The JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) captured this image of the galaxy Centaurus A. MIRI revealed otherwise hidden structures and dust in the galaxy, including looping patterns and filaments. These are evidence of a past collision. The image also shows the galaxy's supermassive black hole, which is actively feeding and luminous. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI), J. Depasquale (STScI), M. Garcia Marin (ESA Office at STScI)
The galaxy Centaurus A is about 11 million light-years away and is the fifth-brightest galaxy in the sky. Because it's so bright, it's been studied extensively by amateur and professional astronomers alike. Also called NGC 5128, it's a starburst galaxy, meaning it's forming stars at a rapid rate.
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Most starburst galaxies are experiencing a merger or have in the recent past. Centaurus A is no exception, and new JWST observations have revealed evidence of a past merger.
Galaxy mergers can take hundreds of millions of years to play out—even longer. At first, two or more galaxies on a collision course interact gravitationally, and a first pass can form long streams of gas and stars called tidal tails or bridges. Friction between the galaxies' stars and dark matter creates drag, and that reduces orbital energy on each pass. The galaxies loop back on each other and collide again, and this process repeats itself.
Eventually, violent relaxation takes hold. This is when the gravitational potential of the dark matter in the galaxies changes, and the orbits of stars change. What was once orderly becomes more random.
All of this change can drive star-forming gas to greater density, triggering rapid star formation, and the result is a starburst galaxy like NGC 5128.
The Rubin Observatory captured this image of merging galaxies in its stunning Cosmic Treasure Chest image. The telltale tidal streams and tails are clear evidence of an ongoing merger. Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA
Near the beginning of a merger, telltale tidal tails make the merger obvious to any observer.
But over time, those obvious visual signs of a merger become obscured.
In visible-light images of NGC 5128, thick dust lanes obscure much of the galaxy's center. Those lanes hold not only dust, but stars and gas, too. Signs of mergers are still there, in the form of bright young star clusters and red, glowing clouds of star-forming hydrogen. But they're not as obvious and aren't definitive signs of a merger.
This visible light image of NGC 5128 was captured with the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. Though the warped shape of the galaxy hints at a past merger, deeper evidence of the merger can't be seen in visible light. Credit: ESO
Only a deeper look beyond visible light can provide definitive proof of a merger so long after its first passes. That's what the JWST did with NGC 5128, capturing images that mark the space telescope's fourth year of observations.
"No single telescope tells the whole story," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, division director of astrophysics at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Discoveries build over time, and new observatories expand on the foundations laid by earlier missions. Webb represents the most powerful step forward yet, opening a window into wavelengths and details never before accessible. This allows astronomers to examine structures and processes that other telescopes could not see."
These images show how NGC 5128 appears to different telescopes in different wavelengths. The ESO's La Silla Observatory captured the visual light image in the upper left. The white box shows what the JWST zoomed in on. The upper right image comes from the JWST's MIRI and NIRCam combined. The bottom image is from only the MIRI. Each image brings different elements into view. Credit: ESO, NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, ESO; Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI)
The JWST's MIRI highlights the unexpected dust formations in Centaurus A. Wispy filaments stretch out on either side of the galaxy, while an odd parallelogram-shaped feature runs across the center. There's also the strange, looping S-shaped feature that's wrapped around the galactic center. Astronomers aren't certain what created it. The galaxy has an active black hole emitting powerful jets that are visible in X-rays. Could they be responsible?
Overall, evidence of a merger has been building for decades. Centaurus A's globular clusters (GC) have a bimodal distribution of metallicities, which can often indicate a merger. One of the populations, the metal-poor one, is about as old as the Milky Way's GCs, while the other is billions of years younger and is metal-rich.
This is a composite image of Centaurus A. Blue shows X-ray light captured by Chandra, orange represents X-rays detected by IXPE, and optical light from the ESO is white and gray. The active black hole is ejected material at near light speed, forming the jet seen in this image. Credit: NASA / MSFC / IXPE / Ehlert et al. / CXC / SAO / ESO / WFI / J.Schmidt
The JWST does more than capture images. It also has a powerful spectrograph, and scientists use that to measure how gas moves around in the galaxy. In Centaurus A, ionized gas is moving rapidly outward, probably driven out by the active SMBH. Nearer the galactic center, warmer molecular hydrogen rotates in a warped disk. Spectroscopic data like this can illuminate a black hole's effect on its galaxy, even though exactly how it all works is not yet clear. Black holes can both trigger star formation and slow it.
While the JWST can't provide answers to all of our questions about galaxies, their mergers and their black holes, the powerful telescope can at least nudge those questions toward answers. With its ability to trace dust and the structures it forms, its ability to measure gas movement, and its ability to resolve millions of individual stars in NGC 5128, it's delivering progress on the scientific questions it was designed and built to address.
The telescope's fourth-anniversary images of Centaurus A are proof of that.
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Galaxy mergers aren't always obvious (2026, July 7)
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A few months ago, I found myself standing in the vinyl record section of a bookstore with my children.
“What even is a record?” one of them asked.
After a quick explanation, another question followed.
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“Why would anyone buy one when you can stream everything?”
I laughed. Then I realized, I wasn't entirely sure how to answer that question.
