A small Israeli company that hopes to revolutionise pre-natal testing through the use of artificial intelligence has had a successful debut on Australia’s stock exchange.

Shares in Identifai Genetics were changing hands early Tuesday afternoon at 24 cents, up 20 per cent from their initial public offering price of 20 cents.

The float gives the company a market cap of $21.8 million.

Chief executive Eyal Miller told AAP in a telephone interview following a bell-ringing ceremony at the ASX that it had been an amazing morning and he was gratified by the market’s response.

The $10 million raised in the IPO will be used to fund the development of Identifai’s Windrose test, a blood test for women who are at least nine weeks pregnant.

A pregnant woman’s blood contains a mix of cell-free DNA from both herself and her unborn child, and ttttIdentifai’s technology uses genomic sequencing and AI to compare the mixture and predict selected inherited conditions.

Expectant mothers have been able to self-fund similar blood tests known as NIPT (non-invasive prenatal tests) since about 2011, but they only scan for Down syndrome and a handful of other genetic conditions.

“We can look through the entire genome, unlike other competitors in the market that are limited in their scope,” Mr Miller said.

There are nearly 300 genes where a fetal finding could change care and 54 genetic conditions that are treatable in the womb, according to Identifai. 

“If there is a positive indication that comes into play, the clinicians now also can provide the treatment accordingly, either through the pregnancy, in-utero treatment, or immediately post-delivery.”

The Windrose test is based on the work of two scientists at Tel Aviv University, Professor Noam Shomron and Dr Tom Rabinowitz, and is currently being further validated through a 600-patient clinical trial.

Identifai is looking for commercial partners to support its launch, with an initial focus on the US market.

Inflation is expected to stay above the Reserve Bank’s target range until the end of 2027, with only six other developed countries having a higher rate than Australia’s.

The extended period of high inflation has left the door open for more interest rate hikes.

Australia’s inflation rate was projected to be among the highest of advanced economies around the world, the International Monetary Fund forecast in its latest World Economic Outlook on Tuesday.

Inflation was forecast to slow from four per cent to 3.9 per cent this year and 3.1 per cent in 2027, above the RBA’s two to three per cent target band.

The central bank’s latest forecast in August predicted inflation to ease to 2.6 per cent by the end of 2027.

The only developed economies forecast to have higher inflation than Australia in 2026 were Greece, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Croatia, Iceland and Andorra.

Minutes from the RBA board’s September meeting, when it unanimously decided to raise the cash rate to a 15-year high 4.6 per cent, showed the central bank was concerned that inflation was not easing fast enough.

Multiple global supply shocks – the Middle East conflict, the AI boom and a super El Nino – were pushing up prices for oil, technology products and agricultural commodities.

While the board still wanted to preserve as many of the gains in the labour market as possible, more persistent supply shocks meant that it would have to accept higher unemployment and lower economic growth than would otherwise be the case to get inflation under control

“The board will remain focused on its mandate to deliver price stability and full employment and will continue to do what it considered necessary to achieve that outcome, including increasing the cash rate target further if required,” the minutes said.

ANZ head of Australian economics Adam Boyton said the minutes read hawkish and reinforced his view that another rate hike in November was more likely than not.

Although the board briefly considered a hold, the arguments in favour of raising the cash rate to 4.6 per cent won out.

Upside risks to inflation had materialised and inflation expectations were creeping up, meaning businesses were increasingly passing on higher costs of fuel and other inputs to consumers.

Rising cost pressures caused business confidence to fall four points in NAB’s September survey to -13 points, 22 points lower than a year earlier.

A confluence of higher fuel pries and interest rates, without relief in the form of an excise cut this time around, was driving confidence to a pretty weak level, NAB head of Australian economics Gareth Spence told AAP.

Adding more aged care beds won’t be enough to help hospital emergency departments prepare for an ageing population, the health minister concedes.

The admission came as a report from the Australian College of Emergency Medicine shows more older Australians are arriving in emergency rooms and are sicker.

In the six years to 2024, hospital visits by over-65s spiked 16 per cent, compared to just four per cent for those younger, the reports shows.

It’s a problem everyone saw coming, college president Peter Allely said.

“This has been the most predictable public demographic for the last few decades,” Dr Allely told AAP before the release of the report on Tuesday.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2010 predicted the number of over-85s presenting to EDs would grow more than fivefold by 2050.

Dr Allely said the forecasts were spot on.

“They plotted a curve, which unfortunately … is starting to go exponential,” he said.

Health Minister Mark Butler said issues involved with an ageing population were hitting the hospital sector.

