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Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 10, 2026 – Institute for the Study of War
- Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 10, 2026 Institute for the Study of War
- Russia hits Ukraine with Oreshnik hypersonic missile: Why it matters Al Jazeera
- UNSC calls emergency session on Ukraine tomorrow Dawn
- Russia bombards Kyiv…
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Google employee made redundant after reporting sexual harassment, court hears
In 2023, Google started a redundancy process that resulted in the departures of her boss and one of the senior managers who failed to report the sexual harassment, according to court documents.
In May that year, Woodall took her concerns about a boys’ club culture and the retaliation she was facing to the top of the organisation.
In her witness statement, she says she met with Debbie Weinstein, then vice president of Google UK and Ireland after hearing from a HR colleague that she was concerned about the team and the experiences of women.
Following their discussion, Weinstein, now president of Europe, Middle East and Africa, appeared shocked by Woodall’s claims. Court documents show she messaged a member of HR: “Just met Vicki [Woodall]. Holy moly. Want to get you for 10 mins today.”
Then in November 2023, as Google prepared for a broader reorganisation and redundancy process, Woodall claims there was a final push to remove her from the agency team.
That month, Weinstein messaged Dyana Najdi, Google’s managing director for UK and Ireland advertising, to say: “keep pushing…for solution on how you can run a process including agency [Woodall’s team]… gotta use this as a chance to exit people”, according to messages of their conversation submitted to court.
In March 2024, Woodall was made redundant alongside the second senior manager involved in the misconduct investigation, however she remains employed by the company receiving long-term sickness payments for work-related stress, according to her claim.
Google denies that Woodall was made redundant for whistleblowing, adding that her role was one of 26 across the team and wider department closed, according to its defence.
It disputes that Weinstein attempted to make Woodall redundant, saying she was very supportive towards her and instigated the investigation into the culture of the agency team.
The company accepts that Woodall’s report of the manager accused of misconduct was an act of whistleblowing, but denies any retaliation against her, saying the subsequent events were perfectly normal business decisions.
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Too many patients are confused by a doctor’s questionnaire
Medic assessing records. Image by Tim Sandle
Many people, before they sit down with a therapist, need to fill out a form with a set of questions. This is to ensure that the therapist knows why the individual is there and what they might be…
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Veteran actor T.K. Carter, known for ‘The Thing’ and ‘Punky Brewster,’ dies at 69 : NPR
Actor TK Carter arrives for the premiere of “The LA Riot” at the Tribeca Film Festival, Monday, April 25, 2005, in New…
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Call centre operator that won major Centrelink contract paid no corporate tax for two years | Business
An outsource call centre operator for Centrelink paid no corporate tax for several years even after winning a major government agency contract worth tens of millions of dollars, Guardian Australia can reveal.
The Perth-headquartered company, Telco Services Australia, generated more than $185m in revenue in 2024-25 but reported no taxable income, new financial documents show.
The year before, it reported $130m in income and also paid zero tax.
The two-year reporting period coincides with the company’s multi-year $90m-plus contract to run call centre operations for Services Australia, the agency responsible for social security.
Jason Ward, the principal analyst at the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research, said the business appeared to be structured in ways “to have avoided reporting and tax obligations in Australia”.
He said the federal government should subject those bidding for public contracts to higher levels of transparency.
The financial documents, lodged on Christmas Eve, show that there were $166.5m in related party transactions last financial year at Telco Services. There is no detail about the identity of the related parties.
These payments “virtually eliminate profits” for the company, according to Ward, resulting in no tax payable.
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At the same time, payments for directors and key management personnel increased during the 12-month period, the documents show, even after it reported a financial loss.
There is no suggestion the company or its directors have acted illegally.
Telco Services is one of the operational arms of a Perth-based entity known as TSA Group, run out of Perth. The group says it has a team of more than 4,300 workers operating in five contact centres across Australia and the Philippines.
Along with its government agency contract, the group runs outsource operations for major corporations and brands, including Telstra and NRMA insurance.
A TSA group spokesperson said while the Telco Services company did not record taxable income, “other associated entities did and the appropriate amount of tax has been paid by them”.
“The taxation arrangements and payments have been assessed by a large, independent auditor,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said the entities which paid the tax were not required to meet public reporting requirements and that Telco Services had paid tax in prior years.
TSA described the related party transactions as costs incurred for services provided by associated companies, which are “simultaneously booked as revenue by the associated companies”.
An analysis of the TSA group’s structure by Guardian Australia found that its various businesses rarely lodge public financial accounts, which is unusual for such a large operator with thousands of employees and large revenue streams.
The complex structure made it impossible to publicly verify how much overall tax it has paid, or how related party transactions flowed between different entities.
Another of its operational arms, called Telco Sales, holds a flagship contract with Telstra. This company paid just over $700,000 in corporate tax in 2022-23 but received a partial refund the following year. It generated more than $120m in revenue over the two tax years.
While the Telco Services arm of the TSA group holds the Services Australia outsource contract, the staff are employed by a different entity called Trimatic Management Services.
Trimatic received $5m in grant funding from the Western Australian government in 2024 to expand call centre jobs in the state.
A spokesperson for Services Australia said the agency hosts one of the largest contact centre networks in the country and that its workforce is “built on a base of mostly permanent Australian public service staff” supplemented by contractors.
Centrelink also uses a separate outsource operator, Concentrix, to run some of its call centre operations.
Guardian Australia has detailed how heavily government agencies now rely on outsource call centres and how attempts to curb reliance on external consultants and contract workers have stalled.
The majority of calls to the Australian Taxation Office’s phone line are answered by workers at three private operators, the US private equity-owned Probe Operations, British multinational Serco and Concentrix.
Tax agents have complained to the ombudsman of a deteriorating service on the ATO phone lines, saying they often speak to inexperienced call staff who cannot provide informed responses.
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Dear Annie: People call me a cancer ‘survivor’ but I’m depressed and don’t want to just get over it
Dear Annie: I was diagnosed with breast cancer a few months ago. I’ve been through surgery and radiation treatments. According to the oncologists, I should now consider myself a “survivor.” Since I have scars, I’m taking medication for…
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Is the Universe Made of Math? Part 2: The Minimalist Universe
This is Part 2 in a series on the mathematical universe hypothesis. Check out Part 1.
Like, it shouldn’t be this easy. Yeah I know physics is kind of hard, and it has taken us centuries to reach our present level of knowledge, and we…
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The battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease
Over the coming months, Marrero and the CJDSS scientists began to suspect that instead of a small cluster of CJD patients, the province of New Brunswick might have on its hands a much larger cluster of people suffering from a completely unknown…
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