Tag: SB001

Experts in cultural preservation worldwide agree that it is impossible to protect all of these places forever. Many would require constant restoration. Others will need defenses like sea walls and flood gates – but those defenses might not be effective for long.

President-elect Joe Biden has announced his transition COVID-19 advisory council, and there are high expectations that its recommendations to combat the pandemic will be backed by science and reflect public health best practices.

A Russian-brokered cease-fire between Armenia and Azerbaijan this week halted fighting over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory, where long-standing hostilities reerupted on Sept. 27.

The news of a potentially viable vaccine for COVID-19 is exciting, but even once we start administering an effective jab it will take a long time to halt the spread of the virus. Many countries are still trying to contain dangerous epidemics, and several have had to implement further economically ...

State of the Climate 2020 puts all these events into the longer-term context of climate change trends and key climate drivers.

COVID continues to ravage societies around the world, and a key issue is how governments can afford to fight it. As economies are disrupted, governments are stepping in to increase their spending to bail out companies, pay the cost of health measures, and subsidise workers’ wages.

Telstra’s plan to split into three entities is the most radical shake-up of Australia’s largest telecommunications company since the Howard government began privatising it in 1997.

The European Union has already announced it is considering a carbon border tax. This would involve a tariff on imports from nations without a price on carbon similar to the EU.

When TV viewing went up overall during the spring lockdown, the greatest growth was in streaming services, while increased viewing for live TV was primarily driven by news consumption.

Donald Trump set bold goals for space exploration during his time in office – from crewed missions to the Moon and Mars to a Space Force.

China’s increasingly belligerent threats to close its markets to Australian exports have excited talk of a full-blown trade war.

The Cashless Debit Card scheme quarantines 80% of social security payments to a cashless card, which prevents spending on alcohol, illegal drugs and gambling products.

Right now the RBNZ is holding off such a move in favour of other monetary stimulus measures. But the big banks strongly oppose negative rates, arguing they’ve had limited success overseas and that the country’s banking technology isn’t up to it.

Last weekend, a few hours after the US presidential election was called for Joe Biden, Myanmar voters started lining up for their own chance to decide whether the National League for Democracy (NLD) government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, would return for a second term.

In West Texas, earthquake rates are now 30 times higher than they were in 2013. Studies have also linked earthquakes to oil field operations in Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Ohio.

On the global stage, as at home, Biden is likely to follow a familiar script. Most obviously, he will embrace America’s alliances and strengthen its engagement with multilateral institutions.

Australia has in the past often hesitated to adopt a strong privacy framework. The new review, however, provides an opportunity to improve data protection rules to an internationally competitive standard.

Designing buildings so they can easily be taken apart and the materials reused provides a feasible and commercial pathway for minimising waste and greenhouse gas emissions.

German biotech company BioNTech and US pharmaceutical Pfizer announced on Monday promising early results from their phase 3 clinical trial for a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

It was the Bank of Japan which first embarked on the experiment known as quantitative easing, or QE, in order to try and stimulate the Japanese economy out of its period of very low growth known as the “lost decade” between 1991 and 2001.

The federal government will extend the JobSeeker Coronavirus supplement for an extra three months, to the end of March, at a cost of $3.2 billion.

Steggall has garnered huge support outside of politics. In a joint letter this week, more than 100 Australian businesses, industry groups and community organisations endorsed the bill as a critical step in the recovery from the pandemic.

The Czech Republic, which had been praised for its swift response to COVID-19 in the spring, is now topping global charts of new coronavirus infections and deaths per population.

The Black Summer bushfires were devastating for wildlife, with an estimated three billion wild animals killed, injured or displaced. This staggering figure does not include the tens of thousands of farm animals who also perished.

If you are conservative, there are at least five reasons to feel concerned about Trump’s legacy — and another five to be optimistic about it.

The bank had said that it supported the transition to a net zero emissions economy by 2050, and that as a consequence it would no longer provide banking services for new business customers with “material thermal coal exposures”.

