These ten countries flaunt some of the most incredible natural scenery on earth – so why do so few people visit them every year?

A small town in rural Queensland is offering $20,000 to anyone willing to move there, but it comes with a catch.

Quilpie has a population of just 650 people and is 1000 kilometres away from Brisbane.

The town is offering $20,000 to anyone willing to move there, but recipients must use the money to buy a plot of land, build a house and live in it.

READ MORE: Service station worker robbed at knifepoint in Queensland

CEO Quilpie Shire Council Justin Hancock explained how the scheme works.

"It's a grant that's similar to what we see the state and federal government offer through the first homeowner's grant."

"It's all about providing a cash incentive to people to build and move to our region."

"There are a few other conditions but we've kept it as simple as possible."

A block of land in Quilpie costs about $20,000.

Although the town is small, Hancock was confident in the town's community and job prospects. 

READ MORE: Police release CCTV footage following Sydney shooting

"It's a very vibrant community, very family-friendly community, people are taking advantage of that work-life balance" 

"There's plenty of jobs available, and the ability to work from home by the end of the year, we'll be getting NBN directly to the premises

Quilpie Shire Council released the first round of the grant 18 months ago, and says that there have been over 600 inquiries about moving into the town.

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Prosecutors in Brazil have agreed to a deal with Rep. George Santos in a case in which he is accused of defrauding a Rio de Janeiro area clerk of nearly $2000 over clothes and shoes in 2008, documents obtained by CNN show.

A petition from Santos' attorney requesting a deal says Santos would agree to formally confess to the crime and pay damages to the victim, a Rio de Janeiro area clerk, as is required under Brazilian law.

A memo from prosecutors agreeing to the deal last week asked the defence for assurances they have the ability to contact the victim to repay him before the deal is finalised.

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The petition from Santos' attorney, filed in January, requests a non-prosecutorial agreement in lieu of a trial for his client, arguing that Santos is now gainfully employed and "re-socialised." The petition also requested permission for Santos to be contacted by the court via email or phone, and participate in the proceedings via videoconference.

Agreements can be reached in non-violent cases where the sentencing minimum is under four years.

Santos did not comment when asked about this reporting on Capitol Hill by CNN's Manu Raju. CNN has reached out to attorneys for Santos in Brazil and the United States.

In 2010, Santos told police he wrote bad checks from a stolen chequebook belonging to an elderly man his mother cared for to purchase the items.

Santos told the New York Post in December he had not been charged with any crime in Brazil. "I am not a criminal here — not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world. Absolutely not. That didn't happen," he said at the time.

After Santos left for the United States, Brazilian authorities could not find an address to serve him papers intimating him to appear in court, which eventually led to the archiving of the case, until it was reopened in January.

Prosecutors could not comment further, as the case is under a gag order.

What did George Santos lie about?

It has been revealed the New York Republican lied about his resume, education, ethnic background, relationship history, real estate portfolio and charitable activities.

Santos also claimed his mother was a trailblazing financial executive who died as a result of the September 11 attacks. 

Her friends described her as a cook and cleaner who died in 2016.

The New York Times today published Santos' resume, which contained more falsehoods.

Santos claimed to have doubled revenue for a department at investment bank Goldman Sachs in eight months, from US$300 million to US$600 million.

Goldman Sachs said Santos never worked for them.

The resume also touted degrees from two universities, neither of which he attended.

Santos was swept into office in a suburban New York district, touting his business credentials and heritage as the grandchild of Holocaust survivors.

It has since been revealed his grandparents were Brazilian Catholics and two Wall Street firms he claimed to work for had no record of him as an employee.

He also lied about being a college graduate, attending a top preparatory school and having a Belgian mother.

READ MORE: 'I said I was Jew-ish': George Santos

In another instance, the openly gay man claimed he had "never had an issue with my sexual identity in the past decade" but only three years earlier, he had been married to a woman.

In 2020, he claimed he had no assets.

In 2022, he claimed to have a net worth of as much as $17 million from a business that does not appear to have any web presence.

He also claimed to have run an animal welfare charity called Friends of Pets United.

But the group was never registered as a charity.

He held at least one fundraiser for an animal rescue charity, but the beneficiary claimed Santos never donated the money.

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A Queensland service station worker was held at knifepoint while the petrol station she was working at was being robbed, police allege.

A 29-year-old man allegedly threatened the female worker with a knife on March 24, as he took a large chunk of cash and cigarettes before fleeing the service station in Alexandra Hills in a vehicle that was allegedly stolen.

