The Queensland Government has named Pulse Consortia as the winning bid who will build the $5.4 billion Cross River Rail project, with tunnelling now expected to begin late next year once financial closure is secured with successful bidders.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk also announced Hitachi Rail will provide a $634 million European Train Control System, while a group of entities named Unity will deliver and install the supporting rail system.

Researchers have said the Great Barrier Reef’s ability to regrow has been damaged by rising sea temperatures.

Following back-to-back heatwaves in 2016 and 2017, researchers recorded a 90 per cent fall in new corals for the first time.

The research team estimated that for the reef’s baby coral to fully recover, it will take 5 to 10 years, but only if there is not another coral bleaching event.

A preliminary report into the cause of the deadly Boeing 737 MAX 8 crash will be released on Thursday by Ethiopia’s transport ministry.

The crash on the 10th of March was the second crash of a MAX 8 in five months and resulted in worldwide grounding of the model.

Boeing released a statement that called for people to avoid speculation over the cause of the crash before the preliminary report's release.

Farmers and animal rights group are calling for the Australian Government’s cattle ‘inhumane and poorly planned’ export deal with Sri Lanka to stop after hundreds of Australian and New Zealand cattle died or contracted disease.

Sri Lankan farmers said the exported cattle are overpriced, unhealthy and infertile, with 10 per cent of the 5,000 cattle they have already received dying.

As the Pilbara coast recovers from severe Tropical Cyclone Veronica, which caused flooding last week, another potential cyclone brewing in the Top End is threatening to worsen the situation.

A tropical low formed about 500 kilometres north north-east of Darwin yesterday and is forecast to move into waters off Western Australia’s Kimberley.

Forecasters have said that if the cyclone hits the Pilbara coast next week, the flooding will be “significant”.

A decade-old public housing funding deal for people in remote Indigenous communities remains in limbo in Queensland after the Federal Government’s Budget announcements this week failed to mention it.

The National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing (NPARIH) was developed in 2008 as part of the Closing the Gap strategy that aims to reduce overcrowding and ensure houses were well-maintained in Indigenous communities, with an investment of $1 billion into the initiative.

The teacher’s union and the Education Department have joined together to trial a new workshop helping school leaders to respond to unreasonable behaviours after a chain of recent incidents of parents and students abusing teachers at Gold Coast schools.

Gold Coast Teachers Union Organiser Jodie Walsh said teachers are frequently facing abusive and swearing parents, and called out people phoning schools over bullying incidents and making threats as being bullies themselves.

Chicago has elected its first gay and first black female mayor, becoming the largest US city to elect a black woman in the position.

Lori Lightfoot, who has never before held office, won the election on Tuesday and said that the people of Chicago have “created a movement for change”.

The 56-year-old former federal prosecutor and practising lawyer won by a margin of 74 to 26 per cent.

Since 1837, Chicago has voted in only one black mayor and one female mayor.