Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
An open letter that made headlines calling for a herd immunity approach to Covid-19 lists a number of apparently fake names among its expert signatories, including “Dr Johnny Bananas” and “Professor Cominic Dummings”.
The Great Barrington declaration, which was said to have been signed by more than 15,000 scientists and medical practitioners around the world, was found by Sky News to contain numerous false names, as well as those of several homeopaths.
Campaigner gives first major interview after being appointed as government adviser on issue
The UK needs a frank conversation about the fear of male violence that women live with every day, according to the government’s new adviser on violence against women and girls.
In her first major interview since her role was announced on Friday, the feminist campaigner Nimco Ali – who has been a key figure in the global fight to end female genital mutilation (FGM) – said she wanted to work across political, ethnic and gender lines.
Scott Morrison says it is the GST top up with has allowed WA to declare a budget surplus.
So, you’re welcome, Mark,” he says
Q: The RBA has warned today that Australia’s historically low population growth rate will heighten the risk of falls in property values in the future. And Treasury has said your housing measures bring forward demand for future years. What will the Government do?
Scott Morrison:
Well, the impacts from the COVID-19 recession are obvious. Whether it’s programs like HomeBuilder and others, there will always be an excess of demand over the supply of housing in this country. Always has been. And that’s what has fundamentally driven house price values all around the country.
And that is still true today. There is still a surplus of demand over supply. And that’s why our HomeBuilder program - and to give you an idea of its impact, what we’ve done in the housing sector is we’ve been unlocking and bringing forward the decisions that home builders want to make. And that will see some 20,000 homes built at a cost of around $500 million.
The Scottish government is facing a fierce backlash after Nicola Sturgeon announced a crackdown on indoor drinking in licensed premises, as one leading adviser said more needed to be done to ensure people were sticking to the rules in their own homes.
Scottish pub, bar and restaurant owners expressed anger and despair at “catastrophic” and “scapegoating” new regulations that are set to last for 16 days across the country, and people on online forums decried the “prohibition” that would result from harsher restrictions in central Scotland.
More than 100 women launch action as activists say practice is serious violation of human rights and privacy
A group of more than 100 Italian women have asked prosecutors to investigate who is behind the burial for nearly a decade of foetuses in graves marked with the names of their mothers in a cemetery in Rome.
The practice only came to light last week after one of the women, whose curiosity was sparked after reading about the so-called “fields of angels” in local newspapers, discovered a plot with a wooden cross bearing her name and the date on which the foetus was buried at Prima Porta cemetery. She subsequently posted about her experience on Facebook.
NSW says a new cluster of three people is likely linked to an existing cluster. The premier Gladys Berejiklian is also warning that the public will be told of “additional venues, additional locations” to respond to during the day.
The remaining three cases of community transmission are all linked, and that source is being investigated by Health. Health has not ruled out also being able to establish a link between that new cluster of three people and also an existing cluster. It’s also important to note that we anticipate during the day there will be additional venues, additional locations, which we’ll be asking the public to respond to.
We anticipate that because we’ve identified these eight cases, that a number of close contacts and family members could be found to be positive as a result, so it’s really, really important for everybody to stay on high alert, look at the information which Health provides during the course of the day, and please react and make sure you take that advice. If you’re asked to get tested and stay home for 14 days, please make sure you do that.
In NSW, another four cases were recorded from returned travellers.
Of the eight locally-acquired cases, one is under investigation and seven are linked to a known case or cluster. NSW Health said:
One new case reported today was locally acquired, is likely to have been infected some days ago and appears linked to the Liverpool Hospital Dialysis cluster. Four more cases are close contacts of this case.
One new case is locally acquired whose source is under investigation. The remaining two cases today are close contacts of this case.
Testing numbers have dropped recently, which is a concern. NSW Health renews its call for increased testing across Sydney, even if you have the mildest of symptoms like a runny nose or scratchy throat, cough, fever or other symptoms that could be COVID-19.
This is especially important for people across West and South West Sydney with these new cases and after the state’s sewage surveillance program detected fragments of the virus at the North Richmond and West Camden treatment plants.
At first glance it sounds like a no-brainer. Coronavirus is most dangerous to older and unhealthier people, so why not protect them and let the rest of society return to life as normal? It would boost the economy and free the young and fit from the mental and financial burdens of Covid restrictions. In time, as the virus tears through them, they will acquire herd immunity that ultimately helps us all.
The strategy proposed in the Great Barrington declaration – a letter signed by an international group of scientists – is the latest salvo in an ongoing battle of ideas for how to tackle the pandemic. It calls on governments around the world to abandon strategies that suppress the virus until we can better cope – through working test-and-trace programmes, new treatments, vaccines and more – for the radically different approach.
The Swedish example is regularly raised by libertarian-minded Conservatives when protesting against government restrictions aimed at quelling the spread of the virus in the UK. But what did the Scandinavian country do differently and could it be applied elsewhere?
When politicians across the world were confronted with the reality of a spreading pandemic, hospitals nearing capacity and deaths rising almost all of them reached for emergency legislation to enforce lockdowns, curfews and other bans on social gatherings. But Sweden chose a markedly different approach.
