Karl Stefanovic and his wife Jasmine are the latest big names to be spotted on-board James Packer’s luxury yacht in the south of France.
The 54-year-old Australian billionaire welcomed the Today co-host, 47, his shoe designer wife, 38, and their two-year-old daughter Harper for a day out on the $283 million boat in newly-emerged photos taken last week.
Former Australian cricket captain Michael Clarke, 41, also joined in on the fun, and was spotted with his rumored girlfriend, Jasmine’s younger sister Jade Yarbrough, 30.
The pair were understood to have been introduced by Stefanovic earlier this year, according to a report in The Daily Telegraph in July.
Earlier today Yarbrough, who runs an interior design company, uploaded an Instagram story with a photo of herself and Clarke strolling the streets of the French Riviera.
Meanwhile, Stefanovic is currently enjoying some time off-air, with co-host Allison Langdon being joined on the Channel 9 breakfast show by Nine reporter Charles Croucher.
Packer has been making headlines amid his lengthy stint overseas, which has seen him host a slew of big names on his yacht including actor and business partner Robert De Niro.
He’s also recently opened up about his new-found health kick which has seen him lose 33kg, telling The Weekend Australian in June that he was ready to start the “third act” of his life as he looks towards a return to Australia following a controversial period for Crown Casino.
“I’m roughly 130kg now and want to be back to 100kg by the end of 2022,” Packer told the publication.
Packer admitted that it “hasn’t been appropriate” to be in Australia amid years of scandals at Crown Casino – which he previously owned a major stake of – including staff getting jailed in China, and several inquiries which found the casino operator enabled money laundering and links to criminal gangs.
With the $8.9 billion sale of his company shares to US private equity firm Blackstone’s finalized on June 24, which saw Packer pocket an enormous $3.36 billion, he’s now ready to plan his return home.
“I want to swim with my kids at Bondi when we’re all in Sydney together next year and be 100kg,” he added.
On the love front, Packer has regularly been joined on his yacht by Danish model Josefine Hanning Jensen, who was recently identified by Confidential.
There’s no word yet on whether Packer and Jensen are romantically linked, or whether she will join him when he eventually heads back to Sydney.
Rugby fans in the stands at November’s Hong Kong Sevens will be allowed to drink, but not eat, with masks having to be worn between sips, an official said on Monday.
The Chinese finance hub’s famously rowdy rugby extravaganza will return after a three-year coronavirus pandemic hiatus in November in a much-needed boost for sports-starved residents.
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But in contrast to most of the world’s major sporting events, strict coronavirus measures will be in place including a Beijing Olympics-style “closed-loop” system for players.
Hong Kong’s sports commissioner Yeung Tak-keung on Monday outlined what fans can expect in the 40,000-seat stadium, which will be capped at 85 per cent capacity.
While drinking will be allowed in the stands, eating will be limited to specific “eating outlets” instead.
“For eating, you need to take off the mask, and we want to reduce and minimize the mask-off activities at the spectator stands,” Yeung told the city’s public radio station RTHK.
He also said officials would be keeping an eye out to ensure fans kept their mouths covered.
“We want the spectators to observe the rules themselves and, also, the Rugby Union will send people around to remind people to put their masks back on after drinking,” he added.
That could prove to be an unenviable task for stadium stewards. The Hong Kong Sevens is known as much for its raucous crowds as it is for rugby, especially in the South Stand — famous for its fancy dress, party atmosphere and all-day drinking, singing and dancing.
The Hong Kong tournament — the highlight of World Rugby’s Sevens circuit and drawing thousands of overseas visitors to the city every year before the pandemic — is scheduled to return from November 4-6.
But it is unlikely Hong Kong will see a large influx of tourists any time soon. International flights remain well below pre-pandemic levels and all arrivals must currently undergo a week of mandatory hotel quarantine.
Hong Kong’s new administration, which took office this month, has been saying it plans to reduce the quarantine period soon, bringing in a health code traffic light system similar to China’s.
