Sunday, April 26, 2026

Renovation grants: Morrison government to offer $25,000 in home builder stimulus

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Renovation grants: Morrison government to offer $25,000 in home builder stimulus

The Morrison government will fund grants worth $25,000 for eligible singles and couples planning to build or renovate homes between June and the end of December, with the uncapped program estimated to cost taxpayers $688m.

With the March quarter national accounts indicating that Australia has entered the first recession in nearly three decades, the new tranche of economic stimulus designed to create a pipeline of work for the construction sector will be unveiled by the Coalition on Thursday.

To be eligible for the grants, singles need to earn $125,000 a year or less based on a 2018/19 tax return or later, and couples need to earn under $200,000. Building contracts need to be executed between 4 June and 31 December 2020.

To qualify, people need to be intending to build a new home as a principal place of residence valued up to $750,000 including the land, or planning to renovate an existing property, with the upgrade valued at between $150,000 and $750,000.

Existing properties need to be worth less than $1.5m before the renovation, and construction must be contracted to commence within three months of the contract date.

The “homebuilder” grants can be used for kitchen and bathroom renovations carried out by licensed contractors, but cannot be for used for add-ons like swimming pools, tennis courts, outdoor spas and saunas, and detached sheds or garages. The grants cannot be claimed for investment properties, and owner-builders are also ineligible.

The new stimulus program comes as the government has delayed a planned mini-budget to July, and the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has also signalled the jobkeeper wage subsidy might be reduced from the current flat payment of $1,500, or paid at differential rates depending on a worker’s income, after a review.

Wednesday’s March quarter national accounts showed dwelling investment in Australia fell 2.9% in the quarter and by more than 15% over the past 12 months. The contraction is expected to be worse in the June quarter and construction lobby groups predict new dwelling commencements will decline by 50% by the end of 2020.

While government grants programs have been shown to drive up housing prices and construction costs, the government contends this won’t happen with the “homebuilder” package, because the current slump in construction makes pricing competitive, and because the program is a short-term pump prime rather than a fixture, which makes it more difficult for developers to price the grant into their contracts.

The government has made it a rule that stimulus designed to counter the economic shock associated with the Covid-19 pandemic be delivered through existing mechanisms rather than new programs to minimise the risk of fraud or administrative disasters.

The housing grants scheme is clearly a new program, but the government claims the same criteria will apply because it will be implemented through “existing systems, being the states’ respective revenue offices”.

In a statement ahead of Thursday’s announcement, Scott Morrison said the new program was about job creation, and about supporting one million workers in the sector including builders, painters, plumbers and electricians.

Morrison said the jobkeeper wage subsidy had already helped Australia’s construction sector weather the opening months of the economic shock associated with Covid-19, and “now we’re helping fire it up again”.

“This is about targeted taxpayer support for a limited time using existing systems to ensure the money gets used how it should by families looking for that bit of extra help to make significant investments themselves,” the prime minister said.

Ahead of Thursday’s announcement Labor called for the government to include social housing in the construction stimulus. On Wednesday, the shadow treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said the government needed to address flaws in previous interventions to ensure the recession wasn’t a deep one.

“We need to see in that at least these three things,” Chalmers said. “We need them to fix up their blunders with jobkeeper so that fewer workers are unnecessarily excluded and we need to see social and public housing as a key part of any package of measures to support the building industry.”

Chalmers said the government needed to deliver “a comprehensive plan for jobs in this long and patchy recovery”.

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Social media firms fail to act on Covid-19 fake news

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Social media firms fail to act on Covid-19 fake news

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Some posts found by volunteers suggested wearing face masks could cause cancer

Hundreds of posts spreading misinformation about Covid-19 are being left online, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Some 649 posts were reported to Facebook and Twitter, including false cures, anti-vaccination propaganda and conspiracy theories around 5G.

90% remained visible online afterwards without any warnings attached, the report suggests.

Facebook said the sample was “not representative”.

A spokesperson for Facebook said; “We are taking aggressive steps to remove harmful misinformation from our platforms and have removed hundreds of thousands of these posts, including claims about false cures.

“During March and April we placed warning labels on around 90 million pieces of content related to Covid-19 and these labels stopped people viewing the original content 95% of the time.

“We will notify anyone who has liked, shared or commented on posts related to Covid-19 that we’ve since removed.”

Twitter said that it was prioritising the removal of Covid-19 content “when it has a call to action that could potentially cause harm”.

