South Australian police chief’s son dies after alleged hit and run during schoolies

Grant Stevens’ teenage son Charlie sustained a brain injury after allegedly being run down south-east of Adelaide, with a man later charged

The son of South Australia’s police commissioner has died in hospital after being struck by a car in an alleged hit-and-run incident during schoolies celebrations.

Charlie Stevens, 18, sustained an irreversible brain injury after being run down about 9pm on Friday in Goolwa, about 90km south-east of Adelaide, an emotional SA police deputy commissioner Linda Williams told reporters.

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Schoolies tragedy: South Australian police commissioner’s teenage son on life support after being hit by car

Grant Stevens’ son Charlie suffers irreversible brain injury, with police alleging car’s 18-year-old driver failed to stop

The son of South Australia’s police commissioner is on life support after being struck by a car while on schoolies celebrations, in an alleged hit-and-run incident.

Charlie Stevens, 18, sustained an irreversible brain injury after being run down on Friday night in Goolwa, about 90km south-east of Adelaide, SA’s police deputy commissioner, Linda Williams, told reporters.

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Australia news live: school strike for climate protests draw huge crowds in Melbourne and Sydney; Albanese says Apec leaders ‘very interested’ in Tuvalu deal

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‘A ceasefire is where we need to get to,’ Zoe Daniel says

Asked by RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas if she supports calls for a ceasefire, Zoe Daniel says:

If you call for a ceasefire, you’re letting down the Jewish community, if you don’t you’re allowing death and destruction to happen in Gaza.

At the end of the day, if I say to you right now, yes, I support ceasefire, that will make zero difference to what is happening in in Gaza.

I’m a former foreign correspondent. I know the logistics of this, of course, a ceasefire is where we need to get to, but you have a terrorist organisation in the middle of this. If there’s just a ceasefire, and there’s no capacity there to try to dismantle Hamas, does that allow Hamas to regroup? What does that actually lead to? That said, I’ve said to you before, very clearly, and I still stick to the position that the Israeli government has to adhere to international law and the rules of war, and I think, in some ways, has not been.

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Woorabinda deaths: two toddlers dead after being found hours apart in same car in central Queensland

Police say two-year-old was pronounced dead in hospital before another boy was found at the same address, south-west of Rockhampton

Two toddlers are dead after being found inside the same parked car, several hours apart, in a central Queensland town.

Queensland police said they were investigating “the sudden deaths” of the two boys, aged two and three, after they were discovered in a car parked in the back yard of a Woorabinda home on Friday night.

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Sydney police officer describes ‘shock and fear’ after colleague pointed gun at him over threat to spoil Top Gun plot

Former officer says course of his life changed forever after incident which made him lose trust in police force

A police officer who had a firearm aimed at his head by a colleague for threatening to spoil the latest Top Gun blockbuster says he has completely lost trust in the force.

Sydney’s Downing Centre local court was told that Constable Dominic Gaynor admitted pointing his gun at and threatening to shoot his junior colleague, Morgan Royston, at a Sydney city-centre police station in May last year.

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NSW shooting: two men arrested after shots allegedly fired from ute at cars on Pacific Highway

Arrests came after black Mercedes ute found abandoned in Port Macquarie and following extensive manhunt

Two men have been arrested following a large-scale manhunt after shots were fired at multiple cars travelling on a major New South Wales highway.

NSW police on Thursday had been searching for the driver and passenger of a black Mercedes dual-cab ute from which they alleged shots were fired at cars on the Pacific Highway on the state’s mid-north coast earlier in the morning.

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NSW police sniffer dogs incorrectly detect drugs on patrons despite costing taxpayers $46m over past decade

Exclusive: Between 1 January 2013 and 30 June this year, 94,535 general and strip-searches were prompted by the dogs but nearly 75% of these searches yielded no illicit drugs

New South Wales police are spending millions of dollars a year on sniffer dogs that often incorrectly detect illicit drugs on patrons as part of a program which has cost the taxpayer more than $46m over the past decade.

In addition to the overall cost of running the dog unit, the police force must pay for at least six to 10 officers to accompany every dog and dog-handler deployed to a music festival.

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‘Deeply distressed’: Daylesford pub crash driver a diabetic who needed immediate treatment, lawyer says

Five Victorians – including two children – died after the crash outside the Royal Daylesford hotel on Sunday

A driver who ploughed through a roadside beer garden in regional Victoria, killing five people, is an insulin-dependent diabetic who required immediate treatment at the scene, his lawyer says.

Three groups were sitting outside the Royal Daylesford hotel when a BMW SUV mounted the kerb and hit patrons at about 6pm Sunday.

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Daylesford pub crash: Victorian community reels over deaths of two children and three adults

Police say a nine-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy, along with two of their parents, are among the five killed

It was one of Daylesford’s busiest weekends. Tourists were taking advantage of a Victorian public holiday on Tuesday to flock to the town for a four-day long weekend.

One of the town’s most popular pubs, the Royal Daylesford Hotel, had families gathered in its beer garden, toasting the sunset and enjoying a relatively warm Sunday in November.

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WA community in lockdown and suspect in custody after man allegedly shot west of Perth

Residents of Wooroloo told they could return to normal activity following earlier lockdown but urged to ‘remain vigilant’

A Western Australian community has spent several hours in lockdown and a man has been taken into custody after an alleged shooting on the outer fringes of Perth.

On Saturday morning, WA Police said officers responded to a “firearm incident” in the township of Wooroloo, about 45km from Perth.

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WA town stops using Wiggles song to deter homeless people; Paul Keating lauds Bill Hayden at state funeral – as it happened

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Husic was on the show to discuss the results of the AI Safety Summit held in the UK this week, where Australia and 27 other countries signed a major artificial intelligence agreement.

