French Prime Minister Jean Castex said France will resume vaccinations following a report by the European Medicines Agency confirmed it was safe. 

Several European countries, including France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, suspended vaccinations following four deaths of patients who developed blood clots after being vaccinated. 

The European Medicines Agency reviewed five million people and concluded no link can definitively be found between the blood clots and the vaccine.

Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner Chin Tan proposed a new national anti-racism framework on Wednesday. 

The federal government’s funding for anti-racism initiatives ended in 2015. The Australian Human Rights Commission has covered the issue since. 

The Commissioner says events such as the pandemic, the indigenous Black Lives Matter movement, and the Christchurch shooting, have highlighted currents of racism that otherwise run unchecked in our communities. 

Coles has today announced the launch of its new sustainability initiative, called ‘Together to Zero’. 

The strategy involves delivering net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The entire Coles Group aims to be powered by 100% renewable energy by the end of the 2025 financial year. 

It also aims to reduce scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by more than 75% by the end of the 2030 financial year.

Coles will also purchase wind farms in Ballarat, Victoria, and phase out the sale of single use plastic cutlery and straws from July this year. 

Content warning: this Zedline includes mentions of suicide.

Principal Commissioner Cheryl Vardon from the Queensland Family and Child Commission said there has been a welcome reduction in child deaths over time according to data released in a new report. 

Child deaths fell by an average of 3% per year from 2004-2019, and transport-related deaths have fallen by an average of 8% per year. However the report also found an increase in rates of suicide for children between 15 and 17 years old. 

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has revealed the Queensland unemployment level has fallen from 7% to 6.1%.

Conus Consultancy economist Peter Faulkner says full-time employment has never been higher in Queensland. It now sits 2.3% higher than one year ago.

54,000 full-time jobs were created in Queensland in February. However, figures showed only 14,000 women found jobs compared to 25,000 men.

However, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says the employment outlook will be bumpy when the JobKeeper wage subsidy ends on 31 March.

A paper published in the journal Science revealed the existence of a shark that was wider than it was long thanks to its long wing-like fins. Named the Aquilolamna milarcae It boasted a wingspan of 1.9 metres and likely glided through the water filter-feeding on plankton.

The shark lived from 93 million years ago until an extinction event 66 million years ago led to a decline in plankton in the oceans.

Flinders University palaeontologist John Long said the discovery shows the awesome plasticity of evolution in response to food sources. 

Murrayville farmer Trevor Wyatt is hoping to see a malleefowl chick this year after 60 years of supervising a nest on his family’s farm.

Wyatt was shown the nest at 6 years old and still supervises it now at 74.

Mallefowl hens lay 20 eggs yearly but only one survives to adulthood thanks to predators.

Chicks are able to fly within hours of hatching, meaning Wyatt has never seen a chick despite decades of caring for the birds. He hopes that this year that will change.

An Australian led initiative has published a document called the Declaration on the Rights of the Moon. The Declaration calls for the Moon to be regarded as "a sovereign natural entity in its own right” by giving it legal personhood, following real life examples like the Whanganui river in New Zealand, or the Atrato River basin in Colombia. 

This follows the socio-legal ‘rights of nature’ movement, which argues that nature has a right to exist and flourish, rather than be treated as property to be exploited by mankind.

The Mackay Hospital and Health Service opened a new free testing clinic for STIs. 

This initiative has been developed because the central Queensland region recorded its highest ever yearly numbers of gonorrhea and chlamydia in 2021, despite the ongoing pandemic. 

These STIs carry the unique challenge of often being largely symptomless, which can result in unknowing transmission. 

The testing clinic will be open every two weeks, and available to anyone over the age of fourteen.