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The federal government’s COVID vaccine rollout is due to start in late February with a target of vaccinating all Australian adults by October. Vaccinating some 20 million adult Australians with two doses each in around eight months is an immense logistical challenge.

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Bitcoin is based on the fact it is artificially scarce. A hard cap on “minting” new coins means there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin in existence. And unlike national currencies such as the Australian dollar, the rate of release for new Bitcoin is slowing down over time.

Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny was today sentenced to two years, eight months in a prison colony for violating the probation terms of a suspended sentence on a 2014 conviction, which he claims was politically motivated.

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In the 1990s and 2000s, China’s public diplomacy stressed concepts such as “peaceful rise”, to emphasise that it favoured economic cooperation with the outside world over any political and ideological differences.

Good news about COVID vaccines has been in abundance in the past few weeks. In the meantime, though, the pandemic continues to accelerate globally, with Europe accounting for 34% of new cases worldwide. One country in particular has been hit hard: Portugal.

Reward of $250,000 being offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case of Steven Goldsmith, who vanished in Brisbane in July 2000.

Last week, a German vaccine advisory committee recommended the AstraZeneca vaccine only be used in 18-64-year-olds, citing a lack of data on the efficacy of the vaccine in people over 65.

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Rita Ora’s hotel quarantine ahead of her involvement in The Voice is unfair to the nearly 40,000 Aussies still stranded overseas, says Labor.

In Melbourne back in May, several more hotel staff and security guards tested positive at two hotels over the ensuing days, triggering Victoria’s severe second coronavirus wave. The hotel quarantine system was cancelled on June 30 as the number of new cases accelerated, peaking at almost 700 per day.

Robots have come a long way since our first clumsy forays into artificial movement many decades ago. Today, companies such as Boston Dynamics produce ultra-efficient robots which load trucks, build pallets, and move boxes around factories, undertaking tasks you might think only humans could perform.

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It’s already happened in the bond market. In several bond auctions, lenders to Australian government have agreed to pay for having the government accept their money.

Amid mounting stories of people desperate to return for financial, family and personal reasons, Australians are stuck because of government caps on international arrivals, transit-country restrictions and expensive and cancelled flights.

Number of jobs advertised continues to increase and listed vacancies are now at levels not seen since April 2019.

Perth and the Peel and South West regions of Western Australia will go into a five-day hard lockdown from 6pm local time on Sunday, after one new local COVID-19 case was detected in the state.

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ACTU says ordinary Australians can’s help the economic recovery at the same time that Government is cutting JobKeeper and JobSeeker programs.

The unemployment rate is now expected to remain near its present 6.6% throughout 2021, instead of soaring to almost 10% as expected six months ago.

Political parties in Australia collectively received $168 million in donations for the financial year 2019-20. Today, Australians finally get to see where some of the money came from with the release of data from the Australian Electoral Commission.

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Just before the newly elected members of Myanmar’s parliament were due to be sworn in today, the military detained the country’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi; the president, Win Myint; and other key figures from the elected ruling party, the National League for Democracy.

The first Newspoll of 2021 has the major parties tied at 50-50 on two-party preferred, a one-point gain for Labor since the final 2020 Newspoll in late November. The poll was conducted January 27-30 from a sample of 1,512 people.

In May 2020, the international mining giant Rio Tinto made a calculated and informed decision to drill 382 blast holes in an area of its Brockman 4 mining lease that encompassed the ancient rock shelter formations at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.

Researchers confirm that the pandemic has escalated psychological distress – including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress.

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Tourism Australia is spending $5-million on a marketing push to encourage people to holiday locally while international restrictions remain.

It seems it doesn’t take much of an economic recovery before people start pressuring policymakers to pull back the very policies that have contributed to the recovery.

That protest against a creatively bankrupt mainstream pop media became a case study in the power of an online crowd with a strong narrative. It finds echoes today in a very different arena: the current attack on Wall Street hedge funds by retail traders via the Reddit forum r/WallStreetBets.

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The past few days have seen a watershed in the world of retail. Online-only fashion company Boohoo is on a spending spree, buying cash-strapped “bricks and mortar” brands that were previously staples of the high street. Barely out of infancy, Boohoo snapped up Debenhams a few days ago and is...

In factories and industrial estates across the world, exceptional efforts are being made to ensure hospitals have ventilators, and logistics firms have freezers and refrigerators. Behind the scenes, this manufacturing drive has been taking place on an epic, unprecedented scale. In some places, it’s also been horrendously inefficient.

A state Consumer Commissioner is playing Cupid ahead of the Day of Love with some sound advice for the love-struck and unwary.

Earlier this month, ten cubesats – small, cheap satellites weighing about a kilogram each – were sent into orbit around Earth. With almost 1,500 of these small satellites launched so far, adding another ten might seem trivial. But this was no ordinary launch.

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Not since the end of World War Two has the mighty US economy experienced such a significant contraction. Covid is, of course, the culprit.

Despite a recent best-in-the-world ranking for its handling of COVID-19, New Zealand remains at risk as the pandemic intensifies globally. With more infectious variants of the virus emerging, there are many persisting concerns.

Two slippery and elusive phantoms seem to be escaping UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative government. The first is the fiendishly viral and deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

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For almost 20 years, Australia ranked in the top 10 (least corrupt) countries. In 2012, Australia ranked 7th with a score of 85. By 2018, it had fallen to 13th with a score of 77. In the latest 2020 rankings, it has also scored 77.

On January 13 the Australian Financial Review reported Google had removed some Australian news content from its search results for some local users.

Permafrost – frozen soil in the far north – is thawing, releasing greenhouse gases and long-lost microbes. But one thing that scientists have not studied extensively is whether permafrost contains certain kinds of particles that could affect clouds and weather.

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Local travellers also don’t want experiences that feel ‘too touristy’, says study aimed at helping industry adjust to lack of foreign visitors.

Union body believes government inaction, neglect of staff and the potential of offshoring maintenance jobs could lead to compromised safety.

President Biden has proposed ambitious goals for curbing climate change and investing in a cleaner U.S. economy. One critical sector is transportation, which generates 28% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions – more than either electric power production or industry.

The Productivity Commission yesterday released the health section of its annual Report on Government Services, bringing together a range of data on hospitals, primary care, ambulance services and mental health care in Australia.

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