Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam has labelled the city’s pro-democracy protesters as ‘the people’s enemy’ after police shot protestors at close range in Sai Wan Ho in eastern Hong Kong, leaving the protestors in a critical condition.

Another traffic policeman was also speeding on a motorbike into a group of protestors, which was criticized as an ‘out of control act’ by executive Lam.

Authorities suspect two fires that were started on Tuesday in Turramurra on Sydney's north shore and Loftus in the Royal National Park, were deliberately lit.

NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons has called for anyone caught lighting fires to spend time behind bars, as authorities investigate to find the potential culprit. 

Disgraced cardinal George Pell has been granted one final chance to fight his child sexual abuse conviction, after the High Court granted the imprisoned cardinal leave to appeal, which was announced this morning in Canberra.

Cardinal Pell’s lawyers will still need to lodge a formal appeal to the High Court, and the case is unlikely to be heard until next year. 

Two South Brisbane neighbouring companies have gone to court after a dispute over 34cm of building foundation two metres below the ground.

Brisbane Times’s Lydia Lynch reports that HS South Brisbane has taken its commercial neighbour United Voice, the union that represents paramedics, childcare workers and security guards, to court in a bid for $524,000 in "loss and damage" over the piece of the concrete.

A multinational engineering firm that was forcing workers on a Queensland gas project to submit blood tests in order to secure employment, has backed down following a legal push by the Electrical Trades Union.

Last fortnight, the union revealed that SNC-Lavalin, a new contract-holder for the project, was requiring prospective employees to submit to blood tests in order to retain their work on Shell’s Queensland Gas Corporation project at Chinchilla.

French police have used batons and pepper spray to clear Catalan independence activists who have been blocking a motorway between France and Spain in the hope of bringing the Spanish government to the negotiating table.

The protest, which had been due to last three days, was called by Tsunami Democràtic, an anonymous pro-independence group which co-ordinated the blockade of Barcelona-El Prat airport last month.

Catalan pro-independence groups have been actively protesting following the sentencing of nine high-profile independence leaders for sedition.

Hundreds of elephants and dozens of Zimbabwean lions will be moved by the country’s wildlife agency as part of a major operation to save the animals from a devastating drought.

More than 200 elephants in Zimbabwe have perished over the past two months due to a lack of water at the country’s main conservation zones in Mana Pools and Hwange National Park.

The animals will be moved from Savé Valley Conservancy, a major park in southeastern Zimbabwe, to three other reserves in the north of the country.

Victorians households have to pay $50 extra more for electricity next year as power distributors are suffering from increasing transmission costs.

The Australian Energy Regulator has signed off on allowing five Victorian power distributors, AusNet Services, Citipower, Jemena, Powercor, and United Energy to charge users more on network of poles and wires, which is just part of the bill, with other charges including wholesale cost margins.

Three Victorian trainers from Greyhound Racing Australia have been suspended after allegedly using possums as live bait but the GRV chief executive Alan Clayton has insisted that the case was an isolated incident.

The unnamed trainers used the possums as lures, a practice is known as ‘blooding’ that often results in dog attacking the animal to death as the prey drives them faster.

Greyhound Racing Australia and the RSPCA are now investigating the matter but have not yet laid charges on the men.