After soaking rains in February, for the first time in three years farmers have a real opportunity to sow a crop, but they must first face international importation issues and supply shortages of agricultural chemicals and fertiliser.

A small town with very dark secrets where racism and mistrust are the order of the day.

The aged care royal commission hears chronic short-staffing is compromising the care of nursing home residents, leaving some workers to question whether they want to stay in the sector.

The plight of thousands of "blackbirds" is being highlighted in a short film and helping younger generations to understand the sacrifices of their relatives.

Many people venture to South West Victoria for the surf.

The University of Adelaide says the departures of chancellor Kevin Scarce and vice-chancellor Peter Rathjen have nothing to do with its finances despite admitting it is facing a budget shortfall of $100 million.

A powerful cold front brings strong northerly gusts and heavy rainfall to much of southern Western Australia, damaging homes, leaving more than 35,000 properties without electricity and washing up yachts.

There’s a new emphasis on land reclamation and building floating structures for everything from accommodation to marine farming to energy generation. Re-defining the use of the ocean is part of the emerging “blue economy” – one that can be both economically beneficial and environmentally responsible. How well can these often contradictory goals be reconciled?

Bill Shorten addresses the Labor caucus after the election defeat, urging the party to continue to think big and progressive.

Prickles the merino sheep has been on the run from her Dunalley farm since the 2013 Tasmanian bushfires, but now she's out of self-isolation and ready for a trim.

Horse sanctuaries close and horse owners are forced to consider putting their horses down amid an "unprecedented shortage of hay".

The honey industry is facing hard times along with other producers, having taken a battering over recent years from the drought and a string of natural disasters.

DAILY BRIEFING: TasWater has issued a temporary boil water alert after E.coli bacteria was found after routine testing.

At 73, Dr Graham Fleming could be enjoying a quiet retirement. Instead, he's gearing up to be a struggling regional town's first resident doctor in nearly 18 months.

Consumer demand for coconuts is booming and world supply is struggling to keep up, so an industry awaits as Australia imports nearly all the coconut it consumes.

A team of citizen scientists join in the effort to restore the balance in inshore reefs and save threatened corals by clearing them of choking algae and seeding them with coral larvae.

Murderer Michael Cardamone, who tortured and callously killed Victorian woman Karen Chetcuti-Verbunt in 2016, has his life jail term upheld by appeal judges who say the "dreadful punishment" is fit for "a dreadful crime".

Australian National University students slam staff over on-campus accommodation support, which they say is structured in a way that the first port of call for a student to report sexual violence is to talk to another student.

A deadly pig disease that has decimated herds across Asia has spread closer to Australia with the Philippines confirming it has tested positive to African swine fever.

Queensland's Royal Flying Doctor Service trades training for loyalty in a new program to bring in more pilots.

It was all over quickly, but a short, sharp storm has brought hail and a little bit of rain to parts of Brisbane, Toowoomba and the Gold Coast.

Consumer groups are warning borrowers that two related short-term money-lending companies that have charged fees of up to almost 1,000 per cent of the initial loan, and are being investigated by ASIC, are now operating under a new name.

Bill Shorten draws a rockstar welcome in enemy territory, Scott Morrison argues with Labor over its support for a Coalition policy and Clive Palmer is personally, yet noticeably, absent from the campaign trail.

Women face a number of hurdles when it comes to working in manual trades, but overcoming the barriers as some have done could be the answer to the skills shortage.

With the coronavirus pandemic putting an unprecedented strain on Portland’s finances, Mayor Ted Wheeler proposed a budget Thursday that he pledged would be able to withstand the economic blow.

NICK Bertus and Will ­Affleck fell just three runs short of a century-old record to lead Parramatta to a two-day win over Western Suburbs.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - In an insurance dispute following an explosion and fire on an oil rig in Ohio, addressed arbitrability and personal jurisdiction issues. Affirmed in part and reversed in part the decision below.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - Affirmed. The district court's grant of a defense motion for summary judgment in an Age Discrimination Employment Act claim was proper because the plaintiff failed to raise a genuine question of material fact about the company's reasons for firing him during a period in which the company halved its workforce and fired thousands of workers.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - Held that an excess insurer could not sue an insured's lawyers for negligent misrepresentation. The insurer claimed that the lawyers led it to believe that a product liability suit posed no threat of exposure to its policy. Concluding that the law firm was immune from suit under these circumstances, the Fifth Circuit reversed the denial of a motion to dismiss and rendered a judgment of dismissal.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - Held that a company surveying the ocean floor was properly apportioned 75 percent of the liability for an accident in which its underwater sonar device struck an offshore drilling rig's mooring line. The remaining 25 percent of the liability was allocated to the operator of the chartered vessel that was pulling the sonar device. Affirmed a judgment after a jury trial.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - In a contractual dispute between two companies in the oil-drilling business, vacated a bench trial judgment, in part. The contract related to exploratory drilling for offshore oil.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - In an insurance dispute following an explosion and fire on an oil rig in Ohio, addressed arbitrability and personal jurisdiction issues. Affirmed in part and reversed in part the decision below.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - Affirmed. The jury award of more than $43 mil. for the breach of a Joint Operating Agreement relating to the plugging and abandonment operation of offshore oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico was affirmed because the application of Louisiana Civil Code and interpretation of the contract was appropriate. No bad faith offset entitlement was found.

