Want to get this in your inbox every weekday? Sign up for the Morning Mail here , and finish your day with our Afternoon Update newsletter Good morning. Victorian residents are counting the costs after bushfires over the weekend left one person dead and scores of homes and businesses reduced to smouldering ashes. Nor is the threat over yet as fires continue to burn. Elsewhere, Iran is warning the US not to intervene in its crackdown against protests that have rocked the country as the reported death toll from the demonstrations soars into the hundreds. Adelaide festival turmoil | Three board members have resigned after a controversial decision to dump the Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah from the 2026 writers’ week program – followed by the festival board’s chair, Tracey Whiting, the ABC confirmed overnight . ‘You can’t replace time’ | Harcourt’s wine and beer producers are mourning the loss of their industry’s heart in the Victoria bushfires, after the inferno took their liquid stock from them and, in many cases, their entire businesses and years of hard graft. In the farming town of Yarck, some people faced the inferno – but others lost everything . Health services | GP bulk-billing rates have rebounded following Medicare incentive changes introduced by the government in November, analysis by the online health directory Cleanbill suggests. Cyclone Koji | Residents have been “smashed” by heavy rain and fierce wind gusts after Tropical Cyclone Koji crossed the coast in north Queensland, with more rain on the way. Culture | The arts are underfunded and undervalued – but our future artists are the key to building the social fibre that will sustain a healthy, resilient and successful Australia, Ben Quilty writes. Continue reading...