Some retailers are giving inaccurate advice to shoppers in states where it is illegal to ride e-scooters on public roads or footpaths
Retailers are preparing for a Christmas boom in the sale of electric scooters, even though it is illegal to ride them on public roads or footpaths in several states.
Federal and state regulation has struggled to keep up with the technology, leaving consumers at risk of inadvertently breaking the law.
Continue reading...Fire danger rating in parts of NSW rises to severe as hot, dry, windy conditions end a brief reprieve of bushfire-hit areas of Australia
• If you are in a bushfire affected area stay tuned to your local emergency broadcaster. Full alerts can be found here for NSW and here for Queensland
A fresh emergency warning was issued for the Hawkesbury on Sydney’s outskirts on Friday for a fast-moving fire, as hot, dry and windy conditions returned to bushfire-hit areas of New South Wales.
The warning was issued for a persistent 80,000-hectare blaze at Gospers Mountain, which was burning in the direction of Colo Heights. Those in the town should leave immediately towards Wilberforce, the Rural Fire Service warned.
Continue reading...Catastrophic fire conditions in New South Wales ease, but dozens of Australian bushfires remain burning. In Queensland, 60 fires are burning, with strong winds and temperatures in mid-30s forecast to make for hazardous conditions on Australia’s east coast
• Factcheck: are greens really stopping bushfire hazard reduction?
• Open thread: tell us how you’re affected by the fires
• Sydney suburb in the pink after surviving bushfire emergency
• If you are in a bushfire affected area stay tuned to your local emergency broadcaster. Full alerts can be found here for NSW and here for Queensland
Residents of Pechey (near Hampton) have been told to leave now, and head towards the New England highway.
“There is a bushfire in Pechey and Hampton and conditions are getting worse,” QFES says. “A fast moving fire is travelling from Grapetree Road towards Deeth Road, Sewell Road, Parker Road, Bush Road and Misty Mountain Road. It is currently impacting Parker Road and Sewell Road. The fire could have on the significant impact on the community.”
LEAVE NOW: Pechey (near Hampton) bushfire as at 1pm Wed 13 Nov: https://t.co/ZLMRe45vEu
Images of Walkers Point, which is also at “leave now”.
Residents at Walkers Point, south of Bundaberg, are being told to evacuate to Woodgate with firefighters battling a large bushfire @abcnews pic.twitter.com/pffLy1elsV
Continue reading...Rural Fire Service says a firefighter has been injured in Sydney as New South Wales faces catastrophic fire conditions across greater Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra/Shoalhaven with strong winds and high temperatures. Dozens of bushfires continue to burn across Queensland and Australia’s east coast
• Catastrophic fire danger: what does it mean?
• Open thread: tell us how you’re affected by the fires
• If you are in a bushfire affected area stay tuned to your local emergency broadcaster. Full alerts can be found here for NSW and here for Queensland
I take that back, the latest update has moved it back up to nine emergency alert level fires:
In the latest update from the RFS, they’ve downgraded six of the fires, meaning there are now four emergency alert level fires.
Those are:
Continue reading...More than 575 NSW schools to close as conditions forecast to worsen on Tuesday, while dozens of bushfires continue to burn across Australia’s east coast. This blog is now closed
This is where we’ll leave our rolling coverage today. Guardian Australia will be covering all the developments tomorrow. Here’s what’s happened so far:
ABC Weather has published an explanation of why Tuesday is looking so bad: it’s a cold front.
“Tomorrow with the winds you’ll be seeing a more south-easterly direction,” Grace Legge, senior forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology, told the ABC.
Why a cold front signals disaster for fire danger https://t.co/NOr4mZ54B3 via @ABCNews pic.twitter.com/3ZrwsfqZeg
Continue reading...More than 130 bushfires continue to burn, with three people dead and 150 properties destroyed, and conditions set to worsen
The greater Sydney region will face catastrophic fire danger on Tuesday for the first time since the rating was introduced and fire authorities say conditions in other parts of New South Wales could also be set to worsen.
The warning was issued as more than 80 fires continued to burn in the north of the state late on Sunday.
Continue reading...There are fears that some people are trapped in their homes in an unprecedented bushfire emergency
Ok, we’re going to leave it there for this evening. Thanks for joining us and we’ll be back in the morning with more reporting on the bushfire situation.
For information about current bushfire warnings monitor emergency websites, including www.rfs.nsw.gov.au and www.qfes.qld.gov.au.
Stranded by the fires today. Disconcerting when you watch dozens of fire trucks laden with firies rush past under lights and sirens. As a journo I know how hard the firefighters work, but on days like today, thank god for the @NSWRFS and @FRNSW #nswfires pic.twitter.com/SCGPfdmtv9
Continue reading...Hot and windy weather has created volatile conditions along parts of Australia’s east coast
Parts of Australia faced an unprecedented bushfire threat on Friday evening as more than 100 blazes burned across coastal New South Wales and Queensland.
Communities on NSW’s mid-north coast and the far north coast were battling the worst of the conditions, which were described by authorities as “uncharted territory” and that led to a dramatic, orange-red glow descending on the fire-threatened city of Port Macquarie.
