Legal
Businesses will have to tell customers when software makes decisions about them
Three new subclauses of the Australian Privacy Principles will reshape how covered organisations write their privacy policies.
Discover
Swipe your next read
Right to save it for later · left to pass. We learn your beat as you go.
Business
Parent HAX wash cloth cleans kids in two minutes, no bath needed
Top N Tail™ is a rinse-free, self-foaming wash cloth designed to clean children from head to toe in around two minutes, requiring only a splash of water and a towel dry.
Property
Stirling sells McGraths Hill centre for $66.8m at a 21 per cent gain
Stirling Property Funds has sold the McGraths Hill Home large-format retail centre in Sydney's north-west to boutique fund manager Centennial for $66.8 million, locking in a 21 per cent gain on an 18-month hold.
Science
Astronomers find a star circling our galaxy's black hole at 25,000 kilometres a second
The numbers are hard to hold in the mind. S301 is a newly discovered star orbiting Sagittarius A* at roughly 25,000 kilometres per second, making it the fastest known star in the Milky Way, moving at about 8 per cent of the speed of light, fast enough to cross Australia's entire east coast in a
Technology
MIT researchers find AI images cannot be traced back to any single artist
The engineering question at the centre of AI copyright disputes has always been mechanical: can you trace what a model produces back to the specific images it learned from?
Business
Workers comp premiums range from 0.84% to 2.09% of payroll
Workers compensation insurance is mandatory across Australia, and every employer's premium starts with the same basic mechanism: multiply your total payroll by your industry rate, then let your own claims history push that figure up or down. The rate itself is not a guess.
Business
Builders say poor design stalls infrastructure before work starts
In public infrastructure, the biggest drag on productivity is rarely wet concrete or broken equipment. It is paperwork, governance loops and design processes that grind projects to a halt months before a worker sets foot on site.
Opinion
Australia is being told to choose between the US and China on AI
Supply chain architecture is not glamorous policy. It is wiring diagrams, export licence schedules and standards bodies most ministers could not name at a press conference.
Geopolitics
Croatia arrests second Ukrainian diver over Nord Stream blasts
The Nord Stream blasts in September 2022 were, by volume of gas lost and by political consequence, the most disruptive act of sabotage to European energy infrastructure in living memory.
Geopolitics
Sacked Ukraine defence chief demands wartime election
Ukraine's former defence minister has called for a presidential election to be held during the war, the first such demand by a senior political figure since Russia's 2022 invasion.
Finance
US national debt passes $40 trillion after doubling under Trump and Biden
On 19 August 2026, the United States Treasury's debt-to-the-penny ledger ticked past a figure that would have seemed almost theoretical a decade ago.
Technology
Stripe pays more than $7 billion for a three-year-old AI startup
Three months ago OpenRouter was worth $1.3 billion. On 16 August 2026, Stripe agreed to buy it for more than $7 billion. The acquisition price is roughly five times the valuation OpenRouter carried after closing its Series B in May.
Work
Goldman Sachs says AI is already cutting 16,000 US jobs a month
Goldman Sachs Research has put a monthly figure on what was, until recently, largely a matter of conjecture: AI has shaved roughly 16,000 jobs a month from US payroll growth over the past year, enough to push the unemployment rate up by about 0.1 percentage points.
Legal
Franchising code lifts civil penalties and tightens disclosure
Australia's Franchising Code of Conduct has regulated the relationship between franchisors and franchisees since 1993, sitting beneath the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.
Finance
Australian explorer hits 33.5 metres of gold in Ecuador
Titan Minerals (ASX: TTM) has published results from diamond drill hole CVDD26-199 at the Brecha-Comanche target in its Cerro Verde prospect, southern Ecuador. The hole returned 33.5 metres at 6.6 grams per tonne gold and 55.5 grams per tonne silver from 236.7 metres downhole.