Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Sydney Theatre Company, Belvoir and Adelaide’s STCSA are among the main stages pushing ahead. No one expects a profit – and many will take a loss
Sydney Theatre Company has announced it is ready to open the doors of the Roslyn Packer theatre and present its first show since March.
Wonnangatta, a new drama written by the award-winning Melbourne playwright Angus Cerini and featuring the actors Hugo Weaving and Wayne Blair, will play from 21 September to 31 October in a socially distanced production for audiences numbering no more than 147 (the Roslyn Packer can usually seat 880 patrons).
Travellers from the UK to France are required to self-certify that they are not suffering coronavirus symptoms or have been in contact with a confirmed case within 14 days preceding travel.
Russia aims to ramp up production of its potential Covid-19 vaccine to between 1.5 million and 2 million doses a month by the end of the year, Reuters reports.
Industry minister Denis Manturov said on Sunday that the nation hopes to eventually produce 6m doses a month, according to the RIA news agency.
Victoria’s chief health officer has said the state’s residents could be wearing masks until there is “no community transmission whatsoever” as the state records a second day below 200 cases.
Victoria recorded 182 cases in the past 24 hours, three more than the previous day’s numbers. The state’s death toll now sits just under 400, with the premier, Daniel Andrews, confirming the deaths of 13 more Covid-19 positive Victorians.
A letter from an ancestor who worked as a nurse in Sydney during the Spanish flu reaffirms what we know about societal responsibility and protecting others
Does history repeat? Ask an ancestor.
I was in hotel quarantine when I discovered a letter written in 1919 by my great-aunt Jean about her work as a voluntary aide during Australia’s Spanish flu outbreak.
Scott Morrison has declared he still has confidence in his aged care minister after Richard Colbeck came under pressure at a Senate inquiry and was unable to recall how many people had died in aged care during the pandemic.
Colbeck apologised on Friday for the times when the Morrison government “didn’t get everything right” in dealing with aged care outbreaks – but insisted it had been prepared for what it sincerely believed to be the worst-case scenarios.
Andrews thanked all Victorians for the role they played in getting the daily coronavirus numbers down below 100.
I’d simply say that, whilst tomorrow’s numbers will be for tomorrow, we are all pleased to see a ‘1’ in front of these additional case numbers, and to a certain extent it is perhaps at that level a little quicker than I thought it might be.
Of course, this Sunday marks the three weeks since the curfew was imposed. Next Wednesday marks three weeks since the most significant workplace restrictions came into effect. To be at this point shows that the strategy is working....
I want to thank each and after Victorian who is making a big contribution to this strategy working. I want to thank them and their families. I want to thank people from all backgrounds, from all parts of the state. No matter your perspective, this is a challenge that none of us are immune from. We’re all in this together. We say that a lot, but it’s true. It’s absolutely true. And because I think more and more Victorians are making the best choices and looking out foreach other, and therefore everybody, we are seeing these numbers come down.
We’ll see what tomorrow holds. But there’s no room for complacency, there’s no way we can assume that this is over. It is an ultra-marathon, and we’re not halfway yet.
The Victorian and federal governments have set up a $15m joint disability response centre, which Andrews said is “essentially mirroring the arrangements we have in aged care”.
There are currently 62 active Covid-19 cases in disability care sectors, across 60 different sites.
We’re grateful to them. That’s not easy. But with that payment, that’ll mean that we can support them to, in turn, keep their clients safe. We all know that, in that sector, that’s what they’re motivated to do – to provide the best care and support to their clients.
Again, I thank the prime minister and the federal government for their partnership. This is yet another example of us working together to deal with a common challenge. And it’s really important that, given the vulnerability of many people across these settings, it’s very, very important that we have a singular focus, and all the senior people around the table at the same time, and that funding to be able to limit the amount of workers who are going to multiple sites.
The coronavirus pandemic has reignited debate in Germany about cutting the working week to four days to help preserve jobs during and after the economic shock.
But the idea remains highly controversial.
Hi everyone, this is Jessica Murray, I’ll be running the global coronavirus blog for the next few hours.
Please do get in touch with any story suggestions or personal experiences you’d like to share.
St Basil’s aged care home breached its duty of care and failed its residents, according to a writ filed in the Victorian supreme court over the nursing response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has cost dozens of the centre’s residents their lives.
The writ, obtained by Guardian Australia, was filed on Thursday and lists Effie Fotiadis as the first applicant in a case that could include residents, their families, employees, or the estates of residents at the Victorian aged care centre.
The ABC has announced the 2020 Boyer Lectures to be delivered by the philanthropist and business leader Andrew Forrest will be delayed due to ongoing Covid-19 travel restrictions and border closures.
The Crown Resorts casino empire controlled by the billionaire James Packer received more than $110m in jobkeeper payments from the Australian government, propping up the group’s profit.
Crown’s full-year results, filed today with the ASX, show the $111.3m the group received to pay both working and stood-down employees was almost two-thirds of its profit before tax of $153m.
This was close to a quarter of the profit before tax the previous year – no surprise, as Crown’s gaming floors largely shut down during the first wave of the pandemic. Crown hasn’t paid a dividend.
The 25th edition of France’s Colmar Jazz Festival, scheduled for September, has been postponed until next year due to the coronavirus epidemic, the city said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Current progress in the health crisis does not allow us today, realistically, to consider staging concerts in September,” the statement says, adding that this edition of the festival will now take place in 2021.
