World’s second biggest miner says it will reduce emissions by 15% by 2030, but ‘will not set targets for our customers’
Mining giant Rio Tinto says it wants its globe-spanning operations to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and will spend US$1bn over the next five years to reduce its carbon footprint.
The second biggest miner in the world has also committed to reducing its emissions by 15% by 2030.
Continue reading...The former prime minister has stepped into the climate debate, with a stark warning to moderate Liberals to act. All the day’s events, live
Greg Hunt will be giving the next coronavirus update at 1.10pm
Meanwhile, the lights keep flickering in Parliament House, which can only mean that my moods have begun to physically manifest.
Continue reading...Home affairs adviser accused of untruthfulness as Tamil family waits on court to decide if youngest daughter can apply for asylum
The Tamil asylum seeker family from Biloela may have to wait another three months for a decision on whether their youngest Australian-born daughter can have her asylum application assessed, after a court hearing in which a home affairs adviser was accused of untruthfulness.
Tamil asylum seekers Priya and Nades and their Australian-born daughters Kopika and Tharunicaa have been detained on Christmas Island since late last year awaiting the hearing on the processing of a visa application for Tharunicaa.
Continue reading...NSW police say they were called to incident next to University of Sydney in Camperdown area of the city
Three baboons have been recaptured after they were spotted on the loose at a major Sydney hospital, triggering a police response and a flurry of interest online.
Police told Guardian Australia on Tuesday evening that they were attending “an incident of that nature” when asked if reports of baboons on the loose were true.
Continue reading...Churches win funding through program that allocates grants only to organisations formally invited by local federal MP
A cluster of evangelical churches with strong links to West Australian Liberals have won almost $40,000 in grants in the past four months through a federal scheme.
Related: Sports rorts inquiry set to grill Bridget McKenzie and Phil Gaetjens
Continue reading...Thorny issues await the two prime ministers when they meet in Australia this week
As gang violence in New Zealand soars – partly fuelled by Australian deportees, police say – prime minister Jacinda Ardern is heading to Sydney for her annual bilateral with Scott Morrison.
The issue of New Zealanders with only distant links to their home country being summarily shipped back to Aotearoa will again be on the agenda, but experts say it is unlikely Ardern will take as tough a stance as last year, when she said the issue was having a “corrosive” affect on trans-Tasman relations.
Continue reading...Government MPs have lashed out at Labor over its emissions target, with arguments in parliament’s corridors. All the days events, live
Parliament starts at 10am.
Tellingly, Joel Fitzgibbon is on board with Labor’s plan. Here he is writing for his local paper, the Newcastle Herald over the weekend:
The aspiration of carbon neutrality by 2050 (zero net emissions) offers a conservative and low-risk path to satisfying the commitment Malcolm Turnbull made in Paris on our behalf back in 2015.
First, it provides plenty of time to think and act, including the time needed to embrace existing and future technologies.
Continue reading...The sea along the Tasmanian east coast is a global heating hotspot -- temperatures there have risen at nearly four times the global average. One man has watched entire sea forests disappear in his lifetime
Continue reading...WA Indigenous affairs minister Ben Wyatt said decision was ‘regrettable’ and Greens senator Rachel Siewert called it ‘hurtful’
The Western Australian branch of the RSL has withdrawn its ban on the performance of Welcome to Country ceremonies and the flying of the Aboriginal flag at all of its Anzac and Remembrance Day services.
In a statement issued on Friday afternoon, RSLWA had said that while it supported the right to fly the Indigenous flag and make a Welcome to Country dedication at official ceremonies, “What RSL is not supportive of is the use of Welcome to Country as part of the actual service itself in terms of the Dawn Service of ANZAC Day and the 11am Service at Remembrance Day”.
Continue reading...Families enter Sydney Olympic Park service through a guard of honour, with a row of 25 candles marking each life lost
The scars remain but traumatised communities are starting to heal as a state memorial honoured the lives lost and the heroes forged in the New South Wales bushfire crisis.
A public state memorial was held at Sydney Olympic Park on Sunday to recognise the devastating toll of the bushfires that ripped through much of NSW.
Continue reading...A new film tracks the life of one boy but is also the story of a generation of Indigenous children and their right to be educated in their language on country
“I want my school to be run by Aboriginal people.
I want adults to stop cruelling 10-year-old kids in jail.
Continue reading...Shadow education minister emphasises education as key battle line against Coalition, while Greens leader Adam Bandt calls for end to public school fees
Labor will continue to make education funding a key point of difference to the Coalition, with a greater emphasis on the disparity between public and private schools’ spending on facilities, Tanya Plibersek has signalled.
In a speech delivered to the Australian Education Union on Friday, Plibersek warned both the government and internal critics arguing for lower social spending that “the fight for fair school funding is not over” and claimed that “visible inequality” in facilities suggests Australians care more about some children than others.
