HAMAS accepts ceasefire deal

Sabra Lane: Good morning. Welcome to AM. It's Tuesday the 7th of May. I'm Sabra Lane coming to you from Nipaluna, Hobart. 

Hamas says it's accepted an Egyptian Qatari ceasefire proposal, but Israel says it's examining the offer, meaning it's uncertain if there will be a stomp to the seven-month war in Gaza. At the same time, Israel says its leaders have approved a military operation in the southern Gaza town of Rafah and have started striking targets in the area, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying he'd send negotiators to continue talks on the ceasefire deal. The United States and other key allies, including Australia, oppose an offensive on Rafah, where about 1.4 million Palestinians, more than half of Gaza's population, is sheltering. For more on this, I was joined by our Middle East correspondent Eric Tlozek in Jerusalem.

Eric Tlozek : So Sabra, Hamas says it's a three-phase proposal, each phase lasting six weeks. The number of hostages to be released in those phases is still to be determined, as is the number of Palestinian prisoners which Israel will release from its jails. And Hamas is saying that in the second phase of that agreement, so in the second six-week period, that the United States has guaranteed there will be a permanent end to the war in Gaza. There will be some kind of pathway towards a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which is something that Israel has consistently said it would not agree to. So essentially, this deal is an expanded form of the deal which Israel had initially proposed, which was for a 40-day ceasefire in exchange for the release of 33 vulnerable, elderly and female hostages. Israel says the deal is somewhat different to the one it proposed, but Qatar and Egyptian mediators have basically indicated it's an extension of that deal, which includes those assurances from the United States for a pathway to end the conflict.

Sabra Lane: How significant is it?

Eric Tlozek : This is a massive step from Hamas. The first time since November they have agreed to a ceasefire. It basically puts the ball very firmly in Israel's court and provides the clearest way yet to stop the loss of life in Gaza and see those hostages released back to Israel. So it is potentially a huge step, and it all depends on whether the Israeli government is going to accept it, and whether or not it will lead to a permanent end to the war will be a key part of that. So it's not yet a concrete deal. There's still a lot of resistance to it within the Israeli government, but it is a significant progress on what we've seen so far in all of these negotiations.

Sabra Lane: Now tell us about Israel's reaction, and we also know that potentially their long-planned assault on Rafa is underway as well.

Eric Tlozek : The initial Israeli reaction from the Israeli cabinet was that the assault on Rafa will continue as planned, and then there are reports from Rafa that Israel has begun bombarding eastern parts of the city. These are the parts that it warned about 12 hours ago that it was going to bomb, and it sent residents flyers, and it put messages on their phones and called their phones and warned residents in some suburbs in eastern Rafa to evacuate, and a large number of people did that today. And now we're seeing reports from inside Rafa that that bombardment has begun, and this started after Hamas said it would accept the ceasefire proposal. Israel initially said this was going to be limited in scope. We don't know if this is the full Rafa operation, but it is certainly an attack on parts of Rafa, and Israel says, regarding the ceasefire proposal, Sabra, Israel says that the proposal Hamas has agreed to is different to the one it put forward. It's going to send a team to discuss the proposal, but there are some political difficulties for the Israeli government. If Benjamin Netanyahu accepts this deal, he has right-wing members of his cabinet who have said they'll walk away from the government, and it's a big question about whether or not they'll be able to get it through the cabinet.

Sabra Lane: Eric Tlozek reporting there from Jerusalem.

Diplomatic tensions with China have resurfaced after an Australian Navy helicopter was targeted by flares over international waters. The Albanese government's condemned the weekend incident as dangerous and unprofessional. For more, I was joined a short time ago by our Defence correspondent Andrew Green.

