It’s time we fixed consumer protection laws surrounding travel cancellations.
The past three years have been the ultimate stress test of our travel rules and regulations, as tens of thousands of trips have been ruined – first by government lockdowns and then, this winter, by labor shortages – and our consumer laws have been found wanting.
A Choice survey found one-quarter of all pandemic-related travel vouchers expired before they could be used.Credit:
It is not that consumer protections don’t exist, but multiple laws are operating in tandem, creating a seemingly impenetrable legal minefield for many travellers.
The overarching Australian Consumer Law sets out rights called consumer guarantees. These include your rights to a repair, replacement or refund, as well as compensation for damages and loss, and being able to cancel a faulty service.
The law also guarantees that services, including airfares and accommodation, must be provided “within a reasonable time”. So, if an airline cancels your flight and cannot put you on another within a reasonable period of time, you are probably entitled to a refund.
You might even be entitled to compensation for “consequential loss” – if you are out of pocket because you have missed bookings made at your destination.
However, a big problem is that there is no set definition of “reasonable time:” What if you think one hour is reasonable while the airline thinks six hours is reasonable?
The next problem is: There is no clear definition of what entitles you to compensation. Nowhere is it written down. Consumers are simply told it depends “on the individual circumstances” of their booking and cancellation.
So, we are expected to contact the airline (if we can get through on the phone, which can sometimes take hours), and then to know enough about consumer law to negotiate a refund from a large, sophisticated business.
Blizzard has announced when loot boxes will be phased out of Overwatch in anticipation of the new Battle Pass system.
The announcement was quietly mentioned in a blog post about the Overwatch Anniversary Remix Volume 3 event. The company confirmed that the loot boxes would “no longer be available for sale” come August 30th.
However, the post notes that you’ll still be able to earn standard loot boxes after the Remix event.
Overwatch 2 – Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase 2022
This Anniversary Remix event is Blizzard’s way of “cleaning house” of sorts, allowing players to earn (or buy) cosmetics before Overwatch 2 launches on October 4, 2022. This includes skins and cosmetics from previous Overwatch Challenge events.
Players will also be able to participate in “brawls” and relive certain game types such as past story missions such as Uprising and Storm Rising and past Summer Games modes like Lucioball.
Blizzard formally announced that loot boxes were going away in June, replacing them with a battle pass and in-game store. The company said they wanted to give players “a lot more control over how they interact with the game and acquire new content.”
Loot boxes have long been a controversial subject in the gaming industry. Games such as Overwatch, Call of Duty, and EA Sports franchises have been criticized for their monetization methods. Additionally, there have been links found between loot boxes and gambling.
Fortunately, it seems Blizzard wants to get away from those tactics and stick with a more fair method of dolling out skins and cosmetics (maybe). In fact, Blizzard confirmed that all unopened loot boxes in Overwatch will automatically open before the launch of Overwatch 2.
Overwatch 2 releases this year on October 4th and will completely replace the original Overwatch. Check out the major differences between the original game and the sequel.
David Matthews is a freelance writer specializing in consumer tech and gaming. He also strongly believes that sugar does not go in grits. Follow him on Twitter @packetstealer
The cricket world has been paying tribute to Rudi Koertzen, the South African umpire famous for his long, slow finger of fate upon giving a player out, after he died in a car crash aged 73.
A hugely popular umpire on the global circuit, Koertzen officiated in 331 international matches during an 18-year career – a record at the time and one that has since been broken by Aleem Dar of Pakistan – before his retirement in 2010.
News of Koertzen’s death broke on Tuesday morning when South Africa’s men emerged for the first morning of their four-day warmup match against England Lions in Canterbury wearing black armbands. “Koertzen’s status as a legend of the game will live on for ever,” Cricket South Africa said in a statement.
According to reports in South Africa, the former umpire was one of four people killed in a head-on collision while driving back from Cape Town to his home in Despatch, Eastern Cape, after a golf weekend with friends.
