When Lou Myers brings out the lead and harness, Kartika the Bengal cat knows fun times are ahead.

Some think Australia is spending billions in a "wasteful splurge on old-timers who were going to die sometime soon anyway". But it has Australia well placed to cautiously remove coronavirus restrictions while protecting lives, writes political editor Andrew Probyn.

Nineteen people are facing charges after firewood worth $1 million was allegedly harvested as part of what police are calling a "large-scale wood theft" operation in southern Tasmania.

Sydney silk Bret Walker SC, who is leading the special commission of inquiry into the Ruby Princess, says he did not take Scott Morrison's criticisms of his "aggressive" questioning of a teary witness as an attempt to interfere with the probe's independence.

Tasmanian students can return to classrooms by the end of May under the Premier's plan to roll back coronavirus restrictions. Rules around national parks, funerals and aged care visits will ease from Monday, with two consecutive days without new cases.

It will be up to the state and territory governments to decide when cafes and restaurants reopen across the country. Here's how the situation is looking in your state.

You can visit mum for Mother's Day and fire up the barbecue for a few mates, but you still can't eat at restaurants and it will be some time yet before you can have a beer at the pub.

Why are there so few antivirals? The answer boils down to biology, and specifically the fact viruses use our own cells to multiply. This makes it hard to kill viruses without killing our own cells in the process.

Chris Buckley spent 76 days in Wuhan during the coronavirus crisis reporting for the New York Times. He now joins an increasingly large group of foreign journalists asked to leave the country he's spent years covering.

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly says it is too far in the future to speculate on when life will get close to normal in Australia as the country looks to lift restrictions in stages.

The recurring political debate about immigration tends to ignore the demand and employment that new communities create, writes Daniel Ziffer.

Theatres and art galleries around the country are on high alert after the NSW Government decision to withhold an annual grant from Australia's biggest multi-arts venue, Carriageworks, forcing it to appoint administrators.

Tasmania's spaghetti soup of road shoulders, painted green lanes, shared-use paths and recreational tracks frustrates cyclists on a daily basis, but with usage on the rise advocates are hoping change is on the way.

A 92-year-old resident of Newmarch House aged care home in western Sydney dies after contracting coronavirus, as NSW reaches a record high in testing rates.

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian will announce the plan to start relaxing lock down restrictions from Friday, but local and regional travel is not yet back on the menu.

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.

Drought sees Pilbara stations sell off their entire herds, but this manager says it's not the end.

A group of scientists is pushing for Exmouth Gulf, next to Ningaloo Reef in remote Western Australia, to be protected from industry saying its biodiversity is of global significance.

A trial is underway to determine if two former senior staff from the Shire of Exmouth in WA falsified records in relation to a $1 million aquarium purchase.

Polluting heavy metals may be leaking into an outback river system in WA's Pilbara and the problem has been made worse by the massive deluge that accompanied Tropical Cyclone Veronica in March.

A tiny male marsupial dies in the wild after "intense" mating and not from the harsh, arid environment in which it lives, research confirms.

A WA community is up in arms after a decision shut down a retirement village. The building has been deemed unsafe, but locals say their rights are being trampled on in favour of mining companies.

Truck drivers are calling for an urgent overhaul of roadworks safety in the outback, saying the highways are littered with disused and seemingly forgotten roadworks signs.

Automation and outsourcing are dirty words for many people in Western countries worried about their future employment prospects. Developing countries are seen to be the major beneficiaries of off-shore labour, with multinationals hoovering up increased profits. But the reality is a lot more complex and even messy. Now, even developing countries are starting to feel the pain.

The CIA’s former counterintelligence chief warns Western spy agencies are being “overwhelmed” by their adversaries. And new surveillance technologies could spell the death of the traditional agent-in-the-field. The future of espionage looks problematic indeed.

The world of classical music is changing. Some are predicting the demise of orchestral events. Others see opportunity in social media and a new sense of engagement between the audience and musicians.

