Tag: SB001

Few industries have suffered more disruption from the internet than the news media. Over two decades or more, journalism has been hit by a “perfect storm” due to the loss of geographical monopolies that national and regional news organisations once enjoyed as well as the emergence of amateur content producers ...

The past week has marked a watershed moment in Russia’s relations with the West — and the US in particular. In two dramatic, televised moments, US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin have changed the dynamics between their countries perhaps irrevocably.

High winds have been blamed for the container ship blocking the narrow strait, which serves as a trade artery that connects the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. But with shipping so heavily reliant on such narrow channels, the potential for these incidents is ever-present.

Chief executive Ian Silk was trying to put into context the $2 million Australian Super threw at the startup news site New Daily throughout 2012 and 2013. He said the $2 million (long gone) wasn’t an investment in the financial sense of the term, but an investment in communications, “a ...

Now, as the COVID vaccines roll out and the sector heads towards a reset, it’s worth applying some fresh thinking to the arts landscape of the future.

The BBC intends to use the drive to get out of London to better reflect the makeup and views of other parts of the UK. Too often England has been treated as the default setting. But just because BBC2’s Newsnight is broadcast from Cardiff or Manchester a handful of times ...

Coal generated less than 2% of Britain’s electricity in 2020, despite being the largest single energy source seven years earlier. While the country’s electricity gets cleaner every year, there’s one sector where this carbon-rich fossil fuel remains difficult to replace: steelmaking.

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has been quite the political football over the past few months, particularly in the EU. There have been concerns about its efficacy, its safety and its availability, which appear to have lowered trust.

This visible manifestation of solar particles entering Earth’s atmosphere is a constant reminder there is more to the Sun than sunlight. But the particles have other effects as well.

The inequities in access to vaccines are stark. By November, wealthy nations accounting for just 14% of the global population had locked in premarket agreements to buy 51% of the first 7.48 billion doses of candidate COVID-19 vaccines.

Looking around, it sometimes seems like COVID-19 restrictions aren’t being adhered to like they were a year ago. In the UK, for example, there have been frequent reports of people not following lockdown rules, with sharp rises in the number of penalties issued to rule-breakers in recent months. But is ...

Football is changing, again. Many fans who have spent years watching their teams, either live in a stadium or on the television, have long had to face the fact that their teams are (more often than not) no longer owned and run locally.

Tinnitus is a common condition, affecting around 17% of all adults. Most people with tinnitus also have hearing loss, suggesting a close link between the two. In fact, tinnitus is often the first warning that, for instance, exposure to loud noise or drugs that are toxic to the ear has ...

On any commonsense interpretation of language, Scott Morrison’s comments in parliament last Thursday deliberately concealed the full truth.

As the current New South Wales flooding highlights, it’s not enough to continue to build cities and towns based on business-as-usual planning principles — especially as these disasters tend to disproportionately affect disadvantaged populations, increasing inequality in Australia.

Last week the federal government prematurely released the national online booking system, which went live before GPs were expecting it. Practices have been swamped with phone calls since, despite many having not yet received any supply of COVID vaccines.

Archaeology already tells us these drowned landscapes played significant roles in human history. Major events such as human migrations across the globe and the invention of maritime technology took place along these now-drowned shorelines.

Former Australian finance minister Mathias Cormann was last week elected Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), after campaigning on a platform with climate action as a central plank.

Danone’s chief executive and chairman, Emmanuel Faber, is to step down after activist shareholders called for his removal. In particular Artisan Partners and Bluebell Capital Partners, which together own less than 6% of the Paris-based food giant, explicit requested the board find a replacement.

Kevin Rhoades, one of the bishops who issued the statement, attempted to clarify things when he said, “There’s no moral need to turn down a vaccine, including the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is morally acceptable to use.” But only hours later, the bishop of Bismarck, North Dakota said the ...

The country has gone from having a large infection rate – including from highly contagious variants of COVID-19 – to having herd immunity within its reach. This, in turn, has allowed it to open up the economy with all the benefits that flow from that.

Australia’s nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, is battling an unfolding COVID crisis. The Morrison government is urgently deploying 8,000 vaccine doses to the nation’s health workers – but poor electricity access means there are serious questions over PNG’s broader vaccine roll-out.

Symptoms of silicosis can include a cough, breathlessness and tiredness. Generally, the more widespread the disease becomes in the lungs, the more trouble a person will have with breathing.

Practitioners saw their role as merely facilitating and supporting academics. They were not fully engaged. These projects were denied the full benefits of practitioners’ expertise complementing academic expertise.

For the fourth time in a row, the liberal-conservative party VVD has won the Dutch general elections. Prime Minister Mark Rutte, one of the longest serving leaders in Europe, will hold on to that status despite a tumultuous year.

