Wednesday afternoon's news in under 5 minutes.

We’ve rounded up all the latest stories from Australia and around the world – so you don’t have to go searching.

1. Female students claim they were told not to wear leggings because it is “distracting”.

Female students at Casuarina Senior College in the Northern Territory are furious after their school allegedly asked them to stop wearing tights because it was “distracting” their male peers.

A sign protesting the request was removed from the school grounds, and the students have now taken to Facebook to express their outrage.

According to the NT News, some girls were sent home to change out of tights, bike shorts and skirts.

The school’s dress code permits wearing polo shirts with trousers, jeans, shorts and skirts to at least the mid-thigh, but prohibits the wearing of leggings or tights and bike shorts, except for classes in which they are necessary.

Related content: She was publicly stripped and beaten for wearing a mini skirt.

One student claimed a teacher said, “It’s distracting a lot of boys when girls wear tights or revealing shorts”.

Another student wrote on Facebook:

“It’s f—ing ridiculous that multiple girls have been sent home due to the fact that they’re wearing leggings/tights/bike shorts,” one student wrote.

“Boys (seem) to be able to wear whatever shorts they like, but we aren’t allowed because it may be seen as provocative or revealing.

“They teach us to dress ­appropriately instead of teaching boys not to see women as a sexual object because of what they’re wearing.”

Principal Paul Matthews denied this was the reason for asking the girls to change, claiming it was in response to a community survey about perceptions of the school.

2. Man charged with slipping abortion pills into ex-girlfriend’s drink.

A man in Norway has slipped abortion pills into his partner’s smoothie after she refused to have an abortion, Sky News reports.

The 20-year-old woman, who has not been identified, lost her baby at 12 weeks in March last year. Following the event, she saw a doctor who ran tests to discover what had caused the termination.

The man is facing up to seven years in jail after pleading guilty to inflicting serious bodily harm and to terminating a pregnancy without the mother’s consent in court this week.

It was revealed in the Norwegian court that the man slipped the woman the pills, which he bought on the internet, on two occasions.

When the first attempt appeared to be unsuccessful in terminating the pregnancy, the man ground the pills up and slipped them to his girlfriend a second time. He said in court he wanted to be sure the pregnancy was terminated after reading the foetus could develop deformities due to the first ingestion of the pills.

The man will be sentenced on March 17.

3. Investigators say Harrison Ford’s plane crashed after engine failure.

According to a preliminary report the plane crash which seriously injured Harrison Ford last week was caused by engine failure shortly after take-off.

Investigators say the famous actor reported the engine failure to air traffic control and was attempting to complete a u-turn and return to the airport when he hit a tree, and crashed onto a golf course, ABC reports.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released the initial report, which references exchanges between Ford and the Santa Monica municipal airport traffic control tower in its investigation.

4. Islamic State supporters launch their own social media network.

After being blocked and restricted by mainstream social media networks, supporters of Islamic State (IS) have created their own social media network, CaliphateBook.

Designed to allow IS supporters and militants to communicate, the site 5elafabook.com was shut down on Monday, only a day after it had gone live, ABC reports..

Before going offline the homepage featured a world map dotted with IS logos as its background.

Currently the front page of CaliphateBook hosts a message which says, “5elafa book announces a temporary shut down in order to protect the info and details of it’s (sic) members and their safety.

“5elafa book is an independent site and is not sponsored by the Islamic State we reiterate that the purpose of launching the site was to clarify to the whole world that we do not only carry guns and live in caves as they imagine. We do not live to spell (sic) blood as the media portrays us.”

Read more: Explain to me: Who is the Australian school boy who fled to Syria to fight with ISIS?

The site was registered on March 3 with web company GoDaddy.com, and the address given was the Iraqi city of Mosul.

5. No-fly ban lifted on passenger who protested the deportation of asylum seeker.

Qantas has lifted its flying ban on Peter Leary, who asked to be removed from a flight which was transporting an asylum seeker to Darwin for deportation.

Mr. Leary cited “conscientious grounds” for his decision to disembark the flight earlier this month and was subsequently banned from flying with Qantas.

Following the incident a petition calling for the ban to be lifted was started Change.org, which obtained over 4,000 signatures in 3 days. In response to the support for Mr. Leary, Qantas lifted the ban but offered no apology.

Mr. Leary’s colleague, who also expressed discomfort with the transportation of the asylum seeker, has not had her no-fly ban lifted Mr. Leary says.

6. Brisbane on alert after man with measles goes to NRL game and pubs in the city

A warning has been issued after a man diagnosed with measles exposed others when attending the Broncos NRL match, and visiting various public locations, ABC reports.

Queensland health expects to see more cases of the highly infectious disease after discovering the man had visited at least seven public venues in the last 10 days.

Related: How to cause a measles epidemic in 5 easy steps.

Metro South Health physician Dr Kari Jarvinen spoke to the ABC saying, “true measles is a serious viral infection that causes fever, cough, runny nose, then a red spotty rash and sore eyes a few days later.

“If people are adequately vaccinated with two recorded doses of Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine, they are very unlikely to get the disease.”

7. Man dressed as Jack Sparrow on the loose in Queensland.

Gold Coast police are trying to track down a man dressed as a pirate after he held a security guard at knife point in attempt to get onto the set of the Pirates of the Caribbean film.

The man was dressed as Johnny Depp‘s character, Captain Jack Sparrow, complete with eye-makeup and a bird on his shoulder.

The disguise allowed him to walk onto the set in Helensdale, Queensland, Daily Mail reports.

Police were called when he threatened a security guard with a knife, after which he fled the set into neighbouring bushland.

He has been described as 177 cm tall, with dreadlocks and a real rosella on his shoulder.

Police are still searching for the assailant and have rallied a dog squad to pursue the man, but he is yet to be discovered.

What’s making your top news today? Comment below.