Melbourne, Apr 30 : Females of an Australian species of lizard rely on testosterone when they want to put off a male from copulating with her, according to researchers at University of Melbourne.

Evolutionary ecology Dr Devi Stuart-Fox of the University of Melbourne, and colleagues studied the female Lake Eyre dragon lizard (Ctenophorus maculosus) and found that she displays a bright orange belly and throat during parts of her breeding season, which researchers think is driven by the hormone testosterone.

They found that the colour features prominently when the female wants to keep amorous males off their back.

Sydney - Human error was behind an Emirates Airlines jet coming within centimetres of crashing at Melbourne airport last month, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said Thursday.

Keying in the wrong take-off weight in a flight computer meant the Airbus A340-500 struggled to clear the 2.4-metre perimeter fence.

The plane, carrying 225 passengers on a flight to Dubai, scraped its tail along the tarmac, forcing the pilot to abort the flight and make an emergency landing.

Sydney - Female circumcision is called female genital mutilation (FGM) in Australia and it's a crime.

Those performing it face a possible seven-year prison term and those who don't report it risk a stiff fine.

In Sydney's outer suburb of Auburn, there's a specialist FGM clinic that has been in operation for over 10 years and sees around 40 women a year.

The typical patient is in her 20s, is about to wed, and was operated on by a village midwife in an African or Middle Eastern country when she was young.

Sydney - Getting a good job nowadays doesn't mean you are more likely to stay in employment in these recessionary times.

Research in Australia shows that the common perception that the low-paid have the least job security is a myth.

The Melbourne Institute of Applied Research found that rates of redundancy are "statistically insignificant" when the highly paid are compared with those at the bottom of the scale.

Sydney - Australian doctors believe they have found the key to eradicating the type of diabetes that obliges sufferers to regulate their blood glucose levels every day of their lives, news reports said Wednesday. "We are really excited about this because there are no treatments for type 1 diabetes," Garvan Institute researcher Shane Grey told The Sydney Morning Herald.

Melbourne, Apr 29 : Putting all rumours to rest, Hollywood actor Mel Gibson has appeared with his Russian girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva for the first time in public at a premiere in Los Angeles.

Gibson and his lover went out together to attend the Los Angeles premiere of Hugh Jackman''s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, reports The Australian.