With the mid north coast facing a once-in-a-century flood, residents are bracing for the worst as the rain keeps falling
As floodwaters inundate the New South Wales mid north coast, residents are scrambling to take stock of the damage and prepare for the rising tide.
Horses and livestock were seen floating along rivers and washing up on beaches on Sunday, as the region faced a once in a lifetime deluge.
Continue reading...City battered by rain as storms across the state trigger floods, a mini-tornado in Chester Hill and hamper Covid vaccine deliveries
Swathes of suburban Sydney were on alert for dangerous flooding after the city’s main dam spilled over on Saturday, with severe storms across New South Wales also triggering a mini-tornado, evacuations, and hampering coronavirus vaccine delivery.
Warragamba Dam spilled over at about 3pm on Saturday and daily rainfall records for parts of the mid north coast for March were broken by more than 100mm.
Continue reading...More than 400mm falls on parts of mid north coast as flash floods hit state
Bureau of Meteorology senior climatologist Agata Imielska also announced some rainfall records had been broken in the last day.
She said for the mid north coast and Hunter region, rainfall has broken previous May records by as much as 200mm.
To give you context of the rainfall, we have seen 405mm recorded at Kendall. So that’s a record heaviest rainfall that we’ve seen. Also, 371mm at Red Oak.
And it’s not just the total rainfall amount, it’s also how quickly and intensely that rainfall has actually fallen. So we had 160mm fall in just three hours at Kindie Bridge that resulted in also a record river height at that particular location.”
Sydney’s Warragamba Dam is set to spill over this afternoon and combine with river flows to potentially cause flooding across western Sydney.
The Bureau of Meteorology national flood services manager, Justin Robinson, delivered the warning at a press conference in Sydney just now. I’ll share the updates from that over a few posts here.
It’s a very dynamic and evolving flood situation and we could see some very deep and rapid responding rivers with very high levels.
Warragamba dam is right at spilling point. Good luck to those downstream in Western Sydney. Here's the capacity of the dam over the past month: pic.twitter.com/yn3vtOny2u
Continue reading...Locals who have endured months of mice and rats getting into their houses, stores and cars are praying heavy rain will help wipe them out
Warning: graphic images may disturb some readers
Drought, fire, the Covid-19 pestilence and an all-consuming plague of mice. Rural New South Wales has faced just about every biblical challenge nature has to offer in the last few years, but now it is praying for another – an almighty flood to drown the mice in their burrows and cleanse the blighted land of the rodents. Or some very heavy rain, at least.
It seems everyone in the rural towns of north-west NSW and southern Queensland has their own mouse war story. In posts online, they detail waking up to mouse droppings on their pillows or watching the ground move at night as hundreds of thousands of rodents flee from torchlight beams.
Continue reading...The body of Toyah Cordingley, 24, was found in sand dunes north of Cairns in October 2018
Australia has taken the first step towards catching a runaway suspect believed to have murdered Toyah Cordingley on a Queensland beach before fleeing to India.
It has been two-and-a-half years since the body of the 24-year-old was found in the dunes of Wangetti beach, north of Cairns, following what police called “a personal and intimate attack”.
Continue reading...More than 100 federally funded clinics will take bookings for Covid-19 jabs from Friday and will begin administering them from Monday. Follow latest updates
This is Elias Visontay bringing you this morning’s main stories: some Covid vaccine developments, a growing political feud, and misogyny culture in the spotlight across the globe.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is “safe and effective”, Europe’s medicines regulator has said, but it will continue to study possible links between the shot and a rare blood clotting disorder. Australian doctors have complained about vaccine supply issues but, from Monday, an additional 6.14 million Australians will be eligible to receive the jab – here’s how to to find out if you’re one of them, and how to book. Australia’s economic performance is also under scrutiny, as the worst performer on a list of the world’s 50 largest economies for “green recovery” spending to kickstart economic growth after the pandemic.
Continue reading...Month-long restrictions to come into force as officials warn virus could rip through PNG’s fragile health system ‘like a tornado’
Papua New Guinea will go into a month-long nationwide isolation in an effort to arrest a spiralling Covid-19 outbreak that threatens to rip through the country’s fragile health system “like a tornado”, health officials say, shutting hospitals and leaving wards without sufficient staff.
Hospitals across the country have already been forced to shut wards and departments, overwhelmed by a combination of staff becoming infected with the coronavirus, surging patient demand, and swingeing budget cuts.
Continue reading...Pared-back bill now relates only to casual employment; government faces scrutiny over its botched vaccine booking website. Follow all the latest updates
Four Corners has announced its episode for Monday. Here is the release:
On Monday Four Corners investigates how and why Brittany Higgins’ story was kept quiet for almost two years.
It does not bode well for the Centre Alliance “alliance” if its two remaining MPs can’t come to an agreement of whether or not there was an agreement.
Continue reading...Two cast members of the Australia and New Zealand edition of the reality TV show have apologised for their past, after racially insensitive images resurfaced online
RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under has already been marred with controversy after two contestants apologised for past racially insensitive behaviour, one having performed in blackface multiple times.
