More than 5,000 feral horses culled in Kosciuszko national park since aerial shooting resumed

Conservationist says for first time number of animals removed exceeds annual population growth

More than 5,000 feral horses have been culled since the recommencement of aerial shooting in the Kosciuszko national park, with the NSW environment minister, Penny Sharpe, describing the number as proof of the need to control the threat the animals pose to the alpine wilderness.

Conservationists said for the first time the number of horses removed from the park would exceed the annual growth in horse populations, giving hope that a major threat for under-pressure ecosystems was starting to be addressed.

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‘They couldn’t care less’: fears for dogs’ welfare as Greyhound Racing NSW axes one of two adoption centres

Staff raise concerns as Wyee rehoming centre abruptly closed after steep drop in gambling revenue for governing body

Current and former staff have raised serious concerns about animal welfare and the culture at the agency that governs greyhound racing in New South Wales after it abruptly shut down one of just two adoption centres for ex-racing dogs this week.

Workers at the Greyhound Adoption Program (GAP) in Wyee were fired on Monday, the same day the Greyhound Racing New South Wales (GRNSW) chief executive, Rob Macaulay, announced the agency would cut 30% from its budget in the next financial year after a 22.5% fall in gambling revenue.

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Australia news live: students at two universities pack up pro-Palestine camps; Queensland rejects carbon capture project over aquifer fears

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Taiwan interested in critical-minerals trade with Australia

Taiwan’s representative to Australia, Douglas Hsu, spoke to ABC RN just earlier about China’s military drills around Taiwan and trading with Australia.

We will continue to show our interest in engaging with Australia on the trade front. I think in the past few months, especially on critical minerals, I had a few opportunities to travel to West Australia and Northern Territory to talk with the businessman in the critical minerals industries.

I found that well, first of all, I was very surprised or impressed by the scale of Australia’s mining industry, and we’ll definitely look forward to bringing more Taiwanese business to work even more closely with Australian partners.

It’s really about ensuring services can do early work that can stop children from experiencing harm, helping kids before they get to crisis point and intervening early to break that cycle of violence and abuse.

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Jarrad Antonovich inquest halted for potential criminal charges over death at NSW spiritual retreat

Coroner suspends inquest into death of man who consumed ayahuasca and frog toxin kambo at the Dreaming Arts festival at Arcoora in 2021

An inquest into the death of a man after taking poison and hallucinogens has been suspended after a coroner found there could be enough evidence for charges to be laid.

Jarrad Antonovich died of a perforated oesophagus after consuming the plant-based psychedelic ayahuasca and frog-based poison kambo at the Dreaming Arts festival at Arcoora retreat in northern NSW on 16 October 2021.

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NSW LGBTQ+ domestic violence centre turns to sausage sizzles to meet funding gap

Inner City Legal Centre among rising number of community organisations forced to raise money so victims don’t fall through the cracks

The only New South Wales domestic violence centre that offers legal assistance to the LGBTQ+ community has been forced to raise funds through Bunnings sausage sizzles to keep their program afloat amid an uptick in demand for assistance.

Legal centres across Australia say they are struggling to meet increasing demand and and are seeing victim-survivors fall through the cracks because of a shortfall in funding. Some centres say they are wary of advertising their services because they don’t know if they will have to turn people away.

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Accounting firm controlled by Exclusive Brethren church to close after extraordinary ATO raid

It is not known if decision to shutter division of secretive sect’s umbrella company has any link to raid reportedly conducted ‘without prior notice’

The accounting firm controlled by the secretive Exclusive Brethren church has announced it will close after an extraordinary raid conducted by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

Universal Business Team’s Australian accounting division, known as UBTA, sent an email to clients on Wednesday advising them that its accounting division would close.

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Australia politics live: Ed Husic says Coalition position on ICC arrest warrants is ‘staggering’; Plibersek in rogue microphone mishap during Sky News interview

Labor minister says Peter Dutton’s opposition ‘wants to pick what law and order it’ll follow’

Ed Husic details government’s new battery strategy

The industry and science minister, Ed Husic, has been speaking to ABC RN about the government’s newly unveiled national battery strategy. As Karen Middleton reports, the strategy is aimed at turning Australia from a “dig-and-ship” economy that sells off its critical minerals into a powerhouse manufacturer of better and safer renewable energy storage.

