The latest report on Australian organ donation and transplant outcomes shows that the number of deceased organ donors continued at record achievement in 2016.

The report notes that 510 deceased and 273 living donors improved the lives of 1,637 Australians and a further 9,600 benefitted from eye and tissue transplants.

Minister for Aged Care and Indigenous Health Ken Wyatt says there is more potential for growth and lifting the national consent rate is fundamental in saving more lives.

The National Multicultural Festival has received complaints about an anti-abortion tent at their event on Sunday.

The complaints are regarding the display material of the ACT Right To Life Association tent which was highly graphic.

Festival director, Azra Khan, says the festival will assess their policy on information stalls.

Air raids and artillery fired by Syrian government forces near Damascus has killed at least 77 civilians in less than 24 hours, according to a war monitor group.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that this includes at least 20 children and an additional 300 people have been wounded in the attacks.

A local doctor says that the Syrian government is ”shooting everything that moves in the residential areas.

Singapore has announced that it will implement a carbon tax at the start of 2019, to further contribute to efforts in reducing greenhouse gases.

The tax will begin at 5 Singapore dollars per tonne of greenhouse gases and will only apply to facilities producing more than 25,000 tonnes of greenhouse emissions per year.

According to Singapore’s government, the proposed carbon tax will also  benefit the nation in its effort to make the country more competitive in international markets.

All Gold Coast beaches remained closed today, having now been closed for three consecutive days, due to dangerous conditions caused by Tropical Cyclone Gita.

Conditions remained dangerous all along the South Queensland coast, with nineteen people rescued from the swell yesterday on the Sunshine Coast.

Surf lifesavers urged people to stay out of the waves, but that’s not deterring some surfers who say these are some of the best surfing conditions they have seen.

A cow set for slaughter has escaped by ramming a fence and swimming to its own private island on Lake Nyskie in Poland.

The cow’s owner gave up capturing the animal after the cow ran from handlers on its way to being loaded onto a truck and proceeded to repeatedly swim off into the lake.

Calls for the cow to be shot has led one local politician to offer to save the ‘hero cow’ from death. 

Online rental homes company, Airbnb, has cracked down on its rental homes that have been turned into ‘pop-up brothels’.

After reports of temporary brothels appearing across British tourist resorts and sites, UK MPs launched an inquiry into the scandal.

Airbnb say they are working with anti-trafficking charity, Polaris, to train its staff and stop potential exploitation.

The echidnas at Sydney's Taronga Zoo helped authorities in their attempts to trace illegal shipments of the world's most trafficked mammal, the pangolin.

Ecologists in Sydney were hoping the Australian creatures could help out their fellow anteaters, whose scales were made of the same substance as the echidna's quills.

Thanks to the echidna's donation of their quills, researchers have mastered reading the chemical record inside the keratin and are now able to identify the diet of the animal the quills or scales belonged to.

Australian dentists have become increasingly frustrated with performing tooth extractions on children as young as two years old.

The National Child Oral Health Study said sugar is to blame and tooth decay is the most prevalent oral disease in Australian children.

Dr Beaumont of the Royal Dental Hospital said that early prevention and education about hidden sugars in food and drink is key to stopping what can be a distressing experience for a young child.