Category Archives: Australia news

Covid-19 live news: Madrid lockdown looms; Italy’s PM proposes extending state of emergency

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Africa approaching 1.5m cases across its 54 countries; Italy could extend government powers to January; record cases high in Ukraine

Sweden has registered its highest daily Covid caseload since June, with 752 new infections recorded on Thursday, though no new related deaths have been recorded.

The Scandinavian country has shunned lockdowns, leaving most schools, restaurants and businesses open throughout the pandemic. Thursday’s rise was the highest since 30 June, when the health agency recorded just over 800 new cases.

The mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, has said infections in Russia’s capital are rising by about 2,000 a day, and ordered employers to transfer at least 30% of staff to remote work.

Writing on his blog, Sobyanin said the rate of Covid-19 hospitalisations was also rising by around 5,000 per week.

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NSW government wins battle to freeze pay of public servants for 12 months during pandemic

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The Industrial Relations Commission has supported the government’s plan to prioritise job creation, the NSW treasurer says

Unions will consider legal and industrial action after what they say was a “diabolical and disgraceful” decision by the New South Wales Industrial Relations Commission to award a 0.3% pay rise to public sector workers.

The commission made its decision on Thursday after the NSW government had pushed for a controversial 12-month freeze on public sector wages.

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Nearly 14,000 Australians with disability made to live on $40 a day for 18 months before receiving pension

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People without a specific severe impairment who want to access disability payment are being forced to first do 1.5 years of job search

Nearly 14,000 people have now been forced to do 18 months of job search and survive on $40-a-day jobseeker benefits before they were finally granted the disability pension.

Under Gillard government-era changes aimed at reducing the welfare spend and increasing workforce participation, people without a specific severe impairment who want to access the disability payment must complete up to 18 months of job search within three years.

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Coronavirus Australia live update: Victoria reports four deaths and 13 new Covid cases as NSW records four

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NSW records no new locally acquired cases for fifth day as pressure mounts over border closures and budget speculation intensifies. Follow all today’s updates

In aviation news, the regional airline Rex has announced it will start flights between capital cities in 2021, as a competitor to Qantas and Virgin.

Rex has signed letters of intent to lease six Boeing 737 planes, which will fly between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, AAP reports.

Hi all, it is Naaman Zhou here. Thanks as always to Amy Remeikis for her blog captaining today.

Pokies profits dropped sharply during the first wave of the pandemic, but are still in the billions, according to new figures released today and reported by AAP.

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Coronavirus live news: 60m Indians may have contracted Covid; Disney announces mass layoffs

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India’s pandemic agency says cases may be ten times official figure; New York introduces face mask fines as positivity rates climb; Boris Johnson apologises for getting north-east England lockdown rules wrong. Follow the latest updates

The revered living goddess is not leaving her temple this year, AP reports:

The old palace courtyard packed with hundreds of thousands of people each year during the Indrajatra festival is deserted, the temples are locked, and all public celebrations are banned by the government to curb the coronavirus.

North Korea has discovered “faults” in its anti-coronavirus measures, state media said on Wednesday, after an outcry in South Korea over a citizen who North Korean soldiers killed near their maritime border where tight virus controls are in force.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered a rare apology for the killing of the South Korean fisheries officer last week in waters off the west coast of the peninsula.

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Coronavirus live news: Italian senate suspended as lawmakers test positive; Covid travel slump could cost 46m jobs

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Vaccine trial shows ‘robust’ immune response; warning over global impact of travel collapse; Belgium death toll exceeds 10,000

Turkey’s health minister appeared to acknowledge that the government does not publish the full number of daily positive Covid-19 cases but only those who are symptomatic, while refuting a claim that the case number had been 19 times the official figures.

The official number of daily coronavirus cases in Turkey has begun to decline in recent days after rising over the past several weeks. Politicians and medics have expressed doubt over the government’s numbers, saying the number of coronavirus cases are actually much higher.

Moderna said it will not be ready to apply for emergency approval for its potential Covid-19 vaccine before the US presidential election in November, the Financial Times has reported.

The company’s chief executive officer, Stéphane Bancel, told FT that he did not expect to have full approval to distribute the drug to all sections of the US population until next spring.

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Coronavirus live news: one million deaths worldwide; White House Covid taskforce rift deepens

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Global death toll passes one million; rift between US health officials coordinating response; New York test positivity rate climbs

Germany could face up to 19,200 new coronavirus infections per day by Christmas unless it finds new ways to slow down the spread of the virus during the cold season, chancellor Angela Merkel has warned ahead of a summit with state premiers today.

