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READ MORE Did you know Australia has now over taken Qatar to be the largest exporter of natural gas in the world? But, thanks to private profiteering and government bungling, this seeming triumph comes at the risk of further diminishing manufacturing industry in NSW and Victoria. It’s yet another example of naive economic reformers stuffing things up because real-world markets don’t work the way they do in textbooks. Last week Dow Chemical announced it would close its Melbourne manufacturing plant due, in part, to high gas prices. This came after RemaPak, a Sydney-based producer of polystyrene coffee cups, and Claypave, a Queensland-based brick and paving manufacturer, went belly-up citing rising gas prices as an important contributing factor. Why haven’t suppliers cut their prices? Because their pricing power means they don’t have to if they don’t want to. “Many other manufacturers are close to making critical decisions on their future operations,...

READ MORE Fair Work Ombudsman inspectors discovered the underpayments when they audited more than 40 sushi outlets across Canberra, South-East Queensland, the Hunter, Central Coast, Coffs Harbour and NSW North Coast. Federal Circuit Court Judge Philip Dowdy said the penalties should deter Ms Hasegawa and the companies as well as “others who might be inclined to contravene the Fair Work Act in a similar fashion”. Most of the underpayments have been rectified but the court has ordered Ms Hasegawa, Hasegawa Ye International Pty Ltd and Heiwa International Pty Ltd to back-pay the final outstanding amounts to employees within 28 days. The Court has also ordered the companies to commission an external audit of their compliance and rectify any underpayments found, and to display workplace notices detailing workers’ rights and alerting workers to the Fair Work Ombudsman’s Record My Hours app. Fair Work Ombudsman Sandra Parker said inspectors would continue auditing the f...

READ MORE “We’re not worried about the turmeric in a latte or a foul-tasting coffee,” Professor Moses says. “But the tablets and capsules [people] buy, they are not natural any more, they have been made in a factory. And that’s where we worry.” Professor Moses also lists black pepper, schisandra fruit, goldenseal root, green tea, guarana and yerbe mate as known to alter the way conventional medicines work. But there are many others. Of the common alternative remedies, she nominates zinc as one that might actually work. “I believe in that one.” Vitamin C tablets. Credit: Quentin Jones In studies, zinc appears to cut cold length by a couple of days – but with significant side effects. Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sbsnews-topstories/~3/2io1UarGQjc/a-breakthrough-and-funding-pledge-for-one-of-australia-s-most-common-cancers Share this: Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in ...

READ MORE Omar Dabbagh reports from Visale, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Scott Morrison is being urged to prioritise education equality during his visit to the Solomon Islands, after a new report found a shockingly low number of girls finish high school in the Pacific nation. Aid agency Plan International, which compiled the ‘Our Education, Our Future’ report with the help of 60 girls in the Solomons, found the female graduation rate there is only seven per cent. Expensive school fees, disturbingly high rates of child marriage and teen pregnancies, dangers facing girls walking to and from school, as well as cultural perceptions towards gender are being blamed for mass female dropouts. “I would say it’s discrimination but it’s also about opportunity. People think that girls are associated to home,” Ella Kauhue, Program Manager for Plan International Solomon Islands, told SBS News ahead of the report’s release next week.  “They do a ...

READ MORE I commend Greg Hunt’s “obsessive target” to eliminate youth suicide (“Hunt sets suicide goal towards zero”, June 1-2). The question though is, after many previous initiatives to move the stubbornly high number of youth suicides down, what can he do that others have failed to do in the past. A good start is the idea of lifting the 10-session cap on Medicare rebates for psychologist sessions as he suggested; we don’t turn away cancer patients after 10 sessions regardless of where they are in their treatment and recovery, so why should we cut off services to seriously at-risk and mentally unwell youth. – Bernard Macleod, president, Couple, Child and Family Psychotherapy Association of Australia Greg Hunt can throw money at mental health until the cows come home. He is starting at the wrong end. Until Australia changes working arrangements for low-income workers, boosts Newstart, stops wage theft, bullying in the workplace, worker exploita...

READ MORE A move by the re-elected Coalition government to protect the integrity of Australia’s lucrative tertiary education sector by stiffening language requirements for international students seems reasonable and prudent. So too does an associated buttressing of mental health protection and support for students. There is a crucial balance, requiring constant monitoring and occasional recalibration, between academic standards and the economic benefits of tertiary education in terms of, first, immediate earnings, and second, a well-educated and skilled workforce. There are widespread concerns that lax language levels, which suggest an inflated commercial desire to attract high-fee-paying foreign students, will undermine the industry in the long term. There are more than 400,000 international students in Australian universities, of which more than a third are Chinese. That’s an expansion of almost 15 per cent in a single year. The number enrolled has been growing rapidly, ge...