WORLD

Friday morning Justice Michael Lee said he was not convinced of the evidence put forth by Qantas – Australia’s most dominating airline – that the laying off of thousands of employees was not, at least in part, motivated by their union membership. Qantas dismissed more than 2,000 ground handlers during …

Signed on Friday, the new order calls on the Florida Department of Health and the Florida Department of Education to set rules for public schools that give parents the “freedom to choose whether their children wear masks.” “The federal government has no right to tell parents that in order for …

Queensland officials announced the three-day lockdown on Saturday morning, with state premier Annastacia Palaszczuk urging locals not to venture beyond their homes until the measures expire on August 3, with a few exceptions. The new “snap” shutdown order comes after just six new cases were tallied on Saturday, as well …

Hundreds of Palestinans gathered on Friday in the town of Beit Ummar, located northwest of Hebron, to mourn the death of a protester killed by the Israeli military a day before. Shawkat Awad, 20, was shot in the head and abdomen on Thursday during clashes that erupted after the funeral …

As if parents needed more subjects to stress about, writer Anjani Trivedi has reminded them that there’s an “ever-changing list of labyrinthine policies to allow travel,” from “home quarantines” to stays in government “facilities” that are more like prisons (try getting out of New Zealand’s). Sure – we somewhat expected …

A Friday report by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) looked at a series of hypothetical scenarios related to Covid-19 variants, finding it a “realistic possibility” that a mutation could appear with a case fatality rate comparable to SARS (10%) or MERS (35%), both of which belong to the …

The latest US athlete to cut the effortlessly grating figure of the wronged runner-up was swimmer Ryan Murphy, who, endlessly irked at losing twice in a week to Russian counterpart Evgeny Rylov at Tokyo 2020, launched a mini-monologue of microaggressions drenched in melodrama during his post-swim presser. “It is what …

“Vaccinated people do not transmit the virus at the same rate as unvaccinated people and if you fail to include that context you’re doing it wrong,” Ben Wakana, deputy director of strategic communications for the White House Covid-19 response team, tweeted at the New York Times on Friday – in …

Abbott’s executive order GA-37, issued on Wednesday, violates the federal supremacy clause of the US Constitution and “causes injury to the US and to individuals whom the US is charged to protect, jeopardizing the health and safety of noncitizens in federal custody, risking the safety of federal law enforcement officers …

The sensational Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial resumed in Sydney this week, after a month- long delay caused by a serious Covid-19 outbreak that forced the city, together with large parts of Australia, into lockdown. During the break the last contingent of Australian troops was withdrawn from Afghanistan – thereby ending …