News In Brief

Welcome to our ‘News In Brief’ column in which we digest all the news releases for you in no more than five paragraphs.
Below are snippets of all the media releases we received from March 16 till the end of the week.
This article updates throughout the week.

Insurance Loyalty Costs

Perth, March 16: Millions of Australians may be paying too much for private health insurance, with new research from Finder showing 23 per cent of policyholders have not compared their cover in more than 12 months.
The findings come ahead of an average 4.41 per cent premium increase from April 1, 2026, marking the steepest rise since 2017. Finder’s survey of 884 insured respondents also found 27 per cent ranked health insurance among their top three most stressful bills.
According to APRA figures, 45.6 per cent of Australians, or 12.6 million people, had private hospital cover as of December 2025, while 55.3 per cent, or 15.3 million people, had private extras cover.
“Australians are sitting on outdated and uncompetitive policies. The best offers – up to $700 in cashback, airline points, free weeks of coverage – go to new customers.
“Sticking with the same policy might feel easier, but that loyalty often comes with a higher bill.”
Finder’s Taylor Blackburn said failing to review cover could also leave Australians paying for benefits they no longer need or missing out on features better suited to their current circumstances.
“Your circumstances change – your income changes, your health changes, your family changes.
“If your policy hasn’t changed with you, there’s a real chance you’re paying for inclusions you don’t use or missing out on ones you need.”

Australia’s AI Play

Perth, March 19: WinDC has partnered with Armada to roll out Australia’s first network of portable AI factories powered by renewable energy, with the first unit already in the country.
The initiative aims to turn excess clean energy into AI computing capacity by placing modular data centre infrastructure directly at renewable generation sites, instead of relying on the congested national grid. WinDC said Australia wasted 7.2 terawatt-hours of clean energy in 2025, with that figure forecast to exceed 10 terawatt-hours in 2026.
Under the partnership, 11 megawatts of modular data centres will be deployed across renewable energy sites in New South Wales, Western Australia and other parts of the National Energy Market. The units are shipping-container sized, fully relocatable and designed to be deployed in around 90 days, while operating on 100 per cent renewable energy with zero Scope 2 emissions verified to the GPU-hour.
“Australia has the wind, the sun, and the land to be a genuine force in global AI infrastructure. What has been holding us back is the grid. We identified that problem ten years ago working alongside renewable energy providers on the east coast, and this is the solution we built,” said Andrew Sjoquist, Founder and CEO of WinDC.
“The demand for real-time data processing and AI inference is growing faster than centralised infrastructure can support,” said Dan Wright, Co-Founder and CEO of Armada. “This partnership with WinDC enables sovereign AI factories to be built where energy is produced, delivering resilient, scalable compute without waiting on grid expansion in Australia.”
WinDC said the project is designed to help renewable asset owners commercialise curtailed generation, while also supporting Australia’s ambition to build more sovereign AI infrastructure locally. The companies are also pursuing a longer-term plan to shift production to Australia once a defined number of units are deployed in the country.

Refinance Speed Push

Perth, March 19: First Title has integrated specialist mortgage fulfilment provider First Mortgage Services into its brand, bringing loan fulfilment and title insurance together under one offering for the Australian and New Zealand property market.
The company said the move is designed to help homeowners, commercial property buyers, lenders, brokers and legal practitioners complete property transactions faster and more securely, as borrowers continue to face pressure from a higher-for-longer interest rate environment in 2026.
“This is more than a name change. It sets a new benchmark for the Australian and New Zealand property market,” said First Title CEO Patti Eyers. “By bringing together the loan fulfilment strength of First Mortgage Services and the protection of First Title’s APRA-regulated Title Insurance, we are creating an industry-leading offer for homeowners, commercial property buyers, lenders, brokers and legal practitioners that prioritises speed, technology and security.”
First Title said the integrated model is expected to cut refinancing cycle times to days, while streamlining the customer experience across both new loans and refinances. The company said its title insurance also protects against risks including fraud, unapproved building works, zoning issues and boundary disputes.
“In a 2026 economy where household budgets are stretched and housing affordability is worsening, borrowers shouldn’t have to choose between speed and security,” said Eyers.
“Our fusion of technology-led processing with Title Insurance was borne from customer needs.
“By simplifying the customer experience, we’re securely cutting down the usual refinancing cycle times to days. This empowers brokers and lenders to deliver faster financial relief to borrowers seeking better interest rates.
“For lenders, lawyers and brokers involved in residential and commercial property, our unified offering aims to remove transactional hurdles and ease bottlenecks safely, while maximising efficiency across the property fulfilment process through our digitisation capabilities.
“What truly differentiates First Title is our ability to deploy our specialist risk mitigation products upfront to solve transactional challenges that cannot be easily automated or resolved. By addressing these critical friction points first, we then leverage our cutting-edge technology to streamline and accelerate the remaining stages of fulfilment.”

