Over the past week, people in Australia have started noticing needles hidden in fruit: first in strawberries, and now in an apple and a bananas. Two people who accidentally ate the needles had to go to hospital, and the trend has thrown the Australian fruit industry into crisis.

Loot boxes in games could lead to problem gambling, according to a study by the Australian Environment and Communications Reference Committee. Over 7,400 game enthusiasts were surveyed for the study, the results of which were presented during a public hearing in Canberra yesterday, as part of the Australian senate inquiry into micro-transactions and chance-based items.

Police said the boy, who has not been named, confessed to the gag as investigations continue over deliberate fruit contamination. They said they still did not know the motive for the attacks and were still looking for suspects. Authorities have complained that the vast majority of the 100 reported cases were hoaxes, and warned that pranksters posting images on Facebook claiming that they have discovered tainted fruit could also face prosecution and potential jail time.

A $100,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for deliberately putting needles in strawberries in Queensland. Police are warning people to slice the fruit before eating it amid fears six brands of strawberries in Australia have been contaminated with needles and pins. Strawberries sold under the Berry Obsession, Berry Licious and Donnybrook Berries brands have already been recalled – and it is now believed the Love Berry, Delightful Strawberries and Oasis brands may also have been contaminated by a copycat.

Harper Nielsen stirs a social media storm claiming "Advance Australia Fair" ignores indigenous people.

A man has appeared in court charged with five counts of murder after twin girls, their three-year-old sister, mother and grandmother were found dead in Perth. The bodies of Mara Lee Harvey, 41, her three-year-old daughter Charlotte, two-year-old twins Alice and Beatrix, and their grandmother Beverley Ann Quinn, 73, were found at a Bedford home, in Perth’s inner northeast, on Sunday.

A new bill will help its intelligence agencies circumvent encryption. And what starts Down Under won’t necessarily stay there.

TONNES of strawberries are being dumped or going to waste around the country as the needle contamination scare threatens the future of the half-a-billion-dollar industry. Western Australia Strawberry Growers Association head Jamie Michael shared a photo of truckloads of fruit being dumped after a needle was found in South Australia in a punnet sourced from WA. “We are dumping strawberries — we have stopped some of the varieties already,” he told the ABC.

Greek port authorities are expected to give an update into the death of Australian Instagram influencer Sinead McNamara, whose body was found on board a luxury yacht. The vessel is owned by Mexican billionaire magnate Alberto Baillères, and has been ordered by the Hellenic Coast Guard to remain docked at the port of Argostoli, on the Ionian island of Kefalonia, while detectives interview crew members and forensic tests are carried out. An autopsy has been ordered, to determine the cause of Ms McNamara's death.

Australia has two pressing environmental problems: climate change and finding a leader who can tackle it. Large swathes of the country are suffering the effects of a seven-year drought, the bush fire season has hit those parts two months early, and the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef grows more severe each year. Yet late last month, the country’s attempts to make some modest changes to its energy policy to help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions blew up an internal storm in the ruling Liberal party that cost Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull his job.

A robot submarine able to hunt and kill the predatory crown-of-thorns starfish devastating the Great Barrier Reef was unveiled by Australian researchers on Friday. Scientists at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) said the robot, named the RangerBot and developed with a grant from Google, would serve as a "robo reef protector" for the vast World Heritage site off Australia's northeastern coast.

A trial of a controversial and highly polluting mining technology is given the green light in South Australia, despite being banned in Queensland for causing what has been described as the worst contamination in the state's history.

Australia's last remaining piano-maker has just created an instrument the likes of which the world has never seen. Most grand pianos have 88 keys but Wayne Stuart's family-run business in Tumut, southern New South Wales, has built the first known piano with an impressive 108 keys. This means it boasts a nine octave range, unheard of on the piano until now.

In a few idyllic parts of Queensland grows the idiot fruit, a tall tree with intricate flowers and some of the largest seeds in Australia.

Uluru. Needs no explanation. Truly difficult to capture the massiveness of this sandstone formation. Every cleft and imperfection has cultural/"Dreamtime" significance. Unfortunately, the bush flies kept me from staying longer. You can see the smoke from controlled spinifex burnings begins the rock. You can see in the middle, a group of people walking on top. Picking up some Aboriginal hitchhikers, their first question was if I had climbed it.

The Australian government wants to increase the criminal penalty for refusing to decrypt data from 2 years to 10 years.

