Today, Labor is calling on the Morrison Government to fund a $500,000 COVID-19 Communications Grant for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities so these communities can better use their networks to effectively communicate vital information.
Labor has been raising concerns about COVID-19 communications with CALD communities since March and it is clear that the Morrison Government could and should have been doing more to engage with Australia’s modern multicultural society.
We must ensure no one is left behind during this ongoing pandemic – a virus does not check someone’s cultural background before it infects them.
Labor wants every communication barrier to be broken so the right information reaches all communities which is why we are calling for a $500,000 COVID-19 Communications Grant for CALD Communities.
The Morrison Government needs to better support CALD communities and engage with community leaders who represent emerging communities during this public health emergency.
The grants would provide up to $5000 to eligible providers and community leaders to:
Break communication barriers within existing official health information.
Provide translation of messages through appropriate publications where they are currently lacking.
Build resilience and improved engagement with emerging CALD communities (with emphasis on smaller, grassroots organisations).
This means more resources to translate and print COVID-19 newsletters, publications, signage, websites, advertisements, brochures, video, radio and public service announcements from existing official information services.
The grants could be used to fund successful applicants to participate in any official COVID-19 training offered by local, state and federal governments.
This is a difficult time for all Australians and it’s essential everyone know how to look after themselves and those around them.
Labor is putting forward this constructive suggestion to help bring Australians together, keep Australians safe, and ensure no Australians are left behind.
The Victorian government has announced a seven-day lockdown today in a bid to curb the state’s growing coronavirus outbreak.
The state’s outbreak has now reached 26 cases, with 11 new cases recorded overnight.
One of the cases is now in intensive care in hospital and on a ventilator.
Mr Merlino said contact tracers had identified 10,000 primary and secondary contacts linked to the outbreak.
Reported yesterday: 12 new local cases and no new cases acquired overseas. – 12,677 vaccine doses were administered – 40,411 test results were received
The circuit-breaker lockdown will be in place until 11:59pm on June 3. Mr Merlino said there would be only five reasons people would be allowed to leave their homes:
Food and supplies
Authorised work
Care and caregiving
Exercise for up to 2 hours with one other person
Getting vaccinated
Schools will close for the duration of the lockdown, but childcare and kinder will be open. Cafes and restaurants can offer take-away only, and public and private gatherings will not be allowed. The vaccination program will also expand in Victoria to include anyone aged 40 years and over.
Victoria’s Acting Premier, James Merlino.
There are more than 70 exposure sites, including the MCG and Docklands stadium. Exposure sites added last night included cafes and businesses across Melbourne’s south-east and the Mornington Peninsula.
Exposure sites had previously been largely spread across the city’s north and west.
Testing capacity is being ramped up across the state as the growing exposure sites affect tens of thousands of people.There were 40,411 test results received in the 24 hours to midnight.
That marks among the highest days of testing in Victoria since the pandemic began, with more than 41,000 test results reported on August 9 last year and more than 42,000 on July 26.
Concerns for unvaccinated aged care residents in Victoria:
Concerns have been raised about the safety of aged care residents in Victoria amid the current outbreak, given more than 25 facilities are still waiting to receive their first vaccine doses.
It was revealed yesterday that of the 598 facilities in Victoria, 569 had received a first dose, leaving 29 facilities completely unvaccinated.
The government said 361 facilities had had two doses. It said four more would receive a first dose yesterday, but did not confirm that had happened.
Shadow Health Minister, Mark Butler, said given how quickly the virus spread and how deadly its effect was in aged care homes during Melbourne’s second wave last year, the statistics were unacceptable.
“The idea that 29 facilities in Victoria, given all that happened last year, haven’t even had a single dose, is a scandal,” he said.
The government has announced extra support to vaccinate aged care residents in Victoria.
“As well, there’s several hundred aged care facilities in Victoria that have only had one dose. These people are not yet protected as Scott Morrison promised they would be.”
