A new research project focused on the mental health of young mothers in western Sydney has been awarded $650,000 by the Federal Government.

Led by Professor Bill Brakoulias, Dr Ashwini Padhi, Sumithira Joseph and Rowena Saheb, the project is aimed at improving young mothers’ mental health literacy, and is part of a partnership initiative between Western Sydney Local Health District’s (WSLHD) Perinatal Child Youth Mental Health Service and Western Sydney University.

The project will lead to the creation of a new and innovative national digital resource for mothers aged 24 and under, which will help them better understand their own mental health, normalise seeking help and help put them and their children on track for a healthy life.

Professor Bill Brakoulias, who is the Mental Health Executive Director of WSLHD, says this means young mums will recognise the warning signs and know how to get help.

“Young mothers at higher risk of mental health issues will be able to increase their understanding of wellbeing and the services available to support their mental health at a vulnerable time. This will improve outcomes for them and their families,” Professor Brakoulias said in a media release.

“The opportunity for our Perinatal Child Youth Mental Health Service clinicians to use their expertise to build capacity nationally will further enhance our status as a leading provider of high quality and specialised mental health services for mothers across the state.”

Once complete, the innovative resource will be freely available for young parents to access in their own time across Australia.

It is a priority of the project team to actively engage mothers from diverse and at-risk populations including migrant, refugee and Indigenous mothers, to ensure the resource is culturally appropriate and accessible.

The project is part of a $16.6 million investment into perinatal mental health services announced by the Australian Government this month.

Source: The Pulse.

The Bondi COVID-19 cluster has risen to 36 cases after NSW recorded 11 new locally acquired infections since the state government’s update yesterday.

There have been 49 locally acquired COVID-19 infections since a limousine driver in Sydney’s eastern suburbs tested positive for the virus last Wednesday.

One of the new infections announced on Thursday morning was a man in his 40s who was not linked to a known case or cluster.

Another unlinked infection was revealed yesterday — a Western Sydney hairdresser who worked in Double Bay, in Sydney’s east.

NSW Health said three of the hairdresser’s close contacts had now tested positive and were all in isolation whilst infectious.

Contact tracers are urgently investigating the source of both cases.

Another case has been linked to the West Hoxton birthday party in Sydney’s south-west, which was described by Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant yesterday as a “super spreader” event.

Of the 30 people who attended the party, 11 have now tested positive.

There were 48,402 tests reported to 8:00pm last night, compared with the previous day’s total of 44,640.

Premier warns NSW of ‘the scariest period’ in this pandemic:

NSW Agriculture Minister, Adam Marshall, tested tested positive for the virus after attending a dinner with colleagues in Paddington on Monday night.

Parliament House on Macquarie Street today shut its doors and several MPs — including Health Minister Brad Hazzard — and their staff are now isolating.

NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, confirmed to reporters this morning that as a result og news surrounding Mr Marshall, she has been tested and isolated. She has returned a negative result. 

“I took a test and was negative before I was even interviewed by [NSW] Health and made sure I took all those necessary precautions, and I will continue to monitor the health advice,” she said.

Ms Berejiklian went on to say that she and Dr Chant believe this in the most serious moment for the state since this pandemic began. 

“Since the pandemic has started this is perhaps the scariest period that New South Wales is going through, and Dr Chant and I are of equal view on that,” she said.  

“It is a very contagious variant but at the same time we are at this stage comfortable that the settings that are in place are the appropriate settings, but that is so long as everybody does the right thing.”

A three-year reprieve has been granted to Australia’s only remaining community television (CTV) stations in a surprise vote that will allow them to stay on air and lock in key partnerships until 2024.

Channel 44 (Adelaide) and Channel 31 (Melbourne) had previously been told they had to stop broadcasting after June 30 and switch to an online-only model, but a vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday saw the federal government give them until 2024.

It was preceded by a majority vote in the Senate on Tuesday night.

“The C31 board would like to acknowledge the efforts of our wonderful staff, producers and program makers over the last few months,” C31 Melbourne Chair, Mike Zafiropoulos AM, said in a media release.

“We have also been overwhelmed by the showing of public support and are heartened by the collective resolve to fight for a positive outcome for Community Television in Victoria. Thank you.”

The stations have endured annual uncertainty since 2014, when former Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, ordered community stations across the country to shift to an online-only model to free up their spectrum for testing new technologies.

But Channel 31 General Manager, Shane Dunlop, said it was a common sense decision to allow the stations to keep broadcasting and to lock it in for three years.

“We’ve had a decade of getting used to whatever last minute reprieves we get,” he said.

“They’ve just been kicking the can down the road a little further, but this length of time really gives us a chance to make the most of whatever the future will hold for community TV, so we can appropriately plan and roll with punches a lot better.”

Source: ABC News.

