Influenza has claimed four more lives in the past week in Western Australia with the state’s influenza related deaths increasing 940% to 52 lives.

While it is shaping up to be WA’s most deadly flu season in a decade, the Health Department warns against comparing cases from year to year with this year’s season starting two months earlier, making the comparison of severity difficult. 

A young woman in El Salvador who gave birth to a baby in a toilet is facing a second trial for murder after the country’s Supreme Court ordered a retrial. .

Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez says she didn’t know she was pregnant, as a result of rape, however prosecutors accused her of murder after forensic investigators were unable to determine the cause of the baby’s death.

Australia could soon have a new country as a neighbour when Papua New Guinea’s autonomous region of Bougainville votes in an independence referendum in October.

The referendum comes nearly thirty years after the beginning of a civil war on the island, which claimed thousands of lives and forced many to flee overseas. 

Voters in the referendum will be asked if they want greater autonomy from PNG, or full independence for the region of just over 300 thousand people.

Youth justice advocates have claimed children are being kept in ‘glass cages’ and only allowed 15 minutes of exercise a day in Queensland watchouses. 

In response to allegations of mistreatment of youth offenders, the Palaszczuk government has created a standalone Department of Youth Justice, which vows a new 32-bed youth detention centre.

Queensland’s Public Guardian Natalie Siegel-Brown and the Australian Lawyers Alliance have also argued the minimum age of detention be raised from 10 to 14.

Drivers of electric cars in Queensland will pay 45 cents per kilowatt hour to charge their vehicles starting this month, about half the cost of fuelling up with petrol.

Until now, the state government’s network of 31 electric car charging stations, located along the coast between Cairns and Coolangatta and inland to Toowoomba, has been free.

Insurance providers have hit back in the dispute over the responsibility for a string of major building defects around Australia. 

The Insurance Council of Australia, a body responsible for construction policy, has said that the blame must be shifted to governments and the building and construction sector as reforms are urgently needed to ensure the quality of construction.

The council ensures the sector that a solution to the impending issue that would unify the industry would be found at a meeting on Tuesday

Heart disease remains Australia’s primary cause of death with dementia continuing to edge higher into second place, despite a drop in the rate of overall deaths. 

Figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, released today, show death rates have decreased by over 70% since 1907, however rates increase according to how remote a person’s location is, with premature and potentially avoidable deaths higher in the country than the city. 

South-East Asian nations such as Thailand have been a popular alternative for Western Nations to send their plastic and e-waste to following China’s tough new import restrictions on this type of waste.

This rapid shift in global markets has had significant environmental effects on communities who now deal with issues like exposure to toxic chemicals and gases as well as physical waste contaminating their communities.

Germany’s Ursula von der Leyen has been approved by the European parliament to become the first female European Commission president. 

The former German Defence Minister secured the backing of socialist and liberal lawmakers, as well as fellow conservatives in the parliament, receiving 383 votes in favour to 327 against. 

Ms von der Leyen’s plans include making Europe the first climate-neutral continent in the world by 2050, launching a Green Deal for Europe within her first 100 days in office and the introduction of a Carbon Border Tax.