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Two teenagers are dead and a man has been hospitalised after a crash in South Australia’s mid-north.
Emergency services were called to the Augusta Highway at Lochiel at 7.30pm on Tuesday after a northbound car left the road and crashed into a tree.
Continue reading...Hundreds rescued in NSW over Christmas break as hot weather sends people flocking to beaches and waterways
At least 10 people have died in water accidents around Australia over the Christmas period and lifesavers have pulled hundreds more from danger.
On Tuesday two girls aged 13 and 14 died when they hit a tree stump while being towed behind a boat on an inflatable at Tamworth in north-eastern NSW.
Continue reading...Adelaide stayed at 27.4C overnight while Victoria is forecast to dip no lower than 26C, the state’s hottest night in four years
Adelaide has sweated through a 38C morning as millions of people in the country’s south endure the peak of a summer heatwave.
Heatwave warnings were issued for South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales and isolated parts of Western Australia with temperatures 8C to 16C above average.
Continue reading...Three Victorians and a South Australian woman die, while two young girls rescued in near-drowning at St Kilda beach in Melbourne
Three Victorians and a South Australian woman have drowned on Australian waterways in a deadly long weekend.
A 17-year-old Pakenham boy died near Mordialloc, south of Melbourne, on Monday afternoon.
Continue reading...With reports of surf lifesaving rescues up in some states, there are fears of a repeat of last summer, when 145 people drowned
Australians are being urged to be safe in the water this week, as the country enters the most dangerous time of the year for fatal drownings.
Two swimmers drowned on Christmas Day – a 36-year-old man in Sydney and a 19-year-old in Lorne in Victoria – and police divers in Western Australia are searching Black Diamond Lake near Collie in the state’s south-west after a 30-year-old man did not return from a swim.
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Ferry services resume in Sydney as fog clears
The fog looks to be clearing in Sydney, or at least the sun has just broken through the clouds where I’m sitting.
Passengers should continue to allow extra travel time and check information displays for service updates as services return to timetable.
Continue reading...Trio were surfing at Cumberland River beach just south of Lorne on Victoria’s Surf Coast on Sunday evening when one ran into trouble
A teenager has drowned and two other men taken to hospital after running into trouble surfing.
The trio were surfing at Cumberland River beach, just south of Lorne on Victoria’s Surf Coast, when one got into difficulty just before 6pm on Sunday night.
Continue reading...Victoria police have charged a Melbourne woman with theft after the dog was allegedly taken from outside a supermarket
Police have reunited a Melbourne woman with her therapy dog after it was allegedly stolen on Christmas Eve, in what its owner described as the best Christmas present she had ever received.
Kyron the dog was returned to its owner in the early hours of Christmas morning, hours after it went missing from a supermarket in the Melbourne suburb of Essendon.
Continue reading...Melbourne airport grounded flights because of flooded terminals and the risk of lightning, as geelong was hit by hail up to 3cm in diameter
Thousands of Victorians have been left without power and Melbourne airport has been forced to ground flights as a major storm front swept across the state’s south.
There was also extreme weather on the way for parts of the Northern Territory and West Australian coasts on Friday as a tropical low deepened over the Timor Sea.
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Long delays on M7 at Prestons in Sydney
Traffic is banked up on the M7 in Sydney. Chanel 7 is reporting that a truck crash has caused the long delays.
They’re sharing their emotions and their grief because they believe this should never have happened.
It’s really important for us to have that public support. It inspires us to continue to do our job.
They’ve also lost two colleagues … so they are hurting incredibly.
A lot of work to be done to assist them as we move into the future because the pain will never go away.
Continue reading...Fellow Liberal new arrival Evan Mulholland calls for prison sentences to be scrapped for some drug offences
New Victorian Liberal MP Renee Heath has railed against the Labor government, claiming it needed to “get out of classrooms, get out of churches”, while her party colleague Evan Mulholland has used his first speech in parliament to call for the scrapping of prison sentences for some drug offences.
The pair were among the first newly elected MPs to address parliament for the first time on Tuesday evening, following the November election that delivered the Andrews government a fourth term.
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Crossbench say Australia needs to ‘get cracking’ on Cop15 commitments
More reactions are coming in after the close of the biodiversity Cop15 – which leading scientists have called “vastly more important” than the Cop27 climate meeting, because it decides the “fate of the living world”.
We need to get cracking on implementation to deliver on commitments.
Continue reading...Father of one of the teenagers says the family was ‘very desperate’ after group’s belongings were discovered on Rosebud beach on Monday night
Four teenagers have been found alive in what police are calling a “Christmas miracle” after going missing in waters off Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.
