History shows why Penrith coach Ivan Cleary can be confident about son Nathan returning for the NRL finals in top gear despite being suspended until the end of the regular season.
Key points:
Penrith’s Nathan Cleary has accepted a five-week suspension for his tackle on Parramatta’s Dylan Brown
Despite the defending premiers missing both Cleary and Jarome Luai until the finals, coach Ivan Cleary is still confident his side can hit the play-offs in top gear
The Panthers take on the ninth-placed Raiders on Saturday night
Cleary was hit with a five-game ban for a spear tackle on Parramatta’s Dylan Brown. He will be sidelined until week one of the finals.
It means the halfback will have only played one full game — a July 23 win over Cronulla — between State of Origin III and the Panthers’ first finals appearance.
But his father said on Monday he would hit the ground running when he returned from his lengthy suspension.
“There has been enough experience for Nathan out of the last few years, probably starting in 2018,” Cleary said.
“He missed eight weeks, came back and had a couple of good games and he made his Origin debut.
“He has always come back from time out pretty much firing, so I think he will be fine.”
Halves partner Jarome Luai remains sidelined with a knee injury for a similar time frame. However, Cleary was confident the duo would pick up where they left off.
“They’ve played together for six years, so that’s a help, and they’ll be training together once Romie (Luai) is up and about.
“I feel like that training should get us in a good enough position for those guys to click back together.”
Despite the lengthy ban, the halfback will join the rest of the squad on a mid-season camp to Kiama on the NSW South Coast before Saturday’s trip to Canberra.
Cleary was sent off for the first time in his career following an ugly spear tackle. (Getty Images: Joshua Davis)
Cleary said the Panthers had considered fighting the severity of his son’s grade-three charge but chose not to, given what was at stake.
If the NRL judiciary had upheld the grading, Cleary would have missed the first week of the finals campaign as well as the Panthers’ remaining five regular-season games.
“I definitely thought we had a case there but in the end the risk was too high for him to lose another week,” said Cleary, whose side finished the season with games against Canberra, Melbourne, South Sydney, the Warriors and North Queensland.
The challenge for the Panthers is now to wrap up a minor premiership with a relatively inexperienced halves pairing.
Sean O’Sullivan will be partnered with either utility Jaeman Salmon or two-game rookie Kurt Falls, although Cleary would not be drawn on who would get the nod to play the Raiders.
Cleary was unable to confirm if center Stephen Crichton would be back after suffering a laceration to his ear in the win over the Sharks.
New Zealand’s borders fully reopened to visitors from around the world on Monday, for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic closed them in March 2020.
Key points:
New Zealand will welcome all international travelers from July 31
Jacinda Arden says the final stages included welcoming back those on student visas and letting cruise ships and foreign yachts dock in the country
The country imposed some of the world’s strictest border controls when COVID-19 first hit
The country started reopening in February, first for New Zealanders returning home, and restrictions have progressively eased.
The process of reopening the borders ended last night with visitors who need visas and those on student visas now also allowed to return.
New Zealand is now also letting cruise ships and foreign recreational yachts dock at its ports.
International students were a significant contributor to New Zealand’s economy and educational providers are hoping the reopening of the borders will again provide a boost to schools and universities around the country.
Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.
New Zealand’s border opening plan revealed by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday during a speech at the China Business Summit in Auckland that the final staged opening of the borders had been an enormous moment.
“It’s been a staged and cautious process on our part since February as we, alongside the rest of the world, continue to manage a very live global pandemic, while keeping our people safe.”
Opening provides relief for Australia
Pre-COVID, Australia and New Zealand citizens had enjoyed free movement between the two countries since the 1920s.
But for the past two years, New Zealand imposed some of the world’s strictest border controls, which led to headaches for the hundreds of thousands of NZ citizens living in Australia.
As of mid-2018, there were an estimated 568,0000 New Zealand-born people residing in Australia — representing the fourth-largest migrant community.
Economically, tourism was New Zealand’s largest export industry and a huge proportion of their tourists were Australians before the pandemic hit.
Some four in 10 visitors to NZ are from Australia.(Pixabay: Michelle Rapon)
Almost one in 10 New Zealanders were directly employed in tourism and there were 1.5 million arrivals from Australia — accounting for 40 per cent of international visitors to NZ in 2019 — who spent some $NZ2.7 billion ($2.5 billion).
And it went both ways — New Zealanders were the second largest market for visitor arrivals into Australia in 2019.
New Zealand has been slowly reopening, first to Australians in March and then to tourists from the US, Britain and more than 50 other countries in May.
