Andre Rivenell News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Last modified on Fri 14 May 2021 16.01 EDT Tony Sammartino has no idea when he will next hug his three-year-old daughter, but it’s almost guaranteed it won’t be for another year at the earliest. “These are the best years of her life, and they should be the best of mine too. And they’re slipping away.” Tony hasn’t seen Maria Teresa, nor her mother and his partner, Maria Pena, since March 2020, when he was in the Philippines with their other daughter, Liliana. Before the pandemic, the family of four split their lives between Melbourne and Subic, a coastal city nort...

A couple from Australia has been stranded in Texas for over a year when a three-month visit abroad in December 2019 intersected with a global pandemic that is still going strong. Flights were canceled across the country in 2020, and these folks have been living in an RV outside of Beaumont ever since. Being stuck on vacation for a year might sound like a dream come true, but for Melissa and Andre Rivenell, it has become a nightmare. The couple has drained their savings accounts to stay afloat, and Andre, a disabled man, has been taken off of his home country's disability assistance because...

Rivenell has Parkinson’s disease. Centrelink cut off his disability pension payments last April after he wasn’t able to provide proof of his disability from overseas (he needed to be in Australia to reapply) . The couple were unable to afford the new flights back to Melbourne as prices skyrocketed in line with shrinking quarantine arrival caps. They resigned to waiting it out, hoping eased border entry would bring their return within reach. That changed in December, when Rivenell suffered a stroke, and was taken to a Houston hospital where he was also diagnosed with myasthenia gravi...

First published on Tue 20 Apr 2021 17.08 EDT Good morning. A verdict has just been announced in the trial over the police killing of George Floyd. Australia’s flawed vaccination program is having devastating ramifications for those stuck abroad. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been found guilty of murder over the killing of George Floyd. US president Joe Biden earlier said he was “praying the verdict is the right verdict” and described theevidence against Chauvin as “overwhelming”. Three thousand National Guard troops have been deployed in Minneapolis and St Pa...

Australia’s delayed vaccine rollout a life and death matter for some stranded overseas Elias Visontay The Coalition government’s delayed vaccine rollout might have caused frustration and a resulting slump in the polls for Scott Morrison, but for Australians stranded overseas and expats with family abroad, abandoned vaccination targets can be a matter of life and death. After international borders shut in March last year, Andre Rivenell was forced to live in a campervan with his wife, Melissa, in his mother-in-law’s Texas backyard while waiting for his cancelled Air New Z...