Four million Indians may lose citizenship
Around four million residents of the north Indian state of Assam are at risk of losing their citizenship.
The Assamese government published a register of citizens which required people to prove they came to India before March 24th, 1971, two days before Bangladesh’s declaration of independence.
The Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party plans to remove those deemed foreigners from Assam, though local government assure those recently designated foreigners will not be immediately deported.
10 am Zedlines
A lack of state government resources is resulting in Queensland’s cattle more exposed to tick outbreaks, a report from AgForce.
The Queensland Government had introduced a new management framework two years ago to simplify tick outbreaks, yet due to insufficient funding and support the plan was unable to work effectively.
AgForce Cattle Tick Committee Chair Justin Boshammer said ticks are a major problem within the cattle industry, costing north Queensland around $160 million a year.
Bankruptcy high in Queensland
During the 2018 financial year, 32,350 Australians declared themselves bankrupt.
Out of any state or territory across the country Queensland recorded the highest number of bankruptcies increasing by 1.5 per cent from last year.
Five suburbs on the top 10 list came from Queensland, these including Upper Coomera, Morayfield, Pimpama, Caboolture and Redbank Plains.
Many of these suburbs reported to include a high number of young families.
Sydney to recycle garbage into fuel
A Sydney recycling factory has plans to turn a quarter of a million tonnes of garbage into fuel every year.
The factory located in Wetherill Park, in Sydney’s West co-owned by waste companies Cleanaway and ResourceCo will turn this waste into fuel.
The waste will replace 100,000 tonnes of coal power and removing the equivalent of 20,000 cars off the road.
VicForest logging may have breached laws
A Victorian Government logging company is believed to have broken the law during a forest clearing, claimed to be home to a threatened species.
VicForests claims it was conducting an experiment called the “Greater Glider Project”.
Greater Gliders are listed as a threatened species under federal laws, with conservationists alleging the forest clearing was undertaken so intensely it may have broken national laws.
Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe election
More than five million Zimbabweans participated yesterday in the nation’s first post-Mugabe election.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, of the ZANU-PF party, and Nelson Chamisa, of the opposition MDC Alliance, are seen as the top two contenders.
Official results are expected to be released on Saturday the 4th of August.
Australian and NZ firefighters to assist in California
Australian and New Zealand firefighters will be deployed to California for 42 days to help battle bushfires in the north of the American state.
The US’s National Multi-Agency Coordination Group requested the assistance of 188 specialist firefighters from Australia and New Zealand.
The fires have burned across 3,760 square kilometres in California, with 50,000 people evacuated and six dead.
9 am Zedlines
Workers at the Gold Coast Airport extension have claimed they were not sufficiently warned about PFAS chemical contamination.
Plumber Craig Anderson, who worked for 18 months on the site, said he was told to wash his hands after working in contaminated groundwater, but was not given further information about the contamination.
While Airservices Australia had been given a report from the University of Queensland on avoiding contamination, the workers were employed by construction company Fulton Hugon, not Airservices, during the project.
Gold Coast bait supplier fined for raw prawns
A Gold Coast bait supplier has been found guilty and fined $10,000 for the transport of raw prawns outside the white spot disease zone.
All bait prawns tested positive for white spot syndrome were traced and removed from sale, preventing the spread of white spot disease to new waterways.
There are white spot syndrome movement restrictions from Caloundra to the NSW border and west to Ipswich.
ACT introduce free childcare
The ACT government is introducing free childcare for three year olds as part of a new strategy on early childcare education.
The state government has planned to offer 15 hours per week or 600 hours per year, of free childcare to parents.
These changes come from recommendations from a national review released in February.