Multiple Sclerosis is a disease of the central nervous system that disrupts communication between the brain and the body. VOA’s Faiza Elmasry talks to a woman diagnosed with the disease about her journey to find a healthier life and learn about the positive changes she made to help relieve the symptoms of MS.
Camera: June Soh
Produced by: June Soh, Zdenko Novacki
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A Sydney restaurant is using a Chinese-made, multi-lingual hospitality robot to address chronic staff shortages as Australia’s economy begins to recover from COVID-19 lockdowns and border closures.
The robot waiter is programmed to know the layout of the tables and delivers food from the kitchen. It is also multi-lingual, programmed to communicate in English and Mandarin. The so-called BellaBot is built by the Chinese firm PuduTech.
Each machine costs about $17,000. They can be leased for $34 per day for each device, or the equivalent of two hours’ wages for restaurant staff. The devices are in use in other Australian restaurants and imports into Australia appear to be unaffected by recent trade tensions between the two countries.
Liarne Schai, the co-owner of the Matterhorn Restaurant in Sydney, is delighted with her new mechanical staff member.
“Ah, love the robot. Love the robot, she makes my life a lot easier. It is like a tower that has got four trays. It will carry eight of our dinner plates in one go. She is geo-mapped to the floor (customer names, location of tables, etc.) The robot knows where all our tables are,” Schai said.
Australia’s hospitality workforce has traditionally relied on international students. They have, however, been restricted from entering after Australia closed its borders to most foreign nationals in March 2020 in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Labor shortages are affecting not only hospitality in Australia, but a range of industries from construction to information technology.
Liarne Schai says she has tried for months without success to recruit workers.
“It is the biggest issue we have at the moment. We have been running ads for chefs, for waiters, for kitchen hands for six months and we have had zero applicants. We are offering above award wages, we are offering bonuses, we are offering everything you can think of to attract appropriate staff and I am not even getting inappropriate staff, or untrained staff. I am just getting nobody.”
Labor shortages should ease when Australia reopens its borders to foreign nationals, but analysts expect many vacancies will remain unfilled.
Employer groups have demanded that Australia increase its intake of migrant workers.
Australia’s official unemployment rate stands at 5.2%.
But with more than 700,000 Australians without a job, there are calls for the government to boost domestic training programs and wages.
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For many musicians, like storytelling superstar Adele, the order of songs on an album is a matter of the keenest concern, affecting how a narrative is presented, how listeners react and ultimately how many albums are sold.
That is a big reason why customers of Spotify saw “play” as the album default option Sunday on the world’s largest audio streaming service, so songs will be heard in the order they appear on an album — though users can still elect the “shuffle” option.
Adele, whose much anticipated new album “30” shot to the top of the charts within hours of its release Friday, is among the artists who have campaigned for the “play” choice, and in announcing its change Spotify specifically mentioned her.
“As Adele mentioned, we are excited to share that we have begun rolling out a new Premium feature that has been long requested by both users and artists to make play the default button on all albums,” a spokesman for the Swedish company said.
“For those users still wishing to shuffle an album, they can go to the Now Playing View and select the shuffle toggle.”
Adele took to Twitter to express her thanks.
“We don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason,” she said. “Our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended. Thank you Spotify for listening.”
The English singer/songwriter, winner of 15 Grammy Awards and 2016’s Billboard Artist of the Year, is known for songs that combine raw, deeply personal feeling with strong musicality.
On her album “30,” Adele, her voice sometimes breaking, sings about her divorce and the guilt, depression and self-doubt that followed — a story she wanted listeners to hear as she had crafted it.
“There is always a story to be told as you listen to an album,” Andrew McCluskey, a song curator for the music to platform, wrote online. “Even if lyrically it doesn’t make sense, you can create a sonic and emotional journey with correct song placement.”
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Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest’s philanthropic organization will help 18 small news publishers in the country to negotiate collectively with Google and Facebook to secure licensing deals for the supply of news content.
Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation on Monday said it would submit an application with the country’s competition regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), allowing the publishers to bargain without breaching competition laws.
Forrest, Australia’s richest man, is the chairman and the largest shareholder of iron ore miner Fortescue Metals Group. He has a net worth of around A$27.2 billion ($19.7 billion), according to the Australian Financial Review.
Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s Google have been required since March to negotiate with Australian media outlets for content that drives traffic and advertising to their websites. If they don’t, the government may take over the negotiation.
Both companies have since struck licensing deals with most of Australia’s main media companies, but they have not entered into agreements with many small firms. The federal government is scheduled to begin a review of the law’s effectiveness in March.
Frontier Technology, an initiative of Minderoo, said it would assist the publishers.
“Small Australian publishers who produce public interest journalism for their communities should be given the same opportunity as large publishers to negotiate for use of their content for the public benefit,” Emma McDonald, Frontier Technology’s director of policy, said in a statement.
Google and Facebook did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.
The 18 small publishers include online publications that attract multicultural audiences and focus on issues at a local or regional level, McDonald said.
The move comes after ACCC late last month allowed a body representing 261 radio stations to negotiate a content deal.
News organizations, which have been losing advertising revenue to online aggregators, have complained for years about the big technology companies using content in search results or other features without payment.
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