Dell Targets AI ROI

Perth, March 17: Dell Technologies has marked the two-year anniversary of the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA by announcing updates across its AI data platform, infrastructure, and solutions and services portfolio, as it looks to help enterprises move AI from pilot to production at scale. The company said more than 4,000 customers have deployed the Dell AI Factory, with early adopters seeing up to 2.6x ROI within the first year.
Dell said unclear ROI remains one of the biggest barriers to enterprise AI deployment, and argued that successful adoption depends on three key areas: AI-ready data platforms, scalable infrastructure, and solutions and services that speed up time to value. The company said its latest updates are designed to make enterprise data more AI-ready while simplifying deployment and accelerating business outcomes.
Among the announcements, Dell highlighted enhancements to the Dell AI Data Platform with NVIDIA, which supports workloads including retrieval-augmented generation, multimodal search, agentic workflows and large-scale data processing. It also introduced new infrastructure spanning desktop AI development, production AI at scale, enterprise data centre workloads, high-performance networking and emerging quantum-classical computing use cases.
Dell also updated its AI solutions and services portfolio, including modular architecture, knowledge assistant capabilities, ClearML blueprints, agentic AI platform support, and Dell Accelerator Services for Agentic AI. The company said the changes are aimed at reducing deployment complexity, closing skills gaps and helping organisations scale AI more efficiently.

BA Adds Melbourne Route

Perth, March 17: British Airways has announced a major expansion to its winter 2026 network, including two new destinations — Melbourne in Australia and Colombo in Sri Lanka — as it grows its long-haul route network by nine per cent. The airline said the expanded schedule is aimed at giving customers more choice across leisure and long-haul travel.
The new Melbourne service will launch on 9 January 2027 and operate daily from London Heathrow via Kuala Lumpur, while Colombo will begin on 23 October 2026 as a three-times-weekly winter service from London Gatwick. British Airways is also increasing frequencies on several existing routes, including Cape Town, Tokyo Haneda, Barbados, Kingston, San Jose, New Orleans, Baltimore and Houston.
The expansion comes on top of short-term capacity increases introduced in response to the situation in the Middle East. British Airways said it added seven extra return services to Bangkok and Singapore in recent weeks, with more than 3,300 additional seats between 10 and 19 March, while extending cancellations to several Middle East destinations including Amman, Bahrain, Dubai, Tel Aviv and Doha.
British Airways Holidays also reported a rise in demand for alternative holiday destinations, with searches up for locations including Antigua, Barbados, the Maldives, Mauritius, Tenerife and Gran Canaria. The airline said flight searches from the UK to the Caribbean, South West Pacific and South Asia have risen sharply, particularly for short-lead travel over the next two weeks.
Neil Chernoff, British Airways’ Chief Planning and Strategy Officer, said: “We’re delighted to announce sizeable growth to our flying schedule for winter 2026, including two notable new destinations that I’m confident will prove popular with our customers. We’re also increasing services across several high-demand routes around the world. Together, these changes represent a significant investment in our long-haul leisure network, adding even more options and choice for our customers.
“Elsewhere, we know there is short-term demand as a result of the situation in the Middle East. To support customers with alternative routes from popular destinations we have already launched additional flights, and we will continue to monitor customer demand and add flights to our schedule if we’re able to do so.”

Sepsis Risk Soars

Perth, March 18: Women in sub-Saharan Africa are nearly 150 times more likely to die from maternal sepsis than those in Western Europe and North America, according to new research by WaterAid.
The report found around 13,000 women die each year from the condition — about 36 deaths daily — largely due to a lack of clean water, sanitation and hygiene in maternity wards.
Across 10 countries including Nigeria, Rwanda and Zambia, 76% of births take place in unsafe delivery rooms, with many facilities lacking basic cleaning, toilets and handwashing services.
WaterAid says investing in clean water and hygiene could cut maternal infections and deaths by at least half, at a cost of less than $1 per person.

Dell Ships GB300

Perth, March 18: Dell Technologies has announced support for NVIDIA NemoClaw and NVIDIA OpenShell, expanding its partnership with NVIDIA to support the development and deployment of autonomous AI agents.
The company said its Dell Pro Max desktops with GB10 and GB300 are designed to let developers and enterprises build and run long-running autonomous agents locally, with stronger privacy and security controls. Dell said it is the first OEM to ship a desktop powered by the NVIDIA GB300 Grace Blackwell Ultra Desktop Superchip, delivering up to 20 petaFLOPS of FP4 performance and 748GB of coherent memory.
According to Dell, the new systems are aimed at supporting always-on AI workloads, including coding agents and other autonomous tools that can operate over extended periods. The company said NVIDIA OpenShell provides a secure runtime environment, while NemoClaw simplifies deployment of always-on assistants and open-source models.

Demand to Double

Perth, March 18: Global air passenger demand is expected to more than double by 2050, according to new long-term projections released by the International Air Transport Association.
Under IATA’s mid-range scenario, demand is forecast to reach 20.8 trillion revenue passenger kilometres by 2050, up from 9 trillion in 2024, representing a compound annual growth rate of 3.1%. Higher and lower growth scenarios project demand reaching 21.9 trillion and 19.5 trillion RPKs respectively.
The report said growth will be strongest in emerging markets, with Asia Pacific and Africa expected to lead at 3.8% and 3.6% annual growth over 2024 to 2050. Fastest-growing markets include intra-Africa, Africa–Asia Pacific and intra-Asia Pacific routes, while Europe and North America are projected to expand more slowly.
“The outlook for air travel is positive. People want to travel and, under all our modeled scenarios, the demand to fly is expected to more than double by mid-century. That is good news for global economic and social development because aviation growth will catalyze opportunities, including jobs, around the world. Our Long-Term Demand report gives governments, industry, and energy suppliers a robust basis for long term planning. It underscores the need for policy frameworks to support key success enablers such as efficient infrastructure development, market access facilitation, regulatory harmonization, and an effective clean energy transition,” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General.