But there has been no firm commitment or time frame yet for ending quarantine.
A detective has been found dead inside a police station in Sydney’s north-west.
The 46-year-old detective sergeant was on duty when he was found dead by colleagues inside a room at Ermington Police Station about 12:30pm on Monday.
NSW Police revealed initial inquiries suggest there are no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death.
The Daily Telegraph has reported the man died after a “shooting incident” and early investigations suggest the officer was shot with a police-issued firearm.
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Detectives have launched a critical incident investigation into the man’s death.
“The 46-year-old detective sergeant from a specialist command was on-duty at the time and initial inquiries suggest there are no suspicious circumstances,” a statement from NSW Police read.
“A critical incident investigation has been launched by detectives from the South West Metropolitan Region, who will prepare a report for the Coroner.
“The investigation will also be reviewed by the Professional Standards Command and independently oversighted by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC).”
Support services have been made available to the man’s colleagues, the officers who found him and those who were in the station at the time.
The death comes less than two years after another police officer took his own life at the Sydney Police Center in Surry Hills.
Oregon authorities are investigating four additional deaths potentially linked to last week’s scorching heat wave, bringing the total number of suspected hyperthermia deaths to 14.
The Oregon state medical examiner’s office said Monday the designation of heat-related death is preliminary and requires further investigation.
Multnomah county, which is home to Portland, recorded seven deaths suspected to be related to heat, the highest of any Oregon county. Portland and Seattle set records Sunday for most consecutive days of high temperatures.
In Portland, temperatures on Sunday rose above 95F (35C) for the seventh day in a row, a record for the city for consecutive days above that mark. Further north in Seattle, the temperature rose to 91F (32.8C) by early afternoon, marking a record six days above 90F (32.2C).
Temperatures near triple digits nearly all of last week in the Portland area, prompting officials to open emergency overnight shelters and cooling stations.
The National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning for both the Portland and Seattle regions lasting through late Sunday evening. Temperatures started to cool off on Monday as colder air from the Pacific blew in.
Climate crisis is fueling longer heat waves in the Pacific north-west, a region where week-long heat spells were historically rare, according to climate experts.
Residents and officials in the north-west have been trying to adjust to the likely reality of longer, hotter heat waves following last summer’s deadly “heat dome” weather phenomenon that prompted record temperatures and deaths.
About 800 people died in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia during that heat wave, which hit in late June and early July of 2021. The temperature reached an all-time high of 116F (46.7C) in Portland.
“In past cycles, households have tended to default for three reasons: unemployment; family breakdown or health issues,” Mott points out. But this cycle is likely to look very different, with unemployment unlikely to rise from near historical lows.
Instead, what worries Mott is the speed of the rate rises, and how quickly housing debt has built up in recent years.
The inflation/rates story is well known; Tuesday’s predicted 0.5 of a percentage point rise would take rates to 1.85 per cent, from just 0.35 per cent in May, and ANZ forecasts rates hitting 3.35 per cent by the end of the year.
Warning from history
But Mott also provides some fascinating historical context on how debt has built up, by looking at the past 10 housing cycles to study the potential impact of rising rates on credit growth.
What’s particularly striking is the magnitude of growth in mortgage commitments in the two years preceding these 10 housing downturns; the 70.1 per cent increase in housing commitments in the two years before this current downturn is the second-biggest jump seen since lending data was first captured during the 1970s, and only beaten by the 131.5 per cent rise in the lead-up to the 1988 -89 housing downturn.
So, while the RBA has argued that mortgage borrowers look, on average, to be in a good position, with about 70 per cent ahead on their mortgage payments, Mott says this is meaningless.
“It is akin to the old saying that, ‘if you have your head in the oven and feet in the freezer, you feel OK, on average’. In banking, it is the tail that matters, the last 5 per cent to 10 per cent of borrowers.”
And this cohort, he says, have overextended themselves to get into the market since June 2020.