Andrew Greene: Over the weekend, we've learnt that an Australian warship, HMAS Hobart, was operating in the Yellow Sea off South Korea in international waters as part of a UN mission to enforce sanctions against North Korea. And the Defence Department has now revealed that an Australian Navy Seahawk helicopter that was operating off that warship was intercepted by the Chinese Air Force in international waters. Now, what was particularly dangerous in this incident, according to the Defence Department, was that it released flares, the Chinese J-10 aircraft, in the flight path of the Seahawk helicopter. The pilot was forced to take evasive action and if the pilot hadn't, we're told, it could have been catastrophic.

Sabra Lane: And what's been the response?

Andrew Greene: Well, the Defence Minister hasn't minced words at all. He's condemned this as dangerous and unprofessional. Richard Miles says that that message has been delivered to Beijing through diplomatic channels. The opposition, for its part, believes he should go further and raise it directly with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing. For now, though, we are yet to hear any formal response from the Chinese side, although the ABC has approached both the Foreign Ministry in Beijing and also the embassy here in Canberra.

Sabra Lane: And this has happened at a time of particularly heightened tensions too.

Andrew Greene: It certainly has. Just last week, we saw Australia's Defence Minister with his US, Filipino and Japanese counterparts talking about this very matter, that is the increasingly aggressive behaviour of the People's Liberation Army in the South China Sea and contested waters west of the Philippines. We also saw last November an incident where Australian divers were targeted by a sonar blast from a Chinese warship, again in international waters, while they were taking part in a UN mission. Now, last week, the ABC revealed details of a recent confrontation between Australia's Navy chief and his Chinese counterpart on that particular incident back in November. And a day later, we see this incident unfold in the Yellow Sea.

Sabra Lane: Andrew Greene reporting there.

There's hope for long COVID patients, with surprising results from a preliminary study using a drug normally associated in treating opioid and alcohol addiction. Queensland researchers say the drug naltrexone seems to restore the function of impaired immune cells in long COVID patients. Clinical trials are starting this month. Rachel Hayter reports.

Rachel Hayter: Jayden Donald was a fit and healthy teenager who rode horses almost every day before two bouts of COVID-19 knocked him for six.

Jayden Donald: It wasn't good. It went from being outside 24-7 to being locked in the house.

Rachel Hayter: The 19-year-old Queensland engineering student could barely walk. He suffered brain fog, headaches, abnormally low blood pressure and a high heart rate.

Jayden Donald: It was a struggle, a big struggle, because you go from everyday riding a horse to just being inside watching TV.

Rachel Hayter: Early into the course of his long COVID, Jayden Donald saw specialists who prescribed him with low-dose naltrexone, a drug used to treat alcohol and opioid dependence.

Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik: What we found was it restored the function of the cells from long COVID patients.

Rachel Hayter: Sonia Marshall-Gradisnik is a professor of immunology and director at Griffith University's National Centre for Neuro-Immunology and Emerging Diseases. She describes what happens to the immune cells known as natural killer cells in long COVID patients.

Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik: It's like a lock and a key. Patients have a faulty lock and key on their cells. So the lock and the key don't work. So on the cell, that means calcium can't come through into the cell and perform its function.

Rachel Hayter: But naltrexone restores that lock and key.

Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik: It may be a way forward for long COVID patients to have a treatment.

Rachel Hayter: The research is set to be published this month in the journal Frontiers in Immunology. Queensland Brain Institute professor Fred Meunier says it's a very interesting paper.

Fred Meunier: It's absolutely necessary to have a proper clinical trial on this. It's a good start, but we need to know that a long COVID patient gets better.

Rachel Hayter: Clinical trials are starting across the country at the end of this month. And as for Jayden Donald, he's already back on the horse. He's returned to the competitive dressage arena and has just finished his first trimester of his engineering degree.

Sabra Lane: Rachel Hayter reporting with Janelle Miles and Emma Pollard.

Flu cases are rocketing in kids under the age of four and doctors say COVID-19 and low vaccination rates are partly to blame. During the peak of the COVID pandemic, the number of flu cases dropped significantly due to lockdowns, social distancing and limited international visitors. There are concerns that children who grew up in that environment haven't built up a natural immunity to flu and are now being hit hard. Angus Randall reports.

