Morning mail: aged care worker crisis, US boosts Europe troops, spy agencies clash over Wordle

Thursday: Tens of thousands of shifts at aged care facilities are going unfilled amid the Omicron outbreak. Plus: Wordle craze frustrates top intelligence chief

Good morning. Joe Biden moves to counteract Russia's long shadow over Ukraine, the aged care and disability sectors reveal worrying details about the ongoing employment shortage, and why the cost of living could become a key election issue.

Some 140,000 shifts at aged care facilities are going unfilled every week, a situation the chief executive of the sector's peak representative group has said is absolutely a crisis" and called for urgent help", including the deployment of Australian defence force personnel. The government has pledged two $400 retention payments for aged care workers but this has drawn the ire of the disability sector, whose staff are not eligible for the bonuses. Thousands of potential workers have been stranded overseas due to Australia's hard border, with only one-in-four applications for travel exemptions approved between August 2020 and December last year. In January alone, 499 aged care residents died from Covid, with 23,900 active cases among residents and staff.