Tag: SB001

Due to Australia’s constitutional arrangements, there is already a complex network of courts to be navigated by parties dealing with family violence and family law issues. Legal responses may require involvement in magistrates’ courts, children’s courts, district and county courts as well as the two possible courts for hearing family ...

According to a 2019 global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services, 66% of the world’s oceans are experiencing detrimental and increasing cumulative impacts from human activities.

Quarantine-free travel is allowed from New Zealand to certain safe travel zones in Australia, as long as travellers haven’t visited a New Zealand COVID hotspot in the preceding fortnight.

Employers wanted to overturn two Federal Court decisions that gave a legal entitlement to annual leave to many long-term leave-deprived employees. Employers wanted a definition of casuals that avoided any possibility of a leave entitlement, and retrospective voiding of any previous entitlement.

The trials underway in the East Kimberley and Goldfields regions of Western Australia, the Ceduna region of South Australia and the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay region in Queensland direct 80% of each welfare payment to a card for use on essentials such as food and clothes, leaving only 20% which ...

Should no further agreement be reached, the UK will leave the EU without a deal. Under the current arrangements, that means Northern Ireland will effectively remain in the EU when it comes to trade in goods while the rest of the UK will leave it.

Turkey’s assertive stance in the region has been raising eyebrows in western capitals for a few years now. Most recently Turkey has been aggressively pursuing the expansion of its maritime boundaries at the expense of Greece and Cyprus through an agreement with one of the warring parties in Libya’s civil ...

With the election of Joe Biden, the US is set to rejoin the Paris Agreement. The country’s commitment, made in 2015, to restrain temperature rises to 2°C as part of an international effort is again endorsed, at least on paper.

Rugby World Cup winners have joined a chorus of voices calling to reduce tackling in the sport in a bid to stop the growing number of brain injuries afflicting many of its former players.

As stock markets around the world struggle through the pandemic, Bitcoin has seen a steady rise in its price. The cryptocurrency is steadily climbing back towards its all time high.

The mystery ailment that has afflicted U.S. embassy staff and CIA officers off and on over the last four years in Cuba, China, Russia and other countries appears to have been caused by high-power microwaves, according to a report released by the National Academies.

The National Science Foundation, which supported Arecibo, implemented a 15% budget cut that year across its Division of Astronomical Sciences. Arecibo was among the first facilities on the chopping block, despite its continued productivity.

Saturday marks the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate agreement – the commitment by almost every country to try to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius.

With the cost of energy generated from wind and solar now less than coal, the share of Australia’s electricity coming from renewables has reached 23%. The federal government projects the share will reach 50% by 2030.

Global emissions are expected to decline by about 7% in 2020 (or 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide) compared to 2019 — an unprecedented drop due to the slowdown in economic activity associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

In early 2020, Airbnb’s management announced that to address the slowing growth in sales, it wanted to scale back ancillary activities and focus on the company’s core strength of mid-range and budget short-term rentals. This was just before COVID-19 stopped the travel and leisure industry in its tracks.

Two people in the United Kingdom have experienced an allergic reaction to the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. This led the UK medicines regulator to issue precautionary advice earlier this week that “people with a significant history of allergic reactions” should not be given this vaccine for now.

When New Zealand digital media giant Stuff stopped using Facebook as an advertising partner in July this year, it joined the ranks of other openly activist brands. But it also showed how brand activism is moving from speaking directly to consumers to companies policing their own supply chains.

When it comes to the Moon, everyone wants the same things. Not in the sense of having shared goals, but in the sense that all players target the same strategic sites – state agencies and the private sector alike.

This year first Victoria, and now NSW, have brought the development of their transmission and generation systems back under their own control.

Even tentative proposals – like an idea supported by unions and the Business Council of Australia to combine fast-track approval of union-negotiated enterprise agreements with greater flexibility in determining their suitability – were shot down in partisan gunfire by more strident business lobbyists.

Our constructions have now – indeed, spookily, just this year – attained the same mass as that of all living organisms on Earth. The human enterprise is growing fast, too, while nature keeps shrinking. The science-fiction scenario of an engineered planet is already here.

The latest Olympic sport added to the 2024 Paris Games is “breaking”, which started as a form of dancing associated with hip hop culture and has morphed into a well-organised competitive sport governed by the World DanceSport Federation.

The long-awaited mandatory code that will force Google and Facebook to pay Australian media companies for news content was finally unveiled yesterday.