Dar, who like Koertzen is one of three ICC elite umpires to stand in more than 100 Tests, told ESPNCricinfo: “It is a very big loss foremost for his family and then for South Africa and cricket.
“I stood in so many games with him. He was not only very good as an umpire but also an excellent colleague, always very cooperative on the field and also always willing to help off the field. Because of the way he was, he was also well respected by players.”
Kumar Sangakkara, the great Sri Lankan batter, was among the former players who shared their thoughts, tweeting: “Saddened at the tragic loss of Rudi Koertzen. What a wonderful friend and umpire. Honest, forthright and loved the game. Shared many a beer at the bar talking cricket with him. RIP my friend.”
As well as his trademark slow raising of the finger that prolonged the agony for batters and added to the theatre, Koertzen was well known to supporters in the UK as the umpire who ceremoniously removed the bails at the end of the 2005 Ashes.
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Koertzen, who worked in the construction industry before becoming a full-time umpire in 1993, signed off from top-level officiating during the 2011 Indian Premier League but still stood in matches for his local club, Despatch CC.
A statement from the club read: “A legend in his own right passed away this morning and will definitely leave a great void in the cricket world. We want to express our heartfelt sympathy and empathy to Uncle Rudi Koertzen’s family and loved ones.”
The first sitting of the new federal parliament agreed against the backdrop of a world in turmoil, reinforcing both the limitations and possibilities of an Albanese government.
As Labor took charge, China was firing missiles off Taiwan while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was putting pressure on a global economy already cleaving under the stress of the pandemic.
The global village that emerged after the cold war is imploding in the face of populist nationalism, fueled by the inherent unfairness of the neoliberal project and forcing societies to seek refuge behind national borders that have never been weaker.
Despite their trappings of power, the levers at the hands of our leaders are limited. After four decades of methodically stripping back the powers of the state, so much of this geopolitical buffering is now outside the control of any individual government.
The Albanese government risks becoming a victim of this crossroads moment in history, when the gap between public expectation and the reality of what government can control has become a chasm.
The latest Essential Report shows that cost of living is emerging as a major challenge for voters, with nearly everyone saying it is concerning them.
But even more worrying will be findings which show most people think the government has the sort of control over the economy that the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, could only dream of.
In your view, how much influence do you think the federal government has on the following
The majority of respondents regard the economy as the product of a set of levers that our elected leaders choose to pull. But right now, debt, unemployment and workplace supply are all hostage to the pandemic; inflation and fuel prices are driven by a foreign war; While the easing of interest rates is the decision of the Reserve Bank of Australia, an independent body.
Compounding this mismatch between perception and reality is our appetite for the government to meet its spending commitments on aged care, early learning, women’s safety and the NDIS – while also reducing the budget deficit.
This crowded list of expectations flows from the “small target” strategy from before the election that further ties the government’s hands by committing to the Morrison government’s tax cuts that disproportionately favor the very rich.
As Jim Chalmers conceded in his budget update, there is not much the government can do but hunker down as inflation runs rampant, wages lag profits and interest rates rise – and pray the world stabilizes.
The one thing tit can control is the moral legitimacy it carries into these urgent global conversations after the previous government managed to have Australia all but shunned from polite global society.
Scott Morrison managed to unify the French, the post-Trump US administration, the Pacific and China with mutual disdain – a truly comprehensive lack of diplomacy.
It is already clear that Australia’s willingness to end its internal climate wars and legislate a more ambitious 2030 target (a floor, not a ceiling) has raised our stocks internationally with Pacific nations, the regions and global forums.
On first blush, the proposed voice to parliament which the prime minister articulated at the Garma festival in Arnhem Land last month might seem a sidebar to these global machinations.
But our response to the invitation of First Nations peoples to make peace, first issued five years ago in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, will frame our legitimacy as a credible nation-state every bit as much as our position on climate change.
This week’s report shows a growing majority of Australians ready to RSVP to the invitation embodied in the Uluru Statement from the Heart to enable a direct Indigenous voice to the federal parliament to address the “torment of our powerless”.
