Thousands of sea dragons, pipefishes and seahorses have washed up along state’s coastline according to analysis of citizen scientist records

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

• Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here

Thousands of sea dragons, pipefishes and seahorses died during South Australia’s devastating algal bloom, in what ecologists say is the worst mass mortality event for the fish family globally.

More than 1,600 weedy and leafy sea dragons, 1,400 pipefishes and 160 seahorses washed up as the harmful algae spread along the state’s coastline, according to analysis of citizen scientist records by Dragon Search SA.

Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter

Global push will triple toxic e-waste annually in 25 years, filling enough shipping containers to circle globe six times

The ongoing campaign to build thousands of massive datacenters for AI will create a “tsunami” of discarded electronics, putting the world on a course to triple its annual generation of toxic e-waste in the next 25 years, a new report projects.

The electronic trash AI generates in the next 25 years could fill enough shipping containers to encircle the globe six times, it said. Yet, says the report by the non-profit environmental group Basel Action Network (BAN), there is no plan to deal with that waste – which typically contains toxins like lead, mercury, cadmium and forever chemicals, as well as valuable metals that are challenging to reclaim.

My job made me the envy of the cool girls; it made me visible. Then Johnno, Stevo and Whack paid a visit

In the summer of 1982, at the age of 14, I was hired to work in the ticket office and kiosk at the Sale Memorial Pool in Victoria’s Gippsland region. The cool girls at school, who did not usually acknowledge me, were seething with jealousy. It was a sought-after job in a time before fast-food outlets and chain supermarkets.

I was anxious because I didn’t look like the girls who usually worked at the pool. The Dolly magazine cover-girl types. They were tanned, used raspberry lip gloss and Impulse body spray, and wore stretchy boob tubes over their crocheted bikini tops.

Exclusive: Southern Cryonics operates out of a shed in Holbrook in rural NSW. Experts say reanimation is ‘a dream’ but true believers are willing to pay for a second chance at life

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

I’m standing atop a very tall ladder, peering down through a haze of liquid nitrogen vapour into a giant stainless steel flask containing three smaller containers.

Inside the smaller wedges – which are labelled 005, 006, 007 – are three of Peter Tsolakides’ “patients”. The frozen bodies belong to people who, before their death, paid handsomely to be cryogenically frozen in the hope of one day being brought back to life.

Researchers find fossils ranging from 7,000 years to 46,000 years old showing evidence that devils may have become reliant on humans for scavenging

Tasmanian devils lived alongside humans in Western Australia’s Pilbara region for tens of thousands of years, according to fossils uncovered at Juukan Gorge.

These squat and sable marsupials, now restricted to Tasmania, were once abundant right across Australia, becoming extinct on the mainland about 3,200 years ago.

The underworld is using big paydays and encrypted apps to lure amateurs into gangland hits – even young people with no criminal history

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Two hands extend out the rear passenger window of an Audi sedan as its driver pulls up in front of a house in Sydney’s west.

In each fist is the black grip of a semi-automatic handgun. At least four shots are fired at the men outside the Merrylands West property on Wednesday before the driver pulls away.

A total fire ban is in place for greater Sydney with extreme fire danger exacerbated by hot and windy conditions

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Summer heat is due to arrive early across much of eastern Australia with potentially record early September temperatures predicted for Brisbane and Sydney, while snow was expected in southern New South Wales.

Maximum temperatures in Sydney during the first days of September were on track to match the city’s midsummer average of 26.4C, warmer than any other start to spring since the city’s Observatory Hill station opened in 1858.

Police say the drugs were uncovered as part of ongoing investigations into illicit drugs in Broome

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

A Western Australian man has been charged after police said they found approximately 3.5 grams of methylamphetamine in a ziplock bag wedged between the bacon and egg of a McMuffin meal during a car search.

The arrest on 20 August was part of ongoing investigations into illicit drugs in Broome, in WA’s Kimberley region.

This month a predator with ties to the online extortion group known as 764 was sentenced to decades in prison. The mother of one of his victims wants parents to know the truth about this ‘harrowing’ global trend

• Sadistic online exploitation: five warning signs for parents - and how to keep young people safe

“My beautiful, kind, intelligent, trusting daughter had the misfortune of stumbling across a link in a Discord server that led her to your evil and cruel group.

“The grooming of her started immediately, and what followed was unimaginably harrowing and traumatic. You were just one of the group members who abused her, who made her do things that no young person should ever be made to do.”

