Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The White House on Monday issued a statement amending the timing of the start of new restrictions on travel from Brazil to the United States to 11.59pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, 26 May.
The White House announced on Sunday that it was restricting travel from Brazil to the United States, two days after the South American nation became the world’s No. 2 hotspot for coronavirus cases.
In its original announcement, it said the restrictions would come into force on 28 May.
The move has been made using emergency Covid-19 powers and favours company directors, they say
A surprise move by treasurer Josh Frydenberg to make shareholder class actions harder has been slammed by lawyers as cronyism that gives company directors the green light to hide bad information from investors.
“If bad directors take advantage of this change to lie to shareholders and people whose savings are in superannuation, the treasurer will share responsibility,” Jacob Varghese, the chief executive of law firm Maurice Blackburn, told Guardian Australia.
A comment by the US secretary of state about Victoria’s belt and road project has ricocheted through Parliament House and the US embassy
When US secretary of state Mike Pompeo popped up on Australian television over the weekend it was not to be interviewed by the national broadcaster or indeed one of the main TV channels.
Instead he chose to appear on a fringe show with a relatively tiny audience hosted by a self-styled “outsider” who loves Donald Trump’s tweets almost as much as he loves railing against “the left”.
Chile’s president says hospitals are ‘very close to limit’, France records lowest number of daily Covid-19 cases since March, India restarts domestic flights
President Donald Trump has further limited travel to the US from the world’s coronavirus hotspots by denying entry to foreigners coming from Brazil, which is second to the US in the number of confirmed cases.
Trump had already banned certain travellers from China, Europe, the United Kingdom and Ireland and, to a lesser extent, Iran. He has not moved to ban travel from Russia, which has the world’s third-highest caseload, approximately 20,000 fewer than Brazil’s.
Remnants of ex-Tropical Cyclone Mangga whip up 100km/h wind gusts, dust storms and heavy rain as Perth and state’s south prepares for onslaught
Some 50,000 homes in Western Australia are still without power as the state continues to be battered by wild weather for a second day in a row, in a “rare event” described as a “once-in-a-decade” storm.
The state has experienced the wildest autumn weather in years, as the remnants of ex-Tropical Cyclone Mangga collided with a cold front and trough, whipping up gusts of about 100km/h.
Bushfires and Covid-19 highlight connection between human health and natural world, states letter by almost 200 doctors and scientists
Leading health professionals, including a Nobel laureate and a former Australian of the Year, say the government must put human health “front and centre” in a new generation of environment laws in the aftermath of the Covid-19 and bushfire crises.
The Nobel prize-winning immunologist Peter Doherty and the epidemiologist and former Australian of the Year Fiona Stanley are among 180 professionals who have warned the government that Australia’s “failing” environmental laws will fuel further public health crises.
The Daily Mail - usually one of Boris Johnson’s supporters in the press - has called on the prime minister to sack Dominic Cummings, trailing its headline with the following:
In the clearest way, Dominic Cummings has violated the spirit and letter of the lockdown. Boris Johnson says he ‘totally gets’ how the public feels about this. Clearly he totally doesn’t. Neither man has displayed a scintilla of contrition for this breach of trust. Do they think we are fools? For the good of the government and the nation, Mr Cummings must resign. Or the prime minister must sack him. No ifs. No buts.
The White House has announced it is prohibiting foreigners from traveling to the US if they had been in Brazil in the last two weeks, two days after the South American nation became the world No. 2 hot spot for coronavirus cases.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the new restrictions would help ensure foreign nationals do not bring additional infections to the US, but would not apply to the flow of commerce between the new countries.
Penny Wong says treasurer should have ‘the courage’ to take responsibility for error as Coalition faces calls to expand wage subsidy
Labor will attempt to pressure the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, to appear before the Senate’s Covid-19 inquiry to explain the “$60bn black hole” in the jobkeeper program.
The move comes as the Morrison government faces growing calls to expand the wage subsidy to cover a wider group of workers, after revelations on Friday that the six-month program is now expected to cost the budget $70bn rather than $130bn.
Ex-Tropical Cyclone Mangga expected to bring 100km/h winds, heavy rain and massive waves along a 3,000km stretch of coast
A massive “once-in-a-decade” storm is expected to hit Australia’s entire west coast on Sunday and Monday, bringing potentially dangerous conditions and prompting authorities to place defence force units on standby.
The Bureau of Meteorology said the storm – the remnants of Tropical Cyclone Mangga combined with a cold front – represented an “unusually widespread severe weather event”.
Rebecca Wilkie is used to running a budget. The single mother of two daughters knows what it is to keep one eye on the bank balance. After being stood down as a full-time Qantas flight attendant at the end of March, however, the budget is tighter still. “Life was a struggle for us before the pandemic, to be honest,” she says.
She is managing. But catching up on the mortgage payments after the initial relief ends, and paying for the greater utility bills when they come through, worry her. She’s hoping, and expecting, that after 18 years at the airline, a job will be waiting for her once jobkeeper stops and the recovery begins.