A voice to parliament is a body enshrined in the constitution that would enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to provide advice to the parliament on policies and projects that impact their lives. Do you support an alteration to the constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice?
These figures show the conditions to build a genuine consensus around a voice are strong, with majority support for a voice already registered by Labor, Coalition, Green and unaligned voters alike.
Labor has a strong record of confronting if not totally reconciling our history: Whitlam’s iconic hand back of land to Vincent Lingiari, Paul Keating’s Redfern truth-telling and Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generation.
The Coalition has not covered themselves with the same glory, weaponizing the landmark Mabo and Wik high court decisions to foment division, militarizing the response to Indigenous community breakdown. But most of their voters want them to be better.
The Greens are demanding more long-term ambition around the Treaty and truth-telling but, as with climate change, they must recognize that their voters expect them to support the immediate advances on the table.
This leaves self-appointed “No” campaigner Pauline Hanson to stand in the way of constitutional change. Finding a way to respond to her fear and confusion with the open heart that lies at the center of the Makarrata will help build the path to the necessary majority.
Contrary to the braying from some on the right, the voice is not about symbolism. It’s about the sort of nation we will be as the world begins to understand itself as a collection of nation-states again.
Ukraine has shown the value of strong nationhood in an uncertain world, the commitment of ordinary citizens to take up arms and hold back what seems to be an unrelenting tide. Taiwan, too; its citizens’ engagement with government is recognized as world-leading.
Australia’s role in the world will be tested in the years to come. Addressing the weight of history that sees our first peoples the most incarcerated on the planet will heal us in ways we haven’t even imagined.
A 26-year-old off-duty Monterey Park police officer shot and killed in Downey Monday afternoon has been identified.
Gardiel Solorio was hired as a police recruit earlier this year and had just started field training in late July.
Monterey Park Police Department Chief Kelly Gordon described the Bell Gardens native as being hardworking, dedicated and family oriented. He is survived by his parents, brothers, sisters and fiancé.
Solorio had a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Cal State LA, he strived to be a good role model for his nephews and wanted to make an impact on the community, Gordon said.
“Right now our main focus is making sure that the person who did this is brought to justice and the investigation is allowed to take place the way it needs to take place,” Gordon said during a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
Downey police responded to an LA Fitness in the 12000 block of Lakewood Boulevard around 3:30 pm to find a man down in the parking lot with gunshot wounds.
Solorio was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators are still trying to determine if there was a confrontation prior to the shooting, or an exchange of gunfire.
Overnight, a number of law enforcement agencies came together to honor the fallen officer during a procession to the Los Angeles County coroner’s office in Boyle Heights.
The Downey Police Department is leading the investigation but has not released any suspect information or possible motive for the shooting.
Police released no new details about the shooting during the news conference.
The shooting has community members concerned.
“It just makes my stomach hurt … My prayers are to the family,” LA Fitness member Christina Baca said.
Detectives are asking witnesses to come forward and call the Downey Police Department with any information.
Shoppers who have active, young kids to keep busy are excited over a new outdoor range from Kmart that features a climbing ramp and slide.
A photo series shared by blogger Oh So Busy Mum to Facebook showed mud kitchen, a climbing ramp and slide and hopscotch mat.
“Wow! Kmart Australia have some fantastic outdoor play items at the moment,” the photos were captioned.
The giant hopscotch mat retails for $16, while a wooden climbing frame sells for $39, an adjustable basketball hoop is going for $59 and 4 balance beams also sold for $16.
Parents were extremely excited about the range and what it would mean for their children.
One social media user commented: “My son has Autism Spectrum Disorder and we have spent a fortune on therapy equipment over the years.
“Most of these items are just as good and for such a better price.”
Another said: Go Kmart! It’s so good to see that they have more things to encourage kids to be and playing inside and outside instead of being still and sitting around playing video games/iPads/watching TV.”
Another added: “They have some great things. Now if it’d just stop raining long enough to dry out the backyard to be able to play outside.”
One eager shopper revealed they had already gotten their hands on some of the outdoor equipment.
