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.

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.

The overwhelming majority of global banks and traditional financial services firms believe part of their business is at risk of being lost to standalone Fintech challengers, according to a PwC report released today.

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.

Australia's next generation of family business leaders is more confident and better prepared for senior roles than two years ago, but is also experiencing more challenges, both inside the firm and in the wider business landscape.

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.

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.

Modest personal tax cuts, tighter superannuation concessions, and a pathway to lower corporate tax rates make this a responsible if not spectacular budget.

Australias four major banks delivered combined cash earnings of $14.9 billion for the first half to March 2016.

An enhanced Singapore-Australia free trade agreement (SAFTA) represents the biggest step-forward in over a decade in our economic relationship with Singapore.

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.

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.

PwC Australia has recruited former CEO and Managing Director of David Jones Limited, Paul Zahra as Global Retail Advisor to add fuel to its growing retail and consumer practice.

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.

PwC Australia has acquired a 15 per cent stake in TOP Education, a Sydney-based private higher education provider, in move that will strengthen the firm's focus on Australia's third largest export - international education.

The world's top 40 mining companies were in a race to the bottom in 2015, with falling market capitalisations and net losses leaving them slower, lower and weaker, according to PwC's Mine 2016 report released today.

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.

Cloudflare today announced a new partnership with JD Cloud & AI that will see the company expand its network in Chinato an additional 150 data centers. Currently, Cloudflare is available in 17 data centers in mainland China, thanks to a long-standing partnership with Baidu, but this new deal is obviously significantly larger. CloudFlare’s original partnership […]

Google today announced that it is making Meet, its video meeting tool for businesses that directly competes with the likes of Zoom, available for free to everyone. Until now, you could participate in a Meet call without being a paying user, but you needed a paid G Suite account to start calls. You won’t be […]

Puppet, the Portland-based infrastructure automation company, today announced that it has named former Cloud Foundry Foundation executive director Abby Kearns as its new CTO. Current Puppet CTO Deepak Giridharagopal will remain in his role and focus on R&D and leading new projects, while Kearns will focus on expanding the company’s product portfolio and communicating with […]

Google Cloud today announced the official opening of its Las Vegas data center region. With this, Google Cloud now operates four regions in the western U.S., with Las Vegas complementing Google Cloud’s existing data centers in Los Angeles, Calif.; The Dalles, Ore. and its recently opened Salt Lake City, Utah region. In total, Google now […]

Microsoft today announced a slew of updates to various parts of its Microsoft 365 ecosystem. A lot of these aren’t all that exciting (though that obviously depends on your level of enthusiasm for products like Microsoft Endpoint Manager), but the overall thrust behind this update is to make life easier for the IT admins that […]

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 […]

The Cloud Foundry Foundation (CFF) just went through a major leadership change, with executive director Abby Kearns stepping down after five years (and becoming a CTO at Puppet) and the CFF’s CTO Chip Childers stepping into the top leadership role in the organization. For the most part, though, these changes are only accelerating some of […]

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 […]

Backblaze today announced that its B2 Cloud Storage service is now API-compatible with Amazon’s S3 storage service. Backblaze started as an affordable cloud backup service, but over the last few years, the company has also taken its storage expertise and launched the developer-centric B2 Cloud Storage service, which promises to be significantly cheaper than similar […]

With Windows 10X, Microsoft introduced a new version of its flagship operating system last October that was specifically designed for dual-screen devices. The original plan was to launch the first set of Windows 10X dual-screen devices before the 2020 holidays, and in February of this year, it announced a slew of tools to help developers […]

Nvidia today announced its plans to acquire Cumulus Networks, an open-source-centric company that specializes in helping enterprises optimize their data center networking stack. Cumulus offers both its own Linux distribution for network switches, as well as tools for managing network operations. With Cumulus Express, the company also offers a hardware solution in the form of […]

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 […]

At its Think Digital conference, IBM and Red Hat today announced a number of new services that all center around 5G edge and AI. The fact that the company is focusing on these two areas doesn’t come as a surprise, given that both edge and AI are two of the fastest-growing businesses in enterprise computing. […]

Orca Security, an Israeli cloud security firm that focuses on giving enterprises better visibility into their multi-cloud deployments on AWS, Azure and GCP, today announced that it has raised a $20 million Series A round led by GGV Capital. YL Ventures and Silicon Valley CISO Investments also participated in this round. Together with its seed […]

Mozilla today launched version 76 of its Firefox browser, and with that, it’s launching a couple of new features that you’ll likely notice if you’re already using the open-source browser. The highlight of today’s release is the enhanced password manager. Firefox Lockwise, as it is called these days, will now ask you for your device […]

Under different circumstances, GitHub would be hosting its Satellite conference in Paris this week. Like so many other events, GitHub decided to switch Satellite to a virtual event, but that isn’t stopping the Microsoft-owned company from announcing quite a bit of news this week. The highlight of GitHub’s announcement is surely the launch of GitHub […]

Google today announced that it is extending the preview period of Android 11 by about a month. So instead of launching a beta this month, as it had previously planned, it’ll release a fourth developer preview today instead. The first beta will officially launch on June 3, during an Android -centric online event it’ll hold […]

Hub Security, a Tel Aviv-based startup that developed a software and hardware platform for cryptographic operations, today announced that it has raised a $5 million Series A round led by AXA Ventures. Crowdfunding platform OurCrowd also participated in this round. Like most companies at the Series A stage, the company plans to use the investment […]

Locatee, a Swiss startup that uses existing sensors and IT infrastructures to provide employers and commercial real estate owners with detailed data about how their spaces are utilized, today announced that it has raised a $4 million Series A funding round led by San Francisco-based FYRFLY Venture Partners and Zurich-based Tomahawk VC. “We started the […]

Google today launched an update to its Duo video chat app (which you definitely shouldn’t confuse with Hangouts or Google Meet, Google’s other video, audio and text chat apps). There are plenty of jokes to be made about Google’s plethora of chat options, but Duo is trying to be a bit different from Hangouts and […]

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

Facebook is today rolling out a tool that will allow users in the U.S. and Canada to export their Facebook photos and videos to Google Photos. This data portability tool was first introduced in Ireland in December, and has since been made available to other international markets. To use the feature, Facebook users will need […]

By the summer of 2016, Marie Outtier had spent eight years as a consultant advising media agencies and martech companies on marketing growth strategy. Pierre-Jean “PJ” Camillieri started as a music software engineer before joining one of Apple’s consumer electronics divisions. Inspired by Siri, he left to start Timista, a smart lifestyle assistant. When the […]

You can now debunk thousands of coronavirus-related hoaxes with a few texts on WhatsApp . Poynter Institute, a non-profit organization that supports journalism, today launched a bot on the Facebook -owned service that will allow people across the globe to debunk over 4,000 hoaxes surrounding the pandemic such as whether the infectious disease originated in […]

Facebook is expanding its Community Help hub to better serve local communities amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The hub has already seen significant usage by those requesting food, supplies and information about local resources, as well as use by volunteers and groups willing to lend a hand. Now, Facebook is adding more features to the hub […]