Last week, the United States and its allies France and the UK fired 105 missiles - most of them Tomahawks - at Syrian targets in an attempt to prevent future chemical attacks in the Syrian Civil War. But what are the alleged chemical weapons being used? And what exactly do they do to people? Here's what you need to know.

Following a halt in November last year "to improves customer service", NBN's HFC network will resume wholesale sales to retailers on April 27.

NBN made the announcement this morning, confirming around 1000 1000 premises in Melbourne and Sydney will be available in the first round of sales.

Microsoft has opened two new Azure regions, both based in Canberra, in partnership with Canberra Data Centres. The new Azure Australia Central Regions will cater specifically to the needs of government and national critical infrastructure for Australia and New Zealand with a focus on high performance, resilience and availability. The new regions will not be be for broad-scale use, with multiple connectivity options available.

The Minister for Home Affairs, Petter Dutton, has flagged that he plans to introduce legislation to the parliament that will compel companies that provide end-to-end encryption on products and services to decrypt communications and data when requested. But there seems to be a fundamental difference in understanding in how encryption works and how they think it works.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is in the process of redesigning the country's banknotes with an emphasis on new security features. Following in the footsteps of the $5 and $10 notes, we now have a new $50 version - and we're beginning to come around to the updates.

The Federal government is going to spin revelations of the leaked Cabinet papers in lots of ways. But the entire matter comes down to a simple fact. Information security might be backed by technology in many cases. But all the best tech in the world isn't worth a pinch of salt if humans cock things up.

This leak, which will cause great embarrassment in government and opposition ranks, is the fault of people who simply didn't do their jobs.

Today the ABC released a series of stories called The Cabinet Files, based on an astonishing collection of files found in an abandoned filing cabinet in a second-hand shop in Canberra.

Inside were years of documents featuring top secret information on the internal workings of five different Australian governments - including NBN Co's secret negotiation papers.

You may have heard that the US Senate was unable to agree on a stopgap funding measure that would keep the government open by its midnight Friday deadline. This means the US is officially in a government shutdown. Here's what that means.

You're probably aware that developed nations such as Israel, Russia
and the United States have missile defence systems. But do you know how these systems work? Or how effective they are? They're not the impenetrable shield you think they are.

The major Australian banks are following familiar public relations tactics in requesting a parliamentary commission of inquiry into banking and financial services. When the public mood is against an industry, it will try to win the public over, while getting the politicians to ignore the public mood. If that fails, the industry gradually concedes ground until attention goes elsewhere.

To reduce energy consumption, many jurisdictions around the world are transitioning to outdoor LED lighting. But as new research shows, this solid-state solution hasn't yielded the expected energy savings, and potentially worse, it's resulted in more light pollution than ever before.

North Korea always seems to be in the news right now thanks to their aggressive threats and missile tests, the latter being the subject of many people's doomsday fears. But where could they potentially strike with the missiles they have?

After 900 failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (that number may be a little off, it's been a long year), US President Trump took two actions yesterday that could destroy insurance markets. US citizens will still be able to buy an "Obamacare" plan for next year and their current insurance will still work. But this portends some very bad news.

Australians have had the opportunity to vote on the issue of same-sex marriage in Australia via a postal survey since September 12. There’s a lot of information to take in and not all of the language is easy to understand. We’ve collated everything we know about the survey right here.

As northeast Asia teeters on the brink of a conflict that could escalate beyond anyone’s control, it is more important than ever to be well-informed about North Korea, and move beyond the common caricatures of the country and its leader, Kim Jong-un. This is difficult when many misconceptions about North Korea perpetuate in the public consciousness.

Davy Crockett is an American folk hero of mythic proportions, and was greatly popularised during the '50s and '60s thanks to Disney's TV miniseries and major motion pictures. But Crockett was a very real person in history, and he had a lot of wisdom to share.

Today's kids have thousands of apps and educational programmes that tell them how to eat healthily. When I was growing up, we learned the Food Pyramid. We categorised grub into four food groups and that was pretty much it. But look back a bit farther, and dietary advice gets a little weirder: in the early 1950s, there were seven food groups, and one was just for butter.

Australians have been fascinated by “Big Things” since the 1960s, when statues such as Adelaide’s Big Scotsman and the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour were opened to great fanfare. Fast-forward to the present day and Australia has a ‘big’ problem – just what are we supposed to do with all these ageing super-sized statues?

On September 20, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will release a redesigned $10 banknote with new security features to prevent counterfeiting ranging from bird wings that flap to micro-printed poetry. This video explains everything you need to know about how these features work.