The social media user said: “Have a heap of the outdoor equipment already put away for Xmas.
“Found a lot on sale in June so grabbed some. Lucky have room in the shed.”
The buzz around the range is growing, with Kmart announcing it has plans to expand the range.
A Kmart spokeswoman told news.com.au: “Over recent years, our Kmart outdoor range has continued to grow in popularity and we are currently expanding these ranges.
“In particular, we have seen huge demand for our kids development, soft play and wooden development products and we have a number of new exciting products in these ranges coming soon both in stores and online.”
Yeah, there have been official Attack on Titan video games, but they’ve never really managed to fully capture the speed and scale of the show, so one indie developer figured he’d try and make his own and release it for free. Which he has done, and then some.
Swammy details the story of his little project in this videoexplaining that what started as a fun little experiment in early 2021 blew-up after his girlfriend convinced him to post a short gameplay video on TikTok. An overwhelmingly positive response inspired Swammy to continue development on the demo, building on a foundation of swinging through the city by adding first some Titans to go up against, and then—after one disastrous mix-up—a co-op multiplayer mode.
By January 2022, the game was looking pretty good!
FREE ATTACK ON TITAN FAN GAME – TRAILER (Swammys AOT Fan Game)
As you can see, the main appeal of this game vs the official releases is the swinging system, which in Swammy’s game is a lot faster and freer. If you’ve played the recent spider-man games, for example, you’ll be pretty much at home here, especially if you play this game in third-person (it’s playable from either first or third-person perspectives).
By the middle of 2022 Swammy’s project had racked up millions of views on social media and hundreds of thousands of downloads. And now it’s blowing up all over again because he’s announced that the whole thing is getting a revamp as he tries to port it over to Unreal Engine 5:
If you want to play the game as it exists today, you most definitely can, with download links available here. Note that while there are versions available for both PC and Android, the PC edition is the one getting all the work, with the Android one now at its “final build”, after “constant harassment and threats” gave Swammy “zero reason to continue working on it, for my own mental health”.
It’s super easy to download and start playing—though there’s a video here if you need some help—and having been messing around with it this morning, I can understand a lot of the hype from fans. Sure, it’s pretty rough around the edges, and stuff like the interface is as barebones as it gets, but allowing for the fact this is a one-man job, and how fun the basic act of swinging around and stabbing things is, I think it’s really cool.
New South Wales and Victory are being told to brace for a multi-day rain event, as a cold front and low pressure system sweep across the nation.
It comes after an icy cold blast yesterday dusted parts of Western Australia with a rare flurry of snow.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has issued more than a dozen flood warnings across the two states in anticipation of the wet weather.
Sydney will be hit by more rain at the end of this week. (AP)
The BoM said “widespread rain and the chance of storms” will impact inland NSW from Thursday to Saturday.
“Increasing showers” are forecast for Sydney from Friday, with up to five mm of rain predicted to fall.
Moderate to major flood warnings are in place around Dubbo and Bourke.
“Moderate falls are possible about the western slopes, which may lead to renewed river rises,” the BoM wrote.
Meanwhile, Western Australia’s south-west corner has been dusted with snow.
A large pool of icy air from the Southern Ocean spread over south-western Australia causing temperatures to plummet. (BoM)A rare flurry of snow delighted hikers in Stirling Range National Park. (Frederick Schafsma)
Parts of the state have been shivering through it’s coldest weather of the year, due to a polar blast of air.
“Perth had its coldest day of 2022 to date yesterday with temps in the single-digit range for all but a few hours and a maximum of just 12.1C,” Weatherzone said.
The air driving the cold front is said to be “unusually cold”.
‘River City’ wakes to white-out as fog swallows city
A dispute over Rudy Giuliani’s grand jury testimony focused on whether he could travel to Georgia.
Giuliani said a medical procedure prevented him from flying, but prosecutors cited travel receipts.
Trump’s personal lawyer denied buying airplane tickets and professed ignorance about the travel purchases.
Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday denied purchasing plane tickets that local prosecutors in Georgia had cited in their bid to get the former New York City mayor’s testimony before a grand jury investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to reverse the state’s 2020 election results.
A week before his scheduled appearance before that grand jury, Giuliani said a recent medical procedure prevented him from traveling by plane and necessitated a delay of his testimony.
But, in a new court filing, local prosecutors in the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said they had obtained records showing that Giuliani paid in cash for multiple airline tickets — “including tickets to Rome, Italy, and Zurich, Switzerland” — for flights between July 22 and July 29.
In a court filing Tuesday, Giuliani’s lawyers said he had not traveled by plane to any location following his recent “surgical procedure.”
“First, and foremost, conspicuously absent from the state’s pleading is the fact that no such travel ever occurred,” wrote Giuliani’s lawyer William Thomas Jr. “Secondly, Mr. Giuliani never purchased airline tickets in case, or otherwise.”
Thomas wrote that Giuliani had been invited to attend a conference overseas and said that, “presumably,” the event organizers or some other third-party could have purchased tickets on his behalf — “but that is unknown to Mr. Giuliani or his counsel. “
During his travel overseas, Giuliani was scheduled to give a speech in Rome, his lawyer added. But Giuliani, “based solely on his health, canceled his speech in Rome,” Thomas wrote in the court filing.
“Mr. Giuliani has no knowledge of anyone else purchasing tickets for him to travel to Rome, but in any event he did not go.”
The filing came just hours before a court hearing Tuesday — the same day Giuliani was set to appear before the grand jury — on his request to delay his testimony. It marked just the latest instance of Giuliani professing to lack knowledge about the planning and funding of his international travel.
Last week, the New York Times reported that the company of Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash covered tens of thousands of dollars of Giuliani’s travel expenses in the summer of 2019, a period federal investigators scrutinized during a criminal inquiry into his ties to Ukraine. The nearly three-year inquiry, which examined whether Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials, is unlikely to result in charges, the Times reported.
While that investigation appears to be fading away, Giuliani is coming under intensifying scrutiny from the Fulton County district attorney’s office. Giuliani has emerged as a key figure in that inquiry, in which local prosecutors are examining a now infamous phone call Trump made to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, urging him to “find” enough votes to reverse his loss to then-President- elect Joe Biden.
Giuliani was among the president’s allies who participated in a scheme to create so-called alternate slates of pro-Trump voters in key battleground states the former president lost in 2020, including Georgia. Court filings have shown that Willis’ office informed all 16 pro-Trump voters in Georgia that they could face charges in connection with the criminal investigation.
Federal prosecutors have also been examining Giuliani’s role in creating alternate slates of pro-Trump voters, and the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has highlighted his role spreading false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
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Whazzaaaaaaa, we’re back with another round of newsy goodness on this fine Tuesday. It’s a pretty wild news day today, with a bunch of startup high-jinx. Check out the site for all of it, of course, but we’ve selected some of the stories that piqued our attention today. Let’s gooooo! — Christina and Haje
The TechCrunch Top 3
Say it, forget it, post it, regret it: WhatsApp was at the top of the news food chain today with two stories. The first is something users seem very excited about — more time to delete a message. In fact, users now have 60 hours to delete a message they didn’t like or didn’t mean to send. This is an extension from 1 hour, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds, Ivan reports. Excuse us while we go look at something…
New feature alert: Now that we got that pesky deleting thing out of the way, WhatsApp also unveiled new privacy options for users that includes screenshot blocking and stealth mode, taylor writes. The screenshot blocking option, which is a once-viewed message, reads very much like Inspector Gadget’s self-destructing message, minus the explosion.
gone phishing: Armenian startup EasyDMARC took in $2.3 million to tackle the billion-dollar phishing industry that has reared its ugly head since strangers have been able to get people to click on links. Mike reports that the company has bundled up the DMARC protocol, or ‘Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance’ into something easier for businesses to use.