Borrowers at maximum
Mott uses Commonwealth Bank’s estimate that up to 10 per cent of borrowers have taken out their maximum possible mortgage over the past three years (that is, these borrowers can withstand 2.5 per cent of rate rises, but will have no excess cash), and estimates a similar or slightly larger proportion of borrowers will have gone very close to their maximum.
While he concedes the analysis is rough, he estimates that, in total, borrowers who have somewhere between $200 billion and $250 billion in mortgages will face severe stress if the cash rate hits 3 per cent later this year, as expected.
“If interest rates continue to rise sharply, and stay around these levels, there will be a ‘fat tail’ of borrowers who will simply not be able to afford to meet their repayments,” Mott says.
“For the first time in several decades, we are likely to see a wave of fully employed borrowers falling into delinquency as they simply can’t make ends meet.”
This period of mortgage stress would be compounded by the fact that $800 billion of fixed-rate mortgages taken out in the past two years at rock-bottom rates will start to expire over the next 18 months, with borrowers facing steep rises in borrowing costs; on a $1 million mortgage, annual interest payments of $19,000 may shoot above $50,000.
How does this all play into the major banks’ bad debt provisions?
Collective provisions stand at a historically low $17.4 billion, but if rates got to 3 per cent and stay there for a few years, Mott sees a scenario (although this is not a forecast) where that might need to rise by $16.4 billion by 2023- 24.
By way of example, he forecasts CBA’s bad debt charge rising from two basis points in the 2022 financial year to 30 basis points in 2024.
It should be noted there’s a lot of water to go under the bridge here. Perhaps most notably, the RBA would presumably react to housing market pain and the economic hit caused by mortgage delinquencies by cutting rates.
And to be clear, even if Mott’s scenario came to pass, there is no systemic risk to the banking system from these rising credit impairments; the “unquestionably strong” regime implemented over the past decade underpins the strength of the banks’ balance sheets.
But the pain would be felt in bank profits, where Mott sees other areas of concern.
His historical data suggests housing commitments generally fall from 20 per cent to 35 per cent during a housing downturn. But because of the rapid growth in the past two years, he estimates a 35 per cent fall is in the frame this time around. That could take mortgage credit growth from about 6 per cent in 2022 to 2 per cent in 2024 (within an overall range of between zero and 3 per cent growth).
Mott also remains concerned about costs. About 60 per cent of the banks’ costs come from wages, which are clearly rising, with IT and property costs creeping higher too. ANZ and NAB abandoned their formal cost-cutting targets earlier this year, and Mott has raised his cost estimates for the banks again as inflation bites.
With the recent updates in iOS 15, the on-device Siri feature is surprisingly consistent at doing on-device tasks like setting timers, alarms, reminders, and calling people. In fact, placing calls is something that Siri has always been good at, and it does an equally good job for cellular calls or FaceTime calls. Now, with a new feature in iOS 16, Siri can end calls for you, as well, all hands-free. This is really useful if you talk on the iPhone speakers a lot, or if you use wireless earphones like AirPods or Beats.
(note: This is an iOS 16 feature and is currently only available as a public beta. With the iOS 16 public release slated in the fall, it will be available to every compatible iPhone across the globe.)
Once you have iOS 16 installed, go to Settings > Siri & Search > Siri Call Hangup and enable the “Siri Call Hangup” feature. Now, say the wordsHey Siri, hang upto put a call to bed. Of course, the caller will also hear those words, which may seem a bit odd to them, but you can decide for yourself whether that small awkwardness is worth it for the hands-free convenience and freedom.
If you don’t see this feature in Settings, it might be because your device isn’t supported. According to Apple, only the iPhone 11 and above are supported. But older iPhones can use this feature along with AirPods and Beats earphones that support the Hey Siri feature. Initially, this feature is also limited to these seven languages: German, English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Cantonese.
While you’re in the Siri settings, take a look at our guide on annoying Siri settings that you should change for some peace and quiet.
