Category Archives: Australia news

Coronavirus: Xi Jinping warns of ‘grave situation’ as spread accelerates through China – live

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More than 1,280 infected in China as officials try to stem spread of virus which has reached Europe, the US and Australia. Follow the latest news

In China, 30 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions have now raised their public health alert to level 1, the highest level, according to Global Times. This enables measures such as quarantining.

Sichuan province has announced a ban on group gatherings. Individuals are not allowed to organise gatherings and restaurants are being prevented from hosting them. Anyone who had prior reservations has been told to cancel.

Chinese tourism continues to be affected by the spread of the virus.

All domestic and foreign tour group operations are to be suspended from Monday. The move follows the closure of Shanghai’s Disneyland, and all tourist sites in the popular Sanya city.

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Ken Wyatt says Australia Day should stay on 26 January

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Minister says that instead of rallying to move the date, Australians should engage in a new generation of ‘truth telling’

The federal government frontbencher Ken Wyatt says Australia Day should remain on 26 January but commemorations around the country should mark both the “good and the bad” of the nation’s history.

Wyatt, the first Indigenous man to be minister for Indigenous Australians, told Nine newspapers “dark beginnings” must be recognised in communities across the country.

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Bushfires, ash rain, dust storms and flash floods: two weeks in apocalyptic Australia

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As the country lurches painfully from one extreme weather to another, residents are fearful of what they will face next

In Australia this summer, talking about the weather inevitably leads to talking about the apocalypse.

“When’s the plague of locusts going to arrive?” jokes one Sydney resident after hearing reports that her city is to receive another storm of giant hailstones on Friday afternoon, just a day after it sweltered in temperatures of 40C and toxic smoke kept people stuck indoors, away from the respite of the beach.

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Australia fires live: homes feared lost in NSW bushfires as six firefighters reported injured – latest updates

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Six volunteer firefighters reportedly taken to hospital with ‘serious injuries’ in truck rollover, names of three US firefighters killed in C-130 crash released, and Sydney covered in thick smoke haze. Follow the latest news and live updates

Thank you to the 41 firefighters from across the US who have arrived today to assist in managing Victoria’s ongoing and significant fire threat. Following briefing and training sessions, they will join local crews fighting fires in East Gippsland. pic.twitter.com/GZgT0zFe5C

Agriculture Victoria’s count of the number of animals killed in the Victorian fires has reached 6,422, the Weekly Times reports. Most of the losses were in the north-east, mainly in the upper Murray, where 5,440 animals – including 3,292 beef cattle and 1,735 sheep – were killed.

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Fire raining on beaches, red skies and a billion animals killed: the new Australian summer | Brigid Delaney

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Climate change has stopped being something to argue about. When you breathe in the ash and feel the pain in your heart, you can no longer deny it

Sometimes you can see the end of the old world and the beginning of the new one as clearly as a seam. Transformations that were once barely perceptible, recognisable only after the fact, this summer have become akin to a crossing. You can see the line as you step over it.

It’s the first summer of this new decade. Welcome. It’s the summer of ash washed up on the beaches, like a long, deranged message unfurled from its bottle. It’s the summer of a billion animals killed by flames and starvation, it’s collapsed biospheres, charred forests, epic dust storms, hailstones and racing clouds carrying fire.

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Australia fires live: Canberra airport closed, reports of air tanker crash in NSW bushfires – latest updates

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ACT residents near bushfire south of Canberra told to seek shelter as contact lost with large water-bombing plane fighting New South Wales bushfire. Follow latest news and live updates

There’s a steady stream of people arriving at the Moruya Showgrounds, which has been re-opened as an evacuation centre. For a lot of people, it’s becoming a home away from home.

One woman from Congo, just south of here, told me it was her third time here since New Years Eve.

The sky is looking ominous outside the Moruya showground where our reporter on the ground, Michael McGowan, captured this image.

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Christian Porter defends Bridget McKenzie over $36,000 grant to sport club she belongs to

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Attorney general claims being a ‘paper member’ of the shooting club raises no issue for the minister

Christian Porter has defended Bridget McKenzie after the revelation she approved a $36,000 grant to a shooting club of which she is a member, claiming being a “paper member” of a club raises no probity issue.

The attorney general made the comment to 6PR Radio on Wednesday, continuing the government’s defence of the Nationals deputy leader and former sport minister after a scathing auditor general’s report found she had skewed the $100m sports grant program towards marginal seats.

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Former Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull says Trump is the world’s ‘leading climate denier’

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Turnbull says US president is ‘actively working against global action to reduce emissions’

Donald Trump is the world’s “leading climate denier”, the former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has said.

Turnbull, who lost the prime ministership in August 2018 in part because of his own party’s opposition to his plans to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, made the comments to BBC Newsnight on Tuesday (Wednesday morning, Australian time).

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Will Australia’s wildlife recover from this bushfire season?

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Images of burned koalas and native animals fleeing the fire front have been beamed around the world. There are estimates that 1 billion animals have been impacted and experts fear that some plants and animals have been pushed to extinction. So how bad is the damage? And will Australia’s wildlife bounce back?

You can read Graham Readfearn’s articles on the impact of the fires on Kangaroo island wildlife, plus the mass fish kills in the wake of the fires.

