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The big news this week is the pace we find the Biden Administration overturning the legacy of Trump while ramping up efforts with the virus, the economic impact and climate change. All good so far. How well it goes from now will be interesting to watch with a zillion executive orders!
In the UK it seems the COVID peak has been reached and that we will see slow progress from now. Sure hope so.
In OZ we have managed to get through another contested Australia Day commemoration! We really do need a proper decent resolution for this but I suspect zilch will happen with PM Morrison!
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Major Issues.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-to-avoid-burnout-seven-changes-you-need-to-make-now-x9d6crsc6
How to avoid burnout: seven changes you need to make now
Does it feel as though your batteries are running out? Are you overwhelmed by work, or even the stress of finding a job? Here are some achievable things you can do to help yourself
Sunday January 17 2021, 12.01am GMT, The Times
Your head is aching, you can’t sleep properly, you constantly feel under pressure from work, you can’t get on top of your to-do list and you spend most of your time stressed and overwhelmed. If this sounds like you, it’s likely that you’re experiencing burnout.
Burnout is defined by the World Health Organisation as unmanaged chronic workplace stress, but it’s come to be recognised as something brought on not just by career worries, but anxiety in all aspects of life, from rocketing rent prices to financial insecurity. It is particularly widespread among millennials — a LinkedIn study discovered that 72 per cent of young Brits have experienced a quarter-life crisis.
Almost everyone experiences burnout during their lifetime. According to the 2020 Global Culture Report, 79 per cent of adults suffer from mild, moderate or extreme symptoms at some point. Add in a pandemic, rising unemployment, home schooling and the end of the office as we knew it, and burnout has reached fever pitch. According to the recruitment website Monster, two thirds of employees feel as thought they are burning out now they are working from home. A study by the wellbeing brand Healthspan found that people in their twenties now feel anxious for an hour and 45 minutes each day.
“For me it’s getting to the point where the usual back-up mechanisms for recharging don’t work,” says Imogen Dall, the author of the Burnout Survival Kit. “Sleep, holidays, the weekend don’t feel like enough. Your work blurs into your life and your life blurs into your work.”
With the nation in lockdown it’ll be months before things return to normal and for many people working from home — or living at work — is permanent. These are the changes you can make before it’s too late.
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Uni arts students sold short on riches of their heritage
12:00AM January 18, 2021
Gender and race are legitimate themes for study, analysis and debate in universities’ humanities courses. Disciplines such as history, literature and social science should encourage students to take a broad view of the world and think independently, grounded in a deep knowledge of their subjects. Humanities courses overrun by identity politics and ideology, however, fail to provide the liberal arts education students are entitled to expect. To the contrary, such courses narrow students’ understandings of the world around them. The problem fuels divisions within the general community, evidenced by perennial controversies around Australia Day and “cancel culture’’ campaigns for the removal of public statues associated with European settlement. The trend is then perpetuated in schools, as a high proportion of humanities graduates become classroom teachers.
An audit of Bachelor of Arts subjects at 10 top universities last year by the Institute of Public Affairs found 572 subjects, or 44 per cent of 1181 subjects analysed, were concerned with identity politics. A further 380 featured critical race theory, a US-born framework for studying race and power. It coined such concepts as “white privilege” and “structural racism”. About 25 per cent of subjects focused specifically on gender issues. Such themes were dominant in humanities courses at Macquarie (70 per cent), and Melbourne (61 per cent) and Sydney universities (59 per cent). The dominance of such themes — which should be fair game for critical scrutiny — short-changes many students.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/free-speech-is-not-a-free-pass-20210117-p56urh
Free speech is not a free pass
The right to freedom of expression cannot be interpreted as a right to incite crime or violence.
Craig Emerson Columnist
Jan 18, 2021 – 2.01pm
Given all the words spoken about free speech in the past week or so, it would be easy to leave the matter behind and move on to something new like our quarantine system. But as the son of a World War II veteran who fought fascism and spent the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp, it would dishonour him to let some of the absurd and dangerous arguments go unchallenged.
Pre-war Nazi Germany taught us that fascism does not spring up overnight. It gathers momentum over time as good people feel too intimidated to speak up, or decide that to do so would give fascists the notoriety they crave.
Neither Prime Minister Scott Morrison nor acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack was willing to criticise an American president for inciting violence by white supremacists who broke into the Capitol, ransacked offices of members of Congress and killed a policeman – though they did condemn the insurgents.
The harsh utterances of a US president in an American political contest are not ordinarily an Australian leader’s business, but a world leader inciting violence certainly is. Our leaders wouldn’t hesitate to condemn an ayatollah for inciting violence against Westerners. Nor should they.
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Israeli firm StoreDot rolls out electric car batteries that recharge in 5 minutes
It’s been a dream of EV battery makers to charge a car battery as fast as a petrol car refuels at the bowser. That dream is becoming reality with Israeli battery company StoreDot overnight announcing the availability of its first-generation five-minute charge battery engineering samples that use its extreme fast charging (XFC) technology.
It says this is no longer at the design stage, the batteries have been demonstrated working with an electric scooter and commercial drone, and samples are rolling out the door. “This represents a significant milestone for the company in its mission to eliminate the range and charging anxiety of electric vehicles (EVs), demonstrating the commercial viability of XFC batteries for the first time via a small form-factor battery cell,” StoreDot says.
The fact StoreDot is on this path is not new. In 2016, The Australian visited the StoreDot pavilion at the Mobile World Congress forum in Barcelona, at which the company spoke of its promise of the five-minute charge.
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Safety nets can get frugal retirees spending super without higher SG
Rather than higher forced savings, we must give retirees the confidence to use their superannuation to live well, not die with a large balance.
Jane Hume Contributor
Jan 21, 2021 – 12.44pm
We all tend to make the most of our best assets. If you’re a great cook, you tend to enjoy entertaining. Inquiring minds are best exercised through intellectual pursuits and challenging conversation. If you have a fabulous bikini body, surprise, surprise, you tend to wear bikinis. It’s human nature to make the most of what we’ve got.
Except, strangely, when it comes to our retirement savings.
Australians are retiring with more savings than ever, largely because of our compulsory super system that quarantines nearly $1 in $10 of earnings. And the super guarantee (SG) is legislated to rise by 0.5 per cent every year for the next five years, taking more money away from your standard of living today so you can retire with a higher balance in the future.
Logic would say that if we were to make the most of our assets in both our working and retired lives, we would aim for a smooth transition between the two.
The release of the independent retirement income review in November found that rather than maximising our standard of living in retirement by effectively using our retirement savings, an extraordinary number of retirees live unnecessarily frugal lives. More and more are living only on earnings, eventually dying with most of their savings still intact.
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'More than devastating': One in five tourism businesses could fail
Tom McIlroy and Fiona Carruthers
Jan 21, 2021 – 10.00pm
As many as one in five businesses in Australia's $50 billion tourism industry could fail in 2021, with operators and advocates pushing the Morrison government to extend temporary wage assistance.
New modelling by the Tourism & Transport Forum shows nearly 32,000 businesses are at risk this year, amid coronavirus travel restrictions and Australia's ongoing international border shutdown.
Prepared for the federal government by modellers Stafford Strategy, the figures show of the nearly 160,000 tourism businesses nationally, those more than three hours' drive away from major cities are particularly at risk if the $90 billion JobKeeper scheme isn't extended beyond March.
Currently the national tourism workforce is 55 per cent of its pre-pandemic size. Under a worst case scenario, it could drop as low as 35 per cent by September.
A targeted extension of JobKeeper could see the 621,000-strong industry grow back to 72 per cent of its 2019 size by December, the data suggests.
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Morrison left to utter sacre bleu amid French subs snafu
The government is approaching the last exit ramp for the troubled $90 billion Future Submarines project. But will it take it?
Andrew Tillett Political correspondent
Jan 21, 2021 – 5.22pm
First, some good news for taxpayers. Not all defence acquisition programs at the moment are a disaster.
It went little noticed but earlier this month, West Australian engineering firm Civmec and German shipbuilder Luerssen announced they had started work on the fourth of what will eventually be 12 offshore patrol vessels for the navy.
In the overall scheme of the shipbuilding program, it's costing a rather modest $4 billion, using a base design that was already in service.
As billions of dollars flow into the industry, it's one of the few shining lights in what should be a positive for the Morrison government.
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Australia’s $220 billion submarine disaster surfaces as PM’s nightmare sinks in
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and recently appointed Assistant Defence Minister Andrew Hastie appear to have discovered why the French submarine project went so horribly wrong.
The key to gaining that understanding starts with reading the original 2016 French tender document which, in writing, estimated the cost of the submarine project at between $20bn and $25bn in 2016 dollars.
Years later the defence minister and naval officials claimed that the tender price was $50bn in 2016 dollars, or twice the level stated in the tender.
Partly at my urging, Morrison and Hastie appear to have checked the original contract documents and confirmed the lower figure.
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Australian TV needs a dose of Nordic courage
By Cat Woods
January 21, 2021 — 11.55pm
I spent the day in tears. I’d come to the final episode in the Danish drama Follow The Money (Bedrag) and though I’d suspected the ending, it totally broke me. Fear not, I won’t be revealing anything that will give away twists or endings. The compelling characters and the series' intrepid examination of greed and financial crime set a new standard in TV storytelling.
Such expertly crafted drama has provided much for Australian screenwriters, producers and actors to aspire to.