“As we’ve said previously, we will not take enforcement action on every Tweet that contains incomplete or disputed information about Covid-19. Since introducing these new policies on March 18 and as we’ve doubled down on tech, our automated systems have challenged more than 4.3 million accounts which were targeting discussions around Covid-19 with spammy or manipulative behaviours.”

Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said the firms were “shirking their responsibilities”.

“Their systems for reporting misinformation and dealing with it are simply not fit for purpose.

“Social media giants have claimed many times that they are taking Covid-related misinformation seriously, but this new research shows that even when they are handed the posts promoting misinformation, they fail to take action.”

Rosanne Palmer-White, director of youth action group Restless Development, which also took part in the survey, said young people were “doing their bit to stop the spread of misinformation” but social media firms were “letting them down”.

Both Twitter and Facebook face questions from the UK’s Digital Culture Media and Sport sub-committee on the way they are handling coronavirus misinformation.

MPs were not happy with an earlier session. They demanded more detailed answers and said more senior executives should attend the next meeting.

For the study, ten volunteers from the UK, Ireland and Romania searched social media for misinformation from the end of April to the end of May.

They found posts suggesting sufferers can get rid of coronavirus by drinking aspirin dissolved in hot water or by taking zinc and vitamin C and D supplements,

Twitter was deemed the least responsive, with only 3% of the 179 posts acted upon.

Facebook removed 10% of the 334 posts reported and flagged another 2% as false. Instagram, which Facebook owns, acted on 10% of the 135 complaints it was sent.

Both the social networks insist they have made efforts to bring fake news about the coronavirus under control.

Twitter has begun labelling tweets that spread misinformation about Covid-19. Facebook has also removed some content, including from groups claiming the rollout of the 5G network was a cause of the spread of the virus.

Analysis

By Marianna Spring, Specialist disinformation and social media reporter

All eyes have been on how social media sites have tackled misleading information on their platforms in recent weeks – and all eyes will be on them again today, as they’re grilled by MPs.

Over the course of the pandemic, different social media companies have made a number of changes to their policies to try to tackle harmful and misleading information. Facebook and YouTube both say they have cracked down on conspiracies that could do damage.

And in a high-profile move, Twitter decided to label a misleading tweet by US President Donald Trump – although it was one about postal voting rather than coronavirus.

But these changes in policy don’t seem easy to implement. In practice, misleading posts are often not reported – or when they are, they are not always removed. The question of the harm different posts pose appears to be at the root of this problem.

Messages posing an immediate threat to life are removed more quickly. However, misleading messages that pose a less immediate threat can prove to be just as dangerous – including those from anti-vaccination groups.

A BBC Investigation into the human cost of misinformation found that the potential for indirect harm caused by conspiracies and bad information that undermine public health messaging – or an effective vaccine – could be huge.

And as misinformation about protests and other news events floods social media, it becomes apparent that the pandemic is just one of many battles against misinformation to be fought.

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Trump Went Full-On Fascist For A Photo-Op. What’s He Willing To Do To Keep Power?

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Trump Went Full-On Fascist For A Photo-Op. What’s He Willing To Do To Keep Power?

WASHINGTON ― If Donald Trump was willing to have Americans gassed and beaten so he could stage a photo opportunity, what will he be willing to do to retain the presidency come election time?

Authoritarianism experts who worried about Trump’s tendencies during his campaign and his first years in office are now sounding fresh alarms following the clearing of a park adjacent to the White House on Monday using gas, flash-bang grenades, pepper pellets and other aggressive tactics ― all so he could stand in front of a church he does not attend and be photographed holding a Bible.

“It was everything that an autocrat is,” said Gail Helt, who watched for signs of democratic decay in Asian countries during her dozen years as a CIA analyst. “Trying to show off the reins of power. That image of him holding the Bible. … I don’t know what that was, but it was disturbing.”

Neither the White House nor the Trump campaign responded to HuffPost queries regarding Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and whether they might worsen the closer we get to an Election Day that may force him from office.

In recent months, Trump has begun aggressively attacking mail voting, a process that is standard in some states now and which many others are expanding because of concerns that in-person voting could spread the coronavirus. Trump has repeatedly claimed that expanding voting by mail will let Democrats cheat, even though he, his press secretary and a top adviser have all voted by mail in recent elections.

“MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE,” he claimed in a statement he posted to Twitter last week.

Trump critics, both Democrats and Republicans, believe that he is laying the groundwork to challenge the election results should he lose and that he could try to remain in office by invoking emergency powers.

Trump has shown at best a hazy grasp of his actual powers during his presidency and instead has made broad statements about his authority under the Constitution. “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” he told supporters last summer.

