Emergency authorities were bracing for further property losses after a function centre and farm house were destroyed by a bushfire raging in Victoria’s north-west. The rail line between Victoria and South Australia was closed as “watch and act” orders were put in place for Dimboola and areas of the Little Desert and Grampians national parks.
Sydneysiders were also sweltering through a scorcher, with temperatures hitting 42C in parts of the city.
Top news
Former police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon to get psychiatric testing amid double murder charge
Why isn’t Ozempic on Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme for weight loss?
January 6 rioter pardoned by Trump is killed by police in traffic stop
New Zealand relaxes visa rules to lure digital nomads and influencers
In pictures
In the Guardian’s Holocaust Remembrance Day gallery, Holocaust survivors and their relatives lay wreaths and light candles at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland where more than 1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered.
What they said …
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“[This is a] wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win.”
Donald Trump has responded to DeepSeek, a Chinese AI chatbot which wiped $1tn from the leading US tech index after it launched. Investors punished global tech stocks on Monday after DeepSeek, a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool, shook faith in the US artificial intelligence boom by appearing to deliver the same performance with fewer resources.
In numbers
The beloved Australian-made children’s animated series Bluey was the most streamed show in the US last year, topping Nielsen’s annual year-end streaming charts.
Before bed read
A weird natural phenomenon called gleeking has been blowing up on TikTok, amassing millions of views online. So how do you know if you have this odd saliva-ejecting talent? And if you do … why would you do it?
Daily word game
Today’s starter word is: POS. You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.
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