The Latest Breaking News from The Conversation

This week, Victoria recorded its hottest day in nearly six years. On Tuesday, the northwest towns of Walpeup and Hopetoun reached 48.9°C, and the temperature in parts of Melbourne soared over 45°C. Towns in South Australia also broke heat records.

Australia has always had heatwaves. But this week’s heatwave in southeastern Australia is something else. Temperatures in some inland towns in South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria were up to 20°C above average for the time of year, which meteorologists described as “incredibly abnormal”. Victoria’s heat record toppled after…

A Chinese personal safety app called Are You Dead? – recently rebranded as Demumu – has gone viral in recent weeks, attracting widespread media attention.

Is governing harder in the 2020s than in earlier decades? The instinctive, and popular, answer would be “of course it is”. While that’s also a correct answer, we should insert some qualifications.