CANBERRA, Australia — Scott Morrison has suffered a significant hit in voters’ opinion of his crisis management with the federal government under sustained pressure over vaccines. A recent poll shows 49 percent of Australians believe the prime minister is good in a crisis, down from 64 percent in mid-March. Morrison also lost ground in being trustworthy—down eight points to 47 percent—and being more honest than most politicians, which fell the same margin to 45 percent. A significant majority of the respondents—73 percent—also believe that Morrison plays politics. Compared to mid-March, more people think he is out of touch with ordinary people…
Author: zenger.news
HOBART, Australia — Australia’s island state, Tasmania, has shut its border with South Australia in response to a growing Covid-19 outbreak in the mainland state. The whole of South Australia will be designated as a high-risk (level two) area, making it the third state to be blocked by Tasmania in the past week. The directive was implemented at 4 PM (Australia Eastern Standard Time) on July 21. It means no one from South Australia can enter Tasmania unless approved as an essential traveler. Tasmanians have been given an hour’s notice to return home from the state. Anyone in Tasmania who has…
CANBERRA, Australia — An extra week of lockdown in the southeastern Australian state, Victoria is unlikely to be enough to quash an outbreak of the Delta coronavirus variant, said an epidemiologist. Based on modeling by Monash University and his own progression data, University of South Australia academic Adrian Esterman believes local Covid-19 cases will not drop to zero by the end of Victoria’s seven-day lockdown extension. “You have got at least another week and potentially two or three weeks,” said the veteran epidemiologist and biostatistician. “It takes as long to get down as it does to take off. I am expecting Monash University modeling…
NEWCASTLE, Australia — Hopes of Australian harbor city, Newcastle, hosting southeastern Australian state, New South Wales, second container port any time soon are speculative, far-fetched and fanciful, said a judge deciding a major competition case. Justice Jayne Jagot in June dismissed allegations that the New South Wales government and the owners of its largest ports had signed anti-competitive and illegal contracts. The 2013 and 2014 agreements effectively require the Port of Newcastle to compensate the owner of Sydney’s Port Botany if container cargo starts to be diverted to New South Wales’ second-largest city. The competition watchdog alleged the compensation due was so high that it…
CANBERRA, Australia — Many artists and cultural workers slipped through the cracks of Australia’s early rounds of Covid-19 support measures, a new report finds. Researchers from the University of South Australia looked at state and federal government responses to the pandemic’s hit on the arts sector in 2020. “JobKeeper and JobSeeker were inadequate for a large proportion of artists and cultural workers because the kinds of frequently precarious and short-term employment contracts commonplace in the sector did not meet the eligibility requirements,” said the working paper Keeping Creative. Eligibility for JobKeeper was contingent upon having had the same employer or having operated as a sole…
MELBOURNE, Australia — New retail spending figures will give a taste of things to come as Australia’s virus outbreak extends to three states, forcing non-essential shops to close. The Australian Bureau of Statistics will issue its preliminary retail trade figures for June on July 21. Economists’ forecasts center on a 0.4 percent decline, wiping out the 0.4 percent gain seen in May, although some believe it could be as much as a one percent drop. The data will cover the full impact of last month’s Victorian Covid-19 lockdown. Sales for July are likely to be even weaker, clobbered by earlier snap lockdowns in Brisbane, Darwin,…
Chris Chambers played for several winning coaches during the course of his collegiate pro-football career. Now he’s working to put what he learned to work in his first head-coaching job at the University of Fort Lauderdale in Florida. His playing days were productive: Following a successful career as a wide receiver at the University of Wisconsin, where he ranks in the top 10 in several statistical categories, the Miami Dolphins selected Chambers in the second round of the 2001 NFL draft. His best season was in 2005 when he led the Dolphins in receptions and was named to the AFC…
Sometimes, the best ideas come up in the shower. But other times, they come up following a conversation with someone who has a problem to solve. The latter is the case when it comes to Optibus, an Israeli startup providing artificial intelligence, or AI, solutions to optimize public transportation. “The original idea came from my father. He was, and still is, the CFO of one of the largest public transit companies in Israel,” says Optibus cofounder and CEO Amos Haggiag. “He was telling me of the inefficiencies of transit planning and how people are making what he thinks are suboptimal…
New research by Prof. Isaiah (Shy) Arkin of the Department of Biological Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem suggests that several existing drugs should be studied as promising treatments for COVID-19. Arkin and his team looked for antiviral drugs that exploit a weak link in many viruses — proteins called ion channels. Ion channels allow the virus to regulate the acidity and salinity of its internal and external environment. Blocking those channels makes it difficult for infections to spread. So far, only one ion channel blocker is approved as an antiviral treatment, and that is for influenza. Arkin and…
Archaeologists have made a discovery in the ancient City of David that is shaking assumptions about Iron Age religion and ethnicity among those who lived in what is now Israel. Israeli archaeologists found the skeleton of a piglet in an unexpected place — Jerusalem, the City of David and capital of the ancient Kingdom of Judah. The piglet was found in a structure dating 2,700 years ago to the First Temple period (957 B.C.–587 B.C.), roughly corresponding to the Iron Age, in the heart of Jerusalem. Jewish dietary laws have long proscribed eating or even touching pigs, while allowing the…