Yahoo News Morning mail: Victoria's state of disaster, the case for elimination, inside the LNP schism
Good morning, this is Emilie Gramenz bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 3 August.
Top stories
Melbourne residents have had their first night under curfew and are in most cases banned from travelling more than 5km from their homes, amid a raft of new restrictions announced by the premier, Daniel Andrews, yesterday. Here are the rules explained for Melbourne and regional Victoria. The “shock and awe” approach has some wondering if an elimination strategy should have been pursued in Australia after all. Greens leader Adam Bandt says coronavirus financial support should be rolled out under existing federal legislation, so it’s available immediately. The strict new lockdown in Victoria represents a hammer blow to the Australian economy, invalidating federal Treasury forecasts released less than a fortnight ago
The World Health Organisation is warning of “response fatigue” amid a resurgence of Covid-19 cases in several countries that have lifted lockdowns. Mexico, India and the Phillipines have all had surges in cases. South Africa has now registered more than half a million confirmed cases and the government is struggling to retain public trust. Boris Johnson has reportedly ordered officials to work-up a plan for avoiding a second UK lockdown, with community prevalence of Covid-19 thought to be rising for the first time since May.
The coordinator of the White House coronavirus taskforce says Covid-19 is “extraordinarily widespread” in the US. Dr Deborah Birx says the virus is no longer restricted to large cities. Meanwhile, House speaker and the top Democrat in Congress, Nancy Pelosi, says she has no confidence in Birx over the handling of the pandemic. And the media will reportedly not be allowed to witness Donald Trump’s formal renomination as the Republican party’s choice for president at its national convention later this month.
Australia
A second major Korean backer of Adani’s Australian coal operation has said it won’t provide any more financial support for the controversial miner, which faces potential debt difficulties related to its Abbot Point export terminal.
The University of New South Wales says it deleted social media posts promoting the comments of a prominent academic because the comments were “being misconstrued as representing the university”. The comments called for international pressure on China to temper human rights infringements in Hong Kong.
The Victorian government will meet with the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria for the first time today to officially begin treaty negotiations. This first meeting will aim to establish a framework for further discussions with government.
Scott Morrison has ended the federal government’s involvement in Clive Palmer’s high court case challenging Western Australia’s border closure, amid rising fears over the Covid-19 outbreak in Victoria.
The world
Thousands of people are under evacuation orders after a wildfire in mountains east of Los Angeles moved closer to homes. Crews battled the flames in intense heat.
A sheriff’s department in a remote rural California county with only 18,000 people was able to obtain a second military-grade MRAP armoured vehicle in 2017 by giving brief answers to a simple questionnaire, according to documents obtained under freedom of information requests.
Local politicians in Germany say the US government’s decision to withdraw thousands of troops from bases across the south and west of the country will have a huge impact. Up to 12,000 troops from the air force and army are due to leave the region.
US astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico after a two-month voyage that was Nasa’s first crewed mission from home soil in nine years. The astronauts flew to the International Space Station in SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon.
Recommended reads
With borders closed, our lifelines to family overseas have been cut. The isolation is suffocating, writes Daisy Dumas. “My life, like so many lives in Australia, is partly held in place by a scaffold of planes and airports, bouts of jetlag and survival tips on travelling through the stratosphere in a speeding metal canister with two toddlers for 24 hours.” But the pandemic has put paid to the feeling that Australia isn’t so far away.
Recessions are awful for young people – but things were already bad for Australians under 35. Greg Jericho looks back at a week when “the Productivity Commission released two reports that might as well have been titled Young People are Screwed Parts I & II”.
Listen
Inside the bitter struggle for control of Queensland’s Liberal National party. Queensland is often a conservative stronghold in federal elections, but in recent years the LNP has struggled to gain and hold power at state level. Now, three months away from an election, internal party tension is on the rise. Ben Smee explains why backroom powerbrokers could be holding the party back.
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Sport
Lewis Hamilton hung on through a puncture drama to win the British Grand Prix. It ensures yet another record has fallen to the British driver. Few milestones remain and none seem beyond Hamilton now.
The Melbourne Storm reclaimed the second spot on the NRL ladder with a four tries to three victory over the Newcastle Knights. Storm beat Newcastle 26-16 in the 2020 Indigenous round. Here’s how it happened.
Nick Kyrgios has withdrawn from the US Open, in a blow to the New York grand slam. The outspoken Australian tennis star cited health and safety reasons as he joined world No.1 Ashleigh Barty in opting out of the Flushing Meadows major.
Media roundup
Rio Tinto chief Jean-Sebastien Jacques will be grilled by a parliamentary inquiry on the destruction of Juukan Gorge in Western Australia, according to the Australian Financial Review. A fit and healthy Sydney GP has described a harrowing brush with Covid-19 that triggered epileptic seizures and permanently scarred his heart, in the Sydney Morning Herald. And police will investigate social distancing measures at the Storm v Knights clash on the Sunshine Coast, according to the Courier Mail.
Coming up
Victorian premier Daniel Andrews will announce further details of stage four restrictions, including which industries will be forced to shut down.
The bushfires royal commission will hear evidence from Australia’s chief scientist and the ABC on issues with national coordination during the crisis.
The NSW coronial inquest into the 2018 Reedy Swamp and Tathra fires will sit.
And if you’ve read this far …
Ernest Hemingway’s published writings are riddled with hundreds of errors and little has been done to correct them, according to a forthcoming study of the legendary writer’s texts. Robert W Trogdon, a leading scholar of 20th-century American literature, says the errors were made primarily by editors and typesetters.
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