7am

Israel has passed a new law allowing for the execution of Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks. The law passed through the country’s parliament despite opposition from Israeli and international human rights groups, as well as the governments of the UK, Germany, France and Italy. Israel’s national doctors’ union has refused to carry out lethal injections, meaning those sentenc...

More than a decade after he retired from AFL, John Barnes collapsed without warning and began having seizures. The former Essendon and Geelong ruckman says years of head knocks left him with epilepsy, memory problems, and a life he barely recognised. Now, as a growing class action takes on the AFL over concussion, Barnes is speaking about the damage he says the game caused – and the accounta...

In September of 2012, Australian soldiers descended on the rural village of Darwan in Afghanistan, killing four men. That raid and the events of that day were central to the defamation action brought by Ben Roberts-Smith. The court eventually found it was substantially true that he had committed war crimes – including kicking Ali Jan, an Afghan villager, off a cliff and ordering his executio...

The fighting may have temporarily eased in the Middle East, but the fallout is still moving through the global economy. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted, fuel markets are unsettled, and Australia is exposed. Now, Anthony Albanese is in Singapore trying to secure supply, as the opposition presses the government over how prepared the country really is. Today, Tony Wood, Energy...

Ben Roberts-Smith was once held up as the face of Australia’s war in Afghanistan. This week, he was arrested and charged with war crimes. Ben Roberts-Smith maintains his innocence. For journalist Chris Masters, the road to that moment began almost two decades ago, when he travelled to Afghanistan to report on the war up close. Over time, he began hearing whispers that some elite soldiers had...

Eighteen years ago, Kevin Rudd apologised to the Stolen Generations and said those injustices must never happen again. But in that same year, Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts was taken from her family at just 10 years old. Now, as a lawyer and advocate, she says Australia is still taking First Nations children from their families – and that the number in out-of-home care is today higher than the est...

It’s been a war of shifting deadlines for President Trump. And now, his latest one expires this morning. Trump is threatening that if Iran fails to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the US will strike the country’s bridges and power plants in what he’s calling "Energy Plants Day and Bridges Day” – stating 'a whole civilisation will die tonight' if Tehran ignores his ultima...

T he first official report from eSafety on how the government’s under-16 social media ban is going has been released. And the early picture is grim. Kids are getting around the ban, and eSafety says it has seen no drop in cyberbullying or abuse reports involving children on those platforms. So is this just a messy start, with the government right to ask for more patience? Or is it proving th...

Under one of the most remarkable landscapes in Australia is one of the world’s largest undeveloped reservoirs of onshore gas – and a Texas oil man wants to get it out. Project Valhalla would drill an initial 20 fracking wells across an area twice the size of Victoria in the Kimberley. And after the WA EPA recommended it for approval, the proposal is now one step closer to going ahead....

In 2007, future United States president Donald Trump stepped into the wrestling ring for a showdown with Vince McMahon, then head of World Wrestling Entertainment and Trump’s close friend. Trump played the villain perfectly. For decades now, Trump has been shaped by a love affair with professional wrestling. It taught him how to control and manipulate a crowd, how to speak, and how to respon...

For months, Jim Chalmers has been trying to write a budget about the future – productivity, reform, repair. But events have a way of dragging budgets back into the present. And right now, the present looks expensive. People are still under pressure. The economy’s been hit by another oil shock. And the Treasurer is trying to make the case for restraint without looking like he’s as...

Readers and writers have been left reeling after a horror novel became the first book to be cancelled over AI claims. The New York Times has reported that an AI detection program indicated that ‘Shy Girl’ was 71 percent AI generated. The news has shocked the publishing industry, with the novel discontinued in the UK and pulled from publication in America. So what are the implications f...

Donald Trump says Cuba's next. For decades, the United States has tried to isolate the country, but now the language is getting stronger, and a tightening of the oil blockade has brought the island to its knees. President Trump has said taking the country would be an "honour", and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, says Cuba cannot fix its economy without changing its government. In Havana, offi...

Jeffrey Hoffman grew up on Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. He was still a boy when the space age began – Sputnik, the first American astronauts, then Apollo. From early on, he knew he wanted to be part of it. He was. Hoffman went on to fly five Space Shuttle missions, logging more than 1,200 hours in space. And today, he’ll be watching as NASA sends astronauts back around the moon for th...

It’s now one month since the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran – and it looks like it may be entering a more dangerous phase. Washington is sending thousands more troops into the Middle East – with President Trump saying he wants Iran’s oil and may seize the country’s Kharg island, adding he could take it “easily”. Meanwhile, the diplomacy is conf...

Louis Theroux has spent years making television out of the people polite society prefers not to think about. In his new documentary on the Manosphere, he turns that gaze on a world of male grievance, online swagger and old misogyny dressed up in the language of self-help. In Australia, researchers and educators say that boys, women and girls are bearing the consequences of actions and attitudes tu...

In late 2023, Australia signed a landmark treaty with Tuvalu – a low-lying Pacific nation threatened by climate change – promising a special visa pathway, disaster support and closer security ties. The deal is now in force. The first climate refugees have begun arriving in Australia, and this year, Tuvalu will help host key Pacific climate talks ahead of COP. But the questions at the h...

Last weekend’s South Australian election wasn’t just a wipeout for the Liberals and triumph for Labor, it was a sign that political discontent is beginning to find a new home in an old brand: One Nation. Pauline Hanson’s party showed just how much room there is for anger on the right in a traditionally progressive state. But the rise in One Nation’s popularity isn’t j...

When Pete Hegseth faced the Senate to become Donald Trump’s defense secretary, he was grilled on everything from his lack of experience and his drinking to past controversial remarks – including that women should not serve in combat roles. But the hearing also made something else clear: Hegseth wasn’t just being chosen to run the Pentagon in the ordinary sense. He was being chose...

It’s been a rollercoaster ride on the global oil market, with wild swings in petrol prices at the bowser. The war against Iran has caused panic buying in Australia and around the world. Meanwhile, our government has been criticised for not having greater reserves of petrol, diesel and jet fuel. And for  not imposing higher taxes on giant gas companies, which are now raking in  a fo...

Australia’s tobacco wars are fuelling violence, with fire bombings and arson attacks spanning across the east coast. Now the federal government wants to treat these organised crime syndicates like ‘drug lords’ by going after them with wire tapping and seizing their assets. And the tobacconists are in trouble too, with calls to ban tobacco stores and only sell cigarettes in superm...

John Blackburn spent four decades in the Air Force, rising to Deputy Chief. For more than decade he’s been warning that Australia is too reliant on imported fuel, too light on reserves, and too exposed if a global crisis – just like this one – disrupts supply. Now, as more than hundred servos around the country run dry and a Trump ultimatum looms, threatening to make the fuel cri...

Like so many stories about misinformation, this one starts with a social media post.  “Australia is making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran National Woman’s Soccer team to be forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed. Don’t do it, Mr. Prime Minister, give ASYLUM.” Not long after that, Donald Trump backtracked and set the record stra...

It’s been one year since dead fish began washing up on South Australian beaches, as the largest algal bloom in Australia’s history spread along the coast. Marine ecologist Dr Scott Bennett was part of the team that first surveyed the bloom – coming face to face with the algae’s devastating impact. Twelve months on, the bloom is still there, the damage has spread, and many o...

South Australia does not usually wake up on election day at the centre of the national mood. But this morning, a contest that looks settled on paper is carrying a much stranger energy. Peter Malinauskas is expected to win comfortably. The real movement is happening elsewhere; in the noise around One Nation, the protest vote in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis gathering around the once margina...