Supporters of the climate group Just Stop Oil have announced that, after three years of disruptive protests, they are ending their campaign of civil resistance. Hannah Hunt, whose speech on Valentine’s Day 2022 marked the beginning of the campaign, made the announcement outside Downing Street in London on Thursday. “Three years after bursting on the…

The group that represents Democratic state election officials says it plans to spend $40m on competitive races in 2026 with the goal of Democratic control of election oversight before the 2028 presidential election. The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State says the plans amount to its “most aggressive” operation to date, a sign of growing…

Peter Dutton has vowed to establish a gas reservation scheme that will lower prices and sack all 41,000 federal public servants hired under Anthony Albanese if he wins an election billed as a “sliding doors moment” for the nation. But the opposition leader held fire on other major policy announcements, declining to reveal his targets…

A Taiwan court has sentenced four soldiers, including three who worked in the president’s security team, to jail for up to seven years on charges of spying for China. The men were convicted of violating the national security law by passing “internal military information that should be kept confidential to Chinese intelligence agents for several…

Just after 6am on Tuesday morning, a curious young ginger cat boarded a train at St Albans station in Melbourne’s western suburbs and journeyed to Flinders Street station in the city centre. In CCTV footage you can see the carriage doors open on platform one before the unexpected passenger casually tails morning commuters to catch…

A New South Wales taxi driver has been fined $12,000 and banned from operating after charging fixed fares in excess of state regulations and kicking out his passengers and their luggage if they refused. Nurman Syarif was convicted in Sydney’s Downing Centre local court last week of several offences relating to his interactions with passengers.…

NSW is expected to ban future privatisation of public acute hospitals, with the state government announcing “Joe’s law” on Thursday, named for the two-year-old who died at the Northern Beaches hospital. Joe Massa suffered a cardiac arrest and died in September after waiting three hours in the emergency department operated by private hospital provider Healthscope…

Donald Trump has said he would be willing to reduce tariffs on China to get a deal done with TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the social media app used by 170 million Americans. He acknowledged the role China would play in any agreement. “With respect to TikTok, and China is going to have…

After more than 170 years at a Scottish university, the remains of a young Aboriginal man killed on his traditional land have returned home. The skull of the unknown man was taken from Tasmania in the 1830s and had been held by the University of Aberdeen since the early 1850s. It is understood he was…

The department of home affairs secretary, Stephanie Foster, has admitted to using disappearing messages on Signal, but says she complies with record-keeping obligations, as officials face scrutiny of their use of encrypted messaging apps in the wake of the Trump administration group chat scandal. The editor of the Atlantic, Jeff Goldberg, published a story this…