Taxpayers would save $1 billion a year in health sector costs if Sydney residents had better access to shady tree canopy and nature, a new report has suggested. The Sydney think tank Committee for Sydney is calling for a series of new greenways and tree plantings across the city to fight urban heat island effects,…

Alcohol is so ingrained in Australian culture that it can be hard to drink less, even when you want to. But increasingly people are cutting back, explains Amy Pennay, associate professor and deputy director of La Trobe University’s Centre for Alcohol Policy Research. Data from the National Drug Strategy Household Survey shows people are consuming…

It would come as a silent threat in the middle of the night — a niqab and a knife — left outside a tent in the squalid, prison-like detention camp housing Islamic State-linked families in Syria.  The message for the occupant was simple: wear the black veil preferred by the Islamic State (IS), or else….

A cafe in Melbourne’s north that was hit by an alleged drive-by shooting on Friday has caught fire overnight, with authorities treating the blaze as suspicious. Emergency services were called to reports of a fire on Mount Alexander Road about 1am, which caused significant damage to both the cafe and the neighbouring post office. A…

Fourteen months ago, a secular Jewish academic from the University of Wollongong (UOW) received a “threatening” six-page typed letter full of antisemitic hatred with his name handwritten on the envelope. The academic believed the letter, full of hateful conspiracy theories blaming Jewish people for all the world’s ills, was sent to him purely because his…