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January

As dawn breaks firefighters continue to battle wind and fire as homes go up in flames in Malibu along Pacific Coast.

How a ‘warrior’ brain surgeon saved his street from fires and looters

It was a scenario the 62-year-old had been preparing for: he had trained, sourced the fire hoses, and briefed his son and neighbour about the course of action.

Most new technologies have both benefits and costs, and sometimes the latter outweigh the former.

AI’s next big (risky) thing: Special agents to organise your life

Tasks that would have taken a month can now be done in an hour, but people will be exposing a lot more digital information, raising privacy and security concerns.

Regis Aged Care CEO Linda Mellors said learning about generative AI was one of her key lessons in 2024.

The most important lessons these CEOs learnt in 2024

Celebrating your wins, staying grounded and embracing generative AI were some of the key things these top business leaders took away from last year. 

From top: Seven Group’s Ryan Stokes, Woodside’s Meg O’Neill and Telstra’s Vicki Brady.

CEOs reveal how to fix the productivity problem

Business reckons it’s ready to invest to help bolster living standards for all Australians. It just needs some policy help.

Why the US wants BHP and Rio to get crazy rich in the Congo

BHP and Rio Tinto see just one problem with the big new copper mine Robert Friedland has built in the DRC. But the US government reckons it has the solution

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Vivian Tu has mastered a candy-coated version of financial advice,

This ‘Wall Street Girly’ wants to make wealth more accessible

Vivian Tu is the latest in a long tradition of women talking to women about economics, business and personal finance – and with TikTok she can reach millions.

December 2024

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad piled almost $400m in cash onto planes and fly them to Russia, before his regime fell.

How Assad secretly sent 21 planeloads of Syria’s cash to Moscow

The near-broke central bank sent almost $400 million in bulk shipments between 2018 and 2019 to Russia when the dictator was indebted to the Kremlin.

Incoming Westpac CEO Anthony Miller has lunch with Lucas Baird at the Palace Hotel in Mortlake.

Suburban pub grub suits Westpac’s new CEO

Living in Sydney’s inner west makes Anthony Miller an outlier among big bank chiefs. The former investment banker is determined to make his firm stand out, too.

Donald Trump is a child king cum tycoon cum rabble-rouser.

Autocrats rise as Trump scorches the land of the free

Strongman leaders have lit a bonfire of the orthodoxies: the role of the state, neoliberalism, globalisation and the international “rules-based” order.

Plenty of CEOs have been to the US to consider how AI could change their businesses this year.

How CEOs are using AI, from driverless forklifts to bird counts

Everyone’s doing it, but are they doing it properly? Here is a fascinating snapshot of what Australian companies are doing with artificial intelligence.

“Who feels nervous about tomorrow?” Murray Rodgers asked the entrepreneurs who came to a recent psychedelic retreat he led in Western Canada. Three hands shot in the air.

The CEOs are tripping. Can psychedelics help the C-suite?

A growing cottage industry is dedicated to the theory that mind-altering drugs can improve business leadership.

The state of your hands can reveal a lot about you.

The signs of poor health that your hands, nails and knuckles reveal

The clues to fighting illness, from eczema and psoriasis to arthritis and Parkinson’s, could be right before your eyes.

Investigators stand at the site where Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, and his assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, were killed by an explosive device.

The vast spy agency behind Russian general’s death

The assassination of Igor Kirillov marked the latest strike in a shadow war between Kyiv and Moscow. It was carried out by Ukraine’s intelligence service, the SBU.

Sausage roll from Ganache patisserie at Castlecrag.

Six surprising things I learnt from a Gen X gap year in London

We expected this to be a memorable time, but it was the workarounds and unknown unknowns that made it even better than we hoped.

The Financial Review’s Primrose Riordan interviewing Andrew Forrest.

I sent Andrew Forrest 50 hard questions. He invited me to have a talk

After months of reporting, and only carefully worded written responses from Fortescue, I found myself with the iron ore billionaire on the company jet in the Pilbara.

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Andrew Forrest.

Fortescue’s Game of Thrones moment

When the firm’s troubled Iron Bridge mine blew its budget and fell behind schedule, Andrew Forrest called a meeting likened to the series’ “red wedding” scene.

Inside the ‘unending chaos’ at Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue

After a frenetic world tour, the billionaire had to wind back his hydrogen plans. A Financial Review investigation looks at what led to an exodus of executives.

The weight loss and diabetes drug Ozempic is in short supply.

The five-day diet that cuts belly fat

Professor Valter Longo’s eating plan called “Pro-Lon” was awarded the first patent for “promoting longevity and health span”.

This image provided by the New York City Police Department shows a man wanted for questioning in connection to the investigation of the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024. (New York City Police Department via AP)

Manhattan murder frightens executives everywhere

Many companies view investor meetings such as the one that the UnitedHealthcare boss was walking to as security risks because they are highly publicised.

November 2024

All smiles: Jim Chalmers, Katy Gallagher and Anthony Albanese on Friday. The government ended the year on a high, in stark contrast to last year.

Labor plans to kick with the wind for a second time

The dynamic could not be more different to this time last year when parliament wound up with the government blowing smoke and the PM resembling a shot duck.

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/topic/feature-articles-1ru