“(There is) more work that we have to do to make sure that our health and aged care services are up to scratch,” Mr Butler told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.

“Emergency departments are dealing with very different presentations to the traditional bread and butter work of EDs, which was car accidents and heart attacks and things like that.”

Mr Butler said Australia was at a tipping point with more Baby Boomers entering aged care, but simply adding more beds to the system in residential care would not be enough.

“There is no single answer, (the answer is) right across the board,” he said.

“As the oldest Baby Boomers start to enter their 80s, their need for good quality aged care and health services is skyrocketing, frankly, and that’s a challenge for all governments.”

For every 72 people who wait in emergency departments longer than eight hours, one person will die, on average.

Not long ago, more than 95 per cent of patients were discharged from emergency in fewer than eight hours. Now, that’s dropping.

“It’s like we need 700 things done three per cent better,” Dr Allely said.

Most older patients arrive by ambulance, the vast majority need care within 30 minutes and about half are admitted to hospital, according to the report.

Regional Australia is also ageing at about double the speed of capital cities, meaning overstretched services have grappled with almost twice the increase in older ED presentations than elsewhere.

“This is not the fault of older people, it is a success story, it’s testament to modern science, medical advances and good public policy,” Dr Allely said.

“The system has not planned or prepared for the inevitable needs of people as they get older and more frail and more complicated.”

The college’s report recommends bolstering non-hospital treatment pathways for older people, unclogging emergency departments, expanding prevention and funding research to keep more geriatrics out of waiting rooms.

“There aren’t many efficiencies to be gained in the healthcare system, but there will be some,” Dr Allely said.

It comes as it’s revealed about 80,000 older Australians are expected to ditch private health insurance cover by 2030 if Labor succeeds in winding back generous rebates, to be spent elsewhere in the system.

Mr Butler said private health insurance figures would continue to grow, but indicated changes were still needed.

“We have to take hard decisions to ensure that we’re able to find the funds necessary to fund the expansion of aged care services that I think everyone recognises that we need,” he said.

A state will support its renewable energy rollout with gas-fired power, as its leadership splits from federal colleagues months from an election. 

NSW officials have announced a tender targeted at building a gas-fired peaking plant, set to provide backup electricity for a greener future grid.

Energy Minister Penny Sharpe said gas-fired stations were important to the grid as the state faces a reliability shortfall in 2033-34, according to government forecasts.

The state Labor government will include the potential project under the Long Term Energy Services Agreement, which guarantees operators a minimum revenue floor for renewable, storage and firming projects.

While the NSW government is seeking to boost its economic-management credentials ahead of facing voters at the state election in March, the move puts it in conflict with the federal Labor government.

Federal Labor excludes fossil fuels, including gas, from its direct underwriting program, known as the Capacity Investment Scheme.

”While gas-fired power stations will operate only occasionally, they will play a critical role in maintaining reliability during rare periods when renewable generation is low and available storage has been exhausted,” Ms Sharpe said on Tuesday.

Technologies other than gas will be eligible for the 1500MW firming job. 

However, analysis provided to the government suggested a gas-fired peaking plant would be the most likely solution. 

The tender will be conducted by independent NSW Consumer Trustee, ASL, with consultation open on the proposed design before it is launched in 2027.

Gas projects have been permitted under the Long Term Energy Services Agreement since it was legislated in 2020.

Also on Tuesday, Treasurer Daniel Mookhey will speak to the government’s pre-election economic plans at the Sydney Institute.

”In my first economic statement to parliament in June 2023, I said that the key to bringing inflation under control is to bring our own spending under control,” he will say.

Inflation has an outsized impact on NSW families, who on average hold larger mortgages than other Australians, according to Mr Mookhey. 

The state will release a debt reduction plan by the end of the week, he will say. 

Mr Mookhey is aiming to reduce the state’s debt by more than $10 billion. 

“Fiscal responsibility isn’t easy, it’s not always popular, but it has never been more essential for the prosperity of our great state,’ he will say. 

A global rating agency last week rapped the knuckles of Mr Mookhey’s federal counterpart Jim Chalmers for government spending.

S&P recently reaffirmed Australia’s AAA credit rating, but lead analyst Martin Foo warned near-record spending could threaten financial health if economic luck runs dry. 

Good credit could pose two issues down the road, he warned. 

Firstly, Australia’s elevated spending was structural in nature, including higher spending on defence, aged care, social security and interest payments.

The second problem was high government spending was complicating the job of the Reserve Bank, he added.

Everything is coming up canola for Australian growers, with the green and gold crop in high demand for biofuels and food.

