Exceptional monsoon rains have caused severe flooding in parts of Australia’s north-eastern state of Queensland. Cars and livestock have been swept away over a large area around the coastal city of Townsville. Emergency crews are evacuating people on rafts. Up to 20,000 homes could be flooded if the downpours continue, officials warn. A dam has reached twice its capacity and ...

Australia has removed the last asylum-seeker children from detention on the remote island of Nauru, ending one of the most contentious parts of the nation’s border-protection policy. The final four children and their families have been approved to fly to the U.S. for resettlement, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement Sunday. There were 109 children in detention when ...

Years before the U.S.-Mexican border wall became a synonym for anti-immigration measures pursued at all cost, Australia embarked on its own, deeply divisive experiment. More than half a decade ago, Australia’s government decided that all migrants arriving in the country by boat should be placed in offshore detention camps outside of the country, on the Pacific Ocean island nation of ...

Australian Defence Force officials have admitted between six and 18 civilians were killed in a Mosul airstrike involving Australian jets, but said they could not determine if Australian or allied missiles caused the deaths. The defence minister, Christopher Pyne, described the deaths as “deeply regrettable” but said the 12-month investigation into the strike on 13 June 2017 could not come to a conclusion ...

Australia sweltered through its hottest month on record in January and the summer of extremes continued with wildfires razing the drought-parched south and flooding in expanses of the tropical north. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology confirmed the January record on Friday as parts of the northern hemisphere had record cold. Australia’s scorching start to 2019 — in which the mean temperature ...

I’d visited the Latrobe Valley a few times before I really took in Hazelwood power station. Of course, I’d seen it. How could anyone miss it? But now I beheld the concrete behemoth, its towering chimney stacks creating their own thin, brown cloud-stream. I was writing about the adjacent town of Churchill, built in the late 1960s as a dormitory suburb for ...

A British man who leaked financial information about one of Russia’s most powerful politicians is pleading with the Australian government to allow his family to live in the country, despite their claim for asylum having been refused. In 2014 Nicholas Stride provided secret documents to media about the financial dealings of Russia’s former deputy prime minister, Igor Shuvalov, when he ...

An “Abolish Australia Day” banner has been hung from London’s Westminster Bridge in the shadow of the British Houses of Parliament in solidarity with Australian rallies. About 30 protesters held the banner off the bridge as throngs of tourists walked by on a cold and cloudy Friday afternoon. London Australia Solidarity Activism Hub spokeswoman Eda Sehyan says the action is ...

It’s summertime in Australia, and the country is in the throes of a record-breaking heat wave that has brought suffering to humans, animals and land. Temperatures in the south have soared past 118 degrees Fahrenheit. Australia’s State Emergency Service declared the heat wave a threat to public safety, as an increasing number of Australians have called ambulances and gone to hospitals in Adelaide for ...

The hot spell about to engulf much of south east Australia is set to be even more blistering with meteorologists having upped their temperature forecasts. Adelaide is now set to hit 44C on Thursday and with parts of Sydney sweltering through a high of 43C on the weekend. Sky News Weather channel meteorologist Rob Sharpe said more than 200 fires ...