Australia news LIVE: Blockade Australia protests disrupt Sydney; global economy at risk of stagflation

The rail union has warned that disruptions to Sydney train services will be significantly worse next week unless the NSW government returns to the negotiating table with an offer that ensures it will modify the state’s new $2.88 billion intercity train fleet.

Commuters are already braced for major disruptions from planned industrial action this week, which will result in a halving of train services on Tuesday and by up to 75 per cent on Friday when workers are expected to refuse to operate overseas-built trains.

Rail Tram and Bus Union state secretary Alex Claassens said the union planned to ramp up industrial action next week unless the government changed its position on the new intercity fleet.

“We are escalating because we are just fed up with the constant promises and backflips,” he said.

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Nicotine vape sellers are facilitating prescriptions for customers who never step foot in a doctor’s office or pharmacy, in what medical bodies say is a blind spot in regulations designed to restrict products to smokers trying to quit.

Customers are being prescribed vapes through web forms and telehealth services that are linked to vape businesses, or receiving referrals to online-only doctors from websites selling vapes promising quick scripts.

Australian Medical Association NSW president Dr Michael Bonning warned the practice created multiple conflicts of interest and that medical professionals prescribing vaping products through a web form were “taking a big risk with their registration”.

Since October last year, Australians have needed a prescription to purchase nicotine vaping products, including e-liquids and pods, in an attempt to restrict their use to helping people quit smoking.

Bonning said there were ethical issues created by authorised prescribers linked to sellers.

“There are conflicts of interest in multiple streams here,” he said. “A doctor who is receiving referrals from a company that sells a product is an ethical issue for a doctor and a pharmacy receiving those scripts.”

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London: Prince Charles’s acceptance of a suitcase containing €1 million ($1.5 million) in cash from a Qatari sheikh will be reviewed by the UK’s Charity Commission.

Claims in The Sunday Times that the Prince of Wales accepted three separate cash payments for his charity from a former prime minister of the Gulf state totalling more than £2.5 million have attracted controversy. The heir to the throne is alleged to have personally accepted the cash donations for The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund between 2011 and 2015 from Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, who was prime minister of Qatar between 2007 and 2013.

Clarence House said the donations were “passed immediately” to the charity which “carried out the appropriate governance and have assured us that all the correct processes were followed”.

There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by either party, but the details have raised further questions about the judgment of the future king.

The Sunday Times reported that on one occasion the cash from “HBJ”, as Sheikh Hamad is known, was stuffed into bags from upmarket store Fortnum & Mason.

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Investigative journalist Hedley Thomas has denied embarking on a campaign to incite prejudice against former Sydney teacher Chris Dawson with his podcast, The Teacher’s Pet, a court has heard.

Dawson, a former Newtown Jets rugby league player, is on trial in the NSW Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to murdering his first wife, Lynette Dawson, who vanished from Sydney’s northern beaches in January 1982.

Thomas was called to give evidence on Monday, in the final days of the Crown case, at the request of Dawson’s lawyers who questioned The Australian’s Walkley Award-winning journalist about his investigation and subsequent podcast into the mother-of-two’s disappearance.

He said he wrote a feature-length article about the first coronial inquest in 2001, including meeting Detective Damian Loone and Lynette’s sister Patricia Jenkins, and met Lynette’s brother Greg Simms in late 2017 when he had decided to create the podcast.

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Western Australia has once again led the country’s gender pay gap list at 21.2 per cent, triple South Australia’s 7.4 per cent gap, with our state’s dominant industries identified as the reason.

An Australia-wide analysis by the federal government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency paints a bleak picture of gender equality in the private sector.

Wages and Ages: Mapping the Gender Pay Gap by Age shows the gap widens substantially when women turn 35, with women earning $7.78 for every $10 earned by their male counterparts.

The data, taken from more than 3 million Australian employees, shows women never out-earn their male colleagues across all age groups, but the gap is most significant when people reach their peak earning capacity, between 45 and 64 years old

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Australia’s state and territory health departments have reported 23 deaths from COVID-19 today with 23,932 new cases and 3133 people in hospital with the virus, an increase of 15 people. There are 111 people in ICU an increase of five patients on yesterday.

NSW - Deaths: 11, cases: 6,862. In hospital: 1,507, with 55 people in ICU.

Victoria - Deaths: 1, cases: 6,305. In hospital: 459, with 26 people in ICU.

Northern Territory - Deaths: 0, cases: 209. In hospital: 17, and one person in ICU.

Queensland - Deaths: 0, cases: 3,260. In hospital: 542, with eight people in ICU.

South Australia - Deaths: 6, cases: 2,137. In hospital: 210, nine people in ICU.

Tasmania - Deaths: 0, cases: 798. In hospital: 45, three people in ICU.

Western Australia - Deaths: 5, cases: 3,434. In hospital: 234, eight people in ICU.

ACT - Deaths: 0, cases: 927. In hospital: 119, with one person in ICU.

Vienna: Places across the world that have legalised cannabis appear to have increased its regular use, while COVID lockdowns had a similar effect, raising the risk of depression and suicide, a UN report said on Monday.

Cannabis has long been the world’s most widely used drug and that use is increasing while the cannabis on the market is getting stronger in terms of its tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its annual World Drug Report.

Various US states have legalised non-medical use of cannabis, starting with Washington and Colorado in 2012. Uruguay legalised it in 2013, as did Canada in 2018. Others have taken similar steps, but the report focused on those three countries.

“Cannabis legalisation appears to have accelerated the upwards trends in reported daily use of the drug,” the Vienna-based UNODC’s report said.

While the prevalence of cannabis use among teenagers “has not changed much”, there had been “a pronounced increase in reported frequent use of high-potency products among young adults”, it said.

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The most senior public servant in New South Wales was contacted in January by the woman who was overlooked for US trade commissioner role before John Barilaro was appointed to it this month.

NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet secretary Michael Coutts-Trotter received an email from former Investment NSW deputy secretary Jenny West after her expected appointment to the job was scuppered.

The Herald can reveal West requested a meeting and expressed serious concerns in a report numbering some 45 pages about how she had been treated. Her email was subsequently referred to Investment NSW.

The bureaucrat was the preferred candidate and was preparing to take the plum New York role before it was re-advertised in December.

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