Why do we see the past through rose-coloured glasses, but not the future? Psychologists tell us that human beings have a tendency to be fearful and pessimistic about the future, while simultaneously romanticising the past. If the theory is true, it might help explain the difficulties we often have in making informed decisions and effectively planning for the future.

Get an update on Google’s controversial proposal to take over the construction and regulation of a section of Toronto; learn about how the ancient Athenians used Tragedy to guide their future decision-making and follow the rush to develop low-orbit satellites to secure the future of the Internet.  

We all know the value of planning, but in a complex, complicated and often confounding world it can be difficult knowing how to start. Scenario Planning is planning tool for uncertain situations - find out what it entails and how it might benefit organisations and businesses.

In this episode, we look ahead to the news and broader media environment in 2020 and pressing issues for local content in a globalised world. We also hear about the need to “decomputerise” in order to decarbonise. 

Why do we see the past through rose-coloured glasses, but not the future? Psychologists tell us that human beings have a tendency to be fearful and pessimistic about the future, while simultaneously romanticising the past. If the theory is true, it might help explain the difficulties we often have in making informed decisions and effectively planning for the future.

It’s a scarce resource and likely to get even more so. But is it causing an increase in political friction? The answer is yes… and no.

Water banking involves the deliberate injection of surplus water into known aquifers. The idea is to repurpose the world’s many artesian basins as giant sustainable storage tanks - ones that can readily be drawn upon in times of drought. It’s just one of the ideas we explore in the second instalment of our two-part series on water conflict and management – the politics, the problems and the potential solutions.

Australia is home to over 1,600 shopping centres, covering more than 26.5 million square metres. We are a nation that love to shop, but times are tough for these aging centres. Online retailers, limited millennial attention spans and old fashioned infrastructure are all putting the squeeze on the mall's market. This doesn't necessarily mean it's the end though, in fact shopping centres are evolving for the future - pulling out all the tricks, enticements and tech they can to ensure you keep spending and they stick around.

Political campaigning is fast changing in the digital era.  Elections are now being contested with data and algorithms.  Parties see it as a great opportunity. Others see it as a threat to democracy.  And the changes are now playing out in real time in the United States. Barack Obama was often referred to as the first Internet president, but Donald Trump is fast becoming the king of social media. 

The hope of nuclear fusion is the dream of a fossil-fuel free future - of limitless baseload power. Enthusiasts say fusion offers all the benefits of nuclear energy without the dangers. In theory and in practice fusion energy is already a reality, but getting the economics right is proving much more difficult than imagined.

MIT research scientist, Andrew McAfee, argues we need to rethink our assumptions about capitalism and the environment.   Economic growth, he says, has been gradually decoupling from resource consumption. So, if capitalism survives this current crisis, we may need to adapt our understanding of the way it all works.  We also hear from Annmaree O’Keeffe, from the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands Program, about the value of Australia’s international public broadcasting effort now that the Pacific is once again an Australian geopolitical focus.

Four parachutists were forced to make an emergency jump from a light plane over a popular skydiving region south of Adelaide earlier this year when the engine cut out, according to an Australian Transport Safety Bureau report.

This kangaroo species normally lives high in the treetops but is now being found in odd places, unable to see and confused, and one ecologist is trying to find out the cause.

The number of older women experiencing homelessness has surged in recent years, with divorce, pay disparity and a lack of superannuation culminating in a "perfect storm" of gender disadvantage.

The WA Attorney-General casts doubt on whether more than $600,000 worth of severance payouts, made to former Health Department employees embroiled in a decades-long corruption scandal, will be recovered.

Chrys Barker has been confined to a wheelchair and is in need of 24-hour care since being critically injured in a car accident in 2014. He's now been awarded what is believed to be the biggest single personal injury settlement in Queensland.

A South Australian judge has given a stark warning to a street-level drug dealer about the horrors of ice, saying it causes people to snap in bars, coward punch strangers, neglect their children and even kill.

The Victorian branch of the CFMEU threatens to immediately cease all financial support for the ALP if Labor leader Anthony Albanese's push to expel union leader John Setka goes ahead.