54 offenders implicated with drug possession and trafficking were arrested at Rainbow Serpent Festival, with Inspector Dan Davidson stating police have not seen illicit behaviour so blatantly displayed at the event before.

Police have raised suspicions the regional Victoria festival has been ‘hijacked’ by organised drug syndicates, with festival organiser Tim Harvey saying it is obviously a concerning situation however, this is not unique to this specific festival.

Scott Morrison has announced a $243 million package to reduce congestion in South East Queensland, which includes upgrades to Gympie Arterial Road and the Ipswich Motorway.

The Prime Minister plans to announce new funding for Queensland infrastructure everyday this week, and says these newest investments will allow families to get around the table at night for their evening meal.

Corporate Australia has fallen marginally short of proposed 2015 targets to have women on ASX200 boards, with females accounting for 29.7% of board members.

Angus Armour, from the Australian Institute of Company Directors, said companies have heard the message about the value of gender diversity in boardrooms, and this was proof that boards are looking beyond the existing talent pool.

There is still work to be done however, with four companies yet to have any women on boards, and cultural diversity still a major issue.

Belgian authorities are calling for DNA samples of children adopted from the Democratic Republic of Congo, in order to establish if their parents are still alive.

Authorities believe the children may have been kidnapped and falsely declared as orphans while their biological parents thought they were sending them to a Kinshasa holiday camp.

Though fears of child smuggling in the Democratic Republic of Congo prompted the country to halt exit permits for adopted children in 2013, some cases continued to be processed as they had already begun.

‘Empire’ TV star Jussie Smollett has been targeted in a suspected racist and homophobic hate crime , after he was attacked by two men while leaving a restaurant.

The 36 year-old gay African-American actor, was admitted to hospital after the two men punched him in the face and doused him in an unknown chemical substance, before tying a rope around his neck, shouting “this is MAGA country”, and fleeing the scene.

The  incident is being investigated by Chicago police as a hate crime.

Tasmanian firefighters are preparing for a horror day as temperatures exceeding 30 degrees, combine with dry winds to create severe bushfire conditions.

33 fires are burning across the state this morning, with 12 at emergency levels, cutting off power to hundreds of homes and engulfing the Hobart CBD in smoke.

Andrew McGuinness of the Tasmanian Fire Service, warns that with the conditions predicted, it’s unlikely any of the blazes will be controllable.

An Apple spokesperson has stated the recent Facetime bug letting users listen to audio when the call has not yet been picked up, will be fixed by the end of the week.

It comes after Facetime users found this bug worked on group calls, whilst normal two-way calls were not affected, with Apple since disabling the ability for group Facetimes.

CEO of security firm TrustedSec, Dave Kennedy, says although it is unsure if the bug was exploited maliciously, Apple’s brand will still take the hit from the incident.

According to a domestic survey published this week, Afghan men remain strongly opposed to giving women more freedoms and leadership positions, with two thirds believing women already have too many rights.

Responses found younger men were even more reluctant than their elders to embrace women’s rights, while almost one in three women thought women are “too emotional” for leadership positions.

Australia has been ranked 13th least corrupt in the world by the Transparency International’s corruption perception Index released yesterday, representing an equal record low for the nation.

Australia’s failure to improve on its record low ranking in the global measure of government corruption has prompted renewed calls for a federal integrity commission to be established “without delay and political wrangling”.

New Zealand was ranked the second least corrupt country in the world, just behind Denmark.