Victoria’s case numbers have also come in and 5,137 new Covid-19 infections have been detected. That’s quite a jump from 3,767 yesterday.
Sadly, 13 lives have been lost overnight.
Continue reading...Category Archives: Australia news
South Korea presidential contender vows to seek nuclear-powered submarines, months after Australia’s Aukus deal
Lee Jae-myung aims to counter North Korea threats and pledges to restart stalled talks between Pyongyang and Washington
South Korea’s ruling party presidential candidate said he will seek US support to build nuclear-powered submarines to better counter threats from North Korea and proactively seek to reopen stalled denuclearisation talks between Pyongyang and Washington.
In an interview with Reuters and two other media outlets, Lee Jae-myung also pledged to put aside “strategic ambiguity” in the face of intensifying Sino-US rivalry, vowing pragmatic diplomacy would avoid South Korea being forced to choose between the two countries.
Continue reading...OzSage experts warn ‘let it rip’ Covid strategy will condemn vulnerable Australians to death
Sheer scale of cases means the impact on an already fatigued health system ‘could be enormous’, report says
- The OzSage report: 10 key points from its critique of Australia’s Covid response
- Follow our Covid live blog for the latest updates
- RATs: kits double in price amid gouging accusations
- Daily Covid cases could rise to 100,000 within weeks, expert predicts
- Vaccine rollout tracker; cases and data tracker
Australia’s independent expert group OzSage has savaged the “let it rip” Covid-19 strategy in New South Wales and elsewhere, saying it will condemn some people to death, particularly the more vulnerable.
In a report released on Thursday, OzSage said the trajectory of Covid data suggested hospital admission and intensive care unit occupancy numbers were “on a steeply rising trend and anticipated to exceed earlier peaks quite soon. In other words, optimistic assumptions about the impact of the Omicron variant on hospital admissions are unrealistic.”
Continue reading...‘It parodies our inaction’: Don’t Look Up, an allegory of the climate crisis, lauded by activists
Adam McKay’s end-of-the-world film is a ‘powerful’ depiction of society’s response to scientific warnings, campaigners say
Don’t Look Up, the latest celluloid offering from the writer-director Adam McKay, has become Netflix’s top film globally despite dividing critics and viewers.
The film, a satire in which two scientists played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence attempt to warn an indifferent world about a comet that threatens to destroy the planet, is an intentional allegory of the climate crisis.
Continue reading...Covid live: UK cases hit new daily record of 183,037; Spain cuts isolation period to seven days
Case figures include delayed data from Northern Ireland; Spain cuts quarantine despite record rise in cases
- UK reports another record daily Covid case rise as figures exceed 183,000
- French daily Covid cases above 200,000 as Italy considers measures
- US sets record for new daily Covid cases amid Omicron surge
- How can we measure the true scale of UK Covid hospital admissions?
- See all our coronavirus coverage
India has recorded another 9,195 confirmed coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, according to recently released data from its health ministry.
A further 302 deaths were also recorded, bring the total death toll to 480,592.
Continue reading...Rapid antigen tests double in price in Australia amid concerns of price-gouging
Reports cost of RAT kits soaring as federal government considers calling in consumer watchdog
- Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates
- Vaccine rollout and rates tracker; Cases and data tracker
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Any official crackdown on price-gouging of rapid antigen tests in Australia is unlikely, despite government suggestions it will get the consumer watchdog involved amid reports the kits have doubled in price as stock disappears from shelves.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has previously noted “price gouging is generally not illegal”, meaning its ability to respond is likely to be limited unless specific circumstances are involved.
Continue reading...Prince Andrew lawyer seeks to halt US case as accuser ‘lives in Australia’
Lawyer argues court does not have jurisdiction as Virginia Giuffre’s ties to Colorado are ‘very limited’
Prince Andrew’s lawyer has called for the US civil case against the royal over alleged sexual assault to be stopped because his accuser is “actually domiciled in Australia”.
Virginia Giuffre is suing the Queen’s son for allegedly assaulting her when she was a teenager. Andrew strongly denies the allegation.
Continue reading...Australia Covid news live update: NSW records 11,201 cases, Victoria 3,767; states consider shorter isolation time; Qld to change border testing requirements
NSW records three Covid-19 deaths as cases spiral; Queensland to allow rapid antigen test to cross border; chief health officers are reportedly considering cutting isolation periods to match the US and UK. Follow all the latest updates
- NSW scales back contact tracing as health system faces Omicron strain
- Covid hospitalisation rates: how is Australia’s health system coping?
