Owners of apartments affected by the combustible cladding crisis in Victoria tell researchers of the emotional and financial toll it has taken on them and their neighbours.

A social media campaign quickly gathers followers as it shines a light on drought-affected towns struggling to maintain their businesses, and encourages people to buy remotely in the lead-up to Christmas.

A seagrass nursery set up to propagate seeds to restore lost seagrass meadows could also be a tool to offset carbon emissions.

Ashleigh Gardner has already suffered five concussions in her short cricket career, but the 22-year-old all-rounder hopes to use the experiences to make her a better player.

A 19-year-old woman is charged with torture and causing the death of an animal after allegedly stabbing a cat 20 times and throwing it from a balcony on Sydney's northern beaches.

There are growing calls for a royal commission into the racing industry after the ABC revealed emails proving Racing NSW was told more than a year ago about the unauthorised sale of thoroughbreds for slaughter at a livestock auction.

MORNING BRIEFING: Total fire bans are in place as temperatures are set to rise beyond the mid-30s on Friday, and a man in a wheelchair has fallen down 100 stairs at Macquarie Park Station.

Shorebirds are increasingly under pressure around Australia, as the nation's wetlands and coastal estuaries continue to be swallowed by housing.

Fines for cyclists who do not wear helmets in New South Wales are more expensive than anywhere else in Australia, and should be drastically lowered, according to university researchers.

MORNING BRIEFING: NSW's economy has dropped to third, behind Victoria and Tasmania, according to CommSec's State of the States report, which measures performance based on several factors.

NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance wants to follow London's lead and take "drastic action" by ditching diesel and renewing Sydney's 8,000 bus fleet.

Forty years ago Peter Smith died after being punched on a night out in Sydney but only now will his sisters get to the bottom of what actually happened and why police closed the case a day after his death.

A jury hears how a woman who was allegedly gang raped by prominent Chinese actor Yunxiang Gao, and a producer, in a Sydney hotel room begged the men to let her go.

A copied artwork featured in the lounge room of Ricky Gervais's character in the Netflix series After Life results in a payout to Aboriginal artist Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri.

Up to 40,000 people are suing the Federal Government over PFAS chemical contamination, arguing their property values have plummeted. It's the largest class action in Australian history and it's backed by Erin Brockovich.

A court hears how a woman had a "chunk" of her tooth fall out after treatment, in a case against two people accused of posing as registered dentists.

While the big aged care chains may have copped many of the torrid headlines, the Federal Government has been another target at this royal commission, writes Anne Connolly.

Having left Melbourne in her 20s because she couldn't see a place for herself, Thai-Australian playwright Anchuli Felicia King is now forging a global career, with plays in London, Washington, Melbourne and Sydney this year.

NSW's Law Enforcement Conduct Commission recommends disciplinary action be taken against two police officers who engaged in misconduct by racially abusing two Afghan women at a traffic stop in Western Sydney.

The first report from the 10-month royal commission into aged-care standards offers blunt condemnation of the system, describing it as "unkind and uncaring" and fails to deliver safe care.

MORNING BRIEFING: The Federal Energy Minister 'unreservedly' apologises to Sydney's Lord Mayor for falsely claiming her council spent $15 million on travel, while parts of NSW remain blanketed in haze as winds fan smoke from bushfires.

Kangaroos have been spotted digging for water in dried-up creek beds as severe rainfall deficiencies continue.

In Sydney to open the International Women's Jazz Festival, Wilma Reading toured the world during the genre's golden age but the "icon and trailblazer" is almost unknown in her home country.

Western United come away with a 3-2 win in their Melbourne derby against the Victory despite trailing 2-0 after just seven minutes. Look back at that remarkable win and Western Sydney's 0-0 draw with Brisbane in our ScoreCentre.

The theory in media circles is that the banking royal commission was big news because "everyone has a bank account". There seems to be no corresponding extrapolation for aged care, writes Anne Connolly.

As the drought bites deeper, residents in a growing number of rural communities are fighting to stop local groundwater being taken to satisfy Australia's thirst for bottled water.

