Australia

An 82-year-old man from Münster (Germany) has fulfilled an old promise he made to his wife who died years ago - and has given Münster Zoo the largest single donation in its history: the zoo has now received 750,000 euros from Horst Eschler.

Zoo director Simone Schehka thanked the donor at a press event on Thursday. The zoo wants to use the money to finance the renovation of its bear house, among other things, she said. A trip to Australia was the deciding factor, the donor said. There he had seen how animals suffered from the devastating bush fires and how many people had helped them.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Tuesday that Australian and New Zealand residents will be able to travel between the two countries without having to quarantine. The trans-Tasman travel bubble will start on Sunday, April 18 at 11:59 p.m.

“This is an important step forward in our COVID response and represents an arrangement I do not believe we have seen in any other part of the world. That is, safely opening up international travel to another country while continuing to pursue a strategy of elimination and a commitment to keeping the virus out,” Arden said.

Nathan Baggaley won silver twice at the 2004 Olympics and, according to the court's assessment, bought and prepared the boat for a large cocaine deal. He was not on board later, but his brother and another person were. They had tried to take over about 650 kilograms of cocaine from another ship far off the Australian coast. According to the BBC, the drugs had a market value of about 200 million Australian dollars (about 130 million euros).

However, the Australian Air Force, in cooperation with the border police, had filmed the handover from the air. In addition, a navy ship followed the criminals' boat. During the following chase on the water, video footage shows Dru Baggaley throwing numerous drug packages overboard. Baggaley now faces life in prison.

Linktree, one of the most popular “link in bio” services with more than 12 million users, announced today it had raised $45 million in Series B funding. The Sydney, Australia-based startup latest funding will be used on tools that make social commerce easier.

Founded in 2016, Linktree is used for bio links by Shopify, Facebook, TikTok, YSL, HBO and Major League Baseball, and celebrities like Jonathan Van Ness, Jamie Oliver and Pharrell.

Facebook is teaming up with News Corp Australia with a three-year partnership that was announced on Monday. It will allow content from much of Rupert Murdoch's local media empire to be featured on Facebook. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The agreement adds to a stream of new partnerships News Corp has signed in Australia in recent weeks.

In a statement Monday, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson alluded to the firm's longtime battle, arguing that "Rupert and [co-chairman] Lachlan Murdoch led a global debate while others in our industry were silent or supine."

Thomas Bach is reelected as president of the International Olympic Committee. The German lawyer was unopposed and won the vote 93-1, with four members abstaining.

Bach said Tokyo was "the best prepared Olympic city ever" and reiterated that the Games would open July 23.

He also signed future Olympic hosts Paris and Los Angeles, while Brisbane, Australia, is now being fast-tracked for 2032 -- a move aimed at avoiding expensive campaigns and allegations of vote-buying.

Less than a month after Buzzfeed acquired HuffPost, it now has laid off 47 US HuffPost employees – mostly journalists – and closed HuffPost’s Canadian operation, with more layoffs expected in the United Kingdom and Australia.

The Italian government has decided to block the export of a 250,000 doses shipment of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine produced in Italy to Australia.

Italy is the first European Union country to use the bloc's new regulations allowing exports to be stopped if the company providing the vaccines has failed to meet its obligations to the EU.

Italy's new Prime Minister Mario Draghi, an influential figure in Europe as the former president of the European Central Bank, argued in a videoconference with EU leaders that the rules should be applied rigorously, furious at reductions by AstraZeneca of up to 70% in the doses it was contracted to provide.

Australia has taken a considerable step towards hosting their third Olympics after Brisbane was named as the International Olympic Committee’s “preferred partner” to begin talks over hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2032.

Following the recommendation by its Future Host Commission, the IOC will start a targeted dialogue with the Brisbane 2032 Committee and the Australian Olympic Committee to discuss the city's potential to host the Olympic Games 2032.

Under the IOC’s revamped selection process, it is seen as the first major step towards the bid being rubber-stamped as Brisbane seeks to follow in the footsteps of Melbourne and Sydney in becoming an Olympic host city.

