PM

Federal politicians are throwing their support behind youth mental health service Headspace despite a major review delivering a mixed report card. While about a quarter of young people significantly improve others go backwards. And overall, the study says the flagship program is having a small impact.

Forty years after the Aboriginal Land Rights Act came into force in the Northern Territory, the federal minister who helped steer it through parliament says Indigenous people need to be given ownership of the laws. Aboriginal leaders describe the passing of the the Act as a watershed moment but say the fight to keep their traditional lands isn't over. Former Aboriginal Affairs Minister Ian Viner says the Act's been under constant threat from governments of all persuasions.

The West Australian coroner has found that police treated a 22-year-old Aboriginal woman who died in police custody unprofessionally and inhumanely. The woman, referred to for cultural reasons as Ms Dhu, died at the South Hedland Hospital in 2014. The Coroner Ros Fogliani found Ms Dhu's death could have been prevented if she'd been properly diagnosed by hospital staff. Ms Fogliani today also allowed some of the CCTV vision of Ms Dhu's final hours to be released to the media.

Online shoppers are being warned to watch-out for fraudsters this Christmas. New figures show around half a billion dollars was stolen from right under our noses last financial year. Experts says computer hackers are developing technology all the time to obtain your bank card details, and take your money. Card-not-present fraud, or CNP, is when your card details are stolen in cyberspace and then used to make payments usually online. It now makes up more than three quarters of all fraud on Australian cards.

More than 3,000 people were evacuated from east Aleppo under a re-negotiated ceasefire deal that marked a major victory for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. A convoy of ambulances and buses drove out of the devastated city, which was besieged and bombarded for months by Syrian government forces. There were reports that some of the vehicles came under sniper fire as civilians tried to board. The people are being taken to the town of Idlib.

Advertising composers say they're out of pocket tens of thousands of dollars in royalties, following the launch of a new music monitoring system. The national body responsibly for distributing the payments, relied entirely on music recognition technology for the first time this year, in place of the self-reporting process.

Today's meeting of the country's education ministers has ended where it began - with a tussle between the Commonwealth and the states over funding for schools. The Turnbull Government wants a new arrangement to carve up the increased funding it's already promised while for the States only the needs-based funding under the so-called Gonski plan will do. A new funding arrangement is now to be thrashed out by the Council of Australian Governments next year.

Consumer advocates are calling for an increase in penalties, after the manufacturers of Nurofen were fined $6 million for misleading consumers. The Federal Court today decided to more than triple the fine for pharmaceutical giant Reckitt Benckiser, over the company's 'specific pain' range. All the products in the range claimed to target specific ailments such as headaches or period pain, despite containing the same amount of the same active ingredient.

The debate about free range egg standards will come alive again next year with the Federal Government preparing to introduce national standards in March. Consumer group Choice calls the big free range egg farms with 10,000 hens per hectare, chicken 'mosh pits'. But the egg industry says the national standards will be transparent and provide certainty for farms to invest for the future. Submissions are now closed for the discussion on Free Range Egg Labelling

A Queensland Government MP has issued a lone call for combat sports in the state to be regulated, while expressing frustration with the committee system in the state's hung parliament. MP Peter Russo was chairman of the inquiry into the safety of combat sports - which tabled its findings in Queensland parliament today. The committee resolved to take no further action after deciding "there was no demonstrated need for this inquiry at this time." This is despite the deaths of two young boxers in Queensland in the past six years.