Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Foreign minister Marise Payne discussed WikiLeaks founder with US counterpart in Washington DC, a spokesperson says
Australia’s foreign minister, Marise Payne, raised the case of the WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange with the US secretary of state during her visit to Washington DC this month, the government has revealed.
But Australian parliamentarians who support Assange say the government should demand his immediate release, after a US news report this week claimed CIA officials during the Trump administration had discussed abducting and even assassinating the Australian citizen.
Pacific Islands face greatest economic contraction in four decades, according to a new report from the Lowy Institute
Countries in the Pacific risk a “lost decade” following the Covid pandemic, with the region facing its greatest economic contraction in four decades, according to a new report into foreign aid.
The latest Lowy Institute Pacific Aid Map, which sets out aid spending and donations to the Pacific Islands region, shows US$2.44bn in foreign aid reached the Pacific in 2019, which is about 8% of the region’s GDP.
Eastern Kuku Yalanji people will take formal ownership of the world heritage-listed Daintree tropical rainforest in northern Australia, after the Indigenous traditional owners reached a historic deal with the Queensland government.
The Daintree national park is part of 160,108 hectares (395,467 acres) of land that will be handed back to the traditional owners at a ceremony on Wednesday at Bloomfield, north of Wujal Wujal.
The $250bn Future Fund says receiving 10 to 20 freedom of information requests a year is “administratively burdensome” and has confirmed proposed changes by the Morrison government would have shielded it from the kind of request that exposed investments in a company linked to the Myanmar military.
Last month, the Coalition introduced a bill granting wide-ranging exemptions to the Future Fund from freedom of information law, prompting criticism that it was a “calculated response” to an FoI that revealed its $3.2m investment in an Adani company criticised by the United Nations for an arrangement that gave financial support to the Myanmar military.
The 25m-year-old fossil reveals ancient eagle had features unlike any seen among modern hawks and eagles
A 25m-year-old eagle fossil discovered on a remote outback cattle station in South Australia has been identified as one of the oldest raptor species in the world.
Palaeontologists discovered the eagle fossil on the shore of a dry lake known as Lake Pinpa in 2016, and have since identified it as a new species, Archaehierax sylvestris, in a study published in the journal Historical Biology.
A Senate inquiry has been told Australia’s disability payment rules need to be ‘rewritten’ as people struggle for months, or even years, before receiving support – with some draining their super, relying on charity or accruing thousands of dollars of credit card debt to get by. Many are also forced onto the lower jobseeker payment, with government data showing that 36% of jobseeker recipients are sick or have a disability.
Laura Murphy-Oates speaks to 28-year-old Natasha Thomson, whose two-year battle to access the payment ended up at the top level of the administrative appeal tribunal, and inequality editor Luke Henriques-Gomes, about the barriers to accessing the disability support pension and the push for reform
A...scamdemic? AAP reports that a record amount has been scammed from Australians this year.
Australians have lost a record $211m to scams so far this year, with people bombarded by bogus calls and texts purportedly from well-known businesses or the government.
The losses between 1 January and 19 September this year have surpassed the $175.6m reported to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Scamwatch throughout 2020.
The prestigious Melbourne University joins several other tertiary institutions in announcing mandatory vaccination policies.
The University of Melbourne will make having a COVID-19 vaccine a compulsory requirement for attending any of its campuses. Exemptions to apply on medical or eligibility grounds. #springst@UniMelb
The adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s musical picked up 10 awards in a ceremony that also acted as a comeback for New York theatre
Moulin Rouge! swept the board at the 2021 Tony awards, picking up 10 trophies during a ceremony that also acted as a celebration of the return of Broadway.
The adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 Oscar-winning musical, which reopened on 24 September, became the first Australian-produced show to win a Tony for best musical, beating Jagged Little Pill and Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.
It’s very easy to laugh at a bunch of rightwing moms clutching their pearls over sexy seahorses – but there’s nothing funny about the systemic, organised way in which conservatives are trying to rewrite history and restrict freedom of speech.
The naked Nirvana baby has been recreated yet again – this time on the unsuspecting streets of Adelaide.