Senate Democrats are aiming to pass a major spending bill this week that includes funding for climate change, health care and tax increases on corporations.
The deal was unexpectedly struck last week by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., and a key centrist, Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., giving Democrats optimism that they’ll have a robust agenda to run on in competitive races ahead of the midterm elections this fall.
While Manchin appeared on five Sunday programs to defend the deal and call for its passage, another centrist who holds a swing vote in the 50-50 Senate, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., whom Democrats consider a difficult negotiator, has been quiet about whether she’d vote for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, released Wednesday.
Sinema’s vote could make or break the bill. Democrats, with no hope of winning Republican support, need every member of their caucus to be present and voting — not guaranteed given recent absences of senators infected with Covid — for it to clear the Senate.
A spokesperson for Sinema said Sunday she had no comment on the bill, adding that “she’s reviewing text and will need to see what comes out of the parliamentarian process,” referring to the Senate official who determines whether bills comply with the chamber’s strict budget rules .
Without her support, it’s still unclear if Senate Democrats will be able to pass it this week.
Democrats are also hoping to pass the PACT Act to extend medical care to veterans exposed to toxic burn pits during their service, a bipartisan measure that Senate Republicans blocked last week.
Party leaders were aiming to schedule another vote on that legislation for Monday but it could be delayed, leaving less time for the filibuster-proof bill. Republicans tanked the proposal amid anger that Democrats decided to proceed with the climate and tax legislation, which they had thought was dead due to Manchin’s earlier resistance.
Schumer’s office has said they intend to pass the legislation before the chamber’s August recess. But they haven’t shut the door to delay it if they need to be.
Why is Sinema undecided?
Sinema has been amenable to most provisions in the Democrats’ spending bill, which are consistent with a White House framework released Oct. 2021 that she endorsed. The big exception is the limitation of the carried interest tax break, which benefits investment managers.
Last year, Sinema made clear to Democratic leaders she opposed closing what many in her party called the “carried interest loophole,” according to multiple sources familiar with the negotiations. The provision was dropped from the House-passed Build Back Better Act, which stalled indefinitely in the Senate earlier this year. But Manchin favors ending the tax break, and it was re-added to the new bill.
Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., who is being encouraged by some Democrats to challenge Sinema in 2024, said lawmakers should vote for the bill.
“Blocking this bill that will reduce inflation and make investments in reducing climate change to protect a loophole for the ultra wealthy would not be prudent,” Gallego told NBC News.
On NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” Manchin defended the legislation and said he hopes Sinema will support it.
“Kyrsten Sinema’s a friend of mine, and we work very close together,” he said. “She has a tremendous amount of input in this piece of legislation. And I would like to think she would be favorable towards it, but I respect her decision. Ella she’ll make her own decision based on the contents.
House Democrats in tough races are excited about passing the bill — if it gets through the Senate.
“I anticipate being being very supportive of it,” Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., told NBC News in an interview Saturday at Huntington Beach Pier. “Medicare should be able to negotiate prices… The climate part of it, I think, is something that really will set our economy up to compete with countries like China in the future.”
Even Porter’s Republican challenger, Scott Baugh, said he’s “interested” in the drug pricing provisions, some of which are broadly popular in surveys, and has to “fully evaluate” them before taking a position. But he opposes the rest of the bill.
“They’re doubling down on a failed policy,” he said in an interview at his campaign office in Newport Beach. “You can’t spend more money and increase taxes and solve the problem.”
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., a conservative fiscal staunch, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “it really looks to me like Joe Manchin has been taken to the cleaners.”
“The corporate tax increase is going to slow down growth, probably exacerbate a recession that we’re probably already in,” Toomey said.
Manchin, however, sounded committed to the legislation and defended the 15% corporate minimum tax, a centerpiece of the new revenues, and rejected Republican criticisms of it.
“You would at least think that they would be paying at least 15%. Most businesses and all corporations that I know pay 21%. So that’s not a tax increase. It’s closing a loophole,” he said Sunday. “The last two years have been massive, record profits.
“And with that being said, it’s been the lowest investment of capital expenditure that we’ve ever had. So it’s not the taxes that’s driving this.”
“Phil Ruthven had a great vision for the future of Australian business based on facts and research,” he said. “We will miss his advice and counsel from him.”
Ruthven was ubiquitous in the 1980s, when for a time he was Australia’s highest-paid professional speaker, in part because he used his grasp of statistics and macroeconomic trends to customize every address.
When Packer had $805 million to play with after selling his television interests to Alan Bond in 1987, it was to Ruthven and IBISWorld that he went for advice.