After all, they weren’t wrong. Streaming gives us access to nearly every song ever recorded. It’s cheaper, faster, more portable, and infinitely more convenient than vinyl. By almost every measure, it is better technology. Which makes the resurgence of vinyl so unexpected.
What struck me wasn’t that my children didn’t know what a record was. It was that they couldn’t imagine why someone would want one.
To them, music is immediate. Infinite. Effortless. The idea of listening to an album from beginning to end seemed almost irrational. This friction between convenience and engagement is exactly what I’ve been wrestling with as AI has become more prevalent in the classroom.
Vinyl records and AI are actually similar technologies. Both seem to provoke a human response to technology: the easier something becomes via technology, the more we begin questioning what was valuable about the underlying use in the first place.
In my own experience with AI, I can’t remember another issue that has prompted so many conversations about what learning is actually for. But as I listen to educators wrestle with these questions, I increasingly hear another one emerging beneath them.
It’s not a question about technology. Rather, it’s a question about learning: What should students still need to do themselves?
I found myself thinking about that question recently while sitting in on rehearsals for our ninth grade capstone presentations.
This capstone project brings together English, science, and global studies and asks students to partner with local nonprofits, investigate real-world challenges, and develop ideas for meaningful action. Their final task is to synthesize everything they’ve learned into a TED-style presentation.
As Director of Innovation at an all-boys middle school outside of Boston, I spend a lot of time thinking about what learning should look like in the age of AI. I work closely with teachers as they design projects, assessments, and learning experiences that ask students to do meaningful work.
As I listened to students rehearse their talks, I was struck by something: Students had access to research, interview notes, statistics, and AI tools capable of generating polished drafts in seconds. Their challenge was deciding what mattered. Which story should they tell? Which evidence was most compelling? Which ideas deserved an audience’s attention?
Watching those students, I found myself feeling unexpectedly hopeful.
The tools sitting on their laptops could summarize articles, generate outlines, and draft paragraphs in seconds. But none of those tools could decide which story deserved to be told. That work still belonged to the students.
As someone whose role in education is focused on the intersection of innovation, learning, and emerging technologies, I expected to leave those rehearsals thinking about technology. Instead, I left thinking about judgment.
I didn’t see technology replacing thinking. I saw technology making a different kind of thinking more important.
For all the anxiety surrounding AI, that moment reminded me that some of the most important work of learning still resists automation.
In Imaginable, futurist Jane McGonigal argues that one of the best ways to prepare for the future is to distinguish between trends and signals. Trends are the large, visible forces reshaping society. Signals are the smaller observations that reveal how people are responding to those forces.
Artificial intelligence is clearly the trend. But the resurgence of vinyl felt like a signal.
The more I thought about it, the less interested I became in whether vinyl sounds better than streaming services.
What interested me was why people were choosing vinyl at all.
Streaming solved the problem of access. It put nearly every song ever recorded in our pockets. By almost every measure, it is the more efficient technology.
And yet, people continue buying records.
Maybe it is because a record asks something of the listener.
You choose an album.
You place the needle.
You stay with it.
The music becomes the activity, not the backdrop to something else.
As technology becomes increasingly good at solving problems for us, I wonder whether we will begin to value experiences that ask something of us in return.
I found myself wondering whether schools were wrestling with a similar tension.
This search for participation over efficiency is the same tension surfacing in our schools. I’ve heard the phrase “cognitive offloading” more in the past year than I have in my entire life.
Not just at conferences or in articles.
I’ve heard it while sitting around tables with teachers trying to make sense of what AI means for learning.
Those conversations have led us to rethink assignments, assessments, and even where some learning takes place. We’ve debated when students should brainstorm with AI, when reflection should happen without it, and which assessments require students to show their thinking in real time.
Not because we’re opposed to AI. Because we’re trying to better understand what learning requires.
At first glance, these decisions seem contradictory. But, in reality, they are not.
When educators ask students to write by hand, discuss an idea face-to-face, wrestle with a difficult text, or work through a problem without immediate assistance, they are often protecting something more than academic integrity.
They are protecting opportunities for students to think.
Learning requires students to do some of the cognitive heavy lifting.
And I can’t help wondering if that’s the signal hidden beneath many of today’s educational debates.
As AI becomes more capable, what humans contribute may matter even more.
The ability to discern.
To judge.
To create.
To remain present long enough to make meaning.
If Jane McGonigal is right that signals reveal how people respond to larger forces, then the resurgence of vinyl may be telling us something about the future of learning.
It’s not about what AI technology can do. Rather, it’s what humans may continue to value alongside it.
None of this is an argument against AI. Quite the opposite.
At my school, we’ve spent the past couple of years exploring AI literacy, assessment, academic integrity, and responsible use. Those conversations matter deeply.
But the conversations that have stayed with me most weren’t really about AI.
They were about learning.
I’ve found myself sitting with teachers and asking questions that feel both surprisingly new and strangely familiar.
Why are we asking students to write?
Why are we asking them to read?
Why are we asking them to discuss, solve, create and reflect?
The more I listen, the more I realize those questions aren't really about technology. They’re about purpose.
AI didn’t create those questions. It simply makes them harder to avoid.