The Bletchley Declaration affirms that AI should be developed, designed and deployed in a human-centric and safe manner.

It has been very clear from a number of countries, not the least of which the US, which brought in a big executive order this week to improve AI safety and security, that there will be more safety testing and also evaluating those AI models, and holding companies much more accountable for the way that they do that development work.

There will be safety institutes set up in the US and the UK to help with that testing and it will involve researchers in that work and a state of the science report that will look at the developments particularly around what they call frontier AI, generative AI and Australia will have a voice there with the CSIRO’s chief scientist, Dr Bronwyn Fox, who will represent our country in the development of that research work to give governments and regulators a heads up on how the technology is evolving too.

I have been concerned for weeks about where things would head. I was concerned that innocent Palestinian families would bear the brunt and the heaviest burden, in terms of the type of action that was being foreshadowed.

I think the world, the international community, is watching very closely. I have said previously there has to be a much more strategic, precise way to hold Hamas to account. Israel’s actions do matter, in terms of the way in which they conduct these military operations, and I think a lot of us are deeply concerned about the impact, not only on innocent Palestinians but particularly kids.

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Suspected mushroom poisoning: Erin Patterson fronts court on murder charges over deaths in Victoria, Australia

Patterson, 49, was charged with three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder after family lunch in rural Australian town of Leongatha

The woman at the centre of a mushroom lunch that allegedly killed three people and left a fourth fighting for his life is also accused of attempting to murder her former partner four times over the past two years, according to Australian court documents.

Erin Patterson, 49, has been charged with murdering Gail and Don Patterson, both 70, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, after a lunch in her home in the rural Australian town of Leongatha on 29 July.

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Erin Patterson charged with murder over suspected mushroom poisoning deaths in Victoria, Australia

Patterson, who has denied any wrongdoing, was arrested on Thursday over the family lunch in the rural Australian town of Leongatha

Erin Patterson, the woman at the centre of the mushroom lunch that left three people dead and a fourth fighting for his life, has been charged with murder.

Patterson was on Thursday charged with murdering Gail and Don Patterson, both 70, and her sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, at lunch in her home in the rural Australian town of Leongatha on 29 July.

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Victorian government scrambling to prepare for long-planned end of public drunkenness laws

Sobering-up facility not completed, emergency workers unclear about their role in new scheme – and it begins on Melbourne Cup Day

It’s been almost six years since Tanya Day hopped on a train to Melbourne but never made it to the city.

The 55-year-old Yorta Yorta woman was arrested for being drunk in public on 5 December 2017 after she fell asleep. She was placed in a police cell to sober up, suffered a head injury and later died.

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Murder charge over woman’s death in luxury hotel room at Crown Towers in Perth

Homicide squad detectives have charged a 42-year-old man with murder after a woman in her 30s was found dead

A man has been charged with murder over the death of a woman whose body was found in a luxury hotel room in Perth’s casino precinct.

Emergency services were called to Crown Towers east of the Perth CBD about 11am on Monday, where the woman in her 30s was found dead.

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Family of Sydney man shot dead during psychotic episode demand police retract claim he was ‘known’ to them

Call by family of Steve Pampalian comes as Greens accuse police of curating the narrative around other people fatally Tasered or shot

The family of Steve Pampalian who was shot dead by New South Wales police in Sydney while suffering a psychotic episode is calling on the force to retract its suggestion he was “known to police” or provide evidence to support the claim.

The demand comes as the NSW Greens accused police of curating the narrative around other people fatally Tasered or shot in recent months, including Clare Nowland and Krista Kach.

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Cleo Smith detective leaked information to journalist he was in a relationship with, watchdog finds

WA Corruption and Crime Commission report finds Cameron Blaine shared sensitive case details with 22-year-old woman

One of the detectives who rescued kidnapped girl Cleo Smith leaked sensitive information about the case to a young journalist he was in a relationship with, a corruption watchdog has found.

Former Det Snr Sgt Cameron Blaine was among the officers who found the four-year-old at abductor Terence Kelly’s home in northern Western Australia on 3 November 2021.

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Renewed push for NSW to raise age of criminal responsibility to 14

Exclusive: With children as young as 10 ‘regularly’ before the courts, NSW must consider raising the age of criminal responsibility, says broad group of child advocates

More than a dozen organisations have formed a coalition to push the New South Wales government to raise the age of criminal responsibility to at least 14, arguing the status quo is harming young people and entrenching social issues.

The group includes key agencies including First Nations organisations, legal and human rights groups, peak bodies and unions, each with different perspectives on why the change is overdue and how it can be done.

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NSW police must speak with mental health experts rather than shoot our loved ones, stepfather says

Exclusive: New figures show on average 10 people in mental health distress die each year during interactions with state police

The stepfather of a man shot and killed by New South Wales police while suffering from psychosis says the current system is “as useless as udders on a bull” as the Guardian reveals officers aren’t allowed to talk with mental health workers during high-risk callouts – even on the phone.

Neil Wilkins, whose stepson Todd McKenzie was shot at his Taree home in 2019, has written to the state’s mental health minister, Rose Jackson, urging Labor to scrap the ban on mental health workers assisting police when weapons are involved.

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NSW police watchdog routinely denied access to internal officer interviews, report finds

Law Enforcement Conduct Commission says it has been refused access during ‘every critical incident investigation to date’

The New South Wales police watchdog is routinely refused access to interview rooms when officers are being questioned after critical incidents, in a practice the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) has described as “consistent and state-wide”.

Despite the LECC Act providing power for investigators to be present as observers when officers are interviewed by superiors over such incidents, the oversight body said the power “appears to be … illusory” in its annual report handed down on Monday afternoon.

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