Australia reached their first Fed Cup final for 26 years with a 3-2 win over Belarus in Brisbane. Ashleigh Barty and Samantha Stosur beat Victoria Azarenka and Aryna Sabalenka 7-5 3-6 6-2 in the deciding doubles tie to seal victory. Barty also won both her singles matches, while US Open champion Stosur lost twice. In November’s final, Australia will host …

A Barnaby Joyce interview and efforts to secure Clive Palmer’s preferences offered bi-partisan distractions as the campaigns continued their charm offensive in marginal battlegrounds. The Opposition Leader kept his campaign in the north, walking a political tightrope over the Adani coal mine in an effort to pick off National Party seats in central Queensland. The Prime Minister, meanwhile, took his …

A woman has received 28 demerit points — enough to have a driver’s licence suspended twice over — after a single police stop on the NSW Central Coast at the weekend. NSW Police said they pulled over the 24-year-old on the Pacific Highway at Ourimbah yesterday afternoon after noticing she was using her mobile phone behind the wheel. While they …

Scott Morrison has crossed paths with Tony Abbott away from the official election campaign trail at a Good Friday church service, telling the former prime minister he’d be on the hustings in Warringah “soon”. The Prime Minister, who was with his wife Jenny Morrison, read a traditional Good Friday reading from the Book of Isaiah at the St Charbel’s liturgy …

A judge in London has found WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange guilty of breaching his bail at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Judge Michael Snow quickly issued his verdict on Thursday after Assange appeared in court, with his supporters packing the public gallery. The basis of Assange’s defence was that he couldn’t expect a fair trial in British courts as the United Kingdom’s …

Popular Australian actor Lincoln Lewis has issued a warning on the perils of social media after he was inadvertently embroiled in a malicious catfishing scam, which destroyed the lives of two young women. Melbourne woman Lydia Abdelmalek created fake accounts of celebrities, including the former Home and Away star, and used them to lure the women into destructive online relationships. …

Labor will set a national electric vehicles target of 50% new car sales by 2030, and 50% for the government fleet by 2025, as well as allowing business to deduct a 20% depreciation for private fleet EVs valued at more than $20,000, as part of its climate change policy to be unveiled on Monday. Bill Shorten will also flag a …

Malcolm Turnbull has called on Scott Morrison to “deal with” Peter Dutton after allegations that the immigration minister met the former Australian resident billionaire Huang Xiangmo after he paid $10,000 to a lobbyist. Turnbull , who introduced foreign interference laws in 2017, said the allegations contained in a Four Corners report regarding a meeting between Dutton and Huang following a …

An Australian member of Islamic State (IS) has begged to come home, describing “rivers of blood” flowing inside the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate and a life of horror and misery. Mahir Absar Alam, who was born in Sydney and went to high school in Loxton in country South Australia, urged Muslims around the world not to believe IS’s propaganda and to …

The Australian government has promised to deliver a surplus of $7.1 billion next year, pay off all debt in a decade, and provide tax cuts and cash handouts to most citizens if it wins the election next month. On Tuesday night, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg delivered his first federal budget, featuring the first surplus in 12 years. But the unveiling of …