Two 18-year-old men and two women aged 18 and 19 were found across the bay on Swan Island off the Bellarine Peninsula about 9am on Tuesday.
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It’s officially a week before Christmas, which means the forecasters at the Bureau of Meteorology are fairly confident they can tell us what whether we can set up for an al fresco Christmas lunch or not.
For some parts of the country, there is a chance of showers:
Particularly in the south, we can get some volatile weather but all the patterns really starting to change as we move into later part of this week.
So we’ll see a weather system move through southern parts of the country, Thursday and Friday. Then a big high-pressure system behind it will quickly move into the Tasman Sea and then kind of sit there over the Christmas weekend into early the following week and normally that drives a lot of warm weather across much of southern parts of the country and our guidance is showing a similar pattern with that as well.
Continue reading...Warning comes as more than 130 people who ate range of contaminated fresh food items suffer symptoms including hallucinations and delirium
Australians are being urged not to seek out contaminated baby spinach products for a recreational high after more than 130 people who ate a range of fresh food items suffered symptoms including hallucinations and delirium.
Authorities were on Sunday night testing the weed believed to be responsible for the widespread recall of products containing spinach thought to have come from a farm in Victoria.
Riviera Fresh – Riviera Farms Baby Spinach
Fresh Salad Co – Fresh and Fast Stir Fry
Woolworths – Chicken Cobb Salad and Chickpea Falafel Salad
Continue reading...Sport governing body says ‘such behaviour has no place in Australian football’. This blog is now closed
‘We will look at the facts’
James Johnson is asked whether Melbourne Victory has any outstanding sanctions for past incidents. He says he is not aware of any but past events may be considered as an “aggravating factor” as an investigation into the incident unfolds:
There is no other suspended disciplinary action that I’m aware of, but what I will say is that we will be working through that today. We have already started working on the show cause process as of late last night, and we will be moving forward as quickly and swiftly as possible to finalise it, because it is important we get ahead of this issue as a sport.
What I can say is that we will look at the facts, we’ll look at it objectively and we will take a decision that we believe is in the overall best interest of the game but I prefer not to comment on the specifics of the outcome because we have to go through that process first.
What happened during the game last night and what happens with the result;
A “show cause letter” to Melbourne Victory;
An attempt to identify individuals involved in the pitch invasion.
This is an element that … infiltrates our game and tries to ruin it for the people who love us was in. We’ll be looking to weed out those people from the sport.
Continue reading...Indigenous children routinely subjected to racist slurs and excessive force, including use of stun guns, Yoorrook Justice Commission told
First Nations children are routinely strip-searched by police and it amounts to “state-sanctioned violence”, a defence lawyer has told Victoria’s Indigenous truth-telling commission.
Tessa Theocharous told the Yoorrrook Justice Commission that the constant mistreatment of Aboriginal children by Victoria police was rooted in racism.
Continue reading...Two police officers and another member of the public were shot dead at a Wieambilla property, then two men and a woman were killed by police late last night. Follow the day’s news live
Police officers who were shot and killed on a regional Queensland property were searching for a New South Wales man last seen by his family almost a year ago, Guardian Australia understands.
On Monday, four officers attended the remote property at Wieambilla in the Western Downs region in connection with the disappearance of Nathaniel Train, 46, from Dubbo in NSW.
Continue reading...Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell expected to enter upper house, where Labor needs six crossbench votes to pass legislation
Victoria is set to elect its first One Nation MP, who will sit on an upper house crossbench that will likely be dominated by progressive parties, including up to four Greens.
The Victorian Electoral Commission will distribute preferences in the eight upper house regions on Wednesday. ABC election analyst Antony Green has said it is looking likely that One Nation’s Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell will beat Labor’s James McWhinney for the final seat in Northern Victoria.
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Severe weather warning for damaging winds in NSW and Victoria
Several children have been injured after a firework shot into a crowd during a Christmas event in Sydney’s northern beaches last night.
An 11-year-old boy was initially taken to Royal North Shore hospital, before being transferred to the Children’s hospital at Westmead for treatment of burns and a chest injury.
An eight-year-old girl was taken to Northern Beaches hospital for treatment of burns and a wrist injury. She has since been released.
Police have been told a 12-year-old boy was taken to hospital by his parents for treatment to minor burns and has since been released, and six other people were treated on scene by NSW Rural Fire Service for minor injuries, and left prior to the arrival of paramedics and police.