Time is running out to sway undecided voters in the Queensland seat of Longman, with up to 34,000 votes already decided while One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, retires to a luxury cruise in the British Isles.

About 22,000 voters in Longman have pre-polled at six polling centres, while another 12,000 have applied for postal votes that might be counted by the Australian Electoral Commission as late as August 10.

A city with an urban bat problem hopes to lure a large flying fox colony from the CBD to nearby swampland by appealing to the animals' maternal instincts.

More than 1,100 baby spectacled flying foxes were found dead or orphaned in the Cairns CBD last breeding season amid increased construction activity contributing to stressed mothers abandoning their young.

A builder with a passion for live music is taking a loss in order to see Brisbane remain an incubator for live music in Australia.

Scott Hutchinson is spending $43 million to fill the void left by the iconic Festival Hall, yet the new venue will only be valued at $25 million.

Work has begun on the project at 312 Brunswick Street in Fortitude Valley under the working title of Fortitude Hall.

Narrow streets are commonplace in city centres throughout Australia; now urban planners are paving the way for skinny roads in the suburbs.

Vehicle speeds, cost and stormwater drainage are all factors pushing councils to make their streets more slender.

Neil Sipe, a professor of planning from the University of Queensland, said narrow streets were the way of the future.

A man with a pickaxe has vandalised United States President Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame before surrendering to police.

The star was nearly completely destroyed, and there was graffiti scrawled on it. Installed in 2007, Trump's star has been frequently vandalised since he was elected president in 2016.

The suspect, 24-year-old Austin Clay, was in custody at the Los Angeles County Jail on a charge of felony vandalism with a bail of $US20,000.

The latest outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been declared over 42 days after the last victim recovered.

It was the ninth outbreak to hit the Democratic Republic of Congo in a decade.

This outbreak reached Mbandaka, a river port city of over a million people, which raised concerns it could quickly spread through West Africa.

Farmers and producers are coming up with their own solutions to phase out single-use plastic, but hope the market will drive demand for plastic-free options.

Paul Crock is in discussions with European companies that are looking at plastic alternatives, and he has even floated the idea of casings for meat, similar to what you would find on the outside of a sausage.

In breaking news this morning Fairfax and Nine have announced they will be merging.

Nine will be the dominant partner, with its current shareholders holding 51.1 per cent of the merged company's shares, and the current Nine chief executive and chairman leading the combined firm.

Fairfax will contribute three directors to a board of six.

The 2017 Queensland Rural Debt Survey report reveals total rural debt in Queensland was $17.24 billion as of the end of last calendar year.

Of the 16 industries captured in the survey, the three major rural debt holding industries included beef, cotton
and sugar, which held $11.72 billion, and was in line with the relative size of the industries in the state.