Weekend One on One

Nearly two years after the failed referendum saw a First Nations voice to parliament shot down, some NGOs and state governments have been taking the initiative to follow the wishes of the majority of Indigenous communities in Australia who voted for this special representation. Australia's principal non-government organisation for public health, the Public Health Association of Australia, has anno...

Israeli military personnel have intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver medicine and food to Gaza and boarded its boats as it approached the area. The Global Sumud Flotilla consists of more than 40 civilian boats carrying about 500 parliamentarians, lawyers and activists including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg. The organisers say they are trying to break Israel's blocka...

The U.S. federal government has entered a shutdown, a few hours after the U.S. Senate failed to pass a short-term spending bill on Tuesday night US East Coast time. It's the first government shutdown in nearly seven years. The last and also the longest federal government shutdown occurred from late 2018 to early 2019 during President Trump's first term when Democrats opposed funding the U.S.-Mexic...

Palau, an independent island nation in the western Pacific Ocean, consists of more than 300 islands in Micronesia. It's a popular destination for divers and ecotourists and visitors are required to take the "Palau Pledge" to protect its ecosystems. But Palau is already facing the immediate reality of climate change, with rising sea levels, coral bleaching, extreme weather events, and biodiversity...

Fandi Ahmad is more than just a footballer; has been described as a national legend in Singapore. He was the first Singaporean footballer to play in Europe, the first Singaporean millionaire sportsperson and the first Singaporean sportsperson to have a published biography. As a young child, his family lived in a two-room public housing flat, Fandi was obsessed with football and spent much of his t...

More than 100 states have signed an Australian-led declaration to protect aid workers. Australian Red Cross CEO Andrew Colvin explains what the declaration is aiming to achieve.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong says the upcoming meeting between Anthony Albanese and Donald Trump will seek to advance areas of co-operation but also underline issues of sovereignty.

A new Aged Care Act is weeks away from coming into effect, but there are aspects that has the Inspector-General of Aged Care concerned.

This week, NASA announced findings of potential biosignatures on Mars. Does that mean there's proof that there was once life on Mars? In this edition of Weekend One on One, Dr Micheal Tice, geology professor at Texas A&M University, who's involved in the ongoing research project, explains what the findings mean.

Making the switch from branded products to a store's home brand alternatives could save shoppers thousands of dollars each year at checkout, according to a financial comparison website. SBS's Cameron Carr has been finding out more from Compare the Market spokesman Phillip Portman.

Dr Dara Conduit at the University of Melbourne explains the impact of the death in custody of Mahsa Jina Amini three years ago on women's rights in Iran today.

The Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia has handed down his long-awaited report, containing 54 recommendations to the federal government.

Israel's attack on Hamas officials in Doha, Qatar, has been met with widespread international condemnation. Five Hamas members died along with one security official from Qatar. What effect will this incident have on the peace process? Ian Parmeter is a Research Scholar and PhD Candidate at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, and he's been speaking to SBS'...

Usman Khawaja says he raised the issue of imposing sanctions on Israel over its actions in Gaza during his meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

When planes fly faster than the speed of sound, air molecules can’t get out of the way fast enough and begin to pack together. Eventually they form a wave in front of the aircraft, creating a burst of air pressure. And you get a big bang - the sound of an aircraft breaking the sound barrier - a sonic boom. This sonic boom can damage structures and break glass. Because of this, supersonic overland...

Former RAAF airwoman Julia Delaforce speaks with Angelica Waite about her experience as a whistleblower and why that has led her to call for change.

Noah Paoa is a PhD candidate in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. His research focuses on sea level rise-induced flooding and its specific impacts on coastal cultural assets and archaeological sites throughout Polynesia. Using digital elevation mapping and wave-driven flood models, Paoa’s work projects future threats to irreplaceable heritage sites. In this ep...

The controversy over working from home continues to swirl around the nation's workplaces. Employers want their workers back in the office; workers ask why as they get more work done at home. So what do the facts tell us about working from home? Dr. Mark Benden is the chair for the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Texas A&M University in the US, and he's been carrying out exha...

As a humanitarian crisis escalates in Gaza, Australian Red Cross emergency nurse Jean-Philippe Miller has flown back for his fourth rotation. After 14 humanitarian deployments worldwide, the 41-year-old from Melbourne says aid work in Gaza is ‘unlike anything else’. Prior to his departure, Mr Miller described his life-saving mission to SBS’s Sandra Fulloon.

Ukraine and its European allies have been buoyed by Donald Trump's promise of security guarantees for Kyiv to help end the war in Ukraine but face many unanswered questions, including how willing Russia will be to play ball. Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed Monday's extraordinary summit at the White House with the U.S. president as a "major step forward" towards ending Europe's deadliest conflict in 80...

Wednesday August 20th is World Mosquito Day - and it may seem strange to set aside a day for an insect which accounts for around a million deaths a year. Nearly 700 million people contract mosquito-borne illnesses every year. The mosquitoes act as vectors, carrying bacteria, viruses, and parasites that cause illness in humans. Malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, Zika virus, West Nile virus, and J...

AI systems can do amazing things, but they can sometimes suffer from a drawback called “catastrophic forgetting”. Researchers at Arizona State University hope to learn how to solve the problem by probing the brains of sleeping bees. The pay-off could be more reliable, more memory-efficient artificial intelligence. When AI systems learn one task — say, how to recognize dogs — and are later trained...

A team of researchers say they’ve found fossils that add two new ancestors to our human family tree. While these two creatures appeared to have lived at the same time - and in the same place - they are two distinct, different hominins. The team says one set of fossils appears to be a fit for the genus Homo. That’s the same genus as modern humans. The other seems to fit Australopithecus, the same g...

Ahead of the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, a Chatham House analyst is saying Ukraine will not accept any deal imposed without its participation. U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to discuss a possible deal to end the war in Ukraine when they meet on Friday. Jaroslava Barbieri, Research Fellow at the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House, points out that Trump h...

A chikungunya outbreak in China has infected more than 7,000 people. Chikungunya causes fever and joint pain, but in some cases can be fatal. There is no vaccine or real treatment. Epidemiologist Jason Rasgon, from Penn State University, explains how the disease is transmitted, and why it seems to be spreading to new areas. The chikungunya virus is not currently endemic in Australia. There have be...