Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Surgisphere, whose employees appear to include a sci-fi writer and adult content model, provided database behind Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine hydroxychloroquine studies
The World Health Organization and a number of national governments have changed their Covid-19 policies and treatments on the basis of flawed data from a little-known US healthcare analytics company, also calling into question the integrity of key studies published in some of the world’s most prestigious medical journals.
A Guardian investigation can reveal the US-based company Surgisphere, whose handful of employees appear to include a science fiction writer and an adult-content model, has provided data for multiple studies on Covid-19 co-authored by its chief executive, but has so far failed to adequately explain its data or methodology.
ABS reports growth slowed to 1.4% through the year as industrial relations roundtables prepare an agenda to regrow the jobs lost during Covid-19. Follow live
Linda Burney and Mark Dreyfus has put out a statement, calling for clear targets to address the over-representation of First Nations people in Australian’s prison systems, and child removal.
Here is part of it:
I doubt we’ll be seeing ‘back solidly in the red’ mugs for sale anytime soon though.
The inquiry into disparities in the risk and outcomes of Covid-19 commissioned by the Department of Health identifies major inequalities, confirming that – contrary to the popular refrain – we are not all in this together.
The World Health Organization struggled to get needed information from China during critical early days of the coronavirus pandemic, according to recordings of internal meetings that contradict the organisation’s public praise of Beijing’s response to the outbreak.
The recordings, obtained by the Associated Press (AP), show officials complaining in meetings during the week of 6 January that Beijing was not sharing data needed to evaluate the risk of the virus to the rest of the world. It was not until 20 January that China confirmed coronavirus was contagious and 30 January that the WHO declared a global emergency.
Officials voice concern as coronavirus halts annual programme in country already struggling against resurgence in cases
In April, almost 40 million children missed their polio drops in Pakistan after the cancellation of the nationwide vaccination campaign.
Alongside Afghanistan, Pakistan is one of only two countries in the world where polio is still endemic. It was very close to becoming polio free, with only 12 cases in 2018, but last year the number of cases rose to 147. In the same year, Pakistan was accused of covering up the resurgence of the P2 strain of the virus, which was thought to have been eradicated in 2014.
The pandemic amplified many of the issues facing remote First Nations communitites. Today, Labor will question officials from the National Indigenous Australians Agency on its pandemic response & plans going forward. Watch at: https://t.co/Ngg6QzZtFn... See more pic.twitter.com/vZorAaEDom
NSW pubs and museums reopen while Victoria restaurants and cafes can now serve meals for up to 20 people, as NSW says rail project linking Sydney’s second airport will create 14,000 jobs. Follow the latest news
The NSW government’s proposal to give public servants a one-off $1,000 stimulus payment if they agree to a 12-month pay freeze has been slammed by unions as insulting, AAP reports.
Treasurer Dominic Perrottet has been talking with union bosses about the proposal which would see non-executive frontline staff such as nurses, police officers, paramedics and teachers receive a one-off payment in return for accepting a pay pause.
Rugby Australia stood down 47 of its 142 fulltime staff on Monday morning, as it implements a restructure that will save the code $5.5m per year.
The cuts, which will also see 30 contractors and casual workers axed, comes after Rugby Australia reported a $9.4m loss in 2019.
We have delivered the news to staff this morning and told them that Rugby Australia values the contribution of each and every one of them, some of whom have given significant service to Rugby Australia and to the game over many years.
This is a difficult time for a lot of very passionate, hard-working Rugby people and we are committed to helping those people find their next opportunity, whether it be within the game or elsewhere.
Senior public health officials have made a last-minute plea for ministers to scrap Monday’s easing of the coronavirus lockdown in England, warning the country is unprepared to deal with any surge in infection and that public resolve to take steps to limit transmisson has been eroded.
The Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH) said new rules, including allowing groups of up to six people to meet outdoors and in private gardens, were “not supported by the science” and that pictures of crowded beaches and beauty spots over the weekend showed “the public is not keeping to social distancing as it was”.
Government has shielded closed collection centres from takeover and provides big subsidy increases after industry lobbying
The Australian government handed major pathology companies lucrative Covid-19 contracts through limited tenders, shielded their closed collection centres from takeover, provided large subsidy increases after industry lobbying, waived normal registration fees and promised to provide additional assistance outside of jobkeeper.
Guardian Australia has spent the past week examining aspects of the federal government’s response to coronavirus, investigating problems with jobkeeper, the childcare support package, and the potential economic impact of the sudden cessation of stimulus.
Goverment guidance requiring 2.2 million people in at-risk groups to stay indoors is to be relaxed in England from Monday, the communities minister has announced. Robert Jenrick confirmed that people currently shielding will be able to spend time with their households or, if they live alone, with one person from another household. The full guidance will be posted on the gov.uk website. 'Now that we’ve passed the peak, the risk to those shielding is lower,' Jenrick said.
