The countrys central bank announced on Thursday that it had decided to update Australias $5 bills, replacing the image of Queen Elizabeth II not with her successor, but with a new design that honors the culture and history of the First Australians. The other side of the notes will continue to be printed with an image of the Australian Parliament.

First Australians is a term used in Australia to refer to the countrys Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who lived in the country for thousands of years before it was colonized by Britain.

This decision by the Reserve Bank Board follows consultation with the Australian Government, which supports this change, the Reserve Bank of Australia said in a news release.

It added that it would consult with First Australians on the design, but that the new notes would not be circulating for a number of years.

Australias $5 bills are currently the countrys only banknotes that bear a portrait of the British monarch. Other notes carry images of prominent historical figures, including womens rights activist Edith Cowan, and the inventor and Aboriginal rights campaigner David Unaipon.

All of the coins in circulation in Australia feature a profile of Queen Elizabeth II. The Australian Royal Mint will begin making coins with the effigy of King Charles III this year.

The decision not to include the new sovereignwho will be coronated on May 6on the countrys banknotes has divided opinion in Australia.

Craig Foster, chair of the Australian Republic Movement, said in a statement on Thursday that the central banks scrapping of the monarchy across its bill designs was an important symbolic step and a recognition of First Australians in our national story.

Australia believes in meritocracy, so the idea that someone should be on our currency by birthright is irreconcilable [with that value], he said.

To think that an unelected king should be on our currency in place of First Nations leaders and elders and eminent Australians is no longer justifiable. Australians deserve to see themselves, and only themselves reflected inall national symbols, including our currency.

The announcement was also welcomed by Lidia Thorpe, a senator in Australias Greens party, who referred to the changes as a massive win for Indigenous peoples who were fighting to decolonize Australia.  

However, the removal of Australias head of state from its banknotes was not received well by some lawmakers.

Peter Dutton, leader of Australias opposition Liberal party, described the exclusion of Charles III from $5 bills as woke nonsense and an attack on our systems, our society and institutions in an interview with radio station 2GB Sydney.  

Meanwhile, senator for the Australian Liberal party Dean Smith told Australias ABC News he believed the central bank had missed a unique opportunity to merge different aspects of the countrys history.

A design incorporating both our new King and an appreciation for Australias Indigenous heritage and culture would be a better and more unifying approach, he argued.

Debate around Australias relationship with the British crown has always existed, but it intensified following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September.  

In 1999, Australia held a landmark referendum on whether to replace the monarchy with a president. Almost 55% of those who voted rejected the proposal, while 45% said they wanted to cut ties with the U.K.s royal family.

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The stock rose in trading after New York markets closed on Wednesday. If the gains hold, the move would be the biggest intraday jump since July 2013. Meta is the best performer in the S&P 500 Index since the stocks recent November 3 closing low of $88.91, and is poised to more than double in value since then. 

Zuckerberg, who has spent the past year promising a faraway future in a digital world called the metaverse, was more focused on immediate problems, such as sending users the most relevant videos at the right time, and finally making significant revenue from messaging products.

He called 2023 the Year of Efficiency.

Were working on flattening our org structure and removing some layers of middle management to make decisions faster, as well as deploying AI tools to help our engineers be more productive, Zuckerberg said on an earnings call with investors. Theres going to be some more that we can do to improve our productivity, speed and cost structure.

Zuckerberg said the company is using AI to improve the way it recommends content a strategy for making the platform more attractive to users and advertisers alike. Meta is still suffering from a slump in demand for digital ads, which make up the vast majority of its sales, especially from clients in finance and technology. But the company also pointed to some industries, including health and travel, where businesses are spending more.

Fourth-quarter sales fell 4% to $32.2 billion, the third straight period of declines. Even so, the total beat analysts estimates, and Meta projected revenue of $26 billion to $28.5 billion for the first quarter, in line with an average projection of $27.3 billion. Analysts are predicting that Meta will return to growth following the current period.

Snap Inc., the parent of rival social-media app Snapchat, gave a less upbeat outlook on Tuesday, sending its shares down 10%. Snap said it expected sales to decline in the current period, with CEO Evan Spiegel remarking that the ad slump appears to be bottoming out. Advertising demand hasnt really improved, but it hasnt gotten significantly worse either, Spiegel said on a conference call.

Meta, whose shares have gained 27% so far this year, is on the rebound after the worst year for its stock in history. The company faced a decline in advertiser demand due to weakness in the broader economy as well as a change in privacy rules on Apple Inc.s iPhone, which made it harder for Meta to offer targeted ads. Meta cut 11,000 jobs, or 13% of the workforce, in November in its first-ever major layoff.

Those cuts came during a quarter that was otherwise an improvement for the company. Facebook, Metas flagship social network, now has more than 2 billion daily users, up more than 70 million from a year ago.Play Video

The company also boosted its stock-buyback authorization by $40 billion, adding to the $10.9 billion remaining from previous repurchase programs. In the fourth quarter, Meta recorded restructuring charges of $4.2 billion related to its job cuts. 

Zuckerberg has spent tens of billions of dollars on an effort to build the metaverse a digital world where people can work and play. Those efforts are still in their early stages, which means much of the investment is not leading to immediate returns.

Still, the Menlo Park, California-based company said 2023 expenses will be $89 billion to $95 billion less than Meta previously forecast. That could help ameliorate investor concerns that the company is overspending on its virtual-reality ambitions.

Capital expenditures in the recent quarter soared to $32 billion. In the fourth quarter of 2021, by contrast, capital spending was $5.54 billion.

