Health News at Your Fingertips

At least 286 Australian citizens and permanent residents remain in Afghanistan, an official has told a Senate inquiry.

Simon Newnham, an acting deputy secretary and crisis coordinator at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said:

Our best estimate with a level of confidence around this figure is that there are 129 Australian citizens remaining in Afghanistan as at 1 October who have registered on our database as requiring assistance from government.

Newnham said there were a further 157 Australian permanent residents remaining in Afghanistan who had registered as seeking Australian assistance, adding to the 286 figure.

Home affairs doesn’t have a clear figure on how many Afghan nationals holding Australian visas were unable to get out of the country. But a home affairs official says Australia has received 26,000 applications for visas in the past four weeks.

From today, indoor aquatic centres have reopened in Sydney, which is a huge win for swimmers as well as people with chronic pain or people undergoing rehabilitation who use hydrotherapy pools.

Annette Kellerman Aquatic Centre chief operating officer Anthony McIntosh is “delighted” that indoor aquatic facilities are now open.

It has been an incredibly challenging time for the leisure sector in both regional and metropolitan areas of New South Wales.

With aquatic and leisure venues now open, McIntosh sees “an opportunity” for Belgravia Leisure to “contribute to the recovery of the physical and mental health needs of the local communities in which we operate”:

Access to these important community assets has never been more important.

The chief of the ADF, General Angus Campbell, has clarified when the Australian government first notified the families of victims of the potential release of the former Afghan soldier known as Hekmatullah.

Hekmatullah was convicted of murdering three Australian soldiers – Corporal Stjepan Milosevic, Private Robert Poate and Sapper James Martin – as they played cards at a patrol base north of Tarin Kowt in August 2012.

Campbell previously alluded to conversations with the family members over the weekend. But he told a Senate committee a short time ago there was an earlier conversation when the information was less certain:

We first notified the families that Hekmatullah may have been released, or may be about to be released, from Qatari custody on 18 August. And then we followed up again this weekend, believing that he had been released from custody.