Iranian explosive-laden boats appear to have attacked two fuel tankers in ‌Iraqi waters, setting them ablaze and killing one crew member, after projectiles struck three vessels in Gulf waters.

The latest attacks mark an escalation in the conflict between Iran and US-Israeli ‌forces, raising the number of ships struck in the region since fighting began to at least 16.

Shipping in the Gulf and along the narrow Strait of Hormuz, which carries about a fifth of the world’s oil, has come to a near-standstill ‌since the US and Israel began strikes on Iran on February 28, sending global oil prices surging to highs not seen since 2022.

The ships targeted in late-night armed boat attacks in the Gulf near Iraq on Wednesday, local time, were the Marshall Islands-flagged Safesea Vishnu and the Zefyros, which had loaded fuel cargoes in Iraq, two Iraqi port officials said.

“We recovered the body of a foreign crew member from the water,” one port security official said, as Iraqi rescue teams continued searching for other missing seafarers.

It was not immediately clear which ship that person was linked to.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have warned that any ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz will be targeted.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to ramp up attacks on Iran if it continues to obstruct the strait.

The Thai-flagged Mayuree Naree dry bulk vessel was struck by “two projectiles of unknown origin” while sailing through the strait earlier on Wednesday, causing a fire and damaging the engine ⁠room, the ship’s Thai-listed operator Precious Shipping said in a statement.

“Three crew members are reported missing and believed to be trapped ‌in the engine room,” Precious ​Shipping said.

“The company is working with the relevant authorities to rescue these three missing crew members,” it said, adding that the remaining 20 crew members had been safely evacuated and were ashore in Oman.

Images provided by the Thai ​navy showed smoke ‌pouring out of the back of the ship.

Iran’s Guards said in a statement carried by the Tasnim news agency that the ship was “fired upon by Iranian fighters”, suggesting the first direct engagement by the Guards who ​have previously fired missiles or drones.

The Japan-flagged container ship ONE ​Majesty ​also sustained minor damage on Wednesday from an unknown projectile 46 kilometres northwest of Ras ​Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates, two maritime security firms said.

Its Japanese owner Mitsui OSK Lines and ‌a spokesperson for Ocean Network Express, its charterer, said the vessel was struck while at anchor in the Gulf and an inspection of the hull revealed minor damage above the waterline.

All crew are safe, they said, adding that the vessel remains fully operational and seaworthy. The owner said the cause of the incident remained unclear and was under investigation.

A third vessel, a bulk carrier, was also hit by an unknown projectile approximately 50km northwest of Dubai, maritime security firms said.

The projectile had damaged the hull of the Marshall Islands-flagged Star Gwyneth, maritime risk management company Vanguard said, adding that the vessel’s crew were safe.

Iran says the world should be ready for oil at $US200 a barrel as its forces hit merchant ships and the International Energy Agency recommended a massive release of strategic reserves to ‌dampen one of the worst oil shocks since the 1970s.

The war unleashed with joint US and Israeli airstrikes nearly two weeks ago has so far killed about 2000 people, mostly Iranians and Lebanese, as it has spread into Lebanon and thrown global energy markets and transport into chaos.

Despite what the Pentagon ‌has described as the most intense air strikes since the start of the war, Iran also fired at Israel and targets across the Middle East on Wednesday, local time, demonstrating it can still fight back.

Three vessels were reported to have been hit in Gulf waters as Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said their forces had fired on ships that had disobeyed their orders.

US President Donald Trump, who has not committed to a timeline for military operations, suggested on Wednesday he was not yet ready to call an end to the war.

At a rally in Kentucky, he said “we won” the war, but the United States didn’t want to have to go back every two years.

“We don’t want to leave early, do we?” he said. “We got to finish the job.”

Trump said US forces had knocked out 58 Iranian naval ships and that oil prices would come down and told reporters in Washington that Iran was “pretty much at the end of the line”.

“Doesn’t mean we’re going to end it immediately, but … They’ve got no navy, they’ve got no air force, they’ve got no anti-air traffic anything. They have no systems of control. We’re just riding free range over that country,” he said.

Trump said the US would now “look very strongly” at the Strait of ‌Hormuz, a now-blockaded channel along the Iranian coast that serves as ​a conduit for around a fifth of the world’s oil

“The straits are in ‌great shape. We’ve knocked out all of their boats. They have some missiles, but not very many.”

An Iranian military spokesperson said the strait was “undoubtedly” under Iran’s control.