Streaming won the battle for access, but vinyl has survived because it offers something access cannot: participation.
Watching these conversations unfold at my school, I can’t help but wonder whether learning is forcing us to confront a similar distinction.
AI can increasingly provide answers. The question is whether students still need the experience of arriving at them.
My children thought vinyl records were obsolete. In some ways, they were right. Streaming solved the problem, and yet, records returned.
Watching students navigate AI has left me less interested in what technology can do and more interested in what learners still need to do themselves.
The value of vinyl was never the music.
The value of writing was never the essay.
The value of learning may not be the answer.
It may be the experience of arriving at one.
And as AI becomes increasingly capable of producing answers, that experience may become more valuable, not less.
That’s the signal I hear beneath the crackle of a record player. It’s a reminder that in an age of instant digital access and gratification, the most valuable things that will remain are those that ask us to show up.
And this may be one of the most important educational conversations of the next decade. %!s()
David Thomson is a revered British writer on film — a critic, historian and author of more than 40 books — who has been described by the Los Angeles Times as “without doubt, the greatest living film historian”; by the New York Times as “among the most ardent cinephiles of the past half-century… sometimes, his books deliver greater pleasures than the multiplex”; and by The Atlantic as the writer of “the most fun and enthralling prose about the movies since Pauline Kael.”
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Thomson is best known for a giant tome that was first published in 1975 under the title A Biographical Dictionary of the Cinema, and that was updated and reissued five times since, most recently in 2014, as The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. In it, he profiles a wide array of figures from across film history — from household names like Cary Grant and Julia Roberts to behind-the-scenes masters like graphic artist Saul Bass and film editor and sound designer Walter Murch — with not just facts but also opinions, which are often contrarian and always thought-provoking.
The Biographical Dictionary was selected, in a 2023 survey of film industry heavyweights conducted by THR, as one of the 100 greatest film books of all time, and in a 2010 poll of critics and writers coordinated by Sight and Sound as the single best film book of all time. The late film critic Roger Ebert once declared that it “does the best job in the fewest words of capturing the essence of its hundreds of subjects,” and the award-winning author Geoff Dyer has described it as “not only an indispensable book about cinema, but one of the most absurdly ambitious literary achievements of our time.”
Thomson’s latest book, A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies, was published by Simon & Schuster on Tuesday and became an instant bestseller on Amazon. In it, the former Dartmouth College professor dissects the evolution of the medium and provocatively argues that the glorification of anti-heroes on screens big and small over the course of the past century — from Citizen Kane’s Charles Foster Kane to the Corleones of the Godfather films to the most memorable figures of Peak TV, such as The Sopranos’ Tony Soprano and Breaking Bad’s Walter White — helped to pave the way for the presidency of Donald Trump and other assorted global problems.
On this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, the 85-year-old, speaking via Zoom from his home in San Francisco, reflected on how a humiliating childhood stammer sparked a fascination with language and a desire to express his views; how he wound up being asked to write a book for the first time, which became 1967’s Movie Man, and how the first edition of the Biographical Dictionary took shape just a few years later; why, of all his books, he is proudest of a trilogy that he wrote that blended fact and fiction; why, in recent years, his books have tended to focus on the impact of movies on those who watch them; plus much more.
You can listen to the full conversation via the audio player atop this post or any major podcast app; or you can read memorable excerpts, some lightly edited for clarity and/or brevity, below.
On how a humiliating childhood stammer sparked a fascination with language and a desire to express his views…
“The stammer was easily the single most distressing thing about my childhood… I was barely able to say a word, and I felt tremendous embarrassment about that, and a sort of shame… It made me very angry because there were things I wanted to say… I do think that that triggered a love of language and an urge to speak out. And although once upon a time I had dreamed of being an actor, the stammer was bad enough that I internalized speech. I do think that it was a tremendous sort of energy that drove me towards writing.”
On being asked to write a book for the first time, which became 1967’s Movie Man…
“I was in publishing. I had a friend at another publishing house who had talked to me and knew how interested in film I was. And he said, ‘Would you look at a manuscript we’ve just had submitted about film and give us a report on it?’ I gave a report on it and nothing happened. But then about two months later, the same guy called me and said, ‘We were looking at your report and we just got the idea that maybe you could write a book about film.’ I had not dreamed of writing a book before then.”
On the backstory of the Biographical Dictionary…
“The idea was initially to have an encyclopedia, and there would be entries on technical terms, on national cinemas and on leading figures. It was reckoned to be a big book in terms of length, and I went away and started writing it — and I found that I was sort of carried away by writing the biographical entries on people, and I wasn’t doing the other parts of the book. I showed what I had to the publisher and said, ‘I don’t know whether you’ll approve of what I’ve been doing.’ They looked at it and they said, ‘Yes, we do approve. Go on like that.’ So it became a book of biographical sketches of directors, actors, actresses, producers, writers and a few other people… Over the years and six editions, which is what the book has had now, it became recognized as a provocative but useful and stimulating book. And it’s certainly the best-selling book I’ve ever had.”