Pete Stokes rode about 150km on a single-speed bike to sketch the outline of the famous Nevermind cover. His efforts, tracked by GPS-based site Strava, show the baby’s (slightly angry) face over the CBD and the banknote over the leafy eastern suburbs of Burnside and Kensington.
Travel agents report Australians’ interest in cruising increasing 40% each month since June, with one analyst describing it as ‘the Teflon market for travel’
On 16 September, Miami-based Oceania Cruises, a luxury culinary-focused cruise company that is a division of Norwegian Cruise Lines, set an all-time, single-day booking record. It was driven by the introduction of its newest ship, Vista, due to take its first passengers in April 2023. Nearly half the available inventory of Vista’s inaugural season was sold in one day. These were new cash bookings, 30% of which came from people booking with the company for the first time.
It’s hard to know what this means for Australia. According to Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), 1.34 million Australians took a cruise in 2018, one of the highest rates in the world by population, yet international travel is currently off limits.
In what’s been described as a ‘paradigm shifter’ for psychiatry, Australian clinical trials are exploring the therapeutic benefits of illegal substances
It was out of desperation that Michael Raymond found himself sitting in a remote retreat in the Peruvian Andes, sipping a cup of bitter tea.
Raymond had reached breaking point. His 16-year career as an electrical engineer in high–security situations for the Australian air force had seen him deal with near-death experiences, crashes, casualties and “the aftermath of human remains”.
As New South Wales hospitals brace for the peak in admissions and overwhelmed intensive care units next month, the voices of those on the frontline are strangely muted.
Often it is family members, union representatives, professional bodies and patients who are providing a window into what life is like for frontline staff in NSW hospitals.
A top neurologist has called on the New South Wales government to list motor neurone disease (MND) as a notifiable disease amid suspicions a cluster of diagnoses in the state could be linked to something in the environment.
Prof Dominic Rowe, a neurologist at Macquarie University, has treated 889 MND patients – many from the NSW irrigation town of Griffith – in the past decade.
Joe Biden meets leaders of Australia, India and Japan in latest effort to cement US leadership in Asia
US president Joe Biden and the leaders of Australia, India and Japan highlighted their Quad group’s role in safeguarding a stable, democratic Indo-Pacific in a veiled dig at rival China.
Studies suggesting ivermectin is an effective Covid treatment relied on evidence ‘that has substantially evaporated under close scrutiny’, fresh research shows
The Associated Press is reporting an Australian economist who was arrested when Myanmar’s military seized power in February made an appearance Thursday in a court in the capital Naypyitaw, where he will be tried for violation of the official secrets law, his lawyer said.
Sean Turnell had been serving as an advisor to the country’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was also arrested when her elected government was ousted by the army. Suu Kyi and three of her former Cabinet ministers have also been charged under the law.
Shadow energy minister Chris Bowen gave a blistering doorstop press conference earlier, blasting the Coalition’s climate and energy policy shift.
It comes as federal treasurer, Josh Frydenbrg is due to tell business leaders later today that the government needs to shift towards adopting a net zero commitment.
Josh Frydenberg personally intervened to try and get the chief executive of AGL sacked because he dared to invest in renewable energy. When he was energy minister, he wouldn’t commit to net zero by 2050. He was the architect of the failed National Energy Guarantee.
Yet, now in some sort of bizarre positioning, internally in the Liberal party, he thinks he can be the champion of net zero. Well, he’s got net zero credibility. Josh Frydenberg has net zero credibility when it comes to climate change. He has too often had the chance to act and too often failed.
Head of Naval Group attacks Australia’s ‘political’ decision to cancel €56bn contract with his firm
Australia has signed up to an empty promise by agreeing to a US nuclear powered submarine deal for which there is no clear delivery date or technology transfer agreement, the furious head of the French defence contractor Naval Group has warned.
Pierre Eric Pommellet also said his firm will be seeking compensation for Australia’s cancellation of a €56bn (£48bn) contract for 12 new Attack-class submarines, which he described as a purely political decision which came without warning.
After finishing her final year of high school in 2019, Amy’s* daughter had dreams of leaving Geelong, in Victoria, to travel to the UK for a working holiday using money saved from her waitressing job.