Matt Doran returns to Weekend Sunrise from personal leave in good spirits – after vanishing while covering Hunter Valley bus crash tragedy

By Jimmy Briggs For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 21:53 EDT, 24 June 2023 | Updated: 21:53 EDT, 24 June 2023

Chris Hemsworth’s personal trainer admits jealousy after seeing photo of Thor star training with Arnold Schwarzenegger

By Mary Mrad For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 20:25 EDT, 17 June 2023 | Updated: 03:08 EDT, 18 June 2023

Rep. George Santos, the scandal-ridden Republican congressman who was caught lying about significant swaths of his backstory, signaled early on Saturday that he intends to serve out his term representing New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

Santos released a statement shortly after 2am on Saturday after he and the other members of the House of Representatives were sworn into the 118th Congress, following gridlock over the Speaker’s gavel.

The gay New York Republican has admitted to lying about having worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, as well as the colleges he claimed to have attended. He is also accused of falsely claiming his grandparents were Jewish Holocaust survivors, and was married to a woman until shortly before he filed to run for Congress for the first time in 2020.

Both state and federal investigations have been opened into whether his questionable accounts led to any laws being broken.

But nevertheless, Santos said his work on Capitol Hill is ‘not about [his] personal life’ and called on Americans and fellow lawmakers to ‘put political differences aside.’ 

Later that same day, protesters lined up outside of Santos’ Queens, New York office to demand he be locked up and no longer represent their urban/suburban district.

‘I am committed to serving the people of New York’s 3rd Congressional District and finding solutions to solve tough problems,’ Santos said.

‘The work begins today, and I am determined to work with both Republicans and Democrats and support sound policy that will provide funding for local law enforcement, and reducing inflation.’

He continued, ‘Now is the time to put political differences aside, stop the finger pointing, and start delivering results.’

‘The work of Congress is not about my personal life, this is about delivering results for my constituents, finding bipartisan solutions, and reversing abysmal policies that have caused some of the worst inflation and crime in our nation’s history.’

Just hours after he was sworn into Congress, Santos’ Long Island constituents took to the streets of Queens to once again demand he stepped down from office. 

They screamed: ‘Lock him up!’ – a line originally used by former President Donald Trump in reference to Hillary Clinton‘s email scandal. 

‘It’s insane that he still has a job right now,’ one of the protesters told journalist Oliya Scootercaster. ‘He completely made up everything on his resume and he tried to excuse himself by saying everyone does that, but people like about lie about knowing excel when they only kind of know excel, you don’t lie about your family dying in the Holocaust or 9/11. 

‘That is so immoral.’ 

Among the protesters were Robert Zimmerman, his Democratic opponent, Assemblyman Edward Braunstein, and activist Jody Kass Finkel. 

‘My only focus and my only agenda is building a bipartisan coalition to remove George Santos from office. He is fraud and a danger to both our country and the citizens for our congressional district — if he name is actually George Santos,’ Zimmerman told the New York Post. 

Protesters took turns speaking at the rally and many times they were caught chanting as a group: ‘We deserve better!’ and ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire!’ 

One protester accused Santos of ‘weaponizing’ the Jewish religion. 

To trivialize the million of lives lost to the Holocaust for personal political gain is disgusting,’ the man said. 

One of the biggest lies he made was that his mother died during 9/11. Now his former roommate Gregory Morey-Parker, who rented a room from Santos in Jackson Heights dismissed Santos claims. 

He said: ‘I’m fully confident that I would have known if Fatima was in 9/11. I am sure she would have brought [being in 9/11] up.’ 

Santos mother Fatima died in 2016 from cancer. 

Morey-Parker lived with the family in Queens and said he grew quite close to Fatima. While living with them, Santos went by the name Anthony Devolder. 

While living with the family, he said he experience Santos lying several times, including when he claimed his family owned a house on Nantucket and would often times say he bought a bottle of liquor for them to share when Fatima had actually bought it, he said, according to Patch. 

‘Santos had delusions of grandeur,’ he said. ‘Fatima would just roll her eyes and say: “Anthony and his stories.” His mother was just very not happy with him and his ridiculous lifestyle that he was portraying.’ 

Rishi Sunak today revealed he was inspired to expand the role of pharmacies after watching his mother form a ‘powerful connection’ with patients in the family shop.

The Prime Minister, who worked as a boy in his mother’s pharmacy in Southampton, today unveiled plans to allow pharmacists to issue prescriptions for a string of common ailments.

The plans, designed to take pressure off GP appointments, is backed with funding of £645million.

Speaking to the Daily Mail today, Mr Sunak revealed that his own experience as someone with a pharmacist mother and GP father had persuaded him the plan could work.

He said the issue was ‘personal to me’, adding: ‘My dad was a GP, my mum was a pharmacist. I grew up working for my mum – I worked in her pharmacy for years. And so I saw first-hand how powerful the connection that she had with her patients was, how much they trusted their trusted her but more generally how much people trust their local pharmacist.

‘So it’s really personal to me, and that’s why what we’re announcing today empowers patients so that they can get more services from pharmacists, but it also is a massive vote of confidence in our community pharmacies.’

The PM took a trip down memory lane today, returning to the pharmacy run by his mother Usha until 2014, where he helped measure out and deliver medicines as a boy.

He said that today’s prescribing plans, which are due to be in place by the winter, would make life easier for patients with minor complaints, as well as freeing up 15million GP appointments a year.

‘Imagine you’ve got kids with an earache or sore throat? You won’t have to call the doctor. You won’t have to wait for an appointment. You can just go to your pharmacist and get those medicines. If you’re someone needing contraception or indeed blood pressure checks, all those things. We’re now going to say you can do it your pharmacy.

‘And it’s great for patients because it means they can get the care they need quicker.’

Mr Sunak appeared to acknowledge that the Government is likely to miss a target to increase the number of GPs by 6,000 next year.

But a new workforce plan in the coming months is expected to boost training places by up to 50 per cent.

And the PM insisted that the pressure on GPs could be eased by directing patients to other medical practitioners.

Speaking during a visit to a GP practice in Southampton, he said: ‘You don’t always need to see your GP. Talking to the patients here, there’s someone seeing a physiotherapist, someone else seeing a nurse for managing their asthma, someone else seeing a nurse for their diabetes treatment.

‘That’s great. They don’t need to see the GP, they can see those people, get the care they need. They can get it faster, and it frees up the GP to focus on the things that only the GP can do. And that’s why we’ve hired 25,000 more people like that since 2019. And that is what modern general practice looks like.’

Mr Sunak outlined the plans as industry groups warned that more pharmacies will close unless ministers provide more funding to the ‘struggling’ sector.

On average, one pharmacy is closing every five days, with owners warning that NHS payments are failing to keep up with the soaring price of medicines.

Mr Sunak said pharmacies are now receiving ‘record’ funding, with additional help for those in rural areas. And he said he was committed to helping the sector thrive.

‘Eighty per cent of the country lives about 20 minutes’ walk from a pharmacy, and for many people they are an easier place to access than their surgery,’ he said.

‘That’s why we’re investing more in them and allowing them to do more, and it’s not just more medicines that people will be able to get there.’