Startups and VCs
Watching startups play extreme hardball is our kind of spectator sport. In this case, only a year after going public, app growth and monetization agency AppLovin submitted an unsolicited proposal today to buy the game engine Unity in a deal worth $20 billion. But there’s a catch: Unity would have to terminate its recent deal to merge with ironSource, an AppLovin competitor, Amanda reports.
While plenty of crypto investors have scaled back their breakneck pace of startup investing as they wait for more clarity on the macro environment, Luke reports that there have never been more firms and more money dedicated to blockchain venture investing. Portal Ventures closes on $35 million debut fund to feed the beast.
RealOpen’s latest product, RealScore, is a crypto credit scoring system for buyers and sellers of luxury real estate, Anita reports. Headed up by ‘Selling Sunset’ star Christine Quinn, the brokerage primarily serves high-net-worth clients who want to purchase property using cryptocurrency.
More more more more more more more:
Yeah, but what do you really do: Paul reports that Truework, which helps lenders verify borrowers’ income and employment, raises $50 million.
Canoo is up a creek, paddling like mad: Pre-revenue EV startup Canoo shows it is burning cash like there’s no tomorrow, in a race to hit a $1 billion EV sales goal, Rebecca reports.
I didn’t like that one: Returning items from whence they came can be a royal PITA. ReturnLogic bags new money to make that less nightmarish, Christina writes.
First, India. Next, the world!: Accel led a $2.6 million investment into Produze on its mission to help agri-producers in India export globally, reports jagmeet.
Fifty dune buggies, coming up!: Abigail caused us to get real excited: It looks like the Meyers Manx dune buggy is coming back, this time as an EV.
Well that’ll cause a hangover: VC-backed low-alcohol aperitif startup Haus is up for sale after Series A falls through, writes Natasha M.
To optimize for growth, study your down-funnel metrics
Image Credits: erhui1979 (opens in a new window) /Getty Images
Early-stage startups put a lot of time and energy into marketing and acquisition: These levers direct new customers into the top of your sales funnel to drive growth. And investors love growth.
But in August 2022, they like revenue even better, which is why Jonathan Martinez says companies should turn their attention to down-funnel metrics.
“Varying messaging by user cohort is your largest lever for moving users through the funnel,” writes Martinez in his latest TC+ post. “It’s imperative to slice users into their respective buckets, because it opens the opportunity for unique targeting and messaging.”
(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
Big Tech Inc.
India game firms are not accepting the “game over” vibe they are getting from the country’s prime minister if the ban on Battlegrounds Mobile India continues. Some firms are decrying the ban as an “unfortunate event” and said such “arbitrary decisions run counter to established principles and will deny opportunities to an entire generation of youth in India,” manish reports.
We have a gaggle of Google news today, starting with a fun story from Ivan about the search engine giant launching a website to help children practice reading. That is followed by talk of the company’s new campaign aimed at pressing Apple into adopting Rich Communication Service, or RCS, which is a protocol designed to improve messaging between Android and iOS users, Aisha writes.
Brian has been following the movement of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 as it moved through both houses of Congress and to President Biden for his signature. He explains what this new bill, focused on US semiconductor protection, entails.
You can’t dance here: We were shocked to find out that TikTok’s parent, ByteDance, bought a hospital group in China, Rita writes. The company was already getting into healthcare, but going from acquiring a company that provides healthcare to owning hospitals is a big leap, or tour jeté, if you will.
But you can dance here: Spotify has a pair of new features, with Aisha writing about updates to the home screen that include personalized discovery feeds for both music and podcasts. Meanwhile, Ivan reports on the company’s Soundtrap app for musicians, unveiling live collaboration and autosave features.
Streaming while dancing: Looks like Walmart is getting into streaming services again, Lauren writes.
Don’t dance with that cookie: The European Union is going after some entities it says have largely ignored warnings to bring their cookie consent banners into compliance, Natasha L reports.
ICYMI: Here are some of yesterday’s big stories that spilled over into today: Kyle and Natasha M write about Groupon cutting over 500 staff and sarah‘s report on Snapchat’s new “Family Center” feature.
