Tuesday's news in under 5 minutes.

We’ve rounded up all the latest stories from Australia and around the world – so you don’t have to go searching.

1. “All children should be removed from Nauru detention.”

A Senate inquiry has found that all asylum seeker children should be removed from the Nauru detention centre because the centre is “insupportable” in its current form.

The five-member, cross-party select committee released its report yesterday saying that Australia is legally responsible for the abuses in Nauru detention centre because it has “effective control” of it.

“Australia created the regional processing centre in Nauru. It is Australia’s responsibility and in its present form, it is insupportable.”

The report called for all children to be removed from the island detention centre. It also called for new laws to mandate reporting of sexual assault and violence allegations, and for workers on the island to be submitted to daily drug and alcohol tests.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has rejected the report.

According to the ABC, Mr Dutton said it was a “political witch hunt” — pointing out the committee is dominated by Labor and the Greens.

2. Father who allegedly set children on fire to appear in court.

A 43-year-old man who allegedly set fire to two of his three children after he doused them in petrol on Friday night will face court today in Perth.

An off-duty police woman who rushed to the scene from her nearby home to assist has spoken of how she helped save the life of the three-year old girl.

First Class Constable Steph said she was watching TV when she heard arguing reports WA Today. 

She went to the scene and was faced with the children’s mother rushing toward her.

“I ended up opening up the front door to see what’s going on and as I’ve done that she’s [the mother] run out of the house saying ‘the kids are on fire’,” Steph said.

“I’ve immediately turned to the right-hand side of the house and that’s when I saw the three-year old on fire and I’ve immediately grabbed a blanket and covered her up and made sure I put out the flames and grabbed the seven-year old and got him out of the house.”

The officer took the little girl to her house and put her in a bath of cold water.

The three-year-old remains in hospital in a critical but stable condition.

Her brother, who was not burned, and her seven-year old sister, who was set on fire but has recovered. were released from hospital yesterday.

The father of the three children, Edward John Herbert, will appear in court today facing grievous bodily harm charges.

3. Former High Court judge Dyson Heydon to stay on as royal commissioner.

Former High Court judge Dyson Heydon has ruled he will stay on as royal commissioner examining trade union corruption.

He announced yesterday that he had considered “all the submissions” and that “in my opinion, the applications must be dismissed.”

Justice Heydon spent more than a week assessing submissions from the ACTU, AWU and CFMEU for him to recuse himself as commissioner after revelations he accepted an invitation to speak at a Liberal party event on April 14 last year.

“The mere fact that a person agrees to deliver a speech at a particular forum does not rationally establish that the person is sympathetic to, or endorses the views of, the organiser of that forum,” he said.

The ACTU said last night that the judgment and called the entire commission into question.

“What we are left with now is a multi-million dollar Royal Commission that is tainted – everything that has happened until now and everything that will happen in the future is stained by these events.”

4. Victoria announces new sex offender laws.

The Herald Sun reports the reforms will include:

• Wider powers for police to enter and search sex offenders’ homes and for police to compel offenders to submit to drug and alcohol tests.
• Corrections staff will be allowed to use capsicum spray and batons if under threat while visiting an offender’s home
• Offenders applying for bail will be placed in the same class as those accused of drug trafficking or armed crimes, who must show cause why their detention is not justified.
• There will also be increased police monitoring and drug and alcohol tests and Victoria Police detectives and intelligence officers will be placed within the Corrections Department’s serious sex offender management unit.

Premier Daniel Andrews told The Herald Sun: “This system is broken and needs to be fixed”.

He added: “These reforms will close immediate gaps in our system and give Victoria Police and Corrections extra powers and resources to keep our community safe.”

5. Worst flu season in years.

Australia is in the grip of one of the worst flu seasons in years, with Queensland in particular bearing the brunt of the “B” strain – one that was not included in the free flu vaccination program.

There have been 15,403 cases of influenza in Queensland this year, about 5000 above the same time last year.

The number of flu notifications for this year will top 18,500 in Queensland alone, making it the worst since the swine flu in 2009.