The forecaster was instrumental in Packer’s decision to expand his pastoral holdings with an emphasis on cotton, cattle and wool, to the extent he became Australia’s second-largest landowner.
“Agriculture is going through a fascinating watershed which is going to see that industry be reborn,” Ruthven told The Australian Financial Review reporter Martin Peers at the time.
“It’s one of the most underrated industries in Australia.”
Asset sales from Packer’s Consolidated Pastoral ended up helping heir James survive the global credit crunch of 2009.
Born and raised in Sydney’s Baulkham Hills, Ruthven moved to Melbourne in the late 1960s.
The first decade of his career was spent in the food industry, but it was while running an Edgells’ factory in 1967 that Ruthven went on a Rotary study exchange to the US which inspired him to change course.
Forecasting demand
He visited a “war room”, a concrete bunker beneath an airport tarmac in Oklahoma, and was amazed by the amount of nonsense information being sourced to aid the American cause in Vietnam.
“It was like something out of Dr Strangelove, it blew my mind,” Ruthven told The Age in 2014.
“I thought, one day, I want to start a company that is going to be the most information-intensive company ever seen.”
Ruthven went back to Edgells and tracked down the company’s entire production records back to 1926. Plotting out historical trends and cycles on graph paper, he was soon forecasting demand for Edgells’ 220 product lines better than the marketing department.
When Ruthven took his soothsaying ability and left Edgells to form IBISWorld, the concept of specialist market research companies was new.
But it grew in step with the professionalisation of corporate life in Australia, and overseas where IBISWorld would eventually have three satellite offices and source most of its revenue, which by 2020-21 was nearly $100 million a year.
Thousands of businesses came to trust Ruthven’s ability to pick trends early.
He often claimed his best call was one made in the mid-1980s, when he predicted that families would increasingly pay outsiders to do their childcare, cooking and lawnmowing for them.
“The business world was laughing at me,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald 20 years later, by which time Australia’s outsourced household services market was well on its way to being the $510 billion-a-year behemoth it is now.
Ruthven acted like the futurist he was. In 1987, the Financial Review reported he had organized one of Australia’s first satellite teleconferences, providing post-budget analysis to business in remote WA mining towns.
rules for success
Ruthven passed executive control of IBISWorld to his children in 2001, and stepped down as chairman in 2015.
In 2014 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia, in recognition of his service to business and the community. He never stopped speaking for free at Rotary events, in gratitude for that life-changing trip in 1967.
Ruthven devoted much of his later life to The Ruthven Institute, which helped clients refine their business strategy based on “12 rules for business success” which he patented.
“Phil had a deep understanding of what Australian businesses could do better. We scrutinized his ‘rules’ from him and found he had distilled down core strategy lessons fantastically well, ”said Andre Sammartino, an associate professor at University of Melbourne who helped established the institute.
“He wanted the next generation of business leaders to get wiser, and we hope we can achieve this legacy.”
Ruthven is survived by three sons from his former wife, Robyn (deceased) – Shane, Justin and Kerryn, their partners and eight grandchildren, as well as his long-term partner, Deborah Light, former editor of the Financial Review.
Versatile Processing Unit for deep learning and AI inference
Intel is adding VPU to Meteor Lake and newer.
A new commit to Linux VPU driver today confirms that the company has plans to introduce a new processing unit into consumer 14th Gen Core processors, a Versatile Processing Unit.
The VPU driver is included into the Linux Direct Rendering Manager (DRM), the same way their graphics driver is integrated. The VPU appears 6 years after Intel acquired a company called Movidius, which has been developing their own VPUs. It is not entirely clear if and how Intel plans to incorporate Movidius designs into Meteor Lake, it could be a full-blown SoC-like integration or just a copy of architecture bits needed for Meteor Lake. Obviously after so many years, VPU design should be much more complex.
The confirmation on VPU comes from Kerner.org patches, where the following description is added:
Intel VPU for Meteor Lake, Source: kernel.org
Thus, Intel confirms the new VPU has five components, including CPU to VPU integration unit, memory management, RISC controller, network on chip and the most important part, the Neural Compute Subsystem (NCS) doing the actual work. This VPU unit could be considered Intel’s alternative to NVIDIA’s Tensor Cores, a dedicated chip that is heavily focused on AI algorithms.
Intel Meteor Lake is now officially coming next year, eventually it should become available for mobile and desktop platforms packed with new hybrid architecture featuring Redwood Cove and Crestmont CPU cores and Intel’s newest Xe-LPG graphics architecture.