Aged Care Services Minister Richard Colbeck said aged care homes still waiting to receive first doses of the vaccine should be covered in the next couple of weeks, but that he was “very comfortable” with the rollout so far.
He said given the outbreak in Victoria, aged care homes there were being prioritised.
“It’s not an overnight exercise, it needs to be done safely and progressively which is exactly what we’ve done,” Senator Colbeck said.
“We will have all of those providers done very quickly and as I’ve said a number of times we’ve prioritised those remaining ones in Victoria.
“We should have all of the providers around the country done within the next week or so.”
Federal Labor MPs, Maria Vamvakinou and Steve Georganas, have launched a public appeal to the Greek Australian community and all Greeks in Australia to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
This is what they had to say:
“We have both been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and we would like to send a strong message that what matters is the vaccination, not the vaccine,” Ms Vamvakinou and Mr Georganas said in a joint statement.
Maria Vamvakinou MP (left) and Steve Georganas MP (right).
“The minimal side effects observed should not be an obstacle to the mass vaccination which will create prospects for the fight against coronavirus and will give us the opportunity to open our borders, to be able to travel to Greece and Cyprus, to open our economy, to regains our freedoms, so that we can live a healthy normal life again.
“That is why we appeal to all Greeks in Australia: do not be influenced by what is written or what is said. All the scientific and medical evidence proves that vaccination saves lives and protects us from the coronavirus. More than 38 million have been vaccinated in the UK so far, and there have been very few side effects.
“Therefore, we call on all Greeks in Australia who have remained unvaccinated: get vaccinated. We stress that only with the vaccination will we take back our lives.”
The European Commission has approved the geographical indication (GI) for ouzo and tsipouro, making the famous alcoholic beverages officially Greek for the first time ever.
A GI is a logo used on products that have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities or a reputation that are due to that origin.
The decision by the Commission opens the door for ouzo and tsipouro to be included in the international register of the Geneva Act of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
According to an announcement by the Association of Greek Producers of Spirits and Alcoholic Beverages (SEAOP), the approval was achieved after coordinated efforts by SEAOP, ENAPAPE and the services of the General State Chemistry.
The association says the recognition of GI by the Commission “will make ouzo and tsipouro even stronger in international markets.”
“They will be able to enjoy protection according to the Lisbon International Agreement, just as they are protected in the EU. They gain a significant bargaining chip in EU talks with third countries for bilateral recognition of GIs,” Nikos Kalogiannis, president of SEAOP, said in a statement.
The anise-flavored drink, ouzo, is deeply connected with the nation of Greece, with many locations, such as Tivarnos, Kalamara and Plomari, having long traditions of distilling ouzo.
Tsipouro, like ouzo, is a strong Greek spirit made up of 40-45% alcohol. Born out of the poverty and ingenuity of rural Greeks, tsipouro is made from pomace — the stems, seeds and skins of grapes that are left over from the wine making process.
Thousands of stargazers looked to the sky as Wednesday night’s full moon passed through its closest point to Earth while also coinciding with a lunar eclipse.
Many had cameras ready to capture the rare orange-red moon dubbed “super blood moon.” The eclipse means the moon was bathed in a deep reddish glow for at least a few hours.
The event itself was best viewed in parts of South America, Australia and south-east Asia, but European countries such as Greece were also lucky enough to get a look at it.
Here are some of the best pictures from Australia and Greece:
— George Mastropavlos (@g_mastropavlos) May 26, 2021
The supermoon rises behind Palamidi castle in Nafplio, Greece. Photograph: Bougiotis Evagelos/EPA.
Australia:
The Super Moon appears behind the Sydney Opera House. Photo: Reuters/Loren Elliott.The full moon rises near Parliament House in Canberra. Photo: AAP/Lukas Coch.
In a multicultural media press conference on Wednesday afternoon, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Multicultural Minister Geoff Lee thanked the people of NSW for their “outstanding support”, also thanking community and religious leaders for the encouragement in the vaccination program.