Follow The Money spans three seasons and delves into the world of white collar crime, corrupt banks and politicians. That same interrogation of corruption informs the third season, but the action takes place on the street. Actor Esben Smed has justifiably received awards for his masterful portrayal as drug-trafficking mastermind and single father Nicky, with his angular face and determined, animalistic need to survive.
Here in the news, money laundering was one of the multibillion-dollar failings exposed in the royal banking commission. The high rates of incarceration of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander youth and the devotion to mining at the expense of environmental protection have merely formed side storylines in shows like ABC’s Total Control. Is it because our public broadcasters fear their funding will suffer if they push the envelope too far?
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Crucial to sign up for a nuclear-free celebration
By Kym Pfitzner
January 21, 2021 — 11.55pm
It’s taken 75 years since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to reach the historic day when we finally have a ban on nuclear weapons enshrined in international law.
Today is a day for celebration. From January 22, all nations that ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons are banned from possessing, developing or having any direct dealings with these weapons of mass destruction.
This development heralds progress towards a safer and more humane world. The Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement across the globe has been striving towards this moment for three-quarters of a century. How timely it is to achieve this milestone after a year of uncertainty and difficulties.
I commend the 86 countries which have already signed this important treaty – from Austria to Zimbabwe – and particularly the 51 nations that have ratified it. They’ve put the interests of humanity and the environment above other considerations.
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Push for seniors to dig deep into super nest-egg
John Kehoe Senior writer
Jan 23, 2021 – 12.00am
The federal government will nudge cashed-up seniors to spend more of their assets by compelling superannuation funds to offer new retirement income products and, potentially, making it more attractive for people to withdraw income from their home equity.
Superannuation Minister Jane Hume kicked off a national debate about retirement incomes this week, drawing the ire of Labor, trade unions and the $3 trillion superannuation industry.
Senator Hume declared people need to be more confident to spend – not hoard – retirement savings to improve living standards throughout their lives, without “ever more” compulsory super contributions increasing to 12 per cent.
The government’s retirement income review led by former Treasury official Mike Callaghan identified that many retirees die with most of their wealth intact and do not run down their super or tap equity in their home, so they may be saving too much.
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Why economists get so many of their predictions wrong
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
January 22, 2021 — 3.30pm
Sometimes the study of economics – which has gone on for at least 250 years – can take a wrong turn. Many economists would like to believe their discipline is more advanced than ever, but in the most important economics book of 2020 two leading British economists argue that, in its efforts to become more “rigorous”, it’s gone seriously astray.
The book is Radical Uncertainty: Decision-making for an unknowable future, by Professor John Kay of Oxford University and Professor Mervyn King, a former governor of the Bank of England.
The great push in economics since World War II has been to make the subject more rigorous and scientific by expressing its arguments and reasoning in mathematical equations rather than words and diagrams.
The physical sciences have long been highly mathematical. Economists are sometimes accused of trying to distinguish their discipline from the other social sciences by making it more like physics.
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Order of Australia biased against women, admits Governor-General
By Jacqueline Maley and Nigel Gladstone
January 22, 2021 — 11.55pm
The Order of Australia honours have a historical bias against women and have not included enough Indigenous recipients, says Governor-General David Hurley, who has personally campaigned to improve representation in the honours.
In a rare, wide-ranging interview on the Order of Australia, which is run out of the Governor-General’s office, he said criticisms that the honours had been mostly given to men were “certainly valid”.
“The data supports it. You can’t walk away from that,” he told the Herald and The Age.
“I don’t like that, I don’t think it’s appropriate, I don’t think it’s right and I want to change it.”
The Order of Australia honours came under renewed criticism on Friday when it was leaked that controversial tennis champion Margaret Court would be upgraded to the highest honour possible on Australia Day – a Companion in the Order of Australia (AC). She was made an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) in 2007.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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Full recovery means getting back to macro policy normal
The RBA's internal warning about financial stability risk underscores the need to return fiscal and monetary policy settings to normal as soon as possible to propel Australia's self-sustaining recovery.
Jan 18, 2021 – 12.00am
At the start of the final holiday week before the traditional post-Australia Day return to work, one of the leading economic and business forecasters in the country has issued a bullish outlook for the national recovery from COVID-19 in 2021. Deloitte Access Economics says ongoing success in keeping virus numbers low and the “game-changer” rollout of vaccines create the realistic prospect of the international borders reopening and migrants, tourists and students gradually returning some time this year.
The economy could grow 4.4 per cent in 2021, as it catches up with the pent-up demand for goods and services following the shutdowns, lockdowns and border barriers of 2020. Unemployment not rising as high and falling faster than first expected means less long-term scarring, with Access forecasting the jobless rate to be back down to the pre-COVID-19 level of 5.5 per cent by mid-2023. Even Victoria is now emerging from the wreckage of its long and hard second wave lockdown and catching up to the recovery under way in the rest of the country.
This kind of bounce back and almost automatic V-shaped recovery should not be surprising, especially when governments have also borrowed so heavily from the future to pay for the emergency budget measures, and which by necessity has pulled the fiscal arm of macro policy temporarily out of shape. The virus success is boosting business confidence. Last week’s surge in job advertisement shows employers are keen to hire, with vacancies now higher than before the crisis. In turn, this shows why a full and self-sustaining recovery from COVID-19 now requires getting fiscal policy settings back to normal as fast as possible.
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James Murdoch blasts US media for unleashing ‘insidious forces’
Alex Barker
Jan 17, 2021 – 11.27am
London | James Murdoch has castigated the US media for the “toxic politics” threatening American democracy, saying proprietors are as culpable as politicians who “know the truth but choose instead to propagate lies”.
The remarks by Rupert Murdoch’s youngest son, made in an interview with the Financial Times and a further joint statement with his wife Kathryn, are his strongest public rebuke of America’s news industry since he parted ways with the family business built by his father.
Asked whether America’s dominant conservative news network Fox News had played a role in the riot that rocked Washington on January 6, James Murdoch said media groups had amplified election disinformation, leaving “a substantial portion” of the public believing “a falsehood”.
“The damage is profound,” Mr Murdoch said. “The sacking of the Capitol is proof positive that what we thought was dangerous is indeed very, very much so. Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years.
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Australian Industry Group chief Innes Willox says business cannot let China bully them in 2021
A leader of a powerful business group has called for a better alignment of the nation’s economic and strategic interests, urging Australian companies to resist bullying from China and for diplomats to get “their hands dirty’’ by helping to find alternative export markets.
Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox’s call to drive export diversification and maintain Australian values received support from senior members of the security community.
Writing in The Australian on Monday, Mr Willox said diplomats and business must unite to overcome trade obstacles.
“Better alignment of our economic and strategic interests has never been so crucial. Let’s pull every lever to overcome the obstacles that China has chosen to put in our way,” Mr Willox writes.
His comments come amid renewed trade tensions. Last week, it emerged that a bid by a Chinese state-owned enterprise to buy an Australian-based builder, Probuild, was rejected on national interest grounds, sparking an angry rebuke from the Chinese embassy in Canberra. More than $1bn of coal from Australia is also being refused entry to Chinese ports.
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China’s mistakes in its ‘war’ on Australia
China’s President Xi Jinping, in his “war” on Australia, appears to have applied many of the strategies set out by the master Chinese General and philosopher Sun Tzu some 2000 years ago. In his manifesto “The Art of War” Sun Tzu sets set out rules for winning a war without fighting and how to use the enemy to defeat the enemy.
But in applying the principles of Sun Tzu to their Australian campaign, President Xi and his advisers have made mistakes.
As a result, Xi’s plan to punish Australia is simply not working, and on some of the battle fronts it is China that is suffering more than Australia. Worse still, some Chinese actions have made it look foolish in the region.
But it can’t be easy for Xi’s advisers to tell the dictator what has really happened.
On the surface Xi’s original strategy was classic Sun Tzu. By banning Chinese imports and/or imposing high tariffs on Australian exports like barley, wine, timber and coal, he would show Australians that they could not win against the might of China. Moreover, given the turmoil in the US, Australia would develop doubts as to whether the US will come to Australia’s defence. Given Australia is economically dependent on China, Australia would either accept the Chinese view of the world or be an example to the region of what happens when you criticise China.
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General Motors offers latest sign of quiet but powerful revolution
Mary Barra, boss of General Motors, took to the virtual stage on January 12 to launch BrightDrop. The carmaker’s new logistics division will peddle such unsexy things as delivery vans and autonomous electric pallets for use in warehouses. Hardly stuff to set pulses racing.
Suppress your yawn, for Ms Barra’s announcement is the latest sign of a quiet but powerful revolution.
“The convergence of software and hardware seen in the carpeted parts of enterprises is now seen on factory floors in every industry we serve,” says Blake Moret, chief executive of Rockwell Automation, a giant of the industry.
His firm runs a full-scale manufacturing facility at its Milwaukee headquarters, to prove that automation enables it to make competitive products despite America’s high labour costs. Its share price has risen 28 per cent in the past year, nearly twice as much as the S&P 500 index of big American firms. Other purveyors have done even better.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/the-hidden-jobs-shift-during-covid-19-20210111-p56t9f
The hidden jobs shift during COVID-19
John Kehoe Senior writer
Jan 18, 2021 – 4.29pm
Jobs are booming in major sectors of the economy, despite the virus-induced recession inflicting employment losses on more than 100,000 Australians.
The number of people employed in the retail, education and training, mining, agriculture, financial services and public safety industries has risen to well above pre-pandemic levels.