Celebrity chef Nigella Lawson ‘will only appear in half’ of the episodes on Channel Seven’s rebooted My Kitchen Rules despite ‘huge’ pay day
By Marta Jary For Daily Mail Australia
Published: | Updated:
My Kitchen Rules is returning to Channel Seven on Sunday, August 7, and will feature new judge Nigella Lawson alongside old favorite Manu Feildel.
But the British celebrity chef will only appear in half of the episodes, a new report has claimed.
On Monday, The Australian reported that Nigella, 62, ‘will appear only for the first round of the show with Manu Feildel.’
MKR is returning to Channel Seven on Sunday, August 7, and will feature new judge Nigella Lawson (pictured) alongside old favorite Manu Feildel. But the British celebrity chef will only appear in half of the episodes, a new report has claimed
Chef Matt Preston will then replace her for the second round, before Colin Fassnidge and Curtis Stone man the show’s finals.
Nigella’s scant appearance comes despite her ‘reputedly huge fee’ the paper reports.
Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Channel Seven for comment.
On Monday, The Australian reported that Nigella, 62, ‘will appear only for the first round of the show with Manu Feildel.’ Manu is pictured left
Global home-cooking sensation Nigella is replacing disgraced Pete Evans, who was axed from the Seven network in 2020 amidst the show’s falling ratings in its then eleventh year of production.
Nigella has previously spoken about her excitement about starring on the series.
‘When you think about the food you love, it’s nearly always home cooking,’ she said.
The cooking show was previously hosted by Pete Evans, (left), Feildel (right) and Colin Fassnidge (centre)
‘I’m a home cook and it’s the food that I want to eat. I’ve eaten 17,000 kilometers to find Australia’s best home cooks.’
The best-selling author will travel around the country with Manu as they criticize a new batch of passionate home cooks.
‘As MKR judges we make the perfect team, with our years of experience in professional and home kitchens respectively,’ Manu said.
‘And as lovers of delicious food and a fabulous dinner party, I can promise you we’re also going to have a lot of fun!’
Nigella’s scant appearance comes despite her ‘reputedly huge fee’ the paper reports
Badminton: It is Malaysian who have won the second mixed doubles game in the mixed team event, to level that 1-1 with England. That goes to a third and deciding game now.
women’s hockey: Scotland have eased up a bit against Kenyanonly adding one goal in the second quarter, so they lead 7-0 at the halfway point.
Gold in men’s 81kg weightlifting for England’s Chris Murray!
Men’s 81kg weightlifting: England‘s Chris Murray set a Commonwealth Games record of a combined 326kg to go into first place, then Kyle Bruce of Australia tried to beat it. It wasn’t the cleanest of lifts, and the judges wanted a replay – then it failed. Bruce appealed – unsuccessfully.
Nicolas Vachon of Canada then had the last lift – he put 7kg on the bar, when he only needed 6kg for gold. An inexplicable decision. He dropped the bar behind him after a wonderful lift, so it is no lift.
Gold for England! Silver for Australia! Bronze for Canada! Confusion for me!
England’s Chris Murray celebrates after winning the final and setting a Commonwealth Games record. Photograph: Jason Cairnduff/Reuters
(I also feel like Team England may have been casting sprays on my weightlifting expertise on Twitter.)
Anyone else have someone with them who is suddenly an expert in weightlifting!?
Men’s 81kg weightlifting: This contest has got to the sharp end and in contention for the medals are Chris Murray of England, Kyle Bruce Australia, Ajay Singh of India and Nicolas Vachon of Canada. Singh is ahead on 319, Murray and Bruce are tied on 318.
women’s hockey: Scotland are leading Kenyan 6-0 at the end of the first quarter. The Kenyans have previously been beaten 16-0 by New Zealand and 8-0 by Australia at these games, so you fear for them here again.
Badminton: I’m going to confess I’m not a Badminton expert, but I do know that England have just won the opening game in the mixed doubles in the semi-final of the mixed team event against Malaysian. Marcus Ellis and Lauren Smith beat Chan Peng Soon and Cheah Yee See 21-12. They’ve started the second game now.
women’s hockey: Earlier in Pool A, wales‘ women won their first match of the group stages, with a 4-0 win over Ghana.
If you need a reminder of how it works, there are two pools of five teams in a round-robin format. The top two in each pool go through to semi-finals which are on Friday.
The Pool A standings are currently England and India tied on six points each after two matches, Canada and wales both have three points, but Wales have played a match more than the Canadians. Canada play Ghana tomorrow at 11am, while England and India will play at 2pm in a match likely to decide who wins the group.
