source : the age
Emergency services across Sydney on Monday recorded one of their busiest winter days, with a record 4100 ambulance callouts and almost 10,000 emergency department presentations.
Western Sydney hospitals were among the hardest hit.
NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said the state would see continued presentations for flu-like illness throughout winter.
“Influenza can also cause complications for people with comorbidities,” he said. “If someone with a co-morbidity gets influenza, the likelihood that they end up in the hospital is far greater than someone who just gets influenza on their own.”
There were about 1000 more emergency department presentations than usual.
Read the full story from health reporter Rachel Rasker here.
Seoul: South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has urged authorities to step up support for people affected by a record heatwave in the country, saying the death toll had risen to 16 and warning that extreme weather was becoming more frequent.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting, Lee called on officials to take necessary measures to protect the daily lives of people and inspect power systems as demand for air-conditioning surges.
“We need to make efforts for a fundamental overhaul of the national crisis system, since this extreme weather is becoming normal,” he said.
The nation’s weather agency said Yangsan, a south-eastern inland city, recorded a temperature of 42.5 degrees Celsius on Sunday, the highest temperature measured in 122 years of weather observations.
The Korea Meteorological Administration also issued its first-ever heatwave warning for parts of Seoul and neighbouring Gyeonggi on Monday, extending this to all of the capital on Tuesday.
Reuters
Liberal MP Simon Kennedy has called on the prime minister to explain how widely Labor consulted on its gambling reforms after explosive allegations in yesterday’s parliamentary inquiry into the proposed laws.
Betting companies today rejected the claims from former rugby league player Luke Bateman that he was offered cocaine on company-funded race day trips, and from leading reform advocate Tim Costello that another former high-roller had been offered drugs and escorts.
“We heard about a host of unethical inducements, and that it was commonplace,” Kennedy told News 24 (formerly Sky News).
“I can only think there are two possible scenarios: either the prime minister and the communications minister consulted broadly and knew about this behaviour and ignored it, or they didn’t consult with people in these VIP programs. Both [scenarios] are incredibly bad.”
Beijing: China is planning to strengthen its ability to prevent and mitigate the impact of landslides and floods as it seeks to better respond to climate change, state broadcaster CCTV said on Tuesday.
The Ministry of Natural Resources will focus on the prevention of shallow landslides, which are widespread, and debris flows triggered by extreme rainfall, according to CCTV.
Areas of focus include the Yaxia Hydropower Project construction site, the Yanshan-Taihang Mountains, the Three Gorges Reservoir Area and the Wumeng Mountains.
China will explore methods to identify and monitor geological hazard risks using aerospace remote sensing.
The war against Iran and surge in oil prices is dramatically altering our spending patterns.
Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics today showed household spending jumped by a sizeable 0.8 per cent through June.
The big swing factor was spending on new cars, particularly EVs and hybrids, as motorists decided they had enough of high-priced unleaded and diesel.
Car data industry released yesterday showed electric and battery vehicles accounted for half of all new vehicle sales in the three months to the end of June.
One Nation Victoria president and candidate for Pakenham, Warren Pickering says he could be premier if his party won enough seats and formed a coalition with the Victorian Liberal National Party.
“We have gone as far as considering things like who we’d want to have in our senior ministerial advisory positions and things like that,” Pickering told 3AW, “So if that eventuates, we are on the front foot there.
“But yeah, as far as coalition partnerships and whatnot, government and ministerial distribution, we’re not there yet.”
If One Nation won enough seats in the upcoming November Victorian election, it could form government in its own right, or if the party joined in coalition with the Liberal National Party and had the most seats, that would make Pickering the premier.
“But we need to earn the trust of Victorians for the next four months before we even start to consider things like that.”
Gambling industry representatives have rejected evidence aired at yesterday’s inquiry into Labor’s wagering laws, which heard a former rugby league player and gambling addict was offered cocaine in a room of betting company executives during a VIP event.
Former Canberra Raiders player Luke Bateman, now an online book influencer, told the Senate inquiry yesterday that he was flown interstate for race days by betting companies, where he was plied with alcohol and asked for his choice of drugs.
“Before getting there, the VIP manager would offer: hey mate, what drugs do you want? Do you want a couple of bags for this weekend?” he said. Describing one exclusive event, he said: “The entire C-suite of the company was there … And I was out in this room doing drugs with all of them. This is like the CEO, the founders, the VIP managers.”
Bateman declined to name the company, saying he did not want to alleviate responsibility from the industry as a whole by making it about one organisation or person.
A probe into whether senior members of the NSW Police Force engaged in serious misconduct when promoting or recruiting other officers, which was due to begin on Thursday, has been postponed with no new date announced.
The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission’s public examination was announced last week. It will also look into whether police gave confidential information to others without proper authority, or engaged in undeclared or unapproved secondary employment.
The probe was expected to run for four weeks, presided over by former Supreme Court judge and chief commissioner Peter Johnson.
The commission declined to release the terms of reference or provide further details.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson says she will continue to block certain news outlets from her media appearances until they “give us a fair go”.
On Monday, One Nation barred The Age, the ABC and The Guardian from its press conference announcing some of its Victoria candidates.
“I did it in 1996 for nine months with the ABC and finally they started doing fair reporting”, Hanson told 3AW today.
“It won’t be forever and a day but it’s like putting out a message: give us a fair go.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson says she doesn’t want a coalition with Opposition Leader Jess Wilson and the state Liberal National party, and that her party will run 88 candidates in the Victorian election.
“They need to work with One Nation to get rid of this toxic Labor, Greens government,” Hanson told 3AW.
“That’s what they need to do, and to have the sheer arrogance saying, ‘Oh, we’re not going to form any coalition’, I don’t want a coalition with them either.
“It’s about working together just to inform the people if they have a certain number of elected members and we have a certain number of elected members.”