Australia's government has passed a new law that will require tech giants such as Facebook and Google to pay publishers for using their news content. Market regulator Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) publishers have had little negotiating power until now because they are so reliant on tech monopolies like Google and Facebook.

A corona mutation is circulating in California and other U.S. states that could be more contagious and dangerous. The data situation is still unclear, but some things seem worrying.

Now another mutation has emerged in California, it has already spread to other U.S. states and has also been detected in countries such as Australia, Denmark and Mexico. It was first discovered in December, reports the journal Science. Investigations suggest that this variant of Sars-CoV-2 could not only be more contagious but probably also takes more violent courses. According to this, intensive medical care and deaths occur more frequently - however, the data situation here is still very thin.

The researchers call the variants B.1.427 and B.1.429 - it occurs with slightly different mutations. Under a different naming scheme, it is also known as 20C/L452R.

B.1.427 / B.1.429 carries several mutations, but three seem to be particularly relevant. They affect the spike protein that the virus uses to dock with human cells. Mutation L452R, in particular, appears to increase infectivity. It apparently stabilizes the interaction between the spike protein and the receptor used by the virus. None of the three spike mutations are found in the virus variants from Great Britain, South Africa and Brazil.

Travel pass – a Covid-19 vaccination passport app developed by the International Air Transport Association – will be tested on Air New Zealand flights between Auckland and Sydney from April on “to streamline the health verification process to help customers know what they need to take their next international trip safely”.

Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and communications minister Paul Fletcher announced on Tuesday a compromise had been reached as the legislation that would force Facebook and Google to pay news publishers for content was being debated in the Senate. Frydenberg said Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg had told him the ban would end "in the coming days" after the pair talked.

Australian authorities will introduce four further amendments, including one that means the government may not apply the code to Facebook if it can demonstrate a "significant contribution" to local journalism.

The proposed law was also seen by some as heavily influenced by the lobbying operations of media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp - which owns many of Australia's major newspapers.

The Australian government in Canberra announced on Sunday that it will no longer run ads on Facebook. The announcement came at the launch of Australia's vaccination campaign against the coronavirus. Health Minister Greg Hunt said the government would advertise vaccinations on the internet, just not on Facebook.

The dispute is triggered by a planned law to regulate the digital news market. The bill had been passed by the Australian lower house last week. The Senate is scheduled to vote on it by the end of this week.

The Serbian Novak Djokovic won his ninth Australia Open after a 7-5 6-2 6-2 win over Daniil Medvedev in less than two hours Sunday at the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne.

Djokovic celebrated his 18th Grand Slam title, leaving him two behind Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal's record total of 20 Slam victories.

Facebook is coming under increasing pressure over its dispute with the Australian government. Canada announced similar action against the platform as Australia. Canadian Culture Minister Steven Guilbeault sharply criticized Facebook and stressed that his country will not be brought to its knees. The occasion is the company's decision to block all news content in Australia

Japan's Naomi Osaka cemented her place as the outstanding star of the women's game by beating American Jennifer Brady 6-4, 6-3 in 77 minutes. The Australian Open was her fourth Grand Slam title.

"I have this mentality that people don't remember the runners-up," Osaka said. "You might, but the winner's name is the one that's engraved.

After Facebook blocked Australian users from accessing and sharing news on its platform, the Australian government heavily criticised the move, calling "an assault" to democracy while still moving forward in passing a law that would force Big Tech giants to pay for news.

“Facebook’s actions to unfriend Australia today, cutting off essential information services on health and emergency services, were as arrogant as they were disappointing,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison wrote on Facebook. “They may be changing the world, but that doesn’t mean they run it.”

On Wednesday, Facebook announced users in Australian will no longer be able to find nor share news from neither local or international sources as a response to a proposed Australian legislation that would force platforms to pay publishers for news content.

William Easton, the managing director of Facebook Australia & New Zealand, wrote in a blog post that the "proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content."

“It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter,” he added.

Google has launched Google News Showcase in the UK and Argentina, offering selected paywall content to users for free. News Showcase is already available in Germany, Brazil and, as of last week, Australia. Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, said the program would help the company pay $1 billion to publishers over the next three years.