Australia News

Warning: This article contains graphic images. The ABC has chosen to pixelate some images. The RSPCA has laid scores of animal cruelty charges in connection to an Adelaide Plains piggery, a year on from the release of covert vision purportedly filmed at the premises. Forty-nine charges of ill-treatment of an animal have been laid against…

A series of strong earthquakes have struck west of Venezuela’s capital Caracas, bringing down buildings and causing scientists to estimate “high casualties and extensive damage”. A magnitude-7.2 quake struck about 160 kilometres west of Caracas on Wednesday afternoon, according to Reuters, while a magnitude-7.5 tremor hit less than a minute later. Follow our live blog…

Formula 1’s “jewel in the crown” was raced on June 7, but the final result is still weeks away. As F1 descends on the scenic Styrian Mountains for this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix, two teams are in the process of trying to reverse the result in Monaco. Frenchman Pierre Gasly crossed the line third, was…

Back-to-back powerful earthquakes struck Venezuela on Wednesday evening, local time, collapsing buildings in the capital of Caracas. The first earthquake had a magnitude of 7.1 and its epicentre was west of the community of Morón, located along the country’s Caribbean coast, about 168 kilometres west of Caracas.  The quake had a depth of 13 kilometres….

A lawyer for the Olympian arrested at Washington’s reflecting pool says his client is a scapegoat who is being targeted to distract Americans from the Trump administration’s failures. David ‘Davey’ Hearn, who represented the US in canoeing at three Olympic Games, was arrested near the recently repainted pool on Friday, local time.  Afterwards, he told…

For most people, accessing reliable, clean water involves walking into the kitchen. But for Maxine Ningella, it means a regular 600-metre walk with a wheelbarrow to collect water from the filtration system in the remote community of Pandanus Park. Around 2,300km north of Perth and 170km east of Broome in Western Australia’s remote Kimberley, the…

Every school day, seven-year-old Vivien Fitzgerald heads to school on a remote cattle station. In between mustering, branding, fencing, water-point checking, weed management and housework, her mother or father joins her as her very own “home tutor”. But parents are now doing it without the information distance education families have used for decades to support…

Ben Stokes refused to give assurances on his long-term future as England cricket captain after his latest disciplinary controversy, saying his full focus was on the deciding Test of the series against New Zealand.  Commenting publicly for the first time since being dropped pending an investigation into an incident at a nightclub after the first…

Independents Allegra Spender and Zali Steggall have confirmed plans to form a new political party, but are yet to convince any of their crossbench colleagues to join what they call a “responsible alternative” to the major parties. There has long been speculation about a formal grouping of the so-called teal independents, who have won previously…

A volunteer-run wildlife organisation that rescued a bird which later tested positive to the deadly H5 bird flu says it did not expect to be “ground zero” for the first case in South Australia.  Australia’s third confirmed case of the avian influenza was recorded on Tuesday in a giant petrel found at Knights Beach on…