“Every religion has encountered their major holy days, major traditions and rituals impacted by Covid and I just wanted to say thank you,” the NSW Premier said.
“Now we are entering the next stage of our battle with covid; We need to make sure that all of our citizens, all of our communities from different backgrounds from right across the state, whether there in Greater Sydney or right across our rural regions, have the vaccination.”
Multicultural media press conference. Photo: The Greek Herald
“Our communities getting vaccinated means we keep NSW safe, we keep our loved ones safe and we can continue to have a normal way of life, but I also know many communities have strong links to families and friends overseas, and if we want to consider opening up our international borders in the future, we need to make sure our communities are safe.”
In a separate media conference, Archbishop Makarios, who has been vaccinated with both doses, gave a strong message to people of NSW to get vaccinated, saying it’s the only solution to get rid of this pandemic.
“I would like to encourage all the people, it does not matter if they’re Greek or not, Christians or not, Muslims or whatever, please get vaccinated. Take the decision, don’t hesitate,” Archbishop Makarios said.
Multicultural media press conference. Photo: The Greek Herald
“It’s not a matter that we have to protect our lives and health, we have to protect our society, we have to protect our country.”
NSW Health administered its highest-ever number of vaccines in the past 24 hours, giving 13,200 vaccines in the 24 hours to 8pm last night, including 5,220 at the vaccination centre at Sydney Olympic Park.
“As the Premier said, what we want to do is get out the message and we’re asking the community leaders to say, ‘Have your vaccinations now, vaccinations are safe, vaccinations protect the individual from the terrible covid-19’,” Dr Geoff Lee said.
“We are working with our faith and community leaders to ensure everyone in our community has access to reliable information about the COVID-19 vaccines.”
People aged 50 and over are encouraged to book their AstraZeneca vaccination through their GP in the first instance, but if they are unable to obtain the vaccine from their GP, appointments can also be booked in NSW Health clinics.
Those aged 40-49 can now also register their interest in receiving the Pfizer vaccine. They will be contacted and invited to make a booking when there is availability at clinics.
Christopher André Marks has kicked off his feature directorial debut with a bang.
His new documentary, King Otto, explores how German football coach Otto Rehhagel defied all odds to lead Greece to victory in the 2004 Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Championship.
“It was one of the times where we felt relevant on the world stage,” Marks tells The Greek Herald from his home in New York.
“You’re used to seeing France and Spain win the Euro…”, but “Greece had never been in that position.”
“We felt a responsibility to Greeks and to the story and to make sure that we told it right, as best we could…,” he says.
Director Christopher André Marks
“I think people remember [2004] fondly and get nostalgic just thinking about it, so, hopefully, we can harness that bit of nostalgia into the film.”
Marks says the documentary shows that Greece’s journey to the European Championship final was no walk in the park.
Rehhagel is infamous for coaching the team through a translator and for his lack of connection to Greece, but King Otto depicts a “warmer” side to the self-proclaimed outsider while treating him as folklore.
“[Homer’s O’Muse quote] from the Odyssey was included because we viewed Mr. Rehhagel’s journey to Greece as an odyssey.”
“Not many football documentaries start with a quote from Homer.”
Marks says Rehhagel is “as charming and inspirational in the film as he is in real life” and provided a miracle for Greeks in it’s year of peaks.
‘I was an outsider but as history shows, outsiders always have a chance,’ Otto Rehhegal sings the first four lines of the Greek national anthem in King Otto. Courtesy of Umbrella Entertainment.
King Otto’s preview screenings have debuted to packed houses in Australia and rest assured this isn’t Marks’ first time at the rodeo.
Marks has produced for HBO Sports and ESPN Films, working on projects such as Tiger Hood and the 30 for 30 series, but says it was his Greek-American identity that inspired him to tell the story for the first time.
Marks says King Otto was a four-to-five-year process that involved finalizing distribution deals and finding “some real gems” of footage from various countries.
“We’ve heard from people saying that they were screaming during the game sequences and acting as though they’d seen the goals for the first time and felt like they were a part of the game. That’s exactly what we are after so we couldn’t be happier,” he says.
