Tag: SB001

In the moment, Scott Morrison’s angry denunciation of the offensive Chinese tweet about alleged Australian war crimes seemed a reasonable response.

Just as writers and artists today are responding to the Anthropocene through climate fiction and eco art, earlier generations chronicled an environmental crisis that presaged humanity’s global impact.

Before most people wake up this Sunday morning, a small space capsule will be dropped off to Earth, landing in Woomera, South Australia. The capsule contains fragments of the surface of a near-Earth-orbit asteroid, Ryugu, collected by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) with the Hayabusa2 spacecraft last year.

Google-owned artificial intelligence company DeepMind demonstrated a deep-learning program called AlphaFold2, which experts are calling a breakthrough toward solving the grand challenge of protein folding.

TikTok, the preferred social media platform of the Gen Z set, is not really about connecting with friends. It’s more about recording the trending dance or fluffy topic of the moment and hoping the algorithm will spread your post to its billions of users.

Climate change is resulting in profound, immediate and worsening health impacts, and no country is immune, a major new report from more than 120 researchers has declared.

The UK has become the first country to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for widespread use. The government has ordered 40 million doses and the first batch of 800,000 doses is expected to be shipped from Belgium – where the vaccine is being made – in the next couple of days.

Jeff Bezos, the world’s wealthiest person, announced on Instagram in November 2020 that he was giving 16 organizations a total of about US$800 million for a wide array of climate-protecting work.

Australians with disability are disproportionately affected by disasters such as fire, floods, cyclones and heatwaves. Yet we rarely hear their perspectives and insights on what’s needed to ensure they’re not left stranded when disaster strikes.

COVID-related travel restrictions and the sudden drop in tourism provided an ideal natural experiment to examine the impact of shifts in the supply of short-term rental accommodation.

Eastern Europe was praised for being exceptional during the first wave of the pandemic. By introducing very strict prevention measures early on, countries in the region had significantly fewer COVID-related deaths than their western European counterparts.

As the diplomatic fallout continues over the digitally altered war crimes tweet sent by China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, earlier this week, it’s important to note this inflammatory and offensive post is not an isolated case.

While COVID-19 has highlighted the value of medical research, it has unfortunately also seriously disrupted it. Lack of funding is driving members of Australia’s once-vibrant virology research community out of the sector, and forcing early-career researchers to turn to fundraising or philanthropy amid intense competition for federal government grants.

This week’s climate emergency declaration by the New Zealand government acknowledges the urgency of the climate crisis and the need to collectively confront it.

China is changing, transitioning from growth driven by the iron-ore hungry expansion of cities and manufacturing to growth driven more by the supply of services.

Several Australian states are going it alone on the the energy transition. The policies adopted by New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and others represent major departures from the existing national approach, and run counter to the neoliberal principles underpinning the current system.

Buttrose, who was appointed by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, strongly defended the ABC in a recent speech, describing it as “one of the lynchpins of our democratic society. It is not designed to make those under scrutiny feel comfortable. It exists to provide checks and balances and hold those in ...

The decision by WorkSafe, a government agency focused on workplace safety, to bring criminal charges against 13 parties in relation to last December’s eruption of Whakaari/White Island heralds a new chapter for volcano scientists in New Zealand.

At the latest meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, states noted with alarm that “preventing conflicts in outer space and preserving outer space for peaceful purposes” is more necessary than ever.

This week’s Newspoll will presumably be the final one for 2020. It gives the Coalition a 51-49% two-party-preferred lead, unchanged from three weeks ago.

What Australians think they can learn from New Zealand, then, depends on the interests and values they stand for — and on the spin they put into retelling the histories of both countries.

Some argue mandatory vaccination can be justified on ethical grounds and recommend penalties for non-compliance – or even payment for compliance. It is clear the Australian government will do whatever it can to encourage widespread vaccination. It anticipates the vaccine will be rolled out in Australia from March 2021.

The federal government has been applying somewhat of a forensic lens to the question of free speech in Australian universities for several years. Most recently, as part of a package of deals cobbled together in September to get the Job-Ready Graduates Package through parliament, One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson convinced ...

JobSeeker has fallen relative to other payments because while the pension and wages have climbed faster than prices, JobSeeker (previously called Newstart) has increased only in line with prices since 1991.