He does not appear to have any authority to undo an election loss, but his critics warn that the outcome of such assertions on his part could largely be determined by his Cabinet members and Republicans in Congress. And that has Republicans who oppose him worried.

“The question is not what Trump is willing to do; it’s what the people around him are willing to enable him to do. We already know what Trump is capable of,” said Tom Nichols, a Naval War College professor and prominent Trump critic.

“Trump is a thug surrounded by weak men and women desperate to be near power. Trump has no sense of right and wrong and will do anything,” said Stuart Stevens, a GOP consultant who worked on the campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. “The burden is on the Republican Party. In our system, parties should serve a circuit breaker role. Republicans have proven that most will not, and it creates a very dangerous situation.”



President Donald Trump leaves the White House to walk to St. John’s Episcopal Church, across Lafayette Park from the White House, on Monday. 

Trump has long spoken admiringly of dictators and of violence as a tool for social control.

In 1990, following the brutal crackdown of protests in Beijing, Trump said: “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.”

Running for president in 2015, Trump repeatedly praised Russian leader Vladimir Putin, even calling him a better leader than President Barack Obama. In 2016, Trump professed respect for North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for murdering his uncle and others as a way to consolidate power. “It’s incredible. He wiped out the uncle. He wiped out this one, that one,” he said.

In 2018, he spoke wistfully about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ability to change the constitution and scrap limits on the number of terms he could serve. And today he is trying to get Russia reinstated into the Group of 7, the organization of large democratic economies, even as Putin seeks to extend his presidential term until 2036 and still retains control of a portion of Ukraine, the reason Russia was expelled from what had been the G8 in the first place.

Trump has also in his years in the White House frequently praised the use of violence. He told police officers in 2017 that they shouldn’t worry about hitting suspects’ heads as they place them in patrol cars. And on a conference call with governors on Monday, he berated them for not “dominating” the streets of their cities.

“If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run all over you. You’ll look like a bunch of jerks,” he told them.

“I am your president of law and order,” he declared hours later from the White House Rose Garden as police and troops were clearing a park of protesters so he could walk through to take his Bible photo.

“Trump is a menace. It’s almost pointless to try and guess what new atrocious thing Trump will come up with, but he has certainly made it clear that there is no line, moral, legal or otherwise, that he won’t cross if he thinks it could help him retain power,” said Daniela Martins, press secretary of the Priorities USA super PAC.

It was everything that an autocrat is. Trying to show off the reins of power. That image of him holding the Bible. … I don’t know what that was, but it was disturbing.
Gail Helt, former CIA analyst

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an authoritarianism expert at New York University, said Trump’s clearing of Lafayette Square on Monday was a textbook case.

“This was an authoritarian spectacle, backed up by the real force of sending military into the streets,” she said. “A cocktail of all the elements authoritarians have used in history: a lawless ruler attacking protesters, using religion as a prop and declaring war on his own people.”

She said what made it even more worrisome was the presence and support of Attorney General William Barr and Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

“They are his willing tools now,” Ben-Ghiat said. “He will do whatever he needs to to be reelected, starting with the military interventions he’s started with the aim of ending the protests.”

Helt, who now runs the Securities and Intelligence Studies program at King University in Bristol, Tennessee, said she saw democracy fall apart in Malaysia starting in 2011 following anti-government protests. She said she never dreamed it could happen here.

“To watch the president be the most pressing danger that we have is really unnerving,” she said.



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Pentagon’s new foreign military training proposal greeted with skepticism in Congress

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Pentagon’s new foreign military training proposal greeted with skepticism in Congress

Jun 3, 2020

The Pentagon is pitching Congress on a new training initiative for foreign military officers that would run parallel to a program that currently exists under the auspices of the State Department, Al-Monitor has learned.

The Pentagon’s draft legislation — obtained by Al-Monitor — says the proposal would “not duplicate or conflict with activities under the International Military Education and Training authorities,” which the State Department oversees. Under the Pentagon’s draft proposal, the Defense Department would implement its program in coordination with the State Department.

But some purse-string holders on Capitol Hill are skeptical of the idea.

Tim Rieser, a foreign policy aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said the Pentagon initiative appears to be essentially a duplication of the State Department program, but one under the Defense Department’s control. “For an administration whose mantra is shrinking the federal government, you have to wonder what’s really behind this,” he said. “What problem are they trying to solve?”

