The day that was, 8 Friday March
And that’s where we’ll leave you this Friday afternoon. Here’s a wrap of today’s headlines:
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has remembered Yankunytjatjara leader and activist Lowitja O’Donoghue as “one of the most remarkable leaders this country has ever known”.
The headteacher of the prestigious Cranbrook school in Sydney resigned after it emerged he had known that a current Cranbrook teacher had engaged in “extremely concerning past conduct” while at a previous school and kept him in his position.
“Diamond” Joe Gutnick, the mining magnate and former president of the Melbourne Demons AFL club, has been banned from managing corporations for four years by the financial regulator.
The high court has refused to hear the appeal of an Aboriginal man whose case to access the age pension three years early due to racial disadvantage failed in the federal court last year.
The National’s deputy leader, Perin Davey, has fended off a preselection challenge and will keep her Senate spot at the next election.
Amanda Rishworth paid tribute to soldier Jack Fitzgibbon, the son of former Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon, who died in a parachuting incident.
A new report has revealed a growing crisis of women and children fleeing domestic and family violence into homelessness, prompting calls for an urgent funding package to provide pathways to safe housing.
The business at the centre of Sydney’s asbestos contamination scandal is seeking a trove of documents from the environmental watchdog as it begins its legal fight to overturn a ban preventing it from selling mulch.
North Melbourne AFL coach Alastair Clarkson is free to coach his side in round one after avoiding a suspension for an outburst in a trial match on the weekend which reportedly included a homophobic slur, but he was fined $20,000 for his tirade.
The Ballarat mayor says the arrest of a 22-year-old man in relation to the death of missing woman Samantha Murphy has brought some closure to the community.
Australia is supportive of any efforts to find the missing flight MH370, the foreign minister, Penny Wong, has said, a decade on from the disappearance of the plane.
New South Wales police have arrested a man after a woman’s body was discovered in the boot of a car.
And Victoria is in for a very hot weekend, with temperatures in the high 30s forecast until Monday in Melbourne and a heatwave warning issued by the Bureau of Meteorology for much of Victoria.
Thanks so much for your company today. Look after yourselves and stay cool this weekend.
Updated
Urgent action needed to protect sharks and rays from overfishing, study shows
One in seven deepwater sharks and rays are at risk of extinction due to overfishing, a study says.
The research has prompted calls for urgent action to police the international liver oil trade and protect the species that live in the ocean depths, including Australian waters, AAP reports.
Experts are also demanding fishing regulations for deepwater sharks and rays, which they claim are some of the species most vulnerable to overfishing.
Prof Colin Simpfendorfer, a James Cook University marine biology expert, is among the international team of scientists involved in the study. He said deepwater sharks could be found in all Australian waters below 200m.
Simpfendorfer said they needed protection, along with rays, around the world like similar marine mammals:
We have many species of sharks and rays in our deep waters. Deepwater sharks and rays have biological characteristics similar to marine mammals which were formerly exploited for their oils and are now highly protected.
For the study, the international team analysed data on 521 deepwater shark and ray species to model populations and used the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) list of threatened species categories and criteria to estimate the global extinction risk.
The study found overfishing, coupled with the slow development and reproduction of many deepwater shark and ray species, make them more susceptible to population decline.
The study has been published in the journal Science.
Updated
