Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Labor claims dinner at Club Taree raised $18,000 from four donors and gave them access to premier
Gladys Berejiklian has said she cannot remember whether she attended an “intimate fundraising dinner” at Club Taree in May 2018, where Labor claims illegal property donations were made.
Labor used question time in New South Wales parliament on Wednesday to ask about the event and donations made to the campaign of the mid-north coast MP Stephen Bromhead, the member for Myall Lakes, in 2018.
Mongolia has reported its first domestic transmissions of the coronavirus, from a truck driver who infected his wife and two other relatives after three weeks of quarantine, according to the AfP news agency.
The landlocked country bordering Russia and China has so far reported just 376 virus cases - all imported - and enforced strict arrival controls that have prompted protests by Mongolians stranded abroad.
Dr David Nabarro, one of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) special envoys on Covid-19, urged people to be “careful” when students in the UK return to university after Christmas to prevent a spike in Covid-19 cases.
Asked about students returning to UK universities in January, and if there was an argument for keeping students at home for longer, Dr Nabarro told Sky News:
We did see that there was quite a big increase in cases in Europe in October and November. We think that was to do with movements that took place in September, including students coming to university.
So if there’s going to be a big return in January, all I’m going to say is, everybody be careful. Because that’s when the virus can really move around quickly.
Texas on Wednesday became the first US state with more than 1 million confirmed Covid-19 cases, and California closed in on that mark as a surge of coronavirus infections engulfs the country from coast to coast, AP reports.
The country’s second-most populous state, Teas has recorded 1.01 million coronavirus cases and over 19,000 deaths since the outbreak began in early March, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. California, the most populous state, has logged more than 991,000 cases.
The Swedish prime minister has said his government will present a law proposal that would ban nationwide the sale of alcohol after 10pm in bars, restaurants and night clubs from 20 November in an effort to curb the spread of Covid-19.
Stefan Lofven said that “we are facing a situation that risks becoming pitch-black” and added that Sweden “currently is risking a situation like the one we had last spring”.
LA judge Brenda Penny declines to suspend James Spears from his role in the court conservatorship that has controlled his daughter’s life for 12 years
Britney Spears is afraid of her father and will not resume her career so long as he has power over it, her attorney said in court on Tuesday.
Los Angeles superior court judge Brenda Penny declined to suspend James Spears from his central role in the court conservatorship that has controlled his daughter’s life and career for 12 years, as Britney Spears’ attorney Samuel D Ingham III requested at the contentious hearing. But the judge said she would consider future petitions for his suspension or outright removal, which Ingham plans to file.
Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit has received the green light to carry out late stage trials for its vaccine in Mexico, the country’s foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard has said.
He said the US vaccine developer Novavax Inc earlier this month also presented health authorities with a request to conduct phase 3 testing in Mexico.
Four judicial investigations have been opened in France into the authorities’ response to the Covid epidemic, the Paris prosecutor’s department has said. The prosecutor opened a preliminary inquiry in June to determine whether any criminal offences might have been committed.
The opposition leader’s comments follow Joel Fitzgibbon’s resignation from the frontbench in a dispute about climate policy
The federal Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, has declined to say whether Labor will articulate a medium-term emissions reduction target before the next federal election.
Albanese’s sidestep followed Joel Fitzgibbon’s resignation from the Labor frontbench on Tuesday after a lengthy internal dispute about climate policy that culminated in a blow-up at shadow cabinet on Monday night.
Former PM says Murdoch media has become ‘pure propaganda’ and is doing enormous damage to the world’s ability to respond to climate change
Malcolm Turnbull says News Corp has become an organisation for “pure propaganda” that has done enormous damage through its promotion of climate change denial.
In a heated exchange on Monday night’s Q&A, the former prime minister and the Australian’s editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, clashed over the media organisation’s treatment of climate science.
Federal parliament returns; Asio chief warns of ‘real threat’ from foreign spies; incoming Biden administration vows to sign back up to Paris agreement. Follow all the updates
The motion was voted up 28 to 25 with Labor, Centre Alliance, Rex Patrick, Jacqui Lambie and One Nation combining to warn the Coalition over the draft bill’s inadequacies.
Greens senator Larissa Waters motion stated:
Senate just passed a motion 28:25 for a strong corruption watchdog, listing all of the features the Gov’s weak model leaves out. A defacto vote on the Gov’s bill - the Senate can see through the fig leaf of the Gov’s belated and pathetic model that wouldn’t stop a thing! #auspol
Richard Marles says Labor is not pursing a royal commission into the Murdoch media empire and will “let Kevin speak for himself”.
Andrew Leigh officially tabled the Kevin Rudd-led petition, which had more than 500,000 signatures, in the parliament today.
We have talked about our position in relation to the media over a long period of time. Now, this is not something we have been considering. This is something Kevin Rudd has been pursuing in his capacity as a private citizen. I mean, I obviously note it is a significant petition in terms of those who have signed up to it and it has been presented to the parliament appropriately. That is where the matter is that in terms of the opposition.
New Zealand and the Cook Islands are set to open a ‘travel bubble’ between the two countries, with NZ prime minister Jacinda Ardern confirming officials from her government would visit the South Pacific archipelago later this week.
“While I don’t wish to put any time-frames on a potential travel bubble, it is my aim and hope that this can resume as soon as is safely possible, and this on-the-ground visit by officials to the Cook Islands is the next step in that process.
US President-elect Joe Biden’s healthcare advisers have held talks with drugmaker executives on the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program to accelerate development of a possible Covid-19 treatment, a Biden spokesman said on Sunday.