The State Department has requested $105 million in International Military Education and Training funding for fiscal year 2021, including $17.5 million for the Middle East and North Africa. That funding is used to train foreign military officers from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. The State Department has also requested $1.6 million to train officers from Turkey.

The Pentagon’s funding request for its proposed training initiative is relatively more modest, starting with just $3 million for the program in fiscal 2021 and gradually rising to $15 million for fiscal 2025. 

“Over time things have a habit of becoming ingrained and expanding, and before you know it, it’s not $3 million, it’s not $15 million, it’s $100 million,” Rieser told Al-Monitor.

Notably, Congress received the Defense Department’s proposal in March, but the Pentagon did not include it in its full 2021 budget request, released in April.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Uriah Orland told Al-Monitor that the proposed International Professional Military Education program would supplement the State Department one “and is intended to increase the participation of critical allies and partners in select [Defense Department] education courses.” 




Orland said that the proposal “would be a critical component” of the Defense Department’s efforts to implement the National Defense Strategy, which calls for “strengthening alliances as we attract new partners.”

He also confirmed that the proposed Pentagon training program would be subject to the same restrictions as the State Department one under a series of human rights regulations, collectively known as the Leahy laws. The State Department currently uses the Leahy laws to reject foreign officers who are potentially implicated in human rights abuses from the International Military Education and Training program.

But Rieser, who helped draft the regulations, noted that Sen. Leahy “would want the authorization for this [Pentagon] program to confirm that the Leahy law applies.”

The State Department did not comment on the Pentagon’s proposal.



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German coalition agrees €130B economic rescue package

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German coalition agrees €130B economic rescue package

“We’re trying to do the best in a very difficult situation,” Merkel Angela Merkel said | Michael Kappeler/ Pool — AFP via Getty Images

Measures include temporary cuts to VAT, a financial allowance for families and plans to boost subsidies for electric cars.

BERLIN — The parties within Germany’s coalition government agreed a €130-billion stimulus package late Wednesday, aimed at rebooting the national economy after weeks of pandemic paralysis.

The program will include temporary cuts to VAT, a per-child financial allowance for families, and assistance for cash-strapped local authorities, along with plans to boost subsidies for electric cars and spend billions on national transport infrastructure.

Chancellor Angela Merkel hammered out the deal with leaders from her center-right Christian Democratic Union, along with its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union, and their junior coalition partners the Social Democrats, over 21 hours of talks across two days.

“We’re trying to do the best in a very difficult situation,” Merkel told journalists while outlining the measures close to midnight.

The main headline from the package is a cut in VAT from July to the end of December to 16 percent from 19 percent, and for the reduced rate to 5 percent from 7 percent. Families will also receive a one-off payment of €300 per child under the rescue package.

Some €50 billion of the total stimulus fund will be targeted at investments in future-focused technologies such as clean transport and low-emission vehicles, according to a 15-page working document seen by POLITICO.

“This crisis will bring about drastic changes, and Germany should emerge stronger from it,” the document states.

On support for Germany’s hulking car industry, the government is set to ramp up its purchase premium for pure electric vehicles to €6,000 from €3,000 through next year and put an extra €2.5 billion into e-charging infrastructure and battery technology. There will also be a multi-billion-euro investment in railway company Deutsche Bahn and public transport.

The program also includes plans to spend €1 billion on funding cleaner aircraft that emit less air and noise pollution, the government said. Meanwhile, a scrappage scheme will be aimed at replacing older diesel trucks.

Of the total €130 billion package, the government — usually fiercely committed to a balanced budget — will contribute €120 billion. The level of spending goes far beyond the estimated €80 billion size of the package initially reported as talks got underway, and underscores the feeling that it’s necessary to underwrite Europe’s largest economy with a long-term program of spending to stave off a lengthy recession.

“It doesn’t have to do much with left or right but really with interests,” said Alexander Kritikos, from the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin, of disagreements between the coalition parties on what to include.

The big losers are Germany’s major auto producers, as the government decided against subsidizing the purchase of diesel and petrol cars despite a pledge to firmly support electric mobility. The leaders of Germany’s three big carmaking states — the SPD’s Stephan Weil in Lower Saxony, home to Volkswagen; Markus Söder from the CSU in Bavaria, home to BMW; and Winfried Kretschmann, the Green premier of Daimler’s home state of Baden-Württemberg — all wanted further measures to support automakers.

“You should never underestimate that economic wealth in Germany is to a certain degree linked to the car industry,” said David McAllister, a senior MEP from Merkel’s CDU and ex-premier of Lower Saxony.