The New South Wales police watchdog finds an officer engaged in serious misconduct by using unreasonable force during a motorist's arrest. It is among just 2 per cent of complaints last year able to be fully investigated due to NSW Government funding cuts.

A Vietnamese man carrying four kilograms of pork-filled mooncakes has been turned away from Sydney Airport after failing to declare he was carrying food.

The mayor of the Inner West Council says a "very deep hurt" is caused to Indigenous Australians by the "jingoistic celebration" on January 26. But an independent councillor has called the move divisive.

The case of Quanne Diec and former nightclub bouncer Vinzent Tarantino shows even when an accused person confesses to a crime, criminal matters can later play out unexpectedly in court.

A Sydney mechanic who rescued a seven-year-old girl being raped by convicted sex offender Anthony Sampieri tells a court he still has nightmares about the "feeling of a scalpel being dragged across the back of my neck".

NSW Police release the identity of a Russian man who they allege killed property developer Albert Metledge and critically wounded his son Antony in a daylight stabbing attack in inner Sydney.

Joi ‘SJ’ Harris was killed when she lost control of a motorcycle during a stunt shoot near Vancouver’s Jack Poole Plaza on Aug. 14, 2017.

Nearly two dozen parents have already pleaded guilty in the case, including "Desperate Housewives" actress Felicity Huffman.

Los Angeles-based tech company Production Club is currently working to provide an alternative to social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The much-beloved, fictional Canadian teen-pop song from 'How I Met Your Mother' has now become 'Let's All Stay at Home.'

THIS dad thought he had a terrible disease caused by lack of blood flow to his extremities. The truth was far less serious, but much funnier.

HE picked up a bottle of alcohol to stop it falling over on the checkout. The cashier told his mum she couldn’t sell it to her now because he’d touched it.

ASUS has been pushing laptops with second screens for a couple of years now, but it's still searching for a winning formula. Last year's ZenBook Pro Duo pushed the keyboard down to the edge of the laptop's body, with the rest of the surface housing a second screen. The problem with that configuration was an awkwardly placed trackpad. But, you know who cares less about trackpad placement? Gamers. Hence, almost a year later, the company's Republic Of Gamers (ROG) division has its own spin on the concept: the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15.

Razer has unveiled the 2020 Blade 15 Advanced with more gaming and content creation power, along with one long overdue addition. To start with, the Advanced model is the first Razer Blade with an 8-core CPU, namely the 10th-generation Intel Core i7-10875. That will make it useful for both content creation and gaming, particularly since you can clock it up to 5.1 GHz.

Another live esports event will air on TV this Saturday -- something we might have to get used to now that people are glued to their screens even more than usual due to the coronavirus pandemic. The second round of the IndyCar iRacing Challenge, an online simulation-style competition, will air live on NBC Sports at 2:30PM ET on April 4th.

There are countless examples of the real world intruding on art, making something that was fine a day ago a grisly mistake now. The pilot episode of X-Files spin-off The Lone Gunmen, which aired six months before 9/11, featured a terrorist plan to fly a plane into the World Trade Center, for instance. And it's likely that The Complex, an interactive movie about dangerous biotechnology, skirts the same issue. After all, nobody wants to fixate on doctors in a life-and-death race against disease when there's a pandemic raging, do they?

Microsoft's buccaneering simulator, Sea of Thieves, already has 10 million players on Xbox One and Windows 10. The company announced that the game is coming soon to Steam, adding to an already large stable of Microsoft games on Valve's platform, and allowing existing Steam users to connect more easily with friends. The game, which was developed by Rare, challenges players to complete voyages across the open seas. What makes things more interesting is the fact that crews can run into pirate ships manned by other gamers -- and attempt to plunder their booty.

The original iPad came out on April 3rd, 2010, at a time when most smartphone manufacturers were making the awkward transition from full QWERTY keyboards to touchscreen-only devices. Apple sold 1 million iPads in that first month, and by the end of 2010, that figure had climbed to 15 million.

That same year, the top video games were Fallout: New Vegas, Bayonetta, Red Dead Redemption, Super Meat Boy and StarCraft II. The alpha version of Minecraft was generating some slight buzz.