Reuters reports that under the Trump administration, Operation Warp Speed has struck deals with several drugmakers in an effort to help speed up the search for effective treatments for the disease amid the global coronavirus pandemic.
The US Covid-19 death toll stands at over 237,000, with more than 9.9 million cases now reported in the country since the outbreak began, according to a Reuters tally.
“As we previously said in September, because President-Elect Joe Biden is absolutely committed to helping develop a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine as soon as possible, campaign medical advisers have received briefings from companies working to produce vaccines in order to be informed about the process,” Biden’s spokesman Andrew Bates said in an emailed statement.
Biden’s advisers met with companies that have Covid-19 vaccines or therapies in late-stage clinical trials in September and October, Bloomberg News had reported earlier. The report added that the meeting was aimed at gathering information about the development, manufacturing and distribution of shots to ward off the novel coronavirus and therapies to treat the sick.
Biden has vowed to “listen to the science”, with his coronavirus plan calling for scaling up testing and contact tracing and promising to appoint a “supply commander” to oversee supply lines of critical equipment.
Lovely reporting from my colleague Lorenzo Tondo in Roccafiorita in Sicily:
When the mayor of Roccafiorita received a phone call in October informing him that an employee in his office had tested positive for Covid-19, his heart sank.
When the phone rang, it was like lightning on a sunny day. With this second wave on its way, for a second I thought that we might actually be wiped off the map.
As Joe Biden announced he would name his own coronavirus taskforce on Monday, the US recorded its fourth consecutive record daily total of new Covid cases, close to 130,000.
“That plan will be built on a bedrock of science,” Biden said, promising to “spare no effort or commitment to turn this pandemic around.”
We’re in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation. All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.
Scott Morrison has signalled he would invite Joe Biden to visit Australia for the 70th anniversary of the Anzus treaty in 2021 as he congratulated the Democrat for winning the US presidential election.
Morrison told reporters that Canberra would continue to deal with the Trump administration during the transition period but looked forward to working with Biden from January.
The election of Joe Biden to the White House is likely to see Australia increasingly isolated as the world heads to net zero emissions, with quite fundamental implications for our economy.
Let’s have a look at what has happened in the last two months.
Defence chief Angus Campbell will consider the findings and decide how much detail will be released publicly
The inquiry into alleged war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan has delivered its final report to the chief of the defence force, who is now considering how many of the “uncomfortable” findings to make public.
Defence chief Angus Campbell confirmed on Friday evening he had received the Afghanistan inquiry report from the inspector general of the Australian defence force, who has been examining the conduct of elite Australian forces in more than 55 incidents of alleged unlawful killings between 2005 and 2016.
The Kremlin has said it is early to judge how effective Russia’s coronavirus restrictions are without lockdowns, as the country reported a record daily number of new Covid-19 infections.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the increase in coronavirus cases to a daily high of 20,582 was alarming and that authorities would take action depending on how the situation developed.
New coronavirus restrictions came into force in Italy on Friday but from pavements dotted with coffee drinkers to lines of striking taxi drivers, the picture on the streets was different from the ghostly scenes of the first lockdown, Reuters reports.
The restrictions, which divide the country into three zones according to the severity of the latest outbreak, are less severe than the blanket measures imposed when the pandemic first took hold in March.
One of the world’s biggest gliding mammals, Australia’s greater glider is actually three separate species, according to new research
One of the world’s biggest gliding mammals, Australia’s once-common and unique greater glider, actually comprises three separate species, according to new genetic research.
Researchers said the findings should prompt urgent work to better understand the three species which are under pressure from rising temperatures, bushfires and land-clearing.
That’s it for tonight, thanks for reading. To recap today’s developments:
The chief of the defence force, Angus Campbell,has released a statement about the inquiry into alleged war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.
Campbell said he received the Afghanistan inquiry report today, which examined the conduct of elite Australian forces in more than 55 incidents of alleged unlawful killings between 2005 and 2016.
Today I have received the Afghanistan Inquiry report from the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF).
The independent inquiry was commissioned by Defence in 2016 after rumours and allegations emerged relating to possible breaches of the Law of Armed Conflict by members of the Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan over the period 2005 to 2016.
Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump still have paths to victory in the US election but the contest is narrowing substantially. In this episode of Full Story, Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor and Simon Jackman from the US Studies Centre discuss what’s unfolding and what a Biden presidency would mean for Australia
High profile figure Sunny Duong the first person to be charged under 2018 laws as relations between China and Australia deteriorate
A Chinese-Australian community figure who was pictured with federal minister Alan Tudge donating $30,000 in Covid-19 relief to a Melbourne hospital in June has become the first person charged with a foreign interference offence.
Di Sanh Duong, known as Sunny, appeared before the Melbourne magistrates court on Thursday charged with preparing for a foreign interference offence.
The head of France’s public health service has said the coronavirus crisis in the country is getting worse and every day in the fight to slow the spread of infections counts.
“We’re facing a very high wave (of infections),” Jérôme Salomon told a news conference. “The epidemic is progressing. We must all slow the spread together.”
Salomon: "The situation is deteriorating. Every day counts. We have to break the chain of this epidemic. Each of us must act to put a brake on the virus." He is outlining the health safety measures. "The slightest doubt, take a test."
Greece has reported 2,917 new coronavirus cases, hitting a new daily peak hours after authorities announced a second nationwide lockdown is going into effect this Saturday, 7 November.
Thursday’s cases follow on the 2,646 cases reported on Wednesday, which was a new record. Authorities said infections have risen 20% in recent days.