China is obviously the biggest producer [and] a lot of countries are recognising that their dependency on that concentrated supply chain isn’t in [their] national interest longer-term. If there are disruptions to that supply, either accidental or otherwise, we’re left vulnerable and these are in terms of the batteries themselves – they’re complex in nature. It’s also driven by software, so we need to have safe and secure batteries, energy storage systems, longer term.

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Without measles immunisation ‘little spot fire’ outbreaks may become harder to control, experts warn

People urged to check they are fully immunised after NSW and Victorian health authorities alert to three separate cases of virus in May

Australians are being urged to check they are fully immunised against measles after a number of outbreaks of the highly contagious virus.

Health authorities in New South Wales and Victoria alerted the public in May to three separate cases, all in travellers returning from overseas. There have been 35 confirmed measles cases across Australia so far in 2024, more than in all of 2023.

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NSW government extends life of Australia’s biggest coal-fired power station by two years to 2027

Deal struck with Origin Energy, owner of 2.88-gigawatt Eraring plant near Lake Macquarie, to limit risk of electricity shortages as renewables come online

Australia’s biggest coal-fired power station will remain operational for at least two more years after the New South Wales government signed a deal with its owner, Origin Energy, in an attempt to limit the risk of electricity shortages until more renewables are built.

The agreement, announced on Thursday, involves NSW taxpayers underwriting the 2.88-gigawatt Eraring plant near Lake Macquarie to keep generating power beyond the scheduled closure date of August 2025 Origin set two years ago.

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Inquest hears claim spiritual leaders conspired to mislead police about Jarrad Antonovich’s death after ‘kambo’ ritual

Antonovich died during a six-day retreat in NSW’s northern rivers after he took a cocktail of alternative ‘medicines’

A group of spiritual leaders at a retreat in the northern rivers conspired to mislead police about the death of a man who had just taken a cocktail of alternative “medicines”, a Bryon Bay courtroom has heard.

The inquest into the death of Jarrad Antonovich also heard that a Brazilian religious tradition fusing Christianity with Amazonian shamanic practices – including the drinking of hallucinogenic tea ayahuasca – gained increasing sway over an Australian community known as the “Church of Ayahuasca” in the lead-up to that fatal ceremony.

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Charlise Mutten murder trial: alleged killer’s ‘strange’ behaviour before nine-year-old went missing

Neighbour tells NSW court of conversations with murder accused Justin Stein shortly before schoolgirl disappeared

A man accused of murdering his partner’s daughter told a neighbour he was digging for “treasure” shortly before she went missing, a jury has heard.

“It seemed strange,” the neighbour told a court on Wednesday.

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Dutton won’t rule out a Coalition government quitting ICC – as it happened

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Chris Bowen says nuclear energy is ‘slow, expensive and risky’

Chris Bowen is also asked about the latest CSIRO report released today, showing electricity from nuclear power in Australia would be at least 50% more expensive than solar and wind.

CSIRO and Aemo have looked at large-scale nuclear for the first time. It finds that that would be far more expensive than renewables, despite claims from the opposition – quite inappropriate attacks on CSIRO and Aemo from the opposition, that they hadn’t counted the cost of transmission. The cost of transmission and storage is counted, and still renewables comes out as the cheapest.

And of course, CSIRO points out that nuclear will be … very slow to build. So nuclear is slow and expensive and is risky when it comes to the reliability of Australia’s energy system.

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Mother of murdered two-year-old shares grief over ‘evil’ act as NSW health minister condemns email to killer’s colleagues

Email sent to NSW Health staff remembering James Harrison as a ‘wonderful colleague and beloved friend’ labelled ‘unacceptable’

The mother of a two-year-old killed in a suspected murder-suicide by his father has expressed grief at the “evil and cowardly act of violence”, while the New South Wales health minister condemned an email describing the killer as a “wonderful colleague and beloved friend” .

The bodies of 38-year-old James Harrison and his two-year-old son, Rowan, were found three days ago in a unit in East Lismore, after the child’s mother, Sophie Roome, raised concerns after Harrison failed to hand over the child after an access visit. Police suspect the deaths were a murder-suicide.

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Claims for psychological injury at work surge in NSW at triple the rate of physical harm

Exclusive: SafeWork NSW promises to crack down on big businesses who fail to protect the wellbeing of staff

Claims for psychological injury at work are increasing at a rate far outstripping physical injury claims in New South Wales, prompting a warning from the state’s safety watchdog for businesses to expect compliance checks and prosecution if practices don’t improve.

