1. “I can’t stay in this house”: 24-year-old Brit’s fiancé was killed just two streets away from their Gold Coast home.
Brit Yallop, 24, was supposed to be planning her wedding to her fiancé, and partner of seven years, Bryn Dodd.
Instead, she's saying goodbye after he was killed in a car accident just two streets away from the home they shared together on the Gold Coast.
The 24-year-old died after his car collided with a truck around 4pm last Friday. Despite the best efforts of paramedics, Bryn died at the scene.
Speaking to the Gold Coast Bulletin, Brit said she and Bryn did "everything together" and said she no longer wants to stay in the home that was once theirs.
"I can't stay in this house," she said.
"I loved everything about him. We'd been together seven years. We're engaged."
Plasterer Bryn - who met Brit when they were in high school but didn't start dating her until they were both 18 - "dropped everything" to move to the Gold Coast four years ago when Brit relocated.
"He's kind and devoted... The day before he died he saved a bird and then released it," she said.
Brit also said that Bryn had changed a lot since he had become caught up in "wrong crowd" in his late teenage years.
"He wanted family, marriage — stuff that he wouldn't have wanted (years ago)... I want people to know that he's not the person he was four years ago.
"He would have done anything to make me happy."
Bryn’s funeral is expected to be held in Victoria later this month.
2. Western Australian woman jailed for life for murdering her own mother.
Helen Levina had an "immense dislike" for her elderly mother and had told a neighbour she wanted to kill the 76-year-old months before the victim was found buried in a shallow grave in the rear garden of their Perth home, AAP reports.
Levina's daughter made the shocking discovery in March 2016 when she noticed a bad odour at the South Guildford state housing property and found her dog chewing on a human skull.
Levina, 57, closed her eyes and shook her head repeatedly in the WA Supreme Court on Tuesday, as she was sentenced to life in jail for murdering Ella Victoria Hromaya in February 2016.
The mother-of-two must spend at least 20 years behind bars before she can be eligible for parole.
The court heard Levina's relationship with her mother had been described as love/hate, dysfunctional and co-dependent.
"It is clear that your relationship with the deceased was acrimonious," Justice Joseph McGrath said.
The court heard Levina had previously told a neighbour: "I have my mother living with me. I can't stand the f****** bitch. I want to kill her."
Police were also once called to the house when the pair argued after Ms Hromaya broke an ornament, and Levina told the officers she wanted them to take her mother away.
The court heard the evening Ms Hromaya was killed, Levina struck her mother to the head and repeatedly stabbed her legs.
But Justice McGrath could not determine whether Ms Hromaya was dead when she was buried.
He said Levina had an immense dislike for her mother and there must have been a significant trigger to cause such a vicious assault.
"Your assault on the deceased was not planned or premeditated," he said.
Justice McGrath said Levina used bleach to speed up the decomposition and lied about what had happened, claiming her mother had moved out with some Jehovah's Witnesses who had visited the home.
A psychiatric report found Levina's mental state was not disordered and she was an "intelligent woman with intact reasoning and judgment".
Defence counsel Henry Sklarz said Levina maintained her innocence and would appeal her conviction.
3. Jayde Lawrence thought she had appendicitis. 15 minutes later, she was giving birth to a son she didn't know she had.
When 27-year-old property manager Jayde Lawrence felt sharp pains in her stomach on Monday afternoon, she rushed to hospital believing she had appendicitis.
But she and her husband Kurt State were in for a surprise, when doctors told her that her appendix had not burst. Instead, she was pregnant and was going into labour.
Just 15 minutes and four pushes, their son Jax was born, weighting a healthy 3.3 kilograms.
"It all changed... and there's no turning back now," Jayde told 9 News.
"It's hard to process something when you literally have 15 minutes to go from being a normal person to laying in a bed being told you're about to give birth to a small human that you had no idea you created."
Jayde said she had taken two pregnancy tests in the last few months and both had come back negative. She said she showed no significant signs of being pregnant.
Baby Jax is also a sort of miracle for the family: it took the Perth couple four years to conceive their first child, a daughter who is now almost two years old, as Jayde has polycystic ovarian syndrome.
The condition makes it hard to conceive, and there are also risks involved in carrying a baby to full term.
4. One in 10 Australian women are sexually harassed at work, survey finds.
An overwhelming majority of Australia's young working women say that respect is their top priority at work, but one in 10 are still being sexually harassed.