An analysis of detailed labour force data by The Australian Financial Review shows the wide-ranging disparity in the employment market and how the COVID-19 recession is reshaping the economy.
Overall, there were about 140,000 fewer people employed across the economy, with a big fall in full-time positions more than offsetting a rise in part-time roles between February and November 2020.
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https://www.afr.com/world/europe/who-warns-of-catastrophic-moral-failure-on-vaccines-20210119-p56v3g
WHO warns of 'catastrophic moral failure' on vaccines
Hans van Leeuwen Europe correspondent
Jan 19, 2021 – 8.12am
London | Rich countries may seek to "jump to the front of the queue" for vaccines, in a jab grab that has left the world "on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure", World Health Organisation boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned.
"Even as vaccines bring hope to some, they become another brick in the wall of inequality between the world's haves and have-nots," Dr Tedros said in a fiery speech in Geneva on Monday.
He said that while 49 higher-income countries had administered 39 million doses of vaccine between them, by contrast in the lowest-income group of countries just a single nation had handed out a mere 25 doses.
"Not 25 million Not 25,000. Just 25. ... The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure," he told the WHO's executive board.
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'Operating in the dark': A year since Australia's first public COVID-19 concerns
By Rachel Clun
January 19, 2021 — 5.00am
It's been exactly one year since health authorities in Australia went public with their concerns over a new illness emerging from central China.
Unbeknown to them, January 19, 2020, was the same day the first case to be detected on our shores quietly arrived in Australia.
In fact, two other cases were already in the country.
Most Australians weren't familiar with the term "coronavirus", many didn't understand "contact tracing", and the idea of watching daily press conferences hoping for "doughnut days" was inconceivable.
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QBE expands COVID-19 provision after losing UK insurance case
By Charlotte Grieve
January 18, 2021 — 2.23pm
Global insurer QBE has expanded its provision for COVID-19 losses by $US185 million ($240 million) after facing another defeat in the UK courts and being threatened by a local class action.
QBE told the market it would increase its COVID-19 allowance to $US785 million, up from $US600 million, after the UK courts delivered another blow to insurers battling potentially billions of dollars in business interruption claims.
QBE’s share price sunk more than 5 per cent after it added an additional $US185 million risk margin to include the potential for Australian business interruption claims. Its shares closed down 5.72 per cent at $8.08.
The insurance industry was caught by surprise last year after it discovered the bulk of business interruption policies included pandemic exclusions that referenced an outdated Act of Parliament.
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'Signal was ignored': Independent inquiry criticises China and WHO over COVID
By David Crowe
January 19, 2021 — 2.05pm
A global inquiry has identified crucial failures in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic when Chinese authorities could have acted "more forcefully" to protect public health.
The inquiry, which reports to the World Health Organisation, has also found that most countries did not act on warnings about early cases and did not share information fast enough when cases emerged.
The report also criticises the WHO for taking three weeks to form an emergency group to counter the virus and being too slow to declare the crisis to be a pandemic.
The findings are part of a second report from an ongoing inquiry chaired by former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who said they would look further into the "coherence" of the health response.
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In evening vigil, Biden, Harris call on Americans to remember coronavirus victims
By Susan Heavey and Gabriella Borter
January 20, 2021 — 10.00am
Washington: US President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday, local time, led a national memorial observance on the eve of his inauguration to honour the 400,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19 during the 11 months since the novel coronavirus claimed its first US victim.
The sundown commemoration came just hours before US President Donald Trump was due to leave the White House and hand over a country in crisis. The ceremony, spearheaded by Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris from the base of the Lincoln Memorial, marked the federal government's first official nod to the staggering death toll from the pandemic.
"We must remember. It's hard sometimes to remember, but that's how we heal. It's important to do that as a nation," Biden said in brief remarks to kick off a tribute that was to include observances in cities across the country.
As darkness fell over the nation's capital, 400 electric lamps lining the sides of the Reflecting Pool were illuminated to honour the 400,000 lives lost, followed by gospel singer Yolanda Adams' performance of the song "Hallelujah," then a moment of silence in memory of the COVID-19 dead.
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National stockpile masks deemed 'defective' by medical watchdog
By Liam Mannix
January 22, 2021 — 12.01am
Some of the masks distributed to hospitals and aged care homes at the height of the pandemic as part of the federal government's national medical stockpile have been judged defective by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
Laboratory testing by Australia’s medical regulator identified a range of issues with some disposable surgical masks branded Softmed and imported by M House.
The issues include quality control, lack of proper labelling, and inconsistent fluid resistance between batches. Fluid resistance is vital for medical masks, as fluid droplets generated by coughing and sneezing have been found to spread COVID-19.
A Kirby Institute study, published in November, estimated Australian healthcare workers were nearly three times more likely to become infected with coronavirus than other Australians. More than 3560 healthcare workers have been infected with COVID-19 in Victoria. Nearly three-quarters of them caught the virus at work.
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How Australia’s rebel scientist triggered the global vaccine hunt
Our quietly smart scientific community took a global lead early in the pandemic
Jill Margo Health editor
Updated Jan 22, 2021 – 1.16pm, first published at 12.09pm
Modesty has its limits and on this anniversary of Australia’s first COVID-19 case, it’s time to tell the story of how our scientists took a bold leading role, bringing the world with them, as the pandemic began.
For the first three months, through preparedness and agility, they were able to bestow a number of scientific gifts that would help the world manage COVID-19.
In early January 2020, there was increasing chatter in the global infectious disease community about an unusual “pneumonia” in Wuhan.
Edward Holmes, a renowned and somewhat rebellious virologist from the University of Sydney was the only Westerner working on this, with his Chinese colleagues.
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‘Emerging evidence’ that new UK virus strain is more deadly, Boris Johnson announces
By Bevan Shields
January 23, 2021 — 6.37am
London: British scientists are discovering “emerging evidence” that the new and more transmissible mutant coronavirus strain running rampant across the country might be 30 per cent more deadly.
In a downbeat press conference, chief medical officer Chris Whitty and chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance also warned they were “concerned” existing vaccines might not work against other variants emerging in South Africa and Brazil.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson during Friday evening’s Downing Street press conference. Credit: Getty Images
The new British strain, named B.1.1.7, is up to 70 per cent more transmissible than the original virus and is partly responsible for a surge in cases which has made the United Kingdom’s second wave far more deadly than the first.
National cabinet recently slashed the number of citizens allowed into Australia over fears the variant would spread rapidly in the community if it escaped hotel quarantine.
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Cast out by their universities, vagabond scholars are now saving the world for free
By Gabrielle Carey
January 23, 2021 — 12.15am
In a single year, Australian universities have farewelled, voluntarily separated from, or made redundant vast numbers of researchers and academics. A huge resource of knowledge and scholarship is now loose in the community. Researchers and research projects have been sacrificed in an effort to scramble out of a COVID-induced financial crisis. But as the American health advocate, Mary Lasker, once commented, "If you think research is expensive, try disease." After 2020, those words surely resonate more than ever.
Then again, not all research is about disease or finding a pandemic vaccine or requires billions in investment. And not all researchers work in a lab or spend their days wearing a hairnet while leaning over a microscope syringing substances into vials. The reason why this stereotyped image of the white-coated researcher is the go-to whenever the subject comes up on television news is because medical and biological research is what we prioritise. This is real research, hard research. All the rest is soft.
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How to check if you had COVID-19
Jill Margo Health editor
Jan 22, 2021 – 12.49pm
The experts answer all your enduring uncertainties about vaccines, the hunt for herd immunity and how to find out if you’ve had COVID-19.
How to check if you actually did have COVID-19 last year?
If you think you may have had COVID-19 but didn’t get a test, Allen Cheng, Professor of Infectious Diseases Epidemiology at Monash University, says you can ask your GP for a serological test.
This laboratory blood test looks for antibodies to see if an infection has been and gone.
There are instant home tests available elsewhere in the world but many of these are unreliable.
Another swab test won’t help because if the suspected infection was months ago, there may be no trace of virus left in your mucus.
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Climate Change
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US under Biden to test Morrison government's do-little climate stance
By Peter Hannam and Mike Foley
January 24, 2021 — 12.00am
Those hoping new United States President Joe Biden would make action on climate change one of his top priorities would have been cheered by the flurry of activity from his first days in office.
With a few strokes of his pen, Biden cancelled a Trump administration permit for the $US8 billion ($10.3 billion) Keystone XL pipeline linking Canada’s oil sands to the Gulf coast, slapped a moratorium on oil and gas leases in Alaska’s pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, began a review of pollution regulations and ordered that the US rejoin the Paris climate agreement 77 days after it had formally left it.
And kicking off the new administration’s first full day in office, Biden’s special climate envoy, John Kerry, was up at Washington’s crack of dawn to tell business leaders of G20 nations the US was on the “road back to progress” on climate action after “four wasted years” under Donald Trump.
“The early hour is appropriate because we really don’t have a minute to waste,” Kerry said, adding that “very few” nations were on a trajectory of cutting greenhouse emissions to meet even the current goals, “let alone the targets we need to avert catastrophic damage”.
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Victoria gets trillion-dollar bad news: sea level rises will swamp parts of the state
The Andrews government has been provided two new scientific reports that show sea level rises well above those they are planning for, threatening its development-led recovery.
