Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Greta Thunberg leads protests as Covid rules restrict numbers compared with last year
School pupils, youth activists and communities around the world have turned out for a day of climate strikes, intended to underscore the urgency of the climate crisis even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Social distancing and other Covid-19 control measures dampened the protests, but thousands of activists posted on social media and took to the streets to protest against the lack of climate action from world leaders. Strikes were scheduled in at least 3,500 locations around the globe.
The prime minister warns nations will be severely judged if they try to profit from hoarding a vaccine
Scott Morrison will use a speech to the United Nations general assembly in New York to urge countries to share a Covid-19 vaccine as soon as a successful candidate emerges, characterising such collaboration as a “global and moral responsibility”.
Morrison will use his contribution to the general assembly 75th anniversary general debate, scheduled for Saturday morning Australian time, to revive concerns that some countries might see “short-term advantage or even profit” in hoarding the vaccine rather than sharing it with the world.
Victorian premier is the last witness who can shed light on the decision to use private security guards, as border restrictions ease around Australia. Follow live
Peter Dutton then followed up that comment, with this one:
Honestly when we had people who couldn’t go to their dad’s funeral and the same time the Premier was approving people from Hollywood to come in and lay by the pool for two weeks, why wouldn’t we call it out?
It was just unfair and it was unjust. It has now changed.
Peter Dutton was on the Nine Network this morning, talking the Queensland border closures:
I just think we want to work very closely together and we’ve been able to do that, and as the Deputy Commissioner pointed out, the ADF and Queensland Police have had a very longstanding relationship and a necessary one and the ADF personnel are going to provide support at the additional hotels that will be stood up to bring more Australians back from overseas. So that will be a very worthy task for them to be involved in. And already they’ve been involved in providing support to the Queensland Police at hotels where people are quarantining. So I think it was obvious yesterday that Dr Steven Miles, who really just picks a fight every day on this issue, I think back-tracked pretty quickly when he realised what he said was actually factually incorrect. And I think the Premier’s pulled him back into line.
Victorian health minister Jenny Mikakos has told the hotel inquiry she had no role in the hiring of private security, while NSW Covid restrictions eased at schools and weddings. Follow live
The French government may be pushing for people to download its Covid-19 contact-tracing app, but when asked whether he had done so, prime minister Jean Castex said he had not because he does not take the metro.
The app was launched at the start of June to much fanfare from the government, but three months later only 2.4 million people out of a 67 million population have downloaded it
Brazil has recorded 32,817 additional confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, and 831 deaths from the disease.
South America’s largest country has registered more than 4.6 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, according to ministry data, ranking it as the third worst outbreak in the world after the US and India.
Israel is tightening its coronavirus lockdown after an alarming spike in new cases, the cabiney decided on Thursday morning.
Bejamin Netanyahu, prime minister, has voiced alarm that a surge in infections was pushing the nation to “the edge of the abyss”.
Rarely can there have been a more low-key beginning to the cricket season in Australia. It’s usually a time of optimism as spring blooms and sports grounds are transformed from hosting football codes of different types into cricket ovals.
But of course 2020 is different and, as Australia’s Megan Schutt explains here, it’s all a bit surreal knowing that the teams have to put on a big show despite the lack of ceremony or razzamatazz in the Covid-era.
Judge says the former Telstra technician is guilty of the murders of Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon but acquitted him of the murder of Sarah Spiers
Bradley Robert Edwards, a 51-year-old former Telstra technician from Western Australia, has been found guilty of the murders of Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon but acquitted of the murder of Sarah Spiers in the Claremont serial killings case, Australia’s longest-running and most expensive criminal investigation.
The Claremont serial killings refer to the deaths of Rimmer, 23, Glennon, 27, and Spiers, 18, between 1996 and 1997. All three women went missing after a night out at the Claremont entertainment district in Perth’s eponymous western suburb.
Rebecca Cartwright tells anti-corruption watchdog she stored Daryl Maguire’s work computer in her parliament house office from 2018
A NSW government staffer didn’t reveal she was storing former Liberal MP Daryl Maguire’s parliamentary computer hard drive because it may have contained information that could implicate him, an inquiry has heard.
The government whip’s secretary, Rebecca Cartwright, on Wednesday told the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) that she has been storing the hard drive in her parliament house office since 2018.
More than 450 long-finned pilot whales became stranded in harbour in Tasmania with rescuers managing to save about 50
About 380 pilot whales were confirmed dead in Tasmania’s west on Wednesday afternoon with rescuers fighting to save the remaining 30 that are still alive.
More than 450 long-finned pilot whales were caught on sandbanks and beaches inside Macquarie Harbour with a rescue effort starting on Tuesday morning.
Extreme weather, locust invasions and violence have forced people to flee their homes
Millions of people were uprooted from their homes by conflict, violence and natural disasters in the first six months of this year, research has found.
