Police have raided three businesses and a home in the Whitsunday region allegedly seizing illegal vapes and $500,000 worth of tobacco. Key points: Police allege 100 kilograms of illicit tobacco, thousands of illegal smoking products and $80,000 in cash were discovered during the raids. Vapes with nicotine are illegal in Queensland unless supplied through a pharmacist or on a Therapeutic Goods Administration prescription.  Mackay Whitsunday District Detective Inspector Emma Novosel said four raids took place on February 10, at businesses on The Esplanade in Airlie Beach, Celeber Drive at Andergrove and Carl Court at Rural View in Mackay, and a house in West Mackay.  She said the raids followed multiple reports from the community of vapes allegedly being sold to children.  A 32-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man have been charged with possession of tainted property.  They are expected to appear in Mackay Magistrates Court on March 13. Alleged child customers Detective Inspector Novosel said police were working with other agencies, including Queensland Health and Border Force, to lay further…

Tomorrow’s connected ecosystem will leverage machine-native wallets, enabling authenticated machine-to-machine transactions across various commercial settings. No people necessary. That’s the vision of Sterling Pratz, CEO at leading payment solution for vehicles and fleets Car IQ, who tells PYMNTS’ CEO Karen Webster that he and his investors see machine payments, and vehicles in particular, as the future. Car IQ’s proprietary Car IQ Pay product provides vehicles with a trusted identity and secure payment capabilities, allowing them to connect directly with banks and merchants to purchase fuel, tolls, parking, and more without the use of a credit card. “Essentially what we’ve created is a vehicle wallet, but what’s more important is what’s inside that wallet — in our case, we’ve gone further than storing money, storing value and distributing that value,” says Pratz. “We actually have purses inside each wallet and those purses can be responsible for different things: you can have a purse that’s…

Groundbreaking new offering will combine self-checkout with autonomous retail for the first time ever, giving retailers immediate relief from labor and inflation challenges—and a hyper-accelerated path to an autonomous future  SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., FEB. 2, 2023 – Standard AI, the world leader in Retail AI, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire leading self-checkout solutions provider, Skip. Standard AI will become the only company to connect self-checkout with AI-powered autonomous checkout into one integrated experience. The powerful combination will give retailers who are seeking immediate relief from labor pains a self-checkout option with a clearly-defined path to an autonomous future. In another first, Standard AI will integrate Skip’s cloud-based point of sale (POS) with the complex back office ecosystem to streamline operations and give greater control over price, discounts, promotions, and more. Retail AI has transformed what’s possible in a physical store. Leading retailers use Standard Checkout™ (part of the Vision…

Cutting-edge retail technology promises to transform the sector, but even the best developments are no replacement for getting the basics right. More than 100 Australian retail professionals sacrificed their holidays on the beach this summer, flying to New York to attend the world’s largest retail conference. Despite freezing temperatures, exorbitant airfares and surging COVID-19 infections, more than 35,000 retailers, suppliers and retail experts from 90 countries attended the conference, which is hosted by the National Retail Federation. This year’s event did not disappoint. Autonomous checkouts and queue-busting mobile point-of-sale technology featured at the NRF’s annual retail conference. Retailers have returned to Australia full of inspiration and armed with information about the latest trends and technologies, from autonomous checkouts and mobile point-of-sale systems to holographic marketing, augmented and virtual reality, and the metaverse. Some innovations may never see the light of day in Australia because, in our relatively small market, retailers…

The world’s largest car maker, Toyota, has been sceptical of batteries because of what is likely to be a life expectancy of 10 years. Picture: Getty Images Motoring journalists have been obsessed with electric vehicles for a couple of years but media spruikers of the technology seem to have missed the global implications of the rise of EV production, especially in China. Car buffs will have noticed how many of the vehicles discussed on motoring websites are now EVs, even though they made up just 3.1 per cent of vehicle sales last year and probably constitute just 1 per cent of the national car fleet. As this column reported on November 15, 2021, the instant torque, and therefore rapid acceleration, of EVs compared with internal combustion engines, is attractive to enthusiastic drivers. The much discussed downsides are range anxiety and recharging times. EV owners who live in older homes without off-street parking…

PERTH, Western Australia, 7 February 2023 – Chevron Australia will contribute a combined A$38 million to carbon capture and storage (CCS) research projects in Western Australia and Victoria, advancing knowledge of the critical emissions technology for a lower carbon future. Of the total contribution, $22 million has been committed to the Barrow Dampier CCS Regional Study, which is led by global technology company SLB, and supports a three-dimensional seismic and storage assessment to identify new CCS opportunities in the Carnarvon basin, offshore Western Australia. Chevron Australia has also committed $16 million to support development of new infrastructure at the Otway International Test Centre in Victoria. The project, which is managed by Australian carbon capture and storage research organisation, CO2CRC, will enable testing of carbon dioxide migration and validation of new modelling techniques that could improve storage processes in future CCS projects. Chevron Australia general manager asset development Michelle LaPoint said the…