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Pilgrim’s Pride Chief Executive Is Accused of Price Fixing

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Pilgrim’s Pride Chief Executive Is Accused of Price Fixing

The chief executive of one of the country’s largest chicken producers was indicted on a price-fixing charge on Wednesday along with three other current and former executives at companies that supply chicken to groceries and restaurants across the United States.

The indictment, by a federal grand jury in United States District Court in Denver, alleges that senior executives at Pilgrim’s Pride, based in Colorado, and Claxton Poultry Farms in Georgia fixed prices and rigged bids from 2012 to 2017. The charges are the first in a still-open Justice Department investigation involving several other major chicken producers.

Jayson Penn, the Pilgrim’s Pride president and chief executive, and Roger Austin, the company’s former vice president, were indicted. Pilgrim’s Pride is the country’s second-largest supplier of “broiler chickens,” which account for nearly all the chicken meat sold in the United States. The company’s customers include the wholesaler Costco and the fast-food chain KFC. Tyson Foods is the top producer.

Also indicted on Wednesday were Mikell Fries, the president of Claxton Poultry Farms, and Scott Brady, a vice president. Claxton supplies chicken to Chick-fil-A.

Each executive faces one count of price-fixing, with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine, which may be raised if ill-gotten gains or losses to victims are found to be higher than $1 million.

“Executives who cheat American consumers, restaurateurs and grocers, and compromise the integrity of our food supply, will be held responsible for their actions,” Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim, of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, said in a statement.

Pilgrim’s Pride did not respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Claxton Farms, Charles Murphy, did not respond to a request for comment.

Accusations of collusion have dogged the U.S. chicken industry since 2016, when Maplevale Farms, a food service firm in upstate New York, filed a lawsuit saying that Tyson Foods, Pilgrim’s Pride, Sanderson Farms, Perdue Farms and other companies had conspired to fix the price of broiler chickens.

Maplevale claimed that Tyson and Pilgrim’s, the country’s two largest producers, led these companies in a scheme to destroy hens that bred new chickens, causing a significant increase in prices. The suit asserts that from 2008 to 2016, the wholesale price of broiler chicken rose 50 percent, despite a reduction in some of the key costs of chicken breeding, including corn and soybeans.

Last year, Sysco and US Foods, two of the largest food distributors in the United States, also sued Tyson and other chicken producers, claiming they had conspired to fix prices across a $65 billion industry.

Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride, Perdue Farms and Sanderson Farms have denied the accusations.

In June, the Justice Department intervened in the Maplevale lawsuit, asking a United States District Court to halt the discovery process for six months as it pursued a criminal investigation.

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Jimmy Carter: Powerful People Must Say ‘No More’ To Racist Justice System

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Jimmy Carter: Powerful People Must Say ‘No More’ To Racist Justice System

Jimmy Carter is the latest former president to speak out about the police killing of George Floyd, calling on people in power to provide more than lip service to improving what he termed “a racially discriminatory police and justice system.”

In a statement posted at CarterCenter.org, Carter said he and his wife, Rosalynn, are “pained by the tragic racial injustices and consequent backlash across our nation in recent weeks.”

Carter, 95, added he and his wife’s hearts “are with the victims’ families and all who feel hopeless in the face of pervasive racial discrimination and outright cruelty.”

But while the Georgia native said shining a spotlight on the immorality of racial discrimination is a must, “violence, whether spontaneous or consciously incited, is not a solution.”

Carter reflected how being a white male of the South made him “know all too well the impact of segregation and injustice to African Americans.”

“As a politician, I felt a responsibility to bring equity to my state and our country. In my 1971 inaugural address as Georgia’s governor, I said: ‘The time for racial discrimination is over.’

“With great sorrow and disappointment, I repeat those words today, nearly five decades later. Dehumanizing people debases us all; humanity is beautifully and almost infinitely diverse. The bonds of our common humanity must overcome the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices.”

Carter also noted that silence can be as deadly as violence, and that people have a duty to speak out against the current system of inequity.

“People of power, privilege, and moral conscience must stand up and say ‘no more’ to a racially discriminatory police and justice system, immoral economic disparities between whites and blacks, and government actions that undermine our unified democracy,” he said. “We are responsible for creating a world of peace and equality for ourselves and future generations.”

Carter closed out his statement by saying change won’t truly occur until America lives up to its professed ideals.

“We need a government as good as its people, and we are better than this,” he said.

Carter is the final former president to speak out about Floyd, 46, a Black man who died last week after a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed on the ground.

Previously, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton made statements condemning the country’s systemic racism problem.