Women’s hockey: Scotland are playing Kenyan and we are currently having a video referee referral. Scotland were already leading 1-0, when a goalbound shot was cleared off the line, but with the wrong side of the stick. The resulting penalty stroke has been converted, so Scotland now lead 2-0. And in fact Jennifer Eadie has just immediately made it 3-0 while I was typing that. There are nine minutes remaining in the first quarter.
Good morning, it is Martin Belam here. A curious beast, the Commonwealth Games, but one thing you can’t complain about is the sheer volume of sport going on. Give me a moment while I set up my 1,057 different iPlayer streams.
Thanks for joining me for the early stint. The good news for you is that Martin Belam is lined up to take you through the coming hours.
Peaty: “I didn’t even do a warm up, I wasn’t that bothered. I only had two hours sleep.
“I am going to have a strong winter, I haven’t had one in two years. I need to reset.
“People don’t appreciate it, why would they? Going through a five-year period as Olympic champion is pressure.”
Swimming: Peaty and Houlie finish in a dead heat. He looked in reasonable nick over the shorter difference but still plenty to do.
England’s Adam Peaty and South Africa’s Michael Houlie react after qualifying in their 50m breaststroke heat. Photograph: Tim Goode/PA
Swimming: Here comes the men’s 50m breaststroke heats. James Wilby, the 100m champion, takes second in the fourth heat. Australia’s Grayson Bell speeds through in first.
Surely the loser should buy the dog…
Men’s bowls: Wales and England shake hands. England looked in fine fettle and the Welsh could not keep up, resulting in a 15-5 victory.
A Wales bowler (right) in action during the match. Photograph: Nathan Stirk/Getty Images
Some athletics news…
Men’s bowls: It is 14-5 to England against Wales in the treble semi-final. The standard is incredibly high and the English seem to be edging every end at the moment to extend their lead. We are 15 ends down, can Wales get back into this?
table tennis: Australia have seen off Wales in the women’s team bronze match opener 11-5 11-5 11-8.
Wales’ Anna Hursey in action during her match against Australia’s Yangzi Lu. Photograph: Jason Cairnduff/Reuters
Beach volleyball: There might not be a beach in Birmingham but there will be some sand at Smithfield today and the teams will have the weather for it. It’ll be like the Copacabana eats 7pm.
Men’s bowls: It is 10-5 to England against Wales in the triples after 12 ends in their semi-final.
Swimming: Adam Peaty is back in the pool in the 50m breaststroke heats at 10.45am or so. He finished fourth in the 100m final yesterday so he will be hoping to do better today.
Men’s bowls: Tomlinson nails it with the final roll of the 10th end to earn three points for Wales to move the score on to 8-5. It’s a tense one.
Cycling: Some reaction to yesterday’s crash at VeloPark.
Men’s bowls: England are 7-2 up on Wales after eight ends in their treble semi-final. It is a pretty tight contest at Victoria Park in the sunshine.
Preamble
It is another action-packed day in Birmingham. We will have everything from hockey to weightlifting with a little bit of gymnastics thrown in for good measure.
There are medals up for grabs in all sorts of events, including bowls and cycling. Hopefully it will be a calmer day on the track after the dramatic crash which saw Matt Walls going over the side and into the crowd during a race, resulting in the curtailing of the session. Thankfully, he and everyone else seem to be all right.
Going into the evening we will have some pretty exciting swimming on our hands. We start with the 100m men’s freestyle final and conclude with the 4x200m relay of the same discipline, with plenty packed in between.
It should be another cracking day aided by some decent weather to boot in Birmingham.
While fears of foot-and-mouth disease loom over the Ekka, organizers and breeders say “very comprehensive” plans are in place to limit risk.
Cattle began arriving yesterday for the stud beef competition, the largest annual showing of stud beef in the southern hemisphere.
Around 1,300 head of cattle are expected to attend the show, which runs from August 6 to 14.
Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association of Queensland (RNA) chief executive Brendan Christou said organizers were working closely with authorities.
The threat of FMD has not stopped many from bringing cattle to the show.(ABC News: Elizabeth Cramsie )
“Biosecurity Queensland will be here, onsite, throughout the show and we have our own vet committee that looks at all of those things as well,” he said.
Mr Christou said there were a range of measures being taken, including ensuring animals were healthy before their arrival, separation of breeds and use of foot baths.
“It is very comprehensive,” he said.
‘Very minimal risk’
However, for all the precautions, some breeders are still unwilling to take the risk.