American Indians and Alaska Natives have been hit harder by Covid-19 than the white US population and have been more likely to become infected by coronavirus at a younger age, a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report showed on Wednesday.
The incidence of laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases among people identified as American Indians or Alaska Natives was 3.5 times that of non-Hispanic whites, making them one of the racial and ethnic minority groups at highest risk, according to the study based on data from 23 US states from 22 January to 3 July.
Health experts say prime minister discussing coercive measures this early risks driving hesitant Australians away
Experts have warned Scott Morrison’s discussion of a “mandatory” Covid-19 vaccine is pre-emptive and risks driving hesitant Australians away.
The prime minister announced on Wednesday that a letter of intent had been signed with the British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to supply Australians with the University of Oxford Covid-19 vaccine if it clears clinical trials.
Victoria reports 17 more deaths; ADF says it offered hotel quarantine support to the state; Sydney bus drivers threaten to strike unless masks are made compulsory for passengers. Follow live updates
The security guard who appears to have contracted Covid-19 while working at a hotel quarantine facility later worked at Sydney’s Flemington market and Parramatta Local Court, but did not work at Bankstown Central Shopping Centre, as chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant indicated earlier. A previous case attended the shopping centre on 8 August.
The security guard work at the Marriott Hotel on 3, 4, 7 and 8 August, developed symptoms on 11 August, and was diagnosed late on 15 August.
The Senate committee examining the Morrison government’s response to Covid-19 heard from officials from the Department of Social Services this afternoon. They confirmed that Australian pensioners would not have their payments indexed until at least next March because of soft economic conditions.
In plain English, this means no increase to pensions.
It’s unacceptable that the government is allowing pensions to stagnate in the middle of the coronavirus crisis and the prime minister must outline what he is going to do to fix this.
The vast majority of the cases of Covid-19 in Victoria can be traced back to a single family that returned to Australia in mid-May who were kept in hotel quarantine at the Rydges Hotel, an inquiry has heard.
The Australian Defence Force has also confirmed that an offer of personnel for hotel quarantine was specifically made to all states and territories.
In the UK, the government has performed a juddering u-turn to say that this summer’s exam results will be based on teacher assessment rather than a controversial standardisation model that prompted fury from students who found themselves sharply downgraded on the basis of their schools’ previous performance.
My colleagues Richard Adams and Sally Weale have a write-up here...
Earlier we posted a link to an interesting El Pais piece which noted that in recent months the average age of those newly infected with coronavirus had dropped significantly. If you’re interested in this phenomenon and its consequences more broadly, take a look at this piece by our own Jon Henley from last week:
Unlike during the early months of the crisis in March and April, when older people accounted for the biggest share of cases, in France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium 20 to 39-year-olds now represent up to 40% of new infections...
The challenge for governments and health agencies, experts say, is to prevent the virus from spreading to more vulnerable populations. “There’s no reason to imagine it can be contained to just one age group, without affecting others, Pascal Crépey, an epidemiologist and public health expert, told Le Parisien.
The Chinese billionaire did not challenge the freeze on his Australian assets, including two Sydney homes worth an estimated $3.28 million
A freezing order on the worldwide assets of Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo over a $140m tax bill was unlawful, an appeal court has ruled.
The property developer, whose association with Sam Dastyari led to the Labor senator’s downfall in 2018, had challenged the international element of the order on the grounds it was unenforceable in China and Hong Kong, where most of his assets lay.
Some people seem to be above the law. Those people do not include the whistleblower and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery
Timor-Leste only achieved independence in 2002. It was Asia’s poorest country and desperately needed revenue. Revenue from massive gas resources in the Timor Sea was its big hope. But it needed to negotiate a treaty with Australia on their carve-up. Australia ruthlessly exploited that fact: delays from the Australian side in negotiating a treaty for the carve-up of those resources, and repeated threats of more delays, were a constant theme of the negotiations. In November 2002 the former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer told Timor-Leste’s prime minister, Mari Alkatiri: “We don’t have to exploit the resources. They can stay there for 20, 40, 50 years.” In late 2003 Timor-Leste requested monthly discussions. Australia claimed it could only afford two rounds a year. Poor Timor-Leste offered to fund rich Australia’s expenses. Australia didn’t accept.
The judicial inquiry into Victoria’s hotel quarantine program will on Monday examine evidence from the Melbourne health institute whose genomic testing could shed more light on the source and spread of the state’s second wave.
The inquiry, called by the Victorian government after “unacceptable infection control breaches in hotel quarantine” and chaired by Jennifer Coate, confirmed on Sunday it had added an extra two days of hearings to its schedule for the week.
The UK government has said that in the 24-hour period up to 9am on Sunday, there were a further 1,040 lab-confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Overall, a total of 318,484 cases have been confirmed in the UK.
As of Sunday, 41,366 people have died in the UK within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19. This was up by five from the day before.
Ireland’s health chiefs will meet on Monday to decide if further restrictions are needed to slow a sharp increase in the spread of coronavirus that the government and officials have described as deeply concerning.
Ireland has reopened its economy at a slower pace than most EU countries but that has not prevented a jump in cases over the last two weeks that led to the first localised reimposition of some restrictions last week.
Victoria recorded another 16 coronavirus deaths on Sunday as well as 279 new cases, as the premier Daniel Andrews expressed “cautious optimism” that the state’s harsh stage four restrictions were finally bringing the crisis under control.
“These numbers are heading in the right direction,” Andrews said. “They speak to a strategy that is working. At the same time, no one day necessarily guarantees the outcome – that is a long hard slog.”