Good morning. Only 50% of Australia’s eligible aged care residents have had a fourth Covid vaccine dose as deaths climb. Anthony Albanese’s net approval rating is up 40 points since Labor’s victory last month, while inflation is tipped to reach 7%. A dramatic 11th-hour intervention by the European court of human rights has dealt a blow to the UK government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Just over half of Australia’s eligible aged care residents have had a fourth Covid vaccine dose, prompting the federal health minister, Mark Butler, to warn the winter rollout “has been too slow”. Health department data shows about 63,515 aged care residents have had their fourth shot – that’s 51.3% of the eligible population. It comes as the latest health department data shows Covid-related deaths are continuing to climb at a significant rate.
The Reserve Bank governor, Philip Lowe, has warned Australians to be prepared for higher interest rates, saying inflation will likely reach 7% by the end of the year and it must be brought under control. Lowe said on Tuesday night he was predicting inflation to rise to 7%. That compares with current inflation of 5.1%.
Anthony Albanese is experiencing a post-election boost not seen since Kevin Rudd was elected in 2007, with the prime minister’s net approval rating up 40 points since Labor’s victory last month. The first Guardian Essential poll since the 21 May election shows 59% of voters approve of the job Albanese is doing as prime minister, including 19% who “strongly approve”, compared with just 18% who do not. In the final poll before the election, just 42% of voters approved of Albanese’s performance.
The European court of human rights has made a dramatic 11th-hour intervention into the British government’s controversial plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda that could ground the inaugural flight to the east African nation. Lawyers for one of the asylum seekers due to fly made a successful emergency application to the ECHR after exhausting applications to UK courts. The decision is a blow for Boris Johnson’s flagship policy of sending asylum seekers 4,000 miles to the east African country.
Australia
Astronomers believe they have discovered the fastest-growing black hole of the past 9 billion years. The supermassive black hole consumes the equivalent of one Earth every second and has the mass of 3 billion suns, they estimate. The lead researcher Dr Christopher Onken, of the Australian National University, said the supermassive black hole was “more or less halfway across the universe”.
Labor’s election victory was aided by Australia’s rejection of the spectre of three more years of Scott Morrison, according to the man responsible for the party’s winning strategy.
Bunnings, Kmart and The Good Guys have been using facial recognition technology in a bid to crack down on theft in-store, research by Choice says.
The majority of Australians believe journalists should not express their personal opinions on social media and only 15% of respondents say they follow specific journalists, according to the latest report on digital news.
The world
Joe Biden will visit Israel, the occupied West Bank and Saudi Arabia next month, the White House has announced. The announcement immediately put the administration on the defensive, given the president’s previous stance that the Saudi regime was a “pariah” because of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and other human rights abuses.
People who caught Covid during the first wave of the pandemic get no boost to their immune response if they subsequently catch Omicron, a study of triple vaccinated people reports.
Authorities in Beijing have warned that a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases linked to a 24-hour bar was critical and the city of 22 million people was in a “race against time” to get to grips with its most serious outbreak since the pandemic began.
The Brazilian ambassador to the UK has apologised to the family of Dom Phillips for incorrectly telling them his body had been found in the Amazon along with that of his missing travelling partner Bruno Pereira.
The World Food Programme has said it is suspending food aid to 1.7 million people in South Sudan, as the war in Ukraine sucks funding from the crisis-plagued country and causes the price of staples to soar.
The fatal shooting of journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh in May has raised fresh concerns over military inquiries into deaths of Palestinians.
Recommended reads
As the cost of living rises and family budgets tighten, how do you have that awkward conversation with your children? How do you explain to your daughter that you can’t afford an expensive birthday party?
Beforeigners is a Nordic noir that pushes beyond the limits of the police procedural and into the unexpected. This stylish TV show, streaming on SBS on Demand, deftly establishes its odd premise in a matter of minutes: as teenagers party by Oslo’s harbour, the water surface is suddenly broken by people who seem to have appeared from nowhere, flailing in the sea and speaking Old Norse. They have no idea where they are or why they are there. They are “beforeigners”, thousands of people from the prehistoric, Viking and Victorian ages who have been inexplicably jolted into the modern world.
Listen
On Friday, the Nadesalingam family returned to their home town of Biloela in central Queensland after more than four years in immigration detention. During that time the Tamil family became the face of Australia’s strict asylum seeker policies. Queensland reporter Eden Gillespie documents the family’s return home, and Priya Nadesalingam discusses life after detention.
Full Story is Guardian Australia’s daily news podcast. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcasting app.
Sport
The plan to send on substitute goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne in the event of a penalty shootout in the Socceroos’ World Cup qualifier against Peru had been on the table for weeks, but remained such a secret that not even captain Mat Ryan knew about it.
In our weekly lifestyle interview about celebrities and their favourite objects, the TV presenter and former AFL player Tony Armstrong tells us about his childhood as a drum nerd, and his favourite place in the world: the couch.
Media roundup
Parents who send their preschoolers to long daycare will for the first time receive subsidies from the NSW government, with fee relief for four- and five-year-olds being extended to privately run centres, according to the Sydney Morning Herald reports. Genetic research has revealed a direct link between dementia and a lack of vitamin D. The Australian reports on a world-first study from the University of South Australia that investigated the link between vitamin D, neuroimaging features and the risk of dementia and stroke. It found low levels of vitamin D were associated with lower brain volumes and an increased risk of dementia and stroke.
And if you’ve read this far …
In perfect minute detail: jumping spiders, falling water drops and more – in pictures.
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