Breeder Bronwyn Betts will be missing her first Ekka in more than a decade
“We were just concerned about the risk of foot-and-mouth disease, notwithstanding that that risk is low. The potential consequences can be quite dire,” she said.
Bronwyn Betts is sitting out the Ekka this year.(ABC news: Elizabeth Pickering)
Ms Betts said the Ekka and shows like it brought greater risk than other sales meet-ups because of the large presence of the public.
“Just in terms of the demographics of people [who] are there. At a sale, you’re largely going to get cattle people that are going to be coming in from cattle properties. They’ll be cognisant of foot-and-mouth [risk] and they will have taken measures,” she said.
“But that’s different from a show where there’s larger numbers of [the] public [who] are entering into an area, and they may well include some people [who] have recently returned from the popular holiday destination of Bali.
“I think there needs to be a lot more public education about what foot-and-mouth disease is, how it enters our country but, also, once it does, how it moves around, because the reality is that people play a big role in that.”
At the Ekka, cattle breeder Jason Childs said he felt enough precautions were being taken.
“Foot and mouth has been around the world for a long time and it hasn’t managed to get into Australia yet and it’s not in Australia yet,” he said.
“I think the risk here is very, very minimal.”
What is foot-and-mouth disease?
Foot and mouth (FMD) affects cloven-hoofed animals, including cattle, pigs, goats and deer.
It causes fever and painful blisters on the animals’ tongues and hooves, which can make animals lick.
While Australia has been FMD-free for more than 100 years, the disease was detected in Indonesia in May and, by July, it had spread to Bali, sparking concerns it could be brought back by tourists.
It is not dangerous to humans, but people can facilitate the spread through products containing fragments of the disease or through dirty clothes and footwear.
FMD causes blisters on the tongues of infected animals.(Supplied: Agriculture Victoria)
FMD also spreads through close contact between animals and can be carried short distances by wind.
An outbreak in Australia would likely lead to mass culls of infected animals. It would also rob the country of its status as being free of FMD, causing major disruption to the meat and livestock trade.
The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) estimates an outbreak could cost the country $80 billion over 10 years.
People arriving on flights from Indonesia are asked to walk on citric acid mats to kill the FMD virus.(Supplied: Perth Airport)
After Indonesia’s outbreak spread to Bali, the federal government introduced extra measures at airports to stop it spreading to Australia.
All travelers from Indonesia must walk on sanitation mats containing citric acid to kill the virus, biosecurity detectors dogs have been deployed in airports in Darwin and Cairns to check imported goods, and 18 extra biosecurity staff are at airports and postal centers around Australia.
Earlier this month, some pork products were removed from supermarket shelves after viral fragments of FMD were found during testing.
So far, the government has committed $14 million to manage outbreaks of FMD and lumpy skin disease in Indonesia, on top of $1.5 million to supply vaccines.
A proposal by the Biden administration to exchange notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for WNBA star Brittney Griner and former marine Paul Whelan, two high-profile Americans currently detained in Russia, has been met with praise, confusion and fury.
While some have praised the Biden administration and state department for doing whatever it takes to bring back Griner and Whelan, others have cast skepticism towards the deal, especially when it comes to releasing Bout, who has a notorious international reputation.
Many have wondered: is it worth exchanging two wrongfully detained Americans for an arms dealer nicknamed the “Merchant of Death”? Others ask if the deal should include Marc Fogel, the “other American” currently imprisoned in Russia after trying to enter the country last year with half an ounce of medical marijuana? Still more wonder if any exchange might encourage further hostage-taking? What about the several hundred thousand Americans who continue to be arrested domestically on marijuana-related charges?
In February, Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport after authorities found vape canisters containing cannabis oil – for which she had a doctor’s recommendation – in her bags. The arrest of the Phoenix Mercury star quickly made headlines as it came amid heightened US-Russia tensions ahead of Moscow sending its forces into Ukraine a week later.
Griner has since been detained in Russia and faces a maximum of 10 years in prison if convicted of transporting drugs.
Brittney Griner speaks to her lawyers standing in a cage at a courtroom prior to a hearing in Khimki, Russia on 26 July. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
In December 2018, former US marine and corporate security executive Paul Whelan was arrested in Russia on espionage charges and was sentenced to 16 years in prison. According to Russian officials, he was caught with a flash drive that contained classified information. Whelan, who also holds passports from Canada, the UK and Ireland, has repeatedly denied the charges and claims that he was set up.
The US government has denounced Whelan’s charges as false and declared both Whelan and Griner as “wrongfully detained”.
