For news updates as they happen in Brisbane and beyond today, follow us here.
For news updates as they happen in Brisbane and beyond today, follow us here.
Eager Billie Eilish fans have set up camp in tents outside the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, waiting for the gates to open for tonight’s concert.
Nine News reported about 400 people were camped outside the Boondall venue, with some coming as far as from Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Speaking to Nine, people in the crowd said they had been camped out for “a while”, with some spotted as early as Monday morning, a day-and-a-half from the gates opening ahead of tonight’s 7pm show.
“[We’re] just talking to other people, making conversation, just walking up and down the lines – making friends with everyone,” said one fan.
The international superstar touched down at Brisbane Airport domestic terminal yesterday, and will perform on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights, before leaving for Sydney and Melbourne across the next week.
If the axing of its 2025 program wasn’t enough, the QUT Art Museum has closed to rip up its gallery floors, after storms caused flood damage to the building at the university’s Gardens Point campus.
“No artwork has been damaged, and we are currently working with insurers,” a QUT spokesperson said in a statement.
The free-to-visit museum, part of QUT, describes itself as one of the state’s premier visual arts institutions.
It’s still not known when the gallery will reopen, but even if it does its 2025 exhibition program has been halted due to a funding shortfall.
Among the displays currently closed to the public is an exhibition by Bigambul artist Leah King-Smith that was slated to run until March.
The art musuem’s temporary closure comes as the university undertakes a broad review of its performing arts courses, due to what it says is an ongoing decline in enrolments, and has halted its dance student intake for 2025.
Back now to today’s expected interest rate cut from the Reserve Bank of Australia: amid the Coalition’s attack that Labor is exerting political pressure on the RBA to cut rates, Secretary of Australian Council of Trade Unions Sally McManus has made her view on the decision clear.
In a post to X, McManus said the RBA “has been known to make the wrong call a[t] key moments”.
After citing two examples, McManus wrote: “Let’s hope they don’t stuff it up again.”
The Brisbane Bullets and head coach Justin Schueller have parted ways, with the NBL outfit now on the hunt for a new leader to take them to Australian basketball’s promised land.
Schueller, who was appointed to the role in February 2023, endured a frustrating 2024-25 campaign, as his side were forced to battle an injury crisis which derailed their promising mid-season strides.
After a slow start to the campaign, Brisbane surged back into contention on the back of six wins from eight games, before Sam McDaniel (shoulder), James Batemon (hamstring) and Jarred Bairstow (ankle) had their seasons end prematurely.
Josh Bannan, Tyrell Harrison and Rocco Zikarsky also endured inconsistent runs due to concussion symptoms and knee issues, as the Bullets missed the playoffs for a sixth-straight campaign.
“We are running a process to identify the best person to lead the next phase of the Brisbane Bullets resurgence. We are committed to ensuring the progress to date continues to take a significant step forward in NBL26,” Bullets chief executive Mal Watts said.
“This is a crucial decision for the club, and we are committed to ensuring we have the best direction in place to drive our team forward and deliver a strong and competitive season.”
Detectives have charged a 17-year-old boy over alleged indecent assaults at a Sinnamon Park bikeway.
It will be alleged four adult women were indecently assaulted along the Edenbrooke bikeway area between Sinnamon Park and Darra from February 10 to 12.
On February 14, detectives executed a search warrant at a Darra property, where a 17-year-old boy was taken into custody.
He was charged with three counts of sexual assault and two counts of unlawful stalking.
He is expected to appear before Richlands Childrens Court on Thursday.
Investigations are continuing.
Eager Billie Eilish fans have set up camp in tents outside the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, waiting for the gates to open for tonight’s concert.
Nine News reported about 400 people were camped outside the Boondall venue, with some coming as far as from Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Speaking to Nine, people in the crowd said they had been camped out for “a while”, with some spotted as early as Monday morning, a day-and-a-half from the gates opening ahead of tonight’s 7pm show.