The Guardian’s Europe correspondent Jon Henley tells Anushka Asthana how in Sweden, the government vested its pandemic response in its unelected public health expert Anders Tegnell, who issued advice and guidance rather than strict lockdowns. It was highly controversial because of catastrophic failures in its care homes: deaths rose rapidly, far outstripping those recorded in neighbouring countries. But as much of Europe appears to be experiencing a second wave of Covid infections, in Sweden cases are not rising so rapidly.
An international group of scientists has called on governments to overturn their coronavirus strategies and allow young and healthy people to return to normal life while protecting the most vulnerable.
The proposal, drawn up by three researchers but signed by many more, argues for letting the virus spread in low-risk groups in the hope of achieving “herd immunity”, where enough of the population is resistant to the virus to quell the pandemic.
Exclusive: if discovery is confirmed it will have global implications as 90% of people breathe dirty air
Tiny air pollution particles have been revealed in the brain stems of young people and are intimately associated with molecular damage linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
If the groundbreaking discovery is confirmed by future research, it would have worldwide implications because 90% of the global population live with unsafe air. Medical experts are cautious about the findings and said that while the nanoparticles are a likely cause of the damage, whether this leads to disease later in life remains to be seen.
The World Health Organization has said European countries will need to “move beyond biomedical science” to overcome Covid-19 as “pandemic fatigue” and new infections rapidly rise across the continent.
Hans Kluge, the WHO’s Europe director, said that while fatigue from months of uncertainty and disruption was measured differently in different countries, aggregated survey data from across the region suggested that in some cases it it had reached levels of over 60%.
The story of Baba, chained to a tree for three years, moved people around the world to help. Mental health nurse Stephen Asante witnessed his journey to freedom
Last November I travelled with the Guardian to the upper-east region of Ghana. Our aim was to see how mental illness is treated in communities that have scant access to health services.
Adults and children are regularly shackled and locked up in 60 countries, report finds
Hundreds of thousands of people with mental health conditions in 60 countries are still being chained, according to a comprehensive and damning new study.
Human Rights Watch says that men, women and children – some as young as 10 – are regularly shackled or locked in confined spaces for weeks, months, and even years, across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.
Ministers have been accused of “putting lives at risk” through data failures which led to nearly 16,000 coronavirus cases going unreported in England, but Matt Hancock insisted the problem had been addressed.
Updating the Commons after it emerged that data transfer errors between laboratories and Public Health England (PHE) meant 15,841 positive results were left off daily figures between 25 September and 2 October, the health secretary said just over half those missed were now having their contacts traced.
From the moment coronavirus reached UK shores, public health advice stressed the importance of washing hands and deep-cleaning surfaces to reduce the risk of becoming infected.
The advice was informed by mountains of research into the transmission of other respiratory viruses: it was the best scientists could do with such a new pathogen.
Three of today’s nine new cases have been linked to known outbreaks or are considered complex cases. These are linked to the Butcher’s Club Chadstone Shopping Centre outbreak, with single cases linked to Corrigan Produce Farms Clyde North and Coles Williamstown. The other six cases remain under investigation.
Anglicare is calling on the federal government to increase jobseeker and fund social housing projects in tomorrow’s budget announcements.
“A permanent boost to jobseeker will add billions of dollars to the economy and at least 145,000 full-time jobs. The benefits would go straight to the areas that need them most,” Anglicare Australia executive director Kasy Chambers said in a statement.
Social housing will offer relief for the tens of thousands of people who are homeless in Australia. It also boosts GDP, and creates jobs in construction for the regions that need it most.
With the economy reeling in the wake of the coronavirus, we need to invest in projects that are shovel-ready. There is no time to waste. Social housing projects can get off the ground quickly – and they bring long-term benefits.
The fact is that one-off payments and tax cuts won’t help people out of poverty. And they won’t boost the economy. A jobseeker increase and social housing will do both.
The latest intervention from Donald Trump’s medical team has been to put the president on dexamethasone, a steroid that is proven, thanks to the UK’s Recovery trial, to benefit Covid-19 patients who are having breathing difficulties.
But the decision to administer the steroid now has only added to the confusion surrounding the president’s state of health. Normally, dexamethasone is reserved for patients who have been ill for at least a week and whose oxygen levels are low.
A new three-tier lockdown system is being planned for England, with leaked government documents paving the way for potential harsher restrictions including the closure of pubs and a ban on all social contact outside of household groups.
The draft traffic-light-style plan, seen by the Guardian, is designed to simplify the current patchwork of localised restrictions, which apply to about a quarter of the UK. It also reveals tougher measures that could be imposed by the government locally or nationally if Covid cases are not brought under control.
Jacinda Ardern says her country will not open up until Australia records a month without community transmission of Covid-19
New Zealand will not reciprocate quarantine-free trips across the Tasman as the Australian Capital Territory joins Australia’s travel bubble with the country.
On Friday, Australia’s deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, announced New South Wales and the Northern Territory would allow Kiwis to bypass the compulsory fortnight of quarantine on arrival from 16 October.