,’’ Major Crime officer-in-charge Detective Superintendent Des Bray said.

“The Dora the Explorer top is pretty individual and someone may remember this and remember seeing a little girl they once knew wearing it.’’

“This child has a mother and father. It is possible there are people who know what happened and who may be in an abusive and controlling environment with somebody they are scared of,’’ Det Bray said.

“They may be aware of what happened and played no role in it but are too terrified to come forward. We would encourage anyone in that situation to reach out to us either through crimestoppers or through a third person.’’

Anyone with information should call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

5. Donald Trump defends his relationship with women.

Donald Trump has defended his relations with women calling them “tremendous” after he seemingly accused a Fox News journalist of being tough  on him because she had her period.

Last week Trump told CNN that Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, one of the moderators at Thursday’s Republican presidential debate, had singled him out with rough treatment, saying that Kelly “is just somebody I didn’t have a lot of respect for.”

“You can see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,” he said.

Many feel that what Trump was referring to was menstration.

His comments caused him to be dumped as a speaker at an important gathering of conservative activists.

Trump released a statement saying that he did not in fact refer to menstruation.

The Trump campaign  said: “Mr Trump made Megyn Kelly look really bad – she was a mess with her anger and totally caught off guard. Mr Trump said “blood was coming out of her eyes and whatever” meaning nose, but wanted to move on to more important topics.”

He told CNN “I cherish women. Do you think I’d make a statement like that? Who would make a statement like that? Only a sick person would even think about that.”

“You almost have to be sick to put that together.”

“I was referring to nose, ears. They’re very common statements,” he said. “What it means is that a person is angry, very angry. She was very angry.”

Trump said that he didn’t take a moment to clarify the remark during the Friday interview because he “wanted to get on to the next subject.”

6. Mother throws three-week old baby from fourth floor window.

Warning: This item may be distressing for some readers.

21-year old Rashida Chowdhury told police that an evil spirit had taken over her baby’s body.

The young mother from the Queens District in New York confessed to throwing three-week old Rizwan Ahmad out the window of her apartment reports the New York Daily News.

The three-week old was found in the courtyard of the building amongst garbage wearing a blue and white onesie.

He died at the scene.

For help: Lifeline 13 11 14. Kid’s Helpline: 1800 55 1800.

7. Police realised she had a son with them when they looked at the deceased mother’s phone.

A couple have died on a desert trek in the US while they were accompanied by their nine-year old son.

Rangers who found the boy’s mother, dead in the searing heat, only realised that missing was a nine-year old boy when they looked at the woman’s phone.

French couple David and Ornella Steiner from the Burgundy region of France, set out to trek the dunes of the Alkali Flat Trail at the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico on Tuesday in 40C heat.

It is believed that Mrs Steienr 51, stumbled and aggravated a knee injury so she headed back to their car while her husband David Steiner, 42, and their son Enzo carried on.

Sadly on her way she collapsed and was found by rangers dead.

They only realised that a man and a boy were with her when they looked at her phone. They then found the father and his son about an hour later.

Sheriff Benny House said the father was also dead.  “I don’t think they were prepared for the heat,” House said. “I think they just thought it was a trail and they would walk it. They started out together. The mother had gotten ill. … It wasn’t very far before she went down and then, farther up the trail, the father went down. It’s just a tragedy.”

Rangers say that Enzo survived because his parents gave him the majority of their drinking water.

Benny House said the boy had told them that his mother and father had “taken one mouthful, while they made him take two”.

8. Dad takes to social media to try and get pollies to crowd fund his family holiday.

A NSW father has taken to GoFundMe to ask politicians to pay for a family trip to Uluru.

Stephen Callaghan from Blue Haven, NSW, said he set up Please Pay For My Kids’ Holiday on Go Fund Me because he was “angry” about travel claims made for the families of Education Minister Christopher Pyne, Labor frontbencher Tony Burke and Treasurer Joe Hockey.

“I’m just so angry at all these politicians that think it’s acceptable for us to cart their kids around business class on holidays,” he told the ABC.

“I understand they have work expenses but this is just pushing the boundaries.

“We’re working class, we’ve got lots of friends who have never been on a holiday. Ordinary Australians are doing it a tougher than [politicians] are.”

On his page he appeals to pollies:

“It has come to my attention that many of you have been using taxpayers’ money to fly your children around on various holidays, fireworks visits, excursion and overseas vacations,” Mr Callaghan wrote on the Go Fund Me site

“I would appreciate it greatly if you were able to donate to my Go Fund Me campaign so MY kids can go on a holiday too.

“All I ask is that, in the words of our great Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, my children get a ‘fair go’.”

He said that he wanted his kids to see Uluru like Tony Burke’s family did.

“The kids are not getting any younger at eight, nine and 12 … we want to see Uluru,” Mr Callaghan said.

“We’re really sacrificing for this trip. I sold my car and the kids have sold a few of their possessions like Nintendo games … it will cost $1,800 just in fuel to get there and back.”

9. LOL is dead to us.

A study by Facebook has found that nobody uses the term LOL anywhere – instead the most popular term on Facebook is “hahah” followed by Emojis then “heheheh.”

The study found that age, gender and geographic location play a role in laughter type and length – young people and women prefer emojis.

The Facebook blog also analysed whether more letters meant more laughter. They found that the most common are the four letter hahas and hehes.

The six letter hahaha is also very common, and in general, the hahaers use longer laughter.

The hahaers are also slightly more open than the hehe-ers to using odd number of letters, and “we do see the occasional hahaas and hhhhaaahhhaas. “

The lol though, they found almost always stands by itself, though some rare specimens of lolz and loll were found.

A single emoji is used 50% of the time, and it’s quite rare to see people use more than 5 identical consecutive emoji.

What do you use to laugh on social media?

Do you have a story to share with Mamamia? Email us news@mamamia.com.au
[post_snippet id=324408]