Historic weather journals help fight climate change

Weather journals dating back to 1830 could provide extensive details to better understand climate change.

The journals from Perth describe temperature, barometric pressure, wind, and rain are likely to be the oldest near-continuous record of daily weather observations in the southern hemisphere.

Climate History Australia is launching a citizen science project to secure help transcribing 60,000 journal entries.

 

Domestic vaccine production

The Victorian government has just announced that it’s providing 50 million dollars to "kickstart" domestic manufacturing of mRNA vaccine technology. This will be the first time the technology will be produced in Australia.

Acting Premier James Merlino says It will take at least 12 months for any of the vaccines to be made in the country. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use the mRNA technology, which had never been used for vaccinations before the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Solar panels possibly linked to forced labour

Australian trade unions are calling for the federal government to invest in local manufacturing of solar panels after concerns have been raised of forced labour in China's production of solar components.

Around 80 percent of Australia's solar power panels are sourced from China.

China has been accused of using the Muslim Uyghur population in forced labour camps in the Xinjiang province.

 

Government funds 'clean' energy projects

The federal government is proposing to spend an extra five hundred and thirty nine million dollars on new 'clean' energy projects.

$275 million towards developing hydrogen production hubs in regional areas and $263 million towards carbon capture and storage projects.

The Queensland town of Gladstone is one of the proposed project hubs, however, hydrogen can use a lot of energy to process into usable forms.

 

Reef defenders rally in Brisbane

A rally is taking place in Brisbane this morning to urge decision makers to reject a proposal from a Clive Palmer owned company who want to build a coal mine just 10kms away from the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

Organisers of the event say Government-appointed scientists have warned of significant and irreversible damage to Reef ecosystems if this coal mine goes ahead. The event will be held outside Parliament House and starts at 9:30 this morning, one week before the Queensland Government decision is due to be announced.

 

LNP fail to probe corruption watchdog

The LNP opposition has made a failed bid to launch an official probe into Queensland’s corruption watchdog over abandoned fraud charges levelled at seven Logan city councillors. 

A lack of evidence led the Director of Public Prosecutions to drop charges against the former Logan councillors last week, almost two years after they were suspended for an alleged plot to oust the council’s then-chief executive. 

Indigenous Leader and Murran man passes away after long illness

John Bugy Bugy Christophersen, a Murran man from the Cobourg Peninsula, died on the weekend after a long illness.

Mr Christophersen was one of the organisers of a convoy that took forty thousand people to Sydney to protest the bicentenary of British settlement and the treatment of Indigenous people in Australia in 1988.

Mr Christophersen also became the World Council of Indigenous Peoples’ vice-president in 1990 and was the longest-serving member and deputy chairman of the Northern Land Council

 

Czech Republic threaten to expel Russian diplomats from Prague

The Czech Republic is threatening to expel all Russian diplomats from Prague after accusations Russia was behind an explosion in an ammunition facility in 2014. 

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis describes the explosion as “an unprecedented terror attack on our territory.”

Foreign and Interior Minister Jan Hamacek is expected to summon the Russian Ambassador today to discuss further steps after 18 Russian diplomats, believed to be secret agents, were expelled from the country earlier this week.

 

The President of Chad, Idriss Déby has died while visiting troops

The President of Chad, Idriss Déby has died while visiting troops on the frontline of a fight against northern rebels from Libya.

President Déby’s death comes days after he won his 6th presidential election.

Rebels based across the northern frontier in Libya attacked a border post on election day and have advanced south hundreds of kilometres.