Passengers on the ill-fated Ruby Princess cruise ship have been sent another warning from the New South Wales health department, that they could have been exposed to tuberculosis.
The Ruby Princess voyage that arrived in Sydney on 19 March is responsible for about 10% of all coronavirus infections in Australia, and the bungled management of the outbreak has sparked two separate inquiries.
Scientists claim to have found more clues about how the new coronavirus could have spread from bats through pangolins and into humans, as India reported its worst single-day rise in new cases, and the number of Covid-19 infections worldwide neared 6 million.
Writing in the journal Covid-19 Science Advances, researchers said an examination of the closest relative of the virus found that it was circulating in bats but lacked the protein needed to bind to human cells. They said this ability could have been acquired from a virus found in pangolins – a scaly mammal that is one of the most illegally trafficked animals in the world.
Government services minister Stuart Robert says Australians who are owed money by the government won’t “need to do anything in terms of getting a refund”.
He defends his actions as minister, and the ongoing role of debt collecting:
The use of debt collectors is a long standing practice for government over many, many, many years where debt is validly raised and details aren’t available, or the Australian citizen is not engaging with government. It’s a long standing practice of government.
The reason why it’s taken since November when I updated that we’re refining the program and that we would be pausing all debts is it’s taken a while to identify all of the 373,000 Australians. We wanted to get that right.
It’s a longstanding practice of governments not to comment on anything before the courts...there is a class action before the courts on this matter, I think we’ll leave it at that.
This is a program that started five years ago based on the best information at the time. I’ve been the responsible minister for 12 months. As soon as information came to light to show there was a lack of sufficiency I moved quickly to pause all debts and refine the program as you’d expect.
I promised I’d come back to the Australian people with updated information, which I’m doing openly and transparently today.
At a press conference on the Gold Coast about the $721m blunder, government services minister Stuart Robert is asked if he should apologise to those affected.
The government started this program over half a decade ago based on the best information at the time ... we’re moving forward with the best information we have.
Cross-party group proposes ending UK abortions after 24 weeks for minor disabilities
Abortion laws in Britain could be changed under cross-party proposals to ban late terminations on the grounds of minor physical abnormalities.
The abortion (cleft lip, cleft palate and club foot) bill, led by the Conservative MP Fiona Bruce and supported by 13 MPs, will be presented in parliament on 3 June.
David McWilliams is a consultant physiotherapist helping ICU patients recover from Covid-19 – from when they first open their eyes since arriving to their first steps. His team support patients at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth hospital, which has one of the largest critical care units in Europe and recently was treating more than 200 Covid-19 patients at one time
Activists seemed on the brink of victory when they were stalled by the pandemic and a historic bill wasn’t formally introduced
Feminists in Argentina like to say: “la lucha está en la calle” — the battle is in the streets. But with the country under a strict coronavirus lockdown, the women’s movement can no longer flood the streets.
So on Thursday, activists have planned a series of virtual events to mark 15 years of their campaign to legalize abortion – and inject new momentum into a campaign which was stalled by the pandemic, just as it seemed on the brink of victory.
The ex-TalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding is facing one of the biggest moments in her eventful career, as she leads the government’s new track-and-trace programme upon which the country’s path out of lockdown depends.
Baroness Harding, 52, the chair of NHS Improvement, was brought in to shoulder the responsibility of this significant new strategy, personally risking the fallout if it does not go to plan.
The Western Australian premier, Mark McGowan, has been forced to acknowledge that his state’s health department was notified of sick crew members on board a live export vessel before it docked in Fremantle, but remains critical of the federal Department of Agriculture for not “backing up” such a significant message with “at least a phone call”.
The admission came after the federal agriculture minister, David Littleproud, defended the actions of his department in response to McGowan’s claim on Tuesday that he discovered sick crew were on the ship Al-Kuwait that day only by word of mouth from dock workers. Littleproud released an email showing a department worker had notified WA Health on Friday about three sick crew members.
The modernising economy is changing family structures – but can ‘western’ residential homes be accepted culturally?
After breakfast on a Friday morning, a small group of elderly people are engaging in gentle exercises – walking to one end of a walled compound and back. Some of them need the assistance of nurses or walkers, or both, to complete the journey.
“Usually, we do this a couple of times but it is a little bit cold today so we are going just once,” says Henry Ofori Mensah, administrator at Comfort For The Aged, a residential care home in Kasoa, a dormitory town west of Accra, Ghana’s capital.
At the turn of the century, a facility like this would have been hard to imagine in Ghana.
The World Health Organization has said it will temporarily drop hydroxychloroquine — the malaria drug Donald Trump said he is taking as a precaution — from its global study into experimental coronavirus treatments after safety concerns.
The WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in light of a paper published last week in the Lancet that showed people taking hydroxychloroquine were at higher risk of death and heart problems than those who were not, it would pause the hydroxychloroquine arm of its solidarity global clinical trial.