The woman was not harmed in the incident.

READ MORE: What Australians can expect for summer after El Niño watch issued

Methamphetamine, a homemade firearm and the stolen goods from the armed robbery was allegedly found by police inside the car used to flee the scene.

Police then arrested a Woodridge man they found inside a licenced liquor venue in Logan.

He was charged with eight counts of armed robbery, one count of attempted armed robbery, possessing dangerous drugs, failure to properly dispose of a needle and syringe, unlawful possession of weapons and possessing anything for use in the commission of crime.

The man was refused bail and is due to appear in Beenleigh Magistrates Court on March 27.

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Extrajudicial executions, rape, forced abortions, jail without trial, torture, starvation rations that leave prisoners so hungry some turn to eating insects.

These are just some of the abuses commonplace in North Korean prisons and other detention facilities, according to former detainees whose testimony forms the basis of a new report released by a human rights watchdog this week.

Using interviews with hundreds of survivors, witnesses and perpetrators of abuse who have fled the country, along with official documents, satellite images, architectural analysis and digital modelling of penal facilities, the non-profit NGO Korea Future has built up what it says is the most detailed picture yet of life inside the secretive country's penal system.

READ MORE: North Korea claims 'radioactive tsunami' weapon test at sea

"The purpose of our report is basically to reveal the human rights violations that have taken place within North Korea's penal systems. (It) finds that even 10 years after the UN established a Commission of Inquiry there still is systematic and widespread human rights violations," said Kim Jiwon, an investigator with Korea Future, which has offices in London, Seoul and The Hague and focuses on human rights issues in North Korea.

Alongside constructing 3D models of some of the detention sites, the group has documented what it believes are more than 1000 instances of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, hundreds of instances of rape and other forms of sexual violence and more than 100 cases of denial of the right to life.

"Comparable to the Soviet Gulag, (North Korea's) penal system is not to detain and rehabilitate persons sentenced by courts in safe and humane facilities. Nor is its purpose to decrease recidivism and increase public safety," the report says.

"It is to isolate persons from society whose behaviour conflicts with upholding the singular authority of the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un."

The report states it has identified hundreds of active participants it alleges have participated in the violence and is calling for investigations and prosecutions for the abuses. Korea Future used witness testimony and satellite imagery to map 206 detention facilities, across every North Korean province, alleging that abuses are personally carried out by officials as high-ranking as major generals.

The report makes for grim reading. Among the cases it highlights are those of three people jailed after trying to cross the border — a punishable crime in this country. The group alleges one was forced to have an abortion when seven or eight months pregnant; another was fed as little as 80 grams of corn a day, a starvation diet that saw his weight drop from 60 kilograms to 37 kilograms within a month and forced him to supplement his diet with cockroaches and rodents; a third was forced to hold stress positions for up to 17 hours a day for 30 days. Other survivors, who spoke to CNN, recounted surviving on animal feed and becoming skeletally thin, witnessing rapes and being subject to severe beatings.

Korea Future is hoping other countries will consider pursuing domestic court cases against North Korean agents and that some of its findings can be used as evidence. And, it hopes western countries will apply targeted sanctions against some of the accused in the report.

READ MORE: Fears grow over North Korea's growing nuclear arsenal

Due to North Korea's self-imposed isolation, which has become even stricter since the country closed its borders in 2020 in response to Covid-19, CNN cannot independently verify the accounts.

However, the conditions outlined in the report are in line with the findings of recent investigations by the United Nations, including a report to the UN Human Rights council this week by Special Rapporteur Elizabeth Salmón, who said women detained in political prison camps were "subjected to torture and ill-treatment, forced labor and gender-based violence, including sexual violence by state officials."

The hermit country is known as one of the most closed and repressive nations in the world. CNN has sought comment from North Korea's Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York for comment, but it has not responded.

North Korea frequently denies allegations of human rights abuses — in its prisons or elsewhere — often claiming they are part of a US-orchestrated campaign against it. This week, soon after a UN meeting on the human rights situation in the country, North Korea released a statement saying it "resolutely denounces and rejects" what it characterised as a "US-waged human rights pressure campaign."

"That such a country takes issue with the 'human rights' situation of other countries is indeed a mockery of and an insult to human rights itself," reads the statement.

Referring to a joint military exercise between the US and South Korea, it claimed the US was using its "human rights manoeuvre as a mechanism for invading" North Korea.

'I didn't feel like I was a human being'

Investigators from both Korea Future and the UN say many inmates become so dehumanised by the abuse that they begin to feel they somehow deserve it. Many, too, simply have no concept of human rights with which to frame their experience.

