The next time you pick up a bag of spuds from the supermarket or fill up the car with petrol, you can thank a treaty signed 150 years ago for the metric system that underpins daily life. On May 20, 1875, delegates from 17 countries assembled on a Parisian spring day and signed the Metre Convention, also known as the Treaty …

Infamous cybercriminals known as the Yahoo Boys are now running “scam schools” teaching recruits how to cash in on everything from financial scams to sextortion using deepfake nude and porn photos. Social media platforms TikTok, Scribd, Telegram and Facebook are being used to advertise master classes, according to intelligence experts, while kingpins are setting up physical training rooms in Nigerian …

Australia’s housing market is in a downturn for the first time in almost two years after the average national price of a property sold dipped slightly in December. The data from CoreLogic shows the median value of property sold in the last month of 2024 was just shy of $815,000 after a price drop of 0.1 per cent. “It really …

Now that the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime has been toppled, Syria’s new leaders have tried to appeal to Western governments to build closer ties and lift harsh sanctions on the country. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist alliance led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, declared Assad’s rule over on 8 December , after the rebel group they spearheaded took control …

The research from the Queensland University of Technology said Australia needed to pivot the housing debate away from increasing supply in the short term and focus on better utilising existing homes. It has also called for governments and policymakers to consider incentivising older home owners, who more likely have a spare bedroom, to increase the current stock by renting out their spare bedrooms. …

Tasmania is so beautiful, it’s hard to describe any of it as a failure. But the housing situation in the Apple Isle — and particularly its sparkling capital, Hobart — is so dire that you can see it everywhere you go. There are tarpaulin-clad camps at the Cenotaph that overlooks the Derwent River and CBD, car parks with vans and …

“My boy, being a top spook is not compatible with being a media tart,” former ASIO director-general David Irvine is reported once to have responded jovially to a question from a journalist. And indeed, the “top spook” — one of very few ASIO employees who are allowed to be named in public — is by necessity a behind-the-scenes role most …

If your grocery bill seems to be increasing each month, you’re not imagining it. A new analysis from investment bank UBS has found price rises at Australia’s leading supermarkets have hit a new high, outpacing inflation over the last year. It comes as Australians continue to grapple with a cost of living crisis, with rates, phone plans, energy bills and …

Emergency and health experts warn Australia is heading into the first of a series of high-risk bushfire seasons, as overlapping bushfire periods stretch resources. Record-breaking dry conditions and warmer than average temperatures during early spring are behind the increased fire risk for large areas of Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory, say Australasian Fire Authorities Council (AFAC) in …

The claim The Albanese government came to power promising to get wages moving again. After a year in office, Treasurer Jim Chalmers claimed the government had achieved exactly that. “[Labor] said that we’d get wages moving again, and we are,” he told parliament on September 11. “An average full-time worker was $3,700 better off in the first year of the Albanese government.” Is that …