By Royce Millar
January 23, 2021
New scientific and economic research for the Andrews government warns of the grave risk of rising seas along the Victorian coast including trillions of dollars of damage to homes and other assets, if global warming is not slowed and planned for.
The research will add pressure on the government to further restrict development on the coast by lifting its current sea level rise planning benchmark of 0.8 metres by 2100, and to start planning for the “retreat” of some low-lying coastal towns.
University of Melbourne professor of environmental economics Tom Kompas, is in the early stages of a risk analysis for the government and its advisory body, the Victorian Marine and Coastal Council.
He said sea level rise was the “biggest risk to the Australian economy from climate change” – bigger even than bushfires, heat stress and the damage to agriculture.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/check-to-avoid-getting-dodgy-smsf-advice-20210114-p56u0t
Check to avoid getting dodgy SMSF advice
In the wake of recent DIY fund rip offs, here's what to research before you pick an adviser or follow investment advice.
Tim Mackay Contributor
Jan 18, 2021 – 12.00am
Trust. It’s what all relationships are based on. Trust is crucial if you need help to manage your self-managed super fund, but how do you know if an adviser is trustworthy?
Late in 2020, a woman described in the media as a "financial planner", Melissa Caddick, mysteriously disappeared following a raid by Australian Federal Police on her Sydney eastern suburbs home, leaving a trail of financial devastation in her wake.
Caddick was no more a financial planner than the rapper Dr Dre is a doctor. Caddick’s firm, Maliver, never operated under an Australian Financial Services Licence, which is required under the Corporations Act to call yourself a financial planner or financial adviser.
This is an open case so we will not rush to premature judgment, but we can take lessons from how similar people attract clients.
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Thousands of elderly wait more than 28 months for access to high-needs home care packages
By Rachel Clun
January 20, 2021 — 12.15am
Thousands of older Australians waited more than two years to access already approved high-level home care packages.
And more than half of all older people approved for residential aged care waited more than three months in 2019-20 to enter their new home, a Productivity Commission report on government services found.
Nationally, 34 per cent of older people living at home but requiring some level of care reported their needs were not fully met. But of those aged over 65 who received services in the previous six months, 84.4 per cent said they were satisfied with the quality of help they received.
Home care packages, funded by the federal government, are designed to support older Australians still living at home with tasks including cleaning and showering. They can be approved at four levels: from level one for basic care, costing roughly $9000 a year, through to level four for high care at a cost of about $52,000 a year.
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Complaints surge in aged care
Aged care-related complaints have risen in the past four years, with 34 per cent of older Australians reporting that their needs are not being fully met.
While waiting times for a level-four package dropped slightly from 30 months to 28 months in 2019-20 from the previous year, it is still taking elderly Australians more than two years to be approved for the highest level of aged care.
The Productivity Commission’s report into government services, released on Wednesday, says the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission received 8539 complaints in 2019-20, of which 6335 were from nursing homes.
The complaints, which equate to 33.4 complaints per 1000 residents, compare with 30.4 in 2018-19 and just 23.1 in 2017-18.
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National Budget Issues.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/low-rates-inflate-asset-prices-rba-20210117-p56upq
Low rates inflate asset prices: RBA
John Kehoe Senior writer
Jan 18, 2021 – 12.00am
Confidential analysis by the Reserve Bank of Australia suggests house values could jump 30 per cent over three years if borrowers believe the cut in interest rates is permanent.
The RBA is on alert for ultra-low borrowing costs inflating a credit-fuelled asset bubble and financial regulators are ready to act if necessary, but so far the central bank believes lending standards are prudent.
An internal RBA document released on Friday in response to a Freedom of Information request says the biggest risk to the economy was high unemployment, and that stronger household balance sheets from low rates could help counteract the danger.
While some market economists have warned that the current extremely low interest rates pose medium-term financial stability risks to the economy, on balance the central bank saw rising asset prices as a net positive.
RBA staff analysis conducted in November said the $200 billion in ultra-cheap loans to commercial banks, government bond buying and the 0.1 per cent interest rate would assist the recovery from the COVID-19-induced recession.
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'That's all, folks': Should the government be pulling back fiscal support?
Jennifer Duke
Economics correspondent
January 18, 2021 — 5.00am
Bugs Bunny is trying to evade capture from Willoughby the hound in the 1941 cartoon The Heckling Hare when the two end up falling off an impossibly tall cliff together. Plummeting towards the ground, a patchwork of farms below, they put their hands over their eyes, grab one another for support and desperately look for something to break their fall. They both seem doomed to end the episode in an animated splatter. Instead they land gently on their feet. With his carrot still in hand Bugs breaks the fourth wall: "Fooled you, didn't we?"
The Australian economy seems to be repeating this skit. When the coronavirus pandemic broke out last year and entire industries were forced to close to stop the spread of the disease, graphs published by the official statistics bureau went into free-fall. International migration figures dropped dramatically, spending fell through the floor and forecasts for everything from house prices to the dole queue seemed dire.
There are undoubtedly businesses still struggling and households finding it hard to make ends meet. But this is not the sky diving plummet from 10,000 feet it initially appeared to be.
The message from the nation's top economists now is that we've landed gently. Deloitte partner Chris Richardson's business outlook report for 2021 says "we got this" on the cover. On his estimates this calendar year is when most categories tipped into the red by the virus start improving. "Opening back up creates a big bounce," Richardson says in the report.
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https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/jobless-rate-drops-to-6-6pc-in-december-20210121-p56vsd
Jobless rate drops to 6.6pc
Matthew Cranston Economics correspondent
Jan 21, 2021 – 11.49am
Australia’s unemployment rate fell to 6.6 per cent in December from 6.8 per cent after the economy gained 50,000 new jobs as Victoria’s COVID-19 restrictions were eased.
The improvement was in line with economists' expectations of 50,000 extra jobs in December, but the unemployment rate dropped even further than forecasts of 6.7 per cent.
The numbers show more than 790,000 jobs were added to the economy in the past seven months. More than 90 per cent of the jobs lost since March have now been regained.
Full-time employment increased by 35,700 to 8.7 million and part-time employment increased by 14,300 to 4.1 million. Monthly hours worked rose again by another 2 million or 0.1 per cent.
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Health Issues.
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CHP Australia backs call to action on health misinformation
Thursday, 14 January, 2021
Consumer Healthcare Products (CHP) Australia has announced its support of the Australian Medical Association’s (AMA) call for action to tackle health misinformation on the internet and social media. The organisation also welcomes the AMA’s Position Statement on Health Literacy.
CHP Australia has previously advocated for the development of a robust strategy to combat health misinformation, and that increased and ongoing investment should be provided to improve Australia’s health literacy.
In September 2020 — responding to the National Preventive Health Strategy Consultation Paper — CHP Australia submitted the following:
“Considering the evolving power and influence of social media in disseminating information and shaping public opinion and perception, a robust and responsive strategy to combat health misinformation must form part of our health literacy and preventive health frameworks.”
CHP Australia CEO Dr Deon Schoombie said, “Health literacy affects an individuals’ ability to discern what is genuine health information and to identify misleading information sources, heavily impacting governments’ and health authorities’ ability to manage and protect public health.
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Medibank poised to snap up Myhealth from Crescent Capital
Carrie LaFrenz Senior reporter
Jan 20, 2021 – 8.00am
Private equity group Crescent Capital Partners is poised to sell its Myhealth medical centre business to ASX-listed health insurer Medibank Private.
Gerry Harvey's family office, with another two family offices acting as a syndicate, were interested in buying Myhealth but Crescent Capital opted to sell its stake to Medibank.
It is understood Medibank and Crescent Capital have penned a heads of agreement for the sale of its stake in the business for around $240 million – or about 9.6 times to 12 times its estimated annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of between $20 million to $25 million.
It marks the first healthcare deal this new year, which is tipped to have a high level of M&A activity in the sector.
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Australian scientists produce quick and safe coronavirus vaccine method
Scientists have created a new method for synthesising vaccines that will enable quicker and safer production of vital immunisations for disease such as tuberculosis and, potentially, COVID-19.
The researchers, led by Sydney University professor Richard Payne and Centenary Institute professor Warwick Britton, have become the first in the world to synthesise a bacterial vaccine with a built-in enhancer as a single molecule.
Early trials on a tuberculosis vaccine made using the method, which fuses the bacterial protein to an enhancer, or adjuvant, using synthetic chemistry and allows vaccines to be inhaled rather than injected, has generated a powerful immune response in mice.
For vaccines to provide any protection, the body’s immune cells need to encounter the protein antigen and the adjuvant simultaneously, which is why they need to be fused together.
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Coronavirus: AMA call for mass upscaling of home-made drug manufacture
The Australian Medical Association has warned of a shortage of essential medications because of supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic, and is calling for a mass upscaling of critical drugs to be manufactured onshore.
The drugs range from normal routine medications used for reflux and heartburn and hormone replacement therapy for women to more serious medications for gastrointestinal issues, antidepressants and allergies.
AMA vice-president Chris Moy said Australia’s ability to secure basic and life-saving medications had diminished, exposing the medical system’s overreliance on international supply chains.
“This year has exposed the fact that Australia has essentially relied on the world market because for other countries, it’s easier for them to manufacture drugs and at a cheap price,” Dr Moy said.
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International Issues.
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Don’t fall for magicians’ tricks on Trump ban
As eyes turn to Trump’s social media bans – Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, Reddit etc., and the online obliteration of Parler, thousands of fingers dance across keyboards piling out furious denunciations and babbling about impingements on free speech.