Angus Randall: More than 5,000 children under five have already had the flu this year, the highest number of influenza cases for any age group, and the virus is no longer just contained to winter.

Dr Rod Pearce : It's now something we've got to think of as potentially getting all year round because of international travel, because of cruise ships.

Angus Randall: Dr Rod Pearce is the chair of the Immunisation Coalition. He explains part of the reason why young children are being hit so hard is because they're pandemic babies.

Dr Rod Pearce : So a three or four year old child hasn't seen influenza through natural protection. So the only thing they've got to rely on is their flu vaccine, otherwise they're going to be hit by a disease the body's not seen.

Angus Randall: Flu vaccines are free for children under the age of five, but the uptake rate so far this year is just 7%, similar to the past few years.

Dr Rod Pearce : Our vaccination rate for children with influenza is only about a third of what it is for all the other vaccines. So we're really under vaccinating the vulnerable.

Angus Randall: Associate Professor Holly Seal is an expert in vaccine perception at the University of New South Wales. She says there are some simple ways to encourage more people to get the flu jab.

Assoc Prof Holly Seale: Sending messages out via school newsletters, via childcare systems, you know, this is what parents are attuned to getting messages about their kids through those systems. So let's, you know, let's use those that are known to work.

Angus Randall: The flu is not the only virus concerning doctors ahead of winter. There have already been nearly 58,000 cases of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, this year. The majority of these were in children under five. Professor Chris Blyth is a paediatric infection specialist at the Telethon Kids Institute.

Prof Chris Blyth : RSV is the cause for the most amount of hospitalisations in young children.

Angus Randall: Much like the flu, RSV cases fell during the early COVID years, but have now returned to pre-pandemic levels. Professor Blyth doubts children born during the early COVID years will be more at risk of RSV because of this blip in case numbers.

Prof Chris Blyth : It's likely those children have been exposed to RSV. We routinely expect children to be exposed to RSV by their second birthday. So yes, there was a hiatus in those early COVID years, but we've had a number of big RSV seasons since then. I expect most children have been exposed.

Angus Randall: New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia are rolling out their own RSV vaccination programs.

Sabra Lane: Angus Randall

Sabra Lane: Sugar cane farmers in North Queensland say they've been forgotten by politicians. They're not sure it's worth caring for the current crop because it might not be harvested. It's because the sugar mill in Mossman, north of Cairns, is likely to close. Growers want the state government to help them get their crops out of the ground. Bridget Herman reports.

Richard Padovan : I haven't heard from the mill yet. So today we're just going to do our power haul. We'll do the chains, oils.

Bridget Herrmann : In Mossman, a sugar cane town 75km north of Cairns in far north Queensland, cane farmer Richard Padovan is going through his list of jobs. But he's in limbo because he doesn't know if he'll be able to harvest his crop this year.

Richard Padovan : We've been marking time for the last four months, three months, because we're scared to spend too much money. We couldn't know what's happening at the mill.

Bridget Herrmann : The local sugar mill unexpectedly went into voluntary administration late last year and farmers are yet to find a mill for this year's upcoming cane harvest. The next closest one is 100km away at Gordon Vale, south of Cairns, and transporting the cane there would cost around $9 million. Grower Scott Fasano says it won't be a viable option unless government helps to cover the freight cost.

Scott Fasano : You may as well just leave it in the paddock because you'll be going backwards. A lot of growers have invested their money this year into this crop and it's not to get any return at all on it. You're financially ruined. You can't come back from that.

Bridget Herrmann : Grower advocacy group Cane Growers is in discussions with the Queensland Government and MSF Sugar, the milling company which owns the Gordon Vale mill, to negotiate getting this year's crop off. The Queensland Government has also provided a $12 million transition package to the town. It says a large portion of the funding is intended for helping growers and workers to retrain and diversify into other jobs and farming opportunities. And that it's continuing talks with growers. Mr Padavan's 21-year-old granddaughter Kate works on the cane trains, moving harvested cane from the paddock to the mill. She says its closure will have impacts beyond the farm gate.

