Three others at Australian Open have Djokovic exemption - source - CNA

MELBOURNE : At least three other participants in the Australian Open with the same medical exemption as Novak Djokovic are already in the country with more potentially arriving over the next week, a source told Reuters on Friday.

Djokovic was spending the Orthodox Christmas in detention on Friday having had his visa cancelled on arrival in Australia when officials ruled his documentation was insufficient to allow him entry to the country while unvaccinated.

The political fallout, both domestically and abroad, intensified overnight as Djokovic's legal team prepared documents aimed at extending his stay after a Federal court hearing in Melbourne on Monday.

The 20-times Grand Slam winner might not be the only person hoping to take part in the Australian Open to face removal from the country, however.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews has confirmed the Australian Border Force is assessing the credentials of two others who entered the country under the same exemption granted to Djokovic. 

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that a third participant in the Grand Slam also entered Australia on the same framework, which had been put in place by Tennis Australia and the Victoria State government.

Exemptions may also have been granted to players or officials who are yet to arrive in Australia, the source added.

While the tournament proper begins on Jan. 17, ITF Junior events and wheelchair tournaments are set to begin next week, so too the qualifying events for the Australian Open.

TA has not commented on the matter since Djokovic was initially detained at Melbourne Airport shortly after 11 p.m. on Wednesday.

Tournament director Craig Tiley, who is also the TA chief executive, defended the medical exemption granted to Djokovic prior to his detention.

Srdjan Djokovic, the detained player's father, has claimed more than 20 exemptions were handed out to tennis participants prior to the Australian Border Force's intervention.

Tiley said this week 26 claims for exemptions had been lodged, but only a "handful" had been approved.

Djokovic's legal team of Nick Wood and Paul Holdenson is expected to file further documents on Saturday supporting the nine-times Australian Open champion's bid for an injunction to delay his departure.

Justin Quill, a partner with Thomson Geer who specialises in media law, said Djokovic might be able to play the Australian Open even while his challenge to the deportation decision proceeds.

He said if Djokovic's interim injunction was successful, the hearing into the matter proper was likely to be listed for a date falling well after the completion of the tournament on Jan. 30.

"When you look at interlocutory injunctions, you have to clear two things," Quill told Reuters.

"You have to demonstrate there is an arguable case with reasonable grounds. If Djokovic gets over that first hurdle, the next thing is Balance of Convenience.

"This is where you balance the scales in regards to the imposition on each party and who will be hindered more if their rights are wrongly denied."

Quill said he believed the Balance of Convenience could favour Djokovic.

"If it turns out the Home Affairs Minister is right and he ultimately wins the case, they can deport Djokovic then. It doesn't really impact the minister too much,” Quill said.

"If it turns out Novak is right and that they never had the right to deport him, he can’t get back the chance at the 2022 Australian Open. He can’t get back his attempt to go down as the greatest ever grand slam winner in history."

(Editing by Stephen Coates)

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2022-01-07 06:29:24Z
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Pregnant woman loses baby after Xi'an hospital denies her entry due to expired Covid-19 test - The Straits Times

BEIJING (BLOOMBERG) - China has fired medical chiefs after a pregnant woman lost her baby outside a hospital that denied her entry due to Covid-19 controls, as officials in the central city of Xi'an face scrutiny for their strict lockdown measures.

The woman, who was eight months pregnant, was turned away from Gaoxin Hospital on Jan 1 because her Covid-19 test had expired by four hours, according to a post on Tuesday written by someone claiming to be the woman's niece.

A video posted the same day, showing what appeared to be a woman bleeding on the sidewalk outside a hospital in Xi'an's Gaoxin district, became a trending topic on a micro-blogging platform.

Two hospital department heads were fired and a general manager was suspended, the Xi'an government announced in a Thursday (Jan 6) statement.

An investigation that concluded on Wednesday determined that the incident was an "accident caused by negligence", the release said, and ordered the hospital to compensate and apologise to the woman.

The city's health commission chief Liu Shunzhi also received a warning from the Communist Party for malpractice in emergency treatment.

Xi'an is currently battling the country's worst Covid-19 outbreak since the start of the pandemic, having reported more than 1,700 cases in a month.

The lockdown has banned its more than 13 million residents from leaving their homes without a special reason, triggering shortages of food and medical care.

This has led to social media posts criticising the government - a rarity in the nation.

Two lower-level officials have already been dismissed in Xi'an to "strengthen epidemic prevention and control", the government said on Monday.

Earlier this week, the health code system that strictly controls people's movements crashed, prompting the suspension of the head of the local big-data bureau, according to a local Communist Party body.

China is one of the very few countries left practising a zero-tolerance Covid-19 strategy that relies on strict border controls, extensive testing and lockdowns to bring infections to zero.

While the Xi'an outbreak is of the Delta variant, the more transmissible Omicron strain now roiling the world poses a further challenge to that approach.

Mainland China has not yet reported community spread of Omicron.

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2022-01-06 04:20:46Z
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Hong Kong to ban dining in after 6pm, close pools bars and gyms; introduce flight bans - CNA

The global finance hub has stuck to a zero-Covid strategy by largely isolating itself from the world and enforcing a draconian and costly quarantine regime.

On Dec 31, a streak of three months without community cases ended with the first local transmission of the new Omicron variant.

Since then, authorities have scrambled to track down and test hundreds of people who had been in contact with a handful of Omicron patients. One patient, however, had no known links, raising fears of a large outbreak.

"We are worried there may be silent transmission chains in the community," Lam said. "Some confirmed cases had a lot of activities before being aware they got infected."

The latest contact tracing campaign was sparked by a patient who danced with some 20 friends in a central park on New Year's Eve. Two of the fellow dancers, one of whom was a domestic helper, came up positive in preliminary tests.

