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National

The Loop: COVID isolation rules for close contacts changing, hot air balloon crashes in Melbourne, Maria Sharapova reveals pregnancy

Hi. It's Wednesday, April 20 and you're reading The Loop, a quick wrap-up of today's news.

Let's start here

A bunch of announcements were made today about close COVID contacts, with multiple states and territories deciding it's just about time to remove them.

Here's a quick look at who's said what so far:

What else is going on

The experienced pilot tried to steer towards the beach when he realised something was wrong.

What Australia has been searching for online

  • Maria Sharapova. The former women's tennis world number one has made a big announcement on her 35th birthday: she's having a baby. It's her and fiancé Alexander Gilkes' first child.

One more thing

It's made us laugh, it's made us cry, it got us through many a day locked down at home — but Netflix has suffered its first fall in subscriber numbers in more than a decade, with a 26 per cent tumble erasing about $US40 billion off its stock market value.

Cutting its services off in Russia put a roughly 700,000-users-sized dent in its subscriber base, but the company also estimates that about 100 million households worldwide were watching its service for free by using the account of a friend or another family member.

Netflix has signalled it will likely crack down on the sharing of subscriber passwords and, for the first time, said it was open to the idea of offering lower-priced subscriptions with advertising.

Time will tell how much these figures will change the Netflix experience so many of us have come to know so well.

You're up to date

Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow.

ABC/wires

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