The Maltese Prime Minister’s chief aide, and tourism minister have both resigned after an escalation of political turmoil relating to the death of an investigative journalist in the Mediterranean country two years ago.

The journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia had accused Keith Schembri, chief aide to the Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, and Konrad Mizzi, Muscat’s tourism minister, of corruption, shortly before she was killed in a car bombing.

A Japanese manga comic of a Uighur woman's story of survival in a detention centre has been viewed over 2.5million times since it was launched in April.

Entitled "What has happened to me", the story's popularity comes amid the release of two tranches of leaked documents, revealing the inner workings of the Chinese government-run camps in Xinjiang, which have detained about a million people without trial.

More than 5000 doctors have signed a petition calling on senators to preserve a law that makes it easier to bring refugees in offshore detention to Australia for medical treatment.

The Morrison government is hoping to repeal the law, passed against its wishes in February, but the doctors are urging independent senator Jacqui Lambie to use her casting vote to keep it in place.

Scandal-plagued Westpac was set to be one of the two major banks to offer mortgages under the federal government's first home loan deposit scheme, but has since been axed in light of the money-laundering allegations it is currently facing.

Only National Australia Bank has been announced as one of the major banks for the scheme, which allows low and middle income earners to receive financing without a large deposit.

The State Government’s plan to revitalise the Southport Spit is set to go through Parliament today.

State Development Minister Cameron Dick said that the Government was investing $60 million into “revitalising” the area on the Gold Coast, and that the project would create 1800 jobs during its lifetime.

A new bill introduced to State Parliament today will attempt to stop fake car crash phone scams.

Deputy Premier Jackie Trad says that the issue of claim farming, where a person rings up asking for compensation for a non-existent car crash, was an issue directly affecting 1.5 million Queenslanders.

Under the new laws, claim farming offences will have a maximum penalty of around $40,000 for an individual and $200,000 for a corporation. 

Malaysia's highest court has acquitted Sydney grandmother Maria Exposto, who was sentenced to hang for drug trafficking after her lawyers argued she was the "perfect text book dummy" and victim of an online romance scam.

The 55-year-old woman was convicted last year of trafficking more than one kilogram of crystal methamphetamine, discovered in a black backpack by customs officials at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in December, 2014.

Thousands of residents in southern California were forced to flee their homes on Tuesday due to a wind-driven wildfire burning in mountains near Santa Barbara.

County officials declared a “local emergency” after the fire erupted, and spread quickly on Monday, scorching thousands of hectares of land in the process.

Santa Barbara county fire spokesman, Mike Eliason said that as many as 6,300 people had been evacuated and about 2,400 structures were being currently threatened by the blaze.