10 things you need to know this morning in Australia

Good morning, all. Hope you had good weekends.

1. A special good morning to Melbourne, where stage four restrictions have slightly lifted. Playgrounds have reopened and single people are now alloweded a single visitor in their social bubble. Look, you take what you can get. Today’s figures have also landed, with 35 new cases and seven deaths.

2. There were nine new cases in NSW on Sunday. A war is continuing to develop between NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Queensland Premier Annastasia Palaszczuk over the issue of border closures, with Berejiklian accusing her northern counterpart of causing “unnecessary heartache”.

3. On Friday, Rio Tinto CEO Jean-Sébastien Jacques stepped down from the company “by mutual agreement” after the company blew up an ancient Aboriginal heritage site. He will depart Rio along with the company’s iron ore division boss Chris Salisbury and corporate affairs boss Simone Niven. “What happened at Juukan was wrong and we are determined to ensure that the destruction of a heritage site of such exceptional archaeological and cultural significance never occurs again,” chairman Simon Thompson said in a statement. This story is sending shockwaves around the globe:

4. The $70 billion JobKeeper wage subsidy program has potentially been rorted by thousands of businesses, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. However, not one has been penalised despite more than 8000 tip-offs to the tax office. The most common JobKeeper tip-offs so far have been “allegations that employers are not passing on the full $1500, businesses not meeting turnover requirements to get into the program, fair work issues such as not paying penalty rates, and employee eligibility.”

5. The Commonwealth Bank is the second bank to announce a foray into interest-free credit cards after NAB launched one on Thursday. To be launched in November, the ‘CommBank Neo’ card follows a similar model but will also offer cashback incentives to attract customers. Expect more products like this as banks and other lenders try to reengineer credit cards to better compete with buy now, pay later companies like Afterpay.

6. New research from VicHealth has found food delivery platforms are more likely to promote unhealthy food options to low-income suburbs in Victoria compared to more affluent ones. It found that during the coronavirus pandemic, residents in low-income suburbs had to scroll past an average of 23 unhealthy food venues before finding a healthier option. However, Menulog, Deliveroo and Uber Eats have rejected the claims of the report, calling them “untrue” and “misleading”.

7. Clinical trials for the coronavirus vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford have resumed in the United Kingdom after the process was recently halted over a participant’s adverse reaction. The company said Saturday in a press release that a review board “has concluded its investigations and recommended to the MHRA that trials in the UK are safe to resume.”

8. ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, is planning to sell the app without the algorithm that drives it, the South China Morning Post reported. The TikTok algorithm powers the app’s “For You” page, which allows users to discover new content. This is interesting, as the algorithm is no small part of what makes TikTok successful.

9. US chipmaker Nvidia is close to buying British competitor Arm for $US40 billion from current owner SoftBank, according to multiple media reports Saturday. The deal could provoke regulatory scrutiny, since it would create a giant in the chip industry. SoftBank first acquired Arm in 2016 in its biggest-ever deal for $US32 billion.

10. 62% of adults in the US worry that “political pressure from the Trump administration lead the FDA to rush to approve a coronavirus vaccine without making sure that it is safe and effective,” according to a new poll from Kaiser Family Foundation. President Donald Trump has claimed that a vaccine for coronavirus may be ready in time for the November presidential election. However, a number of public health experts have called this timeline unrealistic, and CEOs of top drug companies signed a pledge promising to prioritise safety over speed amid uneasy public confidence in the vaccine.

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