On why there will not be further editions of the Biographical Dictionary…
“The book, in its latest form, might be twice as long as the first edition. It had grown enormously… It’s over a thousand pages now, and to keep going at that rate, it would be hard to bind and hold in the hand. In other words, there would have to have been two volumes. And I think that alarmed publishers, and for good reason… The book got sort of outdated technologically, as a form. And Knopf, the publisher of the book over here [in the United States], reached a point where they said, ‘We’re not sure it’s economically viable to go on making this book bigger and bigger and bigger, when already most of the people who would be potential buyers for the book have one edition, or maybe two or even three, because they’ve been keeping up.’ So they came to the decision, which sort of pained me at the time, that no, they would not do a seventh edition. That meant that I was able to stop making notes in the way I had been. And I now see, which maybe they saw and didn’t really want to tell me, that I was getting to be a little too old for the labor, which was fairly intense. So I was sort of freed from it, in a way. And there will not be another edition.”
On his trilogy of metafiction — 1985’s Suspects, 1990’s Silver Light and 2023’s Connecticut — of which he is prouder than any of his other books…
“A publisher came to me after the Dictionary appeared and said they loved the format of biographical sketches… and they said, ‘What about a dictionary of characters from films?’ I loved the idea and I thought about it and I said, ‘I think that could be terrific, but I don’t think you can mix genres. I think the whole book would have to be characters from one genre or another.’ And film noir was the obvious one to start with. So I proposed a book that would be, let’s say, a hundred characters from film noir, and I would write a biographical sketch that included what we know about the character from the films they’re in, but would also go back beforehand and then afterwards so that you would tell the story of a character as if the movie was just one part of that life, and that turned into Suspects. It’s now called a metafiction, but as I was doing it it seemed to me that it was fiction, but a kind of film commentary that got at what the films were most about. That was a turning point for me because I discovered, by doing it, a genre that was me: the absolute confusion of fact and fiction. And over the years, I have done two more books, Silver Light, which is the western, and Connecticut, which is the screwball comedy. I do feel that those are the trilogy of books that I would offer for the best I’ve done and probably will ever do.”
On his controversial 2006 book Nicole Kidman…
“It was trying to get at who she is and what she had done, but also about what she meant as an iconic figure. And this book was done a while ago, when she was still a young woman. She’s gone on to a middle-aged career, and obviously she’s going to become an old lady, and she’s interesting enough and smart enough to make those periods as interesting as when she was a very young, very hot, sexy woman. I’m not saying she isn’t sexy still. But I did get a lot of flak for it, and teasing, based upon the idea that I had a great crush on her. I liked her very much. But I don’t think I had a crush on her. Not that I don’t have crushes on people.”
On how screen antiheroes helped to pave the way for the presidency of Donald Trump…
“There is something dreadful about The Godfather. It’s, let us say, one of the best-made films ever. It did hugely well at the box office. It won prizes, deservedly so. But it is about a shaming fantasy. The guys who watch it — and it’s really a guys’ film — want to be in that gang. They find the security and the companionship so attractive and so appealing that they dream of being Corleones. And I think that is a terribly dangerous situation. And I’ve been prompted particularly in this line of thought by the realization that we have a president [Trump] who clearly, in my view, is acting as if he’s in a movie, and it’s like a version of The Godfather — I mean, it is the emperor as a gangster. And I don’t think that process is one that film buffs can simply write off. I think it’s in the nature of the medium.”
On his current feelings about film versus television…
“We’re kidding ourselves if we don’t understand that Ozark or Babylon Berlin or any of those long form series are movies. They’re like old-fashioned serials — you follow them for 40, 50, 60 hours. We found a way of making films that virtually go on forever, and the audience loves them… You can’t think of making a list of the great American movies of the last 30 years without including The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Ozark and several others. They are the great works. They’re beautifully made in the way in which they’re shot and acted and written — very high quality work — and they’re about the real country in a way that the movies simply don’t match these days. A time came where, for me, it became increasingly clear that what was being shown on my television screen was actually more compelling than what was being shown on movie screens, and that it was silly not to take account of that and recognize it. So I have spent more and more time watching those things and writing about them. I think they’re central to the modern experience.”
On how he manages to be such a prolific writer…
“I don’t sleep very much, which is a problem, but it gives me more time. And also, for decades now, I have had issues of depression — manic depression — and nothing treats them better than writing. Composing, for me, is not just composing a sentence or a book, it’s composing myself, my inner-self. So I do it to stay well and to stay alive, really. There’s something profoundly organic about it for me. I have to write. And really, if I don’t write for two days in a row, I get very edgy, and I’m likely to get very depressed.”
Anika Wells says telcos 'least trusted industry' after Telstra outage
6d ago
'You shouldn't make stuff up': Wells dismisses speculation over foreign interference causing Telstra outage
6d ago
Core triple-zero system operational but some welfare checks in progress, Anika Wells says
6d ago
Telstra share price plunges after network outage
6d ago
Nacc watchdog ends complaint investigations into Brereton after his resignation
6d ago
Cross-country rail services suspended after Telstra outage
6d ago
PM says Telstra has indicated outage is not malicious
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Telstra says 90% of mobile network back online after outage
6d ago
Some regional NSW trains also facing disruptions
6d ago
V/Line passengers advised to defer travel
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Triple zero calls affected by Telstra outage, say WA police
6d ago
All regional train services paused in Victoria due to radio network fault
6d ago
Telstra users report widespread mobile network outage
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Albanese to host three Pacific leaders in Brisbane
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Good morning
What we learned today, Wednesday 8 July
Ima Caldwell
We’re going to leave our live coverage there for today, thanks for joining us.