- Omicron ‘not the same disease’ as earlier Covid waves, says UK scientist
- Vaccine rollout tracker; cases and data tracker
- Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing
- Follow our global Covid live blog
- See all our coronavirus coverage
NSW cases have jumped again, significantly this time, recording 11,201 cases today. Its the highest ever tally recorded by a state in a single day, and the first time a state has recorded over 10,000 cases in a day.
Sadly, three people have lost their lives overnight.
Continue reading...Australian man ‘cannot leave Israel for 8,000 years’ over unpaid child support
Noam Huppert says he is subject to travel ban until the year 9999 because he owes £1.8m to ex-wife
An Australian national living in Israel has said he is subject to an 8,000-year travel ban unless he pays an outstanding £1.8m in child support payments.
Noam Huppert, a 44-year-old analytical chemist working for a pharmaceutical company, is not allowed to leave Israel until 31 December 9999 owing to a 2013 “stay of exit” order handed down after a family court case was brought by his ex-wife, according to news.com.au.
Continue reading...NSW scales back Covid contact tracing as health system faces Omicron strain
Authorities to focus on high-risk groups as Dominic Perrottet admits health staff are at point of exhaustion
- Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates
- Covid hospitalisation rates: how is Australia’s health system coping with the spread of Omicron?
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The New South Wales government’s Covid contact-tracing system has been all but abandoned, with efforts now focused only on those in the highest risk categories.
NSW Health authorities are under increasing strain as the Covid Omicron variant pushes up hospital admissions, while its virulence means contact tracers have all but given up tracking its spread in the wider community.
Continue reading...Australia Covid live news updates: almost 500 extra Sydney cases undetected in community for days after mistake by major testing facility
More positive cases after Sydney lab testing error; ‘sacred’ SCG Ashes Test to go ahead, NSW minister says; Queensland reports 1,158 cases, scraps day five testing requirement after Brad Hazzard criticises ‘tourism testing’; massive demand for testing in NSW blows out wait times as state records 6,062 cases and one death; Victoria records 2,738 Covid cases and four deaths; Tasmania reports 43 cases and the ACT 252 – follow all the latest news
- Covid positive test rate in NSW jumps to 6.5%, highest since start of pandemic
- Covid hospitalisation rates: how is Australia’s health system coping with the spread of Omicron?
- Vaccine rollout tracker; Cases and data tracker
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- Follow our global Covid live blog
- See all our coronavirus coverage
More footage of those queues – this one in Sydney. Yikes. A big thank you to everyone involved for their patience ...
Back on those testing queues, waiting times for results and calls for more rapid antigen testing.
Of the people AAP spoke to, around half were from interstate and were required to take a PCR test. Car batteries were going flat in the line and people, including the elderly, were forced to wait for hours in hot vehicles.
The numbers appear to correlate with people lining up in the ACT to get tested, with the territory’s health minister saying anecdotal evidence from testing teams pointed to half of all swabs being for people getting tested to travel.
Continue reading...How Australia’s far right uses cryptocurrencies to monetise hate online
As cryptocurrencies become mainstream and frictionless, extremists are finding new ways to fundraise
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- Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates
There have never been more ways to ask for money on the internet. For rightwing extremists looking to monetise hate, that can be a big opportunity – and the earning potential of these digital assets hasn’t gone unnoticed in Australia.
Earlier this year, I traced funding networks associated with a sample of Australian channels that share rightwing extremist content on the chat app Telegram, and found links to at least 22 online funding tools. These included donation requests via wallet addresses for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, monero, ethereum and litecoin.
Ariel Bogle is a researcher and journalist with a focus on technology and extremism. She owns a small amount of ethereum.
Continue reading...Covid positive test rate in NSW jumps to 6.5%, highest since start of pandemic
After easing of restrictions in mid-October, positive result rate hovered at 0.5% or below
- Follow our Covid live blog for the latest updates
- NSW restrictions; NSW vaccination rates by postcode
- Vaccine rollout and rates tracker; Cases and data tracker
- Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing
The Covid positive test rate in New South Wales has risen to 6.5%, the highest since the pandemic began.
The positivity rate is up from 1.73% a week ago and 0.71% a fortnight ago, a figure some epidemiologists say is likely to mean a proportion of cases are going undetected.
Continue reading...Sydney New Year’s Eve fireworks: health experts call for caution as Omicron outbreak worsens
NSW tourism minister expects lower turnout as leading epidemiologist says best place to watch festivities is from home
- Follow our Covid live blog for the latest updates
- NSW restrictions; NSW vaccination rates by postcode
- Vaccine rollout and rates tracker; Cases and data tracker
- Get our free news app; get our morning email briefing
Experts are urging caution around Sydney’s planned New Year’s Eve celebrations amid surging Covid-19 cases in New South Wales.