One former inmate, who says she was detained for little over a year from 2015 after complaining to authorities over her housing situation, likened her treatment to that of an animal.

"When we raise rabbits, we keep them in dens with fences and give them food. (In jail), it was like we were the rabbits, kept in a cell and given food from behind bars … we were not treated as humans, but as some kind of animal," said the survivor, whose name CNN has agreed to protect as in North Korea the families of defectors can face retribution.

At one point her cell was around two square metres, "and I know this because we were sleeping zig-zag style and someone's feet were touching my shoulders."

"We should not move in the cell and we had to sit with our hands on our sides and as we were not supposed to look up we had to look down. We were not supposed to talk, so all you hear is people's breathing sound."

She described being fed only corn mixed with rice bran — more commonly used as animal feed.

"How can it be enough? When you eat breakfast, from the moment you put down your spoon, you're hungry. It's all grass and no nutrition so you get hungry as you don't even feel the food inside your stomach.

"All your nutrition in your body is gone so you end up looking like a skeleton by the time you leave, just right before dying." She was released after a little more than a year inside.

"I didn't feel like I was a human being. I thought it would've been better to be dead if I had to live like that."

READ MORE: What prison food is like around the world

Political prisoners

North Korea has long faced claims of torture and abuse in its political prison camps, known as "kwalliso".

A landmark UN investigation in 2014 found that Pyongyang was using this type of camp to keep a lid on dissent — and the ruling Kim dynasty in power — and that up to 120,000 people were held in them. It also estimated that over the past few decades hundreds of thousands of political prisoners had died in kwalliso amid "unspeakable atrocities."

Among Korea Future's key contentions is that similar methods of abuse are being used "systematically" in ordinary prisons, known as "kyohwaso," and other penal institutes such as holding centres and prosecution offices.

Not only that, but it says the abuse in these centres is "greater in scale … than in better-known political prison camps" and that while some of the people held in kyohwaso are accused of standard crimes, such as theft, many are being held essentially as political prisoners.

The report places responsibility on North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un.

"The purpose of (North Korea's) penal system is to isolate persons from society whose behaviour conflicts with upholding the singular authority of the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un," states the report.

"Detainees are re-educated through forced labour, ideological instruction, and punitive brutality with the purpose of compelling unquestioning obedience and loyalty to the Supreme Leader."

READ MORE: Kim regime cashing in on North Korean crystal meth boom

'They just didn't have the concept of torture'

Kim Jiwon, the Korea Future investigator who interviewed many of the survivors, praised their courage in speaking up, adding that he had found it was "really, really difficult to hear their stories."

"I can't even fathom how they felt, and what they had to go through," he said.

While difficult, asking the survivors to relive their experiences and cross checking their accounts against each other had been vital in corroborating and building up a picture of what had occurred, Kim said.

Among the things that had struck him during the interviews was that, so dehumanising had their treatment been, that many "just didn't have the concept of torture."

"They were always told by the penal facility, the correctional officers, that they had done something bad. So they just simply thought that they were bad people and for that reason, they were being punished. This was very ingrained in their mindset," Kim said.

"They didn't even realise that they were being subjected to torture."

'I thought I couldn't live like this'

A male survivor whose testimony was used in the Korea Future report told CNN he had been detained multiple times for defection, including in 2000 and 2017, after making his way across the border with China to seek work.

While he described seeing prison guards raping women detainees, being beaten up and forced to walk around with his body bowed at a right angle during one spell in jail, he said the conditions were an improvement on his first experience.

"In the past, we had to crawl with both hands and knees when we were moving, but in 2017, we could stand up and walk. All you needed was to bend your back forward 90 degrees when moving," he said.

He said as many as five people would be held in a single 6.6 square metre room that had no heating, but that at least in 2017 they were given blankets to help them cope with the cold — winter temperatures in North Korea can fall as low as minus 23 degrees Celsius — unlike when he was imprisoned in 2000, when they were given nothing.

He even went as far as to describe some periods of his detention as "no stress," at one point moving to a centre where there were no beatings or torture and thinking "wow, Korea has been changed."

But he painted a bleaker picture of one holding centre. "I noticed the center guards were raping female detainees at night. They'd ask some women to wash their clothes at night and when the women came out they raped (them)… I thought some things haven't changed after all these years."

He said he told an inspector what he had seen and that initially he was thanked for bringing the matter up, but soon afterward two men beat him up "so hard."