Environment editor Adam Morton has written about the latest figures from the government on threatened species, and environment reporter Lisa Cox has written about the world heritage areas burned, plus a guide to the animals most at risk.

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Australian Open 2020: day two – live!

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Second set: Pliskova* 6-1 3-3 Mladenovic (*denotes server): Pliskova holds to love in the time it took me post a tweet and confirm who Sinner faces in the second round.

Shame to see Max Purcell bow out so early, but Jannik Sinner is a kid going places. The Next Gen Finals champ has Márton Fucsovics next.

Italian @janniksin wins his first ever #AusOpen match!

He def. Aussie qualifier Max Purcell 7-6(2) 6-2 6-4 #AO2020 pic.twitter.com/KOZj4JHAJq

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Coronavirus: Australia to screen passengers on flights from China for potentially fatal illness

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Sars-like virus can be transmitted by human contact and has infected more than 200 and killed three

Australia will begin screening passengers on high-risk flights from China for signs of a new Sars-like coronavirus following confirmation from the Chinese health authorities that the virus has begun spreading from human to human.

The outbreak was first reported in Wuhan City in China on New Year’s Eve and tied to a seafood market, but officials have since confirmed that it has spread to other humans who had not frequented the market, as well as to health workers.

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Jailed British-Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert rejected Iran’s offer to work as a spy

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Melbourne University academic rebuffed bid to recruit her in exchange for her release, letters reveal

Iran tried to recruit the British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert as a spy for Tehran in exchange for her release, but the overture was furiously rebuffed, letters smuggled out of Evin prison reveal.

Moore-Gilbert, a Cambridge-educated academic specialising in Middle East politics, is currently being held in Ward 2A, an isolated Revolutionary Guard-run wing of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, serving a 10-year sentence for espionage, a charge she, and the Australian government, rejects as entirely false.

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Huge hail batters Canberra as severe thunderstorms hit south-eastern Australia

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Hail smashes into Parliament House and brings down trees in the ACT, with heavy rainfall hitting NSW, Queensland and Victoria

Australia’s south-east has been lashed by severe thunderstorms and large hailstones that destroyed buildings and cars in Canberra and left two tourists in hospital after they were injured by lightning.

Two supercell thunderstorms brought hail and heavy rain to cities and towns across the east coast on Monday, battering the outer suburbs of Sydney about 3pm, with 4.5cm hailstones recorded and strong winds bringing trees down over cars in the Sutherland area.

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Large hailstones batter parts of Canberra — video

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Golfball-size hailstones have hit Canberra as severe thunderstorms move through parts of south-eastern Australia. The hail struck parts of Canberra including Parliament House while roofs, windows and cars were damaged across the city. The wild weather follows weeks where the Australian capital has been enveloped in smoke from nearby bushfires

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Huge dust storms in Australia hit central New South Wales

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Videos posted to social media show the clouds turning day into night in some areas

Damaging winds produced by thunderstorms across central New South Wales have whipped up dust storms that turned daytime into night in some towns.

The Bureau of Meteorology issued a series of severe thunderstorm warnings on Sunday evening for inland NSW with the associated winds generating massive dust clouds.

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Man injured in New Year’s Eve Cobargo bushfire dies, as hail pelts Melbourne

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The 84-year-old dies in Sydney’s Concord hospital as Australia’s months-long fire crisis continues

The death toll from the unprecedented bushfires in New South Wales has climbed to 21 following the death in hospital of an elderly man burned in Cobargo on New Year’s Eve.

The 84-year-old was taken from his home on Tuesday 31 December to South East Regional hospital before he was transferred to Concord hospital in Sydney where he died in the early hours of Saturday.

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Coronavirus: Australia’s top health official says there is ‘no current need’ to enhance airport screening

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Sars-like virus has infected nearly 50 people in China, killing two, with cases also detected in Japan and Thailand

Australia’s top health official says there is “no current need” to enhance existing airport screening measures to target an unknown Sars-like virus that has infected nearly 50 people in China and killed two since it was reported on New Year’s Eve.

Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Brendan Murphy, said authorities in Australia were “watching developments very closely” but had not issued a travel warning.

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Hundreds of thousands of fish dead in NSW as bushfire ash washed into river

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Ecologist fears the Macleay River may take decades to recover, with heavy rains likely to affect other waterways

Hundreds of thousands of native fish are estimated to have died in northern New South Wales after rains washed ash and sludge from bushfires into the Macleay River.

Parts of the Macleay River – favoured by recreational fishers – have been turned into what locals described as “runny cake mix” that stank of rotting vegetation and dead fish.

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Coalition awarded $500,000 sports grant to rejected project after Andrew Broad quit

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Seat became hotly contested once the then National MP quit after allegations of improper conduct on a work trip

The Morrison government awarded a $500,000 sports grant in the rural Victorian seat of Mallee a year and a half after it was first rejected – when the seat became hotly contested due to the resignation of Nationals MP Andrew Broad.

The Northern Grampians shire council applied for the grant in September 2018 and was rejected in the first round of the controversial community sport infrastructure grant program, only to see the $500,000 Lord Nelson Park project in St Arnaud approved in April 2019, just weeks out from the election.

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