The soon-to-be Duchess of Sussex was left struggling on her wedding day after being “very rude” to someone who would have otherwise offered his assistance, an author has claimed.
The world got its first glimpse of Meghan Markle’s Givenchy gown from inside a vintage Rolls-Royce limousine as she traveled from Cliveden House Hotel to Windsor Castle with her mother Doria Ragland on the morning of May 19, 2018.
Created by British designer Clare Waight Keller and featuring an open bateau neckline, the gown was a marvel for its simplicity and elegance.
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The Duke and Duchess of Sussex on their wedding day. (Getty)
Meghan’s veil was more than five meters long and made from silk tulle organza.
Its length proved tricky for her as she attempted to exit the car and walk up the steps to St George’s Chapel.
Author Tom Bower says the bride had “problems” with the veil and train but was ignored by a nearby army officer.
“A military man told me an extraordinary story about Meghan when she arrived at the wedding at Windsor Castle on that glorious day in 2018,” Bower tells The Mirror’s Pod Save the Queen podcast.
“You see her get out of the car unaccompanied and she has problems with the train of her dress and the army officer doesn’t step forward to help her.
The veil was embroidered with the floral emblems of the Commonwealth countries. (AP)
“And the reason is, is the day before in the rehearsal, she had been very rude to him so he thought ‘well I’m not going to help you today’.
“I didn’t get the story from him but a fellow officer of his, who explained what had happened.”
READMORE:‘Princess Charlene’s royal reinvention should be applauded’
As she got out of the car Meghan’s veil appeared to have become twisted in the vehicle with an aid and her dress designer quickly coming to assist.
She was then helped up the stairs and into the chapel by her two pageboys who carried the five-metre-long train.
The veil featured a hand-embroidered trim of flowers in silk threads and organza, in the distinctive flora of each of the then-53 Commonwealth countries.
Meghan Markle arrives at St George’s Chapel for the royal wedding on May 19, 2018. (AP)
Her veil was held in place by Queen Mary’s diamond bandeau tiaraslow to the bride by the Queen.
The diamond bandeau was made in 1932, with the center brooch dating back to 1893.
Bower’s claim is one of many examples of Meghan’s behavior both before the wedding and after, included in his book Revenge.
He revisits the much-told story about an incident in the lead up to the royal wedding, when Meghan claims Kate made her cry during a bridesmaid dress fitting with Princess Charlotte.
He says it was Meghan who made the Duchess of Cambridge cry and not the other way around, as the Duchess of Sussex told Oprah.
Prince Harry married Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle on May 19, 2018. (Getty)
Bower says Kate was tired, having only recently given birth to Prince Louis, and was brought to tears by Meghan following a disagreement about tights and the length of the bridesmaids’ dresses.
Meghan was supported by her friend Jessica Mulroney, the mother of another bridesmaid, Ivy.
“Some would say that the Duchess of Sussex compared Ivy favorably against Charlotte,” Bower writes.
“Others were surprised by Meghan’s close attachment to Mulroney.”
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Detail proves Harry was destined to break royal tradition
Argentine football referee Dalma Cortadi appealed Monday for justice to be done after she was punched from behind by a male player who disagreed with her on-field ruling during a regional league match.
Cortadi, 30, laid criminal charges against her attacker, 34-year-old Cristian Tirone, who was arrested on the pitch after knocking down the referee after she yellow-carded him for a foul.
Cortadi was taken to hospital and spent several hours under observation after the attack, which was caught on video.
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Robbie Slater’s Premier League preview | 08:33
The footage shows Tirone seemingly aiming his fist at the back of Cortadi’s head, missing, and connecting with her neck. She falls to the ground, but gets up immediately as Tirone is pulled away by others on the field.
“I fell and I don’t remember anything else. When I got up I was dizzy and nauseous. Nothing like this has ever happened to me,” she told the Ole sports daily.