Soon afterward, "I thought I couldn't live like this so I broke the window in the room and grabbed a piece of glass," he said. "The police guard came into my room and in front of them I stabbed my tummy."

Despite all this, he said it was better to focus on those aspects that had improved — likening it to encouraging a child, saying that focusing purely on bad behaviour would not encourage them to change for the better. He said in 2017 he received three meals a day and the same food as the police were eating, unlike in 2000 when his rations were only vegetable soup.

"We were used to being called like sons of bitches back in 2000," he said. "But in 2017, we were called comrades."

READ MORE: How two kidnap victims created a Golden Age in North Korean cinema

'A crime against humanity'

James Heenan, representative of the UN Human Rights Office in Seoul, said many escapees simply didn't have a concept of human rights; one of the first steps in helping them was to educate them so they could recognize that what had happened to them was abuse.

"Generally they tell us the raw, unadulterated version of what happened to them and sometimes they see it as a bad thing. Sometimes I think that's just the way the system works. (They think,) 'I was beaten because I deserved it.' So the issue of knowledge of human rights is a key one."

Heenan said the abuse fit into four main categories.

Firstly, people were being detained arbitrarily and either not given a trial or given a show trial, without a lawyer, that might be as short as 10 minutes, he said. Secondly, people were being tortured and subject to other forms of ill treatment related to health, food and sanitation that could be "tantamount to torture if it's done in a certain way," he said.

Thirdly, "We also see the issue of extrajudicial executions in prison, people who are just executed from prison without trial are subjected to the death penalty," he said. "And the final thing that we see (is) forced labour. People in prisons, in detention, are forced to work in inhumane conditions for no pay for the profit of the state. And this is one of the most widespread violations we see."

After the outbreak of Covid-19 prompted North Korea to shut down its few remaining connections with the outside world, it became harder to know what was happening in the detention centres, Heenan added. While prior to that, some escapees like the one who spoke to CNN, had suggested "limited improvements" with perhaps fewer cases of torture and extrajudicial killings, he cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from this saying there were too many "blind spots."

"(For instance), many people are sent to political prison camps on lists, and not many people leave — they're there for life until they die. So firsthand experience of most of these centres has always been difficult to come by," he said.

But rights groups could be confident that such abuses were still occurring, he said, and that the situation was "still very dire," because the testimonies of survivors were cross-checked for consistency, or "triangulated," not only against other survivors but against medical evidence of their injuries and in some cases satellite evidence.

"These individuals are telling consistent stories … you also have the sheer weight of testimony, he said.

"In these cases, the weight of evidence, the weight of testimony is very, very strong."

The situation in detention facilities was "one of the most egregious examples of the (human rights) violations we see (in North Korea)," Heenan added.

"And this is what the UN Commission (and most others) have concluded, that the things like torture and ill treatment and so forth that are going on in those facilities reaches the level of a crime against humanity."

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Ten people have been injured during a flight to Portugal following some severe turbulence.

The Hi Fly plane, operating the service on behalf of Angolan airline Taag, landed in Lisbon on Thursday with eight passengers and two crew members injured, one seriously, according to Angolan newspaper O Novo Jornal.

Photos posted to Facebook from inside the flight showed objects, including food and drink carts, plates and bottles all strewn around the cabin.

READ MORE: Teen who stabbed Perth father to death avoids life sentence

The Airbus A300 even sustained a crack in the roof, according to the publication.

The terrifying moments came several hours into the flight, which departed from the Angolan capital of Luanda, as the aircraft crossed the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Taag said in a statement the situation was due to "adverse weather conditions".

Emergency crews greeted the aircraft on arrival at Humberto Delgado Airport but according to reports, most of the injured had been tended to with first aid on-board the aircraft.

The seriously injured person was helped by a doctor on board.

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Victorians are being warned to be vigilant about thieves with a spike in theft from front porches and apartment buildings.

One complex in Maribyrnong has had $20,000 worth of property stolen in just 12 months.

"They seem to be just a magnet," apartment building resident Megan Menzies told 9News, referring to storage cages in the building's car park.

READ MORE: Huge change to hit Bunnings overnight

The Ariele building has repeatedly been targeted, with a $2000 bike, a $4000 drum set and soccer equipment among the property recently stolen.

Some residents have taken to reinforcing their storage cages with metal bars.

Mail boxes have also been hit.

Resident Protyan Roy has even had crucial medicine for his toddler taken.

"A lot of packages have been stolen," he said.

With more Melburnians back in the office, criminals are taking advantage, according to Gregor Evans from the Strata Community Association.