On Friday, the NSW tourism minister, Stuart Ayres, said New Year’s Eve fireworks would proceed as planned under the current public health order, despite the growing Omicron outbreak.
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Continue reading...England hospital Covid admissions highest since February; France announces new curbs – as it happened
No walk-in PCR tests available in England for a few hours due to ‘high demand’; French PM announces new measures
- No new Covid restrictions in England before new year
- Germany toughens restrictions as Omicron variant takes hold
- See all our coronavirus coverage
Queensland has detected 784 new Covid-19 cases but the health system is coping, state premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has said.
Quarantine and testing policies are being reviewed and rapid antigen tests may be introduced for some people within 48 hours to take pressure of testing facilities, AAP reports.
I don’t want people to be alarmed by that, the real issue here is what is the impact it is having on individuals in hospitals?
We are not seeing any massive impacts on our hospitals, which is really good news.
Continue reading...‘Turn the planes around’: Māori leader says New Zealand should block Australian deportations
Chair of National Māori Authority says country should adopt John Howard’s playbook or risk sparking local gangland wars between deported criminals
A prominent Māori leader has called for a dramatic response to what he labels Australia’s attempts to turn New Zealand into a “dumping ground” for criminals, suggesting Jacinda Ardern’s government should “turn the planes around”.
The executive chairman of the National Māori Authority, Matthew Tukaki, also raised concerns about a potential increase in gun violence in Auckland, saying the city “could see gangland wars similar to those that occurred in both Sydney and Melbourne in the early 2000s if we are not careful”.
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Continue reading...‘Meet Barnaby Joyce!’: Amber Heard names dog after Australia’s deputy PM
Actor welcomes scruffy white pet with tribute to politician Johnny Depp described as ‘inbred with a tomato’
Six years after Barnaby Joyce threatened to euthanise dogs belonging to Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, Heard appears to have had the last laugh, naming her new four-legged friend after Australia’s deputy prime minister.
On Monday the actor posted a photograph on Twitter showing herself holding up a large scruffy white dog with the caption: “Meet the newest member of the Heard family, Barnaby Joyce!”
Continue reading...No comfort at the bottom of the feed: how to prevent information overload in the time of Covid
Experts explain techniques to navigate pandemic news so you can avoid being swamped while keeping up to date
There was a routine. Kate Sewell would watch the New South Wales premier’s daily Covid press conference at 11am. During the work day, she kept a browser tab running with a pandemic news live blog. She’d pick up her phone and scroll through posts about masks and lockdowns on social media. And then, on her drive home from her healthcare job in Sydney, maybe listen to a podcast or news radio.
She never felt exactly good when she turned off the TV or put down her phone, but maybe there was comfort in the noise. “It was the numbers game,” she says. “Are things going up? Are things going down? Chasing that hope that if the numbers are going down, OK, things are getting better.” The announcement in September that Gladys Berejiklian’s daily press conferences were coming to an end was “a hallelujah moment”, Sewell says.
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Continue reading...Covid live news: new restrictions for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
New coronavirus restrictions are being introduced in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as the country’s leaders try to combat rising Covid cases
- Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland reintroduce Covid restrictions
- Omicron: bleak New Year or beginning of the end for the pandemic?
- Tory MPs warn Boris Johnson against toughening Covid new year rules
- See all our coronavirus coverage
China has reported 206 new Covid cases on Christmas Day, a significant jump from 140 a day earlier, its health authority said on Sunday and Reuters reports.
Of the new infections, 158 were locally transmitted, according to a statement by the National Health Commission, compared with 87 cases the previous day.
‘We’re all going to get Omicron’: NSW health minister’s warning as Australia records 9,618 cases
Covid case numbers continue to grow across Australia with 6394 cases in NSW, 1,608 in Victoria, 774 in South Australia, 714 in Queensland, 71 in the ACT, 44 in Tasmania, 12 in the Northern Territory and one in Western Australia
- Millions more Australians to be eligible for Covid booster
- Follow the live blog for the latest updates
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New South Wales reported 6,394 new infections on Boxing Day and 458 cases in hospital, with the health minister warning “we’re all going to get Omicron” and the Australia-wide tally reaching almost 10,000 cases.
The case numbers in NSW are a slight increase on the already record case numbers reported on Christmas Day.
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