On Wednesday, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, announced that the US has made a “substantial proposal” to Russia to release Whelan and Griner. Although Blinken refused to say what the US was offering in return, a source familiar with the matter confirmed a CNN report that Washington was willing to swap Bout, who is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence in the US, as part of the exchange .
Prisoner swaps have been a long part of the history between the two former cold war adversaries. The first major exchange between the US and the Soviet Union occurred in February 1962 when Americans gave up Rudolf Abel, a convicted KGB spy, in exchange for American pilot Gary Powers, whose U2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union two years earlier. The exchange, which took place on the fog-covered Glienicke Bridge on a cold, cloudy Berlin morning, was adapted into a Steven Spielberg thriller over 50 years later.
The Powers-Abel exchange paved the way for further prisoner swaps. A little over 20 years later, the US conducted what one American official called the “biggest spy swap” in history. The US released four eastern European spies in exchange for 25 people detained in East Germany and Poland. In more recent memory, 10 Russian agents detained by the US were exchanged in 2010 for four Russian officials that the Kremlin had jailed over their illegal contacts with the west.
Paul Whelan holds a sign as he stands inside a defendants’ cage during his verdict hearing in Moscow, Russia, on 15 June 2020. Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
In April, former US marine Trevor Reed was released back to the US after being detained in Russia since 2019. Russian authorities had accused Reed of attacking a Moscow police officer and sentenced him to nine years in jail. In exchange for Reed, the US released jailed pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was sentenced in 2011 to 20 years in prison for conspiring to import more than $100m worth of cocaine into the US.
Despite these exchanges, none have quite involved the notoriety of a figure like Bout. Born in 1967 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, to a bookkeeper and a car mechanic, Bout went on to train as an interpreter at Moscow’s Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages.
Rumored to speak six languages, Bout developed a decades-long career by acquiring Soviet military transport plans and filling them with various weapons that were left behind after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Since then, Bout has supplied weapons to conflicts around the world including Afghanistan, Angola, Congo, Lebanon, Somalia and Yemen.
For decades, governments and rebels fought each other with weapons that Bout sold to either side.
In 2008, Bout was arrested in Bangkok after he was caught on camera trying to sell weapons for use against Americans by undercover US Drug Enforcement and Administration agents. He was convicted in a New York court in 2011 and was sentenced to 25 years at a federal prison in Marion, Illinois.
Reports of Bout’s potential release have since been met with an array of emotions.
Kathi Austin, founder of the Conflict Awareness Project, a non-profit that investigates major arms traffickers, expressed concerns about the possibility of Bout’s release.
“I spent nearly 15 years chasing Bout around the globe to stop his trade in death… My life and that of other colleagues and UN peacekeepers were put on the line to bring him to justice,” she told the Guardian.
“You cannot imagine how much I have emotionally struggled with the idea of Bout’s release … Putin knew very well what he was doing by making Brittney Griner a bargaining chip … In a post-release situation … Putin is certain to weaponize Bout in areas of the world where the Merchant of Death has a proven track record,” she said.
Viktor Bout waits in a holding cell in Bangkok on 9 March 2009. Photograph: Sukree Sukplang/REUTERS
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the nonpartisan membership organization Arms Control Association, echoed Austin’s concerns.
In a statement to the Guardian, Kimball said: “Releasing Viktor Bout … could certainly lead to adverse consequences … If he is part of a prisoner swap with Russia, it could damage future efforts to hold accountable those who illegally facilitate dangerous weapons transfers to warlords , conflict zones and undemocratic regimes.”
Jodi Vittori, a former air force lieutenant colonel and current professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, said: “Given that Mr Bout has been incarcerated since then, it is unlikely that his arms trade networks remain significantly intact.”
Nevertheless, Vittori expressed concern over the irony of such a proposal, saying: “Trading American hostages for a notorious Russian arms trafficker with the ominous moniker of the Merchant of Death sends the world mixed messages at a time when the United States is striving to arm Ukraine as it fights for its life and democracy against Russia.”
Jordan Cohen, a defense policy and arms sale analyst at the Cato Institute, cast doubt on Bout’s ability to cause harm in the short term if he is released. “US and western intelligence will likely track him and his network to make sure no sudden arms trafficking deals are happening. Beyond that, his years in prison and solitary confinement also likely diminished his ability to quickly mobilize his network, ”Cohen told the Guardian.
Others have praised the Biden administration for its proposal. Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, tweeted: “I applaud @SecBlinken & @StateDept efforts to bring Britney Griner and Paul Whelan home even if it means handing over Viktor Bout.”