"Working in the owners corporation space, managing apartment complexes, we've seen a spike of robberies," he told 9News.

READ MORE: Teacher avoids jail for sex with schoolboy

The most recent crime data reveals the cities of Melbourne and Yarra have recorded the biggest increases in theft.

There has also been a jump in Hobsons Bay, Hume, Casey and Bayside.

Apartment building residents who are concerned are being encouraged to contact their body corporate.

"Committees of these properties can increase security, whether it's through access control systems, cctv systems," Evans said.

But the tenants and owners of Maribyrnong's Ariele building say they've been ignored.

READ MORE: Chris Dawson to face trial over allegations

"We sometimes wonder if our building manager even exists sometimes," Menzies said.

A representative from the building's owners corporation told 9News they have recently organised a security audit to be carried out at the property and latch protectors and new signage has been installed.

"A further four cameras were installed around the property, with the system also upgraded," the representative said.

Residents who have concerns about their building manager can make a complaint to Consumer Affairs Victoria.

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Patrons attending a music gig nearby rushed out to throw liquid onto the fire.

Three fire trucks were sent as flames engulf scrub, toetoe and flax on a cliff face.

A US contractor was killed and five US service members and one other US contractor were wounded when a suspected Iranian drone struck a facility on a coalition base in northeast Syria on Thursday, the Pentagon said.

In a statement released late on Thursday, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said US Central Command forces retaliated with "precision airstrikes" against facilities in eastern Syria used by groups affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

The Defence Department said the intelligence community had determined the unmanned aerial vehicle was of Iranian origin.

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"The airstrikes were conducted in response to today's attack as well as a series of recent attacks against Coalition forces in Syria" by groups affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, Austin said.

Overnight, videos on social media purported to show explosions in Syria's Deir Ez-Zor, a strategic province that borders Iraq and contains oil fields.

Iran-backed militia groups and Syrian forces control the area, which also has seen suspected airstrikes by Israel in recent months allegedly targeting Iranian supply routes.

Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been suspected of carrying out attacks with bomb-carrying drones across the wider Middle East.

In recent months, Russia has begun using Iranian drones in its attacks on sites across Ukraine as part of its war on Kyiv. Iran has denied being responsible for these attacks, though Western nations and experts have tied components in the drones back to Tehran.

READ MORE: Russia's security chief blasts West, dangles nuclear threats

The attack and the US response threaten to upend recent efforts in the region to deescalate tensions, as Saudi Arabia and Iran have been working toward reopening embassies in each other's countries.

The kingdom also acknowledged efforts to reopen its embassy in Syria, whose embattled President Bashar Assad has been backed by Iran in his country's long war.

US Army General Michael "Erik" Kurilla, the head of the American military's Central Command, warned that American forces could carry out additional strikes if needed.

"We are postured for scalable options in the face of any additional Iranian attacks," Kurilla said in a statement.

Syria's state-run SANA news agency did not immediately acknowledge any strikes. Syria's mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There was no immediate reaction from Iran over the strikes, which come during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Iran's mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

READ MORE: Protesters fill French streets as anger at President Emmanuel Macron mounts

Qatar's state-run news agency reported a call between its foreign minister and Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser.

Doha has been an interlocutor between Iran and the US recently amid tensions over Tehran's nuclear program.

Qatar's foreign minister also spoke around the same time with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian.

Austin said he authorised the retaliatory strikes at the direction of President Joe Biden.

The US under Biden has struck Syria previously over tensions with Iran. In February and June of 2021, as well as August 2022, Biden launched attacks there.

US forces entered Syria in 2015, backing allied forces in their fight against the Islamic State group. The US still maintains the base near Hasakah in northeast Syria where Thursday's drone strike happened.

There are roughly 900 US troops, and even more contractors, in Syria, including in the north and farther south and east.

READ MORE: China and Russia – Explaining a long, complicated friendship

"As President Biden has made clear, we will take all necessary measures to defend our people and will always respond at a time and place of our choosing," Austin said.

"No group will strike our troops with impunity."

Syria's war began with the 2011 Arab Spring protests that roiled the wider Middle East and toppled governments in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen.

It later morphed into a regional proxy conflict that has seen Russia and Iran back Assad.

The United Nations estimates over 300,000 civilians have been killed in the war. Those figures do not include soldiers and insurgents killed in the conflict; their numbers are believed to be in the tens of thousands.

The Pentagon said two of the wounded service members were treated on site, while three others and the injured contractor were transported to medical facilities in Iraq.