Yahoo News Morning mail: inner-Sydney cluster grows, America's 'red zone', the anti-real estate agent
Good morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 30 July.
Top stories
Queensland has closed its borders to greater Sydney and halted all visits to aged care facilities for 48 hours as a new Covid-19 cluster forms in Sydney’s inner-east suburb of Potts Point. Victoria has recorded nine deaths and 295 new infections, with the rising tally of active cases linked to aged care facilities requiring clears answers, Gay Alcorn writes. The prime minister’s department has refused to release 1,100 documents relating to the national Covid-19 commission’s discussion of gas projects, amid ongoing allegations of potential conflicts of interest. Legal advice obtained by the Australian Conservation Foundation suggests that national cabinet deliberations may not be exempt from freedom of information requests. And, in bad news for older Australians, the latest payroll job numbers are in, with workers aged 60 and older facing a sharply tightening labour market, writes Greg Jericho.
The US has suffered its deadliest day of summer, with more than 1,300 Covid-19-related deaths taking the national toll to just shy of 150,000. Twenty-one states have entered what the federal government has dubbed “the red zone”, in terms of rising infection numbers. Globally, known cases have doubled in the last six weeks, undermining optimism that pre-pandemic normality is anywhere in sight. For the first time in history, Saudi Arabia has banned Muslims from abroad from entering the country to perform the hajj – an annual event that usually attracts 2.5 million people, with officials allowing between 1,000 and 10,000 locally based pilgrims access to Mecca.
Top executives from Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple have been grilled by US Congress in a landmark antitrust hearing. The “emperors of the online economy”, including two of the world’s four richest men, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, faced a fierce examination of their business practices, with the panel chair, David Cicilline, saying the four “abuse control over current technologies to extend their power” and use “control over digital infrastructure to surveil other companies”. “Open markets are predicated on the idea that if a company harms people, consumers, workers and business partners will choose another option,” he said. “We are here today because that choice is no longer possible.” Facebook has been under fire for its aggressive monopolistic tendencies and Apple faces accusations of anti-competitive behaviours.
Australia
The price of gas-fired power will need to stay very low if it is to compete with a national grid increasingly based on renewable energy, Australia’s peak governing body for the electrical system has warned, with solar panels expected to meet up to nearly a quarter of need by 2040.
A third Aboriginal man has died in Western Australia custody this month, with authorities confirming that a 47-year-old man was discovered unconscious in his cell at Roebourne regional prison, 500km south-west of Broome.
Feral livestock are to blame for a sharp fall in native mammal numbers in the Northern Territory, researchers say. Populations of small and medium-sized animals such as bandicoots and gliders have declined, with cattle, horses, buffalo and donkeys destroying their habitats.
The world
A Pakistani man on trial for blasphemy has been murdered inside a courtroom, with the member of the minority Ahmedi sect shot dead by a lone gunman. A spokesman for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said religious fanaticism had become “unbearable”.
German police investigating the Madeleine McCann case have uncovered a cellar on an allotment plot in Hanover owned by the prime suspect in 2007. A garden house on the property was torn down that year. Forensic experts have begun combing the site.
As many as 1,000 babies born to surrogate mothers in Russia for foreign families have been left in limbo, with international border closures preventing would-be parents from entering the country, one of the few countries globally in which paid surrogacy is legal.
Researchers in England have located the likely site from which 50 of the 52 giant sarsen stones at Stonehenge were hewn, a popular dog-walking spot in Wiltshire some 24km north of Salisbury. The 20 tonne, 7m centre stones were moved 4,500 years ago.
Recommended reads
“Car enthusiasts hate them because they run so silent; you can’t get any noise out of them.” But for the veteran motor mechanic Craig Salmon, the list of upsides to electric vehicles far outweighs the negatives, as he tells Royce Kurmelovs – including performance. “The thing no one tells you about electric cars is you get 100% of the torque with zero rpm.” While Australia may have been slow to embrace the worldwide turn to EVs, one company in Tasmania is making affordability its mission. A common fear across the country is that electric cars won’t get you where you want to go. What happens if you run out of charge on a busy highway, or halfway to work? Here’s how the government could easily address these problems.
It’s almost the norm across parts of Europe and North America, but such are the weak rental protections for tenants in Australia, build-to-rent apartments remain rare. In Sydney’s inner west that’s now changing for longtime renters like John McCallister, writes Alyx Gorman. And while on-site rents might be higher, no-surprise leases and 4% capped annual rental rises are just some of the benefits for those looking to eliminate the real estate agent.
There’s something intrinsically cathartic about being in a choir. Linked to improving health and wellbeing, fighting diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, being in a choir fosters near-family like closeness, Ria Andriani explains. But in the coronavirus era, the feasibility of packing dozens of singers together for rehearsal renders this a remote dream, at least until a vaccine is found.
Listen
As Australia eyes its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, on this episode of Full Story, Greg Jericho speaks with Gabrielle Jackson about where the economy is at and what still lies in store.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
In its 15-year history, the A-League has seen the support for clubs wax and wane but it has never captured the sort of tribalism the old NSL engendered, writes Simon Hill. And while success acts as a fillip, a sense of belonging is much harder to sustain.
After nearly five months of inaction Andy Murray believes upsets could be the new norm, likening the enforced break to world tennis to a long injury layoff. And the Scot has called for more mixed-gender events.
Media roundup
Australian workers will withdraw nearly $42bn from retirement savings, reports the Australian, with the figure nearly double forecasts, fuelling concerns the government is undermining long-term planning for short-term solutions. The AFL clubs Richmond and Carlton are facing hefty fines, the Age reveals, after reports a player left the hub to attend a beauty salon, and another’s young children were taken to Sea World before returning to lockdown. And Australian astronomers have discovered a group of ancient stars considered “the building blocks of our galaxy”, posing major new questions about the evolution of the Milky Way, reports the ABC.
And if you’ve read this far …
What’s in an apostrophe? Well, if you’re Donald Trump Jr, quite a bit. Having copped heavy flak for a grammatical error in the subtitle of his forthcoming self-published book, the president’s son has been digging downwards on Twitter: “Sleepy Joe wont like this one. But lets be honest he probably doesn’t keep up with current events.” And his promotional website doesn’t do much better, promising the book will uncover “countless liberal scandals, years of entrenched racism in the democrat party and decades of failed polices”.
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