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Free daily horoscope, celeb gossip and lucky numbers for 4 June, 2020

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Free daily horoscope, celeb gossip and lucky numbers for 4 June, 2020

TODAY’S MOTIVATIONAL QUOTE:

We are not rich by what we possess but rather by what we can do without. — Immanuel Kant

TODAY’S WISDOM FROM AROUND THE WORLD:

What can’t be cured, must be endured. — Old Proverb

TODAY’S CHINESE PROVERB:

Suspicion will chase the wind and clutch at shadows.

Want to know what the future holds? Get a FREE tarot card reading.

FOR THOSE OF US BORN ON THIS DAY:

Happy Birthday! The months ahead are likely to start on a fairly even keel; with numerous planets gathered in your sign you’ll be feeling extra vibrant and sassy right now, but as fall approaches a collection of intense aspects are likely to pull you in two directions! The sassy you will want to take on the world, but a part of you will want to stay at home in your sweats eating ice-cream! Keep yourself motivated with some competitive sport or activity around this time to banish this inner tension. By Christmas all your reserves of tact and discretion will be called upon; if a family member (or a close friend) seems to be acting strangely give them some space, because they will confide in you if you don’t pressure them. By the following spring your year will end on a high when you get an opportunity to travel to a new place!

CELEBRITIES BORN ON THIS DAY:

Famous people born on your birthday include: Suzi Quatro, Dan Hill, Scott Valentine, Tony Curtis, Curtis Mayfield, Lalaine, Colleen Dewhurst, Deniece Williams

CELEBRITY GOSSIP:

She may not be in the headlines quite so much these days, but Britney Spears is quietly building a solid and long-term fan base that should see her career continuing for many years. The planets tell us that Britney is also a lot happier with this more low key approach!

ARIES DAILY HOROSCOPE | Mar 21 – Apr 19

The planets aren’t being too fabulous today, especially when it comes to your general relationships. An apparently in-depth vibe is likely to cause some low-level confusion. A misunderstanding and/or crossed wires should definitely be readdressed, sooner rather than later!

Todays Numbers: 3, 11, 20, 23, 34, 44

TAURUS DAILY HOROSCOPE | Apr 20 – May 20

You may be tempted to pursue an unexpected development that may be slightly intriguing. That said; if this leads to something that may require a commitment of your time, then tread carefully. The impression that someone’s not being totally direct with you may be worth noting!

Todays Numbers: 7, 16, 21, 30, 38, 47

GEMINI DAILY HOROSCOPE | May 21 – Jun 20

Although it’s a day that has the potential to bring a little light relief, fun, and a little bit of romance too, you may need to recognise a superficial and/or casual response for what it is. There is a slight tendency over interpret and over analyse something unintended. Take care with a seemingly routine matter too!

Todays Numbers: 1, 4, 11, 30, 42, 46

CANCER DAILY HOROSCOPE | Jun 21 – Jul 22

It’s a day where your prevailing mood may be a little intense. Because of this you’re likely to blow hot and cold with those whose responses may seem frustratingly casual. In addition; you may need to bite your tongue as the inclination to tell it like it is becomes overwhelming!

Todays Numbers:  3, 17, 24, 28, 33, 48

LEO DAILY HOROSCOPE | Jul 23 – Aug 22

The planetary line-up will be less constructive than it appears. Blame the new moon for any lack of clarity, and blame Venus for any chilly undercurrent. It may be wise to defer a personal concern for a day. By airing your thoughts, you’re more likely to cause than resolve problems!

Today’s Numbers: 2, 14, 26, 34, 41, 45

VIRGO DAILY HOROSCOPE | Aug 23 – Sep 22

A slight sense of stagnation, courtesy of a muddled and contradictory undercurrent, could make today seem like hard work. One particular relationship could be the sole cause of this. Specifically, you may be on the receiving end of mixed messages, but don’t act yet, if that is the case!

Today’s Numbers: 8, 13, 16, 24, 32, 48

LIBRA DAILY HOROSCOPE | Sep 23 – Oct 22

Communications are likely to be more ‘miss’ than ‘hit.’ There could be a minor complication in the form of a possible encounter where you least expect it. A vague hint of a romantic turn may add to the mix. It may take longer than you realise to unravel something said!

Today’s Numbers: 7, 14, 21, 30, 38, 43

SCORPIO DAILY HOROSCOPE | Oct 23 – Nov 21

Avoid heavy dialogue when it comes to romantic and emotional matters, because today’s rather contradictory vibe could give way to unnecessary misunderstandings and may even create the impression of problems where none exist. A new or fresh realisation may just need to be shelved for now!

