Tag: SB001

China has been the only country to land on the Moon for over 40 years – since the Soviet Luna programme.

US President Donald Trump’s time in the White House is coming to an end. But, as has become obvious over the past few weeks, he is unlikely to deliver a gracious concession speech.

In September, Australian judge James Spigelman resigned from Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal on the basis of his doubts about the territory’s now infamous security law, which was adopted directly by Beijing in June.

On November 9, Pfizer announced the interim results of its candidate vaccine, showing it to be “more than 90% effective” in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in late-stage human trials. The news was greeted with joy.

The Victorian government plans a pilot scheme for up to five days sick and carer’s pay, at the national minimum wage, for casuals or insecure workers in priority industries.

It’s no secret the trail of data we leave online can reveal intimate details about our lives. And there are myriad people whose job it is to collect and sift through this, often with a goal to engage in targeted advertising.

During the recent American elections, the most eye-catching graphics were were the individual county tallies.

Australian governments have always wanted thriving regional cities, but policy innovations with this goal in mind have a bad history. Planned well, regional cities have huge potential to generate national economic growth while improving livability and sustainable development.

As is typical for a “next-generation” launch, both consoles sport significant boosts to computing power, support 4K graphics and offer faster performance and loading times. But unlike previous launches, they present starkly different visions for the future of video gaming.

The pandemic has seriously altered how we work. According to statistics published by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in September 2020, US$35 trillion (£26 trillion) has been lost globally in labour income. There has also been an estimated loss of 17% of working hours worldwide since 2019, with young people ...

It’s difficult to put into words how hard COVID-19 is hitting rural America’s hospitals. North Dakota has so many cases, it’s allowing asymptomatic COVID-19-positive nurses to continue caring for patients to keep the hospitals staffed. Iowa and South Dakota have teetered on the edge of running out of hospital capacity.

A total of 39 people – Afghan non-combatants or prisoners of war – were killed, and another two cruelly treated. Some 19 Australians will be referred on for criminal investigation and likely or possible prosecution.

For three years, between 2015 and early 2018, there were popular protests across Ethiopia, but particularly in the country’s two largest regions – Oromia and Amhara.

Some economists and others, including President Donald Trump and his Federal Reserve Board of Governors nominee Judy Shelton, favor a return to the gold standard because it would impose new rules and “discipline” on a central bank they view as too powerful and whose actions they consider flawed.

Leaders at the BRICS summit will have been well aware that the big story of the G20 will be the coronavirus pandemic and efforts around the world to develop effective vaccines. While the recent vaccine breakthroughs in the US and Europe will be of great interest, BRICS countries – notably ...

Douglas Stuart’s debut novel Shuggie Bain has won the 52nd Booker Prize. The ceremony, normally a glitzy affair with long speeches, readings from shortlisted books and a lavish dinner, was held in a relatively empty Roundhouse Theatre.

There are now two COVID-19 vaccines that, at least according to preliminary reports, appear to be 94.5% and 95% effective. Both were developed in a record-breaking 11 months or so.

New Zealand is in an economic recession and the government is trying to spend its way through it with direct investment to boost the economy and jobs.

The state of Michigan, and the United States as a whole, may face a political crisis brought on by President Donald Trump’s continuing efforts to undo the 2020 election results.

The idea of testing sewage to track the presence of a virus is not new. Scientists in Israel used it to monitor a polio outbreak in 2013.

The review dispenses with the argument that the goal of a retirement income system should be “aspirational”, or to provide people with higher income in retirement than they had in their working lives.

The UK government has just published a ten-point plan for getting to net zero emissions, while the election of Joe Biden heralds a welcome change in the direction of US climate policy.

Early results from COVID-19 vaccine trials are starting to emerge, and scientists have received the first reports from three independent studies with optimism because protection against the coronavirus is possible.

As of late summer, governments around the world had pledged US$12.2 trillion of relief in response to the coronavirus pandemic. That’s around 15% of global GDP, three times larger than government spending put forward during and after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and enough for every adult in the world ...

On Nov. 17, Trump also fired the cybersecurity director at the Department of Homeland Security, who had rejected the president’s claims of election fraud. Trump is reportedly weighing the additional termination of CIA director Gina Haspel as part of a late-term purge.

