The recent floods in NSW have brought more than just record rainfall – and bloodthirsty leeches are loving it

A big congratulations to the students who have qualified for the next round of the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee. See the names of the spellers who are headed to the State/Territory Finals here

Rohan Browning is set to light up the track in Tokyo after running 10.05 seconds and becoming the first male Australian sprinter to qualify for the 100m at an Olympics in 17 years

Archie Cross has displayed courage beyond his 13 years, rescuing about 10 residents and a handful of pets from their flooded homes in NSW with his little fishing boat

The future looks bright for the southern purple spotted gudgeon fish, a tiny native species twice declared regionally extinct and this time found in a lake just two days before it was to be drained

A newly discovered species of peacock spider with a bright orange face has been named after the clownfish from hit animated movie Finding Nemo

Australia’s Parkes telescope will be part of one of the first commercial lunar landings, probably this year. The 64m telescope is valuable for spacecraft tracking due to its large dish surface

Australia was once home to the world’s biggest-ever bird, which weighed as much as a cow. Scientists have called Dromornis stirtoni an “extreme evolutionary experiment”

A skyscraper-sized container ship 400m long has become wedged sideways across Egypt’s Suez Canal, blocking all traffic and threatening to disrupt global shipping

Australian poet Dorothea MacKellar surely nailed it when she wrote her classic poem My Country in 1904. Mark Knight reflects on how it sums up this land of amazing contrasts

NASA’s mini helicopter, Ingenuity, is set to make history on Mars by taking the first powered flight on another planet

Thousands of curious onlookers are flocking to an erupting volcano in Iceland for a rare up-close look at its flowing red lava

More than 20,000 students from all corners of Australia have signed up to sit the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee, including these kids from the Northern Territory’s Ross Park Primary School. The school round of the competition closes on Friday

A new photography competition named for famous Australian photographer, adventurer and explorer Frank Hurley has attracted more than 1200 entries from 26 countries

Excessive screen time is the number one health concern of Australian parents, according to The Royal Children’s Hospital National Child Health Poll of almost 2000 parents

Scientists have a new idea to test out about how Mars went from being a wet world to the desert it is today. Instead of escaping into space, they now believe water was absorbed into the surface

With about 250 spellers ready to test their talent, Brentwood Park Primary School has one of the biggest groups of students sitting the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee. Has your school signed up yet?

Experts are one step closer to saving the critically endangered spotted handfish, a cartoon-like creature that only lives in Tasmania’s Derwent Estuary and looks like it walks on its hands

Students at a girls’ school in Sydney sick of not being ­allowed to wear shorts or pants as part of their uniform are fighting to have strict rules dating back more than 100 years changed

Riley Yeatman has dreamt of playing in US Major League Baseball. Now the rising star from Adelaide is one step closer to that becoming a reality after signing with the San Diego Padres

The discovery of a preserved dinosaur sitting on a nest of eggs with fossilised babies inside is giving researchers new clues into how the creatures hatched their young

Breaking stereotypes and giving girls new ideas about careers is the aim of a campaign called Future You, which features videos, games and quizzes about 12 characters with great STEM skills

Mark Knight wonders what others think about Prince Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah at a time when the world is fighting a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic

A multi-millionaire explorer has become the first person to travel to Earth’s four furthest extremes after diving almost 11,000m to the bottom of the Mariana Trench

A deadly facial cancer has wiped out thousands of Tasmanian devils in the wild but a new study shows the future is looking brighter for the much-loved marsupial

Two orphaned eastern pygmy possums barely the size of a fingertip are thriving thanks to a human helping hand. The five-week-old babies are being cared for at the Australian Reptile Park

The worldwide search is on for eight passengers to take a trip around the Moon in 2023 with Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. He will pay the entire cost of the SpaceX flight

Single-use plastic packaging, straws, plates, bowls, cutlery and cups will disappear under new plans to reduce waste that’s hurting our environment

Three new species of bioluminescent sharks — including the largest known underwater glowing creature — have been found in deep, dark water off the coast of New Zealand

Lucy Burford was just seven when she restyled Port Adelaide’s AFL guernsey. Eleven years later she reflects on her achievement and the inspiration behind the design