These were the top stories:
Telstra has blamed an issue with a time-keeping server for a major outage in which thousands of mobile customers were unable to make calls or access data on the country’s largest network on Wednesday morning.
The outage threw public transport services across Australia into chaos, with passengers asked to avoid V/Line trains in regional Victoria tomorrow as the network recovers.
The shadow communications minister, Sarah Henderson, defended making two test calls to triple zero today amid the Telstra outage, saying she was “clearly concerned about the well being and safety of Australians”.
Two investigations into complaints made against the former national anti-corruption commissioner, Paul Brereton, have been dropped after its watchdog said it could not “justify such expenditure”.
Officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade say they are providing assistance to an Australian facing legal action in the US, coming after Australian-born Denise Nataly Migliore was arrested over allegedly voting illegally in US elections.
Anthony Albanese announced a $250m diplomacy plan to boost rugby league participation in the Pacific.
A high-profile Melbourne man was called a rapist and punched in the face by his former personal assistant shortly after he raped her at his home, a Victorian court has heard.
The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, began his first visit to Australia in three years, sparking calls for the federal government to raise human rights concerns, while excitement builds within the nation’s Indian diaspora.
Have a nice evening, we’ll see you tomorrow for another day of breaking news.
Josh Taylor
More detail on the cause of the Telstra outage
Telstra’s chief financial officer, Michael Ackland, provided more detail on the cause of this morning’s mobile network outage beyond our earlier understanding it was a time server issue.
He said it was a software fault that caused the GPS node to reset. The GPS node within Telstra tells the rest of the organisation’s systems what the most accurate time is – to the nanosecond.
The reset changed the time and synchronisation, which we know from earlier comments was then passed on to the rest of the Telstra network. If time appears wrong in the network this can cause a number of different problems, including around authentication and how the network ensures maximum speeds of data.
We don’t know yet if this was affected, but Ackland indicated Telstra was looking at its processes that allowed this issue to occur.
He said:
double quotation markThe fact that it occurred means that there is something in our process that we need to fix, and we change, and we are working through that. We’ll update more of that once that investigation is complete.
Read more:
More than 300 welfare checks conducted after triple-zero failures, Telstra CFO says
Ackland said Telstra is confident they have “identified a software defect” as the cause for the mass outage. He confirmed there were more than 300 failed triple-zero calls.
double quotation markSo we did 333 welfare calls today.
We believe we are picking up all of the calls that may have failed or didn’t connect.
Of those, six customers were referred to emergency services, he said.
Asked by a reporter whether Australians could still trust the network, Ackland said:
double quotation markWe let customers down today in their hour of need. There’s nothing that makes that untrue for many of those customers who are in traumatic situations, and we apologise for that deeply. We take this incredibly seriously.
Telstra CFO Michael Ackland speaks to media during a press conference in Melbourne today. Photograph: Reuters
Telstra rules out ‘cyber incident’ as cause of widespread network outage
Telstra’s CFO, MichaelAckland, is speaking in Melbourne. He says that as of 4pm today the telco had “resolved all of the final issues and our network issues are fully resolved”.
double quotation markWe know it will take some time for devices on the network to reconnect correctly …
I encourage customers still facing issues to restart their device …
We are still conducting our investigation into the root cause, but we are confident we have identified a software defect.
I want to be clear, this was not the result of a cyber incident.
We’ll hear more about this soon from our technology reporter, Josh Taylor, on the technicalities.
Passengers asked to avoid V/Line trains tomorrow as major public transport disruption continues
Donna Lu
The effects of today’s Telstra outage are continuing to wreak havoc on the Victorian transport system, with long queues at Melbourne’s Southern Cross station for buses replacing regional V/Line trains.
The queue for coaches to replace trains on the Ballarat-Wendouree line stretches more than 100 metres.
An overhead announcement says:
double quotation markWe are having major difficulty getting road coaches into the station.
We are suggesting all V/Line customers try and make your own way home … with your own transport.
Apologies again for the major disruption.
Another announcement follows:
double quotation markThere will be a two- to three-hour delay for more coaches.
A V/Line spokesperson said in a statement:
double quotation mark
The V/Line network continues to be impacted following the nationwide Telstra telecommunications outage, with passenger train services unable to operate.”
“This includes this evening’s and tomorrow morning’s peak services – with a very limited coach service operating.”
We advise passengers not to travel on V/Line services tomorrow if possible.
We acknowledge this has been inconvenient to many people and thank passengers for their patience as work continues to safely restore services.”
Here are some pics of the peak-hour disruptions:
Peak-hour commuters queueing at Melbourne’s Southern Cross station after delays to V/Line services caused by a Telstra outage. Photograph: Donna Lu/The GuardianV/Line service disruptions could extend to tomorrow morning due to the Telstra outage. Photograph: Donna Lu/The Guardian Photograph: Donna Lu/The Guardian Photograph: Donna Lu/The Guardian
At least 32 calls had difficulty reaching triple zero in Victoria
Triple Zero Victoria(TZV) has been notified by Telstra of 32 calls that experienced difficulty connecting to the Telstra national triple zero emergency service.