The country’s disease control agency recorded 2,089 new infections in the last 24 hours, but Merkel believes Germany could find itself in a similar situation to France or Spain by the end of the year.

The number of deaths involving Covid-19 registered in England and Wales has risen for the second week in a row.

A total of 139 deaths registered in the week ending 18 September mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).This is up from 99 deaths in the week to 11 September, and 78 deaths in the week to 4 September.

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George Pell: why the cardinal is free to travel to Rome despite Australia’s Covid ban

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The cardinal is travelling for official Vatican government business, which means he does not need an exemption

Cardinal George Pell did not need to apply for a travel exemption to leave Australia because he is travelling to Rome for official Vatican government business.

The news that Pell was flying from Sydney to Rome on Tuesday generated criticism online with people questioning why the Australian government – which has banned its citizens from leaving the country as a Covid-19 precaution – granted him an exemption.

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Global Microsoft outage brings down Teams, Office 365 and Outlook

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Microsoft says a recent update has affected the processing of authentication requests, making cloud-based services inaccessible

Microsoft has said it is investigating an outage that brought down Microsoft’s cloud-based office services including the meetings software, Teams, worldwide.

Microsoft reported issues with authentication for its cloud services at around 9.25pm UTC, meaning people were having issues logging into the online services Teams, Outlook and Office.

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One million coronavirus deaths: how did we get here?

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Milestone is known toll of months of Covid pandemic that has changed everything, from power balances to everyday life

Though an inevitable milestone for months, its arrival is still breathtaking.

Deaths from Covid-19 exceeded 1 million people on Tuesday, according to a Johns Hopkins University database, the known toll of nine relentless months of a pandemic that has changed everything, from global balances of power to the mundane aspects of daily life.

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Victoria hotel quarantine inquiry: systemic issues more urgent than individual blame

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Victoria’s second wave of coronavirus was caused by a mix of bad luck and bad management

We have learned a lot from the judicial inquiry into hotel quarantine in Victoria, and the lessons should not be obscured by the fact that the failures were systemic and cultural, rather than the result of people acting corruptly or in bad faith.

Ministers, public servants and statutory officers have all minimised their own responsibility and some have had failures of memory we might see as convenient. But pinning guilt on individuals is of limited use.

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Coronavirus Australia live update: Victoria hotel quarantine inquiry finds private security decision influenced by police preference

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Melbourne’s stage four restrictions ease as Victoria records three deaths and five new Covid cases and NSW reports zero. Follow live

A man who had been deported to New Zealand, and who was in isolation at a government-run quarantine hotel, is under investigation by the police after he tied bed sheets together to escape the facility from a fourth floor window.

All travellers returning to the country – only New Zealanders and their families, plus others with special exemptions are allowed to pass through its borders – must spend two weeks in mandatory isolation, during which they are tested twice for Covid-19.

I am going to leave you in the very capable hands of Naaman Zhou for the rest of the afternoon shift.

There have been quite a few messages today – I am slowly working my way through them – but if you have anything else to say, or I missed you, you can contact me here and here.

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Coronavirus live news: global death toll nears one million as WHO warns number is likely an underestimate

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WHO says global toll is likely to be over one million already; travel in and out of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague may be banned

The percentage of Covid-19 tests taken in New York state that have come back positive has inched up to 1.5%, governor Andrew Cuomo said, a worrisome trend for the former centre of the US coronavirus epidemic.

The rise in positivity in New York above the 1% target comes as 27 other states recorded increases in the number of cases for two straight weeks.

MEPs won’t yet be returning to Strasbourg due to rising coronavirus infections in France, the European parliament speaker said, despite a plea by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.

The European parliament has its headquarters in Strasbourg in eastern France, where MEPs usually based in Brussels travel every month for 12 plenary sessions a year.

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Coronavirus live news: concern over case clusters at French schools and universities; Melbourne lifts curfew

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Le Monde reports 32% of outbreaks in France found in schools or universities; Victoria ends curfew

Families are counting down the days to moving into new homes in a Hong Kong estate that had been used as a Covid-19 quarantine centre in what had become a lightning rod for discontent, the South China Morning Post reports.

They included L.N. Siu, her husband and daughter, who were overjoyed when they were finally allocated a public housing flat at the Chun Yeung Estate in Hong Kong last December. They had been waiting eight years.

Romanians go to the polls on Sunday to choose mayors and local councillors, but a Covid-19 surge is threatening to hit the first electoral test after years of political turbulence with a high abstention rate.

