The federal government has passed a law preventing Australian companies from relying on data from animal testing for ingredients to be used solely in cosmetics. More than 500,000 animals – mainly rabbits,
Shares in timber company Gunns fell sharply in intraday trading today, following reports that the ANZ bank would pull out of funding Gunns' controversial $2 billion pulp mill project in Tasmania. At 12.51pm, Gunns was down 18 cents, or 5.61%, at $3.03, having touched a low for the day of $3.01. "There's a bit of uncertainty over the funding of the mill,'' CMC Markets head of trading James Foulsham said. "But there still hasn't been big volumes going through. "So I don't think it's any wholesale dumping by any of the institutional investors or anything like that.''
THE idea that coal-fired electricity generation can continue to be the major contributor to global electricity generation and the world can still restrict carbon dioxide emissions to a level constant with holding climate warming below 2 degrees is a fairytale, according to letter in the premier science journal Nature (published online, May 7, 2008).
Melbourne's unleaded petrol reached an all-time high yesterday of 162.9 cents a litre for unleaded fuel. More than 100 petrol stations across the city were charging the record figure, before dropping the price back to 159.9 cents. Retail prices for petrol, diesel and oil have risen worldwide due to political, environmental and economic factors. High prices are hurting consumers everywhere - even in countries such as Egypt, India and Indonesia where fuel prices are subsidised by the government to minimise consumer costs.
Greenpeace says the world's most popular electronic game consoles contain high levels of toxic chemicals, though they do not pose an immediate danger to gamers. A report by the environmental watchdog group says Nintendo's Wii, the Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 use varying degrees of bromine, PVCs and other potentially harmful chemicals, including phthalates, which can affect human hormones.
AUSTRALIA'S transport sector is caught in a dilemma: it must drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the means to do that is years away, according to a climate change specialist. Ben Wheaton, a partner in climate change services at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said greenhouse gas emissions from transport were growing at the fastest rate in the country, faster even than agriculture. Australian Greenhouse Office figures show that transport constitutes 13.5% of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.
AUSTRALIA is taking a wrong path by offering subsidies to install solar rooftop panels, instead of promising households high prices if they sell excess power to the grid, a leading German MP has warned. Hans Josef Fell, the Greens' energy spokesman and co-author of Germany's pathbreaking Renewable Energies Act, said renewable energy now made up 14% of Germany's electricity generation, mainly due to good prices for selling excess power.
HUNDREDS of venue owners and patrons have been warned and three fined for breaking Victoria's tough ban on smoking in licensed venues. Local councils have been given a hit-list to target the one-in-four high-risk venues that the Government estimates may be "non-compliant" with smoking laws introduced in July last year. The State Government has also launched an urgent inquiry into compliance with smoking laws, with the inquiry expected to report back by September.
NOW that the first Rudd-Swan budget is behind us, the real test of the new Labor Government's economic management credentials emerges - climate change. Budgets are annual set-piece events. In contrast, trying to layer an emissions trading scheme on an extraction economy like Australia's, as Woodside's chief executive Don Voelte says, has never been tried before.
The solar power industry is predicting a dramatic decline in people installing solar panels, causing millions of dollars in lost business and job losses, after the Federal Government made it harder for households to receive an $8000 rebate. Environment Minister Peter Garrett announced in the budget that only households earning less than $100,000 would qualify for the rebate, effective immediately. It follows a surge in applications - up to seven times more a week, businesses say - since the Howard government doubled the rebate from $4000 to $8000 a year ago.
At least 1000 students and teachers were killed or buried in the collapse of another school in quake-hit south-west China, state media reported today. "So far, the number of dead or missing is estimated at more than 1000 at the school," Xinhua news agency said. The report came from Beichuan county, where reports earlier had said up to 5000 people in the area may have been killed by yesterday's 7.8-magnitude quake. Elsewhere, the quake left 500 people dead and 2000 buried under debris in one city, state TV said today, citing the local relief headquarters.
