Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Donald Trump has announced his daily US coronavirus briefings will resume and that wearing face masks were “patriotic” as European leaders agreed a huge coronavirus rescue plan and Australia announced it was scaling back economic support as one of its states battles a growing Covid-19 outbreak.
Having almost entirely avoided wearing a mask in public during the pandemic, the US president tweeted that “many people say it is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance”. The post came with a photo of the president in a mask, possibly taken at his visit about 10 days ago to the Walter Reed military hospital outside Washington.
The Morrison government will reduce the level of income support paid out under the jobkeeper and jobseeker payments from 28 September, and create two payment tiers for the wage subsidy to ensure the rate aligns more closely with people’s pre-Covid income, rather than giving part-timers and casuals a pay rise.
The overhaul will be unveiled by Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg on Tuesday ahead of an economic statement the government will deliver on Thursday. As well as lowering the rate of both the jobkeeper wage subsidy and the $550 coronavirus supplement in jobseeker after September, the government will tighten the eligibility requirements for both payments – including retesting businesses in October.
Investigation into how infection control breaches are believed to have led to a Covid-19 outbreak starts today. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
Neal said the inquiry had received a number of submissions about “what went well, and what went less well” in managing hotel quarantine in Victoria.
He said that, without preempting anything to come in the inquiry, the following issues had arisen for discussion:
Neal said the inquiry, which is not hearing from any witnesses today, will hear evidence “of a scientific and medical nature about what has been understood about the spread of the virus from the hotel quarantine program into the community”.
It will also hear about the impact of the virus in the community, and the “various steps taken by government agencies and public health officials in response to that impact are matters of profound and ongoing significance to this community”.
Understandably, there has been intense community interest and daily commentary in the media about this program. Increasingly over recent weeks there has been growing and understandable community concern about transmission from that program into the general community.
To establish and implement the hotel quarantine program, a range of contractual and other arrangements were entered into between government departments, hotels, a number of private service providers, private security companies, medical services, transport and food providers. It’s anticipated in the course of the inquiry that you will hear from various witnesses that the purposes of the directions and the contractual arrangements entered into was to either eliminate or reduce the public health risk posed by Covid-19 by containing its spread from returned travellers into the community.
As set out in the order in counsel establishing this inquiry, information already available to the inquiry suggests the possibility of a link between many of the cases of coronavirus identified in the Victorian community in the past few weeks and persons who were quarantined under the hotel quarantine program. Comments made by the chief health officer to the media have suggested that it may even be that every case of Covid-19 in Victoria in recent weeks could be sourced to the hotel quarantine program.
The British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline has bought a 10% stake in a German biotech company that is a key player in the global race for a coronavirus vaccine as part of a deal that could eventually be worth more than £800m.
GSK on Monday said it will pay £130m for the stake in CureVac. GSK will also make a separate payment of £104m that will fund research into CureVac’s development of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines.
Denmark will allow merchant sailors stranded at sea since the outbreak of the coronavirus to come ashore and be reunited with their friends and families, the Business Ministry has said.
The United Nations has made an urgent appeal for US$283 million to help Sudan tackle the coronavirus pandemic and its economic consequences, as millions in the country face hunger.
An official said the pandemic had worsened an economic crisis, hitting purchasing power, while movement restrictions had restricted people’s access to food, healthcare and basic services.
South Africa’s death toll from coronavirus has passed the 5,000 mark, according to official figures released on Sunday by the continent’s hardest hit country, AFP reports.
South Africa registered 85 new deaths from the virus in the previous 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 5,033. A total of 13,449 new infections were also officially diagnosed, taking the number to 364,328, figures released by the health ministry showed.
The coronavirus situation in Hong Kong is “really critical”, with a record 100 new infections recorded on Sunday, the territory’s leader, Carrie Lam, said, as Melbourne became the first city in Australia to make wearing masks compulsory in response to a resurgent and aggressive outbreak there.
Hong Kong was held up months ago as a model for its success in keeping down Covid-19 cases in the crowded city-state of 7.5 million people, but its caseload – although still low by European and American standards – had grown by a third in the past fortnight to nearly 1,800. Lam has shuttered bars, gyms and nightclubs in the past week and on Sunday announced new guidelines including mandatory mask-wearing indoors.