The findings are contained in a wide-ranging survey of 2109 working women and 500 men, who shared their thoughts on everything from job security, equality, skills and aspirations.
While being treated with respect by their boss was viewed as essential for 80 per cent of the women, in reality only two thirds believed they actually were, AAP reports.
Fewer than a third of women, who were all under 40, believed both sexes were treated equally in the workplace, while half of the men surveyed did.
Sexual harassment was also commonplace at work for many women, with 10 per cent having endured such behaviour in their current job.
Women with a disability, or who were from culturally diverse backgrounds, gay, or studying were most likely to have been harassed.
One woman told of how she was described as a "tasty little bitch" after meeting with a GP, while another in the legal industry was told by a magistrate to "prove to me you're more than blonde hair and blue eyes".
Other women told of how male colleagues commented on their bras, or were told how their harassers were "just being friendly".
Reporting the harassment was difficult for many, with women fearful about the impact it could have on their career progression or worried that their boss wouldn't sanction the perpetrator.
One of the study's co-authors, Dr Elizabeth Hill, from the University of Sydney's Women, Work & Leadership Research Group, said while young women were "crying out to be treated with respect" they actually had a poor experience of being valued in the workplace.
"Enough is enough. Workplaces have to change," Dr Hill told AAP as the study was released on Tuesday.
"Australian women are better educated than ever and this is the workplace they are faced with."
5. Attention Aussie kids: You're not brushing your teeth nearly enough.
New research shows one in three Australian children do not brush their teeth twice a day and one in ten have had at least one decayed tooth pulled out before they turn nine years old.
One in three preschoolers have never seen a dentist, according to Royal Children's Hospital National Child Health Poll, released on Wednesday.
Paediatrician Dr Anthea Rhodes at RCH says the results show poor oral hygiene habits are being learnt from an early age and this is setting kids up for a lifetime of painful tooth decay, AAP reports.
"We know that in Australia that tooth decay in children is on the rise and it's in fact the most common cause of preventable hospital stay in children under 15, so we did expect that there might be some worrying findings but what we didn't anticipate was just how poor the habits are in many homes across Australia when it comes to looking after kids' teeth," said Dr Rhodes.
The poll of 2000 parents, representing 4000 children, was conducted in January to provide information on what parents understand about oral health.
Dr Rhodes says what they'e uncovered is widespread confusion and a need for better education.
The majority of parents were not aware that a child's first dental check-up should occur at around 12 months of age, while almost half (48 per cent) of parents did not know that tap water, which contains fluoride, is better than bottled water when it comes to protecting teeth.
Most of the confusion among parents was in regard to caring for the teeth of infants, said Dr Rhodes.
"Lots of parents didn't think that baby teeth needed to be brushed in the same way that older kids need their teeth brushed and weren't aware that things like putting a baby to bed with a bottle at night is strongly linked to tooth decay," she said.
The poll also showed that despite 85 per cent of parents knowing fruit juice is a sugary drink that can cause tooth decay, one in four children drank sugary drinks most days a week.
6. The world's oldest message-in-a-bottle found washed up on an Aussie beach.
The world's oldest known message in a bottle has been found half-buried at a West Australian beach nearly 132 years after it was tossed overboard into the Indian Ocean, AAP reports.
The previous world record for the oldest message in a bottle was 108 years, four months and 18 days between jettison and discovery.
The bottle was found near Wedge Island, 180km north of Perth, and had been flung from the German sailing barque "Paula" in 1886 as part of a 69-year official experiment to better understand global ocean currents and find faster, more efficient shipping routes.
From 1864 until 1933, thousands of bottles were thrown into the sea from German ships, each containing a form on which the captain wrote the date it was jettisoned, the co-ordinates, the name of the ship, its home port and travel route.
On the back, the finder was asked to write when and where the bottle had been found and return it, either to the German Naval Observatory in Hamburg or the nearest German consulate.
Only 662 message slips were returned and none of the bottles.
The Wedge Island find takes that total to 663 and is the only known example of the type of bottle used.
The last bottle and note to be found was in 1934 in Denmark.
The latest find has been determined to be authentic by offshoots of the German Naval Observatory and the Western Australian Museum.
Perth woman Tonya Illman found the bottle and has loaned it to the museum to display for the next two years.