Continue reading...Commissioner says Det Insp Mark Thompson ‘gutted’ at phrasing he used about Camp Hill car fire deaths in Brisbane
A senior Queensland detective who said police were keeping an “open mind” as to whether the deaths of Hannah Clarke and her children were a case of a “husband being driven too far” has been stood aside from the investigation.
The Queensland police commissioner, Katarina Carroll, apologised on Friday for comments made by Det Insp Mark Thompson as he appealed for information into the deaths the previous day, saying the detective was “gutted” at his choice of words.
Continue reading...Domestic violence campaigners appalled force wants to consider suggestions Rowan Baxter was ‘driven too far’ when he set fire to his family in their car in Brisbane
Queensland police have revealed that a man who killed his wife and three children by dousing them with petrol and setting them alight had a history of domestic violence and was known to them.
But in comments that have shocked domestic violence campaigners, the force says they are keeping an “open mind” about suggestions the 42-year-old Rowan Baxter had been “driven too far” and are appealing to people who knew the couple to come forward to understand his motives.
Continue reading...The ALP leader says a feasibility study into a new coal-fired power station in Queensland is ‘hush money’ for climate sceptics
Anthony Albanese says he supports jobs and economic activity from the Adani coalmine, but he has blasted a feasibility study into a new coal-fired power plant in Collinsville as “hush money” for climate sceptics in the Coalition.
In Queensland on Wednesday for his fourth “vision statement” since taking the Labor leadership, Albanese told reporters the ALP needed to improve its electoral performance in the state given the poor showing in last year’s federal election. He said he was listening to voters in a number of regional centres.
Continue reading...We’d been incredibly close when I was a child. Then, in 1994 she went away and never came back. Now here we were, taking to the road with no real plan after her cancer diagnosis
I had been sitting in the cafeteria of a hospital in Perth, Australia, for seven hours waiting for the phone to ring.
Seven hours of drained coffee cups, watching families cry and cling to each other, wondering if they were tears of grief or relief, seven hours of slowly feeling the panic rise up through my body.
Continue reading...Waks, now an advocate for Jewish abuse victims, was one of a number of children Cyprys abused at Melbourne’s Chabad Yeshivah centre
A child abuse victim who blew the whistle on abuse within the Orthodox Chabad sect of Judaism in Australia has been awarded $804,170 in damages in a civil case brought against his perpetrator and serial abuser, David Cyprys, in Melbourne.
Manny Waks was about 13 years old when he was first abused by Cyprys at the Elwood synagogue, and he was also abused at the Chabad Yeshivah centre in Melbourne.
Continue reading...Politicians from WikiLeaks founder’s home country have flown to UK to visit him in jail
Boris Johnson should block attempts to extradite Julian Assange to the US, say two Australian MPs who have flown to the UK to visit the WikiLeaks founder.
Andrew Wilkie, an independent federal MP, said the extradition of Assange, who has been charged by the US with conspiring to hack into a secret Pentagon computer network, would set a dangerous precedent.
Continue reading...Yang Chen says watching survival and adventure TV shows helped her stay alive, as she knew to keep hydrated and warm
A Chinese student who survived in flooded and dense Gold Coast bushland for five days used an empty milk bottle to collect water and get by.
Yang Chen went missing last Wednesday while walking with a friend in the Tallebudgera Valley and spent the next five nights sheltering in caves until she was found by water police near Gorge Falls on Monday morning.
Continue reading...People who flout new order in Xiaogan city in central Hubei face detention for 10 days as global death toll reaches 1,775. Follow live news and latest updates
Shares in China have posted strong gains after the country’s central bank cut the interest rate on its medium-term lending to try to cushion businesses from the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak. The bank also injected another 200bn yuan of liquidity into the system.
The move is expected to pave the way for a reduction in the country’s benchmark loan prime rate on Thursday, Reuters reports, to lower borrowing costs and ease financial strains on companies hit by the epidemic.
China CSI 300 erases Covid-19 slump.
Why?
* Short selling ban (in China this means the Gulag!)
* Funds need gov't approval to sell (prove an outflow)
* Record repo injections by the PBoC, rate cuts
* Xi - will cut taxes and record fiscal stimulus
Rally means all is good, right? pic.twitter.com/hCRUaEiHdZ
#PBOC injects 200 bn yuan liquidity via 1-year medium-term lending facility (MLF).
PBOC cut the rate on MLF to 3.15%, from 3.25% in the previous operation. https://t.co/EXAEiLHayq
A reporter is asking about Australians onboard the MS Westerdam cruise ship that docked in Cambodia last Thursday. An American passenger on that ship was subsequently diagnosed with Covid-19, after testing in Malaysia. The foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne answers:
There were some Australians on the vessel Westerdam. 39 of those have remained in Phnom Penh after the ship finally docked. They have been provided with hotel accommodation in the capital.
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