Production is set to rise to a record level of 8.1 million tonnes in 2026/27, more than 15 per cent above the five year average, according to the Rabobank winter crop forecast released on Tuesday.

The canola price is hovering above $800 a tonne, which is the highest it’s been in several years due to demand from several sectors.

“Growth in global consumption of oilseeds is expected to outpace production, while stronger biofuel demand should reduce stocks and support canola prices,” analyst Vitor Pistoia said.

Nearly 60 per cent of the canola haul will come from WA, with a 41 per cent increase in planting area this season.

Growing conditions in southern Queensland and NSW have been somewhat tougher, as dry conditions forced some growers to forego sowing canola, Nutrien Ag agronomist Luke Doel told AAP.

Crops in southern parts of NSW were boosted by late rainfall in May.

“We’ve had the late start, which has been offset by the unusually warm winter,” said Mr Doel, who is based in the state’s central west,

“So everything’s come in three or four weeks early.

“Flowering started mid-July, which is very early.”

The mixed climatic conditions across Australia have led to a decline in total winter crop volumes, at a forecast 62.9 million tonnes.

Though that is nearly eight per cent down on last season, it is still 2.6 per cent above the five year average, the report said.

“Production is more concentrated in southern and western regions of the country this year,” Mr Pistoia said.

Wheat growers were forecast to harvest a total of 31 million tonnes, which is 13 per cent down on last season, while barley and pulse production would also decline, according to the forecast.

Predictions of a strong El Nino climate pattern have influenced producers’ plantings decisions and may affect prices.

A Commonwealth Bank analysis released in early October said El Nino could cost $13.4 billion over the next two years, leaving gross domestic product about 0.45 percentage points lower than it otherwise would be.

Fire ants likely imported from overseas in a shipping container have landed at a critical logistics site, with measures underway to rapidly wipe them out.

A biosecurity team at the federal agriculture department detected the fire ant nest at the Enfield Intermodal Centre in Sydney’s inner west suburbs.

The nest was quickly treated at the logistics hub, a facility for the freight industry, to prevent an infestation from taking hold.

Genetic analysis undertaken by the National Fire Ant Eradication Program confirmed the species as red imported fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) and are likely to have originated from overseas via a container.

NSW Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty said properties within a 500m radius of the freight facility would be inspected to keep to assure the community fire ants were being eradicated.

“It’s important to note that no further ants have been found, but we are focused on making sure any potential spread is identified and eradicated quickly,” she said on Tuesday.

“While fire ants are one of the world’s most invasive species, they can and have been successfully eradicated in NSW.”

The Invasive Species Council warned the spread of the “super pest” could cost the Australian economy up to $2 billion a year.

The federal department’s entomologists confirmed the red and brown ants – two to six millimetres in length – are not related to the only other fire ant-impacted site in the country in southeast Queensland.

Further surveillance and treatment will be expanded to a 2km radius of Sydney suburbs in the coming weeks.

Fire ants were detected at Port Botany in 2014 and were successfully eradicated.

The council’s advocacy director Reece Pianta warned the risk of fire ants spreading beyond Queensland’s borders was still alive.

”This detection is a reminder of why we need to keep investing in strong border biosecurity and surveillance,” he said.

“Fire ants are widespread among many of Australia’s trading partners, so finding new incursions quickly is critical to stopping them becoming established.”

Hackers have forced the temperature of many French supermarket ‌fridges up to 50C overnight, causing fires and food losses at several hundred stores across the country in a major ‌cyberattack.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said a “large scale” attack was “affecting connected refrigerators in several major food retailers across France” and reported damage included “food losses and fires”.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu instructed France’s National Cybersecurity Agency ANSSI to investigate, a person in his office said.

They said France “was co-ordinating with its European counterparts, as other countries may also be affected,” while also investigating whether any other French firms were at risk.

Felix Aime, a senior cyber threat intelligence analyst at Sekoia Threat Detection and Research, said Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany and Belgium had also been affected.

Carrefour said 80 of its supermarkets had been hit while Monoprix said five per cent of its stores were affected.

Les Mousquetaires, owner of retailer Intermarche, said fridges at about 150 of its stores were heated up to 50C for ‌six hours overnight.

It said hackers managed to switch refrigerators and freezers to defrost mode overnight.

A ‌spokesperson said all affected food had ⁠been discarded to eliminate health risks.

Paris resident Geert de Clercq witnessed staff at an Intermarche in central Paris throwing ​cartfuls of defrosted frozen foods into a giant rubbish container, with molten ice cream sloshing out of broken tubs on the street.

