Australia Financial News

Australia’s sovereign wealth fund has posted a 6 per cent return for the year to June 30 as it increased its exposure to local and global equities.

Real estate stocks added 1.4%. Asia In Asian stock markets, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index climbed 2% at 18,484.03. China's Shanghai Composite jumped 1.2% at 3,135.89.

Qantas claims the domestic aviation market is “highly competitive”, blaming air traffic control staffing issues and weather conditions for causing the airline to cancel Canberra services at more than five times the rate of competitors.

Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate has picked a fight with Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, saying cancelling theCommonwealth Games was “un-Australian” and would be the only thing he is remembered for.

The dealmaking interest in ASX-listed lithium miners has spilled over to their unlisted counterparts.

Qantas says getting money back to customers “is an expensive task” but that it is “not shy” about doing so, although it refused to commit to sending physical mail to people in credit for flights not taken.

Andrew Forrest, Fortescue’s executive chairman, who is currently facing questions over high executive turnover at his companies, has offered advisory work to former British chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.

Boeing and the CSIRO say Australia could source as much as 60 per cent of its jet fuel requirements from sustainable sources in just 18 months – but only if airlines, jet fuel companies and plane manufacturers work with government to unlock supplies of feedstock.

International leisure travellers are gradually returning to India, Australia’s Intrepid Travel, which offers services to small groups of travellers for overseas vacations, said. India is the company’s second largest market where tourists from Australia, the US, and the UK arrive in large numbers. In 2021, France-based family office Genairgy, owned by Julien Leclercq, a board member and shareholder of global sports retailer Decathlon, had picked up a significant minority stake of 30% in Intrepid.

deadly substance online to those at risk of self-harm.York Regional Police Insp. Simon James told reporters on Tuesday that Kenneth Law has now been charged with a total of 14 counts of counselling or aiding suicide within the province of Ontario.James alleges Law operated several websites selling sodium nitrite — a substance which can be lethal in large doses.Sodium nitrite is a white, crystalline substance used as a food additive and typically found in processed meats.

More than 1 million older Australians may be paying extra tax on their superannuation even though they are eligible for a tax-free pension account.

Private-capital backed mine site power business Zenith Energy has lined up a $320 million debt deal from a mix of existing and new lenders, as APA Group’s $1.7 billion acquisition of Alinta’s West Australian remote power assets kicks up interest in the sector.

The head of big bank ANZ has said the federal government’s intervention in blocking Qatar Airways flights to keep the national carrier Qantas profitable was “disturbing”.

One of Australia’s best critical minerals discoveries will cost between $1.6 billion and $2.3 billion to turn into a mine, according to a long-awaited study into future development of Chalice Mining’s Gonneville project.

Brent crude edged up by 3 cents to $84.45 a barrel by 1332 GMT while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude dipped 4 cents to $80.07. Hurricane Idalia strengthened on Tuesday as it headed towards Florida's Gulf Coast after skirting past Cuba. It is likely to cause power outages and could hit crude production.

World Championship, ace Indian shuttler Prannoy H.S achieved a career-best world ranking as he reached No.6 in the latest chart released by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) on Tuesday. After pocketing a bronze, his first-ever medal in World Championships, at Copenhagen recently, Prannoy climbed up three spots to achieve his new career-high rank with 72437 points in the men's singles category. Prannoy, who stunned the Olympic champion Viktor Axelsen in the quarterfinals in the World Championship, is the lone Indian featuring in the top 10 in the men's singles list. The 31-year-old reached two finals this year. He won his first BWF title this May at Malaysia Masters and finished runner-up at the Australian Open after an epic, intense three-game battle against China's Weng Hong Yang earlier this month. Among the other Indian shuttlers, Lakshya Sen dropped a place to the No.

Convincing everyone to adopt a new technology can be a slog at first. The humble microwave oven, for example, took two decades of lukewarm sales to reach just a tenth of U.S. households. But then came the 1980s, and quicker than you could say “Hot Pockets,” microwaves had spread to nearly every kitchen.

Meta on Tuesday said it purged thousands of Facebook accounts that were part of a widespread online Chinese spam operation trying to covertly boost China and criticize the West. The campaign, which became known as «Spamouflage», was active across more than 50 platforms and forums including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and X, formerly known as Twitter, according to a Meta threat report. «We assess that it's the largest, though unsuccessful, and most prolific covert influence operation that we know of in the world today,» said Meta Global Threat Intelligence Lead Ben Nimmo. «And we've been able to link Spamouflage to individuals associated with Chinese law enforcement.» More that 7,700 Facebook accounts along with 15 Instagram accounts were jettisoned in what Meta described as the biggest ever single takedown action at the tech giant's platforms. «For the first time we've been able to tie these many clusters together to confirm that they all go to one operation,» Nimmo said. The network typically posted praise for China and its Xinjiang province and criticisms of the United States, Western foreign policies, and critics of the Chinese government including journalists and researchers, the Meta report says. The operation originated in China and its targets included Taiwan, the United States, Australia, Britain, Japan, and global Chinese-speaking audiences. Facebook or Instagram accounts or pages identified as part of the «large and prolific covert influence operation» were taken down for violating Meta rules against coordinated deceptive behavior on its platforms. Meta's team said the network seemed to garner scant engagement, with viewer comments tending to point out bogus claims. Clusters of fake accounts were run

Many leading media companies have taken a stance against allowing artificial intelligence (AI), like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, into the newsrooms, and have withheld permission for AI to scan their content on the web. 

(Reuters) — Piedmont Lithium said on Tuesday it has received a partial prepayment of $31.6 million for the sale of 15,000 dry metric tonnes (dmt) of lithium concentrate under its offtake deal with North American Lithium (NAL).

Australian woman's brain was found to harbor a live 8cm (3in) worm, a never-before-seen phenomenon in human medicine. This unprecedented event, detailed in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, marks a monumental leap in our understanding of parasitic infections and the intricate relationship between animals and humans.