Researchers believe an Australian bee which produces a “cellophane-like” material for its nests could help to end the world’s reliance on disposable plastics. The native Hylaeus nubilosus masked bee, known for the distinctive yellow badge on its back, does not sting or live in hives but it has generated interest because of the nesting material it produces, which is non-toxic, waterproof, flame-resistant and able to withstand heat.

Nazi, fascist, socialist, ultra right-wing - these terms seem to be bandied about a lot these days. But what do they really mean?

There are many elements of Australian culture that I truly value and they are often found in our sense of humour. Whether it is the irreverence, the irony, the larrikinism, or hyper-realistic mockery of cliché’s and stereotypes in Baz Luhrmann’s films, these comedic tools capture aspects of our culture that I truly hope we never lose.

When Ashish Sood came to Australia in 2007 he spent weeks living on the streets. His goal was to one day own his own restaurant, and when he did he was going to give away free food to the homeless. Now his dream has come true.

Fossil enthusiast Philip Mullaly was walking along the beach in Victoria Australia when he saw it: a glint in a boulder with quarter of a tooth exposed. "I was immediately excited, it was just perfect and I knew it was an important find that needed to be shared with people," Mullaly explained.

The Bunya pine is a unique and majestic Australian tree that commands respect.

IN 1979, a strange ‘double flash’ was observed by a satellite as coming from between South Africa and Antarctica. It was a telltale cue. That kind of flash was usually a nuclear explosion.

"Batavia Revealed: Shipwreck Psycho" explores the bloody truth behind one of Australia’s worst mass murders, investigating [the] horrifying tale of one of the world’s most terrifying and gruesome shipwreck stories of all time. By Maria Lewis. [Actual program available only in Straya.]

Bad for workers, bad for taxpayers, bad for the environment, bad for Australia. The latest iteration of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a boon for multinational corporations, writes Patricia Ranald.

The Australian government has expanded its network security rules to effectively ban Chinese company Huawei from its future 5G network. Huawei says it is a world leader in 5G technology, and calls the decision extremely disappointing for consumers. It has operated in Australia for the past 15 years.

Conservative lawmaker Scott Morrison has forced out Malcolm Turnbull as Australian prime minister, the third time the country's leader has sunk over climate policy in the past decade, and the seventh since 1997, according to Australia's ABC News. An internal Liberal party row started when Turnbull proposed modest emissions targets for the country's energy sector. He dropped the plans Monday after pressure from the party's right-wing faction, but that led to a narrowly defeated leadership challenge from Peter Dutton on Tuesday, then a final ousting from Morrison on Friday.

Refugee children on Nauru are facing an unprecedented health crisis and are at a real risk of death, three whistleblowers have warned. One healthcare worker recently employed on Nauru told 7.30 some of the children are using Google to research ways to die. Leaked documents compiled by immigration workers and obtained by 7.30 reveal a shocking spate of recent self-harm incidents.

Minister for Social Services Dan Tehan says clampdown necessary to protect public health

Pacific nations Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have signed on to a joint undersea internet cable project, funded mostly by Australia, that forestalls plans by Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to lay the links itself.

The Australian government awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid contracts to a company that was found to have been systematically bribing high-level Vietnamese officials. Australian consulting firm Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), a donor to both the Labor and Liberal parties, was a significant corporate player in the government’s foreign aid program for more than a decade, winning 83 contracts worth $489m for projects across the Asia-Pacific.

A dramatic rescue operation successfully freed a humpback whale trapped in a shark net off Australia's Gold Coast. Footage from the scene taken by Nine News shows the enormous whale thrashing in the water Monday, further entangling itself in the yellow lining of the net as it attempted to escape. A team of marine rescuers from the Queensland Boating and Fisheries Department managed to get close enough to the whale, while in a small rubber dinghy, to cut away the net.

Keep America Beautiful managed to shift the entire debate about America’s garbage problem. ... the ‘litterbug’ became the real villain, and KAB supported fines and jail time for people who carelessly tossed out their trash, despite the fact that, clearly, ‘littering’ is a relatively tiny part of the garbage problem in this country.”

Wonderful video with native bird calls.

Despite chief executives having bumper pay increases last year, the majority of Australian workers have seen their wages decline. Figures released on Wednesday show the real value of wages has stagnated across the economy, with inflation and wages now growing at the same annual pace of 2.1%. Wages had been keeping slightly ahead of prices since late last year but a rise in fuel prices, private health insurance premiums and tobacco excises in the June quarter has lifted headline inflation to match wages.