Less than a week after the cast of the hit drag reality competition’s Australia and New Zealand iteration was announced, images emerged of contestant Anthony Price, known for his drag persona, Scarlet Adams, in multiple costumes appearing to imitate other cultures.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern has long criticised the policy and now the deportation of a 15-year-old boy has seen calls for Australia to be referred to the UN
They may be close allies, but the latest flare-up in a long-running diplomatic standoff between Australia and New Zealand has seen relations between the two nations hit an all-time low.
The source of the friction is a controversial deportation policy which Australia uses to deport hundreds of New Zealanders every year. Part of the country’s hardline and oft-criticised immigration policies, the dispute resurfaced last week when the Australian home affairs minister Peter Dutton used a television interview to refer to the policy as “taking the trash out”.
Continue reading...Cultured stem cells turn into blastoid ‘balls’, like natural blastocysts after egg fertilisation
Scientists have made clumps of human tissue that behave like early-stage embryos, a feat that promises to transform research into the first tentative steps of human development.
The clumps of cells, named blastoids, are less than a millimetre across and resemble structures called blastocysts, which form within a few days of an egg being fertilised. Typically blastocysts contain about 100 cells, which give rise to every tissue in the body.
Continue reading...People have stood at bars once again – but there remains a fine line between standing and dancing, which is still banned
New South Wales residents are now allowed to stand with their drinks in bars, following the latest easing of Covid-19 restrictions.
“This is what life is all about,” the New South Wales treasurer, Dominic Perrottet, said while holding a Guinness on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Board belonging to big wave surfer Danny Griffiths believed to have made the journey via New Zealand
An Australian surfer has found a surfboard he lost four years ago after it floated at sea for thousands of kilometres, from the bottom of Australia to the top – potentially via New Zealand.
Danny Griffiths, a big wave surfer, lost his favourite board after he crashed off a wave at the very southern tip of Tasmania. It was found, covered in barnacles, by two brothers near Townsville in north Queensland, more than 2,700km away.
Continue reading...Aotearoa has a proud history of protesting human rights abuses on the world stage. Now that means pushing back against our traditional trade partner
Today a 15-year-old waits alone in a New Zealand quarantine facility, facing an uncertain future. Deported from Australia, he is not ordinarily resident here, and government agencies normally engaged for child protection are making plans for his care. Although Australia was his home, he was not Australian enough to be simply sanctioned in that nation for whatever infraction he is deemed to have committed.
This dehumanising treatment is what passes for necessary hard-line immigration policy in Australia. In its very high human cost, failure of binding child rights standards, and international criticism, it is very much in line with Australia’s longstanding approach to migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Australia has been thought of as outside human rights norms and any moral standard of fairness for some time. In fact, our neighbour has been repeatedly found to be enforcing policy that amounts to literal torture on its offshore prison islands.
Continue reading...New study suggests young regent honeyeaters are not getting the chance to learn mating calls
What happens to a species if the music starts to die, or when their songs become corrupted or their singers have never heard the original tunes?
A new study has found that a loss of melody and song could be a bad sign for one of Australia’s rarest songbirds – the regent honeyeater.
Continue reading...Too often leaders are out of touch with what is going on in their workplaces. Defining a set of values is the key to progress – and leaders must live by those values
Through the whorls of Canberra’s streets and up the sweep of Commonwealth Avenue, Parliament House sits as a testament to democracy and the rule of law.
It’s a place of many rules, rules about where you can go and when you can speak and how you should speak. The guide to the House of Representatives’ parliamentary procedures runs to more than 100 pages, and points to a further 24 sources of information on the rules. Then there are the standing orders, which run to 164 pages. And that’s not even including the Senate.
Continue reading...After 100,000 women marched for justice on Monday, the federal government faces scrutiny over whether it’s listening. Follow all today’s latest news and updates, live
Mike Bowers has been busy this morning.
Scott Morrison’s address to the joint party room spoke about the March4Justice issues, as well as the wider concerns about harassment and abuse at work, included a comparison to the Kokoda Trail.
He said, according to Sky News’ Andrew Clennell,
He actually compared it to walking the Kokoda Trail, is what I’ve been told out of the party room and said we are on a narrow path, we have to look after each other and focus on what matters.”
You wonder how you’ve got over the first hill and the next one’s even bigger.
That’s what it’s like in the pandemic,” he said, citing the next hill as being weaning the economy off government support.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern under pressure to respond to Australian home affairs minister’s latest instance of ‘taking the trash out’
Pressure is mounting within New Zealand for the government to condemn Australia as a “rogue nation” in breach of human rights following the deportation of a 15-year-old boy.
The minor was sent to New Zealand under the controversial 501 policy by which the Australian government has been deporting non-citizens determined to have a “substantial criminal record” under a character test within the Australian Migration Act.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern, who says she ‘never agreed with the policy’, is seeking more information about the 15-year-old
Australian authorities deported a minor to New Zealand as part of a program home affairs minister Peter Dutton described as “taking the trash out”.
The New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, confirmed that one of the people deported from Australia earlier this month was under the age of 18, but said she was not aware of any further details about the case.
Continue reading...Former Liberal staffer and Grace Tame among those to address tens of thousands of protesters calling for an end to gender-based violence
Brittany Higgins’ voice shook as she addressed the crowd outside Parliament House in Canberra.
She had decided at the last minute to speak to more than a thousand people, mainly women, holding signs calling for justice for women, for sexual assault survivors and for Higgins herself, who has alleged she was raped by a colleague inside Parliament House.
Continue reading...