News

It hasn’t been the start to 2021 many of us wanted. In the past three weeks Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales have dealt with fresh COVID outbreaks, but it’s worth remembering each have faced unique challenges, and tackled them in different ways.

In developing countries, each person produces, on average, six litres of toilet wastewater each day. Based on the number of people who don’t have access to safe sanitation, that equates to nearly 14 billion litres of untreated faecally contaminated wastewater created each day. That’s the same as 5,600 Olympic-sized swimming...

Colourful mining magnate Clive Palmer’s political ambitions appear to be in tatters. But what of his multibillion-dollar legal ambitions?

The global COVID-19 pandemic is intensifying, with more infectious variants of the virus, and more rapid spread, especially in countries such as the US and UK. This deterioration has meant a higher number of infected returnees arriving at New Zealand’s MIQ facilities — with 31 new cases in a recent...

Australian military contingent has completed quarantine formalities and is now working to get schools open and provide other assistance.

Biden’s cabinet choices have clearly been made with the aim of fulfilling his campaign promise of restoring competence and stability to Washington. He has prioritised individuals who have solid experience and credentials, as well as those with whom he has strong working relationships.

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London police seeking a man who conned an elderly woman into paying for a fake Covid jab. Authorities warn there will be more such cases.

A “sudden stratospheric warming” event took place in early January 2021, according to the Met Office, the UK’s national weather service. These events are some of the most extreme of atmospheric phenomena, and I study them as part of my academic research.

The attack on the Capitol exposed, in stark terms, the dangers of disinformation in the digital age. It provides an opportunity to reflect on the extent to which certain elements of America’s free speech tradition may no longer be fit for purpose.

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Though we think of commuting as a modern phenomenon, spending time getting to and from work is as old as humanity. Hunting and gathering (going back 200,000 years), farming (about 10,000 years), and living in cities (about 5,000 years) all involved leaving and returning home.

President Donald Trump is extremely unlikely to capitulate to pressure to resign in the final days of his presidency. And his Cabinet is equally unlikely to force him out by invoking the 25th amendment of the Constitution, despite calls from the Democrats to do so.

Researchers have found large increases in public trust in the Australian and NZ governments as the pandemic raged. But this may wane.

Relative to most Western countries, some of which are losing someone to COVID every 60 seconds, we live in a largely COVID-free oasis. This puts us in an incredibly good position to carefully exit from the COVID crisis and manage a steady return to nationwide normality, without the suffering seen...

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Settlement announced last week includes US$2.2-billion in compensation to the families of crash victims, plus a US$243-million fine.

English elections that were originally meant to take place in May 2020

There has been a surge in global mergers and acquisitions since the second half of 2020 as the strong snap up the weak. Driven by the tech, media, entertainment and telecoms sectors, total deals for the year were worth US$2.9 trillion.

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Greater London is crisscrossed by 14,800km of public roads, each with an average width of 8m. This network accounts for 8% of the metropolitan area, and motorways and A-roads alone cross the Thames and its tributaries at least 400 times.

During the first peak of the coronavirus pandemic, it became apparent that the processing of the standard COVID-19 test using nasal swab samples, while considered a gold standard, was slow, taking over 24 hours to give results in most cases.

Researchers confirm that if we’re outdoors – particularly in green spaces – we’ll have lower levels of depression and anxiety during lockdowns.

GCSE and A-level exams in England have been cancelled, opening the door to a repeat of the confusion that marked the award of grades in 2020.

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Liquid ecstasy valued at almost $700,000 found by Border Force hidden in an air cargo consignment that arrived in Sydney.

England has gone into a tough lockdown to halt spiralling COVID-19 hospitalisations and relieve pressure on its health system. The prime minister, Boris Johnson, has said the new lockdown will last at least seven weeks, but it’s safe to assume that, with many hospitals near capacity, it will stay in...

The year 2020 broke disaster records across the country in destructive and expensive ways. The Atlantic had so many hurricanes, meteorologists ran out of tropical storm names for only the second time. Across the Midwest, extreme storms flattened crops and tore up buildings. Western states repeatedly broke records for their...

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Greater Brisbane’s 72-hour COVID lockdown, which takes effect at 6pm on Friday, has a crucial difference from the months-long lockdown endured by Melbourne earlier this year, or the current restrictions aimed at stamping out Sydney’s COVID clusters.

After the chaos in the US Capitol, stoked largely by rhetoric from President Donald Trump, Twitter has permanently suspended his account, which had 88.7 million followers, citing “risk of further incitement of violence”.

UK think-tank says top bosses are earning about 120 times more than the average British worker. And the gap keeps increasing.

The UK is facing an alarming escalation of the pandemic. Primarily, this seems to be due to a new, even more infectious variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. As of January 5, there are more patients in hospital in the UK than at the peak of the first...

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Queensland company gets taxpayer funding of $1-million to build pilot manufacturing plant for world-first milk-processing technology.

Chinese tech billionaire Jack Ma has allegedly fallen out with the Beijing government. Several recent articles reported that Ma offended the Chinese authorities by delivering a speech in Shanghai in October criticising financial regulation, and that he and his colleagues were called in for questioning.

As much as one billion tonnes of waste could be burned in open and uncontrolled fires around the world each year, according to one estimate – close to half of all the municipal solid waste generated on Earth. But even if the true total is a fraction of that amount,...

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A day after President Donald Trump incited supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer called on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office, saying “This president should not hold office one day longer.”

In cities around the world, temperatures could rise by more than 4℃ by 2100 under a high-emissions climate change scenario, suggests research published this week in Nature Climate Change.

State’s Chief Health Officer warns this variant is 70 percent more infectious than other strains. More restrictions now in place.

In 2018, federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor warned his state counterparts lives were at risk from substandard solar panel installations. An audit of the Clean Energy Regulator by the Australian National Audit Office found there were potentially tens of thousands of badly installed and even unsafe rooftop systems. The regulator...

PM outlines five-phase rollout plan likely to begin in mid-February. Initial recipients to include health workers and aged care residents.

In recent weeks, dozens of pro-democracy activists and politicians in Hong Kong have been arrested for allegedly trying to overthrow the city’s government. Most recently, on January 6, 53 people were detained under the notorious National Security law. These arrests are the latest in a long line of efforts by...

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Zero marginal cost, zero emissions energy is now a reality. Wind and solar are cheaper sources of new electricity than coal in most cases, putting significant pressure on the profitability of the inflexible, ageing coal generators.

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Two Democrats were announced the winners of the run-off elections for Georgia’s two Senate seats, allowing the Democrats to take back control of the chamber from the Republicans.

After weeks of President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about voter fraud and other improprieties costing him the presidential election, Washington erupted in chaos today as his supporters stormed the Capitol during a joint session of Congress to certify the results.

Foreigners in Australia on student visas will be able to work more often in an effort to help farmers find extra temporary workers.