Israel is hosting its second election in five months today, after its first vote proved inconclusive.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, head of the conservative Likud party, was unable to create a coalition government after the first election. 

Mr Netanyahu is also facing potential indictment due to bribery, fraud and breach of trust accusations, but polls still predict a close race between his opposition Benny Gantz.

A central issue is Israel’s secular-religious divide. 

Fourteen offences will be added to the unduly lenient sentence scheme in England and Wales which allows people to ask for a sentence to be reviewed by the Attorney General’s Office, even if they are not connected to the case.

Those who believe sentences of those involved in cases of stalking, harassment, abuse by a person in a position of trust and other sex crimes are too lenient will be able to challenge court punishments.

Crimes like murder and robbery are among some of the crimes already heard through the scheme.

Victorians’ drivers’ licences will be uploaded to a national facial recognition database in an effort to prevent identity theft and the creation of fake documents.

The state government has already uploaded the data to a digital platform, and will transfer information to the National Driver Licence Facial Recognition Solution within the next three months.

Lawyers warn the move could lead to privacy and security breaches.

Queensland researchers are planning to collect 20,000 saliva samples from adults to help determine what role genes play in skin cancer.

Scientists are seeking recruits from a broad range of Australians living in every state and territory, who have had the disease, never had it and who have different skin types. 

400,000 Australians seek treatment every year for skin cancer.

Two Sunshine Coast mushroom growers are crowdfunding in order to expand their business.

Katrina Atkinson and Daniel Tibbet grow shiitake, oyster and lion's mane mushrooms for their business, Mountaintop Mushrooms.

As they each work two part-time jobs on top of their business, they are relying on the sale of mushroom kits, shiitake logs, training sessions and crowdfunding to meet their goal of doubling their production to 50 kilograms a week.

Image: Mountaintop Mushrooms

Youth bail houses, built to keep children out of youth detention centres, are costing Queensland taxpayers around $2,600 a day per child. 

The independent evaluation of the Queensland Government's Supervised Community Accommodation program found that the bail houses are not effective.

Few children elect to stay in the houses, the overcrowding in youth detention centres is not effectively being alleviated, and hundreds of incidents described as “critical” by the report have occurred.

A Queensland study has revealed that a growing demand for ethanol biofuel could increase sugarcane farmland in Brazil by 5 million hectares.

University of Queensland School of Earth and Environmental Sciences researcher Milton Aurelio Uba de Andrade Junior says that future biofuel demand would directly impact land use, with predictions of a twofold increase in demand of ethanol by 2030.

The sugarcane land is likely to expand primarily into pasturelands, with little effect on native rainforests.