On Wednesday, the G7 group of nations – the US, Canada, Japan, Italy, Britain, Germany and France – agreed to examine the option of providing escort for ships so they can navigate freely in the Gulf.

Oil prices, which shot up earlier in the week to nearly $US120 a barrel before settling back to around $US90, rose nearly five per cent on Wednesday, US time.

The International Energy Agency, made up of major oil-consuming ​nations, recommended releasing 400 million barrels from global strategic reserves to stabilise prices, the biggest such intervention in history, which was swiftly endorsed by Washington.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Trump had authorised the release of 172 million barrels from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve from next week.

Iranian officials ​made clear ​on Wednesday they intended to impose a prolonged economic shock.

“Get ready for oil to be $200 a barrel, because the oil price ​depends on regional security, which you have destabilised,” Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesperson for Iran’s military command, said in comments addressed to the US.

Four people were wounded after two Iranian drones hit near Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates, though flights continued, the Dubai Media Office said. 

At Oman’s Port of Salalah, firefighters battled a blaze at fuel storage tanks after days of Iranian attacks, according to the Oman News Agency.

At sea, a Thai-flagged bulk carrier was set ablaze, and a Japanese-flagged container ship and a Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier were also reported to have sustained damage.

In Iran, huge crowds took to the streets for funerals for top commanders killed in airstrikes, carrying portraits of slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his son and successor, Mojtaba.

An Iranian official told Reuters Mojtaba Khamenei had been lightly wounded early in the war, when airstrikes killed his father, mother, ​wife and a son. 

With AP

The Australian CEO of a top-tier software giant has apologised after cutting his global workforce by 10 per cent.

In a message to staff, Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said the decision to shed 1600 people was incredibly difficult, as staff were left waiting for an email advising them if they were on the list.

“I believe this is the right decision for Atlassian. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Far from it,” he said, according to documents filed in the US stock exchange.

“I know this has a huge impact on each of you, and it weighs heavily on me and Atlassian today.

“To Atlassians who are leaving us – I’m sorry for the impact this will have on you.” 

The decision was driven by the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence.

“This is primarily about adaptation. We are reshaping our skill mix and changing how we work to build for the future,” Mr Cannon-Brookes said.

Atlassian employs about 14,500 people in 14 countries across the world, including Australia.

In February, the Sydney-headquartered software company reported $US1.6 billion ($A2.3 billion) in revenue for the three months to December 31, up 23 per cent from a year ago and ahead of expectations.

But it net loss for the second quarter widened to $US42.6 million ($A61 million), up from $US38.2 million ($A54.7 million) a year ago. 

Atlassian makes a suite of cloud-based collaboration tools, including Jira and Trello, used for software development and project management.

Australia’s data centre boom risks widespread blackouts and cascading grid failures without tougher connection standards, the energy market rulemaker has warned.

Citing outages caused by data centres in the United States and Ireland, the Australian Energy Market Commission wants the power-hungry facilities capable of riding out grid disturbances issue-free.

Australia has become a favoured destination for data centres to accommodate the world’s growing digital footprint and appetite for artificial intelligence.

The country currently sports the second-biggest investment pipeline in the world and data centre energy use is set to climb from two per cent of domestic annual consumption to 12 per cent by 2050.

Federal policymakers are conscious of the energy and water usage associated with infrastructure and are preparing frameworks as part of the National AI Plan.

The recommended rule changes should prevent data centres unplugging simultaneously during a voltage dip and causing network instability, the commission said.

Two years ago, 60 data centres in Virginia pulled 1500MW off the grid at the same time during a single fault, forcing operators to take emergency action to avoid widespread blackouts.

Ireland has gone as far as placing moratoriums on new data centres due to network disruptions.

Australian Energy Market Commission chair Anna Collyer said such incidents could cost consumers billions of dollars in lost electricity supply and emergency network upgrades.

“Data centres aren’t passive loads anymore – they’re active grid participants,” she said.

“When they fail to ride through faults, it has the potential to trigger cascading failures and blackouts.”

The proposed changes would prevent stability issues without blocking investment in the sector, she said.

“Data centre operators would know exactly what’s required up front.”

The decision not to press for criminal charges against corrupt officials involved in the robodebt scheme is “grossly disappointing”, a victim of the unlawful program says. 

A National Anti-Corruption Commission inquiry on Wednesday found two of six people referred to it for investigation engaged in corrupt conduct but ruled out referring them to face criminal charges. 

