Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
News Hub reports New Zealand’s US ambassador has commented on the election. As government employees, ambassadors are prevented from indicating political views (despite being political appointments) but it looks like Scott Brown, for one, is feeling confident enough in the result to be a little honest.
Twitter has permanently suspended the account of the conspiracy theorist David Icke. A spokesman for the social media platform said Icke had violated its rules regarding coronavirus misinformation, PA Media reports.
The move follows the decision by YouTube and Facebook to terminate Icke’s accounts in early May for the same reason.
According to a CNN nationwide exit poll, about a third of voters said the economy was most important to them, around one in five said racial inequality and about one in six said the coronavirus pandemic.
We'll be updating this summary of what we know – and don't know – throughout the night:https://t.co/LZqwjQNhbl
‘We need to keep moving forward as we live with Covid-19,’ Gladys Berejiklian says. We’ll also be bringing you Australian reaction to that election, as it happens
In the UK Liverpool (otherwise known as the World’s Best City) is set to become the first to have mass test-and-trace operation. My colleagues Sarah Boseley and Jess Elgot write:
Up to half a million people in Liverpool will be tested for Covid-19 under the UK government’s first attempt to embark on city-wide mass testing.
Indonesia has reported 2,973 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of infections to 418,375, according to data from the country’s health ministry.
The country has also reported an additional 102 deaths, taking the total number of fatalities to 14,146.
The St George Illawarra NRL player has pleaded not guilty to aggravated sexual assault at his Wollongong trial
NRL star Jack de Belin raped a teenager after ignoring her protests to stop undressing her and later asked why she was being “so emotional”, a jury has been told.
The St George Illawarra player, 29, and his friend Callan Sinclair, 23, have pleaded not guilty to the aggravated sexual assault of the woman, then 19, after meeting her in a Wollongong bar in December 2018.
Geoff Raby argues the suggestion Australia can turn to other markets is ‘nothing other than wishful thinking’
Australia is likely to keep suffering economic harm from “repeated rounds of Chinese economic coercion” and needs to find a way to reset the relationship, a former ambassador to Beijing has warned.
Seafood exporters are the latest industry group to report disruptions in accessing the Chinese market and Geoff Raby, the Australian ambassador to China from 2007 to 2011, said Australia needed China more than the other way around.
US president Donald Trump is currently speaking past a coronavirus curfew intended to mitigate infections in Florida, as he hosts a rally in Miami-Dade county.
The county has a nightly curfew that comes into effect at midnight. But Trump’s rally is still going on past the witching hour, with thousands of supporters in attendance.
With 25 mins left til Miami-Dade’s midnight curfew goes into effect, Pres. Trump has landed in Opa-Locka. pic.twitter.com/mZtoX6LcwO
“Is there any place you would rather be than a Trump rally? We got a lot of rich people here, lotta money,” says Trump at his rally that is now breaking Miami-Dade curfew.
In Serbia, huge crowds have attended the funeral for the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro in violation of coronavirus-fighting restrictions.
Associated Press report that thousands gathered outside the main temple in the capital, Podgorica, for the liturgy and the burial of Bishop Amfilohije. Authorities said the bishop died Friday after contracting the virus weeks ago.
Governments in Europe face a “very, very difficult situation” in controlling rising numbers of Covid-19 cases as their citizens grow weary with renewed restrictions on daily life, the World Health Organization’s top emergencies expert said.
“Clearly people are frustrated, and have every right to be frustrated, and they are fatigued,” Mike Ryan told a regular WHO news briefing in Geneva.
Footage of a pianist in Barcelona playing a rendition of the Bangles’ hit Eternal Flame amid the sound of explosions, wailing sirens and protesters has gone viral on social media.
Peter William Geddes, who was playing in Plaça Nova on 31 October, said as the violence escalated in the background he felt peaceful: “When I play I am very calm. No nerves.”
Tony Harris has criticised the Morrison government for slashing audit office funding and delaying federal anti-corruption watchdog
Tony Harris, the former New South Wales auditor general, has blasted the Morrison government for cutting funding to the Australian National Audit Office and for moving too slowly to establish a federal anti-corruption commission.
During an appearance before the Senate committee examining the sports grants saga, Harris said he believed there was “a pattern of behaviour that constitutes a goal” of reducing public scrutiny of government activity.
Queensland Liberal National party members have begun agitating for an urgent post-election state council meeting to bring to a head internecine conflicts between the party’s membership, its office bearers and its state leader.
As counting continues in a number of close seats, the LNP’s numbers are likely to go backwards in the next parliament. In her concession speech on election night, Deb Frecklington said she intended to remain as the state leader.
Former deputy premier and treasurer’s seat of South Brisbane was the only seat lost by Labor on election night
Voters in Brisbane’s inner suburbs have turned out in unprecedented numbers for the Queensland Greens who have won at least two city seats at the state election, including that of Labor’s prominent left faction leader Jackie Trad.
