Local governments have expressed concern about a decision to kill off merger discussions between four Wheatbelt shires.

Great Southern traffic police say they will be targeting distracted drivers during a campaign over the Australia Day long weekend.

A prominent businessman on Western Australia's south coast has been sentenced to eight years and six months in jail for attempting to hire a hitman to murder his estranged daughter-in-law. Brian Vincent Attwell paid $10,000 to an undercover police officer who had posed as a hitman in September last year. The court heard the 74-year-old was angry over legal action after his son's divorce and he was motivated by "sheer hatred" of Michelle Attwell. The trial was played recordings of the businessman saying his daughter-in-law had cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he wanted her "strangled and buried".

Wheatbelt nickel miner Western Areas says it is pleased with its quarterly results, despite seeing small drops in production and sales and higher costs.

Booker T Jones shares his stories from over fifty years of taking to the stage and collaborating with some of the biggest names in music.

The Member for O'Connor says he will be urging the Federal Government to remember struggling parts of Western Australia's grain belt in talks over drought assistance.

A man has been sent to jail for a crime spree, that included the theft of firearms, tens of thousands of dollars worth of jewellery, and an attempted theft of an ATM.

Residents in the Great Southern town of Broomehill West have expressed frustration over a lack of information during a recent blackout.

A Denmark man has been charged with attempting to use a hidden camera to film his teenage stepdaughter while she showered.

WA nickel miner Western Areas is attempting to raise about $100 million in a venture designed in part to reduce debt.

Western Australian Wheatbelt nickel producer Western Areas says it will make significant savings after raising the funds to pay off a $110 million bond.

WA grain growers are being told they must take the initiative to market their own grain if the industry is to survive.

A study shows the mining boom has generated up to 65 per cent more wealth for the top 20 per cent of West Australian households. But the research by Curtin University shows not all areas have reaped the rewards. It analysed the effects of the boom from 2003/04 to its peak in 2009/10 and found while those with higher incomes benefited substantially, other residents also benefited due to increased employment opportunities.

Coronavirus is changing the way the entire human race lives. Emergency workers are scrambling together contingency plans, fearing hospitals could soon be overwhelmed. Scientists are racing to invent a faster, cheaper Covid-19 test kit available for us all. Restaurants are reinventing themselves as delivery services, artists are turning to live-streaming to make a living. This week, the entire Background Briefing team investigates how each of us are finding new ways to get by.

Coolah and Dunedoo are neighbouring towns, both with no visible Aboriginal community, and the reason why is complex with reports of massacres, movements and missing pieces of history.

The names of towns, roads and localities of central and western NSW are a treasure trove of toponymy, or the study of name origins, but their meanings also provide powerful connection for people and the places they call home.

In 2017, Curious Central West travelled far and wide to investigate stories that were complex and confronting, while others were cute and quirky.

How the Wiradjuri people, indigenous to the Central West of New South Wales, survived European settlement.

Thousands head to the tiny New South Wales town of Louth for a dusty race weekend amid the ongoing dry.

Water is fast running out across the Macquarie Valley, with one town preparing for the possibility of closing the hospital

Graham Morrison, 55, is given a three-and-a-half-year jail sentence after hitting a family car on the Newell Highway near the end of an 11-hour trip.