Nearly 15m new internal displacements were recorded in more than 120 countries between January and June by the Swiss-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
The EU Council, scheduled for later this week, has been postponed after its president tested positive, reports Euronews political editor, Darren McCaffery.
MEANS: EU Council due to be held this Thursday and Friday has been postponed until next week, 1st and 2nd of September
The UN summit is proving to be a bad-tempered event.
In a recorded video, the US president, Donald Trump, called Covid-19 the “China virus”, adding: “We must hold accountable the nation that unleashed this plague upon the world.”
Aboriginal legal services say they don’t have enough funding to meet the new commitments
The coroner’s court of Victoria has changed the way it investigates Indigenous deaths in custody to reflect recommendations made in a royal commission almost 30 years ago, but Aboriginal legal services say they don’t have enough funding to meet the court’s new commitments.
The Victorian state coroner, judge John Cain, issued a practice direction on Tuesday outlining new standards for investigating Indigenous deaths in custody. It includes a requirement that the coroner attend the scene of death where practicable, instead of relying on the report of the police officer conducting the investigation.
The government is considering ditching the superannuation increase from 9.5% to 12% by 2025. Find out what that would mean for your retirement
The Morrison government’s looming decision on whether to proceed with promised increases in superannuation contributions could have a big effect on the amount of money saved for your retirement.
The superannuation guarantee contribution is legislated to increase from its current rate of 9.5% of income to 12% by 2025 – and the Coalition promised at the last election to stick with that schedule, but is now rethinking it amid the Covid-19 crisis.
A federal judge in South Carolina has struck down a rule requiring mail-in absentee ballots to be signed by witnesses for the upcoming November election, citing the severity of the coronavirus pandemic.
In a ruling on Friday, US district court judge J. Michelle Childs ordered the state Election Commission to immediately inform voters about the removal of the requirement.
The latest Guardian editorial, on the UK facing its second wave of coronavirus:
The United Kingdom is facing a Covid calamity, and it is a situation that was made in Downing Street. Infections and hospital admissions are rising rapidly.
An exponentially growing epidemic is outpacing the rate at which the testing regime is expanding, meaning that it is not possible to properly track the spread of the disease.
The UK government has warned of six more months of “very difficult” lockdown restrictions, amid a continuing rise in infections, the Times reports this morning.
According to the paper, the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, is expected to announce new movement curbs in the coming days, although there is said be a split among members of his cabinet over how extensive these should be, with the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is resisting a full shutdown of the hospitality sector.
The UK is at a “critical moment” and if people fail to follow coronavirus rules “we’re going to end up back in situations we don’t want to be in,” a senior government minister warned in a broadcast interview this morning.
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, told Sky News:
We’re certainly at a critical moment this morning.
It is clear we’re just a few weeks behind what we’re seeing elsewhere in Europe.
.@grantshapps says it's important the public adhere to the new social distancing rules as #COVID19 'hospital admissions are creeping up'.
Commonwealth needs to prepare for new argument former human services minister knew scheme was unlawful, court says
A federal court trial set to decide whether robodebt victims are entitled to compensation has been delayed after fresh claims were levelled against government minister Alan Tudge.
The court heard at a pre-trial hearing on Monday that Gordon Legal plans to argue Tudge, who was human services minister in 2016-17, either knew or was “recklessly indifferent” to the fact the botched program was unlawful.
The US is nearing the stark milestone of 200,000 deaths, nine months after the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, as cases in the UK rose to a four-month high and Europe continued to see rising infections.
The number of deaths in the US, the highest in the world, stood at 199,509 on the Johns Hopkins University tracker on Monday morning, roughly a fifth of the global total. Nearly 6.8m of the world’s 30.1m infections are in the US.
Covid-19 has spread around the planet, sending billions of people into lockdown as health services struggle to cope, Pablo Gutiérrez and Seán Clarke write. Find out where the virus has spread, and where it has been most deadly:
A clown juggled and acrobats launched themselves through the air above a stage in an open field in Seoul at the weekend as the audience watched from the safety of their cars, cocooned from the risk of coronavirus.
The annual circus – usually held in May – was pushed back twice this year because of the virus until organisers turned it into a drive-in event, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports. Cho Beong-hee, the manager of the Seoul Street Art Creation Centre, said:
The performing arts are very important even during a pandemic. So we came up with different ideas in trying to make this event happen and the drive-in option was chosen as it was deemed the safest idea.
I think watching performances in cars is great. I think it can be done in the future, with other performances like musicals.
Joy and tears after three-year-old found hungry but smiling after wandering off from his parents’ home south of Perth
Western Australian man Chris O’Reilly says he could have “ran on water” when news came through that his three-year-old son had been found safe after going missing in dense bushland south of Perth.
The toddler had wandered off from his parents’ home at 7:30am on Saturday morning, after going to play outside.