The oil price is on a rollercoaster. Having crashed into negative territory just last April, the price of Brent crude climbed all the way to US$70 (£50) earlier in March. It has since slid below US$64. So where is it heading and what are the implications?

If you thought that vaccine hesitancy was the biggest challenge of the pandemic, think again. A new challenge is approaching: supply chain hesitancy. The potential for interruption along vaccine supply lines may lead to pauses in vaccination rollouts that will affect millions of people.

In the lead-up to the new season, however, the focus has not solely been on the footy. Much attention is also being paid to the darker side of the sport: concerns over concussions and the safety of its players.

On Tuesday news broke of the discovery of fresh fragments of a nearly 2,000-year-old scroll in Israel. The fragments were said to come from the evocatively named Cave of Horror, near the western shore of the Dead Sea.

Because AI researchers are competing to win their chosen race, they may overlook safety concerns in order to get ahead of their rivals. But safety enforcement via regulations is undeveloped, and reluctance to regulate AI may actually be justified: it may stifle innovation, reducing the benefits that AI could deliver ...

Thanks in part to the pandemic-induced economic slowdown and the collapse of coal and triumph of wind power over the last decade, a new analysis suggests the UK is halfway to meeting its net zero greenhouse gas emissions target. The ultimate goal of a fully renewable grid will depend on ...

The European Medicines Agency has said that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and effective, and not associated with an increased overall risk of developing blood clots.

After the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, most countries in the world closed their borders – though public health experts initially questioned this strategy for controlling the spread of disease.

Subsidence can threaten flooding in low-lying coastal areas, much more so than rising sea levels, yet scientists are only just realising the global implications of the threat with respect to coastal cities.

In a post-Brexit world the UK is trying to navigate both a changing international security situation and the loss of unfettered access to its largest market. The new Integrated Review aims to provide answers to this problem by turning Britain’s focus more towards Asia and the Pacific Rim for both ...

Biden is the most strongly identified Irish-American in the White House since John F Kennedy, the only other Catholic president. As vice president, Biden made jokes about banning the colour orange from his house (the colour of Northern Irish unionism) and, as he prepared his run for president, he met ...

Methane is a short-lived but powerful greenhouse gas and the second-largest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide. And the majority of human-induced methane emissions comes from livestock.

The federal government should be explicit about what proportion of the population it judges will need to be vaccinated to warrant border reopening. Australians could then measure progress towards that goal.

Easy copying and imitation discourage innovation, because why make the effort if someone else will profit from it? The patent system works by enabling inventors to block unauthorized use of patented technology.

At first glance, prosecuting current or past top officials accused of illegal conduct seems like an obvious decision for a democracy: Everyone should be held accountable and subject to the rule of law.

The COVID vaccine rollout is now underway in Australia and around the world. It’s incredible we’ve been able to develop and produce safe and effective vaccines so quickly — but the current crop of vaccines might not protect us forever.

This week, actors such as Simon Baker, Bryan Brown and Marta Dusseldorp were in Canberra. Their aim was to convince parliament to introduce rules requiring streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+ to spend 20% of their local revenue on new Australian drama, documentary and children’s content.

The Morrison government is gifting 8,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Papua New Guinea, and demanding AstraZeneca and European authorities urgently provide one million doses of Australia’s contracted supplies to help the country deal with its escalating pandemic crisis.

Green hydrogen is being touted as an alternative to fossil fuels in New Zealand. The government has invested NZ$8.4 million to explore its potential and $19.9 million in a hydrogen energy facility.

On March 11 — exactly a year after the World Health Organization declared COVID a pandemic — Australia’s health department secretary Brendan Murphy fronted a Senate select committee to discuss potential delays to the government’s timetable for the vaccine rollout.

Young people were the first in Myanmar to peacefully protest the country’s new military regime. Then came labor unions. In the weeks since a Feb. 1 military coup, Mynamar’s resistance movement has expanded dramatically to include some perhaps unlikely activists: doctors, nurses, bankers, grocers, railway workers and other working professionals ...

On March 11, Beeple, a computer science graduate whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, auctioned a piece of crypto art at Christie’s for US$69 million.

In 1963, inside a covert U.S. military base in northern Greenland, a team of scientists began drilling down through the Greenland ice sheet. Piece by piece, they extracted an ice core 4 inches across and nearly a mile long. At the very end, they pulled up something else – 12 ...

The Quad is being marketed as a constellation of liberal democracies against an illiberal China. But there is a world of difference between how each of the participants view and interact with China.

Even a short walk, an ocean view or a picnic by a river can leave us feeling invigorated and restored. There is now a growing body of evidence establishing the link between such nature encounters and our mental and physical well-being.