As it happened:Defence minister to visit Ukraine;Morrison pushed $500m project before business case was done

That’s where we’ll leave our live coverage today,thanks for reading. We’ll be back with you on Monday.

Until then,here’s what you need to know tonight.

Instagram says it’s deploying new tools to protect young people and combat sexual extortion,including a feature that will automatically blur nudity in direct messages.

The social media platform said in a blog post Thursday that it’s testing out the features as part of its campaign to fight sexual scams and other forms of “image abuse,” and to make it tougher for criminals to contact teens.

Sexual extortion,or sextortion,involves persuading a person to send explicit photos online and then threatening to make the images public unless the victim pays money or engages in sexual favours.

Instagram and other social media companies have faced growing criticism for not doing enough to protect young people. Mark Zuckerberg,the CEO of Instagram’s owner Meta Platforms,apologised to the parents of victims of such abuse during a Senate hearing earlier this year.

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Meta,which is based in Menlo Park,California,also owns Facebook and WhatsApp but the nudity blur feature won’t be added to messages sent on those platforms.

Instagram said scammers often use direct messages to ask for “intimate images.” To counter this,it will soon start testing out a nudity-protection feature for direct messages that blurs any images with nudity “and encourages people to think twice before sending nude images.”

“The feature is designed not only to protect people from seeing unwanted nudity in their DMs,but also to protect them from scammers who may send nude images to trick people into sending their own images in return,” Instagram said.

The feature will be turned on by default globally for teens under 18. Adult users will get a notification encouraging them to activate it.

AP

The COVID death rate has dwindled to single digits over the past few weeks,but reports that said Australia had a week with no COVID deaths in early March were wrong.

The claims were triggered by data from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System showing that the rolling seven-day COVID death average fell to zero for a few days in early March.

But there’s now a weeks-long delay in getting COVID death data into the federal system,experts said.

“While this is encouraging data,it’s almost certainly not correct that there were zero COVID deaths in that week,” Associate Professor James Wood,an infectious disease modeller from the University of NSW,said.

“Instead,our near real-time reporting system for reporting of deaths has mostly wound down and we now need to rely on the slower ABS reporting which tends to occur at about a 2-month delay.”

The data now shows the seven-day rolling average for COVID deaths in early March was between 4 and 6 – very low but not unprecedented numbers that are likely to rise as more data rolls in.

The death rate hit a similar low last September,before another spike in infection caused by the JN.1 variant drove deaths and hospitalisations up again. Each “wave” of hospitalisations and deaths has been smaller than the last since January 2022,however.

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Professor Adrian Esterman,chair of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of South Australia,said an estimated 20 to 25 per cent of Australians were infected during the most recent wave.

“We should not get complacent. Last month there were over 250 active COVID-19 outbreaks in residential aged care homes,and only 36% of Australians aged 75 and over have had a booster shot within the last six months. We see very little messaging from any of our governments encouraging elderly people to get vaccinated,” Esterman said.

“This is not good enough. We should at the very least still be doing all we can to protect our vulnerable population.”

A psychologist has rejected claims he acted as an advocate for a Yindjibarndi organisation in its decades-long battle with mining company Fortescue Metals Group.

Expert witnesses are giving evidence in a Federal Court case between the Yindjibarndi Ngurra Aboriginal Corporation and the State of Western Australia,with FMG as the second respondent.

The case will determine whether FMG must pay compensation to Yindjibarndi people for mining on their land without agreement at the Solomon Hub,a massive iron ore operation in the state’s Pilbara region. The Yindjibarndi Ngurra Aboriginal Corporationseeks compensation for two types of destruction:of country,including sacred sites,and of community.

When Fortescue began planning the Solomon Hub,it started negotiating with the Aboriginal corporation,but the relationship began to sour in 2007 when the Yindjibarndi people realised FMG could legally destroy their sacred sites and was doing so in construction of the mine.

When the corporation refused to accept FMG’s royalty offer,the miner gave financial backing to a breakaway group,Wirlu-Murra Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation,which paid people $500 each to attend a meeting that voted in favour of the deal in 2010.

Excerpts were played in court on Thursday from a recording of a conversation between psychologist Dr Jeff Nelson and Michael Woodley,chief executive of the Aboriginal corporation.

In the recorded conversation,Nelson can be heard asking Mr Woodley for clarification on conflict between cultural obligations and benefits to people who work in mining.

He also asked about problems caused by alcohol before the mine,and whether FMG founder and billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest believed he could do whatever he wanted because the provision of alcohol had weakened the Yindjibarndi people.

“It’s aggravating that they’ll come in to people who are struggling and then even cause more harm by splitting the community and maintaining the split,” Nelson says in the recording.

“That’s not acceptable,it’s like kicking a dog when it’s down,you just don’t do that shit,eh?”

In the recording Woodley is heard to agree,saying:“They knew exactly what they were doing and how they could manipulate.”

Read morehere.

Former Test cricketer Stuart MacGill will stand trial in November accused of being involved in a cocaine haul linked to his alleged kidnapping.

MacGill wasarrested in September 2023 and charged with knowingly taking part in the supply of a large commercial quantity of a prohibited drug.

The 53-year-old pleaded not guilty to the charge at an arraignment in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court this morning.

Judge Timothy Gartelmann listed MacGill’s trial to start on November 18. It is expected to run for up to seven days.

Police will allege MacGill was involved in an attempt to import one-kilogram of cocaine worth more than $300,000 in April 2021.