A TZV spokesperson confirmed it has continued to receive emergency calls from the community and dispatch events to emergency services agencies.
double quotation markWe have been notified by Telstra of thirty-two calls that experienced difficulty connecting to the Telstra national Triple Zero (000) emergency service.
Victorian Police Communications Liaison Officers located in our communications centres are currently conducting welfare checks with these thirty-two calls as a matter of urgency.
As Telstra has also communicated, we ask the community to not test call 000.
No adverse events have been identified at this time.
A Victoria Police spokesperson confirmed it “is completing more than 20 welfare checks on impacted callers this afternoon”.
double quotation markNo issues have been identified by police so far.
For context, when you call triple zero in Australia, you first speak to a Telstra triple zero emergency call person who transfers the caller to the relevant emergency service in the requested state or territory.
The Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Determination 2019, which is enforced by ACMA, requires telecommunications carriers to ensure that emergency calls are successfully carried from each telecommunications provider to the Emergency Call Person (Telstra).
Once its network is restored, telcos are required to conduct welfare checks on people who have tried calling triple zero during a large network outage if they were unable to connect to triple zero.
Henderson says triple-zero ‘test calls’ did not break the law
Shadow communications minister, Sarah Henderson, defended her two test calls to triple zero today amid Telstra outages, saying she was “clearly concerned about the well being and safety of Australians”.
double quotation markThe bottom line is that I’m doing my job, and I don’t have trust in this government, and I have very low trust in our telecommunications carriers after what we saw last year.
Host Patricia Karvelas said the law is “crystal clear” and asked whether Henderson “knew it was an offence to call triple zero if you weren’t in an emergency”.
double quotation markNo, you haven’t read the criminal code correctly, Patricia, then, because the criminal code provides that someone commits an offence if they call triple zero where they’re making, or intending to make, a hoax call or where they are doing it in a vexatious way.
Reiterating her recently released media statement, Henderson said she was “not going to apologise for doing my job”.
Shadow minister for communications Sarah Henderson. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Is it a federal offence to call triple zero without an emergency?
As we previously reported, the shadow communications minister, Sarah Henderson, was criticised after she admitted to testing triple zero twice.
The host of Afternoon Briefing, Patricia Karvelas, suggested it could be a “federal offence” when speaking to the ABC’s chief digital political correspondent, Clare Armstrong.
474.18 Improper use of emergency call service (1) A person commits an offence if the person:
(a) makes a call to an emergency service number; and
(b) does so with the intention of inducing a false belief that an emergency exists.
Penalty: Imprisonment for 3 years.
(2) A person commits an offence if:
(a) the person makes a call to an emergency service number; and
(b) the person makes the call otherwise than for the purpose of reporting an emergency; and
(c) the call is a vexatious one.
Penalty: Imprisonment for 3 years.
(3) In determining whether a call by a person to an emergency service number is a vexatious one, have regard to:
(a) the content of the call; and
(b) the number, frequency and content of previous calls the person has made to emergency service numbers otherwise than for the purpose of reporting emergencies; and
(c) any other relevant matter.
Shadow communications minister ‘not going to apologise for doing my job’ after testing triple zero twice
The shadow communications minister, Sarah Henderson, says she is “not going to apologise for doing my job” after she tested the triple-zero number herself twice today, amid Telstra outages.
Henderson said she called triple zero twice and when those calls didn’t connect, she notified Telstra.
double quotation mark… it is my job to hold the government and the telecommunications carriers to account on critical services such as the operation of the Triple Zero network.
After learning about the outage, my first concern was for the safety and wellbeing of Australians. I called Triple Zero twice initially, and when these calls did not connect, I immediately notified a senior Telstra representative.
After Optus’s failure to act when first advised of the Triple Zero outage last September, access to information about the operation of the emergency call network is critical.
On behalf of the Coalition, I initiated the Triple Zero Senate inquiry because, like many Australians, I have very little trust in our telecommunications companies and the Albanese government’s management of the emergency call network.
I am not going to apologise for doing my job and it is time Anika Wells focused on doing her job a lot better than she is right now.
Australia falls further behind housing supply target
Australia is more than 112,000 homes behind its target of 1.2m by mid-2029, new building data shows, AAP reports.
The nation’s builders have completed 307,635 homes since the commencement of the national housing accord in the third quarter of 2024, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported on Wednesday.
While the number of homes under construction has been trending steadily higher, the industry remains far below the required rate to meet the target.
Assuming a steady pace of dwelling completions, Australia should have already built 420,000 homes by now.
To catch up by the end date of 30 June 2029, Australia needs to build more than 274,000 homes each year, or about 69,000 each quarter.
A 0.4% fall in dwellings completed in the March quarter to 43,816 won’t help.
Tom McIlroy
Diplomats assisting Australian woman charged over allegedly voting in US elections
Officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade say they are providing assistance to an Australian facing legal action in the US, coming after Australian-born Denise Nataly Migliore was arrested over allegedly voting illegally in US elections.