One-time White House press secretary (there have been four during Trump’s presidency), Sarah Sanders moaned that she had lost 50,000 followers on Twitter since Trump’s ban on the platform had been made permanent. Whether Sanders’ followers had left of their own volition or been banned themselves, was not immediately clear. One of Sanders’ followers offered some uninvited advice. “Calm down. Five people are dead.”
Our own federal government was concerned. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was concerned. Acting Prime Minister, Micheal McCormack, tossed word salads madly about until he admitted that he was concerned. The member for Wentworth, Dave Sharma, on his Twitter account believed Trump’s Twitter ban was necessary under the circumstances but he, too, was concerned.
Such reactions should be seen as a magician’s trick; misdirection, a distraction from the issue that frankly, everyone should be talking about. How the Right in the US has veered so close to fascism.
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The US inflation pressure cooker may be steaming
The Fed’s tone is still dovish. But what is here now is a shift in inflation probabilities from 'very low to 'not so low'. Investors are thus correct to hedge their bets, however gloomy the news about the pandemic.
Gillian Tett Contributor
Updated Jan 17, 2021 – 2.01pm, first published at 1.47pm
What was the best-performing asset class in 2020? If you think "tech stocks" or "bitcoin", think again.
Instead, as the Bridgewater hedge fund recently wrote to its clients, "among the more interesting and least recognised outcomes" of 2020 was that US inflation-linked bonds beat other assets by delivering a 35 per cent return, on a risk-adjusted basis, as investors hedged against inflation risks.
This is a notable straw in the wind. It might seem bizarre that anyone should fret about American inflation now. Data on Wednesday showed that annual US consumer price inflation was a measly 1.4 per cent in December. Wage growth is also weak, unemployment high and economic activity dragged down by the pandemic.
Even if growth resumes in 2021, recent decades suggest that the twin forces of globalisation and digitisation should keep prices in check.
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Biden outlines 10-day blitz of executive actions to nullify Trump era
By Zeke Miller
January 17, 2021 — 3.11pm
Washington: In his first hours as president, Joe Biden plans to take executive action to roll back some of the most controversial decisions of his predecessor and to address the raging coronavirus pandemic, his incoming chief of staff said on Saturday.
The opening salvo would herald a 10-day blitz of executive actions as Biden seeks to act swiftly to redirect the country in the wake of Donald Trump's presidency without waiting for Congress.
The promised executive actions to be taken on Day One include policy changes on housing, student loans, climate change and immigration.
On Wednesday, following his inauguration, Biden will end Trump's restriction on immigration to the US from some Muslim-majority countries, move to rejoin the Paris climate accord and mandate mask-wearing on federal property and during interstate travel. Those are among roughly a dozen actions Biden will take on his first day in the White House, his incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, said in a memo to senior staff.
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Records reveal Trump allies behind rally that ignited Capitol riot
By Richard Lardner and Michelle Smith
January 18, 2021 — 6.57am
Washington: Members of President Donald Trump’s failed presidential campaign played key roles in orchestrating the Washington rally that spawned a deadly assault on the US Capitol, according to a review of records, undercutting claims the event was the brainchild of the President's grassroots supporters.
A pro-Trump nonprofit group called Women for America First hosted the “Save America Rally” on January 6 at the Ellipse, an oval-shaped, federally owned patch of land near the White House. But an attachment to the National Park Service public gathering permit granted to the group lists more than half a dozen people in staff positions for the event who just weeks earlier had been paid thousands of dollars by Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign. Other staff scheduled to be “on site” during the demonstration have close ties to the White House.
Since the siege, several of them have scrambled to distance themselves from the rally.
The riot at the Capitol, incited by Trump’s comments before and during his speech at the Ellipse, has led to a reckoning unprecedented in American history. The President told the crowd to march to the Capitol and that “you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
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'Blood on his hands': As US nears 400,000 COVID deaths, experts blame Trump
By Jorge L. Ortiz
January 18, 2021 — 10.21am
San Francisco: Besides being the first president to get impeached twice, Donald Trump will have a stain on his legacy with arguably longer-lasting consequences: He's about to become the only American leader in a century with more than 400,000 deaths from one event on his watch.
The US is expected to cross that sombre threshold soon, likely on Monday, yet another reminder of how poorly the nation with the world's largest economy has fared during the coronavirus pandemic. The current COVID-19 death toll is about 396,000.
Not since Woodrow Wilson was in office during the 1918 flu pandemic – which killed about 675,000 in this country and 50 million worldwide – had a president overseen the loss of so many American lives.
That total is fast approaching the 405,000 US fatalities from World War II – thousands of them recorded when Harry Truman was president after Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in April 1945 – to rank as the third-deadliest event in the history of the republic. About 618,000-750,000 were killed in the Civil War of 1861-1865.
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The verdict's in on Trump's trade war with China
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
January 18, 2021 — 11.48am
Last Friday was the first anniversary of the signing of the “Phase One” trade deal with Beijing that paused the Trump administration’s trade war with China. Twelve months on, it is obvious that, contrary to Donald Trump’s conviction, trade wars are neither good nor easy to win.
Trump will end his presidency having presided over the three largest US trade deficits in history even as China recorded a record monthly trade surplus in December and, in the midst of a global pandemic, its second-highest annual surplus.
Trade data released late last week showed China’s overall surplus rose 27 per cent to $US535 billion ($696 billion) in 2020, the highest since 2015. The December surplus, powered by an 18 per cent increase in exports, was a record $US78 billion. The $US317 billion full-year surplus with the US was 7 per cent higher than in 2019.
Earlier this month US trade data showed its overall trade deficit for the first 11 months of the year had grown 13.9 per cent over the same period of 2019, to $US605 billion, with analysts forecasting a deficit of close to $US900 billion for the full year when those numbers are released next month. The US trade deficit in November was the highest in 14 years.
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https://www.smh.com.au/national/global-threat-from-three-strongmen-20210118-p56uvr.html
Global threat from three strongmen
Political and international editor
January 19, 2021 — 12.00am
Vladimir Putin is embracing a new brazenness. It was always obvious that he was directing the years-long series of assassinations and disappearances of his opponents. But he at least tried to feign innocence.
By killing people with radioactive isotopes and nerve agents, he was using methods that might go undetected in most circumstances. And even when the covert instrument of assassination was discovered, Putin always denied any involvement by the Russian state.
It wasn’t convincing, of course – you can’t buy the Russian military’s home-grown nerve agents of the Novichok variety at the local chemists, or even on the dark web. But Putin always protested his innocence. It was important to him to keep up a facade of deniability, no matter how thin.
His spokespeople denied any state involvement again when the hero of Russia’s opposition movement, the charismatic Alexei Navalny, was suddenly taken gravely ill on a flight in August 2020, suspected poisoned. The doctors in the Russian city of Omsk diagnosed the problem as low blood sugars, which supposedly triggered a metabolic disorder.
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New era: Joe Biden and the old establishment step back in
· The Wall Street Journal
They are 78, 80, 70 and 78 years old.
One started in Washington when Richard Nixon was president, the others when Ronald Reagan was. They have seen it all: wars, recessions, control by one party and then another, terrorist attacks, and, now, a pandemic.
They are, in short, the very personification of the political establishment that was attacked by American citizens who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Now they are, collectively, in charge of handling the aftermath.
Together, they all face the same question: Are they really in control?
They are, respectively, President-elect Joe Biden; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer; and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. They have known one another for decades, so there will be no surprises. They will be overseeing a Washington where the Senate is perfectly divided between the two parties and the House nearly so — a power alignment that, at least in theory, ought to draw them all a bit closer together near the political centre.
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We only obeyed orders from President Donald Trump, say rioters
· The Times
Members of the mob that stormed the US Capitol Building are telling police they felt President Donald Trump told them to, potentially making him liable to criminal charges for incitement.
With more participants in the siege being arrested every day, explanations of their actions are emerging.
One Kentucky man told the FBI that he went to Washington with his cousin and marched towards congress because “President Trump said to do so”.
A retired Pennsylvania firefighter, charged with throwing a fire extinguisher at police, said he believed he was “instructed” to go to the Capitol by the President, according to court documents seen by The Washington Post.
Jenna Ryan, a Dallas estate agent charged with illegally entering the Capitol, begged Mr Trump for a pardon on local television. “I thought I was following my president,” she said.
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https://www.afr.com/world/asia/america-s-disarray-is-china-s-opportunity-20210119-p56v5g
America’s disarray is China’s opportunity
A dispassionate assessment of world affairs, as it stands, cannot avoid the conclusion that the US is currently in deep trouble — and China is well placed to take advantage of that.
Gideon Rachman Columnist
Jan 19, 2021 – 9.45am
On January 20, 1961, John F Kennedy, America’s youngest-ever, elected president, gave his inaugural address from the steps of the Capitol. Exactly 60 years later, Joe Biden, America’s oldest-ever president, will be sworn in at the same place – just days after it was stormed by a riotous mob.
Kennedy used the magisterial backdrop of Congress to proclaim that the “torch has passed to a new generation”. Biden is the representative of an older generation – one that now fears the torch of liberty is in danger of being extinguished, even in the US itself.
Watching Kennedy’s address again, it is striking how much of it was addressed not to the American people but to the leaders of the Soviet Union. JFK was speaking at the height of the cold war. Much of the American elite now believes the US is on the brink of a second cold war – this time with China. But, unlike Kennedy, Biden cannot promise to “pay any price, bear any burden” to ensure the “survival and success of liberty” around the world.