The remaining four were cleared of corruption, including former prime minister Scott Morrison, who initiated the scheme while social services minister. 

The outcome came as no surprise to Melbourne mother Felicity de Somerville, who had $11,500 drained by Centrelink from her bank account without warning under the scheme in 2017.

“Grossly disappointing but not surprising,” she said when asked by AAP what she made of the decision not to push for criminal charges.

“I don’t think any Australian should be surprised they’re not going to take accountability for this and that no one’s going to get in trouble, because that’s the culture we’re breeding.”

The former nurse had just finished maternity leave when she found her account had been debited the equivalent of six months wages overnight despite having agreed to a payment plan. 

It left her unable to afford medical care for her daughter, who was unwell at the time and caused immense distress for her and her husband, a welder then earning $45,000 a year. 

“It really was horrible but I count myself lucky compared to what some others went through,” Ms de Somerville said. 

The watchdog found ex-departmental general manager of business integrity Mark Withnell carried out corrupt conduct by intentionally misleading the Department of Social Services during the preparation of a cabinet submission in 2015.

It also found department deputy secretary Serena Wilson carried out corrupt conduct by misleading the Commonwealth Ombudsman during an investigation in 2017.

But the watchdog said the findings would not be referred to the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions to consider criminal charges.

“There was insufficient admissible evidence to establish the alleged offences against either Mr Withnell or Ms Wilson beyond reasonable doubt,” the report said.

“Key admissions and statements made during this investigation are not admissible in criminal proceedings.”

Mr Morrison was found not to be corrupt.

His failure to realise that bureaucratic advice was misleading was put down to shortcomings by federal departments.

He welcomed the findings in a lengthy statement on Wednesday, sympathising with those affected by the scheme and insisting department officials were to blame. 

“The NACC has rightly concluded that ministers must be able to rely on the accuracy of the advice provided by their departments, especially on matters of technical expertise, and receive that advice in good faith,” he said.

“Whether they follow that advice is a matter for those ministers. In this case, I relied upon, and followed, that advice. 

“The departmental advice and warranties provided to ministers were wrong.”

The corruption watchdog did not make recommendations in its final report, which followed referrals from the royal commission into the robodebt scheme.

Between 2016 and 2019, the former coalition government’s robodebt scheme recovered more than $750 million from almost 400,000 people.

Many welfare recipients were falsely accused of owing the government money and the program was linked to several suicides.

The Albanese government has promised it will release a sealed section of the robodebt royal commission’s final report when the investigation ends.

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Former ASIO chief Dennis Richardson has resigned from his position as special adviser to the anti-Semitism royal commission.

Commissioner Virginia Bell announced Mr Richardson’s sudden departure on Wednesday night, as her inquiry prepares for its initial report by the end of April.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the royal commission following the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, in which 15 people were killed on December 14 when a father and son opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration.

“As I noted at the commission’s initial hearing, Mr Richardson was uniquely well placed to advise on the material to be sought from our intelligence and security agencies in order to assess the effectiveness of their preparedness for, and response to, a terrorist attack,” Ms Bell said in a statement.

“Thanks to Mr Richardson and the senior members of his team, Tony Sheehan, the former Commonwealth counter-terrorism co-ordinator and deputy director-general of ASIO, and Peter Baxter, a former deputy secretary at the Department of Defence and director-general of AusAID, work on the interim report is well advanced.”

Ms Bell thanked Mr Richardson “for the valuable contribution he has made to the commission”.

Her statement did not provide reasons for Mr Richardson’s resignation.

Mr Albanese’s government initially refused to call a royal commission into the Bondi massacre, instead tapping Mr Richardson to head a review of the adequacy of intelligence and law enforcement agencies before the attack.

Following weeks of political pressure, Mr Albanese relented and announced broader inquiry to be headed by Ms Bell, a former High Court judge, to investigate anti-Semitism and any failures in the nation’s intelligence services.

Mr Richardson’s review was folded into the new royal commission.

The inquiry is due to deliver its interim report to the government by April 30.

German sports car maker Porsche says it plans to cut further jobs after posting a 91 per cent drop in 2025 profits.

Porsche chief executive Michael Leiters said a process to streamline the firm had already been “put in place” before he took the job earlier this year.

This process would now be “tightened even further” and include “further job cuts,” he said during the presentation of Porsche’s 2025 figures in Stuttgart.

Leiters did not give a specific number of positions to be slashed, citing planned talks with all parties involved.

On Wednesday, Leiters also announced plans to streamline the management structure in an effort to alleviate the car maker’s woes.

