🚀Musk's Ego Clashes with Australian Common Decency
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The S&P/ASX 200 closed 34.3 points higher, up 0.45%.
S&P/ASX 200 (XJO) closed 34.3 points higher at 7,683.5, up 0.46% from its session low and 0.15% from its high. Advancers outnumbered decliners 158 to 110 in the S&P/ASX 300 (XKO).
Information Technology (XIJ) (+1.7%) was the best performing sector today, likely due to a bounce in US tech stocks in New York Monday and a small pullback in benchmark bond yields. The latter may have helped Financials (XFJ) (+1.1%) and Real Estate Investment Trusts (XPJ) (+0.7%) today.
Health Care (XHJ) (+1.2%) also did well after an article in The Australian today [paywall] suggested that Wesfarmers (ASX: WES) (-0.56%) may take over Ramsay Health Care (ASX: RHC) (+2.9%). [ Read more - Carl Capolingua ]
💡Evening’s Headlines
Among the big winners in Madrid tonight were Novak Djokovic, Aitana Bonmatí, Jude Bellingham, and Simone Biles. Spain was the epicentre of world sport, hosting the 2024 Laureus World Sports Awards alongside an unparalleled lineup of the sport's finest athletes.
In the already-ferocious dispute between Elon Musk, the owner of X, and the Australian government over censorship, a United Australia Party senator has drawn strong criticism after sharing a vision from the alleged Wakeley church stabbing on social media.
🗳️ AUS POLITICS
Albanese Criticizes Musk: Billionaire Above the Law
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called Elon Musk a “arrogant billionaire who thinks he’s above the law”.
The PM was asked by ABC News Breakfast how far the government would go with Musk on the takedown of content from last week's Sydney church stabbing. Albanese said:
We'll do what's necessary to take on this arrogant billionaire who thinks he's above the law, but also above common decency. What the e-Safety Commissioner is doing is doing her job to protect the interests of Australians. And the idea that someone would go to court for the right to put up violent content on a platform shows how out-of-touch Mr Musk is. Social media needs to have social responsibility with it. Mr Musk is not showing any. [ Read more ]
📠 BUSINESS
South Australia Leads CommSec's Economic Report for Quarter
The State of the States economic performance report from CommSec has once again placed South Australia at the top of the economic leaderboard, narrowly ahead of Western Australia and Victoria.
By monitoring eight important metrics and contrasting the most recent observation with decade averages, or the "normal," the State of the States report aims to identify which state or territory's economy is doing the best.
According to the most recent report, South Australia was the most reliable performer, ranking first on four of the eight major economic indicators: dwelling starts, construction work, unemployment, and economic growth.
Victoria was overtaken by Western Australia in second place. In the meantime, Tasmania, Queensland, New South Wales, and the Australian Capital Territory tied for fourth place in the performance rankings—an unprecedented occurrence. Eighth is the Northern Territory. [Read more ]
🏠REAL ESTATE
Anglicare’s Rental Affordability Snapshot confirms Sydney’s rental crisis has reached new lows
Despite the record low numbers from the previous year, Anglicare Sydney's annual Rental Affordability Snapshot has confirmed that rental affordability and supply have decreased even further in the last 12 months.
The Snapshot, which took place on March 16–17, 2024, shows that the number of affordable and suitable properties available to those receiving income support payments has decreased even more, from 46 properties in the 2023 Snapshot to just 22 in 2024. From 0.4% to 0.2% of all available properties, this has decreased.
In addition, the 10,735 private rentals in Greater Sydney and the Illawarra that were listed during those dates are the fewest listings in the Snapshot's last ten years. [ Read more ]
🥫CONSUMER
Survey Reveals Confusion Over Supermarket Discounts
The variety of terms used to characterise what seems to be a sale, such as "down, down," "low price," "super savers," and "prices dropped," can make it difficult to determine whether a discount is truly being offered.
Australian shoppers appear to be confused, according to new survey data from CHOICE. Experts claim that it's either careless advertising or a case of purposeful consumer confusion. [Read more ]
🖥️ Technology
Phi-3 Mini: Microsoft's Lightweight Alternative to GPT-4
Microsoft unveiled the first of three compact models it intends to release, the Phi-3 Mini, the company's next lightweight AI model.
3.8 billion parameters make up the Phi-3 Mini, which was trained on a smaller dataset than large language models such as GPT-4. Hugging Face, Ollama, and Azure are now selling it. Phi-3 Medium (14B parameters) and Phi-3 Small (7B parameters) are scheduled for release by Microsoft. A model's parameter count is the number of complex instructions it can comprehend.
In December, the company unveiled Phi-2, which outperformed larger models like Llama 2. According to Microsoft, Phi-3 outperforms the previous iteration and can yield results that are comparable to those of a model ten times larger.
The Verge is informed by Eric Boyd, corporate vice president of Microsoft Azure AI Platform, that the Phi-3 Mini is "just in a smaller form factor" as capable as LLMs like the GPT-3.5. [ Read more ]
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🌎 World Tonight
After much debate, the UK parliament has finally approved a bill that will enable the government to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda so that the East African country will review their claims. [CNN]
The 10 crew members on board were killed when two Malaysian navy helicopters collided in midair during a practice for a parade, according to the navy. [ THE GUARDIAN]
In a brief trial held in absentia on Monday, a Russian court found a Meta spokesperson guilty of encouraging terrorism and sentenced him to six years in prison, according to Russia's independent news outlet Mediazona. [ THE NEW YORK POST]
🏅 Fact Check
How education and social media regulation can combat science denial.
It's ironic that as scientific evidence on climate change and vaccines have become more compelling, public opinion on social media appears more divided.
Five billion people use social media globally, and millions of posts are shared on Meta (Facebook) every minute.
While a virtual life can be fun and informative, it can also be harmful. Misinformation about climate science is rife. So, too are conspiracy theories and disinformation about vaccine science, as we witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This misinformation not only undermines trust in science but actively threatens public health: The World Health Organization has named vaccine hesitancy, along with air pollution and climate health, among the top 10 global health threats of our time. [ Read more ]
📰 Good News, Inspiring, Positive Stories
Teegan Wattam is carving history with every step she takes across the graduation stage this week.
It will be the first time a First Nations graduate has received Bachelor of Health Science/Master of Speech and Language Therapy at Charles Darwin University (CDU).
A proud Larrakia and Wadjigan woman, Ms Wattam has her sights set on addressing healthcare challenges in the Northern Territory, particularly in helping Territorians who have speech and swallowing difficulties to communicate and manage their conditions effectively.
“I think there's such a shortage of allied health professionals up here, and because of that there are long wait lists, which is probably the biggest impact as well, that we have a really high turnover of staff,” she said.
“I think people don't realise the wider impact that allied health professionals have in the areas we can work in. Like, for example, a lot of people just think speech pathologists help people to talk.
“But we do a lot more than that. We help them with swallowing, to communicate in all different ways and in learning.”
Ms Wattam started her healthcare education at a university in Sydney, but when CDU opened places for a double degree in health science and speech pathology, she jumped at the chance to return home and be part of the first cohort of the course. [ Read more ]
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