King Otto also suffered delays brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The production was delayed from its 2020 release and working on the film during lockdown and in different locations proved to be a challenge for the team.
Rehhagel, along with former President of the Hellenic Football Federation (HFF), Vasilis Gagatsis, Rehhagel’s assistant Ioannis Topalidis, and former members of the Greek National Football Team are featured.
They keep audiences crying and laughing right to it’s final scene.
Greek-Australians will be able to relive the historic moment when King Otto hits Australian cinemas on May 27.
A team of researchers at the Royal Melbourne Hospital have discovered a simple blood test could help thousands of Australians get an early diagnosis of dementia.
People generally consider dementia to be an older person’s disease. But nearly 30,000 Australians who have the condition developed it before they were 65.
Because the first symptoms of dementia are often depression and anxiety, many people do not realise they have the disease. This is especially the case for younger patients.
“In many situations, the blood tests, the brain scans, even the memory testing can be close to normal,” Professor Dennis Velakoulis, from the Royal Melbourne Hospital, told ABC’s 7.30.
“There are many situations that general practitioners and specialists face where it’s unclear if someone has a mental health or psychiatric disorder, like depression.”
Prof Dennis Velakoulis receives the Ian Simpson Award from Dr Kym Jenkins, President RANZCP
Professor Velakoulis hopes the research his team is doing will one day help patients get answers earlier.
“The general feeling when psychiatrists hear about this research is one of expectation and hope,” he said.
The test will work by measuring the level of neurofilament light in the blood.
“Neurofilament light, or NFL, is a protein that lives in brain cells. It helps to maintain the structure of brain cells. And when a brain cell is damaged, it’s released,” he said.
“When we see it elevated in the spinal fluid or blood, it indicates that there’s been some brain injury and the brain cells have died.”
Crucially, neurofilament light is not present in samples from patients with mental illness, meaning this test could differentiate between the two conditions.
This is the first time Australian researchers have confirmed the link.
“People with psychiatric illnesses, or people who are healthy, have normal levels of NFL, because there’s no brain cells dying. But in many neurological disorders, particularly in dementia, there are brain cells that are dying and releasing NFL.”
At the moment, neurofilament light levels are commonly measured in samples of spinal fluid. But as the technology improves, it should be possible to just test the blood instead.
“In the past, we were measuring NFL only in cerebrospinal fluid, because the levels there were higher. Now with new technology, and new machines that can measure very, very low levels of proteins, we are able to look for it in the blood.”
The team hopes that following more research, the technology will be developed and made available to GPs across the country.
“If the test is confirmed to perform in the same way that it did in our earlier study, then we would be hoping that this blood test would be widely available to general practitioners and other specialists.”
The Orlov Revolt is one of the littlest-known and earliest acts of resistance against Ottoman rule. It served as a percursor to the Greek Revolution and has left an irrepressible mark on Greece and Russia’s history. The Greek Herald looks back 250-odd years ago to give you everything you need to know about the revolt.
The Byzantine Empire drew swiftly to an close with the Ottoman Empire’s siege of Constantinople in 1453.
The Byzantine Empire had held dominion over the eastern half of the Roman Empire for over a millennium and still to this day remains the longest-lasting medieval power.
The Ottoman siege would mark the beginning of over three and a half centuries of Greek revolt and resistance against Ottoman rule, with the Orlov Revolt being one of the most important among them.
What was the Orlov Revolt?
The Orlov Revolt was an unsuccessful, more than year-long joint Greek-Russian revolt against Ottoman rule that occurred in the Peloponnese, Crete, and Epirus, between February 1770 and June 1771.
It is described as the ‘first Greek revolution’ and a landmark event in the development of the Philhellenism movement.
The name ‘Orlov’ denotes Admiral for the Russian Navy Alexey Orlov’s arrival in the Mani Peninsula which kicked off the revolt.