As the United States faces meat shortages in the wake of the coronavirus, exports of pork and other proteins to China have soared.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - In a contractual dispute between two companies in the oil-drilling business, vacated a bench trial judgment, in part. The contract related to exploratory drilling for offshore oil.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - Affirmed. The jury award of more than $43 mil. for the breach of a Joint Operating Agreement relating to the plugging and abandonment operation of offshore oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico was affirmed because the application of Louisiana Civil Code and interpretation of the contract was appropriate. No bad faith offset entitlement was found.

By Rob Stein, Carmel Wroth, Alyson Hurt

To safely phase out social distancing measures, the U.S. needs more diagnostic testing for the coronavirus, experts say. But how much more?

The Trump administration said on April 27 that the U.S. will soon have enough capacity to conduct double the current amount of testing for active infections. The country has done nearly 248,000 tests daily on average in the past seven days, according to the nonprofit COVID Tracking Project. Doubling that would mean doing about 496,000 a day.

Will that be enough? What benchmark should states try to hit?

One prominent research group, Harvard's Global Health Institute, proposes that the U.S. should be doing more than 900,000 tests per day as a country. This projection, released Thursday, is a big jump from its earlier projection of testing need, which had been between 500,000 and 600,000 daily.

Harvard's testing estimate increased, says Ashish Jha, director of the Global Health Institute, because the latest modeling shows that the outbreak in the United States is worse than projected earlier.

"Just in the last few weeks, all of the models have converged on many more people getting infected and many more people [dying]," he says.

But each state's specific need for testing varies depending on the size of its outbreak, explains Jha. The bigger the outbreak, the more testing is needed.

On Thursday, Jha's group at Harvard published a simulation that estimates the amount of testing needed in each state by May 15. In the graphic below, we compare these estimates with the average numbers of daily tests states are currently doing.

Two ways to assess whether testing is adequate

To make their state-by-state estimates, the Harvard Global Health Institute group started from a model of future case counts. It calculated how much testing would be needed for a state to test all infected people and any close contacts they may have exposed to the virus. (The simulation estimates testing 10 contacts on average.)

"Testing is outbreak control 101, because what testing lets you do is figure out who's infected and who's not," Jha says. "And that lets you separate out the infected people from the noninfected people and bring the disease under control."

This approach is how communities can prevent outbreaks from flaring up. First, test all symptomatic people, then reach out to their close contacts and test them, and finally ask those who are infected or exposed to isolate themselves.

Our chart also shows another testing benchmark for each state: the ratio of tests conducted that come back positive. Communities that see about 10% or fewer positives among their test results are probably testing enough, the World Health Organization advises. If the rate is higher, they're likely missing a lot of active infections.

What is apparent from the data we present below is that many states are far from both the Harvard estimates and the 10% positive benchmark.

Just nine states are near or have exceeded the testing minimums estimated by Harvard; they are mostly larger, less populous states: Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Several states with large outbreaks — New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, among others — are very far from the minimum testing target. Some states that are already relaxing their social distancing restrictions, such as Georgia, Texas and Colorado, are far from the target too.

Jha offers several caveats about his group's estimates.

Estimates are directional, not literal

Researchers at the Global Health Initiative at Harvard considered three different models of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak as a starting point for their testing estimates. They found that while there was significant variation in the projections of outbreak sizes, all of the models tend to point in the same direction, i.e., if one model showed that a state needed significantly more testing, the others generally did too.

The model they used to create these estimates is the Youyang Gu COVID-19 Forecasts, which they say has tracked closely with what's actually happened on the ground. Still, the researchers caution, these numbers are not meant to be taken literally but as a guide.

Can't see this visual? Click here.

If social distancing is relaxed, testing needs may grow

The Harvard testing estimates are built on a model that assumes that states continue social distancing through May 15. And about half of states have already started lifting some of those.

Jha says that without the right measures in place to contain spread, easing up could quickly lead to new cases.

"The moment you relax, the number of cases will start climbing. And therefore, the number of tests you need to keep your society, your state from having large outbreaks will also start climbing," warns Jha.

Testing alone is not enough

A community can't base the decision that it's safe to open up on testing data alone. States should also see a consistent decline in the number of cases, of two weeks at least, according to White House guidance. If their cases are instead increasing, they should assume the number of tests they need will increase too.

And, Jha warns, testing is step one, but it won't contain an outbreak by itself. It needs to be part of "a much broader set of strategies and plans the states need to have in place" when they begin to reopen.

In fact, his group's model is built on the assumption that states are doing contact tracing and have plans to support isolation for infected or exposed people.

"I don't want anybody to just look at the number and say, we meet it and we're good to go," he says. "What this really is, is testing capacity in the context of having a really effective workforce of contact tracers."

The targets are floors, not goals

States that have reached the estimated target should think of that as a starting point.

"We've always built these as the floor, the bare minimum," Jha says. More testing would be even better, allowing states to more rapidly tamp down case surges.

In fact, other experts have proposed that the U.S. do even more testing. Paul Romer, a professor of economics at New York University, proposed in a recent white paper that if the U.S. tested every resident, every two weeks, isolating those who test positive, it could stop the pandemic in its tracks.

Jha warns that without sufficient testing, and the infrastructure in place to trace and isolate contacts, there's a real risk that states — even those with few cases now — will see new large outbreaks. "I think what people have to remember is that the virus isn't gone. The disease isn't gone. And it's going to be with us for a while," he says.

Can't see this visual? Click here.

Daniel Wood contributed to this report.

Even those who have already renewed will receive discounts

(United States Fifth Circuit) - Reversed, vacated, and remanded. Holding that a creditor can establish that its expenses are attributable to the actions of the bankruptcy estate through evidence of either a direct request from the debtor-in-possession or other inducement via the knowing and voluntary post-petition acceptance of desired goods or services.