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PwC mentors young leaders from China and Australia on Infrastructure - 28 May

Young leaders from Australia and China are working together to provide creative solutions to issues facing both countries as part of the China Australia Millennial Project (CAMP).




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Australian entertainment and media industry must 'have a go' to grow - 15 Jun

Australian entertainment and media market is forecast to grow to $43.4 billion by 2019, a compound annual growth rate of 4.2 percent.




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Local economy, Local Investment Solutions with Geospacial Economic Modelling - 25 Jun

Unique granular modelling of over 2,000 locations across Australia uncover how fragmented and concentrated our economy is.




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Australia Improving but far Behind NZ in Leveraging Mature Age Workers - 29 Jun

Australia jumped five places to 15th in OECD rankings for employment of mature age workers.




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PwC backs Australia’s best young STEM innovators with $20,000 seed funding - 1 Jul

Two young Australian innovators are ready to take their ventures to the next level after sharing in $20,000 in seed funding from PwC during a live pitching event held by the Foundation for Young Australians.




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PwC Australia announces FY15 full year results - 28 Jul

PwC Australia today announced its full year results to 30 June 2015 with revenue growth of 10.1% to $1.73b, supported by another year of strong profit growth.




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Cyber threats keeping Australian insurers up at night - 31 Aug

Cyber risk, political interference, and macro-economic volatility rank among the top sources of anxiety for Australian insurers, according to a joint PwC and Centre for Financial Innovation (CSFI) report released today.




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Plan to save the sight of 32,000 Indigenous Australians will generate millions - 1 Sep

The eyesight of more than 32,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would be saved if the Government invested just $227 million over 10 years, a new report has found.




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Australian corporates keen on JVs in China, but barriers remain - 21 Sep

A new PwC survey has found that 70 per cent of major Australian companies are planning to enter new joint ventures or strategic alliances to drive growth from the Chinese market.




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Regulatory headaches continue for Australian pharma industry - 23 Sep

Regulation, compliance, and price pressure are slowing access to potentially life-saving new medicines, and undermining industry confidence in the current listing process.




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PwC FY15 global revenues increase 10% to US$ 35.4 billion - 6 Oct

The PwC network reported total global gross revenues of US$35.4 billion for the fiscal year ended on 30 June 2015.




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Australia making progress on carbon, but more work to do - 12 Oct

Australia will need to nearly double its historic rate of decarbonisation, if it is to meet its goal of a 26 percent decrease in carbon emissions.




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Obesity to affect one-third of Australians and cost $88b by 2025 - 14 Oct

The economic impact of obesity will reach $87.7 billion and affect one-third of Australians by 2025 based on current trends and without further intervention.




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Australia and its Allies Do More With Less - 15 Oct

As global challenges increase, Australia’s defence budget is growing, while the US and most other allies have been decreasing their defence resources.




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Australia behind in getting ahead of digital disruption - 20 Oct

Australia lags behind the world's best corporate performers in all ten indicators of digital intelligence needed to drive financial performance.




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Australia Tops Asian Region for Cyber Security Risks: Report - 21 Oct

The number of detected cyber security incidents in Australia was the highest worldwide in the last 12 months with an increase of 109 percent, compared to a 38.5 percent increase globally.




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PwC named a 2015 Employer of Choice for Gender Equality - 6 Nov

PwC Australia is pleased to announce it was selected by The Workplace Gender Equality Agency WGEA as one of 90 organisations in Australia as an Employer of Choice in 2015.




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Home and away, Australian CEOs bearish on growth - 16 Nov

Australian CEOs are less confident about domestic growth than their regional peers, and less certain of their ability to capture a return in Asia Pacific markets.




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Violence against women costing Australia $21.7 billion a year - 23 Nov

Violence against women and their children is costing Australia $21.7 billion each year, with Governments carrying more than a third of the cost burden; as shown in the report A high price to pay: the economic case for preventing violence against women.




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Make or break year for the future prosperity of Australia - 20 Jan

Australian CEOs are less confident about their companies' growth prospects than a year ago, and less optimistic about growth in the global economy, according to a PwC report released today.




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Lights out for Australian power deals - 28 Jan

2016 could be the high-water mark for Australian power and renewables deals following a strong year for transactions in 2015, according to PwC's energy, utilities and mining leader Mark Coughlin.