Today’s Numbers:  5, 9, 15, 22, 36, 44

SAGITTARIUS DAILY HOROSCOPE | Nov 22 – Dec 21

If you’re not time-pressured or working under an important commitment, then you can perhaps slow the pace down. Romance may well be in the air, but the careless vibe may guide you into one or two imprudent decisions. Excessive impulses should be avoided, as should grand promises!

Today’s Numbers: 3, 11, 22, 37, 42, 49

CAPRICORN DAILY HOROSCOPE | Dec 22 – Jan 19

Communications are not very well aspected. There may be some misinformation to untangle and this might well take an unexpected turn with regards to a friendship. An issue regarding commitment might be the root cause of some prickly dialogue. It’s not a day to secure agreements!

Today’s Numbers: 5, 13, 27, 32, 41, 45

AQUARIUS DAILY HOROSCOPE | Jan 20 – Feb 18

A rather misleading undercurrent may well impact on those lesser decisions without your realising and you could end up wasting time on a very minor development that could be resolved quite quickly. A moment of poor timing may need to be addressed or repaired as soon as possible!

Today’s Numbers:  6, 12, 20, 25, 33, 48

PISCES DAILY HOROSCOPE | Feb 19 – Mar 20

After the rather strenuous week so far, there is a slight tendency to under-react to today’s bubblier vibe, which carries a confusing undercurrent. Specifically; you may miss or even forget about a developing matter. Something said, hinted, or suggested may require a closer look!

Today’s Numbers:  9, 16, 24, 38, 42, 47

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Weather forecast, alerts and UVB index for all South African provinces, 4 June 2020

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Weather forecast, alerts and UVB index for all South African provinces, 4 June 2020

Weather data provided by the South African Weather Service. For a detailed forecast of your province, click here.

Weather Warnings

None.

Special Weather Advisories

None.

Weather Watches

None.

Gauteng:

Temperature: Fine and cool to warm.

The expected UVB Sunburn Index: High

Mpumalanga:

Temperature: Fine and cool but partly cloudy in the east with morning fog patches in the south-eastern parts of the Highveld.

The expected UVB Sunburn Index: –

Limpopo:

Temperature: Fine and cool to warm but partly cloudy in the east.

The expected UVB Sunburn Index: –

North-West Province:

Temperature: Fine and cool to warm.

The expected UVB Sunburn Index: –

Free State:

Temperature: Fine and cool.

The expected UVB Sunburn Index: –

Northern Cape:

Temperature: Morning fog along the north west coast, otherwise fine and cool to warm.

Wind: The wind along the coast will be moderate southerly to south-easterly.

The expected UVB Sunburn Index: –

Western Cape:

Temperature: Morning fog patches along the south coast and the adjacent interior, otherwise cloudy and cool to warm becoming fine from the afternoon.

Wind: The wind along the coast will be strong easterly to south-easterly between Cape Point and Cape Agulhas in the morning, otherwise moderate to fresh, becoming light to moderate northerly to north-westerly in the west by the evening.

The expected UVB Sunburn Index: Moderate

Eastern Cape:

The Western half – Temperature: Partly cloudy to cloudy with fog in places south of escarpment in the morning, otherwise fine to partly cloudy and cool but warm in places in the south.

The Western Half – Wind: The wind along the coast will be light north-westerly in the west in the morning and evening, otherwise moderate to fresh south-westerly.

The Eastern half – Temperature: Cloudy in places in the south in the morning, otherwise fine and cool but warm in places in the south.

The Eastern half – Wind: The wind along the coast will be Light northwesterly becoming moderate northeasterly late morning freshening in the afternoon

The expected UVB Sunburn Index: –

Kwazulu-Natal:

Temperature: Cloudy in the east at first, otherwise partly cloudy and cool, but warm in the north-east.

Wind: The wind along the coast will be gentle to moderate southerly to south-westerly, becoming easterly to north-easterly from the south from late morning.

The expected UVB Sunburn Index: Low



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WHO Resumes Study of Hydroxychloroquine for Treating COVID-19

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WHO Resumes Study of Hydroxychloroquine for Treating COVID-19

On June 3, the World Health Organization (WHO) resumed a study looking into whether the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine could be effective in treating COVID-19.