Continue reading...The woman, 32, and man, 24, were reported missing after failing to turn up to their jobs on Monday
Two bodies, believed to be a missing couple, have been found in far north Queensland.
A woman, 32, and a man, 24, both from Townsville, were reported missing in the Cairns area on Monday after failing to turn up to their respective jobs.
Continue reading...Ultra-endurance athlete, aerodynamic wonder … and facing extinction. Why the bird who flies 30,000km a year needs Australia’s mudflats
• Vote for your favourite in the 2019 bird of the year poll
The ascent is vertical. Up, up and into the jet stream. If the conditions are not right up there it will come back down and wait. But if there is a good tailwind in the right direction it will begin an epic journey that will take it around the curvature of the Earth; from the Arctic Circle to the southern hemisphere.
Using the sun and stars as a compass, and navigating by the Earth’s magnetic field, recognising landmarks, the far eastern curlew will fly nonstop to the Yellow Sea, where it fuels up on the mudflats of north-east China.
Continue reading...Passenger – reported to be Irish tourist, 26 – winched off cliff at Lennox Head by helicopter
One man is dead and another, believed to be an Irish tourist, is in a critical condition after a hang-gliding accident on the New South Wales north coast.
Emergency services were called to the Pat Morton lookout at Lennox Head near Byron Bay about midday on Wednesday after reports of a crash.
Continue reading...A woman was also injured when the pair fell from the flying fox at Cape Tribulation
A South Australian man has died and a woman is in hospital after they fell about 10 metres from a zipline in Queensland’s far north.
The pair were believed to have been harnessed together when they fell from the flying fox run by Jungle Surfing Canopy Tours at Cape Tribulation about 2pm on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Exclusive: public notice on proposal was placed in classifieds of paper in Queensland town of Emerald
A Clive Palmer-controlled company has applied for a mining lease and environmental authority to build a massive coalmine four times the size of Adani’s in the Queensland Galilee Basin.
The Galilee Coal project – formerly called China First – has not progressed since it gained federal environmental approval in late 2013.
Continue reading...Angeleanna Estorffe tells operator ‘I think he’s really hurt’ after her husband was shot by intruders
Harrowing audio has been released of Angeleanna Estorffe struggling to tell a 911 dispatcher her Australian husband was dying after being shot by intruders in their Texas family home.
Brenton Estorffe and his wife were asleep when the intruders broke a window at the rear of their home in Katy, near Houston, just after midnight on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Sterling Mervyn Free molested seven-year-old in bushland before dropping her back at North Lakes shopping centre
A 27-year-old father of two daughters faced a sentencing hearing on Tuesday for sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl after stalking her in the toy section of Kmart at a shopping centre in Brisbane last year.
Sterling Mervyn Free lured the girl from the Westfield North Lakes shopping centre, molested her in bushland and dropped her back to the centre more than an hour later.
Continue reading...The pterosaur, which had a four-metre wingspan, lived about 90 million years ago and was capable of crossing continents
In the heart of Queensland, palaeontologists have found the fossilised partial skeleton of a new winged dinosaur species capable of crossing continents.
The pterosaur, with a four-metre wingspan, may have lived about 90 million years ago.
Continue reading...The head of the Earle Haven nursing home admits failings but claims government auditors were ‘anti-Semitic’
The boss of a Gold Coast aged care facility where more than half the high-care residents were malnourished before it closed has said he is “fed up” and is getting out of aged care.
Arthur Miller admitted to a Queensland parliamentary hearing on Friday that he was not up to the task of managing the high-care facility at his Earle Haven centre, which closed suddenly on 11 July, effectively leaving 69 residents homeless.
Continue reading...Neil Parker said he had to ‘carry his leg’ after breaking it in a six-metre fall down a waterfall at Mount Nebo, north-west of Brisbane in Queensland
A Queensland bushwalker has said he had to “carry his leg” as he crawled for two days to safety after it “clean snapped in half” in a six-metre fall down a waterfall.
Neil Parker, 54, fractured his leg and wrist in the fall on Sunday while walking by himself in Cabbage Tree Creek on Mount Nebo, north-west of Brisbane.
Continue reading...Guardian Australia reports from three communities hard hit by one of the worst droughts in living memory
Australia is experiencing one of its most severe droughts on record, resulting in desperate water shortages across large parts of New South Wales and southern Queensland. Dams in some parts of western NSW have all but dried up, with rainfall levels through the winter in the lowest 10% of historical records in some areas.
The crisis in the far west of the state became unavoidable after the mass fish kills along the lower Darling River last summer, but now much bigger towns closer to the coast, including Dubbo, are also running out of water.
Continue reading...Corporate watchdog says criminal investigation is nearly complete and it is in discussions about way forward
A criminal investigation into Clive Palmer and the collapse of Queensland Nickel is nearly finished and the corporate regulator is in discussions with other government agencies about what to do next, federal parliament has been told.
“We are at the point where we are in discussions with other government agencies about the appropriate way forward,” the Australian Securities and Investments Commission commissioner, John Price, told a parliamentary committee on Friday.
Continue reading...