Today's News - Friday 21 August 2020
Today's News - Friday 21 August 2020
Our Backyard
The Prime Minister says any coronavirus vaccine will not be forced on people. However, the Government will consider linking payments to vaccination status.
Australia has taken steps towards securing a supply of a leading vaccine candidate, if it is successful.
Tenants will be further protected from rent increases and evictions, and landlords will be able to apply for cash payments, under a suite of measures announced by the Victorian Government.
The measures include extending a moratorium on rental increases and evictions for both residential and commercial tenants until December 31.
Land tax relief for eligible residential and commercial landlords is also being extended, and the potential discount has doubled from 25 per cent to 50 per cent.
Tenant advocacy services will also receive funding as part of a new $600,000 package.
Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt says the National Indigenous Australians Agency is having conversations with the copyright owner of the Aboriginal flag and has asked his department for options in solving commercial issues around its use.
He is also disappointed the symbol will not be displayed at this weekend’s AFL Indigenous round.
Mr Wyatt said he had previously held private conversations with Indigenous man Harold Thomas, who designed the flag and owns its copyright, which he has licensed to WAM Clothing.
The AFL was not able to strike a deal with WAM and the flag will not be painted in the centre circle for matches Sir Doug Nicholls Indigenous Round, named in honour of the Indigenous football pioneer. The flag has been used by the AFL during Indigenous rounds in recent years.
An international mining company is pushing to reopen a disused gold mine in the Queensland town of Gympie as it believes there is still a fortune lying in the ground.
Aurum Pacific, which controls multiple mining projects across Australia and the Pacific, bought the lease on the Eldorado gold mine from mining giant BHP seven years ago.
Geological study suggests there could still be a million ounces buried under the ground.
Gympie mayor Glen Hartwig has indicated support.
Star Entertainment Group says the coronavirus pandemic has not derailed its major construction plans in Queensland and NSW despite casino revenue being dented by the lockdown period.
The group posted a statutory net loss of $94.6 million for the 12 months ending June 30, a 147.8 per cent slump compared with financial year 2019.
Star’s casino operations in Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sydney were significantly impacted by COVID-19, which caused venues to close in April and has reduced patronage ever since.
The initial onset of the virus forced the casino giant to stand down 8500 staff members while it was unable to operate.
Earnings (EBITDA) were down 22.8 per cent to $429.6 million compared with 2019, while revenue dropped 23.3 per cent to $1.66 billion.
Hardware store Bunnings was the company's strongest performer for the year, with earnings up 13.9 per cent to $1.85 billion. Officeworks also performed well, with profits up 13.8 per cent to $197 million.
Bunnings now comprises of around 70 per cent of Wesfarmers' total earnings, a situation Mr Scott described as a "good problem to have", and noted he still viewed there as being plenty of future growth in both the Bunnings business and other businesses in the portfolio.
Revenue for the Kmart Group, which includes Kmart, Target and online division Catch, rose 7.2 per cent to $9.2 billion, though earnings plummeted 22 per cent to $422 million due to higher operating costs.
Target was unprofitable for the year and would continue to be in the 2021 financial year, the company warned, with another write-down of between $120 million and $140 million expected due to store closures.
Online sales across Wesfarmers rose 60 per cent for the full year, excluding Catch, which saw its gross transaction value rise 50 per cent. Online trade now accounts for nearly 7 per cent of the conglomerate's total revenue, or $2.1 billion.
After almost three decades, Australia's longest-running legal saga is at an end, after the West Australian Supreme Court approved the final distribution of funds to creditors of Alan Bond's Bell Group.
Bell Group — bought by Bond from another WA billionaire businessman Robert Holmes a Court — collapsed in 1991, and the banks who had helped prop it up reaped $280 million from the sale of its assets.
The WA Government held a large stake in Bell Group. It is set to receive about $670 million.
Banks were found liable in a 2008 judgment, and settled in 2017.
A Brisbane accountant has been charged with multiple money laundering offences over her alleged involvement in a "relentless" email scam worth more than $3 million.
