349 ARRIVE HOME
Hundreds of Australians evacuated from Lebanon have arrived in Sydney on government-assisted repatriation flights. The ABC reports there were emotional scenes at Sydney Airport on Monday evening and quotes passengers and their waiting family members thanking the Australian government for its help. The flights are bringing people from the Lebanese capital of Beirut to Larnaca in Cyprus and then on to Australia.
AAP says another Qantas flight is expected to bring up to 220 people back this evening. The newswire highlights Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong’s post on X last night which said: “Welcome home to 349 Australians and their immediate family, who touched down in Sydney tonight after leaving Lebanon over the weekend. Today another two assisted departure flights leave Beirut Airport for Cyprus.”
Lebanese authorities say Israeli attacks have displaced more than 1.2 million people in the country, and nearly 2,000 people have been killed in the past year, most of them in the past two weeks. Israel says it is responding to bombardments by Hezbollah and wants thousands of its citizens displaced from the north of the country to be able to return. Following a year of violence in Gaza, Israel has opened up a new front in southern Lebanon in recent weeks, sending troops over the border.
Yesterday vigils were held around Australia marking the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ attack on southern Israel, which according to the Israeli government killed 1,200 people, with 251 hostages taken. Guardian Australia reports Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was jeered at an event in Melbourne, while Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was cheered in Sydney.
The site says around 6,000 people gathered in Moorabbin on Monday evening, with the prime minister joined by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, Macnamara MP Josh Burns, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, and other state and federal politicians. Walking alongside rabbi Gabi Kaltmann, Albanese was reportedly met with jeers of “shame”, with one man carrying a sign declaring: “Shame on you Albo. Photo opportunity only!!! No genuine support for Jewish community”.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports Dutton received a standing ovation during his address to a vigil in Vaucluse when he said: “Moral clarity is important because frankly there hasn’t been enough of it. Instead we’ve got a moral fog. In the interests of moral clarity, let me be clear — Israel has every right to defend its people from existential threats. If we don’t take a strong stance now, we risk repeating the mistakes of the 1930s.”
On Monday, the Gazan Health Ministry said at least 41,909 Palestinian people have been killed and 97,303 injured in Israeli strikes since October 7 last year. The White House released a statement from US President Joe Biden yesterday which declared: “Far too many civilians have suffered far too much during this year of conflict — and tens of thousands have been killed, a human toll made far worse by terrorists hiding and operating among innocent people.
“We will not stop working to achieve a ceasefire deal in Gaza that brings the hostages home, allows for a surge in humanitarian aid to ease the suffering on the ground, assures Israel’s security, and ends this war. Israelis and Palestinians alike deserve to live in security, dignity, and peace.”
LABOR SUFFERS IN POLLS
The Sydney Morning Herald reports new polling shows voters are “holding the Labor government to account for the financial pain from rising prices and the cost of housing”. The paper says the Resolve Political Monitor shows 58% of respondents claim they would struggle to pay for a major expense due to household budgets being stretched so thin, while 36% say the federal government is responsible for rising living costs and 13% blame external global factors outside the government’s control.
The SMH says the polling shows Labor’s primary vote has increased from 28% to 30%, while the Coalition’s has risen a percentage point to 38% over the past month. Albanese remains ahead of Dutton as preferred prime minister for the second month in a row.
The Australian Financial Review highlights that the government is reintroducing its stalled Help to Buy bill into the lower house today (see yesterday’s Worm for a recap on the accompanying threat of a double dissolution election). The government says Help to Buy would give 40,000 first-home buyers access to cheaper deposits through a shared equity scheme with the federal government. Last month, the Senate voted to delay considering the legislation until at least late November.
Housing Minister Clare O’Neil said yesterday: “Every time the Coalition and the Greens have had a chance to help renters or first home buyers, they have chosen politics over progress. This week they get the chance to make progress for first-home buyers in the Parliament. Australians wanting to buy their first home expect more than further delay.”
The AFR highlights there are only 15 sitting days before the Christmas break and the government will be hoping for progress on a long list of stalled legislation, such as Future Made in Australia, pay increases for early childhood education workers and the Nature Positive environmental legislation. The paper also points out Albanese is heading to a summit of Southeast Asian leaders in Laos tomorrow where he is expected to meet Chinese Premier Li Qiang.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A woman has finally received a reply to a job application 48 years after she submitted it.
Tizi Hodson, from Gedney Hill in Lincolnshire, sent a letter in January 1976 applying to be a motorcycle stunt rider, the BBC reports. She never heard back until suddenly, decades later, the letter arrived back to her with a handwritten note at the top declaring: “Late delivery by Staines Post Office. Found behind a draw [sic]. Only about 50 years late.”
