SYDNEY — Protesters are massing in capital cities around Australia to object to lockdowns prompted by Covid-19. Thousands of angry, unmasked people marched from inner Sydney’s Victoria Park to Town Hall in the central business district on June 24. They broke through a police barrier to continuing down George Street but were stopped at King Street. There is a heavy police presence in Sydney, including mounted police and riot officers. New South Wales Police described it as a “high-visibility policing operation” response to “unauthorized protest activity.” Protesters threw plastic bottles and plants taken from the street at officers. Police confirmed, “a number”…
Author: zenger.news
CANBERRA, Australia — Bill Shorten, Australia’s leader of the opposition, insists he has no interest in returning to the leadership of the Labor Party, dismissing a story that he has been discussing this issue with colleagues as “boring” and unsourced. During an interview, he was asked by host David Speers several times whether he was interested in Labor’s top job, to which Shorten replied with a no. “I think that Anthony Albanese can win the next election,” he said. “I think Labor is competitive, but as we’ve seen from the last election, it is always a two-horse race.” Labor lost two consecutive elections…
ADELAIDE, Australia — South Australia will likely end its week-long Covid-19 lockdown on time after reporting one new virus infection linked to the Modbury cluster, said Premier Steven Marshall. The premier said the shutdown will end at one minute past midnight on the morning of July 28, provided there are no further “unlinked” coronavirus cases. “Working together, we have been able to demonstrate we can get through this complicated situation,” said Marshall. “We are absolutely delighted with how the people of South Australia have worked with the restrictions. Everyone has made extraordinary sacrifices this week. We said we wanted to go hard,…
BÉNI-AÏSSI, Algeria — Kamel Hamdad, a public service vehicle operator, was on his way from Tizi Ouzou, a city in north-central Algeria, to the nearby commune of Beni Douala just after midday on June 25, 1998, when he made a gruesome discovery at a police checkpoint near the mountainous village of Thala Bounane. “I saw the Mercedes-Benz vehicle of singer Matoub Lounès completely riddled with bullets and splattered with blood,” he told Zenger News. “I was the first witness at the scene of the assassination and saw the assailants escape. I was afraid the criminals would kill me. But then I gathered the…
CANBERRA, Australia — A Bangladeshi asylum-seeker who arrived in Australia by sea eight years ago now has to choose between risking persecution to treat his chronic condition and continued detention that has left him all but inhospitable. “Every single day, my condition is terrible now; I do not know what I do,” he said. Sahab Uddin is one of 123 people still held in Nauru, northeast of Australia, after seeking asylum in Australia. Some 137 men remain in Papua New Guinea. All were sent to the Pacific nations for “offshore processing” after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s declaration, eight years ago this…
CANBERRA, Australia — Australian treasurer Josh Frydenberg has again rejected calls for the JobKeeper wage subsidy to be reinstated, saying the current support measures are getting to applicants faster. But he continues to watch developments, particularly the lockdown in the southeastern state, New South Wales, which is now in its fifth week and looks set to go longer than the planned 30 July cut-off with another 145 local cases reported on 26 July. “Our policies are never set and forget,” said Frydenberg. “You never know what is around the corner. You need to be flexible. You need to respond to changing circumstances.” He…
SYDNEY — AstraZeneca has backed Australia’s expert immunization panel’s new advice on vaccination after the latter recommended getting any jab available. The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation strongly recommends everyone in Sydney get any jab available, including AstraZeneca. The slightly revised recommendation comes on the basis of an increased risk of the Covid-19 vaccine and Pfizer’s constrained vaccine supply still a month away from scaling up. The southeastern state, New South Wales, recorded 145 new local cases on July 26, with the state capital’s ongoing Covid-19 crisis likely to lead to a lockdown extension beyond July 29. AstraZeneca pointed to global medical advice showing…
Almost five years have passed since the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, and allegations of corruption and fraud still abound. Many of the projects set for the Barra da Tijuca Olympic Park and the Deodoro Sports Complex never got off the paper, said Councilor Felipe Michel (Progressistas Party), the president of the Rio de Janeiro Sports Commission. “The facilities are abandoned because the municipality did not do any post-Olympiad planning,” Michel said. “When we talk about [architectural] ‘legacy,’ we are not only talking about physical spaces but also about post-Olympic planning, from simple preservation of the space to…
WASHINGTON — In a push to develop carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technology, legislation outlining such measures has been included in a larger Energy Infrastructure Act approved by a bipartisan U.S. Senate committee. The infrastructure bill, including 48 amendments, cleared the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), by a 13-7 vote on July 14. It would invest $100 billion in a broad range of energy technologies and initiatives. “If the world wants less carbon in the atmosphere while preserving jobs, the answer is sequestering carbon,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), co-sponsor of the carbon…
Archeologists at the former Greek royal family’s summer palace have unearthed several thousand bottles of rare alcoholic beverages, including a bottle of Scotch whiskey dedicated to Queen Elizabeth II, in a hidden cellar. Restorations by the Ministry of Culture at Tatoi Royal Palace, about 17 miles from the center of Athens, uncovered more than 4,000 rare bottles of wine and 235 other alcohol beverages on July 18. The bottles were discovered in a previously unknown wine cellar in the palace. They are considered of great historical importance as many bear original labels. Among the finds were bottles of Château Margaux,…