Christmas Island locals who woke to see the spacecraft floating off the coast hope global attention will encourage tourists

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Engineers from Elon Musk’s SpaceX are on their way to a remote Australian island to retrieve part of a Starship that dived into the Indian Ocean.

The spacecraft – now floating off the coast of Christmas Island – was launched in Texas on 24 July, in the 13th test of the technology. After reaching orbit and releasing 20 non-functioning satellites, the upper stage of the rocket re-entered the atmosphere, landing in the ocean.

Calls for South Australian government to release official estimates for cuttlefish, which once numbered in hundreds of thousands in upper Spencer Gulf

• Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here

Scientists and divers have called on the South Australian government to release official cuttlefish population estimates amid fears of a “catastrophic” decline, after a dive survey counted only 44 individuals.

Each year, tens to hundreds of thousands of giant Australian cuttlefish assemble off the coast of Whyalla, in the upper Spencer Gulf, to breed – the only place globally where cuttlefish gather en masse.

Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter

The Yamaji-Wajarri people studied the wide-open skies of their country for millennia before being host to one of the world’s largest radio telescopes

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Carlleen Dingo’s earliest memories are of looking up at the inky black skies above Australia’s north-west coastline, awash with planets, stars and galaxies. Geraldton, or Jambinu, is a coastal town 400 kilometres north of Perth, known for its wildflowers, red earth, fierce winds and undulating sandy dunes.

But at night, there’s another world on display.

Rapper pleads not guilty to six counts of sexually penetrating a 20-year-old woman without consent after a gig in Perth

A British YouTuber and musician bit and slapped a young female fan while he was raping her after a gig in Western Australia, a court has been told.

Yung Filly, 30, has pleaded not guilty to six counts of sexually penetrating a 20-year-old woman without consent in a Perth hotel room in September 2024.

UK police adviser in the early 2000s and global consultant in ‘no-body’ homicide cases says he has narrowed down the outback search area

• Peter Falconio murder 25 years on: new footage shows dying Australian outback killer’s refusal to reveal body’s location

The former British government expert who consulted on the search for the remains of the murdered backpacker Peter Falconio says he has now identified a “most likely” potential burial location – an abandoned racetrack only 8km from the scene of the infamous outback attack at Barrow Creek.

In July 2001, Falconio and his partner, Joanne Lees, both from Yorkshire, were ambushed and attacked by Bradley John Murdoch as they drove along a remote stretch of road in Australia’s Northern Territory, about 300km north of Alice Springs.

Adelaide-based Olympian was banned from driving for five years over Melissa Hoskins’ 2023 death

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Former professional cyclist Rohan Dennis faces a jail sentence after admitting he drove while disqualified over the events leading up to the death of his Olympian wife, Melissa Hoskins.

A judge had previously warned the former Olympian he would be jailed if he drove while banned.

Northern Territory force reopens evidence boxes in attempt to close investigation after 25 years

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

Northern Territory police have reopened evidence boxes to reveal several previously unseen photographs from the investigation into the murder of the British backpacker Peter Falconio and attempted abduction of his girlfriend, Joanne Lees.

Tuesday is the 25th anniversary of the outback disappearance, which still resonates as one of Australia’s most horrific and culturally defining crimes. It carries unanswered questions for Falconio’s family.

NT police release body-worn camera vision of Bradley John Murdoch denying knowing where UK backpacker’s body is weeks before his death

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Infamous killer Bradley John Murdoch aggressively denied knowing where the body of still-missing backpacker Peter Falconio was during a police interview weeks before he died.

NT police released body-worn camera vision of the interview on Saturday, days before the 25th anniversary of the killing of the 28-year-old British man on the Stuart Highway near Barrow Creek, in July 2001.

Curtin University researchers use innovative techniques to date three-billion-year-old impact crater in Western Australia’s Pilbara region

A meteorite that struck Earth three billion years ago left behind a “smoking gun” – evidence of the world’s oldest impact crater in a remote part of Australia.

Ancient rocks in Western Australia’s Pilbara region record the event, which occurred during the Archean eon, a period 4 to 2.5 billion years ago, when tectonic plates were beginning to form and early life emerging.

Tests taken in Western Australia suggest a second bird was also infected, but there is no evidence poultry or agriculture systems are affected

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The deadly H5N1 bird flu strain has arrived on the Australian mainland with test results confirming a migratory seabird found on the Western Australian coast was positive for the disease.

The agriculture minister, Julie Collins, confirmed a brown skua – found unwell last Sunday at Cape Le Grand national park near Esperance in southern WA had died from H5N1.