Source : the age
The Australians held in quarantine for 42 days in a Perth facility after being caught up in a hantavirus crisis have boarded flights home to NSW and Queensland.
The group had been aboard cruise ship MV Hondius in May when the outbreak began.
One man spoke to 9 News Perth as he prepared to board his flight home.
Asked what did he get up to in quarantine, he replied: “Not much, what else can you do.[We were] tested all the time … [we] had plenty of walks … [we] had good food, quite a variety.
Another said the group were incredibly grateful to the Commonwealth government and staff who looked after them at the facility.
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington is set to be drained again for repairs after algae and peeling blue paint appeared just weeks after a $US14.7 million ($21 million) renovation.
The DC Water authority issued a permit to drain the 609-metre rectangular pool, it said on Monday (US time), while the repair company said it would fix the pool as part of its warranty.
Peeling paint and algae growth have been visible in the pool since soon after US President Donald Trump declared the renovation project complete on June 6.
Concerns have been raised about the no-bid contract to recoat the pool.
On Monday, Trump echoed a weekend threat by US Attorney Jeanine Pirro to prosecute people accused of attempting to destroy the pool.
“Please remember that there is a 10-year prison sentence for the destruction, or even the attempted destruction, of such things – Which will be fully enforced!” Trump wrote in a social media post.
Accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith is set to attend the opening of the Anzac Hall at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra tonight, but not all of the politicians attending the event want to be seen with him.
Nationals leader Matt Canavan told reporters this morning he had no plans to meet Roberts-Smith but pointed out that the Victoria Cross recipient has not been convicted of the five counts of the war crime of murder.
“People are innocent until proven guilty, and Ben Roberts-Smith has not been proven guilty of any crime in the criminal issue,” Canavan said.
He said the conduct for which Roberts-Smith was awarded the VC would “live on”.
As south-east Australia shivers in wintry conditions, Europe is suffering through an extreme heatwave.
At least 18 people have died in France, including two children left in a hot car, as temperature records tumbled in several cities on Monday.
Some French schools are closed and various local measures, including bans on swimming and alcohol in some places, are being enforced. Temperatures in the low forties have been recorded.
Forecasters in Britain predicted temperatures could break records for June this week.
Heatwaves and storms are being intensified by climate change, and Europe is warming at more than double the global rate, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.
Read more here.
David Oldfield says One Nation needs to remain a “standalone” party as support surges in opinion polls, but he has cast doubt on whether the support will translate into government.
“They can certainly come to arrangements when it comes to who’s going to be in power or who might be assisting them, but the party itself, to stay true to the people who support it, needs to be operating as their own entity,” Oldfield told 2GB this morning.
The party never had an expectation of forming political coalitions with other parties, he said.
“One Nation needs to stand on its own, and it is,” Oldfield said.
The party’s recent surge in support meant Coalition partner the Nationals would be “wiped out” in the lower house and Liberals would be “really struggling” if an election were held this weekend, Oldfield said.
A federal election is not due until 2028. But rising support for One Nation also posed a risk of further defections from the Coalition parties to One Nation, posing a distraction for the opposition until then, Oldfield said.
Francisco Guterres, a former president of Timor-Leste and a leading figure in the country’s independence movement, has died. He was 71.
Guterres, widely known by his nom de guerre Lu Olo, died on Sunday at Prince Court Medical Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he had been in intensive care, his family said on the late president’s official Facebook account. The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.
Guterres served as president from 2017 to 2022, capping decades of involvement in the political and armed struggle that led to independence for South-East Asia’s youngest nation in 2002.
Fretilin, the party Guterres led for years, said his death was a “profound loss” for all those who shared the goal of building a free, democratic and sovereign Timor-Leste, also known as East Timor.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese should follow UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and resign, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson said this morning.
“I’d love it, and so would the Australian people, as it’s proven,” Hanson said to journalists in Canberra this morning.
“I started up [the] Fire the Liar [fundraising campaign] with $4.8 million in funding from Australian people donations. It’s clear that the people don’t want Anthony Albanese as prime minister in this country any longer.”
Hanson claimed the UK was facing a “mass migration” crisis which had led to Starmer’s downfall, and that similar issues were reflected in Australia.
“People don’t feel they’re British anymore, they can’t fly the flag, and I see the same thing happening here in Australia,” she said.
“So [Albanese] wants to take a few lessons from that. Our economy is in, is in the toilet, actually. I think it’s a mess of trillion-dollar debt, the government spending is out of control, so it needs to be changed.”
Andy Burnham is about to achieve an astonishing rise to power in a way rarely seen in the Westminster system in Britain or elsewhere, including Australia, Europe Correspondent David Crowe writes.
This is a bizarre turn of events for Labour, which was elected to government just two years ago. It is only happening because Keir Starmer could not lead, and his MPs could not hold their nerve. A leadership change like this, just as in Australia, is an admission of failure – not just for the leader, but for the party room.
While Starmer took Labour to a landslide victory at the 2024 election, he and his MPs were unready for government. And it showed. When he attempted difficult changes such as welfare reform, MPs rebelled and he backed down. Then Labour sources would complain in the press that he was weak.
Read Crowe’s full analysis here and the latest news on Starmer’s downfall here.
Six people who were aboard a cruise ship at the centre of a hantavirus outbreak have been released from quarantine after 42 days.
The group has been living in a quarantine station on the outskirts of Perth after being escorted from the virus-stricken MV Hondius in May.
The group – which contains four Australians, a permanent resident and a New Zealander – are well and have all tested negative for the virus.
Three people from the cruise ship died in the outbreak.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has walked back her controversial comments on parental leave, saying her views were “taken out of context” after she addressed the National Press Club last week.
While speaking last week, Hanson said: “If women take time off and they are not paid their wages because they’re not working, fair enough. Why should business pay? But they’re not at work. That’s the difference. That’s why the pay gap is there,” Hanson told the press club.
Speaking to Seven’s Sunrise this morning, Hanson said she supported government-funded paid parental leave but didn’t want small businesses to have to pay for parental leave.
“It’s up to companies if they want to have it in their policy to give it to their workers. So, there’s no way, shape, or form that I am actually saying to get rid of it. I’ve seen it’s been very beneficial to women to get back in the workforce,” Hanson said.
“There are businesses that cannot afford it. All right, it’s OK for government taxpayers [to] pay for it, but there are businesses, smaller businesses that cannot afford it. You put another pressure on the small businesses to pay for maternity leave, they’ll actually fold.”
