India beat Pakistan by six wickets in Champions Trophy – as it happened
Energy giant AGL disputes $25m fine for wrongly taking welfare money from hundreds as ‘excessive’
Energy giant AGL is disputing a “manifestly excessive” $25m fine for using the Centrepay debit system to wrongly take welfare money from hundreds of vulnerable Australians. It argues that a judge should not have used the massive financial penalty to try to “provoke some attention” from the company’s board and executive leadership.Late last year, the federal court imposed the hefty fine and excoriated AGL for wrongly taking money from 483 welfare recipients via Centrepay, the scandal-plagued, government-run system that allows automatic diversion of social security payments to essential services, like electricity bills and rent.A Guardian Australia investigation last year revealed deep flaws with the system, including that some of Australia’s biggest electricity retailers had used Centrepay to continue receiving welfare money from the pockets of departed customers long after they left.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news emailIn AGL’s case, the company used Centrepay to receive and retain an average of about $1,000 from the welfare payments of 483 former customers between early 2016 and late 2020
Consumers don’t have a debt problem. The US government does | Gene Marks
A recent report from the Federal Reserve warned that consumer debt is now more than $18tn and the people are worried. Americans’ “credit card and household debt reach all-time high”, reports Fox News. Consumers are “finding it harder and harder to pay off their debt”, claims CNN. A “third of Americans have more credit card debt than emergency savings”, says Marketplace.Yes, consumer debt has ticked up this year
Telegram fined nearly $1m by Australian watchdog for delay in reporting about terrorism and child abuse material
Encrypted messaging app Telegram has been fined nearly $1m by Australia’s online safety regulator for failing to respond on time to questions about what the company does to tackle terrorism and child abuse material on its platform.The notice was issued to Telegram, among other companies, in May last year, with a deadline to report back in October on steps taken to address terrorist and violent extremism material, as well as child exploitation material on its platform.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news emailBecause Telegram failed to respond for nearly 160 days, eSafety has issued an infringement notice to the company for A$957,780.“If we want accountability from the tech industry we need much greater transparency. These powers give us a look under the hood at just how these platforms are dealing, or not dealing, with a range of serious and egregious online harms which affect Australians,” the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said in a statement
Hackers steal $1.5bn from crypto exchange in ‘biggest digital heist ever’
The cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has called on the “brightest minds” in cybersecurity to help it recover $1.5bn (£1.2bn) stolen by hackers in what is thought to be the biggest single digital theft in history.The Dubai-based crypto platform said an attacker gained control of a wallet of Ethereum, one of the most popular digital currencies after bitcoin, and transferred the contents to an unknown address.Bybit immediately sought to reassure its customers that their cryptocurrency holdings were safe, while its chief executive said on social media that Bybit would refund all those affected, even if the hacked currency was not returned
New content kings: the independent creators changing the NRL’s media dynamic | John Davidson
Rugby league’s history in Australia has long been influenced and shaped by legacy media, that of newspapers, radio and television in Sydney and Brisbane. The engines of The Daily Telegraph, Sydney Morning Herald and The Courier Mail, along with Channel 9, 2GB and others have played key roles in covering and spreading the sport to the masses.That dynamic changed dramatically in 2017 with the launch of Fox League, a 24-hour dedicated pay TV rugby league channel. But bubbling away underneath all of that has been the rise of the internet and an explosion of social media platforms that focus a large chunk of bandwidth on the NRL.Today there are countless podcasts, accounts, websites and blogs dedicated to anything and everything connected to “the greatest game”
RFU adds extra England Test and leaves Borthwick without warm-weather camp
Steve Borthwick will have to forgo a crucial training camp and guide England into this year’s autumn internationals with a week’s less preparation after the Rugby Football Union arranged an extra lucrative November Test against Australia.England habitually play three autumn internationals in the same year as a British & Irish Lions tour but the RFU arranged a fourth, which could generate up to £10m in revenue, after its latest accounts reported record losses to reserves of £42m.The new professional game partnership (PGP) – worth £33m a year to the Premiership clubs – allows for England players to be released for an extra week before the start of international campaigns. They miss a round of domestic fixtures as a result and Borthwick uses the time to oversee a warm‑weather training camp in Girona. The extra week’s access to players was also a key part of the previous arrangement between the RFU and the Premiership
Nine working-class creatives on class in the arts – and how they made it
The Guide #179: How National Theatre Live brought the magic of the stage to the cinema
Working-class creatives don’t stand a chance in UK today, leading artists warn
Who is ‘working class’ and why does it matter in the arts?
Noel Clarke loses appeal court challenge that could have delayed Guardian libel trial
Stephen Colbert on Trump: ‘With this guy, every troll is a trial balloon’