-With AAP.
1. A US baby weighing about the same as an apple at 245g is officially the world’s tiniest.
A newborn girl weighing 245g – about the same weight as an apple – is believed to be the world’s tiniest surviving baby.
San Diego’s Sharp Mary Birch Hospital revealed the birth of the girl, who was born in December, and said she is believed to be the world’s tiniest surviving premature newborn.
She has now been discharged weighing 5.6 pounds.
The girl was born 23 weeks and three days into her mother’s 40-week pregnancy.
Doctors told her father after the birth that he would have about an hour with his daughter before she died.
“But that hour turned into two hours, which turned into a day, which turned into a week,” the mother said in a video released by Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women & Newborns.
More than five months have passed, and she has gone home as a healthy infant, weighing two kilograms.
The baby’s family gave permission to share the story but wanted to stay anonymous, the hospital said. They allowed the girl to go by the name that nurses called her: Saybie.
Her ranking as the world’s smallest baby ever to survive is according to the Tiniest Baby Registry maintained by the University of Iowa.
Dr Edward Bell, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Iowa, said Saybie had the lowest medically confirmed birth weight submitted to the registry.
But "we cannot rule out even smaller infants who have not been reported to the Registry," he said in an email to The Associated Press.
The hospital said the girl officially weighed 7g less than the previous tiniest baby, who was born in Germany in 2015.
In the video produced by the hospital, the mother described the birth as the scariest day of her life.
She said she was taken to the hospital after not feeling well and was told she had preeclampsia, a serious condition that causes high blood pressure, and that the baby needed to be delivered quickly.
"I kept telling them she's not going to survive, she's only 23 weeks," the mother said.
But she did. The tiny girl slowly gained weight in the neonatal intensive care unit.
A pink sign by her crib read "Tiny but Mighty". Other signs from nurses celebrated milestones, like Saybie reaching certain weights.
When she graduated from the NICU nurses put a tiny graduation cap on her.
The girl faces enormous challenges as a micro-preemie, who is an infant born before 28 weeks of gestation. Micro-preemies can experience vision and hearing problems, developmental issues and a host of other complications.
2. James Packer sells shares in Crown Resorts to Macau entertainment company.
James Packer has sold almost half his stake in Crown Resorts for $1.76 billion to a Macau-based entertainment company.
Consolidated Press Holdings, Mr Packer's private investment company, confirmed on Thursday night it had sold 19.99 per cent of its shareholding in Crown Resorts to Melco Resorts and Entertainment.
It was sold for an aggregate purchase price of $1.76 billion, equivalent to $13 per share.
Once the share sale is completed, CPH will own about 26 per cent of Crown, worth about $2.3 billion, and will remain represented on the Crown board.
Mr Packer said Crown was a stronger company with Melco as a strategic shareholder.
"Crown has been a massive part of my life for the last 20 years and that absolutely remains the case today - my continuing Crown shareholding represents my single largest investment," Mr Packer said of the deal.
"I am still vitally interested in Crown's success as a world-class resort and gaming business. The sale allows me to continue my long term involvement with Crown and at the same time to better diversify my investment portfolio."
Melco's chief executive Lawrence Ho said the stake was a great opportunity for Melco, which operates casinos across Asia, including in Macau and the Philippines.
"It is certainly our intention to continue if the opportunity arises to increase our stake in Crown," Ho said.
CPH will lodge a Notice of Change in Substantial Holding both with Crown and the Australian Securities Exchange.
With Reuters
3. Six children have died in a horror week on Queensland's roads.
A one-year-old boy has been hit by a car and killed in regional Queensland, the 11th victim of a car accident in a horror week that's claimed the lives of six children.
The toddler was hit by a reversing car near the entrance to the old Chinchilla sawmill on Edward St, which is being redeveloped into an industrial site.
Paramedics pronounced the child dead at the scene and said a 71-year-old man driving the vehicle was taken to hospital suffering "emotional distress".
Ten other people have been killed on Queensland's roads this week in a horror streak before an annual safety initiative, Fatality Free Friday.
The boy was hit about 10.45 am, after which paramedics were called to the truck-filled industrial lot, northwest of Toowoomba, with reports of a vehicle and pedestrian crash.
A family friend, who preferred not to be identified, told AAP the family was "utterly devastated".
Police Superintendent Dave Johnson says the fatalities are absolutely tragic and they must stop.
"There's no reason to lose that many lives on our roads at any time period. There's no excuses for it, there's no reason for it," Supt Johnson said.
"We want it to stop right now."
This death comes after a 14-year-old boy died in a crash in a stolen car on Wednesday and four children lost their lives in a crash with their mum on Monday.
A 14-year-old was allegedly at the wheel of the stolen car that crashed on Brisbane's bayside, killing the boy in the front passenger seat and injuring four girls, the youngest just 10.
The teenage driver was stable in the Queensland Children's Hospital on Thursday and has been charged with dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death, unlawful use of a motor vehicle, unlicensed driving and failing to stop for a red traffic light.