The UK government closed down entire sectors of the economy, and without support there would have been a more immediate and painful rise in unemployment. This policy aimed to protect jobs as the UK went into lockdown in March.

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall today announced a six-day “circuit breaker” lockdown to try and snuff out the state’s COVID outbreak.

China’s signature foreign policy, the Belt and Road initiative, has garnered much attention and controversy. Many have voiced fears about how the huge infrastructure project might expand China’s military and political influence across the world.

Chinese startup car manufacturer NIO is a relatively young electric vehicle (EV) company from Shanghai. Founded in 2014 by serial entrepreneur William Li, it is one of a number of Chinese companies racing to become a leader in the design and manufacture of EVs.

Greenland is the largest island in the world and on it rests the largest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere. If all that ice melted, the sea would rise by more than 7 metres.

Morrison’s visit was presaged by ministerial visits to Tokyo last month. Foreign Minister Marise Payne came for the second foreign ministers’ summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between Japan, the United States, Australia and India.

The Victorian government has announced the big social housing investment for which housing advocates, industry groups, academics and social service providers have been clamouring for decades.

Last week San Francisco became the latest city to ban natural gas in new buildings. The legislation will see all new construction, other than restaurants, use electric power only from June 2021, to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Not long after Pfizer and BioNTech announced in a press release that their COVID-19 vaccine candidate has over 90% efficacy, British politicians began discussing an imminent roll-out – before Christmas, according to health minister Matt Hancock.

Globally, more than 50,000 merchant ships ship about 11 billion tonnes of goods a year. In 2019 they covered nearly 60 trillion tonne-miles, which refers to transporting one tonne of goods over a nautical mile.

Hong Kong has a parliament without the language of opposition. The National Security Law forbids dissent and is stifling the idea of democracy in the territory.

Peru is in deep crisis. The week-long regime of interim president Manuel Merino has been brought crashing down in the face of mass protests by tens of thousands of angry protesters.

The giant Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership between Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and the ten members of ASEAN (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) was signed online on Sunday, November 15.

Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential election raises a perennial question about what Rupert Murdoch does when the candidate he has opposed wins.

The ability to make 360-degree panoramas on mobile phones, VR scanning and drone photography are now all reasonably accessible – as evident in their use by commercial real estate platforms in Australia.

In 2019, the average daily commute time for Australian metro workers was 66 minutes. Then COVID happened.

The US has traditionally been the preferred destination for migrants. It normally gets close to half of the skilled migrants who come to OECD countries and around one third of skilled migrants globally.

Joe Biden’s election as US president presents Prime Minister Scott Morrison with the opportunity to reset Australia’s ailing relationship with China. Encouragingly, Biden has signalled his commitment to rebuilding global alliances and restoring a degree of certainty in foreign policy.

Europe is dealing with its “second wave” of COVID-19. And governments seem powerless to stem the tide. Dutch political leaders find it difficult to convince their citizens to wear face masks.

It’s unsurprising that Anthony Albanese is looking over his shoulder, because last term he was sitting on Bill Shorten’s shoulder, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

Frequent communication can help remind people about unseen dangers, making them more likely to prioritise safe behaviour. Energy companies, for example, send summaries of incidents from across the sector to teams, and schedule time for staff to talk about how to prevent something similar happening.

Following the news that Pfizer’s vaccine for COVID-19 is showing signs of 90% efficacy, there’s been a lot of excitement about the end of the pandemic being in sight. Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, has even suggested that life could return to normal ...

The world may have expected the chaos and uncertainty of the US presidential election to end when Joe Biden was declared the winner last weekend. But these are not normal times and Donald Trump is not a conventional president.

Back in 1647, Christmas was banned in the kingdoms of England (which at the time included Wales), Scotland and Ireland and it didn’t work out very well. Following a total ban on everything festive, from decorations to gatherings, rebellions broke out across the country.

Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s now departing chief adviser, has been at the centre of a drive to “harness the power of data and technology” at every turn. Technology has a role to play in modern government, but what Cummings seems intent on fashioning appears something closer to a populist ...