Indonesia’s komodo, the largest living lizard still on Earth, likely originated in Australia millions of years ago from a mix of parents, according to new research

Last summer, teenagers accounted for one third of the 177 people brought to Victorian emergency departments for treatment for sunburn, prompting calls for more to be done to protect kids

A 2000-year-old ceremonial carriage made of iron, bronze and tin has been unearthed from the outskirts of Pompeii, the city buried in the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD

Sport isn’t the only thing going on in the Warner household. Reading, writing and spelling are right up there. Watch the family have some fun in one of our celebrity spelling bee videos

Five males, a mother with two babies and two other female critically endangered orang-utans have been released into the wild in the Indonesian part of Borneo island

The huge parachute used by NASA’s Perseverance rover to land on Mars contained a secret message in binary code, thanks to a crossword lover on the spacecraft team having fun

Prime Minister Scott Morrison knows spelling isn’t always easy — just watch him try to spell hippopotamus — but it can be lots of fun, especially with competitions like the Spelling Bee

Brisbane has been named preferred candidate by the International Olympic Committee to host the 2032 Olympic Games, great news for Australian Olympians of the past, present and future

Mount Etna, Europe’s most active volcano, has awed even experienced volcanologists, pumping out spectacular displays of lava, ash and volcanic rocks for more than a week

On March 1, South Australia will become the first state to ban single-use plastic, less than a week after the opening of a shop in Adelaide in which everything is made out of single-use plastic

A microphone on NASA’s Perseverance rover has recorded for the first time the sound of another planet. It’s hoped there will be more to hear from Mars soon as the rover gets to work

Melbourne Zoo’s oldest residents have shown no one’s ever too old to learn. Elephant Mek Kapah and tortoises Wilbur, Little John and Jean are all involved in their own health checks

Australia is set to play a bigger part in international space missions as scientists reveal the treasures collected from a Japanese capsule that returned to Earth near Woomera

The Perseverance rover has successfully landed on Mars in its mission to look for signs of ancient life on the red planet

Australian archaeologists are studying ancient koala teeth and bones to create a map that will show how people and animals moved across the continent through history

Health Minister Greg Hunt was so excited when Australia’s first vaccine delivery arrived he was doing cartwheels — at least in cartoonist Mark Knight’s imagination

A stunning image of sharks and seagulls at sunset has won the Underwater Photographer of the Year 2021 award from 4500 images entered by photographers from 68 countries

All the COVID-19-causing virus in the world right now could easily fit inside a single soft drink can, according to a fascinating calculation by a mathematician

Wildlife warrior Robert Irwin talks to Kids News about how kids can be community leaders in protecting the environment and wildlife and how every little thing we do helps

It’s getting busy around Mars, with two spacecraft recently entering the red planet’s orbit and another about to arrive

Millions — perhaps billions — of people around the world are preparing for a very important annual celebration — Chinese or Lunar New Year. Here’s what you need to know to join the fun

In a world turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic, we have to expect the unexpected, even when the unexpected comes in the form of Ash Barty’s wooden wombat tennis trophy

A mob of roos is about to be moved off the front lawn of an Adelaide school, but it’s not because they’re eating too much grass. It’s all to help raise money for bushfire recovery

Scientists from Madagascar and Germany say a newly discovered species of chameleon that fits on a human fingertip is a contender for the title of world’s smallest reptile

Aussie kids are most looking forward to spending time with their friends this year after an interrupted 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the results of a survey by Kids News

A phrase that was widely used in 2016 when Donald Trump first became US President has been crowned the “word of the decade”, outperforming “Karen”, the people’s choice winner last year

To celebrate the launch of The Great Australian Wildlife Collection, Kids News took a peek inside the Baby Animals book. Tell us which baby animal you think is the cutest

Best-selling author Trent Dalton wants kids to help him tell the story of the Black Summer bushfires — and maybe have their poem published in a special book

A curious emperor penguin nicknamed Smudge has made friends with an Australian Antarctic expeditioner undertaking the annual penguin census at the Auster and Taylor rookeries