Cortadi was refereeing a third-tier match of the Tres Arroyos regional league between Independencia and Garmense, which was suspended after the attack.
She told Ole her gender was irrelevant to the matter.
“We want justice to be done and that this man pay for what he did. That is what is important,” she said.
The league denounced the attack and Garmense suspended Tirone for life.
Prime minister Anthony Albanese has released the proposed draft change to the constitution to recognize Indigenous Australians with a voice to parliament.
But what will Australians be asked at a referendum, and what do we still need to know about a voice?
What is constitutional recognition?
Recognizing Indigenous Australians in the constitution is an idea that has gone through many iterations.
In 2007, the former Liberal prime minister, John Howard, proposed a symbolic preamble to the constitution to recognize the special place of Indigenous Australians as the first inhabitants of Australia.
The Rudd and Gillard governments set up an expert panel that in January 2012 recommended something more substantive: replacing the race power in the constitution with a new provision prohibiting racially discriminatory legislation.
In 2017 the Uluru statement from the heart, agreed by 250 Indigenous leaders after six months of consultation, asked for three things: a constitutionally enshrined voice to parliament; a Makarrata commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations; and truth-telling.
What did Anthony Albanese propose?
On Saturday Albanese spoke at the Garma festival, revealing the proposed question for a referendum to recognize Indigenous Australians and the proposed alteration to the constitution.
The “starting point” is to add three sentences:
1. There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
2. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to parliament and the executive government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
3. The parliament shall, subject to this constitution, have power to make laws with respect to the composition, functions, powers and procedures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
At the referendum, Australians would then be asked:
Do you support an alteration to the constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?
What does the Coalition say?
The opposition spokesperson on Indigenous Australians, Julian Leeser, said he supported the move to enshrine a voice in the constitution but wanted to see the detail of the question and the proposed reforms.
“We as a Coalition have an open mind about the issue of the voice that the government is putting forward, and we are awaiting the detail,” he said.
“This is a step today on that road, but we still want to know how the voice itself is going to operate.”
The Country Liberal senator, Jacinta Price, a Warlpiri woman, has been more strident, arguing in her first speech the government is “yet to demonstrate how this proposed voice will deliver practical outcomes and unite, rather than drive a wedge further between, Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia”.
What detail already exists about the voice?
In July 2021, the Indigenous Voice Co-design Process, co-chaired Marcia Langton and Tom Calma, proposed voices at the local and regional, and the national level.
The national voice would be a “small body of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members tasked to advise the Australian parliament and government” to ensure they “have a direct say on any national laws, policies and programs affecting them”.
The Australian parliament and government would be “’forced’ to ask the national voice for advice on a defined and limited number of proposed laws and policies that overwhelmingly affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples” while there would be an “expectation” to consult it on laws that “significantly” affect them.
It proposed “a 24-member model including five members representing remote regions, and one member representing the significant number of Torres Strait Islanders living on the mainland”.
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The report also detailed consultation standards and transparency mechanisms for the voice.
Constitutional recognition and the design of the voice has also been the subject of two joint select committees in parliament, including one co-chaired by Leeser and Labor’s Patrick Dodson.
When will the referendum happen?
The Albanese government has committed to take the voice proposal to a referendum in this term of parliament, which could be held as early as mid to late 2023.
In April the Uluru statement leadership launched a campaign ahead of the federal election calling for the voice referendum to occur on 27 January 2024, the “day after Invasion day/Australia day”, or 27 May 2023.
The latter date is the 56th anniversary of the successful 1967 referendum, which allowedthe commonwealth to make laws for Indigenous people and count them in the census, and also the sixth anniversary of the Uluru statement.
What happens now?
Since the parliament would have the power to set the “composition, functions, powers and procedures” of the voice, the question now is: what level of detail will the Albanese government give about these before the referendum?
On Friday, Langton said the structure of the voice had been “investigated to the point where there is nothing more we can say.”
