Category Archives: Australia news

Bad actors seizing on Microsoft IT outage to scam public, Clare O’Neil warns

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Home affairs minister says small businesses should be cautious of emails from people posing as CrowdStrike or Microsoft

Scammers are attempting to use the global CrowdStrike outage on Microsoft Windows systems to steal from small businesses by offering fake fixes, the Australian government has warned.

The world has begun to recover from a global outage of Windows systems running the cybersecurity company Crowdstrike’s software, after the company issued a faulty update. But bad actors have seized upon the crisis to attempt to scam the public, the home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, said on Saturday.

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Chemical fire in Melbourne’s west forces evacuations and closes roads

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More than 80 firefighters attended an early morning blaze at the Orica factory, a short distance from the scene of last week’s fire at a chemical factory

Dozens of firefighters and emergency services have rushed to contain a major chemical factory fire in Melbourne’s west on Saturday morning, with five people evacuated and smoke causing local road closures.

It comes just a week after a major Derrimut factory fire, which forced thousands of people to stay indoors due to potentially toxic smoke.

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Two Australians and three Indonesians survive helicopter crash in Bali, officials say

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Bell 505 Jet Ranger X helicopter came down in Pecatu village on the southern side of Bali after it was entangled in a kite string

Two Australians and three Indonesians have survived a tourist helicopter crash in Bali after it became entangled in a kite string, officials say.

The Bell 505 Jet Ranger X helicopter, owned by PT Whitesky Aviation, came down in Pecatu village in the coastal area on the southern side of Bali, a statement from Indonesia’s transportation ministry said.

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Custom-mixed hormone therapies misleading menopausal women to think personalised products are necessary, experts say

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Companies are selling compounded MHT as more ‘natural’ – but there are links with endometrial cancer, the Australian Menopause Society warns

Prof Susan Davis was shocked to see her name on the website of an Australian telehealth menopause clinic offering a product she believes “is frankly reprehensible” and “misleading women”.

Davis, the director of Monash University’s Women’s Health Research Program, was concerned that the unauthorised use of her name and accompanying quotes suggested she backed the custom-made menopause hormone therapy (MHT) being sold.

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Microsoft IT outage: Australian airlines, banks and supermarkets begin return to normal operations

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IT support staff need to implement the fix in person, one computer at a time, experts have said

Supermarkets, banks, airlines and industries across Australia are slowly recovering on Saturday morning from the massive global Windows outage caused by a CrowdStrike software update gone wrong, with experts warning it could take weeks to resolve.

On Friday morning, the CEO of the Texas-based cybersecurity company, George Kurtz, apologised for the outage, and said it was not a cyber-attack, but a software update issue on its cloud-based cybersecurity platform Falcon for Microsoft Windows. It had since been fixed.

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Mother of NSW police shooting victim demands mental health reforms a year after son’s death

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Judy Deacon will lead a Sydney rally to press her case that police no longer be sent as first responders in mental health emergencies

A year ago to the day, Judy Deacon got a call to head to the police station.

The 80-year-old expected the issue to be that her son, Jesse, had been hospitalised again. But on her way there, she got a phone call from Jesse’s father. He was crying, and as soon as she heard the tears, she knew her son had died, she said.

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‘No turning back’: how Elizabeth Struhs’ father went from sceptic to speaking in tongues and alleged murder

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Jason Struhs, his wife Kerrie, and 12 other members of Toowoomba religious sect the ‘Saints’ are on trial over the eight-year-old girl’s death

For 17 years, Jason Struhs was the sceptic in the family, Queensland’s supreme court heard.

He refused to pay a tithe to the leader of religious sect the “Saints” that his wife, Kerrie Struhs, was a member of, saying: “God doesn’t need the money”. He even testified against Kerrie in exchange for a lower sentence, when the couple were charged with failing to supply the necessaries of life for their young diabetic daughter, Elizabeth, after she was taken to hospital in a coma in 2019 , a court heard this week.

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Slow recovery from IT outage begins as experts warn of future risks

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Fault in CrowdStrike caused airports, businesses and healthcare services to languish in ‘largest outage in history’

Services began to come back online on Friday evening after an IT failure that wreaked havoc worldwide. But full recovery could take weeks, experts have said, after airports, healthcare services and businesses were hit by the “largest outage in history”.

Flights and hospital appointments were cancelled, payroll systems seized up and TV channels went off air after a botched software upgrade hit Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

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Microsoft outage: how Australian airports, banks and supermarkets are affected by a major IT meltdown

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Home affairs minister Clare O’Neil says outage will take “some time to resolve” following problems caused by a CrowdStrike cybersecurity software update

The Australian government has warned a global IT outage that threw major businesses including airports, banks, supermarkets and media outlets into chaos on Friday could still take “some time to resolve”.

The government activated a National Coordination Mechanism meeting of emergency authorities as well as representatives from the major supermarkets, banks, airlines and other key industries on Friday night to respond after Windows workstations were hit by the “blue screen of death”.

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Quickly moving cold front could bring ‘most significant snowfall of the year’, as Australia’s east coast battles bitter winds

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Bureau of Meteorology predicts strong winds for SA, NSW and Victoria that will make temperatures feel colder than what is forecast

Bitter winds and rain are in store for the south-east coast and South Australia over the weekend thanks to a cold front that could also herald the heavy snow ski resorts have been hoping for.

The Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting strong, gusty and potentially damaging winds and showers, local thunderstorms and strong, abnormally high tides.

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CrowdStrike has ‘issued a fix’ to Windows outage – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. Follow the latest developments on the global Microsoft outage live blog

Shorten says last CFMEU Labor donation was over two years ago

Earlier on the Today Show, the NDIS minister, Bill Shorten, was asked about the CFMEU and said that the last donation received by the Labor party from them was more than two years ago.

We’ve said that we’re suspending all donations from the CFMEU. In fact, we’ve suspended the CFMEU from the Labor party … The last donations were over two years ago. We’ve taken the action to stop any financial relations with the CFMEU.

I want to make clear there is zero tolerance for anyone who tried to subvert the demerit and penalty system. This taskforce will help ensure the penalties apply to all road users.

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Greg Lynn to appeal conviction in Victorian high country murder case, court hears

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Jury had found former Jetstar pilot guilty of killing Carol Clay, but not of murdering Russell Hill

Former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn will appeal against his conviction for the 2020 murder of elderly camper Carol Clay, a Victorian court has heard.

After a five-week trial, a supreme court jury last month found Gregory Stuart Lynn guilty of murdering Clay and acquitted him of murdering Russell Hill in Victoria’s high country in 2020.

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Uber told to pay banned Sydney driver $10,000 after failing to prove passenger’s complaint

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Exclusive: Rideshare company failed to gather evidence that driver with near-perfect rating had breached its code of conduct, tribunal finds

Uber has been ordered to pay $10,000 in damages to an Australian driver after it permanently banned him from working due to a passenger complaint but failed to gather evidence that he had breached its code of conduct.

The ruling from the New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal related to Uber’s conduct when terminating the driver’s account af a trip in last August.

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Doomscrolling linked to existential anxiety, distrust, suspicion and despair, study finds

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Expert compares doomscrolling to being in a room where people are constantly yelling at you and says media needs to rethink news

Does scrolling your phone give you an existential crisis? That’s the question a team of international experts have sought to answer in a study published in the Journal of Computers in Human Behavior Reports.

Researchers surveyed 800 university students from the US and Iran and found that doomscrolling – or spending excessive time consuming negative news – was linked to feelings of existential anxiety, distrust and suspicion of others, and despair.

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Australia’s $50,000 arts degree is here – putting university fees on par with the UK and US

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The Hecs/Help scheme was not designed so people making a regular wage remained in debt until death, expert says

There was a time when would-be poets, historians and writers could expect to pay off an arts degree at an Australian university within the decade, if they were able to find stable employment. Fast forward to now and they may die with their debt.

Arts degrees in Australia are poised to cost more than $50,000 for the first time, with experts warning some students will never be able to pay off their debts.

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‘Harrowing’ footage sparks calls for Queensland government to remove children from police watch houses

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Exclusive: Labor MP Jonty Bush among those speaking out about state’s youth justice policies after Guardian Australia investigation

Queensland’s most prominent victims’ rights groups say the state government must remove children from police watch houses after the release of confronting footage showing the “brutal” treatment of children in the adult holding cells.

The videos, published after a year-long investigation by Guardian Australia and SBS The Feed, showed young people locked in “freezing” isolation cells, becoming panicked and struggling to breathe.

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Forrest says Fortescue still committed to hydrogen despite job cuts – as it happened

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This blog is now closed

A drone delivery service will launch in Melbourne today.

Food delivery service DoorDash is working with Wing – a subsidiary of Alphabet, AKA Google – to deliver the service.

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Palestinian-Australian charged with trespass after allegedly refusing to leave Anthony Albanese’s electorate office

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Sarah Shaweesh says she entered the prime minister’s office as a constituent seeking information about her family’s declined visa application

A Palestinian-Australian constituent of Anthony Albanese seeking visa help has been arrested and charged with trespassing, after she allegedly refused to leave the prime minister’s electorate office in the Sydney seat of Grayndler.

Sarah Shaweesh livestreamed her arrest on social media, saying she was a local constituent who lived in Marrickville, and the police had “threatened to arrest me because I went into the office to ask about my family’s declined visa applications”.

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Amber Haigh said she was tied up by Robert Geeves and questioned about other relationships during sex, murder trial told

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Paul Harding tells court Haigh had recalled to him having her hands tied ‘together at the wrist’

Amber Haigh said she was tied up by the man accused of her murder and questioned by him during sex, after he claimed to have video of her having sex with her third cousin, a court has heard.

Haigh was a 19-year-old mother when she vanished from the New South Wales Riverina in June 2002, leaving behind her five-month-old son.

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NSW police detective found to have committed ‘serious misconduct’ following car crash after work drinks

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Law Enforcement Conduct Commission makes two findings of serious misconduct including for allegedly leaving crash scene in NorthConnex ‘to avoid being breath-tested’

The New South Wales police watchdog has made two findings of “serious misconduct” against a high-ranking detective who crashed a work car while allegedly drunk in the NorthConnex tunnel in May 2023.

The police officer, whose identity is secret due to a 40-year court order, pleaded not guilty in December to charges of driving under the influence of alcohol and high-range drink-driving, nearly seven months after the incident happened last May.

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