Greens: taxpayers should fund international expansions of media organisations...and more zedlines

As part of the media ownership reforms, a $60 million fund has been promised to boost independent and regional publishers and young rural journalists. Currently, the program is restricted for Australian run outlets with a turnover of between $300 thousand and $30 million a year. Greens senator Sarah Hanson Young says that journalists investing in Australian journalism, regardless of the country the outlet is from, deserve backing as much as anyone else. School urges community to vote no in SSM survey Caloundra Christian College has sent a three page letter to parents urging them to vote ‘no’ in the marriage equality postal survey. The letter says a ‘yes’ vote endangers the school’s ‘ability to continue to teach and model a Christian view of marriage’, and asks ‘all associated with the college community to participate and vote no’. Parents at the school are divided on the letter, with one mother saying the school shouldn’t be ‘shoving their own narrow-minded and fear driven views onto the school community’ in an interview with the Sunshine Coast Daily. QLD unions showing support for SSM Queensland Unions have joined the marriage equality debate, expressing support for the ‘yes’ campaign. Union members rallied outside the Queensland Council of Unions on Peel St, Brisbane to display their support and attempt to sway undecided voters. All survey forms should arrive by September 25th, and need to be returned by November 7th. Suspected Indigenous artefacts seized More than 130 suspected Aboriginal stone tools have been seized from a house in Sydney after an investigation into the illegal sale of Indigenous cultural material. The potential artefacts are believed to have come from Tasmania, and were seized last week following a tip-off about them being for sale in an online auction. The maximum penalty for selling Aboriginal relics is $795,000. Teenage couple in Pakistan were electrocuted, police say The bodies of a teenage couple in Pakistan who are feared to have been murdered bear marks consistent with electrocution, police say. Doctors, police, and a magistrate exhumed the bodies a month after they were buried, finding visible signs of electric shock and torture on the torso and limbs. Police say the couple intended to elope but were caught by their families and ordered to be killed by tribal elders. Four people, including the fathers of the teenagers, have been arrested, and post-mortem results are awaited. Venezuelan president’s plan to beat hunger: breed rabbits The Venezuelan government has urged citizens to see rabbits as more than “cute pets”, defending a plan to breed and eat them amidst criticism from the opposition that this would do nothing to end chronic food shortages. The plan is the work of the Nicolas Maduro government to boost food availability. Rabbits are a popular food in Europe, and according to the United Nations food and agriculture organisation they are more efficient than pigs and cattle in converting protein into edible meat. The opposition says the plan is unsustainable, and would see the would-be rabbit industry in Venezuela struggle to find everything from feed to wire for breeding cages.