Crypto News: House prices accelerate

Good morning, it's Amy in Melbourne with the Friday edition of Australia Briefing.

Today's must-reads:
• Housing market gains momentum
• Fortescue executive departures
• Superannuation products fail test

Australia's housing-market momentum accelerated in August as demand from a growing population vacuumed up new supply and outweighed the impact of the central bank's aggressive policy tightening campaign. Across the ditch, New Zealand house prices posted their smallest monthly decline this year.

Another female executive is leaving Australian mining giant Fortescue Metals. CFO Christine Morris has left, becoming the second top executive to depart this week after CEO Fiona Hick called time on the top job on Monday.

Signage on the Fortescue Metal Group Ltd. head office in Perth. Photographer: Philip Gostelow/Bloomberg

A UN-backed investor program designed to pressure Australia to accelerate decarbonization plans has signed up 18 new money managers, expanding the group from seven investors to 25 with a now combined $8 trillion assets under management. Newest joiners include Fidelity International and Morgan Stanley Investment Management.

Australia is expected to reduce its forecast for the upcoming wheat harvest as hotter conditions bake growing areas, a blow to buyers such as China which may need more imports after rain damaged its crop.

Qantas Airways has faced pressure from multiple angles this week. After copping a parliamentary grilling over profits, the airline is now being sued by Australia's competition watchdog for allegedly selling seats on thousands of cancelled flights. Meanwhile, US airline stocks are down, as a litany of problems from rising oil costs to flagging domestic-travel demand threaten earnings.

Australia Retirement Trust, the nation's second-largest pension fund, had a socially responsible product fail the annual regulator test this week. The test, designed to weed out under-performing funds and clamp down on excessive fees, also pinged dozens of other funds' products. If any product fails twice in a row, trustees cannot accept new members into that investment option.

Stocks churned at the end of a challenging month, with traders parsing mixed economic data and awaiting a key jobs reading to gauge the outlook for Federal Reserve policy. Bond yields fell. The dollar rose.

Hong Kong is making preparations for a possible direct hit by Super Typhoon Saola, which is shaping up to be the strongest storm to affect the city in at least five years. And as Bloomberg's David Fickling writes, with the wild weather around the globe, it's a good time for property owners to check their insurance policies — what they find may shock them.

China allowed large cities to cut down payments for homebuyers and encouraged lenders to lower rates on existing mortgages in its latest attempts to halt a slide in the country's residential property market. Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping is planning to skip next week's Group of 20 summit in New Delhi, in a move that may aggravate ties with India.

Wildfire smoke has blanketed communities around the world in the past few months, as countries from Canada to Greece grapple with devastating bushfires. We spoke to Indigenous fire practitioners about traditional ways of managing land to help prevent fires as Australia prepares for the next fire season.

And you can sign up for the India Edition newsletter by Menaka Doshi – an insider's guide to the emerging economic powerhouse, and the billionaires and businesses behind its rise, delivered weekly.

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A tiny island in the Caribbean, Anguilla, is known for its coral reefs and white sand beaches. Since the 1990s, however, it's also been in charge of assigning internet addresses that end in .ai to residents and businesses looking to register websites. It was one of hundreds of country-specific domain names and easy to overlook — until recently. Stability.ai, Elon Musk's X.ai and Character.ai are just a few of the hot artificial intelligence startups that have snapped up the .ai domain assigned to the islands and cays that comprise Anguilla. I'm sure that will come up in a quiz somewhere! Have a great weekend.