New Delhi, August 28 : Scientists have found that the continent of Australia has been largely untouched by humans, and stands as one of the world’s top five wilderness havens, ranking alongside the Amazon forest and the Sahara desert.

A report by two conservation groups, the Pew Environment Group and the Nature Conservancy, found that forty percent of Australia qualifies as wilderness.

The two conservation groups have hired scientists to scan the globe for the last remaining areas of wilderness and the report, the Wild Australia Program Study, put Australia towards the top of the list.

Melbourne, Aug 28 : A school in Australia is under attack for urging its students to read Penthouse, a soft-core pornographic magazine.

St Stanislaus College, in Bathurst is also under fire for child-sex allegations following which, police sex crimes squad has been called in to investigate the claims involving a former college boarder subjected to horrific late-night prayer sessions.

Canberra, August 28 : A research team from Australia, France and the UK has used mathematic modelling to determine when conservationists should manage species.

According to a report by ABC News, the model indicates that when conservationists should switch their efforts from managing the environment, to actively searching for a vanished species or giving up altogether.

"The most cost-effective strategy is to assume a species still exists, even if it hasn''t been seen for some time," said the researchers.

Melbourne, Aug 28 : Want to know what makes women happy? Well, ladies’ happiness lies in a bigger shopping trolley.

Sydney - Australian hikers on the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea have stumbled across the skeletal remains of what they believe is a World War II pilot, still in a parachute harness and suspended from a tree.

"It's swinging like somebody caught in a tree and that's when you can really see the cabling and it's the exact shape of a body, same size, everything, but it's just covered in moss," tour guide David Collins told Australia's ABC Radio on Thursday.

"It's exactly what it looks like - just somebody caught in a harness, in a seat harness."

Melbourne, Aug 27 : The Italian priest, who was organising an online beauty competition for nuns, has called off his plans amid protests from faithful and local religious authorities.

The Rev. Antonio Rungi thought that the ‘Miss Sister 2008’ would give nuns more visibility within the Catholic Church and fight the stereotype.

But later changed his mind after seeing reports that suggested that nuns would be metaphorically put on a catwalk, insisting that he had been misunderstood.

Rungi said what he had in mind was not just external beauty but the "overall beauty."

"I wanted to make a blog on vocations, one where everybody could bring their own experiences," the Courier Mail quoted Rungi, as saying.