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PwC Australia appoints Luke Sayers as CEO through to 2020 - 15 Feb

Chairman of the Board of Partners of PwC Australia, Michael Happell, has announced that Luke Sayers will continue as Chief Executive Officer of the Australian firm for a further four years.




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PwC renews calls for STEM specialists in primary schools - 04 Mar

Providing every primary school in the country with access to at least one specialist science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teacher could be possible if teachers are incentivised to acquire STEM specialisations and collaboration between schools is prioritised.




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Australia's Slide on Female Economic Empowerment Continues - 07 Mar

Australia has fallen back to pre-2007 performance on female economic empowerment with one of the biggest annual declines among OECD countries according to PwC's annual Women in Work index.




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Plebiscite could cost Australian economy $525 million - 14 Mar

A standalone plebiscite with a compulsory vote on marriage equality could cost the Australian economy $525 million according to modelling released by PwC Australia today.




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Time for Australian oil and gas players to think bigger - 11 Apr

Australian oil and gas companies will need to think bigger and embrace customers in Asia, rapidly evolve their business models, and become much more responsive to emerging trends, if they are to thrive in a challenging new global marketplace.




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PwC and NAB join forces to help Australian microbusiness - 12 Apr

PwC and NAB have teamed up to help self-employed and microbusiness customers operating in an emerging more flexible economy to manage their GST requirements.




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The social purpose market in Australia - 28 Apr

Every year Australia spends more than half a trillion dollars on social purpose goods and services directed at health, welfare and education, almost one third of the nation's GDP.




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Global market for commercial applications of drone technology valued at over US$127bn - 11 May

The emerging global market for business services using drone technology is valued at over US$127 billion with the drone revolution disrupting industries ranging from agriculture to filmmaking.




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Australia a hotspot for economic crime - 16 May

Australian organisations are experiencing a significantly higher rate of economic crime than the rest of the globe according to a PwC survey released today which finds 52 percent experienced economic crime in the last 24 months compared to the global average of 36 percent.




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STEM agenda alive and kicking - PwC partners with McCarthy Catholic College for Sydney's first P-TECH Pilot - 30 May

PwC has today been announced as the first employer partner for a new Pathways in Technology (P-TECH) style pilot at McCarthy Catholic College, Emu Plains.




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Who's the fairest of them all? Australian entertainment & media industry needs diversity to grow - 8 June

A lack of diversity in Australia's media and entertainment workforce in terms of ethnicity, gender, age and thinking is dragging on the industry's growth, according to a PwC report released today.




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Microsoft’s Visual Studio Online code editor is now Visual Studio Codespaces and gets a price drop

About a year ago, Microsoft launched Visual Studio Online, its online code editor based on the popular Visual Studio Code project. It’s basically a full code editor and hosted environment that lives in your browser. Today, the company announced that it is changing the name of this service to Visual Studio Codespaces. It’s also dropping […]




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Microsoft opens registration for its free, online Build 2020 developer conference

Microsoft has now opened registration for the virtual edition of its online-only Build 2020 developer conference, which will take place from May 19 to 20. Typically, the event draws more than 6,000 developers, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, that’s obviously not an option. In contrast to Google, which completely scrapped its I/O developer conference […]




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AWS launches the $995 Elemental Link for streaming video to its cloud

AWS today announced the launch of the Elemental Link, a small hardware device that makes it easy to connect a live video source to the AWS Elemental Media Live service for broadcast-grade live video processing in the cloud. The $995 Link, which weighs in at less than a pound, is meant to allow Media Live […]




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EIA forecasts U.S. crude oil production to decline because of low oil prices (4/15/2020)

In the April 2020 update of its Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), released on April 7, and before a recently announced agreement by oil producing countries to limit production, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that U.S. crude oil production will average 11.8 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2020, a 4% decline from the 2019 production levels. Crude oil production will average 11.0 million b/d in 2021, a 6% decline from 2020 (Figure 1). If realized, the STEO 2020 production decline would mark the first annual decrease since 2016. The majority of the forecasted production decline occurs between the first and fourth quarters of 2020, dropping from 12.7 million b/d to 11 million b/d (13%) and remaining around that level through 2021. The forecast did not incorporate the April 12 joint announcement by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and several other non-OPEC countries to reduce crude oil production. These production reductions may significantly affect global balances and could provide upward price pressure that would affect U.S. crude oil drilling and production. ...




