Download the app for the latest alerts on Hurricane #Irma. All devices: inside post

Download the @ABC News app for the latest alerts on Hurricane #Irma. All devices: https://t.co/trQbXE4vud http://pic.twitter.com/v6W6s2fSiX

— ABC News (@ABC) September 10, 2017

Warning has been issued for the Melbourne suburb of Dallas due to air quality

#BREAKING An emergency warning has been issued for the Melbourne suburb of Dallas due to hazardous air quality. MORE https://t.co/bj9Vcdpkr0

— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) July 13, 2017

Drug tests for the dole: Thousands of young job seekers to lose welfare if they are caught using ice, ecstasy and marijuana

Thousands of Australians will soon be forced to undertake random drug tests to hold onto their welfare payments.

Beginning next year, 5000 Newstart and Youth Allowance recipients across three locations will be included in the two-year trial of drug testing.

Job seekers will be selected at random and tested for drugs including ecstasy, ice and marijuana.

Anyone who tests positive to a test will be placed on welfare quarantining, while those who fail more than once will be referred to medical professions for assessment and treatment.

The cost of this measure – which is certain to raise the ire of welfare advocates – is deemed commercial-in-confidence and has not been published.

The Turnbull government says the trial is part of a suite of reforms to stop welfare payments being used to fuel drug and alcohol addictions.

Cashless welfare cards will also be expanded across two new locations, with the income management program extended for another two years to June 2019, after two test runs showed positive results for problem gambling and alcohol consumption.

Welfare will be denied to people with disabilities caused solely by their own substance abuse.

Other welfare measures include tougher verification requirements for single parents seeking welfare and a crackdown on those attempting to rake in multiple payments.

There will also be stricter residency rules for new migrants trying to access Australian pensions.

Older job seekers will also face harsher mutual obligation requirements under new welfare reforms.

For the 270,000 job seekers aged 30-49 will now have to undertake activity requirements of 50 hours a fortnight, up from 30 hours.

Job seekers aged 55-59 years will no longer be able to meet 30 hours of activity solely through volunteering, with exceptions in areas of high unemployment.

For job seekers aged 60 to pension age will need to undertake 10 hours of activity per fortnight (up from zero).

A new, single JobSeeker payment will be introduced in March 2020, replacing or consolidating seven existing payments including the Newstart Allowance.

Less than one per cent will be affected by changes to their payment rates, the government says.

Source: Young Australian job seekers face random drug tests | Daily Mail Online

Amateur scientists find four new planets while watching TV

Australian amateur scientists have discovered four new planets in space, without the need for a telescope and all from the comfort of their own home.

Four ‘super earth’ planets were discovered by viewers of Stargazing Live, an ABC TV show which on Tuesday looked at research being done by Oxford University.

In it, the show’s viewers were called on to join the hunt for planets by using a website set up by Zooniverse, a crowd-funded Astrophysics group within the University.

Footage of more than 100,000 stars from the powerful Kepler Space Telescope has been uploaded online, and in trawling through the shots space lovers struck gold.

Said to be close to double the size of earth, the four planets are ‘crammed together’ and ‘much closer to the star than even Mercury is to the Sun’, Zooniverse principal investigator Dr Chris Lintott told the ABC.

‘The closest of them whips around in just three-and-a-half days, so a year is only three-and-a-half days long,’ Dr Lintott said.

Source: Amateur scientists find four new planets while watching TV | Daily Mail Online

Lindsay Lohan set to make explosive return to TV ‘I’m back, b*****s’

Republicans threatening to expose Donald Trump as the emperor with no clothes

It’s almost as though Republicans are tired of having President Trump’s evidence-free allegations laid at their feet. Almost.

Late Monday, a spokesman for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (Republican-California) threatened to subpoena the Trump administration to produce evidence of Trump’s claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the campaign. The White House has declined to produce this evidence publicly, offering various excuses, including the Constitution’s separation of powers and – most recently on Monday – arguing that Trump wasn’t speaking literally when he made the claim.

The Justice Department missed Nunes’s deadline to provide evidence Monday, which drew Nunes’s subpoena threat.

“If the committee does not receive a response, the committee will ask for this information during the March 20 hearing and may resort to a compulsory process if our questions continue to go unanswered,” Nunes spokesman Jack Langer said…

Source: Republicans threatening to expose Donald Trump as the emperor with no clothes | The Independent

Adele concertgoers left stranded at Sydney train stations

Adele concert goers left waiting for 40 minutes for the show to start as thousands were left stranded at Sydney train stations

She’s one of the world’s biggest singer-songwriters.

And on Friday, Adele sold out ANZ stadium in Sydney, leaving thousands stranded in the city as they attempted to travel to Sydney Olympic Park before the show started.

Following hours of traffic delays and chaos to get to the concert, Adele decided to start her show 45 minutes late because at 7.30pm when the show was meant to start, the stadium was ‘about 35 per cent full’.

MORE: Adele concertgoers left stranded at Sydney train stations | Daily Mail Online