Cooperative U CEO Dominique Schelcher said his supermarket had also been targeted.

“Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and to the food supply of the French people is of extreme gravity and is unprecedented,” he wrote on X.

“Retail and wholesale play an essential role in keeping Europe supplied with the goods people rely on every day,” said Christel ⁠Delberghe, director general at European retail association Eurocommerce.

“This incident underlines the importance of resilience across the entire supply ‌chain.”

Supermarket cold aisles are typically run by control panels that manage an entire store’s fridges and freezers and can be accessed over the internet, which lets maintenance companies adjust them from ​anywhere.

The source close ‌to Lecornu said ANSSI had identified a vulnerability in software supplied by Danish company Danfoss.

Danfoss said it was “aware of incidents in France affecting a limited number of refrigeration management ​systems”.

The affected units “were running outdated firmware,” Danfoss said, adding that it had “long advised customers to keep supported systems updated with the latest firmware and to migrate legacy systems to current-generation solutions”.

On August 9, cybersecurity firm Claroty’s Team82 published research detailing vulnerabilities in the Danfoss AK-SM 800A controller.

According to the report, software updates issued by Danfoss addressed issues ​that ​could have allowed attackers to bypass authentication controls and execute code on compromised devices.

The ​attacks resemble disruptions reported at about a dozen US military commissaries in late August that ‌led to food losses after fridges were affected.

Dutch supermarket operator Ahold Delhaize, which operates the Netherlands’ largest supermarket chain Albert ​Heijn and has major ‌operations in the United States, said it was also dealing with a “security issue” in its network, and had taken several systems ​offline to protect them.

A smartphone app for the retailer told clients that due to a “cybersecurity incident” it was unable to deliver groceries.

Online orders represent about 10 per cent of sales for Albert Heijn.

Physical stores remained open and Dutch news agency ​ANP reported ​that rivals had noted an influx of delivery ​orders.

Ahold Delhaize said there was ​no reason to see a link between the incidents in France and its supermarkets.

Ahold is the fourth-largest grocery retailer in the US, where websites for its Stop & Shop, Giant, Hannaford and Food Lion stores all had notices saying “site temporarily down”.

with DPA

Australians largely aren’t aware of what brings migrants to the country, as new arrivals say they feel they are making a large contribution to the economy without recognition.

Findings from the Liberal-aligned Centre for Independent Studies echoed reports historic migration is broadly viewed as a positive but the current intake is having a negative impact on Australian society.

But Australian-born citizens and first generation migrants each feel multiculturalism is being held back by the other side, according to report author Parnell Palme McGuinness.

“New Australians have a strong sense of contribution to Australia, as well as an anxiety that they are not fully embraced,” Ms McGuinness said.

First-generation migrants reported the main reason people come to Australia was for better job opportunities or for cultural and environmental factors.

Near the bottom of the list of motives were escaping conflict and welfare access, two reasons ranked highly by Australian-born citizens.

The report comes as the government, coalition and One Nation each announced policies to slash migration and rethink the role of international students and tradespeople in the economy.

Construction groups have used the debate to advocate for changes to skilled migration settings to better connect skilled migration to address chronic workforce shortages.

Tom Hartley, the owner of a local glass business in Adelaide, said he had seen a shortage of glaziers emerge in the past 20 years, forcing him to wind back services.

“Our applicants (are) almost down to zero,” Mr Hartley told AAP.

“Our last Seek ad locally, I think we had two applications, and they were people that had trade experience but were not qualified.”

The dearth of suitable candidates has forced Mr Hartley and hundreds of other trade reliant companies to look overseas with the support of a state-based industry program.

Master Builders South Australia has sourced fully qualified tradespeople from overseas to link directly to employers through its Build Connect program.

Program lead Melinda Maher said when politicians talk about skilled migration in construction, it must require a trade qualification.

“A Certificate III in a shed in the Philippines …that’s not skilled migration. That is semi-skilled,” Ms Maher told AAP.

Delays in processing visas, however, remain a sticking point despite a recent ministerial direction which brings targeted applications, relating to sectors such as construction, to the top of pile. 

“Employers are screaming for these people. They’ve been interviewed, screened, they’ve been job offered, and they’re still waiting on visas at the Home Affairs level,” Ms Maher said.

US academics Robert Hall and Michael Woodford have won the 2026 Nobel economics prize for “for microeconomic ‌foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation”, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences says.

The prestigious award, ‌formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is the ‌final prize to be given out this year and is worth 12 million Swedish crowns ($A1.7 million).