Nationwide, the east European country of almost 19 million people has 43,000 seats to fill in the single-round election seen as a test ahead of national polls in December.

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Melbourne stage 4 restrictions and Covid lockdown rules explained

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There have been some changes to metropolitan Melbourne’s tough stage four coronavirus restrictions. Here’s what you need to know

Stage four restrictions have been in effect across metropolitan Melbourne since Sunday 2 August.

The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced his government’s roadmap for easing coronavirus lockdown restrictions on Sunday 6 September. Some small changes came into effect on midnight 13 September, and further changes were announced on 27 September, to come into effect by the next day.

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The music of the virus: sadness, relief and communal consolation

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We have a sense of what it means to live in disturbing times, to live under threat. We should not forget the many people who have known this all their lives

  • This is part of a series of essays by Australian writers responding to the challenges of 2020

One fine untroubled morning in 2019 I was out walking in Potts Point, on my way to see my eldest brother. He lived in a room here when I was 21 and he was 26. In those days, Potts Point was unconventional and impoverished, home to people who minded their own business, which was largely conducted at night.

His room was narrow, with a bed and a wardrobe housing a few shirts on wire hangers. A window opened on to a wall. There was a bathroom on the same floor. I could stay there when he was away; I could borrow a shirt. When he wasn’t away I stayed in a friend’s apartment on New South Head Road and walked to Potts Point to visit him. At the time, I was writing a thesis on the fiction of Samuel Beckett. As I wrote I grew more and more uneasy about the loss of this thesis, and I began to carry my work with me in a small suitcase for safekeeping. With my suitcase and my plain man’s shirt I wasn’t of much interest to the people on the street. I kept writing. The suitcase became heavier and heavier, for it now contained books and all my drafts. I carried it to my brother’s concerts. We began to share this burden, as we walked about the city. Once he stopped and put it down, flexing his fingers. “You do realise I make my living with my hands,” he said, before he picked it up again.

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‘We should not pretend everybody is suffering equally’: Covid hits Australia’s poor the hardest

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Disadvantaged areas already ravaged by the virus will be devastated when government subsidies are cut

If the slogan of 2020 is “We’re all in this together”, perhaps it should come with an asterisk: *except for those with less, who are hurting more.

Covid-19 hasn’t torn through Australia as it has the United States, Brazil, India and much of Europe, but the economic impact has exposed gaping inequities in almost every facet of our lives.

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Australia weather: cold front brings springtime snow and damaging winds to south-east

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Temperatures plummet as snowfall reported in parts of NSW, Victoria and the ACT

Springtime snow has fallen in parts of south-eastern Australia and a severe weather warning is in place as a cold front moves across New South Wales.

Damaging winds hit Sydney on Friday night, with winds of 115km/h recorded at Camden in the city’s south-west, while gusts reached 106km/h in the city.

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Coronavirus live news: France sees 14,000 new cases; police clash with anti-lockdown protesters in London

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France’s total cases now 527,446; London mayor condemns ‘unacceptable’ demonstration. Follow all the developments live

Coronavirus cases in Colombia, which is nearly a month into a national reopening after a long quarantine, surpassed 800,000 on Saturday, a day after deaths from Covid-19 climbed above 25,000.

The country has 806,038 confirmed cases of the virus according to the health ministry, with 25,296 reported deaths. Active cases number 78,956.

Queen Elizabeth II will recognise the work of hundreds of doctors, nurses, fundraisers and volunteers during the pandemic when the her annual birthday honours list is published next month.

The list, which was due to be published in June, was postponed in order to add nominations for people playing key roles in the early months of the outbreak. It will be released on 10 October.

We all have to play our part, but the dedication, courage and compassion seen from these recipients, be it responding on the frontline or out in their communities providing support to the most vulnerable, is an inspiration to us all.

We owe them a debt of gratitude and the 2020 Queen’s Birthday honours will be the first of many occasions where we can thank them as a nation.

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Coronavirus live news: full lockdown recommended for Madrid; new record cases in Netherlands

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Spanish government calls for Madrid lockdown; Netherlands records worst day for new cases; cases in Reykjavík linked to two French visitors

The UK government has been continuing to source medical gloves used as PPE by frontline healthcare workers from a manufacturer in Malaysia repeatedly accused of forcing its workers to endure “slave-like conditions” in its factories, the Guardian can reveal.

Top Glove, the world’s biggest producer of rubber medical gloves, has faced multiple allegations of exploitation from migrant workers mostly from Bangladesh and Nepal.

Related: NHS sourcing PPE from company repeatedly accused of forced labour

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

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