• 5 mins ago

A man has been charged after allegedly grabbing a 26-year-old woman from behind and dragging her along the ground before assaulting her in a Cairns car yard.

• 11 mins ago

A Canadian woman was killed and several other tourists were taken hostage by gunmen who holed themselves up in a medieval castle in southern Jordan on Sunday.

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• 14 mins ago

ASX shrugs off last week's weakness to record a strong start, ahead of the mid-year budget update and a ratings agency downgrade.

• 17 mins ago

Tuggeranong and Belconnen will be the next regions in Canberra to become a part of the pilot.

• 21 mins ago

Police will search properties north-west of Melbourne on Monday as the investigation into the disappearance of missing mother Karen Ristevski continues.

• 29 mins ago

You expect cricketers playing "bush cricket" to spin a bit of a yarn about what happens on the field, but one scoreboard in the Upper Great Southern Cricket Association has to be seen to be believed.

• 40 mins ago

An innovative centre that has helped teachers learn how to use technology in the classroom as well as run student bootcamps in robotics and coding is being closed by the Department of Education.

• 42 mins ago

REA Group's website will start offering its own home loans - and taking commissions - thanks to a deal with National Australia Bank.

• 53 mins ago

A teenager is fighting for life and a 35-year-old man has died after separate crashes continued a horror start to the Christmas Holidays on the roads.

• 1 hr ago

It might be a good idea to stick the ham and turkey into the barbie outside this Christmas with the temperature expected to be a hot 35 degrees.

• 1 hr ago

Coles is trying to reform the poker machine industry by introducing $1 bet limits on the thousands of machines it owns but says it is being stone-walled by gaming machine manufacturers.

• 1 hr ago

Police are investigating a brawl at a McDonald's in Melbourne's west that involved a group of about 100 to 150 youths.

• 1 hr ago

Police are investigating a mass brawl that broke out at a wedding reception in Sydney's south-west on Sunday morning. 

• 1 hr ago

The Aussie has dropped to a six-month low on geopolitical tensions and after US Federal Reserve officials called for a faster pace of rate hikes next year.

• 1 hr ago

Gable Tostee's lawyer says it's far from certain that the Queensland coroner will hold an inquest into the death of his Tinder date.

• 1 hr ago

A messy affair between a high profile media boss and a 35-year-old personal assistant has become public after the breakdown of legal negotiations.

• 1 hr ago

Dan Carter endured one of the worst performances of his career as Racing 92 went down in Glasgow.

• 1 hr ago

Ten policemen in Egypt have been charged with torturing a man to death at a police station in Cairo in November, a judicial source and the victim's lawyer said on Sunday.

• 1 hr ago

The news, traffic and weather to get you up to speed.

• 1 hr ago

Former Newcastle Knights player Alex McKinnon has reportedly launched legal proceedings against the NRL for the tackle that left him paralysed in 2014.

• 1 hr ago

US President-elect Donald Trump's incoming White House chief of staff on Sunday played down the prospect that Trump would revisit Washington's decades-old "one China" policy, even though he suggested as much a week ago.

Fans of Vine, the 6-second video app owned by Twitter, were writing their eulogies in October when the social network announced it planned to shut down. Over the weekend, the company changed its mind — sort of.

Paramedics and police have been punched, kicked and spat on in a string of incidents across a horror 24 hours for emergency service workers.

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The local stock market is set to rise at the open, however, it's unclear if a lacklustre performance on Wall Street will filter through to Aussie financials.

Western Australian Senator Rod Culleton has resigned from his position in Pauline Hanson's One Nation party.

Three of the greatest players of their generations will be part of The Age's footy coverage in 2017.

The Outer Sanctum, the unconventional footy podcast that broke one of the biggest stories in the game this year, has struck a partnership with The Age for the historic first AFL Women's season. 

London: Australia's High Commissioner to Britain, Alexander Downer, has appeared in a self-narrated and often wooden short documentary to urge Britain to "get on" with leaving the European Union.

A $100,000 reward has been announced in the mysterious case of Sydney woman Katrina Ploy, whose body was found at a notorious suicide spot but who police suspect was murdered. 

An 18-year-old man is in a serious but stable condition after allegedly being struck in the head during a fight he was not involved in in Batemans Bay.

A female pedestrian has been killed in a hit-and-run crash in Sydney's west overnight, police say.

An Australian university professor has reportedly been held for five months in a Turkish jail without charge as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues a purge of alleged opponents.

The Washington Post

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Melbourne Express is your morning primer - a live blog with breaking news, headlines, transport updates and weather.

Cloudy with a top of 24C in the city and Parramatta today.

Several buses en route to evacuate ill and injured people from the besieged Syrian villages of al-Foua and Kefraya have been attacked and burnt.

A suicide bomber disguised a policemen has detonated himself outside a military base in the southern port city of Aden, killing at least 49 soldiers and policemen.

A backyard family fight has left one man in hospital and another charged with assault.

A 14-month-old girl has drowned in the backyard pool of a home in Medowie in Port Stephens.

A man has suffered burns to his face and body after a bonfire exploded in West Gippsland.

The cost to NSW taxpayers of a broken election promise two decades ago has surpassed $1.5 billion and threatens to top another billion dollars over the next 10 years.

Labor Party's clubs run the most profitable poker machines in the city.

Australia could lose its prized AAA credit rating as early as Monday afternoon as Treasurer Scott Morrison prepares to hand down a mid-year budget update likely to show little improvement for deficit projections.

Asthma sufferers will get some relief in the government's mid-year budget update with almost $130 million in drug subsidies.

Artist's impressions have been released on Sunday of the likely $3 billion casino development on the Southport Spit where Chinese-owned ASF Consortia want to build a casino and integrated report.

A woman who was caught allegedly threatening her drug lord husband's co-accused as well as laundering the proceeds of his crimes has claimed she will lose her job with the Department of Family and Community Services if she does not get bail.

Sam Docherty confident Blues midfield powerhouse Patrick Cripps will be fit and firing in 2017.

Gilman Wong has been forced to step aside as chief executive of cancer treatment outfit Sirtex Medical following shareholder demands for an investigation into the sale of shares two months ago.

Japan's economic reforms are stalling against unpaid overtime and outdated work practices