The 65-year-old Carina woman has been accused of being a "money mule" for hackers who had fraudulently gained access to the email accounts of businesses.
Police have alleged hackers sent fake or falsified invoices to businesses who then sent cash to the woman.
It's alleged the woman's job was to funnel the money that was paid to her by the businesses and send it overseas.
It's alleged at least seven victims transferred $3.3 million to more than 50 bank accounts.
A polar blast is headed towards the south east this weekend and, just as the season is set to wrap up, it could bring some of the coldest temperatures of winter.
“Many Australians will be waking up to snow this weekend,” said Sky News Weather meteorologist Tom Saunders on Thursday.
Across large areas of the south east the mercury could sink to 5C below the average with temperatures across a swath of inland New South Wales struggling to get into double digits at what should be the hottest time of the day.
Ahead of the cold weather will come the rain, with showers widespread on Friday as a front passes through.
The snow is forecast to reach as low as 500 metres meaning dozens of towns could get a dusting. Apart from the ski resorts, places including Orange, the Blue Mountains and even Canberra could see a flurry or two.
Commonwealth Bank has shaved the savings rate on the banking product most commonly associated with its school Dollarmites program.
The country’s largest bank has cut 10 basis points off its Youthsaver account, bringing the maximum savings rate to 1.1 per cent.
The alleged president of the Nomads has been charged over three public place shootings on the NSW south coast after a major strike force investigation.
Police allege the 34-year-old supplied the firearms used in three public place shootings in the Batemans Bay area, which he had directed to take place. He will be remanded in custody to appear at Goulburn Local Court on Friday.
Brewing giant Carlton & United Breweries is the latest big company to underpay staff, admitting hundreds of workers were shortchanged a total of about $1 million in penalty rates.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has launched an investigation into CUB, which in a statement on Thursday said it "self-reported" the underpayments.
Workers at three outlets of the dumpling chain Din Tai Fung in Sydney and Melbourne have been allegedly underpaid more than a combined $150,000.
Some of the employees at Din Tai Fung World Square and Chatswood in Sydney and Emporium Melbourne worked for less than $15 an hour, the Fair Work Ombudsman says, and one worker is allegedly owed more than $50,000.
Most of the 17 allegedly underpaid staff were young people from China and Indonesia in Australia on student visas or work visas sponsored by Din Tai Fung, meaning they were largely dependant on the chain to stay in the country or had limitations on their working hours.
World News
Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny was taken to hospital in Siberia after suffering symptoms of what his spokesperson calls poisoning.
Mr Navalny, 44, is unconscious, in intensive care and on an artificial lung ventilator, his spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said on social media. "We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed into his tea. It was the only thing that he drank in the morning," Ms Yarmysh said.
Mr Navalny has served several stints in jail in recent years for organising anti-Kremlin protests.
He started feeling ill when returning to Moscow from Tomsk in Siberia.
Russia holds regional elections next month and Mr Navalny have been preparing for them.
A Syrian refugee in Germany has spoken of his relief after being able to testify at the trial of two ex-members of Syria's secret police who are accused of crimes against humanity, the first high-profile case worldwide against former officials during the long-running conflict.
Wassim Mukdad, who fled to Germany four years ago, is among more than a dozen alleged victims testifying before a regional German court about the abuse they suffered at a Syrian government detention centre where thousands of opposition protesters were tortured.
The main defendant in the trial is Anwar Raslan, a former member of President Bashar al-Assad’s secret police suspected of overseeing the abuse of detainees at the notorious al-Khatib jail near Damascus, also known as Branch 251.
German prosecutors accuse Raslan of supervising the “systematic and brutal torture” of more than 4000 prisoners between April 2011 and September 2012, resulting in the deaths of at least 58 people.
US President Donald Trump has urged people to boycott tyres from Goodyear, tweeting that the Ohio-based company had banned his famous Make America Great Again slogan.
But the company did not announce such a specific ban, only that it asked employees to refrain from workplace expressions involving political campaigns and "forms of advocacy that fall outside the scope of racial justice and equity issues".
Mr Trump's tweet immediately sent the company's stock downward.