The 102-year-old car rental firm Hertz has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US after its business all but vanished during the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reports.
Hertz said in a US court filing on Friday that it had voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 reorganisation. Its international operating regions including Europe, Australia and New Zealand were not included in the US proceedings.
The 54 countries of the African Union were reporting a total of 103,933 cases of coronavirus on Saturday morning, according the Africa Centres for Disease Control.
So far African nations have reported 3,183 deaths from Covid-19, while 41,473 people have recovered since the virus was first detected on the continent 14 weeks ago.
Case numbers have not grown at the same exponential rate as in other regions and so far Africa has not experienced the high mortality seen in some parts of the world. Today, there are 3,100 confirmed deaths on the continent.
By comparison, when cases reached 100,000 in the World Health Organization (WHO) European region, deaths stood at more than 4,900. Early analysis by WHO suggests that Africa’s lower mortality rate may be the result of demography and other possible factors. Africa is the youngest continent demographically with more than 60% of the population under the age of 25. Older adults have a significantly increased risk of developing a severe illness. In Europe nearly 95% of deaths occurred in those older than 60 years.
Now that countries are starting to ease their confinement measures, there is a possibility that cases could increase significantly, and it is critical that governments remain vigilant and ready to adjust measures in line with epidemiological data and proper risk assessment.
The Morrison government commission has promoted gas as a key way to boost the economy after the coronavirus crisis
The head of the Morrison government commission tasked with coming up with plans to revitalise the economy after the coronavirus crisis, Nev Power, is to step aside from his position as deputy chairman of a gas company over conflict of interest concerns.
“Because of the perceptions of conflict of interest he has stepped back from participating in board meetings and will not participate in the decisions of the board” of Strike Energy, a spokesman for the National Covid-19 Coordination Commission said on Friday evening.
The Downfall meme format has been widely circulating on the internet for more than a decade, with users adding their own subtitles to a clip from the 2004 German film Downfall, showing a highly agitated Adolf Hitler in his bunker screaming at his military commanders in the final days of the war.
Labor leader says deputy PM’s comment about activism is ‘entirely inappropriate’ after recent bushfires
Anthony Albanese has demanded the deputy prime minister and Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, apologise for observing that a lot of people “set their hair on fire” about climate change, given the recent experience of the catastrophic summer of bushfires.
The Labor leader said McCormack’s comment on Friday was “entirely inappropriate” given the government had conceded that climate change was one of the factors in the fires “that saw thousands of homes lost, that saw millions of hectares burnt, and that had a devastating impact on the communities of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia”.
Michael McCormack says trade minister and diplomats are trying to fix the issue
Deputy prime minister Michael McCormack is concerned coal exporters could face a tougher time selling the commodity into China.
There are reports the Chinese government is warning state-owned power plants not to buy new shipments of Australian thermal coal and instead favour domestic products.
Car appeared to accelerate away from traffic lights directly into shopfront in Greenacre
Ten people have been injured, at least one seriously, after a car crashed into a hijab store in Sydney’s west on Thursday afternoon.
Emergency services said they were treating a driver and nine pedestrians, after a people mover van drove into Hijab House in Greenacre, on the corner of Waterloo and Boronia roads, shortly after 3pm on Thursday.
The US secretary of state criticises China's handling of the coronavirus outbreak, while backing Australia's push for an investigation into the origins of Covid-19. In a media address, Mike Pompeo attacks the Chinese Communist party, declaring it 'ideologically and politically hostile to free nations'. His comments come after China slapped 80% tariffs on Australian barley exports and continue similar rhetoric from the Trump administration that is increasingly critical of Beijing
Angus Taylor also spoke on the border closure issue while on the ABC:
Well, I think ultimately it’s a decision for Queensland but the advice coming in is very clear from the Chief Medical Officer and it’s clear what the New South Wales Premier has put her view as well.
What I want to see is opening up, getting things going again, jobs, investment and of course we have got to make sure all our policies are aligned with that at the federal level and we’d like to see states do the same and that includes our emissions policy which is all about strengthening the economy.
Speaking to the ABC a little earlier, Gladys Berejiklian says she did not think it was “logical at this stage to maintain those border closures for a prolonged period of time”.
She prefaced the comment with “that’s a matter for the Queensland premier and the Queensland government” before giving her opinion, so that might tell you how relations within national cabinet are starting to go.
New South Wales is in a position now where we’re really focused on jobs and the economy, and we’ll be able to get our industries up and running.
But for Australia to really move forward as a nation during this very difficult economic time as well as difficult health time, we do need our borders down, we do need to allow people to move between states, to live, to work, to see family.
Here is more on US president Donald Trump calling for an in-person G7 meeting.
Donald Trump has said he may seek to revive a face-to-face meeting of Group of Seven leaders near Washington, after earlier canceling the gathering due to the coronavirus pandemic.