A Dfat spokesperson told Guardian Australia:
double quotation markThe Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular assistance to an Australian facing legal action in the United States of America. Owing to our privacy obligations we are unable to provide further comment.
Originally from Sydney, Migliore is a resident of Franklinton, Louisiana. She allegedly voted in two elections, in 2022 and 2024, despite being ineligible.
In a statement, the acting assistant secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, Lauren Bis, said the FBI had been involved in the case.
Bis said:
double quotation markOur message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: we will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences, including criminal charges and deportation. Only Americans should be electing American leaders.
Australian woman arrested after allegedly voting in US elections
Tom McIlroy
The US president, Donald Trump, has posted on social media about an Australian woman arrested after allegedly voting illegally in multiple American elections.
Denise Nataly Migliore, 51, was arrested after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigation into allegations she made false statements to register to vote, before casting ballots in 2022 and 2024.
As a lawful permanent resident and not a US citizen, she is not eligible to vote.
“Australian alien arrested after investigation finds she illegally voted in two federal elections,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The ABC reported the Australian was arrested at a federal courthouse in New Orleans on 1 July. Originally from Sydney, Migliore is a resident of Franklinton, Louisiana.
Trump has railed against alleged illegal voting in US elections, despite data showing the practice is vanishingly rare.
Denise Nataly Migliore, an Australian who was arrested in the US over allegations of illegally voting in two US elections. Photograph: US Department of Homeland Security
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, spoke in Brisbane a short time ago where he announced a $250m diplomacy plan to boost rugby league in the Pacific.
Albanese has been meeting with the heads of Tonga, Samoa and Papua New Guinea, prior to heading along to the final match of the NRL’s State of Origin clash this evening (I will be interested to see what colours he is wearing).
He gave a shout-out to the NRL chair, Peter V’landys, describing him a “tyro” who is “absolutely determined that rugby league will make a difference, not just what happens on the field, but importantly, what happens off the field as well”.
double quotation markTonight, we’ll see an example of that. A game that is faster than it’s ever been, a game that brings people in and brings people together … I am delighted to join you as we launch the Pacific Rugby League Partnership. This has been years in the making. This has required hard work and diligence, a partnership between nations, leagues, clubs, and schools, but above all, it’s a partnership between peoples.
A partnership built on the Pacific’s deep shared passion for rugby league. For all of us, more than the sport, a language, a culture, a connection, that is both family and faith. Something that is so important …
This specific partnership will inspire the people of these fantastic nations, and together, of course, we’re all one Pacific family.
Albanese (left) and Samoan prime minister Laʻauli Leuatea Schmidt during a bilateral meeting in Brisbane on Wednesday. Photograph: John Gass/AAP
Penry Buckley
Continued from previous post:
The shadow attorney general, Susan Carter, a member of the committee, went on to defend its work.
She told the ABC:
double quotation markWe spent a lot of time reviewing the submissions that we received and we invited a number of those people to attend and give evidence, but of course, we’re a bit hamstrung at the moment because we can’t compel witnesses to attend, and the times that we had available were unsuitable for those witnesses to attend …
The big question that is unanswered, that Michael Daley glossed completely over is, why did the DPP or the office of the DPP, why was the decision made to leak information about a young Indigenous offender to a radio station?
As previously reported, Dowling has admitted her office pitched the story but denied under oath that she had authorised it.
NSW attorney general says inquiry into top prosecutor ‘won’t be happening’
The NSW attorney general, Michael Daley, says an inquiry into whether the state’s top prosecutor should be removed from office, the recommendation of a controversial inquiry report, “won’t be happening”.
As we reported yesterday, a NSW upper house inquiry voted 4-3 to find that the state’s director of public prosecutions (DPP), Sally Dowling SC, authorised pitching a story to radio station 2GB about a sentencing hearing involving a young Indigenous person, and “falsely denied having done so in her evidence to the committee”.
It recommended Daley establish a formal inquiry to investigate if there are grounds to remove Dowling from office. Dowling has admitted her office pitched the story but denied under oath that she had authorised it.
Daley, who described the report yesterday as a “stitch-up”, told ABC Radio Sydney today the inquiry “won’t be happening”.
double quotation markThey [the committee] were not entitled to find that on the evidence before them. I don’t know what evidence they might have conjured up in their own minds, but if you have a look at the minutes and proceedings and transcripts, not only was there no evidence put before the committee to support a finding like that, they actually ignored the only sworn evidence coming out of the meeting where that media issue was discussed, and that was the evidence of sworn evidence of senior counsel Sally Dowling and of her senior media adviser.
Continued in next post:
Sarah Basford Canales
National Anti-Corruption Commission says there’s ‘work to get on with’ after watchdog drops two investigations into former chief’s conduct
The National Anti-Corruption Commission vows to get on with the job after news this morning its watchdog is dropping two investigations into conduct by the former chief.
In a short statement this afternoon, the commission said it appreciated the Nacc inspector’s decision to cease the investigations and that she found no ongoing “systemic issues to address”.
The acting Nacc commissioner, Kylie Kilgour, said:
double quotation markThe commission respects the Inspector’s oversight role. As acting commissioner, I am committed to maintaining an open and constructive relationship with the Inspector. We have a range of prevention and education activities underway, as well as a number of important investigations. There’s lots of work to get on with.”
