NSW Health authorities are racing to contain a COVID-19 cluster that has spread from a gym in Sydney’s CBD to suburbs in the city’s north, west and as far as the Central Coast.

Eight of the 14 new cases detected in NSW in the last 24-hour reporting period are linked to the Sydney CBD cluster that is believed to have stemmed from the gym at the City Tattersalls Club on Pitt Street.

The new cases take the cluster’s total to 23, with health authorities warning the cluster is likely to grow.

Of the eight new cluster cases, three attended the City Tattersalls Club, three are known contacts of previously reported cases and two are household contacts of previously reported cases, NSW Health spokeswoman Dr Ch...

Waverley mayor Paula Masselos said she is confident beaches will remain open, but is “absolutely” concerned about large crowds flocking to Bondi and Bronte as temperatures rise.

Sunbathers stretched out on the sand and grassed areas, swimmers braved the chilled water and the promenade along Bondi Beach was filled with walkers and joggers on Saturday under the watchful gaze of police, lifeguards, rangers and council ambassadors.

Cr Masselos said “everyone seemed to be behaving well”, but with warmer weather forecast on Sunday, she said beachgoers should avoid the beach if it looks busy.

“We need to remember that we are still in a pandemic and we need to adapt our behaviour to
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A five-year-old boy is in a critical condition after allegedly being severely beaten with a wooden stick in a Cabramatta home overnight.

Police have charged a 20-year-old man and a 31-year-old woman after finding the child suffering serious injuries at the home on Chadderton Street at 9.50pm on Friday.

The boy was treated at the scene before being taken to Liverpool Hospital. He was then transferred to the Children’s Hospital at Westmead where he is in a critical condition.

Officers from Fairfield City Police Area Command arrested the man and woman – who are known to the child – were arrested at the home.

Those who talk of closure in murder cases have never sat with the families, numb, bewildered and caught in an impenetrable bubble of grief.

Those who think that anger dies have never met Phil Cleary – whose sister, Vicki, was murdered 33 years ago this week.

I use the term murder deliberately, even though the killer was acquitted and convicted only of the lesser crime of manslaughter.

The trial, jury result and the subsequent jail sentence were insults to the victim, an indictment on the system and an official ratification that women were second-class citizens to be blamed for their brutal fate.

Cupcakes, as everyone knows, serve a single, noble purpose: they lift the spirits.

And so when one of my daughters, living in country Victoria, baked a batch of cupcakes, she thought of her sister and baby niece locked away in sombre, curfewed Melbourne.

Frosting her creations with swirls of chocolate icing, my daughter set to thinking about how she could have one of these mood-enhancing dainties delivered to her sister and baby hunkered behind the ring of steel that is Victoria’s capital city these days.

Carefully snugging a cake into a little plastic container, she hurried to the local post office, hoping to catch the afternoon mail.

President Trump has a woman problem: they have turned from him in droves since the last election. So who better to tout his credentials, and gloss over his flashes of overt misogyny than his wife? Surveys have shown she is the most effective of all the Trump surrogates at shaping the way people – especially, crucially, independent women – think of her husband. Which is why Trump’s campaign officials have been trying to coax her out of the shadows, urging her to take more of an active role.

This week out she came, clad in militaristic-styled khaki as she praised the “warrior” parents of America, to put the case for her husband at the Republican National Convention. She spoke in a cool monotone but expressed a kind of empathy the President has not appeared capable of...