TRANSCRIPT
- Israeli airstrikes kill 42 people in Gaza City
- Labor politicians condemn Peter Dutton's nuclear energy policy
- South Sydney fear Campbell Graham may miss the entire 2024 season
A Hamas spokesman says at least 42 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza City.
The spokesman says one strike on houses in Al-Shati refugee camp killed 24 people, and another 18 were killed in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood.
The Israeli military says it targeted two Hamas military infrastructure sites in Gaza City but provided no further details.
Hamas denies the claim, and says the attacks targeted civilians.
Meanwhile, the director of the Rafah office of the International Committee of the Red Cross William Schomberg, describes what his team saw following an Israeli airstrike north of Rafah that killed 25 people on Friday.
"The scale of this shock was quite unprecedented, at least for us. And to give you one very unfortunate but graphic detail, we literally found body parts scattered in different areas, including within the compound, which we then later collected."
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Labor politicians are condemning the Opposition leader Peter Dutton's nuclear energy proposal, saying the Albanese government is offering cost of living relief in Australians' energy bills from July.
Australians are set to receive tax cuts and energy bill relief from July 1.
Meanwhile, Peter Dutton claims a conservative estimate of Labor's policy sits at around $1.3 trillion dollars, but Senator for New South Wales Jenny McAllister insists the Australian Energy Market Operator estimated $121 billion in costs to achieve Australia's 2050 net zero goals.
Senator McAllister says Mr Dutton's policy has not been adequately detailed and fails to address climate commitments, insisting tax payers will bear the costs.
"Australian Labor under Mr. Albanese is offering a costed policy understood, backed by experts that gives Australia the opportunity to deal with the reliability challenges we need to address now and to participate in the global economy as we move towards a net zero future. The contrast is with Mr. Dutton, who is offering a risky, untested experimental technology."
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Four million Australians live with back problems and treatment costs Australia more than $3 billion annually.
A new technique to rehabilitate spinal discs is offering hopes of new treatment.
Human trials set to begin next January are promising a technique designed to rehabilitate spinal discs.
Orthopaedic spine surgeon Dr Ashish Diwan is founder of the venture capital firm specialising in biotech which is funding the trial, and which has government support.
He says commercial release may still be five years away, but the first human trials follow four years of rigorous testing on animals.
“This trial is focused on trying to cure that intervertebral disc injury by healing it. We inject a recombinant protein which can mobilize the stem cells, which are just there, sitting there in the bone above and below into the disc. And when they arrive at the disc, they actually become disc-like cells and they make new disc and they heal the disc. We will start off with a small group of about 20, then we will increase it to 80 and then we will get it to the next phase where 250 to 300 people will participate. Australia is leading the world in this.”
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Unfavourable weather have resulted in a major marine rescue training exercise being relocated.
The multi-agency exercise was scheduled to take place at Bondi beach however adverse conditions meant it was relocated to Sydney Harbour.
The exercise involved Marine Rescue New South Wales volunteers from seven units across Greater Sydney, along with members of New South Wales Police Marine Area Command and Surf Life Saving New South Wales.
Coordinated by New South Wales Police Marine Area Command, volunteers participated in real-time search and rescue scenarios.
The scenarios required crews to locate manikins using specialist drift modelling, search patterns and expert techniques to simulate real-word emergency incidents.
Marine Rescue New South Wales Superintendent Dan Duemmer says it's important to train volunteers in all conditions.
"Look it's important that we conduct our exercises in all sorts of conditions and it is not ideal for offshore operations today. But still, things go wrong in any sort of condition so we want to make sure when we're training and when we're doing our exercises, we are doing them in adverse conditions."
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South Sydney fear Campbell Graham may not play at all in 2024 as the star centre struggles to return from his pre-season sternum surgery.
Graham underwent surgery in February to try and heal his problematic sternum, after it had been a lingering problem throughout 2023.
It had initially been expected Graham would miss the first half of the NRL season, before his return date was revised to round 18.
But the 25-year-old is still yet to resume training with Rabbitohs teammates, and the club now believe he may not return at all this year.
As things stand, it is possible the Rabbitohs would only consider bringing him back if they remain a finals hope late in the season.