Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
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.”
Man punches shark repeatedly until it lets woman’s leg go in attack off Shelly Beach
A woman is in a stable condition in hospital as authorities hunt the juvenile great white shark that attacked her on the NSW mid north coast.
The 35-year-old was rushed to Port Macquarie Base Hospital with serious leg injuries after she was mauled off the city’s Shelley Beach about 9.30am on Saturday.
Writing to her missing son was an act of longing and hope, but the years of silence took their toll on my great-great grandmother
Seventy-five years ago on 15 August 1945 Japan surrendered, bringing the second world war to an end. My great-aunt Faye, who was 23 at the time and living in Melbourne, described how the day unfolded in an exercise book she used as a diary:
“Soon after I started work the announcement of the end of the war was made so we were given the rest of the day off and tomorrow as well. This is the moment we waited almost six years for and we thank God and our wonderful allied combined forces for its successful conclusion and hope for a permanent and happy peace.
Canada is preparing for a “reasonable worst case scenario” in which further surges of coronavirus cases would at times overwhelm the public health system, officials have said.
In this scenario, there would be a large peak later this year followed by a number of smaller peaks and valleys stretching to January 2022. Each of the peaks would exceed the health system’s capacity.
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NSW Health is advising of a new public health alert for Liverpool Hospital and Dooleys Lidcombe Catholic Club.
Peter Dutton had some things to say about the border closure between NSW and Queensland on the Nine network today:
When you get a premier like Annastacia Palaszczuk making announcements about border closures when Gladys Berejiklian is doing a press conference and she is caught out, the question is asked of her and she knows nothing about it, she hadn’t been contacted by Queensland, well you would imagine she would be a bit miffed. I think it is childish. There is a growing mood here in Queensland at the moment, I have got to say, Ally, of people who say if the doctors are saying close the borders or put in place this regime, fair enough, but there is a lot of politics being played in Queensland at the moment by the state government here in relation to this issue. You see brochures now going out into letterboxes in marginal seats and what not, and Annastacia Palaszczuk is walking a fine line here. People will be cynical if they think these decisions are being made for political reasons and her break down in the relationship with the New South Wales premier, particularly for those people who live in the Tweed or on the Gold Coast, is negatively impacting on those lives and businesses and it is unacceptable.
Victoria’s aged care crisis continues, with the department of health taking control of three more aged care homes due to Covid-19 outbreaks, as the state’s premier raises the hardship payments available to those who must forgo income in order to isolate after testing.
Victoria recorded 278 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, the lowest number for more than two weeks, with the number of total actives cases also dipping.
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