The two laureates developed new macroeconomic models that improved our ability to implement effective stabilisation policy, enabling well-timed fiscal and monetary policy measures that can reduce the intensity of damaging swings in the ‌economy.

“The laureates’ ‌work has provided ⁠us with a stable theoretical foundation for the models that ​are now used by central banks and governments around the world,” John Hassler, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said in a statement.

“With them, we are better equipped to deal with shocks in the economy, such as energy crises or sudden changes in how much households ⁠consume.”

The economics prize, first awarded in 1969, is ‌not ​one of the original five awards created in the 1895 will of industrialist and dynamite inventor ​Alfred Nobel, but ‌was established by Sweden’s central bank.

The majority of previous laureates have been from the ​United States. Only three women have ever won, most recently Claudia Goldin in 2023 for work on how gender has affected pay and employment over time in the United ​States.

Analysis ​by the Institute for Scientific ​Information, part of Clarivate, had picked researchers working on ‌monetary policy, the economics of information technology and evolutionary economic theory as possible recipients.

Last year’s winners, Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, won for work on “creative destruction” and how new technology and production methods can boost growth and living standards.

The Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and ​peace were announced last week.

Child safety officials were warned a diabetic girl faced an extreme risk of death if returned to her science-denying, religious extremist mother, two years before the girl’s preventable death, a coroner has heard.

Eight-year-old Elizabeth Rose Struhs died at her family’s home near Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, after her parents, brother and 11 other members of “the Saints” church group gathered to pray around her.

Her father, Jason Richard Struhs, had stopped administering her insulin shots days earlier.

A coroners inquest started on Monday into the adequacy and appropriateness of the responses by child safety, health and other government agencies prior to Elizabeth’s death on January 7, 2022.

Elizabeth was “minutes from death” when airlifted to Brisbane Children’s Hospital in July 2019 after her mother Kerrie Struhs refused to seek treatment for her ill six-year-old, a pediatrician testified.

The girl was subsequently diagnosed with type-1 diabetes.

The pediatrician, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she had been stonewalled by Queensland’s child protection authority over concerns Elizabeth faced “extreme risk of harm including death” if returned to a mother who rejected medical science.

“Elizabeth was in a comatose state and very near to death,” the pediatrician said.

Elizabeth’s endocrinologist had reported to Child Safety that the mother believed her daughter would be cured of diabetes and would not need insulin to stay alive, the coroner heard.

“It is a life-threatening condition … if the mother continues to deny treatment, she cannot be in Kerrie’s care,” the endocrinologist said.

The mother had been a member of “the Saints” for years and had a history of refusing to seek medical or dental treatment for Elizabeth, the coroner heard.

The pediatrician said Child Safety had not received the endocrinologist’s report but were aware of its contents when they decided to return Elizabeth home.

She said officials were “stuck on” the idea that Elizabeth would also be cared for by her father, who at the time had not joined the cult.

The two medical specialists saw Jason Richard Struhs as “weak” in the face of pressure from the Saints, the pediatrician testified

The safety plan drawn up by Child Safety relied on the then-six-year-old girl identifying herself if she was unwell, the inquest was told.

“It’s not developmentally appropriate”, the pediatrician said.

Jason Struhs agreed to a diabetes treatment plan but by January 2022 had been convinced by his wife and the Saints to stop Elizabeth’s insulin.

Elizabeth rapidly became unwell, was unable to speak and fell into unconsciousness.

She died on a mattress on her living room floor after her parents and 12 other Saints members gathered around her to pray and sing.

The coroner also heard of an earlier opportunity for officials to intervene, after older sister Jayde Struhs triggered the Struhs family’s first contact with child protection services in 2013.

Jayde told her school nurse her parents had become involved in an extreme religion based on the Bible, counsel assisting Simon Hamlyn-Harris said.

A Child Safety manager giving evidence on Monday agreed the then-teenager was concerned for herself and her siblings “about the controlling nature of the religion (and) concerns about things she was required to believe”.

Jayde was at a point where she “wanted to get out”, Mr Hamlyn-Harris said.

But the manager said no harm was identified.

The system had since changed, and staff now relied more on professional judgement than prescriptive guidelines, the coroner heard.

Jayde fled the family home a year later but remained in contact with her younger sister.

Coroner Ainslie Kirkegaard on Monday acknowledged the loss for Jayde and her family was made worse by public scrutiny, including through the inquest.

Elizabeth’s parents are serving 14-year jail terms after they, along with Saints leader Brendan Stevens and 11 others, were found guilty of manslaughter in 2025.

The inquest is due to run for two weeks.