Kate : As a young person it's so hard to find a job in Mossman because all the jobs are taken. And that's where the mill was such a great opportunity for young people because it was seasonal work but there was like 100 jobs, seasonal jobs that you could fill in.

Bridget Herrmann : Many families have lived and farmed sugar cane in Mossman for generations.

Kate : My grandad, my great uncle and my dad, they've worked so many hours and they've dedicated their whole lives to the cane farm and that's something that I would have liked to do eventually and I wanted my kids to grow up on the farm, the cane farm, just like I did. And it's sad, it's so sad. They've worked so hard and just so many hours and so many birthdays and everything.

Bridget Herrmann : Mossman's mill could still operate later in the year if a buyer requires it soon. The Government, cane growers and MSF Sugar are continuing to meet to negotiate sending this year's crop to Gordon Vale. In the meantime, the mid-year harvest season draws closer and farmers are waiting for answers.

Sabra Lane: Bridget Herrmann reporting.

Sabra Lane: Tapping into the brainpower of girls could be the key to solving some of the world's biggest problems. That's the idea behind a new push to get more girls thinking like entrepreneurs or considering science, technology, engineering and maths careers. And there's hope giving girls the right skills early will help tackle a shortage of women in those industries. Stephanie Smail reports.

Stephanie Smail: The challenge of getting healthy, affordable food to more people is a serious global problem. But these 10 and 11 year old girls at St Anthony's Primary School south of Brisbane are ready to tackle it.

Opinion: We can do your idea and make it a little bit colourful and more.

Stephanie Smail: They've been tasked with defining the problem, working out how to solve it and coming up with the solution.

Opinion: So once we decide on our idea.

Tiffani Seaton : It's all about rewiring the brain and having the opportunity to create solutions from problems and not getting stuck at the barrier of thinking, oh here's a problem,

Tiffani Seaton : I can't solve it.

Stephanie Smail: Kamilaroi woman Tiffany Seaton runs these girls only programs across the country.

Tiffani Seaton : We want girls to develop these skills at a young age and to be able to see themselves as future leaders and future founders.

Hannah McGuire: Just draw an apple and make it look like an orange.

Stephanie Smail: After hours of thinking and planning, this is the solution 11 year old Claudia Dunn and her team have come up with.

Hannah McGuire: We're doing like a breakfast truck where it's like an ice cream truck but it comes in the morning and it dries around and it's healthy and nutritious.

Stephanie Smail: Already an aspiring businesswoman before today's workshop, she says now she's even more determined.

Hannah McGuire: People think boys are stronger, better and I'm like nope, nope, we can be stronger, we can do anything we want as long as we try.

Stephanie Smail: Ten year old Hannah Maguire's team wants to develop a fun educational app that uses games to teach kids about healthy food options.

Hannah McGuire: I really like technology, I've always thought about making an app and I'm not sure what because there's already many apps but this is a really good idea because it's like a way for kids to eat healthy and get them excited about it.

Stephanie Smail: There's also a way to use a community garden to make money, as 11 year old Grace Shacker explains.

Hannah McGuire: And we're going to have kitchens and you can take that stuff, cook something with it in the kitchen and then you can sell that at the community garden.

Stephanie Smail: There are teachers like Chris Smith and Anthony Moss at the workshop too, learning how to roll out the problem solving and design thinking that could help get more girls into business and STEM.

Kris Smith : It's difficult as a teacher to provide all of those opportunities because they are more time consuming, they're more expensive to get resources and they also require better research.

Anthony Moss : I often find the girls are quite creative and come up with a bit of the out of the box thinking.

Stephanie Smail: There are online resources for teachers who do the program, which was developed by the Academy for Enterprising Girls and funded by the Federal Government.

Sabra Lane: Stephanie Smail reporting there, and that's AM for today. Thanks for your company. I'm Sabra Lane