Today
Iron ore faces ‘riot point’; Airliner crashes; Bushfire threat rises
Read everything that’s happened in the news so far today.
This Month
‘Ready to burn’: Australians urged to avoid Boxing Day travel
Firefighters are battling blazes across the country and millions of people are being warned to stay alert as the risk of Christmas-week bushfires intensifies.
- Holly Hales, Kaitlyn Offer and Will Ton
Race to control giant bushfire after it triples in size
The blaze in Victoria’s Grampians National Park has razed 34,000 hectares and continues to grow.
- Holly Hales and Aaron Bunch
November
‘Find your niche’: The hard lessons of building tech companies
IND Technology has made the rare leap from academia to commercial success, while legal tech start-up Nexl nearly failed but is now growing rapidly in the US.
- Paul Smith
Innovations that go above and beyond to meet customer needs
Endeavour Energy, the winner of the Established Business to Consumer category, has found customer expectations keep changing, requiring an innovative response.
- Christopher Niesche
August
- Commercialisation
- Higher Education Awards
This special paint could save lives from bushfires
New paint technology developed at UNSW to help fire-proof homes is a joint winner in the Higher Education Awards research commercialisation category.
- Alexandra Cain
Wildfire menaces Athens suburbs, forcing residents to flee
Hundreds have fled as flames as high as 25 metres spread in to the Greek capital’s suburbs, fuelled by gale-force winds.
- Angelos Tsatsis and Renee Maltezou
February
Victorians stay to protect homes ahead of catastrophic fire warning
Victorians under threat from bushfires have largely fled before catastrophic conditions descend, but others are staying to protect their homes.
- Callum Godde
Firefighters battle ‘potentially catastrophic’ breakdowns in Vic blaze
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has thanked Victorian firefighters as another blaze ripped through the state’s west, forcing thousands to evacuate.
- Gus McCubbing
December 2023
- Exclusive
- NSW Rural Fire Service
‘Very, very anxious’: Bushfire app stops working for the blind
Donna Purcell relied heavily on the Hazards Near Me app to provide early bushfire warnings. It abruptly stopped working.
- Tess Bennett
Cracks ground RAAF planes as bushfire season looms
Fissures have been found where the tail fins join fuselages on some C-27J Spartan aircraft operated around the world.
- Andrew Tillett
November 2023
- Opinion
- The AFR View
NSW gets it right on emergency services levy
Levying insurance premiums to pay for emergency services was a bad idea. But what about the rest of our ad hoc tax system?
- The AFR View
September 2023
Using AI to help save wildlife after bushfires
Ecologists know that far more data is needed to help species to survive catastrophic bushfires. That is where AI comes in.
- Sian Powell
- Opinion
- Extreme weather
El Niño’s extreme weather turns up heat on business
Industries that are more susceptible to the physical risks will receive greater scrutiny and need to demonstrate a proactive approach.
- Emma Herd
Satellites that can see through smoke to fight fires this summer
Using Australian locational and building data from Geoscape Finnish satellites will give emergency responders near real-time intelligence on damage and fire path warnings across the country.
- Tom Burton
More than 7m homes at risk of flooding: KPMG
A record 7.2 million households live in local government areas hit by floods last year, more than double the average in the past decade.
- Nila Sweeney
- Analysis
- Analysis
Australia is less humid, which is why bushfires are worse
Sharp changes in air humidity missed by climate-change models are responsible for the jump in the frequency of devastating fires.
- Roger Jones
August 2023
Why didn’t sirens warn Maui death was coming?
State-of-the-art emergency sirens were not used to alert residents on the Hawaiian island that a deadly fire was out of control.
- Caroline Mimbs Nyce
Canadian bushfires threaten two cities: Kelowna, Yellowknife
A state of emergency was declared in Kelowna, a city east of Vancouver and home to about 150,000. Yellowknife’s 20,000 residents were told to flee.
- Jennifer Gauthier and Timon Johnson
How invasive plants caused the Maui fires to rage
Fast-growing when it rains and drought resistant when lands are parched, grasses are fuelling wildfires across Hawaii.
- Simon Romero and Serge F. Kovaleski