Thirty-nine people were detained after police were attacked with “a hail of bottles” at an open-air party in central Frankfurt attended by thousands of youngsters, police in the German city said today..
Five officers were injured in the riot that began at around 3:00 am (0100 GMT) when police intervened to stop a brawl involving around 30 people in Frankfurt’s historic Opera square.
People who travel outside of Ireland have been warned they will invalidate their travel insurance even if the place they visit is on a so-called ‘green list’ of safe countries to by published this week, the Irish Times reports.
It added that travel insurance exclusions denying cover to people who travel contrary to official guides are the norm across the sector. At present, the advice from the Irish Government is that non-essential journeys overseas should be avoided.
Victoria has recorded 363 new Covid-19 cases and three more people have died as premier Daniel Andrews announced face masks will be made mandatory across Melbourne as the state attempts to control a second-wave outbreak of the virus.
At a press conference on Sunday, Andrews appeared wearing a face mask and said residents in metropolitan Melbourne and the Mitchell shire would be required to wear “masks or face coverings”, including bandannas or scarves in public from midnight on Wednesday.
Australia’s acting chief medical officer warns people in Sydney are not taking precautions ‘as seriously’ as in Melbourne
Victoria has recorded 217 new cases of Covid-19 and three more deaths, as the prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced parliament would be postponed due to the health risks of MPs travelling to Canberra from Melbourne and south-western Sydney.
Katharine Murphy sits down with Guardian reporter Paul Karp and Nine senior economics correspondent Shane Wright to discuss the Australian economy and the government’s various stimulus packages. As conditions remain grim, with 992,300 Australians out of work, and the unemployment rate rising to 7.4% in June, how will the government navigate Australia’s recovery?
India has become the third country to record more than 1m coronavirus infections, following the US and Brazil, as it reported 34,956 new cases in the past 24 hours, taking the national total to 1,003,832.
New peaks continue to appear around the world, including an alarming rise in the Brittany region of France.
That’s where we might leave this blog for now. You can keep up to date with global news on The Guardian website or come join me on the new Guardian live blog launching soon.
Labor MP Amanda Rishworth is also speaking with ABC. She agrees the parliament must follow medical advice, but says the cancellation of this sitting fortnight makes it difficult for the opposition to scrutinise government.
Question time is a really important forum which the opposition can ask the government questions, and every MP has a chance to raise their voice in parliament. So this is critically important that we have parliament sitting. It is a really important vehicle.
Yes, there is the Covid committee, but parliament itself is the opportunity for every MP from around the country to bring the concerns of their constituents. So it does make it more challenging [if it is not sitting].
Mining magnate allegedly diverted funds to the benefit of his Palmer United party in the weeks before the 2013 election
Mining magnate Clive Palmer has been charged with fraud and corporate misconduct offences that carry lengthy prison sentences over the alleged diversion of at least $10m to the benefit of his Palmer United party in the weeks before the 2013 election.
Palmer denied the allegations, telling Guardian Australia the charges were “nonsense” and rehashed matters over which a court had already ruled in his favour.
Several houses on Ocean View Drive now dangerously close to cliff edge as huge waves wash away beaches
Beachfront homes along the New South Wales Central Coast have been left dangling over the ocean and in danger of collapse after powerful surf caused massive erosion.
A powerful low across Australia’s east coast earlier in the week created large swells and high waves battering some coastal areas.
The news that there may be a delay in re-opening pubs in Ireland has been described as a “hammer blow” by the Licensed Vintners Association, which represents pub owners, who said the future of 7,000 pubs and 50,000 jobs hung in the balance.
Ireland has paused its phased easing of lockdown and extended rules on face coverings amid a surge in Covid-19 cases. Leo Varadkar, the tánaiste (deputy prime minister), told parliament today that pubs, nightclubs and other venues will open no sooner than 10 August, and possibly later.
Covid-19 was found to be the direct cause of death among 89% of the pandemic’s victims in Italy, according to a report on Thursday by the country’s higher health institute and national statistics agency.
The study was based on the death certificates of 4,942 people who had tested positive for Covid-19 and carried out until 25 May, by which time 31,573 people were officially reported to have died of the disease.
Hundreds of thousands of buyers allegedly paid as much as three times the normal bank interest rate when arranging finance through a car dealer
Law firm Maurice Blackburn has launched a class action lawsuit against Westpac on behalf of hundreds of thousands of car buyers who were sold vehicle loans under a deal that allegedly allowed dealers to secretly pocket vast commission payments.
