Monday's news in 5 minutes.

1. Police set up exclusion zone in searching for missing Queensland girl.

Hundreds of volunteers, police and SES have been searching through the night for a five-year-old girl who wandered away from her family at Nerang on Sunday afternoon.

The young girl was with family members when she reportedly ran off on Neilsens Rd, near the M1 overpass about 4.30pm during a park outing.

After her family alerted police the dog squad and the police helicopter were called in to search the area.

Residents in the Carrara and Worongary area have reported hearing announcements from a loudspeaker on the chopper advising people to look out for the missing girl, “Jocelyn”.

It is reported that the young girl is scared of adult males and likes to climb trees.

Around 1am police put an exclusion zone in place to assist with the search for the five-year-old giving them powers to search private property.

The girl is Caucasian in appearance with blonde shoulder length hair, blue eyes and is approximately 115cm tall.

She was last seen wearing a dark pink T-shirt with a ladybird emblem on the front, dark blue denim shorts and she was not wearing shoes.

2.  Review of IVF laws may see parents able to choose their baby's sex.

New laws that will allow parents to choose the gender of their baby to balance the sexes in their family may be introduced.

A review by the National Health and Medical Research Council has heard that “gender balancing” should be introduced to stop Australian families travelling overseas for gender selection procedures. But under the new Health Department rules for IVF clinics families not be able to choose a baby’s gender for “cultural or racial reasons’’.

The new rules may allow "gender balancing". Image via IStock.

News Limited reports that fertility specialists are lobbying the National Health and Medical Research Council to let parents use IVF to balance their families already stacked with one gender.

Ian Olver, the chairman of the panel said the new rules would not let parents use IVF to choose the gender of their first child but instead would follow an Israeli style law that allows let them balance the genders if they already have two children of the same sex.

“There’s a difference between that and being able to choose your first child because you want a boy … there are cultures where that sort of thing happens,’’ he said.

Fertility Society of Australia president Michael Chapman called for “gender balancing”. “I see many distraught couples with three or four children of the same sex who want to have a child of the opposite sex.” he said.

Prof Olver said they were considering the proposal. “I don’t think there would be an appetite for anything that emphasised one gender over another and allowed people, for cultural or racial reasons, to pick one gender’’ he said.

3. Australian first in-utero spina bifida surgery performed.

A team of doctors in Brisbane has performed prenatal in-utero surgery to treat a fetus with spina bifida.

Fairfax Media reports that operation involved making an incision in the mother's abdomen to access the uterus, then making an incision to reach the lower back of the fetus to correct the abnormality associated with spina bifida.

The team at The Mater, led by director maternal fetal medicine Dr Glenn Gardener was joined by surgeons from Vanderbilt University Hospital in the USA, who have been performing this type of surgery since 1997.

“The team that we had from Vanderbilt University Hospital have done more than 300 operations of this kind,” Dr Gardener said.

The surgery was performed in the small gap when it needs to be done between the 22nd and 25th weeks.

"Most cases of spina bifida are diagnosed at the 18-20 week scan so that gives the doctors and the patient a few weeks to consider whether it is an option for them or not."

Dr Gardener said while the surgery was not a cure for spina bifida, it did significantly improve the outcome for babies diagnosed with the condition.

4. Carl Williams could have committed two more gangland murders.

The ex-wife of gangland murderer Carl Williams has claimed that Williams was behind six murders after uncovering letters from the grave.

The gangland boss pleaded guilty to the murders of Lewis Moran and his son Jason, Mark Mallia and Michael Marshall, but his ex-wife told Sunday that she believes he committed two more.

Roberta Williams won access to Carl’s computer, which was filled with hundreds of the letters to his daughter, girlfriend and criminal associates.

“Maybe two ... names have come up on his computer,” Ms Williams said.

She told Sunday that she was more shocked by his infidelities than his crimes.

“It has shocked me that he can look me in the face and be one person and I’ve read stuff and he’s another.”

5. Rio Olympic village uninhabitable.

Rio’s Olympic Village has been deemed uninhabitable after stress tests found it had leaking plumbing interfering with electrics and sewage problems. The apartment towers are so unsafe Australian athletes due to arrive today will stay in hotels until the defects are fixed.

Last week sewage was found to be leaking into the showers.

Australian team leader Kitty Chiller  told News Limited a “crisis point” was reached yesterday and alternative accommodation had been found for the first athletes to arrive.

Hundreds of Australians are due to arrive by week’s end, but Chiller said that none will move in to the village until problems are rectified.

“Our building is one of those that is compromised in its plumbing and electricity,’’ Chiller said. “The main issue is water leakage, which leads to electricity issues. There are crews working on it 24-7. Initially they put 100 more workers on it, then 300, and then 1000. ’”

6. PM to introduce new laws to keep terrorists behind bars.

The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has written to state and territory leaders to fast track new laws designed to keep terrorists behind bars after their jail sentences expire.

The Daily Telegraph reports the laws will apply to high-risk offenders who authorities believe are still a national security risk. They are similar to those that apply to sex offenders and extremely violent criminals.

Under the new legislation, the offenders will be held indefinitely after their sentence expires.

“Our governments must do all we can to protect the community from individuals posing a high risk of reoffending and/or those in need of continued rehabilitation,” Mr Turnbull wrote.

“The guiding principles of a post-sentence preventive detention scheme would be that it cover high-risk terrorist offenders and contain appropriate procedural protections and safeguards.

7. Call to make Queensland three states.

Rockhampton based senator Matt Canavan wants the Queensland Parliament to allow federal senators to be elected for different regions in a first step towards creating new states.

Senator Canavan, who is the Federal Minister for Resources and Northern Australia says Australia needs to have more states.

“In the US when they were 25 million people, they had 30 states. We’ve still got six,” he told The Courier-Mail.

“I’m a big supporter of new states. I find it strange that we have the same number as we did at Federation.

Senator Canavan said Queensland was the perfect place to start a push towards creating more states.

“The Queensland Constitution allows the state to be divided up and senators elected to represent regions,” he said.

He wants the idea to become Liberal National Party policy within a year as a precursor towards carving up Queensland into at least three new states.

8. Munich mall shooter planned attack for a year.

The 18-year-old who carried out Friday’s shooting in Munich had planned the attack for a year, even photographing sites of a previous shooting.

Bavarian investigator Robert Heimberger said the shooter, 18-year-old German-Iranian David Sonboly, received both inpatient and outpatient psychiatric treatment last year to help him deal with “fears of contact with others.”

The teenager killed nine and wounded three dozen others before taking his own life at a shooting at a mall and a nearby McDonald’s restaurant.

The teenager is said to have been obsessed with mass shootings and is believed to have hacked a Facebook account in an attempt to lure people to a shopping mall where the attack took place.

German authorities said he purchased a Glock 17 handgun used in the attack on the so-called "dark web”.

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