The 70-year-old says she remembers clearly typing the letter in her flat in London back in 1976.
“How they found me when I’ve moved house 50-odd times, and even moved countries four or five times, is a mystery,” she said. “It means so much to me to get it back all this time later. Every day I looked for my post but there was nothing there and I was so disappointed because I really, really, wanted to be a stunt rider on a motorcycle.”
The BBC says the lost application didn’t hold Tizi back though and she later “moved to Africa, worked as a snake handler and horse whisperer, learned to fly and became an aerobatic pilot and flying instructor”.
Say What?
Their groundbreaking discovery revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans.
The Nobel Assembly
American scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for their discovery of microRNA and its role in gene regulation, the ABC reports.
CRIKEY RECAP
“It has to do with honour — the Iranians are trying to do anything they can not to be humiliated,” Porat told Crikey.
Porat said Iran was anticipating an Israeli response to a missile attack Iran launched on Tuesday. That rocket fire was in retaliation to Israel’s killing of several leaders of Iran-aligned armed groups.
“Iran is in a panic. They’ve avenged the killing of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah and [Hamas leader Ismail] Haniyeh, on Iranian soil, and now they’re trying to threaten in any way they can because they’re very worried.
“They’ve seen Israel’s abilities of pinpoint intelligence, heavy bombardment and accuracy, and they’re seeing Israel working with the US. They’re shaking in their boots.”
A year later, however, concern for the people of Gaza — and for the dozens of Israeli hostages still locked up in Hamas’ tunnels — has begun to wane. The world’s focus is shifting to the fast-expanding misery along the Israel–Lebanon border, and to a possible full-scale war between Israel and Iran.
As the fighting in Gaza grinds on with no end in sight, the prospects for resolving the most intractable conflict in the world between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians seem ever dimmer. But is it so?
Without their knowledge, emergency patients’ medical scans from public hospitals were likely provided by Australia’s largest medical imaging provider to train AI, documents reveal.
Last month, Crikey revealed that I-MED had given potentially hundreds of thousands of chest x-rays to Australian health technology company harrison.ai as part of a partnership.
In response, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner said it was making “preliminary inquiries” into the practice, as politicians and consumer, privacy and patient advocacy groups raised concerns about patient data being used to train AI without express consent.
Now, further analysis of a 2021 paper published on the training of harrison.ai’s chest x-ray AI tool, the Annalise.ai CXR, uncovers new details about the kinds of patients whose data was used.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Israel marks anniversary of Hamas attacks as Middle East war rages (CNN)
Fears of a global oil shock if the Mideast crisis Intensifies (The New York Times) ($)
Harris dismisses Trump’s comments that he’s a ‘protector’ of women (The Washington Post)
Disguised GP admits attempted murder poisoning (BBC)
Qantas apologises after R-rated movie played to passengers on Sydney to Tokyo flight (The Guardian)
Coleen Rooney’s lawyers accuse Rebekah Vardy of ‘deplorable conduct’ in new Wagatha battle (The Mirror)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Labor’s Help to Buy housing bill is darkening Parliament’s doors again. Will this time be any different? Paul Karp (Guardian Australia): The Coalition and the Greens have decided to throw the kitchen sink at Help to Buy, with objections that capitalise on frustration about lack of affordability. The political debate has nothing to do with how many places there are in the scheme (10,000 a year), how many will be taken up, and the precise profile of participants. It has become a symbol.
For Labor, they are the blockers and we are builders. For the Coalition, home ownership should be wholly and solely for the individual not the government. For the Greens, only bolder solutions can help renters and begin to unwind poor affordability.
It remains to be seen how many times this clash of values will play out before we get more policy that does the one thing everyone says will work: increase supply.
Meta is officially the global arbiter of ‘truth’ — yes, you should be afraid — Joan Westenberg (The Sydney Morning Herald): What makes these platforms so powerful is their ability to cultivate open expression and tear down barriers. It’s a noble idea, and worth defending. But for every heartwarming story of long-lost school friends reunited or grassroots movements gaining traction, there is a Cambridge Analytica scandal, or disinformation spreading like wildfire. And Meta has now, in effect, become a gatekeeper of global discourse, a role it is neither suited to, nor was elected to fulfil.
The ban on RT and Rossiya Segodnya won’t be the last word when it comes to online disinformation. The challenge now is in maintaining the openness of the internet, while curbing harmful content and propaganda.
Defending Russia’s propaganda as free speech is shortsighted nonsense. But Meta’s ban raises pertinent questions about where and how we draw the line for online expression, the role of governments in policing the digital realm, and the responsibility platforms have in combating and responding to disinformation in an era when truth seems increasingly elusive.
