1. Moderna Inc. stocks rose by 18% yesterday afternoon to a record price of $150.14, as the company requests clearance for its coronavirus vaccine in the US and Europe. 

2. Prime Minister Scott Morrison is seeking an apology from China, after a diplomat in Beijing tweeted an ‘doctored’ image appearing to show an Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan child. The tweet follows the recent investigation into Australian military conduct and increases current tensions between the two countries.

3. Qatar has abruptly taken steps to end a $300 million-a-year lamb trade deal with Australia, which had been standing for the past five years. Speculation has mounted that this move from Qatar is in retaliation to an investigation launched around the invasive searches of Australian female travellers at Doha’s Hamad International Airport in October

4. Three out of four Australians traveling this summer will remain within their own state according to research by the Tourism and Transport Forum (TTF), and over 70 percent said they would spend some or all of their overseas holiday budget on domestic travel instead.

"This is great news for domestic operators and shows there is significant opportunity to capture the outbound spend of locals who were going abroad although it would still not fully compensate for the lack of international visitation," said TTF chief executive Margy Osmond.

5. The Dow Jones fell 271.73 points or 0.91% on Monday but still remained up 11.8% for the month, the best monthly performance for the index since January 1987. The S&P 500 was down 16.72 points or 0.46% to 3,621.63 and the Nasdaq fell 7.11 points or 0.06% to 12,198.74, but both had their best monthly performance since April this year.