Multiple men are yet to face trial charged over the alleged kidnapping of MacGill from his Cremorne home that same month.

MacGill has alleged he was forced into a car and driven to a property at Bringelly,where he says he was threatened and assaulted before being released.

In case you missed this earlier breaking news,a West Australian former reporter now working for the United Nations Children’s Fund is lucky to be alive after being shot at in Gaza.

Tess Ingram,who worked for theAustralian Financial Review’s Perth bureau and then this masthead before moving to New York to work for the United Nations in 2022,was in a UNICEF vehicle waiting to enter the north of Gaza when it was hit by live ammunition.

The three UNICEF and UNRWA cars were in convoy on a coordinated mission to deliver fuel to water wells in the north,and lifesaving nutrition and medical supplies to Kamal Adwan Hospital.

They left Rafah after some delays,got to a holding point before the checkpoint at Wadi Gaza,to a designated holding point where UN vehicles are made to wait until the checkpoint is ready to receive them,Ingram told Al Jazeera.

“We were waiting there when gunfire broke out in the vicinity,” she said.

“The gunfire came from the direction of the checkpoint towards civilians,who then ran away from the checkpoint,and the gunfire hit us. We were really lucky. We had some colleagues outside of the car checking a mechanical problem with the nutrition truck when the fire broke out,and they had to run back to our armoured vehicle. Fortunately,they were safe.

“But three bullets hit the car that I was in right on my passenger door the window and also the bonnet of the car. So this is just another example of how unsafe it is for humanitarian aid workers and how missions like these are made impossible.”

UNICEF said in a statement that the incident had been raised with Israeli authorities.

“Sadly,humanitarians continue to face risks in delivering lifesaving aid. Unless humanitarian aid workers are protected,in accordance with[international humanitarian law],humanitarian aid cannot reach people in need,” it said.

Read the full story.

Australia must respond to China’s dominance of the global critical minerals market or miss a significant opportunity to grow the nation’s economy,says Resources Minister Madeleine King.

Speaking on ABC radio,King outlined the rationale for the Albanese government’s new “future made in Australia” scheme,launched by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday.

The scheme promises billions of dollars of financial support for businesses that build clean technologies such as large-scale batteries and solar panels,as well as processing the critical minerals and rare earth elements needed to make them.

But economists including Productivity Commissioner Danielle Wood have warned the scheme could create businesses that are reliant on handouts.

In response to the warnings,King said:“I really believe in free markets. But the problem is in critical minerals and rare earths,that the market is not operating very well internationally and,in fact,I think it’s been manipulated.”

Australia has some of the world’s biggest reserves of critical minerals but does not have the capability to process them. Most of what is mined in Australia is sent to China,along with 80 per cent of global supply.

China has previously restricted exports of minerals such as gallium,graphite and germanium as it flexes its superpower muscles.

“There will be a lot of support for Australia being able to have an independent critical minerals sector that can help us deliver the things we need to deliver in terms of battery projects,offshore wind,onshore wind,storage,all these things that go towards the decarbonised world,” King said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will visit the Kokoda Track ahead of Anzac Day commemorations during a visit to Papua New Guinea.

Albanese will walk the track alongside Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape,before taking part in a dawn service.

The trip,more than 80 years after troops fought along the rugged track to defend against a Japanese invasion,comes as Australia seeks closer ties with its closest neighbour.

The prime minister said the visit would honour the sacrifice of Australians who fought in the campaign.

“This year on Anzac Day I will be in Isurava on the Kokoda Track ... taking the opportunity to show my respect to the remarkable effort to protect our nation at one of its darkest hours,” he said in a speech in Sydney on Friday.

The visit to Papua New Guinea comes after Albanese became the first Australian leader to address that country’s parliament. Marape also gave aspeech to federal parliament in February.

AAP

Thanks for your company for the first half of the day. If you’re just joining us,here’s what you need to know:

That’s it from me,but I’ll return next week. Take care,and my colleaguesAngus Daltonwill be leading our live coverage for the rest of the afternoon.

The opposition’s veterans’ affairs spokesman Barnaby Joyce says a $550 million upgrade for the Australian War Memorial should not be dependent on a business case.

Barnaby Joyce’s defence of the project follows revelations the former coalition government approved the costly upgrade before a case could be delivered.

A scathing report into the upgrade revealed howScott Morrison announced the controversial project before a business case for it was put together,conflicts of interest over key contracts and large cost blowouts.

In one case,the auditor-general found a company had its contract increased to just $1 below the threshold at which it would need ministerial approval before the same firm had an $805,000 contract extended to $16.9 million.

But Joyce said he was “supremely relaxed that our government made the decision to announce the project before a business case had been completed”.

“We say ‘Lest we Forget’,we have never said ‘Lest we Forget,dependent on a business case’,” he said in a statement to AAP.

“While the auditor has identified important improvements for better processes and ministerial oversight,I am supremely relaxed that our government made the decision to announce the project before a business case had been completed.”

He maintained Australian veterans should be honoured regardless of the findings in a business case and said the upgrade would create a memorial the nation would be proud of.

“I am uncomfortable when the words ‘business case’ and ‘remembering them’ are used in the same sentence - very uncomfortable,” Mr Joyce said.

“We didn’t send our fine men and women to war based on a business case,they didn’t die and get shot-up based on a business case,and we shouldn’t decide whether we remember them or not,based on a business case.”

The Australian War Memorial’s multimillion dollar upgrade,which is slated for completion in 2028,has been mired in controversy from the outset.

AAP