Sweden’s wolf hunt starts on Thursday, with the country aiming to halve the population of the endangered predator. The Swedish government has given the green light for five entire wolf families, a total of 30 wolves, to be killed in a hunt campaigners say is illegal under EU law. Under the Berne convention, protected species…
Experts have predicted a “buyer’s market” for house hunters in the year ahead, giving them greater negotiating power as the mood of the housing market shifts to “cautious optimism”. However, even the more hopeful expectations for 2025 were met with caution, as an important stamp duty relief for first-time buyers was scheduled to end in…
The Post Office needs to be removed from running redress schemes for victims of the Horizon scandal to prevent justice from being further delayed, an influential parliamentary committee has said. In a report published on Wednesday, one year to the day since the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office brought the scandal to…
Masses of glittering algae have returned to Tasmania’s coastline in a spectacular bloom of bioluminescence that experts say is the largest seen in years. The phenomenon, known as “sea sparkles” or “red tide”, was caused by masses of noctiluca scintillans, a pink-coloured algae that experts say was beautiful to look at, but considered bad news…
Commonwealth Bank call centre worker Adrian Thoen was devastated when he found out he was among thousands of workers at the nation’s biggest bank being underpaid to the tune of $16m. He was employed on a flexible contract instead of a standard enterprise agreement, with more than 7,000 workers losing out on money and entitlements.…
A woman has died in a New Year’s Day scuba diving accident at a popular Gold Coast swimming spot. Meanwhile, another woman was found dead on Wednesday after an extensive search following a water tubing accident north-west of Brisbane on New Year’s Eve. Emergency services were called to Wave Break Island, in Biggera Waters, at…
New Year’s Eve revellers have largely been praised for their behaviour at Australia’s biggest fireworks shows, while officers were kept busy with outbursts of trouble around local fireworks. More than a million people swarmed the main vantage points around Sydney harbour and hundreds of thousands of Melbourne partygoers were treated to a fireworks and laser…
A man waiting for the subway in Manhattan was pushed in front of an oncoming train on Tuesday afternoon, but survived with injuries to his leg and head, according to the New York police department. The apparent attack comes less than two weeks after a woman died after being set on fire on a stationary…
The number of people admitted to hospital in England because of a lack of vitamins or minerals is soaring, according to analysis of NHS figures. In 2023-24 there were 191,927 admissions where the main reason was a lack of iron, up 11% on 2022-23. The figure is almost 10 times the 20,396 hospital admissions for…
Ecuador’s attorney general’s office has confirmed that incinerated bodies found on Christmas Eve belong to the four children missing since early December, in a case posing a severe challenge to President Daniel Noboa’s “war on drugs”. The four boys – all black, aged between 11 and 15, and residents of Las Malvinas, a poor area…