However, I have urged the state department to also include Marc Fogel in the deal. Fogel, a former history teacher at the Anglo-American School in Moscow, was arrested last August after trying to enter Russia with medical marijuana that his doctor prescribed him to treat “severe spinal pain”. Russian authorities sentenced him to 14 years of hard labor, accusing him of committing “large-scale drug smuggling”.
“The tragic situations of Brittney Griner and Marc Fogel seem very similar. So I would hope Fogel could be included in a package deal. Getting three innocent Americans back, not just two, for one real criminal, seems like a good trade to me,” McFaul, whose sons Fogel taught at the Anglo-American School, told the Guardian.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Jane Fogel said that her hopes of securing her husband’s release have been fading, saying: “There’s a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that Marc will be left behind.”
While Griner’s wife received a call from Joe Biden, Fogel’s family has been stalled at the state department’s “mid-functionary level”. In a letter Marc Fogel recently addressed his family regarding the prisoner swap reports that the Washington Post reviewed, he wrote: “That hurt… Teachers are at least as important as bballers.”
Meanwhile, others have criticized the irony of the state department’s proposal as hundreds of thousands of Americans remain incarcerated over marijuana charges.
The Libertarian party of New Hampshire responded to the news of the prisoner swap by writing about action on drug offenses in the US, saying: “America is mad at Russia for doing to Brittney Griner what it does to 374,000 people per year.”
another user tweeted: “I often wonder how Americans who have family members still in American prisons over weed, feel watching this entire #BrittneyGriner thing unfolds?”
Beer drinkers are being warned pubs could soon slug $15 for a pint after the biggest tax hike in more than 30 years, with the cost of a slab also going up.
Twice-yearly indexation happens on February 1 and August 1, and the latest was a record increase of about 4 per cent, Brewers Association of Australia chief executive John Preston said, making us the world’s fourth highest beer-taxing nation behind Japan, Norway and Finnish.
Mr Preston said $15 for a pint of regular, non-craft, full-strength beer was on its way, with prices in WA pubs already “up there”.
“That’s where we’re heading,” he told The West Australian.
The tax on a carton was about $18 and was set to rise by about 80 cents, he said.
“Whether you drink at home or whether you drink in the pub, you’re going to get slugged.”
Mr Preston said the industry had asked the Federal Government to consider cutting the rate for draft beer on tap in the March budget given the tough times pubs had endured throughout the pandemic.
“In the end, they didn’t do it… we were really disappointed,” he said.
“It’s a big cost for pub owners and this was a way to give some targeted support to them as they tried to recover from the pandemic and deal with increased wage bills, increased electricity bills.”
Pub owners agreed they were copping it from all sides, with the excise hike on top of frequent increases for all other supplies.
They tend to resist jacking up beer prices, knowing the cost of a pint is the main measure by which punters judge their watering holes.
But third generation publish John Parker of The Royal, The Standard and Dandelion said the higher tax would have to be passed on to consumers, tipping $10 schooners and $14 pints.
Froth Craft Brewery co-owner and head brewer Tyler Little said the excise hike was inevitable. Credit: Ben Yew/TheWest
He described the hike as a “kick in the guts”.
“Beer has already gone up because of higher transport costs,” Mr Parker said.
“I can’t speak on behalf of other publicans but I’m pretty sure we won’t be absorbing the increase ourselves.
“Everybody has had it tough for the past few years but hospitality has been hit particularly hard.
“We’ve had lockdowns, forced closures, reduced trading capacity, mask mandates. We did what we were asked to do and it was tough – a lot of us lost money – but I stayed open as much as I could.
“I felt, being a publican, you’ve got a responsibility to be a place where people can come and still catch up. But then for them to increase the tax, it’s like ‘c’mon’.
“People have been locked away for so long. Give us a break.”
King Road Brewing Co head brewer Steve Wearing agreed.
“We’re facing pretty huge increases in our materials, transport costs and all of our servicing costs so we definitely have a great deal of other increasing costs at the minute to add to this hike,” Mr Wearing said.
“At the minute, we’re absorbing all these costs but it’s getting to the point where we are going to have to look at increasing our prices soon.
“We obviously avoid doing that as much as possible – we don’t want to put the price of beer up but we’ve got no choice.”
Froth Craft Brewery co-owner and head brewer Tyler Little said the excise hike was inevitable.
“But you just have to find creative ways to enrich your product and your brand because you can’t get away from tax increases,” he said.
“Every aspect of running a brewery is indefinitely going up. We increased our beer prices last year by $1 just because we saw our profit margins going down.
“You’re not going to run a very successful business if you’re going to take the brunt of increasing costs of things.”