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Why are free societies sinking into an anarchic pit of hate?
Big tech's legal obligations are a sideshow: the bigger question is where the bile and venom come from.
Janet Daley Contributor
Jan 19, 2021 – 2.45pm
Is it right to deny people who incite violence a public platform? You bet it is. All free societies do this to a greater or lesser extent. Open democracies which guarantee freedom of expression have always drawn lines. You cannot attend a civic meeting, or even stand on a street corner, and shout death threats without being arrested. The obvious charge would be of threatening behaviour or causing an affray. Scarcely anyone would be likely to dispute this.
So that's the easy one. There are far more difficult questions to examine in what is becoming a major political issue for our time. So while we wait to see if the Trump mob will turn up at Joe Biden's inauguration on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) to test the principle once again, perhaps we can examine the more difficult problems, some of which are new and others of which are not new at all, in spite of their technological dimension.
This is not really a debate about "free speech". What that properly entails was established long ago and is (or was) accepted by general consensus. It involves respecting the rule of law and the rights of others to hold differing views – which is to say, not threatening the safety of people you disagree with. But something peculiar has happened to public discourse in the past few years. It now has a dimension – or an arena – in which participants expect to ignore all the previous understandings of what constitutes acceptable conduct.
The hot topic has become: are the Big Tech outfits, which make available wildly irresponsible messages, publishers or simply platforms? If the former, then they are liable for what appears; if the latter, they are not. The tech giants are clearly terrified by this debate since a judgment that they are, in fact, publishers would involve them in an enormous and hugely expensive extension of their duties to monitor everything that appears on their sites.
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The American republic’s near-death experience
Trump failed. However, if US politics unfolds as seems likely, there will be more Trumps. One of them, more competent and ruthless, may succeed.
Martin Wolf Columnist
Jan 20, 2021 – 9.34am
Here is what has happened. US President Donald Trump asserted for months, without evidence, that he could not be defeated in a fair election. He duly attributed his defeat to a rigged election. Four in five Republicans still agree.
The President pressured officials to overturn their states’ votes. Having failed, he sought to bully his vice-president and Congress into rejecting the electoral votes submitted by the states. He incited an assault on the Capitol, in order to pressure Congress into doing so. Some 147 members of Congress, including eight senators, voted to reject the states’ votes.
In brief, Trump attempted a coup. Worse, the great majority of Republicans agree with his reasons for doing so. A huge number of federal legislators went along. The coup failed, because courts rejected evidence-free cases, and state officials did their jobs. But 10 former defence secretaries felt the need to warn the military to stay out.
In March 2016, before Trump had even won the GOP nomination, I argued he was a grave threat. It was evident he lacked any of the qualities required in the leader of a great republic. But, it turned out, he had the redeeming flaw of gross incompetence.
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How US media policy paved the road to insurrection
Sure Donald Trump may have incited the mob, but history shows that it was flawed media regulation decisions that made America so very vulnerable to the Trump agenda.
Malcolm Long
Jan 19, 2021 – 12.28pm
The political mess that has engulfed the United States can be directly traced to almost a century of bad US government decisions about how to regulate its all-pervasive mass media.
The riotous mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 may well have been directly incited by Donald Trump’s calls to action on the day. But years of relentless, unfiltered streams of fake news and toxic commentary on US television, radio and social media prepared the ground.
It didn’t have to be this way. History shows it was some key media regulation decisions that made America so very vulnerable to the Trump agenda.
In the late 1920s, at the birth of radio – the first mass medium – both the US and Britain recognised that whoever controlled the content on this new medium would possess extraordinary power. They would have unprecedented ability to sway public opinion, with significant implications for democracy.
The two countries reacted very differently. The US decided broadcasting was too powerful to be entrusted to government. It would be the exclusive domain of commercial corporations, selling content to consumers in the marketplace. Britain decided broadcasting was too powerful to be entrusted to commercial magnates; it would be a publicly owned activity. Hence the BBC was created, with a charter of editorial independence from government and providing a well-resourced national news and information service.
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Deeper causes of America's troubles are economic and social
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
January 19, 2021 — 11.55pm
The older I get the more I prefer movies where nothing much happens. I’m increasingly impatient with car chases, gunfights and sword fights. I like movies that look at people’s lives and the way their relationships develop. Truth be told, I prefer escapist movies, but make an exception for those that help me better understand the difficulties encountered by people living in circumstances very different to mine. They may not be much fun, but they are character-building.
I put Frances McDormand’s memorable Nomadland in that category. If you want to understand how the richest, smartest, most “advanced” civilisation in the world could be tearing itself apart before our very eyes, Nomadland is an easy place to start.
McDormand plays an older woman who, having recently lost her husband, finds the global financial crisis and its Great Recession have caused her to lose her job, her home and even the small company town she’s lived in for years.
She fits out a second-hand campervan and takes off on the roads of middle America in search of somewhere to earn a bit of money and somewhere to camp for a few weeks that doesn’t cost too much.
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China's aiming for 8% growth. Can it do it without Australian coal?
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist
January 19, 2021 — 12.47pm
China ended 2020 as the only major economy that didn’t shrink as a result of the pandemic and, if the forecasts are right, will grow at a startling rate in 2021. If it wants to meet those forecasts it might be forced to rethink its ban on Australian coal.
The 2.3 per cent rise in China's GDP last year might have been its weakest growth since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, but was a global standout in a year when the pandemic wrecked all the other big economies.
China’s economic statistics do have to be taken with a pinch of salt – it is remarkable that it was able to produce the data from its sprawling economy within a couple of weeks of year-end – but the performance of its economy does accord broadly with both its response to the pandemic and third-party data on its exports.
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'Mob was fed lies': Mitch McConnell accuses Trump of 'provoking' riot
By Richard Cowan
January 20, 2021 — 5.19am
Washington: US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has accused President Donald Trump, a fellow Republican, of provoking the January 6 riot at the Capitol.
"The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the President and other powerful people," McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, local time.
The US House of Representatives last Wednesday impeached Trump for a second time. The Senate has yet to schedule a trial to determine Trump's guilt or innocence.
McConnell last week said he would listen to the arguments presented during the Senate trial before deciding how to vote on the impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection that resulted in the siege of the Capitol.
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We can’t combat China’s ‘grey zone’ war while polarised
Ben Scott
China is gearing up for global competition with a Biden-led United States. That’s reducing Australia’s room to move. But it also makes it more important for us to get right the things we can control. To make smarter China choices, Australia should change the way it debates, formulates and implements China policy.
From China’s perspective, Australia is a frustrating anomaly in need of correction; a country that remains firmly allied with the US despite its apparent economic dependence on China. Not only has Canberra failed to toe Beijing’s line, it has actively questioned China on issues ranging from 5G telecommunications to COVID-19.
As Beijing’s economic pressure on Australia begins to bite, our national debate will intensify and could polarise. It’s not hard to imagine populist arguments and simplistic solutions gaining wider appeal.
That’s part of China’s goal; as DFAT Secretary Frances Adamson told a Senate estimates committee last year, “what … I think Beijing is looking for, is division”.
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Donald Trump’s best did their job well: they deserve to be known for more than his final days
The Wall St Journal Editorial Board
· The Wall Street Journal
As the Trump presidency ends in the disgrace of the Capitol riot, an effort is already underway to erase everything in the last four years as disgraceful too. That’s a lie — a Big Lie, to borrow the cliche of the moment. Donald Trump’s profound character flaws need to be separated from what so many people in his administration accomplished for the country.
These men and women didn’t “enable” Trump. Sixty-three million Americans did that when they elected him in 2016, with a significant assist from the Democrats who nominated Hillary Clinton, perhaps the only candidate who could have lost to Trump.
President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on Thursday will bring an end to outgoing President Donald Trump's four years in the Oval Office where he leaves as the first one-term President in nearly 30 years.
Trump appointed people who had the usual varying combinations of conviction and ambition. They served despite the hostility of the bureaucracy and press, and a president who often didn’t appreciate their work. Sometimes — in some cases, often — they protected the country by stopping Trump from his worst impulses.
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'We must end this uncivil war': Biden takes charge
Trevor Hunnicutt
Jan 21, 2021 – 9.18am
Joe Biden was sworn in as president of the United States, offering a message of unity and restoration to a deeply divided country reeling from a battered economy and a raging coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 400,000 Americans.
Standing on the steps of the US Capitol two weeks after a mob of then-President Donald Trump's supporters stormed the building, Biden called for a return to civic decency in an inaugural address marking the end of Trump's tempestuous four-year term.
Joe Biden has arrived to the White house after he was sworn in as the 46th US president.
"To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America, requires so much more than words. It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity," Biden, a Democrat, said after taking the oath of office.
"We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. We can do this - if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts."
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/there-was-no-carnage-just-poetry-20210121-p56vpg
There was no carnage, just poetry
Americans heard a call for unity and a staunch defence of their most hallowed institutions as Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States.
Jacob Greber United States correspondent
Updated Jan 21, 2021 – 8.09am, first published at 8.07am
There was no carnage. No riot. No insurgency nor division.
Instead, Americans heard a call for unity and a staunch defence of its most hallowed institutions.
Watch 22-year-old Amanda Gorman, the youngest-ever inauguration poet, recite the entirety of her work moments after Joe Biden was sworn in as 46th US president. In her 5-minute poem, she referenced the violence of January 6th, called for reconci...
