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... After discussions with each country’s trade ministers, the leaders were under the impression that all that was left was to shake hands and smile for the cameras. For Vietnam, which was hosting the conference, the new deal was set to be a major diplomatic coup. The leaders noticed that Abe and Trudeau were late for the meeting and some murmuring broke out. Abe soon came striding into the meeting looking “very flustered,” according to Turnbull. When Turnbull asked him what was going on, Abe said, “Justin won’t sign. He’s pulling out.” Asked if Trudeau was trying to scuttle the...

"A global child exploitation sting triggered by a US Department of Homeland Security investigation has rescued four Australian children as young as two months old who were used to produce and exchange child rape videos and images through online pedophile networks around the world."

MELBOURNE—Australia on Sunday added to growing pressure on China over its handling of the CCP virus, questioning its transparency and demanding an international investigation into the origins of the virus and how it spread. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, which emerged from mainland China last year, causes the disease COVID-19. Australia’s foreign minister, Marise Payne, said her concern about the Chinese regime’s transparency was at a “a very high point.” “The issues around coronavirus are issues for independent review, and I think that it is important that we do that,” Payne told ABC television....

A controversial drug heralded by some as a coronavirus cure comes with symptoms of its own, Rita Wilson says. The actress, 63, says she was given chloroquine after she and husband Tom Hanks tested positive for COVID-19 while in Australia last month. The malaria treatment may or may not have helped her beat the virus, but it certainly gave her “extreme side effects,” she tells Gayle King on Tuesday’s “CBS This Morning.” After getting the chloroquine, Wilson became “completely nauseous” and experienced vertigo and weakened muscles, she warns. “We have to be very considerate about this drug,” she says. “We...

Doctors who prescribe an anti-malarial drug being touted as a potential COVID-19 treatment will face a $13,000 fine due to new prescription rules. The rules, brought into effect in Queensland on Tuesday, means that clinicians are banned from prescribing hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment. Hydroxychloroquine is an anti-malarial drug now used to treat anti-immune conditions such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. There is no solid evidence that the drug is effective against COVID-19, but Federal Health Minister said that there has been “some promising research so far”. The new restrictions were brought in place after doctors began prescribing the drug...

The unanimous decision of the High Court quashing George Pell’s convictions was the end of the matter for Australia’s most ­famous Catholic priest. But to understand the dreadful state of justice inside our courts, you need to go back to where this courtroom drama started. The decision by the primary judge preventing Pell’s legal team from using psychological evidence about the credibility of the complainant points to a much deeper dilemma about how the accused can defend themselves from allegations of sexual assault in 2020. Pell had the wherewithal and the resources to pursue his wrongful conviction to the country’s...

A renowned global economist has told 60 Minutes that total society lockdown is not a sustainable long term solution to stopping the spread of coronavirus. Danish political scientist Dr Bjorn Lomborg describes a delicate and difficult balance that needs to be achieved in order to stop the spread of the virus without causing total economic meltdown. But can we stop the spread of coronavirus without destroying global economies?

The George Pell story is a fiasco that combines incompetence and malevolence. It had every aspect of tragedy — a big man who polarised opinion, a church engaged in criminal behaviour, victims who demanded justice, and police, media and legal institutions that failed to honour their obligations. It is a particular Australian tragedy that originates in the horrific crimes of the Catholic Church. These crimes and their cover-ups were worse than normal crimes because they ruined the lives of children and violated the raison d’etre of the church — to proclaim God’s mission. The earthquake that engulfed the church did...

Abstract Although several clinical trials are now underway to test possible therapies, the worldwide response to the COVID-19 outbreak has been largely limited to monitoring/containment. We report here that Ivermectin, an FDA-approved anti-parasitic previously shown to have broad-spectrum anti-viral activity in vitro, is an inhibitor of the causative virus (SARS-CoV-2), with a single addition to Vero-hSLAM cells 2 hours post infection with SARS-CoV-2 able to effect ∼5000-fold reduction in viral RNA at 48 h. Ivermectin therefore warrants further investigation for possible benefits in humans. Ivermectin is an FDA-approved broad spectrum anti-parasitic agent1 that in recent years we, along with other...

The words “rapist” and “no justice” have been graffitied on St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne with inverted crosses attached to the church’s gate after Cardinal George Pell was acquitted for child sex abuse. In similar scenes, a children’s tricycle, ribbons and a paper bag bearing a biblical quote have been left on the gate of the east Melbourne monastery where Cardinal Pell spent his first night of freedom after 405 days in prison. Cardinal Pell, who consistently maintained his innocence throughout the legal ordeal, was taken to the Carmelite Monastery in Kew on Tuesday afternoon after being released from...