Tony Papagiannopoulos moved to Australia from Greece with his mother at the age of 15 and from a very young age, it was always drummed into him to be careful with money.

Although Mr Papagiannopoulos, now 52, spoke no English when he first arrived, he eventually worked his way through an IT degree and saved scrupulously throughout his 25-year career in the private and public sectors in preparation for his retirement.

But according to an exclusive report by ABC News, in March this year, Mr Papagiannopoulos started looking to move $200,000 of his retirement savings from an investment that wasn’t doing very well.

He was recommended by a couple of accountants to either “go to shares” if he wanted to take a bigger risk, or “go to bonds, which is somewhere in the middle.”

Mr Papagiannopoulos decided to have a look at bonds on Google and clicked on the first few that came up.

“They looked secure — the website came up professionally,” he told Amy Bainbridge and Loretta Florence from ABC News.

What happened next will shock many.

The elaborate scam:

ABC News reports that Mr Papagiannopoulos asked to get a call from someone to talk about the investment. The day after he put in his contact details, Mr Papagiannopoulos got a call from a woman called Jane Weaver from JP Morgan. She put him through to a man claiming to be her senior colleague and financial adviser, Andrew Duncan.

“[He was] very well spoken, he certainly knew his stuff,” Mr Papagiannopoulos told the media outlet.

“Me being a little bit further behind on the knowledge, I was learning a lot more as I was trying to understand exactly what he meant. I asked him to provide me with details of his proposal in writing, which he did very quickly on the same day.”

He received a prospectus via email from info@jpmorganbonds.com. The email, which had a JP Morgan email signature, included the estimated fixed rate of return.

Mr Papagiannopoulos spent a few days mulling over the offer. He also did his due diligence and decided to look up JP Morgan’s phone number online to make sure the firm really did have a retail investment division. Whilst there was a bit of confusion with numbers, he eventually got through to Mr Duncan and decided to invest.

″I was very sure I was speaking to JP Morgan at the time, simple. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gone any further,” he told ABC News.

On March 25, a week after receiving the prospectus, he transferred the first instalment of $100,000 to a Westpac account. Five days later, he sent through another $100,000. 

Hours later, the elaborate scam came undone when Mr Papagiannopoulos’ wife received a call with a ‘scam warning’ and the person on the other end of the line introduced herself as “Jane Weaver from JP Morgan,” ABC News reports.

After googling the number, Mr Papagiannopoulos found complaints stemming back to 2016 identifying the number as one used by scammers.

Recovering his money:

In a statement to ABC News, JP Morgan said Mr Papagiannopoulos had been targeted by a “sophisticated scam” and encouraged investors to remain vigilant, conduct due diligence and to seek independent financial advice before investing.

Meanwhile, Mr Papagiannopoulos had immediately set about getting his money back. In April, Citi bank managed to recover $114,000 of the $200,000, and returned it to Mr Papagiannopoulos two weeks after the scam. 

After speaking to the ABC and lodging his case with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), Westpac got in touch with Mr Papagiannopoulos at the beginning of June. Westpac told him it had recovered another $84,000 on May 27. 

“I should have known better,” Mr Papagiannopoulos said. “I let my family down. That’s where I’m punishing myself daily.”

Three Adelaide researchers have been honoured in this year’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Research Excellence Awards. 

The trio from the University of Adelaide are Professor Peter Psaltis, Professor Ian Olver AM, and Professor Sarah Robertson, who were recognised for their work in cardiology, medical ethics, and reproductive health.

Mr. Psaltis was awarded the Marshall and Warren Innovation Award for his research into the cardiovascular disease atherosclerosis; specifically, the role of adventitial haemangioblasts as an ‘outside-in’ driver of plaque growth and stability. 

“I am extremely honoured and proud to receive the 2020 NHMRC Marshall and Warren Innovation Award,” he said. 

“It’s humbling recognition of the work that my team has done, and continues to do, in pursuing new treatment approaches to tackle atherosclerosis, which is the disease that causes hardening of the arteries and in turn heart attack and stroke, two of the leading causes of death and suffering around the world.” 

Psaltis’s project investigates how unique stem cells on the arteries can contribute to plaque growth and instability to find more effective treatments for atherosclerosis. 

“This particular award relates to our discovery of a unique type of stem cell in the wall of arteries. Our NHMRC grant will study how these stem cells cause atherosclerotic plaques to form in arteries, so that we can target them with new treatments for heart and vascular disease. 

Peter Psaltis is a cardiologist, vascular biologist, and senior research follow at the University of Adelaide.

He holds fellowships through the Adelaide Medical School, co-leads the Heart and Vascular program and at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI).

He was awarded just under $400,000 in a Federal Government grant in 2018 to aid his research into how the drug colchicine could determine whether it could help people living with heart disease reduce their chance of a heart attack.