Overall, homeowners have more disposable income. This has led to an uptick in home improvements, renovations and real estate activity. Media coverage adds fuel to the fire by breathlessly reporting rapid price rises. First-time buyers panic that they will miss their chance.

Transport projects worth A$5 billion or more in today’s money were almost unheard of ten years ago. Today, as the chart below shows, megaprojects make up the bulk of the work under way across the country.

Trump’s 2016 election seemed to have been the final nail in the coffin for the idea of a truly liberal international order with the US as a benevolent leader.

We learn more about the effects of COVID-19 on our health every day. We now know that contracting the coronavirus SARS-COV-2 can have a long-term impact on our heart and lungs, and the infection can even persist for months in some people.

As the holiday season approaches, we need to consider what effect it will have on people’s compliance with public health rules and the spread of COVID-19. Are concerns about broken rules and increasing cases unfounded? Or should policymakers implement stricter regulations – or even go so far as to cancel ...

Mental health is a growing concern, with up to one in two people now thought to experience a mental health problem in their lifetime. Many working-age adults experience problems like depression, anxiety, phobias or PTSD, which are worsened by unemployment.

One narrative for this election may be that Biden ran a campaign that was unspectacular, when unspectacular was exactly what Americans wanted after four years of endless spectacles. Perhaps Americans wanted more conventionality after an exceedingly unconventional president.

Even as the labor market recovers, as we saw in the latest U.S. employment report on Nov. 6, the number of people who have been without a job for more than 26 weeks continues to increase.

Most parts of the UK are now living in a state of some form of lockdown. Meanwhile, however, more police are out on the streets. This is because in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Austria and France, the UK’s terrorism threat level has been raised to “severe”.

If the coronavirus pandemic has shown us anything, it’s just how much people depend on a few large technology companies. The use of mobile apps and web services has increased significantly in recent years, as people adapted to new ways to stay in touch.

The president, Donald Trump, baselessly claimed at a White House press conference on Friday morning, Australian time, that the presidential election has been stolen from him by fraudulent and corrupt electoral processes.

Mining magnate Clive Palmer has lost his challenge to the closure of the Western Australian border in response to COVID-19. Palmer has also been ordered to pay costs.

How people grow food and the way we use the land is an important, though often overlooked, contributor to climate change.

When it comes to handling the waste crisis in Australia, options are limited: we either export our waste or bury it. But to achieve current national targets, policy-makers are increasingly asking if we can instead safely burn waste as fuel.

As the COVID-19 pandemic restricts freedom of movement, the candidates will be forced to campaign largely through social media and traditional media, which might work in the favour of larger and better-resourced parties. Not all parties and candidates have the finances to run online campaigns.

When the US formally left the Paris climate agreement, Joe Biden tweeted that “in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it”.

5 types of misinformation to watch out for while ballots are being counted – and after

On Nov. 2, 2020, the International Space Station celebrated its 20th anniversary of continuous human occupation. With astronauts and cosmonauts from around the world working together, the ISS has demonstrated humankind’s ability to not only live and work in space but cooperate with one another.

At midnight on October 21, Ireland introduced its highest level of national restrictions as part of a lockdown that will last six weeks. In the days that followed, many other European countries did the same, from France to Germany, Wales and Belgium. England will shortly follow suit.

In a surprise last minute decision, the flagship stock exchange listing of Ant Group was suspended by regulators in China and Hong Kong.

Trump has already sent out a fundraising appeal for money to “FIGHT BACK”, and has signalled he will pursue appeals all the way to the Supreme Court.

Last summer’s horror bushfire season claimed 33 lives, although the real cost in human life might have been greater when smoke-related health issues are taken into account. More than 3,000 houses were destroyed in the 24 million hectares that burned.

More than 10 million Australians have a superannuation account. Which means, effectively, more than 10 million of us are mini-shareholders with the capacity to influence future business decisions.

One goal of a map maker is to reveal patterns that may exist in the data, and colouring is key to this – they have to decide when to move from one colour to another. In some cases it’s preferable to split up a narrow part of the distribution into ...