K’gari (Fraser Island) has been burning for more than seven weeks and, so far, the fires have razed half of the World Heritage-listed island off the coast of Queensland.

A UK citizen who has been living in France for 36 years has brought a case to the Court of Justice of the European Union that could have profound implications for British people living in European countries after Brexit.

Australian drivers pay fuel excise when they fill up their vehicle with petrol, diesel or liquefied petroleum gas. Zero and low emission vehicle owners currently pay little or no fuel excise but still use our roads.

The BOOT considers whether the workers would be better off overall if a proposed agreement applied rather than the relevant award.

Australia guards its AAA credit rating with care. Successive governments from both sides of politics have framed federal budgets with one eye on the economy and the other on what ratings agencies such as Standard and Poor’s will do.

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has today released new guidelines to reduce health risks from drinking alcohol. Under the new recommendations, healthy adults should drink no more than ten standard drinks a week, and no more than four on any one day.

In 2016, the UK became the first country in the world to formally permit “three-parent babies” using a genetic technique called mitochondrial replacement therapy – replacing unhealthy mitochondria (a part of the cell that provides energy) with healthy ones from a donor.

The places which are visited virtually, through these predominantly static webcams, are varied, numerous and increasingly popular. Wildlife settings, coastal scenes, city centres, zoos, aquariums and countryside are all favourites.

Bolsonaro, who came down with COVID-19 in July, has also criticized face masks. He and his more faithful supporters oppose any suggestion of mandatory coronavirus vaccinations.

The Pacific Ocean is the deepest, largest ocean on Earth, covering about a third of the globe’s surface. An ocean that vast may seem invincible. Yet across its reach – from Antarctica in the south to the Arctic in the north, and from Asia to Australia to the Americas – ...

The emergence of DDoS stressers over the past decade has actually led to an overall reduction in the number of DDoS attacks.

Last weekend, The Age reported on a Victorian government plan, quietly unveiled three months ago, that would revolutionise the collection of the private medical data of every Victorian who has ever used public hospitals or health services.

The coronavirus pandemic provides a model. Australia’s response to COVID-19 was led by a national cabinet and informed by the national and state chief medical and health officers, meeting as the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC).

New Zealand Media Ownership Report shows, there are now more independent news outlets in the market than at any time in the past decade.

The Moderna and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines also appear to be close to gaining approval by regulatory authorities. The vaccines promise billions of people around the world a return to normality as the pandemic is brought to an end.

The European Court of Human Rights finally has the opportunity to take on climate change. And it is taking it seriously, thanks to a group of 8 to 21-year-olds.

Australia’s latest emissions data, released this week, contained one particularly startling, and unjustifiable, fact. Against all odds, in a year when emissions fell in almost every sector, Australia’s export gas industry still managed to do more climate damage.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen urged all Danes to show “samfundssind,” which means to consider the needs of society above your own. In English, it roughly translates to community spirit, civic engagement or civic-mindedness.

When Joe Biden was confirmed as the winner of the US election, it came as a relief to many people in Ukraine. But while a Biden presidency is a welcome development, it’s unlikely to solve Ukraine’s myriad domestic issues – with enduring challenges such as endemic corruption set to continue ...

While some may see cultured meat as unnatural, the biggest meat-lovers are generally the most excited to try it. The technology, therefore, has the potential to substantially reduce demand for conventional meat, possibly far more than plant-based meat.

Putting Americans first was also the stated reason behind the president’s decision to withdraw from trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and focus on bilateral rather than multilateral agreements. Aside from denying American companies the benefits free trade pacts provide, this also has meant the U.S. increasingly sits on the ...

Three years after the bubble that inflated its value from US$5,000 to US$20,000 in less than three months burst in spectacular fashion, plunging more than 80%, the cryptocurrency is again on the verge of a record high.

The maker (or makers) of the curious objects are likely still around, but they’re not talking. In the meantime, the structures call to mind some major oddities and artefacts from the past, all of which gained considerable fame.

In the 19 years since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, federal parliament has introduced 124 separate acts concerning the national intelligence community. On the whole, these acts have enhanced government power, increased secrecy, and scrambled to keep up with a constantly evolving threat environment. The result is one ...

It has been a long time coming, but the UK’s ailing news industry may finally be on the verge of structural change that could help slow, or maybe even reverse, the more than decade-long economic decline of public interest journalism.

How do you know that something you are looking for is not there? Looking for a needle in a haystack is fundamentally easy – however laborious and tedious – if you know it’s definitely there.