The helper's employer and eight other of her close contacts then went on a cruise journey on Jan 2.

As part of its coronavirus restrictions, Hong Kong has restricted cruises to short trips in nearby waters, with ships asked to operate at reduced capacity and to only allow vaccinated passengers who test negative for the virus.

The "Spectrum of the Seas" ship, which returned a day early, had about 2,500 passengers and 1,200 staff on board. The nine close contact passengers were isolated from the rest of the people on board and preliminary tests taken during the journey returned negative results, authorities said.

"Spectrum of the Seas is taking appropriate measures under guidelines by the Department of Health," Royal Caribbean told Reuters in a statement.

The nine close contacts were sent to a quarantine centre, while the rest of the passengers and staff will have to undergo several compulsory tests in coming days, the government said.

Additionally, people who have been to dozens of places across Hong Kong around the same time as the close contacts of recent patients have been issued compulsory testing notices, the government said in a separate statement.

Victoria Park, in downtown Hong Kong, the newly-opened M+ modern art museum, ferry piers, restaurants, stores, clinics were among the places listed.

Gabriel Leung, University of Hong Kong dean of medicine and a government adviser, told public broadcaster RTHK there were probably "five-to-10 invisible transmission chains" in the city.

"There’s no time to waste," Leung said. "We need circuit-breaker measures."

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2022-01-05 08:41:00Z
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Djokovic will defend Australian Open title after exemption from COVID-19 vaccination - CNA

MELBOURNE: World number one Novak Djokovic said on Tuesday (Jan 4) he would defend his Australian Open title at Melbourne Park later this month after receiving a medical exemption from getting vaccinated against COVID-19.

Djokovic, who had declined to reveal his COVID-19 vaccination status, said previously that he was unsure whether he would compete at the Grand Slam due to concerns over Australia's quarantine rules.

"I've spent fantastic quality time with my loved ones over the break and today I'm heading Down Under with an exemption permission. Let's go 2022," the Serbian player said on Instagram.

Organisers of the Australian Open, which starts on Jan 17, had stipulated that all participants must be vaccinated against the coronavirus or have a medical exemption granted by an independent panel of experts.

But Djokovic pulled out of the Serbia team for the ATP Cup in Sydney to raise doubts over his participation in the year's first Grand Slam in Melbourne.

"I am ready to live and breathe tennis in the next few weeks of competition. Thanks everyone for the support," Djokovic added in his statement, which was accompanied by a picture of him in an airport.

Djokovic has won a record nine Australian Open titles, including the last three, and is in a three-way tie on 20 majors with Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal in the all-time list.

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2022-01-04 10:44:00Z
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Vietnam urges China to urgently reopen border gates as trade stalls - CNA

HANOI: Vietnam's trade ministry asked China's Guangxi authorities to take urgent measures to ease congestion at border crossings after China stepped up its border controls with neighbours to follow zero COVID-19 policies, state media reported.

Pictures and video footage from state-run Vietnam News Agency (VNA) showed thousands of trucks were held up at the border following reports that imported COVID-19 cases had been detected in Guangxi province.

"Anti-virus prevention measures that Guangxi is applying under the 'zero COVID' policies, including closing border gates or stopping fruit imports, are over-necessary," VNA reported, citing a trade ministry statement.

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2022-01-02 09:06:08Z
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Climate change, new construction mean more ruinous fires in the US - CNA

Many whose homes were spared remained without power while temperatures dropped to the single digits. The blaze burned at least 24 sq km.

The cause of the blaze is still under investigation, but experts say it's clear what allowed it to spread so fast.

“With any snow on the ground, this absolutely would not have happened in the way that it did,” said Keith Musselman, a snow hydrologist in Boulder.

“It was really the grass and the dry landscape that allowed this fire to jump long distances in a short period of time.”

Three ingredients were needed to start this fire – fuels, a warm climate and an ignition source, said Jennifer Balch, a fire scientist with the University of Colorado, Boulder. “And then you add a fourth ingredient, wind, and that's when it became a disaster.”

Temperatures in Colorado between June and December were the warmest on record, Balch said. The grasses grew thick because they had a wet spring, but saw no moisture until snow flurries arrived Friday night.

“All of Colorado is flammable, our grasses are flammable, our shrubs are flammable, our trees are flammable," Balch said.

"This is a dry landscape that is flammable for good chunks of the year, and those chunks of time are getting longer with climate change."

The lesson learned throughout this event is that the “wildland-urban interface is way bigger than we thought it was”, Balch said. That means a wider area is under threat of wildfire.

That border area, where structures built by people meet undeveloped wildland prone to fire, has always been the foothills, she said.

Firefighters in Boulder consider the interface west of Broadway, a busy road that passes through the centre of town. But Thursday's fire sparked east of that line, next to thousands of houses that have sprouted up on the east side of the Rockies since the 1990s, Balch said.

“There were stretches between Denver and Fort Collins that had no development, but now it’s just like one long continuous development track,” Balch said. “And those homes are built with materials that are very flammable — wood siding, asphalt roofing.

"We need to completely rethink how we’re building homes.”

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2022-01-02 06:06:00Z
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China to extend preferential tax policies for foreigners until end-2023 - CNA

BEIJING : China will extend preferential income tax policies for foreigners residing in the country to Dec. 31, 2023, the finance ministry said on Friday, as part of measures to ease the burden on taxpayers.

Previously, China said benefits and allowances for foreigners including housing rental and education for their children would cease to be income tax-exempt starting Jan. 1, 2022.

In recent days, the government has pledged to further cut taxes and fees in 2022 to support struggling businesses. China will also extend some favourable income tax policies to ease the burden for middle- and low-income groups.

(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Editing by Kim Coghill)

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2022-01-01 02:59:21Z
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