Under a previous agreement between the company and employee representatives, 1900 jobs are to be cut in the Stuttgart region, where the company is based, by 2029.

Porsche reported on Wednesday that its net profit slumped in 2025 as billions of euros in costs linked to a shift back towards combustion-engine models weighed on earnings.

Net profit fell 91.4 per cent to 310 million euro ($A503 million), the DAX-listed sports car maker said, compared with nearly 3.6 billion euro a year earlier.

Revenue dropped by almost a 10th to about 36.3 billion euro.

The company faced several headwinds last year: sales in China slowed, US tariffs added significant costs and demand for Porsche’s electric models came in well below expectations.

Former chief executive Oliver Blume revised the company’s strategy before stepping down, expanding the range of combustion-engine vehicles to support sales.

The shift has proved costly.

Porsche booked about 2.4 billion euro in expenses linked to the strategy change.

The wind-down of a battery subsidiary added about 700 million euro in charges while US tariffs had a similar financial impact.

Total special charges therefore amounted to roughly 3.9 billion euro.

Operating profit fell 92.7 per cent to 413 million euro.

In the core car business, excluding financial services, operating profit dropped to 90 million euro from about 5.3 billion euro a year earlier, according to figures from parent company Volkswagen.

Porsche expects business to improve in the current year but warned market conditions would remain challenging.

New chief executive Leiters said geopolitical uncertainty persists and potential effects of the latest developments in the Middle East had not been factored into the outlook.

Leiters took over from Blume at the start of the year, after Blume shifted his focus to leading Volkswagen.

Teachers and politicians have railed against NAPLAN testing after a widespread outage caused chaos across thousands of schools.

Testing was halted suddenly on Wednesday morning after students and teachers were unable to access the writing component of the annual assessment online.

Teachers are calling for the assessment to be scrapped altogether, after many schools were forced to postpone the re-taking of tests. 

NAPLAN was riddled with problems and should be replaced with assessments led by teachers in the classroom, a national teachers’ union said.

“Today’s outages coupled with the high-stakes nature of the assessment risks increasing student anxiety and will add to teachers’ increasing workloads,” Australian Education Union federal president Correna Haythorpe said.

“There will also be questions about the accuracy of the NAPLAN results once these assessments finally take place.”

The federal opposition’s education spokesman questioned the validity of the data collected on Wednesday and said the minister responsible should explain how the problems will be rectified.

“Tonight there will be 1.4 million young people asking their parents questions about today’s abandoned NAPLAN tests and what it means for them,” Julian Leeser said.

“This also creates deep systemic problems. This failure could skew the entire dataset.”

The Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA) confirmed the outage affected students trying to log in to the online test portal.

Grade 3 students were not impacted because their assessment is completed by hand.

“This issue is being urgently investigated by our technology provider, Education Services Australia, who run the platform,” ACARA said in a statement.

More than 1.3 million students in grades 3, 5, 7 and 9 were set to begin testing on Wednesday, although the full extent of the outage is not yet clear.

An authority spokesperson confirmed testing had resumed after 12pm on Wednesday after issues relating to the online portal were fixed. 

“We apologise for the disruption to students and schools, and thank them for their patience,” the spokesperson said.

“The issue has now been resolved and schools have been informed they can resume testing.”

Educators took to social media to describe the confusion and interruptions following the widespread outage. 

A Victorian secondary school teacher told AAP the disruption was difficult to manage, with students left nervous and unsettled by the outage. 

They hope NAPLAN would return to pen and paper.

The national assessment – which tests reading, writing and language conventions, along with numeracy – transitioned to a fully online format in 2022.

NSW’s education standards authority Paul Martin confirmed students across the state had reported the online portal being slow.

“Some students were able to log on and some weren’t. It reached a point where ACARA provided advice to all schools to pause the test,” he said. 

NSW Education Minister Prue Car asked students and parents not to panic, confirming there was a wide window to undertake the testing.

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority chief executive Andrew Smith reported many students had been experiencing difficulty on Wednesday morning. 

Schools that did not experience troubles continued testing as planned. 

“We don’t have actual numbers yet, but it would seem that there’s enough schools for us to be concerned,” Mr Smith told ABC Melbourne. 

Victorian exams have been plagued by blunders in recent years. 

In 2024, a mistake allowed pupils to access questions in advance from instructional cover sheets at the front of online booklets. 

The debacle affected 65 of 116 Victorian Certificate of Education exams and led to the sacking of the state curriculum and assessment authority’s entire board following a review.