And poetry.
The verse came from an extraordinary 22-year-old woman, Amanda Gorman, who stole the show as the youngest poet to read at a presidential inauguration, with a reminder of just how fragile those institutions can be.
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'We all got played': QAnon fans in shock as reality of defeat dawns
Drew Harwell and Craig Timberg
Jan 21, 2021 – 5.54am
Washington DC | Followers of the extremist ideology QAnon saw their hopes once again dashed Wednesday as President Donald Trump left Washington on the final day of his presidency, without any of the climactic scenes of violence and salvation that the sprawling set of conspiracy theories had preached for years would come.
As Trump boarded Air Force One for his last presidential flight to Florida, many QAnon adherents - some of whom had earlier this month stormed the Capitol in a siege that left at least two QAnon devotees dead and others in jail - began to wonder whether they'd been duped all along.
When one QAnon channel on the chat app Telegram posted a new theory that suggested Biden himself was "part of the plan," a number of followers shifted into open rebellion: "This will never happen"; "Just stfu already!" "It's over. It is sadly, sadly over." "What a fraud!"
But while some QAnon disciples gave way to doubt, others doubled down on blind belief or strained to see new coded messages in the Inauguration Day's events. Some followers noted that 17 flags - Q being the 17th letter of the alphabet - flew on the stage as Trump delivered a farewell address.
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The link between Lincoln in 1865 and Biden in 2021
Ronald G. Shafer
Jan 21, 2021 – 7.57am
In delivering an inauguration speech to try to heal a bitterly divided nation, President Joe Biden faced perhaps the greatest challenge since Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
In his "America United" address, Biden spoke "about the need to bring the country together during an unprecedented moment of crisis". His address follows an attack on the Capitol by supporters of a president who still won't accept defeat and refused to attend his successor's swearing in and a pandemic that has killed more than 400,000 Americans.
Democrat Joe Biden was sworn in as president of the United States, vowing to end the 'uncivil war' in a deeply divided country.
In his second inauguration on March 4, 1865, Lincoln sought to begin the healing of a divided country emerging from a bloody Civil War that took more than 700,000 lives in the North and the South.
The new dome of the Capitol with the statue of Freedom on top gleamed in the bright sunlight behind the 56-year-old Lincoln as he stepped forward to deliver his address. The clearing sky seemed symbolic of the ending of the dark war to the special correspondent for the New York Times, poet Walt Whitman.
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‘A total failure’: The Proud Boys now mock Trump
Sheera Frenkel
Jan 21, 2021 – 8.23am
After the presidential election last year, the Proud Boys, a far-right group, declared its undying loyalty to President Donald Trump.
In a November 8 post in a private channel of the messaging app Telegram, the group urged its followers to attend protests against an election that it said had been fraudulently stolen from Trump. "Hail Emperor Trump," the Proud Boys wrote.
But by this week, the group's attitude toward Trump had changed. "Trump will go down as a total failure," the Proud Boys said in the same Telegram channel Monday.
As Trump departed the White House on Wednesday, the Proud Boys, once among his staunchest supporters, have also started leaving his side. In dozens of conversations on social media sites like Gab and Telegram, members of the group have begun calling Trump a "shill" and "extraordinarily weak," according to messages reviewed by The New York Times. They have also urged supporters to stop attending rallies and protests held for Trump or the Republican Party.
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Biden gives the world permission to exhale after four chaotic years
By Matthew Knott
January 21, 2021 — 7.56am
Washington: You could feel it as President Joe Biden began delivering his inaugural address: the resting heart rate of American politics returning to something resembling normal.
For the past four years Donald Trump kept America - and the world - in a state of constant anxiety. At any moment of the day or night, you could expect a tweet threatening war against North Korea, announcing new tariffs on Chinese goods or falsely declaring himself the winner of the presidential election.
Democrat Joe Biden was sworn in as president of the United States, vowing to end the 'uncivil war' in a deeply divided country.
For his most loyal supporters, Trump’s chaotic style was an exhilarating departure from presidential norms; for everyone else, it was simply exhausting.
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The words a divided America wanted and needed to hear
Joe Biden spoke directly to a country struggling with a deadly pandemic, a battered economy and deep political divisions.
21 January, 2021
Joe Biden gave the inauguration speech that most of America wanted to hear and the rest of America needed to hear.
It was an address that spoke directly to this turbulent time in the country’s history as it struggles with a deadly pandemic, a battered economy and the deepest political divisions since the civil rights era.
Biden’s key message was that he would be the anti-Donald Trump, that he would not inflame this political divide, but would rather seek to draw the country’s warring tribes closer together.
“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal,’ Biden said.
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Biden takes power with Pax Americana on the ash heap of history
Now that Joe Biden is President, it is widely believed that he will repair some of the damage inflicted during the Trump era. After four years of chaos and instability, we are told, the incoming administration will reassert America’s democratic leadership across the globe.
Don’t believe the hype. The Pax Americana is on the ash heap of history. And the reasons have more to do with Washington’s flawed policies of the post-Cold War era and the rise of China than with the America First nationalism of the Trump era.
Go back three decades. The US had emerged the victor from the Cold War without a shot being fired across Europe. It achieved global hegemonic status not by especially assertive or ambitious action on its part, but by the self-induced collapse of the Soviet empire. The decades-old strategy of containment had worked.
With the end of the East-West standoff, a dangerous bipolar world had been replaced by a unipolar world in which America had no serious rivals. As a result, “American global leadership”, a “New America Century”, “indispensable nation” and “benign hegemony” became the new credos of US foreign-policy elites.
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Two raging viruses among Biden's biggest challenges
A dim prospect of national unity does not doom progress on ending America's uncivil war, as Joe Biden outlined in a speech full of allusions to Abraham Lincoln.
Simon Jackman Contributor
Jan 21, 2021 – 3.54pm
The high watermark of inauguration speeches is Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, delivered in 1865 to an exhausted Union, with the end of the Civil War just a month away. Its spare 700 words are inscribed in the Lincoln Memorial at the western end of the National Mall.
Lincoln concluded his speech with the aspiration to “to bind up the nation’s wounds”. Biden reached for the same sentiment – and aspired to Lincoln’s eloquence – in his first speech as President to a crisis-weary nation.
Biden’s speech abounded with allusions and references to Lincoln, too many to list here. But they were all apt.
Without undue risk of hyperbole, American democracy is being subjected to its greatest stress since the time of Lincoln, who spoke at Gettysburg of the “great civil war” testing whether a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” could “long endure”. And so Biden called for an end to the “uncivil war” rending America.
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Trump exits with a whimper and a final pardon
Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker
Updated Jan 21, 2021 – 2.34pm, first published at 2.02pm
Palm Beach, Florida | Donald Trump's final act as the 45th President of the United States was announced as his official government motorcade rolled through the palm-lined streets of South Florida one last time: a full pardon for Albert Pirro, the ex-husband of Trump loyalist and Fox News host Jeanine Pirro.
Mr Trump had decided on Wednesday morning to grant a final gift of clemency after issuing 143 other pardons in an early-morning spree that included his controversial former chief strategist Stephen Bannon.
His remaining aides had hoped that Mr Trump's departure remarks at Joint Base Andrews earlier that morning – where he thanked his supporters and wished the incoming administration "great success" – would serve as the enduring image of his already fraught exit from the presidency. Instead, they scrambled to explain another whim from their boss.
Away from his twin cravings – the public and the press – the outgoing president announced the Pirro pardon in a brief written statement as much of the world spun forward without him. Many of his once-close Republican allies eschewed his sparsely-attended Air Force One farewell to attend President Joe Biden's inauguration instead.
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Can Biden really unite America? Probably not
Can Joe Biden really bring the US people together and restore faith in America’s future? Alas, the terrible deterioration of American public life in the 21st century means there is every reason to think not.
Tom Switzer Contributor
Updated Jan 21, 2021 – 3.00pm, first published at 2.56pm
The day of the presidential inauguration is when an American president must rise above the deep divisions of politics and reach to the higher duty of representing the nation. Joe Biden made that leap today with an authentic, heartfelt speech calling for repair and renewal.
Every president faces their own particular set of challenges, but the 78-year-old veteran senator and former vice-president was right when he said: “Few periods in our nation’s history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we’re in now.”
Indeed, the challenges are daunting: a pandemic that has killed more than 400,000 Americans, the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression and widespread racial and cultural tensions. Add to this what Biden cited as environmental “survival” and “a rise in political extremism, white supremacy [and] domestic terrorism”. and it’s no wonder he repeatedly called for “unity”.
But can Biden — or anyone else for that matter — really bring the American people together? Can he restore their faith in their future?
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https://www.smh.com.au/national/why-populism-may-grow-despite-trump-s-departure-20210121-p56vrr.html
Why populism may grow, despite Trump's departure
By Andrew Hammond
January 21, 2021 — 11.55pm
Donald Trump’s departure from office will be welcomed by many who decry the rise of global populism. Yet Trump is a symptom, not a cause, of populism whose rise may grow significantly into the 2020s fuelled by the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis.
As of 2020, some two billion of the world’s population was governed by populist leaders, including the more than 300 million US populace, according to academic research from the Global Populism Database – a comprehensive tracker of populist discourse. That data, from an international network of academics analysed speeches – through textual analysis – of key leaders in 40 countries during the last two decades.