The stock trimmed its losses on Wednesday afternoon before closing down about 2.4 per cent for the day.
Mexican officials and border town residents have criticised US President Donald Trump for threatening to levy a tax on cars crossing into the United States to fund his signature border wall.
The mayor of Ciudad Juarez, Armando Cabada, slammed Trump's proposed car tax as a political stunt aimed at garnering support ahead of the US election in November.
About 73 million private vehicles crossed from Mexico into the US last year, according to data from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, an average of 200,000 cars every day.
Trump made the suggestion during a speech in Yuma, Arizona, on Tuesday, US time, in which he vowed Mexico was "100 per cent" paying for the wall.
Lightning strikes have sparked wildfires in northern California's wine country, burning dozens of structures and forcing thousands of people to flee their homes.
California was hit by nearly 11,000 lightning strikes in 72 hours, sparking 367 fires, nearly two dozen of them major, as the state suffered a record heat wave, authorities said.
Fire crews are stretched thin throughout California.
In San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, about 22,000 people were ordered to evacuate.
After days of warning Australians that Google services were “at risk,” the company appeared to suffer an unrelated worldwide outage for two of its biggest offerings today.
Gmail users began to report problems shortly after 2pm, suffering intermittent issues sending and receiving mail, logging in and attaching files, according to DownDetector.
About 20 minutes later, more problems were reported with Google’s cloud storage service Drive, which stopped accepting file uploads.
Other Google services including Docs, Meets, and Voice are now under investigation.
Google has yet to officially comment on the issue, though both services are now listed as suffering a “disruption” on its online service dashboard.
Covid-19
Last week, there were about 30,000 fewer tests in Victoria than the previous week.
Experts say it could be a logical decrease due to fewer people showing symptoms. The Premier wants to keep testing rates high to re-open with confidence.
There are 101 active coronavirus cases in New Zealand, with another five infections were confirmed yesterday.
All five cases are related to the community outbreak in Auckland, taking the total number from that cluster to 80, while one case that was considered part of the Auckland cluster has been reclassified as a mystery case.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-20/five-new-coronavirus-cases-in-new-zealand/12578208
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus
Property News
According to the latest Domain House Price Report, regional NSW dwellings are outperforming Sydney and are on par with Canberra.
The data showed that in the three months to June 2020, the median dwelling price – for both houses and units – in regional NSW was up 1 per cent over quarter to $503,972. This was a 6.2 per cent increase year-on-year.
Market News
The Australian share market closed in the red, weighed down by banks, miners and health stocks while companies that performed well yesterday saw profit taking.
Snapping a two-day winning streak, the S&P/ASX200 closed 0.77 per cent lower at 6120 while the All Ordinaries Index shed 0.67 per cent to 6271.7.
Profit takers moved on healthcare giant CSL, which dropped 3.86 per cent to $300 and logistics software company Wisetech, down 1.47 per cent to $27.46.
The big four banks were all lower, with ANZ slipping 1.18 per cent to $18.46, Commonwealth Bank easing 1.1 per cent to $70.26, National Australia Bank falling 1.06 per cent to $17.70 and Westpac declining 0.8 per cent to $17.26.
Rio Tinto, which reported a delay to restarting the smelter at a US copper mine on Wednesday, was 0.41 per cent cheaper at $101.25 while fellow mining giant BHP dipped 0.87 per cent to $38.72.
Online travel agent Webjet plunged 12.5 per cent to $3.22 while airline Qantas recovered early losses to close unchanged at $3.76 after posted a loss of $1.97 billion, describing the 2020 financial year as “the most challenging period” in its long history.
Soft drink giant Coca-Cola Amatil reported an $8.8 million half year net loss after being hit hard by business closures and limited trading during the coronavirus pandemic but said it planned to increase its presence in e-commerce and online food delivery platforms.
Shares in the company put on 4.62 per cent to $9.28.
The Aussie dollar was fetching 71.63 US cents, 54.79 British pence and 60.49 Euro cents in afternoon trade.
Michael Tran
Director Relationships
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