AI Data Boost

Perth, March 18: Dell Technologies has unveiled new enhancements to its AI Data Platform with NVIDIA, aimed at helping enterprises better manage and activate data for AI applications and autonomous agents.
The company said many organisations face challenges with fragmented and unstructured data, limiting the effectiveness of AI systems. The updated platform is designed to address this by improving data orchestration, governance and performance, enabling businesses to prepare and use data more efficiently.
Dell said the platform delivers significant performance gains, including up to 12 times faster vector indexing, three times faster data processing and quicker response times for AI workloads. New tools such as the Data Orchestration Engine automate the full AI data lifecycle, from discovery to transformation, while maintaining governance controls.
The announcement also includes new storage innovations such as the Dell Lightning File System and Exascale Storage, designed to handle large-scale AI workloads and prevent performance bottlenecks. These systems aim to keep GPUs fully utilised and improve efficiency in data-intensive environments.
Dell said the enhancements form part of its broader AI Factory with NVIDIA initiative, providing enterprises with a scalable foundation to deploy AI solutions and improve returns on investment.

Eckem Wins Approval

Perth, March 18: Eckem Holdings Berhad has secured approval from Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad for its proposed listing on the ACE Market, clearing a key step in its initial public offering plans.
The Malaysian group is involved mainly in the distribution, sales and formulation of specialty industrial chemical products, while also manufacturing and trading rubber-based personal care and lifestyle products. It said the IPO is expected to strengthen its operational infrastructure and support long-term growth.
The offering will comprise 125 million new shares and 62.5 million existing shares, with allocations for the Malaysian public, eligible directors and employees, Bumiputera investors approved by MITI, and selected investors. Proceeds will be used mainly to build a new corporate office, warehouse and laboratory, expand a new rubber products production line, repay borrowings and fund working capital.
Tan Khai Jeik (Jack Tan), Executive Director of Eckem Holdings Berhad, said, “Receiving Bursa Securities’ approval marks an important step in Eckem Holdings’ journey towards becoming a publicly listed company. Since establishment, we have built a solid foundation as a specialty industrial chemical solutions provider. This IPO will allow us to strengthen our operational capabilities, expand our infrastructure and position Eckem Holdings for the next phase of growth.”
M & A Securities Sdn Bhd is acting as principal adviser, sponsor, underwriter and placement agent for the IPO.

Acai Bros Jules Collaboration

Perth, March 19: Acai Bros has partnered with Perth creator Jules Neale to launch a limited-edition smoothie collaboration across all 11 of its stores nationally.
The new Peaches & Cream smoothie, developed with Neale, has been added to the menu for a limited time as part of the brand’s continued focus on flavour-led, wellness-oriented offerings. According to the media release, the launch aligns with Acai Bros’ broader positioning around making functional products more accessible and appealing to customers.
The smoothie combines Remedy Peach Kombucha, peaches, coconut yoghurt, mango nectar and banana, alongside collagen and vanilla protein, delivering 22g of protein.
The collaboration highlights how brands in the health and quick-service sector are increasingly using creator partnerships to support menu innovation, boost customer engagement and create limited-time purchase opportunities.

HCLTech Named World’s Most Ethical Companies

Perth, March 20: HCLTech has been named one of the 2026 World’s Most Ethical Companies® by Ethisphere, marking the third consecutive year the global technology company has received the recognition.
The award highlights HCLTech’s continued focus on ethical business practices, with the company assessed across areas including ethics and compliance, governance, culture, environmental and social impact, and employee training and awareness.
HCLTech employs more than 226,300 people across 60 countries and reported consolidated revenue of US$14.5 billion for the 12 months ending December 2025.

Firefly Expands AI

Perth, March 20: Adobe has expanded its Firefly platform with a public beta release of custom models, allowing creators to train AI on their own images to replicate a specific illustration, character or photographic style.
The company said the feature is designed to help creative professionals and brands maintain visual consistency across campaigns, projects and platforms, with trained models becoming reusable tools inside the Firefly workflow. Adobe added that custom models are private by default.
Firefly now brings together more than 30 AI models from Adobe and third-party partners including Google, OpenAI, Runway and Kling, giving users more options for generating and refining creative work in a single environment.
Adobe also introduced new creative tools including Quick Cut for turning raw footage into a structured first cut, along with expanded image editing features that make it easier to add or remove objects, extend scenes and fine-tune visuals.
In addition, Adobe said it is expanding access to Project Moonlight, its private beta conversational AI interface designed to help users move across Adobe apps and turn natural language instructions into creative workflows.