Many older Australians say they are not getting the care and support they need. Families complain of unchecked neglect and abuse. Many aged-care providers are saying the sector’s services are underfunded. Care staff say they are overworked and underpaid. And many older Australians are waiting more than a year to ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted different responses from company CEOs seeking to ensure their businesses survive. Keeping their employees safe has been the first priority, but beyond that, their task has involved understanding the situation, launching countermeasures, and trying to evolve ways of working to ensure their businesses can continue.

There is no doubt the COVID-19 crisis has incurred widespread economic costs. There is understandable concern that stronger measures against the virus, from social distancing to full lockdowns, worsen its impact on economies.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is the major source of some of the minerals used to manufacture components in household appliances, mobile phones, electric vehicles and jewellery.

There’s no universal definition of elimination. As applied to other infectious diseases such as polio and measles, it means a prolonged period of zero local transmission in a country or region. For measles, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is very exacting and demands no community transmission for 36 months.

The periodic table of the elements, principally created by the Russian chemist, Dmitry Mendeleev (1834-1907), celebrated its 150th anniversary last year. It would be hard to overstate its importance as an organising principle in chemistry – all budding chemists become familiar with it from the earliest stages of their education.

Hundreds of people are on trial for incitement, conspiracy, and violence endangering the nation. But the prime minister, Hun Sen, who has been in power since 1985, regularly insists that his tenure has been characterised by peace, stability and development – despite internal and external threats. He is the world’s ...

The Boeing 737 Max began flying commercially in May 2017 but has been grounded for over a year and a half following two crashes within five months.

Washington’s first Thanksgiving as a president may have not been tremendously successful, given the scarce attendance at the church service.

Morrison has already sought to find common ground with Biden by stressing, when they spoke, their mutual interest in elevating the role of technology in reducing emissions.

Within minutes of news that crew members of the cargo ship Fesco Askold had tested positive for COVID-19, a social media storm broke across Samoa.

The government has had a difficult decision to make between controlling the spread of the virus and limiting the economic damage caused by restrictions. Lift restrictions too soon and you risk escalating infections in a matter of weeks that require the re-imposition of those restrictions.

The UK government is spending an enormous amount on COVID-19 - supporting the health service, helping to relieve the suffering of those who have lost their incomes, and helping businesses keep afloat.

The death of the greatest player in the history of the game of Association Football, Diego Armando Maradona, on 25 November produced an outpouring of grief and nostalgia around the world. He was such an important figure in his native Argentina that the president declared three days of mourning.

US Secretary of State-designate Antony Blinken promises both awkwardness and opportunity for Australia’s Morrison government.

Biomethane technology is no longer on the backburner in Australia after an announcement this week that gas from Sydney’s Malabar wastewater plant will be used to power up to 24,000 homes.

Early in the pandemic, many researchers feared people who contracted COVID could be reinfected very quickly. This was because several early studies showed antibodies seemed to wane after the first few months post-infection.

The South Australian and Victorian governments have announced, and New South Wales is considering, road user charges on electric vehicles. This policy has drawn scorn from environmental advocates and motor vehicle lobbyists who fear it will slow the uptake of less-polluting vehicles.

From the 1980s right through to the global financial crisis, the standard response in Australia and elsewhere to too weak or too strong an economy has been monetary policy — the manipulation of interest rates by a central bank, in our case the Reserve Bank.

From potential new diabetes therapies, to an environmentally friendly sewage treatment system, this year’s Eureka Prizes have acknowledged a diverse group of brilliant minds tackling pressing global problems.

John Kerry helped bring the world into the Paris climate agreement and expanded America’s reputation as a climate leader. That reputation is now in tatters, and President-elect Joe Biden is asking Kerry to rebuild it again – this time as U.S. climate envoy.

As part of his spending review, chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a cut to the UK’s foreign aid budget, which will be reduced from 2021 from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5%.

Election Day delivered a presidential victory for the Democratic Party and narrowed the partisan split in the U.S. House and Senate. But it was nevertheless a victory for Republicans in the battle every decade to draw state and congressional districts that favor their party.

Throughout 2020, there have been vocal and highly visible protests in Thailand against the government of Prayut Chan-o-cha, who led the 2014 coup against the government of Yingluck Shinawatra. He then became the head of the junta that ruled Thailand until 2019.

The Labor party will hold its national conference “virtually”, before Easter next year, Anthony Albanese has announced.

Efforts to reduce emissions have so far only partially decarbonised the electricity generation sector. Reaching net zero will require immense effort to also decarbonise heating, transport, as well as shipping and aviation.