Dr Alan Hampton of the Influenza Specialist Centre told The Age last month: “The flu is still increasing at the moment. There’s certainly quite a lot of flu around.”

In Victoria, experts are not expecting the worst to hit until September.

The Courier Mail reports that the flu has hit pregnant women hard, with a number of women being hospitalised due to the severity of their sickness.

Across the country in August there were 46,680 cases, up from 45,172 cases at the same time last year.

6. Ashley Madison leak good for business.

The online dating site for married men and women wishing to conduct an affair, Ashley Madison, has gained “hundreds of thousands of new clients,” according too its parent company Avid Life Media.

In this past week alone “hundreds of thousands of new users signed up” to the dating platform in the wake of the hacking scandal, the company said.

And over the past seven days, women alone reportedly sent more than 2.8 million messages through the platform.

The company released the figures in response to a story in The Washington Post that claimed the vast number of users on the site were male, saying the company would have created fake female profiles to lure men in.

The Washington Post claimed that of more than 35 million records released, only five million actually belong to women,

Avid Life Media said that in fact the ratio of men to women using the site was 1.2 to 1.

The company said that fewer payments from women are shown in the leaked data as they are “not required to pay to communicate with men” on the site.

7. Mother admits to drowning twin two-year-old sons.

A mother from Arizona in the US has admitted drowning her twin two-year-old sons because “nobody loved them and nobody loved her.”

The grandmother of the twins found the two boys in a bedroom. Police say she initially thought they were sleeping but then realised they weren’t breathing.

The grandmother yelled for help and began life-saving measures on the twins before hearing her daughter, 22-year-old Mireya Alejandra Lopez, in the bathroom. There, the grandmother found the child’s mother holding down the third boy in the bathtub, according to a police statement.

KPHO reports that Lopez told police she believes her twins were “bullied [and] are treated differently.” Lopez said she did not want her children to grow up living a difficult life.

The mother-of-three also said she did it “because nobody loved them and nobody loved her,”

Lopez is facing two counts of homicide and one count of attempted homicide.

For help: Lifeline 13 11 14.

8. Virgins killed on the way to king’s dance.

The young women and girls were travelling on the back of an open truck on their way to the festival.

About 40,000 young women participate in the eight-day “reed dance ceremony,” in which they sing and dance bare-breasted. During the reed dance, the king often selects one of the young women to become one of his wives.

Swaziland is polygamous and the king has more than a dozen wives.

Local media was discouraged from reporting on the accident and police disputes the death toll, but a human rights group confirmed that at least 38 women died.

9. What do women fear more: Getting older, larger or cancer?

The answer, sadly, is the former.

A study by not-for-profit health information organisation Jean Hailes for Women’s Health has found that while one in five women are concerned about weight and ageing, just one in 10 worries about cancer and mental health.

And frighteningly, only one in 20 women fears heart disease – which is the single biggest killer of Australian women.

Dr Mandy Deeks, Jean Hailes’ head of communication, told News Limited women were “made to believe that cardiovascular disease is a male disease when this is definitely not the case”.

10. New Zealand to see final four flag designs today.

New Zealand will today unveil the final four alternative flag designs in their quest to see if the county desires a new flag.

The Flag Consideration Panel has already released its top 40 flag designs, which were whittled down from more than 10,000 public submissions, now they have just four.

Later in the year the first referendum will be held for voters to rank their preferred alternative flag design – and then next April a second referendum will pit that flag against the current design.

11. Scientists design slow-melting ice-cream.

Licking the drips of ice-cream off the cone may be a thing of the past, with British researchers discovering a way of prolonging the freezing duration of ice-cream.

Scientists found a protein that is more resistant to melting than conventional products, binding together the air, fat and water – creating a super-smooth consistency.

Researchers expect the drip-less version to be available in three to five years.

So no more sticky fingers… but it doesn’t quite seem the same, does it?

Do you have a story to share with Mamamia? Email us news@mamamia.com.au
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