The Brisbane City Council has promised to deliver on a 2016 election commitment for new CityCat services.

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk has allocated funds in the 2018-19 council budget, with services planning to halve peak-hour CityCat travel times and run to new destinations.

Funding is believed to be close to $1 million within the Brisbane CityCat and Ferry services, with council plans to deliver 100 new express “SpeedyCat” services a week before September.

Vietnam has seen several protest demonstrations across the country, with more than one hundred people arrested.

The protests are a response to a draft bill which would allow foreign investors to lease land for up to ninety-nine years, leading to fears of Chinese investors dominating the Vietnamese market.

Assembly chairwoman, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, says protesters may have misunderstood the bill and the National Assembly is always listening to the people’s opinions.

The World Health Organisation has announced Paraguay officially eliminated malaria.

With no recorded cases of malaria in five years, it is the first country in the Americas to be free of this disease since Cuba eliminated malaria 45 years ago.

According to the WHO, Algeria, Argentina and Uzbekistan are likely to be declared free of malaria later this year.

Bill Shorten has announced that if the Labour Party wins the next Federal election, $83.7 million worth of funding will be restored to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The Liberal Party plans to freeze funding indexation to the ABC in 2019, meaning that future funds to the broadcaster will not align with inflation.

Mr Shorten commented that over 930 people have been made redundant from the ABC since the Coalition came into power.

Over 300 people have petitioned the Lord Mayor of Hobart to remove statues of inverted crosses that have been installed on the streets as part of the Dark MOFO arts festival.

The statues have caused a backlash from the Australian Christian Lobby and other religious organisations, which have deemed the inverted crosses as ‘highly offensive.’

The Lord Mayor has responded to the outcry, stating that ‘it is not the role of the council to censor free speech’ and they support the artistic discussion generated by the festival.

A man is suing the Queensland Government for $750,000 in psychological damages. The man, now 23, was restrained in a spit mask as a teenager in the Brisbane Correctional Centre at Wacol.

He has filed a damages claim in the Districts Court of Brisbane against the state for alleged ‘cruel and degrading treatment’ over a five-month period.

A spokesperson for Queensland Corrective Services stated that because the matter was before the court it would not be appropriate to comment.