Physical injury claims rose 11% over the four years to mid-2023, while claims of psychological damage jumped 30% over the same period, according to the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (Sira).

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Australia news live: Telstra announces 2,800 job cuts; mediation talks in Reynolds and Higgins defamation case

Liberal senator, and former political staffer expected to attempt again to resolve a pair of high-profile defamation cases. Follow today’s news headlines live

A High Court decision in Britain to allow Julian Assange to appeal his extradition to the US is a “small win” for the WikiLeaks founder but he should be freed now, the union for Australia’s journalists says.

As AAP reports, the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance remains concerned there is no certainty an appeal will be successful, which would mean Assange could still be tried for espionage in the US.

Tonight’s decision by the High Court is a small win for Julian Assange and for the cause of media freedom worldwide.

MEAA welcomes the decision of the High Court, but we remain concerned that there is no guarantee of success.

We call on the Australian government to keep up the pressure on the US to drop the charges so Julian Assange can be reunited with his family.

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Australia news live: Melbourne university orders protesters to leave; AEC can’t ‘adequately deal’ with AI-generated election misinformation

AEC tells Senate of overseas examples of ‘deceptive content’ about polls. Follow the day’s news live

The NSW police minister, Yasmin Catley, was on ABC News Breakfast earlier to discuss the state’s four-day domestic violence blitz.

She said it was the sixth operation in 18 months, with “thousands of arrests” in that time.

[The operations] are scheduled about every quarter, so police have been doing this for quite some time. NSW police [utilise] the DV registry, where they accumulate information about [alleged] high-risk offenders and it’s that intelligence that they use to then go out and undertake these operations.

We will debate it when we return. I would really urge the opposition to get behind it and support those bail laws that we have before the parliament.

Everything is on the table. We are all worried about this, I’m a parent as well myself. Social media companies are not doing enough and we need to seriously look if we need to change the law in order to keep your young people safe.

We need to get all the experts in one place. The premier [Chris Minns] has called this emergency summit. We are just seeing too many cases where the worst possible thing has occurred because of bullying online. We banned phones in schools in NSW and that has worked an enormous amount in the school day inside the school gates, but we need to look beyond that now.

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Police suspect murder-suicide after ‘tragic’ discovery of man and two-year-old’s bodies in Lismore home

Police say the boy’s mother raised concerns after the father failed to hand over the child for an access visit

A crime scene has been established after the bodies of a man and his two-year-old son were found in a home on the New South Wales far north coast overnight, in what police believe was a murder-suicide.

Police said officers attended a unit in East Lismore about 9.45pm on Sunday due to concerns for the welfare of a man and his son.

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New rules for NSW polluters to require ‘credible’ plan for mitigating climate impact

Exclusive: EPA chief executive says ‘foundational’ rule changes put climate impacts ‘front and centre' of planning process

New coalmines, gas fields and other big sources of greenhouse gases in New South Wales will need to provide more rigorous plans to minimise pollution and reduce carbon emissions before they are approved, under new rules imposed on Monday.

Revised assessment requirements and guidelines from the Environment Protection Authority mark a “foundational” tightening of rules for firms planning new projects or modifying existing ones that emit at least 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year, said Tony Chappel, the NSW EPA chief executive.

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Police officer allegedly stabbed in the head in Sydney’s CBD

Paramedics treated an officer for non-life-threatening head injuries and police arrested a 33-year-old man

A police officer is said to be “doing fine” in hospital on Sunday after allegedly being repeatedly stabbed in the head with a 30cm kitchen knife in Sydney’s central business district.

Detective superintendent of the Sydney City Police Area Command, Martin Fileman, told reporters on Sunday afternoon that the male constable was stabbed in the back of the head a “number of times” before he and a female constable gave chase to the alleged attacker.

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Children’s author charged with online grooming in Sydney

Man, 41, arrested and charged with online grooming after allegedly sending inappropriate images to someone he thought was 13

New South Wales police have charged a children’s author for the alleged online grooming of children, under Strike Force Trawler.

The state crime command’s sex crimes squad force detectives launched an investigation early this month after receiving an interstate report a children’s author was allegedly communicating inappropriately with a child online.

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