Across four electorates spanning the Brisbane CBD and surrounding northern and western suburbs, the Greens polled more than a third of primary votes.
In the fifth part of our series examining the plight of refugees in Indonesia, we hear the story of what has happened to Mozhgan’s family. Her dad Amir has struggled the most. In episode one we heard him in the midst of a shocking crisis. That was a year ago. How is he now?
Polls suggest narrow Labor win over Liberal National party but neither side willing to predict result. Follow live
The early counting is good for Labor in Townsville - a minor swing in their favour. Townsville is Labor’s most marginal seat but actually the least likely of three seats in the northern city to flip.
Labor folks are more pessimistic about the Townsville seat of Mundingburra and Barron River, on the outskirts of Cairns.
On Jackie Trad’s chances, Steven Miles says:
The one thing I know about Jackie, she won’t have left one stone unturned to try to hold South Brisbane in what will be challenging contest.
But let’s be clear, it is only challenging because the Liberals had chosen to preference her. If they had preferenced the Greens last, then Jackie wouldn’t be in trouble at all.
There is one Green member in Parliament[Michael Berkman, Maiwar] and that is because of Labor’s preferences, so he that’s crazy he talks about principles. It was amazing enough after the last election when there was a lot of discussion about what the LNP should do at the seat of South Brisbane and basically a revolt from our members with regards to the fact that we didn’t do what we’ve done this time.
Jackie Trad is very polarising, particularly amongst our supporters and they are very comfortable with the decision that has been made. In fact, in some ways you could say that they it, and now we will see what the result will be.
Coronavirus didn’t kill the culture wars, it only sent them into a momentary recess
When Covid-19 hit, I’d been wondering for a long time what glued together the disparate positions of the religious right in Australia: for deregulation yet also massive taxpayer subsidy; for free enterprise yet also against the free movement of labour; for the equality of all freedoms as long as one, religion, is more equal than others; for “our children’s future” yet also against climate science.
During the coronavirus crisis, the patterns began to repeat: divergent positions coalescing under an intellectually amorphous but readily identifiable tribal banner. What unified that tribe was, for want of a better word, a contrarianism, what impolite adherents might call an “up yours” to political correctness.
Queensland premier says Queensland border will stay closed to Victoria and greater Sydney as pressure mounts on NSW and WA to open. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
Independent MP for Warringah Zali Steggall is using the release of the bushfire royal commission report to call for greater action on climate change.
“The royal commission final report makes it clear: increasing temperatures due to climate change will contribute to greater severity of extreme weather and natural disasters in Australia.
“The outlook for Australia is alarming. Australians are now staring down the barrel of more unpredictable and dangerous events that will affect our safety and prosperity as a nation.
Moore-Gilbert, who has Australian and British citizenship, had been held in Qarchak, widely regarded as the worst female prison in Iran
The detained British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert has been moved back to Tehran’s Evin prison, sources with knowledge of her case have confirmed to the Guardian.
Moore-Gilbert is understood to be back in the secretive ward 2A of Tehran’s largest prison, where she had spent much of the past two years under the control of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Report into the apocalyptic 2019-20 bushfires says Australia must radically change its approach to fighting fires under new climate conditions
Australia’s bushfire disaster last summer was just a glimpse of what global heating will deliver to the country in the future, with major changes needed to the way the nation responds, according to the final report of the royal commission.
The royal commission has made 80 recommendations, including calls for a more co-ordinated approach and new legislation to allow the prime minister to declare a national state of emergency.
As the row over the discharge of Covid-positive patients into Scotland’s care homes during the early days of the pandemic deepens, health secretary Jeane Freeman has insisted that a new report does not diminish government accountability, writes Libby Brookes, the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent.
The report – which concluded the risk of an outbreak linked to discharge of positive or untested patients was “not statistically significant” - prompted anger from opposition parties, care chiefs and unions, who argued that it failed to properly explain why dozens of patients who tested positive for coronavirus, along with thousands who went untested, were discharged from Scottish hospitals into care homes in April and May.
For relatives and families of people who have died in care homes during this pandemic, I want them to know really clearly that I am not saying that this report says there is no accountability here or that I think that report in any way offers them comfort. It’s a very technical report and it comes to a statistical conclusion but that doesn’t take away from the human impact of this virus…
Angela Merkel faced shouts and heckles in Germany’s parliament this morning as she outlined her government’s plans for a “soft” second lockdown, writes Philip Oltermann, the Guardian’s Berlin bureau chief.
From Monday, bars, restaurants, theatres, swimming pools and fitness studios will close for a month, and public gatherings be limited to two households or up to ten people. Unnecessary travel is discouraged and hotels advised not to host tourists. Schools, nurseries and shops will stay open, however.