Pakistan's parliament has passed a bill that protects transgender citizens’ right to self identify, to have their correct gender markers recorded on official documentation, to separate facilities in prisons and places of confinement, and to vote and run for elected office.

The bill also prohibits discrimination against transgender people in schools, workplaces, hospitals and public spaces.

More than 20 young women in the western city of Herat in Afghanistan have established themselves as computer experts building apps and websites through coding highlighting the untapped talent of girls in Afghanistan.

The all female team have produced a 2D game ‘Fight against opium’ which is an animated interpretation of the missions that Afghan soldiers undertake to destroy opium fields, fight drug lords and help farmers switch to growing saffron.

The Federal Government will now spend $5.7 million to support Indigenous people suffering from kidney failure, following campaigns from remote suffering patients to provide treatment centres outside capital cities.

The money spent will be used to provide more mobile dialysis treatment centres to those in remote areas of Australia as well as compensate for a new medicare item in the mobile treatments favour.

Australian pear growers in the Goulburn Valley are struggling to turn profits.

In recent years manufacturers of processed products have started sourcing the fruit elsewhere, forcing fruit growers to sell varieties traditionally sold to canning factories to retailers, over saturating the market and depressing the price of pears overall.

Logan City Council will today hope to secure a stay on a Queensland Industrial Relations Committee decision to temporarily reinstate CEO Sharon Kelsey, who was sacked after providing information to a Crime and Corruption Commission investigation which led to corruption and perjury charges against Mayor Luke Smith.

A source said this would be “totally unworkable”, but nine of the councillors will need to seek leave from Local Government minister Stirling Hinchliffe in order to vote on pursuing the legal action and they are apparently not confident.

Brisbane temperatures will plummet to single digits over the weekend, with Brisbane and Ipswich seeing minimum temperatures of 5-9 degrees, as a cold front approaches southeast Queensland.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Michael Paech said we’ll get a real cool, dry south-westerly burst over the weekend and as a result morning minimums, and in fact maximums, to drop away fairly rapidly.

The cold change follows downpours on the Sunshine Coast earlier this week.

Malaysia’s opposition leader Mahathir  Mohamed, a 92-year-old previous authoritarian ruler of the country, has defeated Prime Minister Najib Razak in a shock upset, winning 112 seats in Malaysia’s Parliament, the amount required for a majority.

Mahathir  Mohamed will become the oldest elected leader in the world, and ends a 60-year rule of Mr Razak’s National Front, which won 76 seats according to the Election Commission.

A Somalian woman has been buried neck-deep in sand and stoned to death after a court run by militant group Al-Shabab convicted her of having 11 husbands, without divorcing the previous ones.

According to Sharia Law, which Al-Shabab adheres to, polyandry, or a woman having multiple husbands, is illegal, while a male may be permitted up to four wives.

Al-Shabab controls large swathes of the Somalian countryside, regularly conducting raids on capital Mogadishu to try and overthrow the central government.