As it happened: Country marks 20 years after Bali bombings; Brittany Higgins to return to stand on Friday

The explosion on the 19-kilometre bridge destroyed one section of the road, temporarily halting road traffic. It also destroyed several fuel tankers on a train heading towards the annexed peninsula from neighbouring southern Russia.

The bridge, a prestige project personally opened by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018, had become logistically vital to his military campaign, with supplies to Russian troops fighting in south Ukraine channelled through it.

Russian forces launched mass missile strikes against Ukrainian cities, including power supplies. At a televised meeting of Russia’s Security Council on Monday, Putin said the strikes were a retaliation for the Crimea bridge blast, which he said had been organised by Ukraine’s secret services.

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Reuters

The laggards: Mineral Resources dropped 3.65 per cent; Fortescue Metals slipped 2.78 per cent; and accounting software firm Xero shed 2.78 per cent.

The lowdown: The local bourse seesawed between positive and negative territory on Wednesday, buoyed by the financial sector and lifts in coal miner stocks.

Fortescue, Pilbara Minerals and Rio Tinto were all down, with iron ore futures falling by 0.4 per cent to $US96.97 a tonne.

In further blows to the sector, hopes that China’s zero-COVID policy may be coming to an end fizzled, which independent analyst Elio D’Amato says has tempered the tailwinds the sector has enjoyed from a low Australian dollar.

“This idea that China needs to perceive this image that they’ve got COVID under control has the potential to derail China’s progress economically in the short-term, and therefore, by its definition, impact our broader mining sectors,” he said.

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“Our waitlist is increasing because what we’ve observed is that it can take some time for the recognition of post-COVID conditions, particularly with the fatigue-predominant types, to reach us,” Royal Children’s Hospital Associate Professor Shidan Tosif told the inquiry.

Patients are usually referred to specialist clinics through a GP and while there is no official cure, symptoms can sometimes be treated on a case-by-case basis.

The inquiry by the House of Representatives health committee is investigating the economic, social, educational and health impacts of long COVID and repeat infections in Australia.

Infectious disease physician Irani Thevarajan from Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute said more resources are required to keep up with demand.

“I wouldn’t say it’s overwhelming the health system, I just think we’ve got an increased demand and we’re trying to meet that demand by increasing our resources and capacity,” Dr Irani said.

Margaret Hellard, deputy director at Melbourne’s Burnet Institute, said official data on how many Australians are suffering from long COVID is not yet known, but is generally quoted as three to five per cent.

“If you’ve got 10 million people infected, if it’s three per cent that’s 300,000 people … big numbers,” she said.

“Even if they’re overestimates, in a disease where there’s a high proportion of the community getting infected then a small percentage becomes consequential.”

AAP

But NSW’s Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant asked people to continue to report positive results.

“Registering a positive RAT through Service NSW allows us to connect people to medical care, particularly older people and the immunocompromised, and it also helps inform our ongoing public health response,” Chant said.

A spokesperson for Service NSW said people would still be able to register positive RATs when isolation ends.

Chant urged people to stay home if they had cold or flu symptoms, get tested, and wear a mask if they had to leave their home.

“If you have COVID-19 you may be infectious for up to 10 days, but you are most infectious in the two days before your symptoms start and while you have symptoms,” Chant said. “We all know from experience what works best to protect one another from COVID-19 so please, continue to take those simple but important steps,” she said.

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On Wednesday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics is publishing the second tranche of data from the 2021 census. It takes a deep dive into the working lives of Australians – from what they earn and the sort of unpaid work they do to where they moved during the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows some industries have grown exponentially since 2016, while others have dwindled.

Statistician David Gruen said the data provided a “fascinating” snapshot of education and employment in Australia.

The four biggest industries combined – healthcare, retail, construction and education – employed more than 40 per cent of the country’s workforce last year, the data showed.

The healthcare and social assistance sector ballooned to more than 1.7 million workers, including more than a quarter of a million registered nurses.

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WA is the second state to announce its own curriculum changes following Queensland earlier this month.

WA schools already teach consent on an ad-hoc basis, but the curriculum changes will mean health and physical education teachers must teach it in some form throughout the student’s schooling up to year 10.

Education Minister Sue Ellery said the government didn’t often mandate new subjects into the curriculum, but the issue of consent was important.

“There’s some high-profile cases that are getting attention right now, and it is important that everybody understands how to say no, how to make informed decisions, how to hear no, and how to hear people’s opinions about those decisions,” she said.

“It’s not a silver bullet by itself. It’s about giving young people extra information, it’s about empowering them to understand that their voice matters, and helping them to make those decisions when they’re confronted by them.”

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“Scammers are ruthlessly luring farmers and rural businesses with seemingly good online deals on tractors and other farm machinery through fake websites or bogus classifieds on legitimate platforms and publications.”

The ACCC data follows heightened awareness around information security, scams and cyberattacks after the personal data of 10 million Australians was stolen in last month’s Optus breach, leading to an investigation into the telco and a push from voters for tougher privacy laws.

Scammers employ sophisticated methods to make a fake business look convincing, such as listing ABNs on fake websites, providing a mock sale contract, answering questions about the machine, and offering a free trial period after a deposit is made into a fake escrow account.

Keogh urged farmers and small business owners to take extra steps to verify a business is legitimate before making an expensive purchase online, such as inspecting machinery in person or through live video.

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