While smart leeches treat us like suckers.

Large parts of Victoria, including Melbourne, remain on high alert for heavy rain, damaging winds, thunderstorms and hail.

Time to check WA’s potential exposure sites list again as venues in Mount Lawley, Leederville, Welshpool, Mandurah and more are added to the growing list.

A pandemic needs people to be selfless and the return-to-school COVID safety measures provide a perfect opportunity for children to learn to be altruistic.

Television and film producer Bruna Papandrea has called on Australians to support former Australian of the year Grace Tame after she left an Australian Open event abruptly before it started on Thursday.

She has been remembered as someone who played an active social and political role advocating for Aboriginal people.

The week in photos from the award-winning SMH and AFR photographers.

Disgraced former television presenter Andrew O’Keefe has lashed out at journalists after he was charged over allegations he attacked a woman.

Police had issued an urgent appeal following her disappearance on Friday. 

Industry leaders are calling on the government to assist them in making millions of rapid antigen tests, parts of Sydney hardest hit by Omicron have the lowest booster shot uptake and the US has rejected Vladimir Putin’s demand that Ukraine never j...

High-profile investors say proposed law changes for Sydney’s parklands will terminate their negotiations with the state government to redevelop the precinct.

The state’s vaccination hubs can administer at least 100,000 more booster jabs a week, as health officials warn valuable staff are being left idle with the program running at half-capacity. 

New schools are being built in Melbourne’s west, but there won’t be enough of them, and they aren’t coming fast enough. A new report forecasts the region will be six schools short of its needs by 2031.

Tonga’s strict COVID-19 quarantine measures are adding complexity to a difficult clean-up mission, with international surge capacity unable to be deployed.

A cold case investigator whose findings were only recently made public has now been criticised for keeping secret tapes.

An investment from a trillion-dollar Singaporean sovereign wealth fund means a major credibility boost for two huge developments planned in Western Australia.

One of the men who died in a suspected shooting has been identified as Yarra Ranges Council worker Marty Sheahan.

Police say the one-time White Ribbon ambassador and chairman grabbed a potential business partner by the throat at his home in Sydney, pushed her to the ground and punched her.

One in five schools were yet to receive rapid antigen tests as some private schools resumed school on Thursday, but the Premier said distribution has been an “incredibly impressive effort” overall.

The Central Land Council is urging the NT government to fully lock down Central Australia and to ask the federal government for help.

Symptoms can be devilishly deceptive. A cold, it seems, can still be just a cold gifting you all the drama of illness, but none of those sweet, sweet antibodies.

Telling my children, aged four, eight and 10, that they would be returning to school and kinder next week was a tough gig to sell.

Ismail Hussein watched the immigration minister use his ‘God powers’ in front of lively protests, the courts and the world’s media to eject a tennis player from the country. Then he went back to waiting.

Eastern states residents will now be allowed to visit direct relatives, providing they are fully vaccinated and complete 14 days of self-quarantine.

Today on Please Explain, political and international editor Peter Hartcher joins Nathanael Cooper to discuss the looming crisis.

Veteran tennis photographer Clive Brunskill says he’s driven by capturing the sport’s historic moments.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has welcomed hundreds of medical interns, who will begin working in hospitals this week.

Those who died with the virus on Wednesday were aged between their 60s and 90s. A total of 11,600 new infections were also reported, as hospital numbers in some SEQ areas appeared to stabilise.

Daniel Andrews said a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine might soon be necessary for those who want to be officially considered fully vaccinated.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said on Thursday that 80 per cent of schools in the state had now received rapid antigen tests ahead of the start of term next week.

Half of all participants in the Adult Migrant English Program drop out within a year. Even fewer end up with a good grasp of English.

The cost of private schooling in Sydney’s northern suburbs has risen more than in other parts of Sydney this year, while fee hikes across the board have returned to their pre-pandemic levels.

Children are about to head back to school and we need their parents to embrace one more annoying chore: the rapid antigen test.

Children are far more likely to be hospitalised for the endemic respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), for which there is no vaccine and which kills 60,000 kids globally each year. We have never closed schools for viruses such as RSV.

When my 10-year-old decided he was an anti-vaxxer, I realised that I would have to tread a fine line between persuasion and coercion.

Sending students to Western Australia’s priciest private schools has never been more expensive.

Infectious disease expert Clay Golledge says WA’s vulnerable will be more exposed in delaying the border reopening. He likened the state to a totalitarian dictatorship.

Sydney’s suburbs with surging Omicron cases have the lowest uptake, while more than half of the people in parts of the north and east are triple-vaccinated.

Contrary to Mark McGowan’s suggestions, life on the eastern side of the country is pretty good. Here’s what WA can expect in its future.

Case numbers in NSW have spiked and plateaued. Hospitalisations are at record levels, ICU admissions are rising and death rates have increased. But what does all that actually mean and what do trends indicate will happen next?

How many rapid tests should your child complete? What about masks? And can they go on school camps and excursions? Here are answers to all your questions.

Australian astronomers have chanced across an object hidden in our galaxy that should not exist.

Grace Tame is what women need to be: loud, angry and rude as hell.

Charles Manson convicted, the era of the punched card, a Paddle Pop and a shandy

Trivia buffs: test your knowledge with today’s interactive superquiz and target.

Victoria’s non-government median school fees are the highest in Australia, and will rise by an average of 2.9 per cent this year.

As survivors enter their 80s and 90s and first-hand memories of Nazi atrocities recede, new research shows one quarter of Australians know almost nothing about the Holocaust, except for its existence.

A tribunal heard anti-vax parents came from far and wide in Victoria, and even from interstate, to get one of Dr John Piesse’s dodgy exemption certificates.

Two major Queensland universities will go beyond health directions when classes resume next month, while COVID plans for schools remain largely unknown.

Bob Reid AM - the Queensland retiree and former NSW detective who hunted international war criminals for almost 30 years.