“[We’re] just talking to other people, making conversation, just walking up and down the lines – making friends with everyone,” said one fan.
The international superstar touched down at Brisbane Airport domestic terminal yesterday, and will perform on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights, before leaving for Sydney and Melbourne across the next week.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he has seen the unverified footage of Australian prisoner of war Oscar Jenkins, who was captured by Russia while fighting for Ukraine.
In the footage, Jenkins is asked by what appears to be his capturer whether the previous reports about his death were false and the Australian says he’s alive.
Asked if the footage was real, Albanese said he had seen the video but could not confirm if the footage was real.
“We still hold serious concerns for Mr Jenkins’ welfare. We’ve made it clear to Russia that Mr Jenkins is a prisoner of war and that there are obligations that kick in, in accordance with international humanitarian law, and they must be observed,” he said.
“We’ve also, of course, made representations to Ukraine, including a one-on-one discussion that I had with president Zelensky, raising Mr Jenkins welfare. We have called for Russia to release Mr Jenkins so that he can come home to his family.”
More than 70 per cent of Australian high school students have failed the latest round of civics and citizenship testing – the worst results in two decades of assessments.
The figures, released on Tuesday, have sparked calls for urgent action to arrest the decline amid a backdrop of low levels of trust in democracy, loss of faith in political institutions and a deep fracturing of social cohesion.
National results show the proportion of year 6 students who met the proficient standard in civics testing fell to 43 per cent, tumbling from 53 per cent in 2019.
Just 28 per cent of year 10 students passed the assessment – sliding from 38 per cent in the previous round of testing.
A representative sample of almost 10,000 students sat the test, run by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, in May last year.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese denies he has been spreading misinformation after a Labor Medicare campaign was found to be misleading.
An attack ad posted online by Labor shows Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in 2014 saying “Medicare is dead”, however, ABC reviewed the original footage and found it had been edited in a misleading way. In the unedited clip, Dutton says, “Medicare is dead if we can’t make it sustainable today”.
The full video shows Dutton defending plans to introduce a co-payment for bulk-billed medical consultations.
Asked about the video and whether Albanese was allowing the spread of misinformation, the prime minister denied this was the case.
“Peter Dutton, when he was the health minister – and remember, he was voted Australia’s worst health minister by doctors – [he] tried to introduce a GP tax, so a tax every time people went to the doctor that would have had to have made a payment. So abolishing bulk billing,” Albanese told ABC Sydney.
“Now, bulk billing is at the heart of Medicare. That’s why we’ve tripled the bulk billing incentive.”
A man has died after crashing an SUV into a retaining wall in Jimboomba yesterday.
Police were called to the intersection of Edelsten Road and Amber Crescent about 12.35pm yesterday, where a silver Nissan Patrol travelling westward along Amber Crescent had reportedly passed through a T-intersection and crashed into a retaining wall.
The 62-year-old man driving the vehicle, who was the sole occupant, died at the scene.
Investigations were continuing this morning.
As Brisbane continues to sweat through summer, research from The University of Queensland has found people living in cities are at a higher risk of death from extreme temperatures events than in regional areas.
PhD candidate Patrick Amoatey said after analysing data for more than 2000 suburbs, he found city dwellers with low income, low education, diabetes and limited access to health services were at highest risk of heatwave related deaths.
“We believe the risk is higher in cities because of the ‘heat island effect’, as there are more heat-absorbing surfaces like roads, buildings, and railway lines,” he said.
In a separate study, researchers from UQ and The Australian National University analysed mortality rates during an extreme heatwave in Victoria in January 2009, along with decades of data, to examine the impacts of climate change on heat related deaths.
An estimated 374 excess deaths occurred in Victoria during the five-day heatwave, with maximum temperatures reaching 12 to 15 degrees above normal.
“Human-induced climate change had increased the excess heatwave-related mortality in the 2009 event by 20 per cent,” Associate Professor Nicholas Osborne said.
Discover more from World Byte News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
