1. Apartments look good value for buyers

Inner city apartment rents in Melbourne and Sydney fell sharply over last year – by 7.6% and 5.7% respectively – as the flow of tourists and students ran dry and renters opted for the leafy suburbs and regions because of the Coronavirus restrictions. The SMH says “the nation’s rental markets have diverged in response to the pandemic disruption through 2020.” Meanwhile, Core Logic data says house rents were up 3.3% collectively across the combined capital city markets over the year but apartment rents fell 4.6%.

2. Labor shuffling shadow ministers

With the Labor leadership of Anthony Albanese looking shaky, a shadow cabinet reshuffle has seen the climate spokesman Mark Butler, dumped from the position. Butler is a senior Labor figure and has held the position for three elections. However, other senior figures in the party, including Joel Fitzgibbon, have been calling for a more sellable climate policy to mainstream Australians and especially his constituency in the Hunter region’s coalfields. Former Treasury spokesman, Chris Bowen, is tipped to be Butler’s replacement. This means the right of the party will be running climate policies going forward. This is a step towards making Labor more understanding of business concerns.

3. Putin worried about the world

Russian boss, Vladmir Putin, had his say at the online version of the Davos World Economic Forum and he warned the Coronavirus has exacerbated pre-existing global problems. He said the crisis had increased social stratification, populism, right- and left-wing radicalism, adding that domestic political processes were becoming more violent.

This is what he said: “In the 20th century, the failure and inability to centrally resolve such issues resulted in the catastrophic World War II. Of course, nowadays such a heated conflict is not possible, I hope that it’s not possible in principle, because it would mean the end of our civilization. But I would like to reiterate, that the situation might develop unpredictably and uncontrollably if we will sit on our hands doing nothing to avoid it. And there is a possibility that we may experience an actual collapse of global development that might result in a fight of all against all.”

This follows China’s Xi Jinping’s speech, which warned of a new cold war and called upon the world to play fair! This is what he said: “We should build an open world economy … discard discriminatory and exclusionary standards, rules and systems, and take down barriers to trade, investment and technological exchanges,” Mr Xi said in a 25-minute speech.

"We should advocate fair competition, like competing with each other for excellence in a racing field, not beating each other on a wrestling arena.”

In case you’re wondering: Google says the Chinese word for irony is “Fengci” and in Russia it is “ironiya.”

4. Firefighters sent on wild goose chase by hunting decoy

While responding to reports that an injured goose needed rescuing from a frozen river, firefighters from the Monroe Township Fire Department in Michigan instead retrieved a hunting decoy. "It ended up being a good training session, actually," Fire Department Chief Mark Cherney told local station WXYZ.

5. Dow drops 2% for worst day in three months

The Dow Jones closed 633.87 points or 2.05% lower on Wednesday in the worst day for the index since October 28. The S&P 500 was down 98.85 points or 2.57% to 3,750.77, which CNBC noted has put the index into the red for the year so far. The Nasdaq dropped 355.47 points or 2.61% to 13,270.60.