Three US men who spent 36 years in prison have been released after authorities say they were falsely convicted of a 1983 murder.

Baltimore men Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart were granted a writ of innocence after being convicted of the first-degree murder of a middle school student, DeWitt Duckett.

The men, who were teenagers at the time of their arrest, are now in their early fifties and are preparing to enter adulthood on the outside for the first time.

Tasmania has rejected a Chinese-backed bid to build a tourist resort overlooking Freycinet National Park on the state's eastern coast.

Company Cambria Green applied for the creation of a special development zone in April 2018 to enable the construction of a vast complex including 550 accommodation units and hotel rooms, two golf courses and an 80-bed health spa or palliative care unit.

Nineteen South Australian prison guards are attempting to have a coroner removed from investigating the death in custody of an Indigenous man, after seven guards lost a bid to avoid giving evidence at the inquest.

Wayne Fella Morrison died, while in the custody of the guards, after being pulled blue and unconscious from a transport van where he was forcefully placed face-down on the back seat in 2016.

Wildlife hospitals and care groups are "overwhelmed" with the influx of injured animals caught in the path of the state's bushfires, with average daily koala numbers tripling.

RSPCA Queensland veterinarian Meaghan Barrow said the busiest period would come now the bushfire crisis had eased and wildlife carers were able to get into the scorched bushland.

A notorious roundabout with a history of crashes in Brisbane's western suburbs is set to be replaced with an overpass and street lights in mid 2020. 

The Moggill Road-Coonan Street roundabout at Indooroopilly has had 32 crashes in the past five years, 10 of which required hospitalisation.

The intersection at Coonan Street will now be modified to create an overpass allowing inbound traffic leaving the street to clear Moggill Road and merge safely, and will be funded through the joint council and federal $500 million suburban roads fund.

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.

Meanwhile, Labor has called for Westpac to face a federal parliamentary economic committee in light of the allegations.