Bali volcano disrupts flights, plain packaging law wins challenge, and more top news

The news Australian professionals are talking about now, curated by LinkedIn’s editors. Join the conversation in the comments below.

Qantas, Virgin and Air Asia have cancelled 22 flights to and from Bali as a volcano erupts. Flights began being cancelled yesterday evening as Mount Agung became active, spewing volcanic ash that can turn to glass inside airplane engines. Previous explosions from the Balinese volcano have resulted in travel delays lasting days or weeks, causing chaos in airports and accommodation providers in Bali. Denpasar airport said 5000 international passengers had been affected since last night.

Australia’s tobacco plain packaging law has been challenged and upheld at the World Trade Organisation. The law, introduced in 2010, replaces logos and packaging with stark health warnings. Judges rejected the claim it infringed tobacco trademarks and violated intellectual property rights and also rebuffed an argument from Cuba, Honduras, Dominican Republic and Indonesia saying it constituted an illegal barrier to trade. WHO secretariat Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva said plain packaging was a tobacco “endgame”.

David Jones is firing 29 senior staff in a reshuffle. The struggling department store let go 16 staff in its head office with another 15 redundancies expected. The management shakeup comes weeks after the surprise departure of David Jones chief John Dixon amid reports of dwindling sales and tough retail conditions. A spokesman said: “These have been -extremely difficult changes to make but are a necessary step in enhancing our competitiveness and positioning the business for future success.”

Optus has officially given SBS the broadcast rights to all remaining World Cup games. It’s the final step in a saga that began when Optus bought the right to exclusively livestream most World Cup games, but broadcasts were plagued by dropouts and buffering issues. When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stepped in, Optus provided refunds to affected customers and temporarily handed the rights back over to SBS, rumored to be worth $8m.

QBE Insurance Group has stopped an in-car driver monitoring program that used sensors to rate drivers’ safety. The five-year-old old program tracked speed, braking and acceleration which was sent back to the insurer with safe drivers offered reduced premiums. More than 12,000 drivers took part but spokesman Ted Stuckey told Fairfax the world-first trial “was a bet ... it wasn't a bet that didn't pay off – you'll see a lot of what we learned from Insurance Box come back in different ways”.

Idea of the Day: A can-do attitude and a willingness to learn are traits we can all adopt from the best business school graduates, says former executive editor of Fast Company and Bloomberg Businessweek, John A. Byrne.

“They accepted that they didn’t have all the answers or that every deliverable need not be perfect. These leaders understood that they were just starting out and could make mistakes.”

What's your take? Join the conversations on today's stories in the comments.

— Cayla Dengate