What if robots cost more than people? A new study suggests that the low-end jobs we assume will be automated might be too expensive.
… %!s()
VCG via Getty Images
Maybe robots will cost more than people. And just maybe, human jobs will be safe for longer than we think. According to a new report by a construction software company, replacing a single nursing assistant with a humanoid robot runs about $375,100 a year, nearly nine times the $42,200 these workers actually earn. And robots that could replace construction laborers, who make just under $50,000 per year, would cost almost $300,000.
“For years, the assumption was that low-paid, low-skill jobs would be the first to go,” a spokesperson from Planera, the software company that did the report, told me via email. “But the data shows the opposite.”
For a decade, the automation story has had a pretty clear villain and a clear victim. The villain was the robot (or those making them). The victim was the low-wage worker doing repetitive, "unskilled" labor: cashiers, assemblers, care aides … the person we were told would be first against the wall when the machines arrived.
This study says we have it almost exactly backwards. The reason: good robots are not exactly cheap.
The report looks at 30 of the most common jobs in America. It combines federal wage data with actual up-to-date pricing from automation and robotics vendors, then calculates the all-in annual cost of swapping each worker for a machine, including buying and installing the technology, keeping it running and paying the humans you still need to supervise it.
Turns out that the most expensive job to automate isn’t necessarily some high-end, high-tech profession. Rather, it’s a nursing assistant.
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Here’s the data:
Chart of key professions and cost to automate them with robots. Data from Planera; chart by Claude.
John Koetsier
“The workers earning the least tend to be the ones doing the most physically demanding, human-facing work,” the Planera representative told me. "And that turns out to be exactly what machines struggle with most. It is white-collar roles that are now more exposed. Software developers, once considered untouchable, are already feeling it. Major tech companies have been cutting engineering headcount precisely because AI coding tools are getting good enough."
The care premium
Replacing a single nursing assistant with robots would run about $375,100 a year, nearly nine times the $42,200 these workers actually earn. The reason is almost comically simple: full hands-on patient care as good as a skilled and trained human can provide requires humanoid robotics that really don’t exist as commercial products yet.
That’s a common refrain through the study: there’s great technology in the labs, and amazing robots coming, but it’s almost impossible to build direct one-for-one human-level equivalents.
“Building a humanoid robot costs upwards of $200,000 for any humanoid robot that can do anything meaningful,” Ankur Saxena, investment director at TDK Ventures, told me in a yet-to-be-published podcast episode. "Most of the humanoid companies are subsidizing these costs. They are incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars of cost to build a single robot. They’re selling it for 100K or less just to get pilot customers ... it’s not sustainable at scale."
Other jobs have similar issues.
Home health and personal care aides land second, at roughly $282,200 a year to automate against a $35,800 median wage: an 8x premium. Same story: they provide in-home physical care that today’s robotics simply can’t replicate.
Construction laborers rank third, with automation pegged at over $285,000 a year versus a $47,100 wage, roughly six times the cost of just hiring a good old-fashioned meatbag human being. The reality is that no commercial robot – and I’m tracking over 1,000 of them – can handle the full messy range of tasks on an active job site.
General maintenance and repair workers sit right behind construction workers at nearly $287,000, because diagnosing complex faults across wildly different equipment is exactly the kind of general-purpose problem-solving that no single machine does well. And rounding out the top five is teaching assistants, at about $194,300 a year to replace against a $36,800 salary. Beyond the price tag, the job involves child supervision and classroom safety, which are responsibilities no school official is likely to hand off to a machine anytime soon.
Plot twist: humanoid robots are getting cheaper
Today all of the above is largely true. The plot twist, of course, is that technology and innovation don’t stand still. As of this moment, humanoid robots are the very worst they will ever be, and every single day, that statement becomes true all over again.
We see amazing hands, incredible humanoids, plus better and better AI every single week.
Just as importantly, not only is the technology getting better and better on both the hardware and software sides, we’re getting much better at reducing cost. Boston Dynamics’ newest Atlas is almost an order of magnitude simpler than its predecessor. 1X has so verticalized the supply chain for its Neo humanoid robot for the home that Dar Sleeper, head of design and product, told me the company’s costs are incredibly low.
And we haven’t even talked about Chinese manufacturing at scale. Baseline costs continue to shrink as the industry starts a long process of maturation and consolidation.
So there’s a lot of probably-justified hope from investors and entrepreneurs that eventually, robots will be cost-effective at scale. That’s why, according to my data, we’ve seen almost $300 billion in investment in humanoid robots so far. All of those investors believe they’ll get a return on their money.
But there’s no guarantees in life or business.
As Saxena, who has invested in humanoid robot companies, says, “the versatility, the dexterity of the human hand, that’s still unmatched by humanoids.”
The most likely result is that we will get humanoids who will be useful for some jobs, but that we’ll still need humans for many others, including the job of managing the robots, maintaining the robots, and filling the gaps where the robots fail.
Which probably means that the 10 jobs that are safe from automation are safe right now, but likely not forever. At least in their exact current form. %!s()
