G'day. It's Tuesday, April 26 and you're reading The Loop, a quick wrap-up of today's news.
Let's start here
Western Australia and the Northern Territory have announced their COVID-19 restrictions will ease this week
In WA:
- The state's mask mandate will be dropped from Friday in most settings
- Density limits on almost all venues will be removed
- The G2G pass system and the requirement for domestic arrivals to be triple-vaccinated will also be dropped
And in the NT:
- Triple-vaccinated close contacts of COVID cases will no longer need to isolate from midnight tonight
- But those people will still need to take regular tests, wear a mask, notify schools or employers and avoid high-risk settings
- Unvaccinated close contacts will only need to isolate for seven days, not 14
What else is going on
- The NSW Teachers Federation has announced its members will strike next Wednesday over pay and conditions. The union's state executive has also authorised members to walk off school grounds if a NSW government MP enters them, and put an immediate ban on the implementation of new policies
- Guide Dogs Victoria has stood down chief executive Karen Hayes pending an investigation into her political endorsement of Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Guide Dogs Victoria released a statement last week saying the board did not know about the political endorsement until it was made public
What Australia has been searching for online
- Elon Musk. Yep, it finally happened — the billionaire Tesla founder is set to buy Twitter after the social media platform accepted his $US44 billion ($61.2 billion) offer. As far as what that actually means for the site, here's what we know so far
- Listen Out 2022. Festivals are back baby, and the line-up has just dropped for the return of Listen Out. The Jungle Giants, AJ Tracey, Young Thug, Barkaa, Disclosure and BBNO$ are among those hitting the stage
One more thing
Uber has admitted it engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct in regards to trip cancellation prompts on its app.
- Uber has a free cancellation period of five minutes
- But for a period of time, whenever consumers tried to cancel their bookings, they received a prompt similar to, "You may be charged a small fee since your driver is already on their way," even if it was within five minutes of booking
- The ride-sharing company has since changed its cancellation message to, "You won’t be charged a cancellation fee," for users who cancel trips within five minutes
This admission is the result of an investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which is suing Uber in the Federal Court. The company is facing fines of up to $26 million.
You're up to date
Thanks for reading.
ABC/wires