Catherine the Great’s ‘Greek Plan’
The Ottoman government, known as the ‘Porte’, declared the first of many wars with Russia in October 1768.
They declared war against Russia for many reasons, including their power struggle in Poland-Lithuania.
A plan was brewing north-east of the equator.
The announcement prompted Catherine the Great, reigning as Empress of All Russia, to enact her ‘Greek Plan’.
Catherine the Great, Empress of All Russia from 1762-1796, is recognised as one of the great powers of Europe [Portrait of Catherine II by Johann Baptist von Lampi the Elder]
Her ‘Greek Plan’ attempted to assist the Greeks in wresting control over the Eastern Mediterranean from the Ottomans. It attempted to revive the Byzantine Empire along with establishing a new pro-Russian puppet Greek state.
It had solidarity amongst Orthodox adherents in its spirit and was proposed as a solution to the ‘Eastern Question’. The Eastern Question was about sharing Ottoman land and its influence among major European powers.
In the meantime, war was kicking off. Russian emissaries, including Grigorios Papadopoulos and Georgios Papazolis, were arriving in Mani, in southern Greece, as early as the mid-1760s to gauge local support for the revolt, as well as in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Crete, and the Morea.
Notably, they found large support in Grigory and Alexei Orlov, with the latter delegated Russian fleet commander, in preparations for an insurrection in the Morea; Kalamata local Panagiotis Benakis; and Cretan shipping magnate John Vlachos ‘Daskalogiannis’, who led the Cretan revolt.
The Ottomans retaliated by hiring Muslim Albanian mercenaries to fend off the revolt and destroyed large sections of Epirus, Patras, Mystras, during and after the War.
The Ottoman forces eventually overpowered the Greek and Russian revolutionaries and the revolt slowly dwindled.
John Vlachos ‘Daskalogiannis’ led the Cretan revolt. His monument stands in Anopoli, Sfakia, Crete [Credit of Gerd-HH on Wikipedia, 25 September 2009]
Public executions, mass murder, and child slave trafficking were rife in the years following the aftermath.
Havoc ensued as the Porte neglected their mercenaries in Greece. This is until the damage hit breaking point and the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca brought an end to the war, allowing the mercenaries to retreat home.
Legacy
The Orlov revolt, and in particular the ‘Greek Plan’, impacted Russia’s history and international recognition well into the 20th century.
The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca gave Russia certain privileges to protect the Orthodox, including Greek Orthodox, population, as well as appoint Greek Orthodox Christians to be its consuls.
Greek-Russian ties remained strong for years and thousands emigrated to Russia, particularly in Crimea, Mariupol, and Taganrog.
These areas became centers dominated by Ottoman-Greek immigrants and their Greek-Russian succesors.
They would play prominent roles in the history of Greece and the Greeks until their destruction in the 1930s.
Thanasi Kokkinakis has been defeated in the first round of qualifying for the French Open, leaving just two Australian men in the hunt for a main draw spot.
Kokkinakis was outplayed 6-4 6-4 by American Mackenzie McDonald.
The loss comes only a few days after he won an ATP Challenger singles title in Italy, his fourth career ATP Challenger title victory and first since October 2018.
Kokkinakis missed the entirety of last year after being hospitalised with a severe case of glandular fever and is building his way back towards the top 100.
He won a Challenger event in February and has performed solidly in recent weeks during the clay season on both the regular and secondary circuits.
Kokkinakis enjoyed his best result in a major in Paris back in 2015, falling to Novak Djokovic in the third Round but he has been hindered with injury and illness since.
But in an encouraging sign, he has been able to string together a full season to date on the tour and said recently that he was in good shape physically and mentally as he looks to rebuild his ranking.
“I have had some good matches under my belt so far,” he said.
“It adds a little bit of pressure for me because I know how important it is to get through and win these matches, so I can go deep in tournaments.
“I have been pretty consistent, which is good, but especially with the rankings as they are now, you want to try for more. It is good that I am getting some matches and hopefully the ranking starts to take care of itself soon.”