The 10-year-old girl has also been charged with unlawful use of a motor vehicle
A mother, 26, and her four children who were in the second car, escaped serious injury.
Supt Johnson said on Thursday he was concerned about underage drivers and people overloading cars.
"It's telling us the choices that drivers make behind the wheel are not the smartest choices," Supt Johnson said.
"The decisions they are taking at times are putting their lives and the lives of others at risk."
On Tuesday, a man, 20, died in Bundaberg when his car hit a tree.
On Wednesday night, an 86-year-old man died at Lake Eacham in Queensland's far north when his car hit an oncoming truck.
A Glenmorgan man, 78, was killed after he swerved to avoid a kangaroo and slammed into a tree on Tuesday.
The worst of the crashes happened south of Kingaroy on Monday, when mother Charmaine Harris McLeod, 35, and her children Aaleyn, 6, Matilda, 5, Wyatt, 4, and Zaidok, 2, died when their car hit an oncoming truck.
In another fatal accident involving a truck in the same area on Wednesday a 62-year-old man's ute collided with a prime mover.
4. Religious discrimination laws are "well advanced", and may be introduced in July.
Attorney General Christian Porter says the draft Religious Discrimination Act is "well advanced", signalling it may be introduced to parliament in July.
Mr Porter admits the proposal is "not without its complications" but creates the need for a similar balance as in sex, age and race discrimination laws.
"We would define an attribute just as we've done with attributes around sexual orientation, or age, or race, or other matters such as disability," he told 6PR radio on Thursday.
"We would define an attribute which is 'religious adherence and expression', and then put into that Act a range of circumstances where it would become unlawful for people to discriminate against a person based on that attribute."
Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce along with other coalition MPs are expected to press for stronger religious freedom laws.
Mr Joyce is pushing for religious beliefs to be exempt from employment contracts, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald report.
The laws would protect views such as those expressed by rugby player Israel Folau that led to his sacking.
"You can't bring people's faith beliefs into a contract," Mr Joyce told the newspapers.
"Your own views on who God is, where God is, or whether there's a God should remain your own personal views and not part of any contractual obligation."
Mr Porter says there's no easy avenue for extending the laws in such a way, as it would depend on the terms of individual contracts.
Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells wants a Religious Freedom Act and says the election reinforced the need for more immediate legislative action.
An Australian Law Reform Commission review on the issue is not due until next year.
5. Julian Assange a no-show at extradition hearing with claims his health is deteriorating.
WikiLeaks has "grave concerns" about founder Julian Assange after he was moved to a medical ward in jail.
The 47-year-old had been expected to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court via video-link from London's Belmarsh Prison in his fight against extradition to the United States over allegations that he conspired to break into a classified Pentagon computer.
Assange did not appear at the five-minute hearing on Thursday, where chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot referred to the Australian as "not very well".
She set a date of June 12 for the next hearing, and said: "It may be that that hearing will take place in Belmarsh."
Ms Arbuthnot added: "It may be more convenient for everyone if it's there."
Assange was represented at the hearing by solicitor Gareth Peirce.
Ms Arbuthnot said: "He's not very well, is that right?"
Ms Peirce replied: "Not very well."
The public gallery was filled with Assange supporters, with many having queued outside the court building for more than an hour.
Just a few hours before the case management hearing, WikiLeaks said it has "grave concerns about the state of health of our publisher, Julian Assange, who has been moved to the health ward of Belmarsh prison".
A spokesman added: "During the seven weeks in Belmarsh his health has continued to deteriorate and he has dramatically lost weight. The decision of the prison authorities to move him into the health ward speaks for itself.
"We strongly condemn the refusal by the Swedish court to postpone a hearing on 3rd June on the basis of Mr Assange's health condition.
"Defence lawyer for Assange, Per Samuelson, said that Assange's health state last Friday was such 'that it was not possible to conduct a normal conversation with him'."
Assange sought political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 after the leaks of hundreds of thousands of classified US diplomatic cables on his whistleblowing website.
He was charged in the US this month with receiving and publishing thousands of classified documents linked to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The US Justice Department has indicted Assange on 18 counts that relate to his "alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States", it said.
He is accused of working with former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in "unlawfully obtaining and disclosing classified documents related to the national defence", a statement said.
Also this month, an investigation into rape allegations against Assange, which he denies, has been reopened by Swedish prosecutors who have requested Uppsala District Court detains him in his absence.
Deputy director of public prosecution Eva-Marie Persson said if the court decides to detain Assange, she "will issue a European Arrest Warrant concerning surrender to Sweden".
Assange supporter and Bafta-winning documentary maker John Pilger said all media organisations are now "in grave danger".
He told the Press Association outside court: "Every journalist should be here.
"What's happening to Julian Assange may certainly, almost certainly, happen to many other journalists.
"Today Julian Assange, tomorrow the Press Association, if it prints the truth, the New York Times, the Guardian, all the rest of them.
"If they really do journalism they're in grave danger at the moment."
Assange is serving a 50-week sentence in Belmarsh Prison for bail violations.