Dealers were able to maximise commissions Westpac and its subsidiary, St George, paid them for selling the loans by charging some customers as much as three times the bank’s going interest rate, it is claimed.
Acting Rural Fire Service commissioner Rob Rogers has been formally appointed to the position, replacing Shane Fitzsimmons as leader of the NSW fire agency.
Rogers began volunteering with the RFS in 1979 and has been acting in the role since April. He was a deputy commissioner during the horrific 2019-2020 fires.
Rob is truly a veteran of the RFS. From his seat on the ‘Belrose Blitz’ (fire tanker) to the commissioner’s chair - the community has benefited from Rob’s leadership in action over successive fire seasons.
We’ve been working in lockstep with Rob Rogers and the RFS to ensure the state is as prepared as it can be to face disaster again this bushfire season.
The Queensland Council for Civil Liberties has called on the state government to release the draft of its bill to increase the maximum penalty for breaching public health orders to six months imprisonment.
The public health act already carries fines of $4,003 for breaching the chief health officer’s directions, which currently includes entering Queensland without a valid border declaration pass.
The proposed further Covid-19 legislation containing prison terms of up to 6 months represents a significant increase in penalties and in that regard the proposed legislation should have been the subject of public consultation.
There has been no consultation with this Council and so far as I am aware no consultation with other stakeholders such as the Queensland Law Society or the Bar Association.
Brazil has suffered 1,233 more deaths and registered 39,924 new cases, its health ministry has said. The country has now recorded a total off 75,366 deaths and confirmed 1,996,748 cases in all, making it the world’s second worst-affected.
As the figures were released, the far-right president, who has repeatedly dismissed the dangers posed by the pandemic, publicly acknowledged a second positive test that suggests he has not recovered. Bolsonaro told reporters he would get tested again in a few days.
Scotland could ask people arriving from England to quarantine, its first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said. In an interview with ITV’s Peston programme due to be broadcast in the next couple of hours, she has said:
Scotland would have the ability through public health measures to ask people to quarantine if they came to Scotland. And I’ve said, again, this is not political, it is not constitutional, I’m taking these decisions purely from a public health perspective. We do see prevalence of the virus at a lower level at the moment – although we’re not complacent – than we do in England.
But that’s not something I want to do if we can avoid that. I think the first thing we want to do is work very constructively as we do already with authorities in England to look at good outbreak management and where that requires localised travel restrictions, then rely on that in the first instance.
Well, my calculation is that if we are more successful in driving the virus to very low levels, getting as close as possible to elimination of it before a potential second wave in the autumn and winter, then we will build ourselves a much more sustainable foundation for economic recovery.
So, the judgement is that taking a couple of weeks, and that’s pretty much what we’re talking about here, longer to come out of lockdown, if that buys us a more sustainable recovery in the medium to long term, then that’s the right thing to do.
Restrictions imposed on Indian city of Bangalore and state of Bihar; Venezuela’s capital Caracas to go into a strict lockdown on Wednesday; Face masks mandatory in France; Follow the latest updates
AFP is reporting on Tokyo being on its highest coronavirus alert level after a rise in new cases - particularly in younger people, in nightlife areas and also in workplaces and in families - as experts said the rising infections were a clear “red flag”.
However, the move to a “red” alert does not mean the city will ask businesses to close or events to be postponed. Even during a national state of emergency in April, there was no “lockdown” in Japan of the type seen in Europe.
AP are also reporting on how virus restrictions in Australia are being reimposed, shutting businesses and curbing people’s social lives as communities try to curb a disease resurgence before it spins out of control.
Residents of Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, were warned today to comply with lockdown regulations or face tougher restrictions. Melbourne’s 5 million people and part of the city’s semi-rural surrounds are a week into a new, six-week lockdown to contain a new outbreak there.
The health department now recommends masks where community transmission of coronavirus is occurring and physical distancing is difficult. From washable cloth face masks to reusable ones and how to wear them, here’s what you need to know
Last week, the national cabinet updated its position on the use of face masks, deciding that people should wear them in locations where there is community transmission of the coronavirus and where social distancing is difficult.
The announcement was a response to rising case numbers in Melbourne, which is now in the early stages of a six-week stage three lockdown.