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The tear gas had barely dissipated in Paris when activists and labor unions announced more national strikes and mass demos, set for Feb. 7 and Feb. 11, as both left-wing and far-right lawmakers vowed to block Macrons plan.

Macron says hes determined not to back down. But he faces resistance from an unexpected force, which is growing in strength: college students and young adults, many of whom have yet to join the workforce, and who are many decades away from retiring. 

Indeed, the French president is one of many leaders confronting two phenomena on a collision course: A revolt against overwork among younger generations; and governments need for people to work longer, and retire older, to avoid having pension obligations swamp their budgets.

In France this week, Gen Z protesters were out on the streets in support of their future selves. RIP my retirement in good health, read one handwritten sign held by a young man on a Paris street on Tuesday. Another read, retirement before arthritis.

About 150,000 university students joined Tuesdays protests, according to student organizations, which have already begun aiming to boost those numbers at next weeks demonstrations. Theres a lot of work being doing on the campuses, says Lucas Boutillier, 19, a sophomore political science student at the University of Picardie, in Macrons hometown of Amiens. Well mobilize even more for next week, he told Fortune on Wednesday. We really believe we can block the reform.

Two-thirds oppose raising the retirement age

About two-thirds of French voters oppose raising the retirement age, according to an Ifop poll released last Sunday. The longer the fight over pensions drags out, the more it could cost the worlds seventh-biggest economy. Macron says France can no longer afford its pensions unless it raises the eligibility age. 

This, to save 1% of GDP? Its ridiculous! François Ruffin, 47, a left-wing member of parliament, railed on a Left Bank street on Tuesday, referring to estimates of the fiscal boost that could come from people working two years longer. The government, he says, should tell the French they know they work hard, and are going to find ways to improve their lives. A large banner nearby featured the logo of French auto giant Renault, with the words: Two years + for their profits? Non merci!

Two decades in retirement

Under Macrons plan, Frances retirement age would gradually increase between now and 2030, with new employees eased into a streamlined pension system. Such change seems urgent. Public pensions make up 13% of Frances GDP, the second-highest in the 27-nation European Union. By contrast, Social Security payments comprise 5% of U.S. GDP. The life expectancy of the average French person is 82 years (nearly five years more than the average American). In effect, that means the average French retiree draws pension benefits for 20 years. By some estimates, only one in three French people work past 60.

Economists warn of looming disaster, not only in France, but in most advanced countriesas the number of retirees grows sharply in relation to the number of working-age adults. Across the 38 wealthy nations that make up the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the ratio of people 65 and older to people aged 20 to 64 will more than double over the next few decades, from 22% now to 46% in 2050. 

In essence, the thousands of youth storming the streets will increasingly struggle to shoulder the burden of supporting their societys retirees. If nothing is done quickly to extend working lives, living standards will fall in the course of the coming decades, the OECD said in a recent report. Without a change in attitude, it will be our children and grandchildren who will pay the price. 

But try telling that to French youth. Youth unemployment is huge in France, says Boutillier, the 19-year-old student. If we increase the time people are employed, those are jobs that arent freed up for young people. 

I want time for me

To members of Boutilliers generation, Macrons plan seems sure to suck them into a life of drudgery that they associate with bygone generations. They have a relationship with work that has totally changed, Laurent Guardelli, a labor lawyer in Paris representing corporations, many of them multinationals, tells Fortune. They say, Its true Im not yet working, but I already know that I want time for me, time for my family, he says.

To be sure, France has done more than most countries to protect that time, at least on paper. The country mandated a maximum 35-hour workweek in 2000, decades before the current trend toward four-day workweeks. And in 2016, it was the first country to introduce a right to disconnect law, forbidding bosses from emailing and calling employees on their off-hours. There is also a minimum of five weeks paid vacation a year. 

In recent weeks, French youth have made it clear they will fight hard to keep every bit of that. Many see raising the retirement age as opening the way to the erosion of all the other labor benefitsincluding some perks that American workers could only dream of.

At one massive street protest earlier in January, Bastien, an 18-year-old freshman at Pariss Sorbonne University, told a journalist, its a pretty depressing prospect to think you are going to work all your life, and finally reach retirement age either ready to die, or so exhausted that retirement wont really be retirement.

Ironically, French employees enjoy higher rates of productivity than other Group of 7 rich countries, according to the OECD. And despite the right-to-disconnect law, Guardelli says almost no employees have sued their bosses for emailing them while theyre off duty. Among tech consultants, which Guardelli has represented in large numbers, they wake up in the morning, first thing they do is switch on their iPhone and laptop, and that lasts very late into the evening, he says.

Tracances is a new French word

Just like Americans, many French are increasingly spending time off checking work emails and Slack messages. In recent months, a new word has crept into the language: tracances, a mashup of work (travail) and vacation (vacances). Last summer, several companies offered employees extended tracances away from the office, on the condition that they packed their laptops and stayed connected.

That is a slippery slope, according to Michèle Bauer, a labor lawyer in Bordeaux. Dont be duped, tracances isnt a favor, she wrote last summer. It erases the necessary boundary between work and private life, she said, pointing out that workaholic habits are what spawned the right-to-disconnect law in the first place.

Boutillier, the 19-year-old student, is determined to fight for that boundaryincluding for the right to retire relatively young. He voted for the first time in last years presidential elections (Macron won), and while his vote is secret, he says, Im no fan of the President. Like thousands of other young French people, he seems willing to risk the economic damage that comes from longer retirements and shorter careers.