CANBERRA, Australia — The Australian environment has started a slow recovery from some of the toughest years on record, a new study has concluded. Researchers found robust species rebounded in 2020, despite the devastating ecological damage caused by the Black Summer fires, as per Australia’s Environment Report. “There’s reason to hope that our environment will get a chance to rebuild,” said Albert van Dijk, an environmental scientist at Australian National University on March 31. “The extreme drought and heat conditions of 2019 and previous years eased after February (2020) thanks to increased rainfall, as La Niña climate conditions emerged,” he said.…
Author: zenger.news
CANBERRA, Australia — Even before recent scandals rocked the state and federal parliaments, Australians overwhelmingly felt politicians were failing to meet their public interest expectations. The latest Next 25 Navigator study, a poll of 2,825 people from last December to February, has found the political class fared the worst of six key institutions on public interest performance. As per the annual report (released on Wednesday), only 22 percent of respondents thought politicians were acting in the public interest. “One conclusion we can draw from our data is that whatever the government is doing, it isn’t working,” said Ralph Ashton, executive director of Next25…
CANBERRA, Australia — Business leaders are being wooed to bankroll the Australian federal government’s gas-fired recovery plan, but critics argue the lack of rules or criteria makes it ripe for rorting. Under the wing of Christian Porter, new Industry Minister, the plan also enlists Keith Pitt, Resources Minister, and Angus Taylor, Energy Minister. The plan’s three “action areas” are unlocking supply, efficient transportation, and empowering consumers. “More gas is part of the government’s plan to reduce emissions without blowing the household budget, while at the same time creating jobs,” said Taylor. Written submissions on the plan are due on March 31…
GOLD COAST, Australia — The Star Entertainment Group has doubled down on its bid to sue an Asian billionaire who racked up an AUD 43 million ($32.8 million) gambling debt at its casino in Gold Coast in the south of Brisbane on Australia’s east coast. VIP high roller Wong Yew Choy allegedly dishonored a blank check after a five-day losing streak playing baccarat at The Star Gold Coast. After losing an international bid to pursue Wong over the debt in Singapore, Star Casino has been granted leave to pursue the billionaire in the Queensland Supreme Court. The well-known Asian gambler had…
To make it into your cup, specialty coffee undergoes a long, arduous and often continent-crossing journey during which the beans must be maintained at just the right levels of humidity and look absolutely flawless. That’s no easy feat, especially when measuring all these parameters is done with work processes of yore. “The coffee industry has hardly seen any new technologies enter it during the 20th and 21st centuries. People are working like they did 200 years ago,” says Eduardo Shoval, co-founder of Demetria, an Israeli-Colombian startup that aims to revolutionize that industry with the power of artificial intelligence (AI). “Suddenly…
Parkinson’s disease is a complex, progressive neurological disorder affecting up to 10 million people. And it is fast growing in prevalence worldwide. The birthday on April 11 of James Parkinson — who first described this syndrome in 1817 — kicks off World Parkinson’s Awareness Week. The disease is most often diagnosed in people over 60, more often males. Classic symptoms include tremor in about 60 percent of cases, rigidity, poor posture and slow movement. But several decades before diagnosis, subtler symptoms like sleep disturbances and loss of smell often appear together with constipation and erectile dysfunction. This happens because clumps…
CHENNAI, India — In a bid to strengthen its diplomatic ties with Sri Lanka and maintain its presence in the Indian Ocean Region, India has abstained from voting on a resolution during the United Nations Human Rights Council’s 46th regular session in Geneva that aimed to probe further into the war crimes committed during the Sri Lankan civil war. Sri Lanka witnessed an almost four-decade-long civil war (1983 to 2009) between the Tamil population, led by the Liberation of Tamil Tigers Eelam, and the Sinhalese government. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam sought to establish an independent state, Eelam, in northern and…
PUNE, India — Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., is setting up back-end operations in India by hiring for roles such as information technology services, customer support, and software development. The development comes when India is sitting on a bill that calls for a ban on all private cryptocurrencies. “India has long been known as a hub for engineering and technology innovation. We look forward to finding that world-class talent to help the Coinbase group develop new ways for our customers to interact with the crypto-economy,” the company said on March 25. The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill,…
MUMBAI, India — Thirty-year-old internet security researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia first learned about a data leak of India’s top three fintech companies on a database sharing marketplace on Feb. 24. The next day, he reached out to a hacker named Jordandaven on a Discord messaging group. “I went to the Discord group where the hacker had shared five sample files of this data dump,” Rajaharia told Zenger News. “Looking at the files and the database structure, I thought it might belong to MobiKwik. I informed MobiKwik and reached out to its chief executive Bipin Preet Singh on LinkedIn to ask him to…
Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science have developed a new method to observe the first stages of embryonic development: growing mouse embryos in bottles. Professor Jacob Hanna and his molecular genetics team explained in the hournal Nature that information about mammalian embryonic development comes either from observing the process in non-mammals like frogs or fish that lay transparent eggs, or by obtaining static images from dissected mouse embryos. The idea of growing embryos outside the uterus has been around since before the 1930s, Hanna said, but experiments had limited success and the embryos tended to be abnormal. A mouse…