Fossil fuel zealotry, not economics, fuels the anti-climate views of a number of Malcolm Turnbull’s former coalition colleagues, he says, including the newly elected Nationals leader.

The former prime minister says an increasing proportion of Liberals and Nationals are living in a “right-wing, fact-free, culture war bubble of anger-tainment”.

During his time in politics, Mr Turnbull was unable to persuade a group of mostly Nationals politicians it was unfeasible to build multiple state-funded coal power stations when the economics favoured renewables. 

The group, including newly installed Nationals leader Matt Canavan and now-One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce, were not interested in the financials, he said.

“It’s religion for them,” Mr Turnbull said at Sydney Climate Action Week.

“That’s basically the problem, they are unshackled from reality.”

Senator Canavan, a vocal critic of net zero, has taken on the leadership of the Nationals following David Littleproud’s shock resignation on Tuesday.

Laying out his energy policy position in a press conference, Senator Canavan said lower power prices should always take precedence over climate or renewables targets.

“That is not the goal of this government. Their goal is to meet arbitrary emissions or renewable energy targets which are not delivering for the Australian people,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

Australia is transitioning away from a grid powered by coal-fired electricity generation to a network dominated by renewables and storage.

The federal government is pursuing clean energy to meet its climate goals and to replace ageing coal stations with the cheapest sources of new generation.

Communications expert Ed Coper, CEO of marketing agency Populares, says the energy transition has become a target of online misinformation campaigns – the “new front” of the climate wars.

On social media platforms, the biggest beneficiaries are those able to weaponise algorithms that reward outrage.

The risk was fringe views gaining undue dominance, Mr Coper said during the panel discussion.

“That is the real danger, that the support and the social license that the energy transition is experiencing in Australia is softer than we realise.”

Kate Hook, co-convenor of Climate 200 and former independent candidate for Calare, described the 2025 federal election as Australia’s biggest-ever co-ordinated disinformation campaign.

Fossil fuel-aligned organisations deployed millions to sway the outcome of the election away from climate action, she said, often under the guise of third-party organisations.

What’s in a name?

For international pop star Katy Perry and Australian fashion designer Katie Perry, the answer can be found in a slight variation in spelling and more than six years of litigation.

The fight over the rights to the Katie/Katy Perry name began when the designer – legally known as Katie Taylor – sued the performer behind Firework and Roar for trademark infringement.

The US singer, whose real name is Katheryn Hudson, hit back with a bid to cancel the designer’s trademark, arguing it was likely to harm her reputation or deceive shoppers.

The dispute dragged on for over six years after the pop star successfully overturned an initial Federal Court ruling that the designer’s trademark had been infringed.

But it came to a decisive end on Wednesday when the nation’s highest court decided the David-and-Goliath battle in favour of the Australian.

The designer’s mark was not in breach of trademark law and was not likely to harm the Dark Horse singer’s reputation or cause confusion, the High Court ruled in a majority decision.

Ms Taylor’s lawyers argued during the hearing that shoppers were savvy enough to distinguish between the two spellings and wouldn’t connect the label to the pop star.

She claimed she didn’t know of the singer’s existence when she first sought the clothing trademark in 2007.

But by the time Ms Taylor applied to trademark the name Katie Perry, she had heard I Kissed a Girl on the radio and bought the song on iTunes.

There was no way she could have known how famous Ms Hudson would become, her lawyer told the High Court in September.

But the pop star’s lawyers contended Ms Taylor should have made a complaint earlier instead of waiting 10 years after the sale of Katy Perry-branded merchandise began.

The designer faced the possibility of having her designer’s mark de-registered after her 2023 win in the Federal Court was overturned on appeal.

The appeal judges found the Katie Perry trademark was deceptively similar to the pop star’s brand and was likely to cause confusion. 

But the appeal judges made a mistake in concluding there were grounds to cancel the trademark, the High Court determined in its majority ruling.

The decision marks the end of a tug-of-war that has been running since 2009, when Ms Hudson became aware the designer had applied to register the Katie Perry trademark.

According to court documents, the superstar told her talent agent Steven Jensen to “keep me outta it entirely”.

“I wouldn’t have even bothered with this (if) mtv hadn’t picked up this silliness,” she wrote in an email.

“Dumb b****! Rawr!”

The singer has been ordered to pay Ms Taylor’s legal bill, with the figure to be determined at a later date.

The designer has been contacted for comment.