With Omicron looming over the summer, authorities consider big changes such as relaxing contact tracing and changing testing requirements for travel as efforts to administer booster jabs ramp up.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he wants to see vaccination rates return to the record high levels achieved in October and November, as Australia faces the Omicron variant.

More than a million WA workers will be required to get a third COVID vaccination as Premier Mark McGowan announces the state will close its borders to Tasmania and the Northern Territory from Boxing Day.

Queensland records 186 new cases of COVID-19, the largest number of daily cases since the start of the pandemic, as new mask requirements are announced.

The former Big Bash League player, who used social media to solicit sexually explicit material from children over several months, has been sentenced to at least two years in jail. 

Comet Leonard is wowing stargazers across Australia, putting on a cracker of a show to brighten the end of the year.

Fox News has defended host Jesse Watters in the wake of him using the term "kill shot" in a speech urging young conservatives to confront the United States' top infectious diseases expert, Anthony Fauci, in public.

The bitter custody battle between Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum and Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein has cost the publicity-shy Gulf royals more than the eye-watering sum decided by the court.

An online petition has gathered millions of signatures calling for leniency for a 26-year-old truck driver who was sentenced to 110 years in prison for vehicular homicide.

NSW Police say the people responsible for gunning down Sydney man Mustapha Naaman in a Hurstville car park in January this year followed the wrong target to the car.

The body of great Yolngu actor David Gulpilil, who died last month aged 68, will be driven via hearse to Darwin, before his body is flown to north-east Arnhem Land to be met by more family members.

An inquest into an infant who died at a Sydney family daycare finds he suffered from an undiagnosed heart condition but that "unsafe" sleeping conditions contributed to his death. 

Japan has hanged three death-row inmates, its first executions in two years, amid growing criticism by human rights groups about the country's use of the death penalty.

Israel will offer a fourth dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to people over 60 amid concern about the worldwide spread of the Omicron variant.

The first text message ever sent, which simply reads "Merry Christmas", has been sold as a non-fungible token at a Paris auction house.

Paul Gallen returns to the ring against fellow former NRL star Darcy Lussick, headlining a packed card of former rugby league men in the ring, as well as the professional debut of Olympic bronze medallist Harry Garside. Follow live.

A landmark judgement by a Tasmanian court to award a child sex abuse survivor $5.3 million "tears through decades of" an abuser's "lies, persecution and underhand dealings", the survivor says.

NSW has records 3,763 COVID-19 cases and two deaths ahead of the national cabinet meeting convening to address the rise in infection numbers.

A trial of a nasal spray as a preventative treatment for COVID-19 will run for six months in Victoria. If it's a success, the spray could be distributed across the world.

South Australia has recorded 198 new cases of COVID-19 — another daily record for the state.

Victoria's Conservation Regulator throws the book at a landowner and an earth-moving company over their alleged involvement in the killing of 70 koalas at a former timber plantation.

The race is on to establish a solar panel recycling industry before the renewable energy source's green credentials go to waste.

A fossil forgotten about in storage for decades has recently been revealed as "one of the most beautiful fossils" ever found, researchers say. 

A Perth mother who killed her two young daughters is detained indefinitely under Western Australia's "mentally impaired accused" laws after being found not guilty of murder due to "unsoundness of mind". 

After eight years on the social housing waitlist, Aunty Donna and her young grandson are thrilled to be spending Christmas in their new home in Coffs Harbour.