Last week, the WHO temporarily stopped people from enrolling in the trial, part of a larger study called Solidarity that is investigating a number of different potential coronavirus therapies, over concerns about the hydroxychloroquine’s adverse effects on the heart. That followed the publication of a Lancet study on May 22, involving more than 96,000 people, which found that the drug did not improve survival among patients hospitalized with COVID-19, and that these patients were more likely to develop heart rhythm abnormalities, a known risk factor of the drug, than those not given the medication. (Researchers have raised questions about how the data was collected for that study, and the journal editors are looking into the matter, but for now, the findings stand.) Other studies have similarly found that people taking hydroxychloroquine do not benefit; the results of one trial conducted in New York suggested that COVID-19 patients taking the drug were just as likely to need a ventilator and to die from the illness than those not receiving the drug.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said in a press briefing on June 3 that the agency’s board reviewed the data concerning heart risks and found “no reasons to modify the trial.”

Hydroxychloroquine is currently approved in the U.S. and other countries for treating malaria as well as certain autoimmune disorders like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. After a small study in France that was publicized in March suggested it might be effective in reducing some of the symptoms of COVID-19, doctors began investigating the medication among patients for the viral illness. Those studies—including one led by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)—are ongoing.

Some experts believe the drug might help control COVID-19 in part by blocking the virus’ ability to bind to the body’s cells. Studies in animals and cell cultures in the lab show it may also help suppress the aggressive immune reaction that doctors have seen in some patients’ lungs and respiratory systems. That suggests that by the time a COVID-19 patient is hospitalized, it might be too late for hydroxychloroquine to help, since the infection is already well underway. But until doctors have the results of rigorous trials that randomly assign hospitalized patients to receive hydroxychloroquine or placebo—like the ones currently conducted under the guidance of the NIH and WHO—are completed, they won’t know for sure if that’s the case.

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In the meanwhile, other studies are looking at whether the drug might be effective if used earlier in the disease progression. So far, the results from these studies are not very promising. On the same day that the WHO resumed its trial, U.S. and Canadian researchers reported in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that hydroxychloroquine did not seem to protect people at high risk of infection from getting COVID-19. The study included 821 people who were exposed to people with COVID-19 infections either in a health care or household settings, and were then given either hydroxychloroquine or placebo within four days of their exposure; 49 people who were taking the drug developed COVID-19, and 58 people in the placebo group did, which didn’t turn out to be a statistically significant difference.

“We found that hydroxychloroquine was no better than placebo in preventing COVID-19 infection after people have already been exposed to it,” says Dr. Emily McDonald, assistant professor of medicine at McGill University and one of the study’s co-authors.

Dr. Radha Rajasingham, assistant professor of medicine at University of Minnesota and another co-author of the study, says “Hydroxychloroquine should not be used as post-exposure prophylaxis for COVID-19.”

It’s still an open question whether the drug could be effective in protecting healthy people who haven’t yet been exposed from getting infected. Studies investigating that are ongoing, but, says Rajasingham, the data gathered so far suggest it’s unlikely. Nevertheless, she says, these studies “are still valuable and…need to finish and answer the questions they were designed to answer.”

Such studies, however, have to continue balancing the potential benefit of the treatment against its potential harms, and there is reasonable concern that the risks of hydroxychloroquine might be too high given the general trend of little improvement among people taking the drug. In a study published in Heart Rhythm on May 28, researchers led by Favio Fenton at Georgia Institute of Technology detailed how the drug affects electrical signaling in the heart of rabbits and guinea pig, and contributes to abnormal heart rhythms; these animals serve as model for understanding heart issues in humans. “We see the wavelengths of the signaling become longer, and cycles that before weren’t arrhythmic now with the drug we see big changes in the propagation waves,” he says. “We have to be careful that this drug is not allowed in patients who are not in studies where they can be monitored. Our study shows that you have to be careful.”

Indeed, on April 24, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about using hydroxychloroquine outside of study settings, and advised doctors not to prescribe the drug off-label for treating COVID-19.

Despite concerns about the medication’s side effects, the WHO decided to continue its study among hospitalized patients in order to get concrete answers, backed by solid scientific research, to an open question about the world’s most pressing health threat. “The message is that it’s possible to do the proper study, and while I know we are all eager to try out different potential therapies, it’s reasonable and proper to wait for the proper study to get the definitive answer,” says McDonald. “Otherwise the next time we have a wave [of COVID-19 cases], we are going to be asking the same questions if we don’t get the answer properly. Our study answered one question and we’re happy to have the answer one way or the other because it’s nice to know something definitive. We won’t have to revisit this particular question again and we can look at new options.”

Contact us at editors@time.com.

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