What the research found is that leaders from across different continents won power through common campaign tactics, including attacking multinational organisations, so-called ‘fake media’, and immigrants. And this electoral success is itself a microcosm of a wider upending of the tectonic plates of the global political landscape.
The research found that, some 20 years ago, only a handful of states with populations over 20 million – including Italy, Argentina and Venezuela – had leaders classified as populists through their speeches. This was an era that saw the controversial billionaire businessman Silvio Berlusconi as a right-of-centre maverick prime minister in Rome, presaging the rise of Trump; and Hugo Chavez as Venezuelan president.
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Dozens dead in rare Baghdad suicide attack
· AFP
The toll in a twin suicide bombing in an open-air Baghdad market on Thursday has reached at least 28 dead and 73 wounded.
The interior ministry said the first suicide bomber had rushed into the market and claimed to feel sick, so that people would gather around him. He then detonated his explosives.
As people gathered around the victims, a second attacker detonated his bomb.
Medical sources said they feared the death toll could be twice as high as officially announced. The health ministry said it had mobilised medics across the capital to respond to the deadliest attack in three years.
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https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/donald-trump-after-presidency.html
Jan. 15, 2021
Trump Is on the Verge of Losing Everything
President Trump’s second impeachment, like the other repudiations he has suffered, feels provisional. He is never quite banished. He is impeached, but Senate Republicans refuse to convict or even allow evidence into his trial. He loses the election, but won’t concede, and may just run again. He is impeached again, but his trial is delayed until after his departure date. It feels as if we have spent four years watching the wheels come off, yet the vehicle somehow still keeps rolling forward.
But now, finally, the end is at hand. Trump is suffering a series of wounds that, in combination, are likely to be fatal after Joe Biden is sworn in on January 20. Trump is obviously going to surrender his office. Beyond that looming defeat, he is undergoing a cascading sequence of political, financial, and legal setbacks that cumulatively spell utter ruin. Trump is not only losing his job but quite possibly everything else.
One crisis, though the most opaque, concerns Trump’s business. Many of his sources of income are drying up, either owing to the coronavirus pandemic or, more often, his toxic public image. The Washington Post has toted up the setbacks facing the Trump Organization, which include cancellations of partnerships with New York City government, three banks, the PGA Championship, and a real-estate firm that handled many of his leasing agreements. Meanwhile, he faces the closure of many of his hotels. And he is staring down two defamation lawsuits. Oh, and Trump has to repay, over the next four years, more than $300 million in outstanding loans he personally guaranteed.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/joe-biden-s-new-deal-20210122-p56w4n
Joe Biden’s new deal
Joe Biden and his team have worked hard to put America’s diversity on display. These aren’t woke decisions - there are hard-headed political calculations at play.
Jacob Greber United States correspondent
Jan 23, 2021 – 12.01am
When governments change, Paul Keating once noted, you change the country.
Nowhere is this more evident and immediate these last few days than in Washington DC where the speed of adjustment has stunned even experienced watchers.
It might even be reaching Gough Whitlam levels, with Joe Biden wasting no time obliterating, with a flood of executive orders, as much of Donald Trump’s legacy as he can.
He’s been aided by the fact the former president failed to enshrine many of his achievements in legislation, making them fragile and easily unpicked or reversed with the briefest stroke of a pen.
While there is continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations on some things, like maintaining pressure on China over the Uighur Muslims, retaining recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and continuing for now the tariff war, much is being dismantled.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/how-jill-biden-is-quietly-making-history-20210121-p56vvw
How Jill Biden is quietly making history
The new first lady is somewhat overshadowed by the other political firsts happening around her, but she doesn't seem at all concerned.
Robin Givhan
Jan 23, 2021 – 12.00am
Jill Biden always seems to be upstaged by the enormity of someone else's history-making presence. As second lady, Dr Biden was arguably the emotional core of the Obama administration's outreach to military families. As the mother of a veteran, she could speak personally about the toll their service takes on their loved ones. But the country was naturally focused on Michelle Obama, a groundbreaking first lady, and had little bandwidth to deeply consider Biden's effort.
Now that Biden has moved into the White House, there's more history being made around her. Kamala Harris is the nation's first female vice-president. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, fills the newly named role of second gentleman. The country is in such a historically divided, volatile, damaged state that almost all of the inaugural traditions and formalities have fallen away. And the symbolism long attached to the first lady as healing and consoling has been tarnished.
In the midst of all of that hope and wreckage, Biden is poised to transform the way in which the presidential spouse is perceived. She isn't angling to be a partner in governing. She's planning to be her own person, which for her includes continuing to pursue her career. It's a simple but profound decision that strikes a blow for gender equity and barrier-breaking that resonates more intimately than the headlines that scream madame vice-president.
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https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/america-s-best-chance-for-unity-20210122-p56w2g
America’s best chance for unity
The new US President is not a perfect person, but Joe Biden is the decent man that the world has not had in the White House for four years.
Michael Fullilove
Jan 22, 2021 – 3.57pm
Watching the images of America on inauguration day was like seeing an old friend who has been in the grip of a terrible fever. But now his vision is clear and his brow is cool, and you recognise him again.
America has indeed been febrile these past months and years – suffering not only from the COVID-19 pandemic but from the presidency of a despicable man who brought incompetence, corruption and misrule to the Oval Office. Donald Trump has never accepted external limits on his behaviour. In the end, there was nothing he wouldn’t do to feed his vanity and preserve his power, including inciting a violent assault on the Capitol.
It is unforgivable that so many politicians and commentators went along with Trump, and for so long.
The Grand Old Party – the party of Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan – now appears to be a dried-up husk.
Kudos to the small band of conservatives, including Republican senator Mitt Romney and observers such as Bret Stephens and Bill Kristol, who adhered to their principles and maintained their dignity. Shame on those who did not.
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Trumpist fantasy still captivates the odd Australian politician
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor
January 22, 2021 — 7.31pm
In the face of a sceptical reporter, a senior Republican White House operative dismissed his views. Guys like you were “in what we call the reality-based community”, he sneered. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore.”
That comment could very well have come from the Donald Trump White House. It did not. It was delivered by a senior aide to the previous Republican president, George W. Bush, more than a decade before Trump declared his candidacy.
But it was Trump who brought it closest to fulfilment. By creating an alternative reality so powerful that many tens of millions of Americans believe that fiction is fact. By creating a mass delusion so persuasive that he tried to establish himself as America’s first dictator on the strength of it.
Even now, even after the mob invasion of the US Capitol and Trump’s fall in disgrace, even after the unanimity of the courts’ rulings, a third of American adults believe Trump actually won the election, according to the scrupulously non-partisan Pew Research group.
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The cult of Trump: Are the days of this false prophet really over?
Tony Wright
Associate editor and special writer
January 22, 2021 — 11.08pm
My dad had skinned his knuckles while trying to fix a stubborn water pump on the farm when a fellow with a reversed collar came down the drive.
He held out a piece of paper and requested a moment. It was a poorly timed approach.
“Clear off,” said my father, or words to that general effect. When the visitor persisted, there was mention of a stockwhip if he didn’t comply.
The fellow, my father explained later, was a self-appointed pastor of one of the fringe religious groups that had put their hooks into the farming district, and he was trying to drum up support for a run at state Parliament.
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China authorises coast guard to fire on foreign vessels if needed
By Yew Lun Tian
January 22, 2021 — 11.21pm
Beijing: China passed a law on Friday that for the first time explicitly allows its coast guard to fire on foreign vessels, a move that could make the contested waters around China more choppy.
China has maritime sovereignty disputes with Japan in the East China Sea and with several south-east Asian countries in the South China Sea. It has sent its coast guard to chase away fishing vessels from other countries, sometimes resulting in the sinking of these vessels.
China’s top legislative body, the National People’s Congress standing committee, passed the Coast Guard Law on Friday, according to state media reports.
According to draft wording in the bill published earlier, the coast guard is allowed to use “all necessary means” to stop or prevent threats from foreign vessels.
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Germany to cut last vestiges of Nazi law
· AFP
Germany is moving to rid itself of a cluster of laws introduced by the Nazis, still lingering on its books 75 years after World War II.
There are 29 German legal or regulatory texts that still use wording introduced when Hitler was in power, according to Felix Klein, the government’s point man for fighting anti-Semitism.
Some of them have “a very clear anti-Semitic background”, Mr Klein said.
Now, with the support of several parties in the Bundestag lower house of parliament as well as Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, Mr Klein wants to wipe the slate clean — preferably before the end of the current term in September.
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The Trump era is over, not with a bang but with an elegant troll
Parnell Palme McGuinness
Columnist
January 24, 2021 — 12.06am
And it is done. The era of Trump is over. Not with a bang, but with an amusingly elegant troll.
One of Donald Trump's last acts as president was to issue an executive order for 244 statues to be erected in his National Garden of American Heroes. The statue park was originally conceived as agitationists attacked and toppled statues in 2020, so they might have expected a garden of Confederates and slavers. Trump's choice of American heroes has left many puzzled.
Closing out his presidency, US President Donald Trump leaves behind an even more polarized America, where thousands are dying daily from the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy is badly damaged and political violence has surged.
Entertainers Walt Disney, Elvis Presley, Woody Guthrie (the working-class hero folk singer who penned a song that lambasted the racism of ''Old Man Trump'', Donald’s father) and gameshow host Alex Trebek will be joined in the garden by giants of the civil rights movement Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, as well as recently deceased left-liberal Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader-Ginsburg and, of all people, political theorist Hannah Arendt.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