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WTI crude oil futures prices fell below zero because of low liquidity and limited available storage (4/22/2020)

On Monday, April 20, 2020, New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil front-month futures prices fell below zero dollars per barrel (b)—at one point, trading at -$40.32/b (Figure 1)—and remained below zero for part of the following trading day. Monday marked the first time the price for the WTI futures contract fell below zero since trading began in 1983. Negative prices in commodity markets are very rare, but when they occur they typically indicate high transactions costs and significant infrastructure constraints. In this case, the WTI front-month futures contract was for May 2020 delivery, and the contract was set to expire on April 21, 2020. Unless they have made other arrangements ahead of time, market participants that hold WTI futures contracts to expiration must take physical delivery of WTI crude oil in Cushing, Oklahoma. Typically, most market participants close any futures contracts ahead of expiration through cash settlement in order to avoid taking physical delivery, and only about 1% of contracts are physically settled. The extreme market events of April 20 and April 21 were driven by several factors, including the inability of contract holders to find other market participants to sell the futures contracts. In addition, in this case, the scarcity of available crude oil storage meant several market participants sold their futures contracts at negative prices, in effect paying a counterparty to close out of the contracts. ...




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Record low demand and low crack spreads drive refinery run declines (4/29/2020)

Transportation fuel demand in the United States has decreased since mid-March 2020, as a result of reduced economic activity and stay-at-home orders aimed at slowing the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). With low demand and a decrease in profitability, as measured by crack spreads, U.S. refineries have reduced gross inputs (runs), which dropped to 12.8 million barrels per day (b/d) for the week ending April 17, 3.8 million b/d lower than the previous five-year (2015–19) average and the lowest level since 2008 (Figure 1). Gross inputs increased slightly to 13.2 million b/d the week of April 24. ...




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Low crude oil prices, record-high inventories, and low demand drive gasoline prices down (5/6/2020)

On April 27, 2020, the U.S. average regular retail gasoline price was $1.77 per gallon (gal), the lowest price since February 2016. On May 4, the U.S. average gasoline price increased slightly to $1.79/gal. The United States declared a national emergency on March 13 in response to concerns regarding spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). From March 16 to May 4, the U.S. average regular retail gasoline price fell by $0.46/gal. The lower gasoline prices reflect low crude oil prices, low gasoline demand, and rising gasoline inventories. ...




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AEO2020: Alternative Policies - Varying Residential Solar Photovoltaic Utility Rate Structure




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AEO2020: Alternative Policies - Carbon Fee Cases




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AEO2020: Alternative Policies - 50% Carbon-Free Generation by 2050




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Tumblr now removes reblogs in violation of its hate-speech policy, not just the original posts

Tumblr is making a change to how it deals with hate speech on its blogging platform. The company announced today it will also remove the reblogs (repostings) from any blogs that were suspended for violating its policies around hate speech. Already, the company says it’s identified nearly 1,000 blogs that were banned for blatant violations […]




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Twitter runs a test prompting users to revise ‘harmful’ replies

In its latest effort to deal with rampant harassment on its platform, Twitter will look into giving users a second chance before they tweet. In a new feature the company is testing, users who use “harmful” language will see a prompt suggesting that they self-edit before posting a reply. When things get heated, you may […]




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Discover is Facebook’s new effort to help people access websites for free — but with limits

Facebook has a new connectivity app called Discover to help those who can’t afford to get online access information on the web. The service, available through mobile web and Android app, allows users to visit any website in text format (no video, images, audio and other elements that eat up large amounts of data) and […]




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Facebook users are buying and selling pangolin parts, even though it’s illegal

In spite of their protected status under international laws, pangolins remain one of the most trafficked animals in the world — and at least some of that trade is taking place right out in the open on Facebook . A new report from tech watchdog group the Tech Transparency Project details how Facebook users are […]




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Platforms scramble as ‘Plandemic’ conspiracy video spreads misinformation like wildfire

A video about the coronavirus featuring a well-known vaccine conspiracist is spreading like wildfire on social media this week, even as platforms talk tough about misinformation in the midst of the pandemic. In the professionally-produced video, a solemn interviewer named Mikki Willis interviews Judy Mikovits, a figure best known for her anti-vaccine activism in recent […]




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Facebook’s redesign goes live with simplified navigation and dark mode

After months of testing, Facebook’s redesign is finally official. Announced last year at F8, the more minimalist approach to its desktop design has been rolled out in waves. In March, the company added an option to try out the new version. Users could switch back and leave feedback for why they had done so. This […]