The spectacular 7-0 decision of the High Court in favour of Cardinal George Pell is impossible to describe in conventional terms of winning or losing. It can be understood only in terms of impact. The impact of wrongful imprisonment and vile insult in the case of Pell. The ­impact of years of legal anxiety, and the final crushing collapse for the complainant. But the greatest impact will be on the Victorian criminal justice system. How could that proud system get something as important as this so legally wrong so consistently through so many steps over a process that lasted years?...

There has been an angry reaction after a Pope Francis tweet appeared to offer his support to Cardinal George Pell. The Pope made comments in his Tuesday morning mass, just hours after the High Court overturned Pell’s convictions for the sexual abuse of children. He then repeated similar comments on Twitter, comparing the suffering of those wrongly accused to the persecution of Jesus. “In these days of #Lent, we’ve been witnessing the persecution that Jesus underwent and how He was judged ferociously, even though He was innocent. Let us #PrayTogether today for all those persons who suffer due to an...

Cardinal George Pell is innocent. Shame on all those who persecuted him in one of this nation’s greatest miscarriages of justice. The High Court judges yesterday spoke with one voice – seven to zero – that Pell should never have been convicted of the improbable rape of two boys in his Cathedral. But don’t tell me to have faith in our justice system. Yes, Pell was yesterday free. But this witch hunt ruined his reputation, destroyed his career and robbed him of 404 days of freedom. So shame on the state institutions who tried so destroy him – a noted...

Outspoken columnist Andrew Bolt has labelled the case against Cardinal George Pell as “the greatest miscarriage of justice in Australian history”. The Sky News host said the “witch hunt” against Pell had destroyed his career, reputation and locked him in jail for 404 days “for a crime he could not possibly have committed”. Pell will immediately be released from prison after the High Court ordered his child sexual abuse convictions be quashed “and judgments of acquittal be entered in their place”. The most senior Catholic in the world to be convicted of child sexual abuse today learned his final appeal...

Australian TV is showing the Cardinal leaving the prison in what is basically a small motorcade.

Finally, despite the worst efforts of Victoria Police, Victoria’s legal system, and the media’s smear factory, Cardinal George Pell has had his conviction overturned by the High Court. The full judgment can be read here. “A” refers to the choirboy and “B” to his deceased fellow chorister. Below some key elements of that unanimous ruling:57. In this Court, the respondent correctly noted that a number of the claimed improbabilities raise the same point. It remains that acceptance of A’s account of the first incident requires finding that: (i) contrary to the applicant’s practice, he did not stand on the steps...

Cardinal George Pell is to be released from prison after he won his appeal, and Australia’s highest court on Tuesday overturned his convictions for child sexual abuse. A full bench of seven judges ruled that Pell’s conviction for child sex abuse should be overturned and he should walk free immediately. They unanimously determined that the jury should have had reasonable doubts as to Pell’s guilt and that the jury had not properly considered all the evidence at his trial. Pell, 78, became the highest-ranking Catholic clergyman worldwide to be imprisoned for child sex offenses after he was arrested in 2018...

HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA PELL VERSUS THE QUEEN 2020 [HCA 12] Today, the High Court granted special leave to appeal against a decision of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Victoria and unanimously allowed the appeal. The High Court found that the jury, acting rationally on the whole of the evidence, ought to have entertained a doubt as to the applicant's guilt with respect to each of the offences for which he was convicted, and ordered that the convictions be quashed and that verdicts of acquittal be entered in their place. On 11 December 2018, following a...

I have consistently maintained my innocence while suffering from a serious injustice. This has been remedied today with the High Court’s unanimous decision. I look forward to reading the Judgment and reasons for the decision in detail. I hold no ill will toward my accuser, I do not want my acquittal to add to the hurt and bitterness so many feel; there is certainly hurt and bitterness enough. However my trial was not a referendum on the Catholic Church; nor a referendum on how Church authorities in Australia dealt with the crime of paedophilia in the Church. The point was...

Cardinal George Pell will be freed from jail after Australia's highest court overturned his convictions for child sexual abuse. The ex-Vatican treasurer, 78, had been the most senior Catholic figure ever jailed for such crimes. In 2018, a jury found he abused two boys in Melbourne in the 1990s. But the High Court of Australia quashed that verdict on Tuesday, meaning the cardinal will immediately stop serving a six-year jail sentence. The Australian cleric has maintained his innocence since he was charged by police in June 2017. A full bench of seven judges ruled unanimously in Cardinal Pell's favour. It...