Tag: SB001

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Long heatwaves during entrenched drought often trigger fears of bushfire. It’s easy to imagine rolling days of hot, dry weather desiccating leaves, bark and twigs, transforming them into a potent fuel.

The stunning price surge in GameStop shares, driven largely by hyped-up Reddit users with the aid of Elon Musk, has drawn the attention of the US government, led to calls for regulation from the head of the NASDAQ exchange, and even driven up the shares of an Australian mining company ...

Anthony Albanese will attempt a political reset to shore up his leadership with a major frontbench reshuffle, shifting climate and energy spokesman Mark Butler and bringing shadow defence minister Richard Marles into a more frontline portfolio.

The industrial revolution transformed cities, resulting in places of residence and work becoming more distant than ever before. This spatial segregation is still largely embedded in the design of our cities today.

Israel is rolling out a fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccine programme, giving a first dose to 48% of its population of 9 million in five weeks. The country’s aim is to vaccinate 80% of the population by the end of May 2021.

The federal government’s A$23.9 million COVID-19 vaccination information campaign, launched yesterday, aims to reassure the public about vaccine safety and effectiveness. It will also provide information about the vaccine rollout.

The massive campaign organized by India’s farmers against laws to deregulate the agricultural sector has entered its ninth week. The government in New Delhi, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has tried to negotiate a compromise. But its attempts to placate the farmers have thus far failed.

Israeli company StoreDot recently announced it can now mass produce electric vehicle batteries that can be fully charged in just five minutes.

The arrest of MIT engineering professor Gang Chen on Jan. 14 has drawn attention to the role of China in U.S. science and technology system.

When a COVID-19 case was found in Northland last Sunday, Aotearoa’s second-longest period with no detected community case came to an end.

Today the Nationals have an embattled leader and a fractured party. They are tolerated rather than respected by the Liberals. For Scott Morrison they are more problem than asset.

Among the many hard truths exposed by COVID-19 is the huge disparity between the world’s rich and poor. As economies went into freefall, the world’s billionaires increased their already huge fortunes by 27.5%.

Angela Merkel has been one of the most stable and enduring of political forces, both in Europe and on the global stage. During her 16 years as leader, she has won four elections for her conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU), faced the European refugee crisis, the global coronavirus pandemic, the ...

Executives from Google and Facebook have told a Senate committee they are prepared to take drastic action if Australia’s news media bargaining code, which would force the internet giants to pay news publishers for linking to their sites, comes into force.

Leading oat milk brand Oatly and the owner of Flora margarine are spearheading a campaign to overturn new proposed EU rules that could have dire consequences for vegan food companies.

The new variant, called 501Y.V2, has acquired 23 mutations, when compared with the original SARS-CoV-2 virus. Importantly, 20 of the mutations cause amino acids changes and eight are located in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.

On his first day in office President Joe Biden started signing executive orders to reverse Trump administration policies. One sweeping directive calls for stronger action to protect public health and the environment and hold polluters accountable, including those who “disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income communities.”

When nonprofits file for bankruptcy, that generally halts pending litigation while providing more time to pay off creditors. But there is an exception for actions by governments, such as the pending lawsuit the New York attorney general filed in 2020.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has today provisionally approved Australia’s first COVID vaccine, the Pfizer vaccine, paving the way for its rollout to begin in mid-to-late February among high-risk groups.

Energy poverty involves low-income households restricting their energy consumption by avoiding certain activities like showering, spending high proportions of their income on energy and, sometimes, being unable to pay bills.

Australian death records underestimate the association between heat and mortality at least 50-fold and chronic heat stress is also under-reported.

The Deaf Society and Deaf Services reports enrolments in Auslan courses have risen by more than 400% since the pandemic began. They attribute this directly to COVID and the increased visibility of signing on the national stage.

Australia Day used to be an obvious and uncontroversial occasion for brands to endear themselves to Australian consumers. No longer.

School is back for 2021, and some students will get extra help this year. Students who fell behind in their learning during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 will be eligible for extra tutoring in Victoria and New South Wales.

Pandemic measures reduced the overall amount of electricity used by 6% in 2020, to the lowest level since 1983. When you look at usage per person the fall in recent years is even more extreme.

Neonicotinoids, the most commonly used pesticides in the world, were banned in the EU in 2018. More than 99,000 people petitioned the UK government to support the ban amid a wealth of scientific evidence linking this group of chemicals to poor health in bees, from the reduced production of bumblebee ...

The challenge of bringing the world’s best tennis players and support staff, about 1,200 people in all, from COVID-ravaged parts of the world to our almost pandemic-free shores was always going to be a big ask.