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Social distancing measures and lockdowns have driven people to shop online, leading to shop closures and a boom for online retailers such as Amazon. Before the pandemic, online shopping was a growing trend – and it’s possible that COVID-19 is the tipping point that will change how we shop for...

Extreme cold, a heatwave, a deluge, and another cold snap: the succession of different extremes raises questions about climate variability and climate change.

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Children are keen social learners, developing skills such as sharing, conflict solving and empathy at a rapid pace. These days, many children have already attended parent and toddler groups or nursery before they start school. So even if they have no siblings, their emotional and social cognition has already started...

Experts estimate WA’s recent five-day snap lockdown may have cost $500-million. Given Victoria’s size, its loss will surely be far higher.

The Senate’s decision to acquit former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial may have been a victory for Trump, but it is a clear sign that democracy in the U.S. is in poor health.

Rolling out a vaccine to stop the spread of a global pandemic doesn’t come cheap. Billions of dollars have been spent developing drugs and putting in place a program to get those drugs into people’s arms.

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Police warn that innocent people are being duped into being ‘money mules’ by fake job ads that are too good to be true.

Victorians will again only be allowed to leave their homes for four reasons: to shop for necessary goods, to provide care, for essential work or permitted education, or for exercise. The controversial five-kilometre radius is also back in place, while masks will be compulsory everywhere outside the home.

Late-stage vaccine trials in tens of thousands of people only last for a defined period of time, typically 12 months. Vaccine manufacturers present data on vaccine safety (and efficacy) for that time-frame to regulatory bodies. Safety data is rigorously assessed before a vaccine is approved for use.

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A well-designed climate law can achieve two main goals: ensuring Australia meets and beats its emissions targets, and that those targets are consistent with the best available science.

Industrial relations is one of the most complicated policy areas, so the heat and claims and counter claims are particularly confusing for workers and employers, many of them already hit for six by the pandemic.

In the UK, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has similarly warned that “temperature screening products, some of which make direct claims to screen for COVID-19, are not a reliable way to detect if people have the virus”. The Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health also noted...

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Fund is open to all media organisations, big and small, with the aim of keeping sustainable public-interest journalism alive and viable.

But it has tightened its entry requirements, with new arrivals from Victoria required to self-isolate at home for five days.

Any feasible pathway out of the climate crisis involves dramatically lowering our consumption of fossil fuels. It’s astonishing, then, that many countries not only don’t reflect the damage caused by burning fossil fuels in the taxes imposed on them, but actively subsidise their extraction and use.

The world’s most forbidding deserts could be the best places on Earth for harvesting solar power – the most abundant and clean source of energy we have.

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After Tesla announced it has invested US$1.5 billion in bitcoin and expects to start accepting the cryptocurrency as a payment for its electric vehicles in the near future, the bitcoin price went soaring.

We discovered a dramatic increase in trust in government. Indeed, 80% of Australians and 83% of New Zealanders agreed government was generally trustworthy, up from 49% and 53% respectively in 2009.

‘Ask them for proof,’ Consumer Commissioner urges as study finds many Aussie and global businesses are making false eco-friendly claims.

Most Australians know all too well how precious water is. Sydney just experienced a severe drought, while towns across New South Wales and Queensland ran out of drinking water. Under climate change, the situation will become more dire, and more common.

Foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, has confirmed that Australia’s ambassador has been allowed to speak with Professor Sean Turnell.

Researchers around the world have built dozens of detectors in hopes of discovering dark matter. As a graduate student, I helped design and operate one of these detectors, aptly named HAYSTAC. But despite decades of experimental effort, scientists have yet to identify the dark matter particle.

The government’s Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia’s Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill presently before parliament was drafted at the end of a six-month consultative process that brought together employer and employee representatives to chart what the prime minister hoped would be “a practical reform agenda, a job making agenda”.

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To date Chile has ordered close to 90 million vaccine doses – enough to fully vaccinate its population of 19.2 million people twice. It’s set to receive vaccines from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sinovac and Johnson & Johnson as well as from the global vaccine-supply programme, Covax.

Australian governments acted to protect homeless people from COVID-19 in 2020 on an even larger scale than previously thought. In the first six months of the pandemic, the four states that launched emergency programs housed more than 40,000 rough sleepers and others.

Exxonmobil’s oil refinery at Altona in Melbourne is to close with the loss of around 350 jobs. BP’s refinery in WA closes this year.

A recent report by audit and consultancy firm PwC predicts that the impact of COVID-19 will lead London to see its first population decline in decades. Is this set to be a blip, quickly reversed – or a turning point which will mark the start of long-term population decline in...

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Rising infections from quarantine hotel at Melbourne Airport worry SA health authorities, who have banned travellers from the Victorian capital.

The House passed a single article of impeachment against Trump, for “incitement of insurrection”, the charge now being considered by the Senate. There is no standard process for an impeachment trial. The guidelines for the trial are agreed by senators to reflect the particular circumstances.

Trillions of barely visible pieces of plastic are floating in the world’s oceans, from surface waters to the deep seas. These particles, known as microplastics, typically form when larger plastic objects such as shopping bags and food containers break down.

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Alcohol has been ranked as the most harmful drug to Australian communities, and the greatest harm of all comes from heavy drinking. In Australia an estimated three-quarters of all alcohol is consumed by the top 20% of its heaviest drinkers, a group that the alcohol industry depends on and actively...

Anthony Albanese will risk a backlash from employers when he releases an industrial relations policy promising a Labor government would substantially increase the legal rights and protections for Australians in insecure work.

Disaster assistance for coastal shires hit by flooding. Resources sector contributes funds for people who lost homes in bushfires.

Roads, railways, mines and dams have disrupted the well-worn trails that reindeer follow each year, particularly across northern Europe.

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Could it be a plea for more pork on the menu? Did a short-sighted tradie put it on the wrong roof? An Adelaide restaurateur is puzzled.

One major consequence is that UK financial institutions must trade euro-denominated shares and bonds from within the euro-bloc. Some temporary measures are in place to keep trades moving, such as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority allowing UK companies to trade EU derivatives until June, but this business will also probably...

Officials in Halmstad municipality, Sweden, recently forced a teacher to remove their mask and prohibited the use of masks and all forms of PPE in schools.

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A university could not close a language program involving a nationally strategic language without government approval. This condition was important symbolically as well as practically. It emphasised to universities the importance of commitment to Asian languages.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison might be warming to the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, but federal Nationals leader Michael McCormack has thrown a spanner in the works by suggesting agriculture be excluded from the target.

Ai Group concerned the post-lockdown economic lift may be more of a short-term policy-led bounce than an enduring revival.