She told Radio National:
When people say they want more detail, all that tells me is they refuse to read our report – because all that detail is there … I see this demand for more detail as mischief-making and sowing confusion … We couldn’t have been more clear than we have been … What we’ve set out in our report for a voice is very straightforward and clear, and is the preferred option of most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”
On Sunday Albanese said the government won’t “go down the cul-de-sac of getting into every detail … because that is not a recipe for success”. On Monday, I told The Project “of course [voters] will know how it works” before the referendum.
The minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, indicated the body would be “representative” but more consultations would be needed about “the way in which a voice would be constituted”.
“I want to make sure that there is involvement and discussion not only with Indigenous leaders, not only across the parliament, but importantly with the Australian public, about what we should do going forward. It is not about the ‘what’ yet … it is about the ‘why’,” she told the ABC.
Former President Donald Trump injected some last-minute confusion ahead of Missouri’s Senate primary on Tuesday by endorsing “ERIC” in a Monday night statement.
Eric who? Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens? State Attorney General Eric Schmitt? Or maybe even little-known Eric McElroy?
“I trust the Great People of Missouri, on this one, to make up their own minds, much as they did when they gave me landslide victories in the 2016 and 2020 Elections, and I am therefore proud to announce that ERIC has my Complete and Full Endorsement!” Trump said in a statement after emphasizing voters “must send a MAGA Champion and True Warrior to the US Senate, someone who will fight for Border Security, Election Integrity, our Military and Great Veterans, together with having a powerful toughness on Crime and the Border .”
When reached for comment, Trump’s team did not provide any clarity, saying only that the “endorsement speaks for itself.”
Allies of Greitens and Schmitt separately argued that their candidate was the true recipient of the endorsement, or that the other guy wasn’t MAGA enough to win Trump’s approval.
One Trump adviser said the internal bickering demonstrated the former president’s enduring power and influence in the party.
“Instead of talking about Missouri, the Erics are debating what Trump’s endorsement means,” said the adviser. “Yes, it’s an epic troll.”
By not endorsing Greitens, though, Trump could have sealed his defeat.
“A Trump endorsement is a wild card Greitens needs. And if he doesn’t get it, it’s hard to see how he wins,” said John Lamping, a Republican and former state senator from Missouri.
Schmitt has led Greitens in most public polls, reaching about 30 percent support in the crowded GOP field, as Greitens tends to top out at 25 percent. Rep. Vicky Hartzler has statistically tied for second with Greitens in those surveys.
Greitens started to stumble after a withering assault of radio and TV ads from political committees financed by GOP establishment figures who savaged the former governor for his sex scandal, the domestic violence and a trade mission he took to China.
For months, Trump had considered endorsing Greitens but privately fretted to confidants that he was concerned about the sex scandal that helped drive Greitens from office in 2018. And he was troubled by allegations earlier this year from the former governor’s ex-wife that he physically abused her and their 3-year-old son. Greitens campaign manager Dylan Johnson at the time called the allegations “politically motivated” and “outright lies.”
Amid a recent lobbying campaign from Donald Trump Jr. and his fiancee Kimberly Guilfoyle — who co-chairs Greitens’ Senate campaign — some Trump-watchers started to believe the former president would give Greitens the nod.
But Schmitt also had Trump allies in his corner, namely former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was part of Trump’s defense team for his first impeachment trial.
Trump’s mood toward Schmitt’s campaign appeared to sour on Sunday when he grousing on his Truth Social website that Schmitt’s pollster, Jeff Roe, had released a survey of Missouri Republicans that failed to show Trump’s dominance in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary, particularly against Florida Gov . Ron DeSantis. Trump won Missouri by more than 15 percentage points in 2020.
The winner of Tuesday’s Republican primary will face either former US Marine Lucas Kunce or Trudy Busch Valentine, heiress to the Busch family beer fortune, in November.
Meanwhile, independent John Wood, a Republican and a former investigator for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, said Monday that he has submitted enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in the general election.
Marc Caputo is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
