source : the age
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news for Monday, October 5. Here’s what is making headlines today.
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Sadistic and nihilistic online networks are using Australia’s most popular gaming platforms to coerce children into self-mutilating and committing violence against their siblings and pets, experts warn.
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Reality TV star and fitness guru Sam Wood is behind bars in Queensland after being charged with alleged domestic violence offences in Noosa. Queensland Police said they had charged a 46-year-old Victorian man with assault occasioning bodily harm (domestic violence) and strangulation in a domestic setting after they were called to an address in Noosa on Saturday at around 9pm.
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The federal government has thrown down a challenge to state premiers over the rampant illicit tobacco trade, dangling fresh cash and pointing to Queensland’s dramatic crackdown as a blueprint for the rest of the country.
- Tenants who rely on credit cards to pay their rent could soon be forced into arrears, advocates warn, after a major rental payment platform blocked the method of payment in response to a new ban on card surcharge fees.
Shadow Energy Minister Dan Tehan has described the Pre-Cop climate conference as a farce.
“We’ve got the prime minister leaving the country in a cost of living crisis to attend a leaders’ event, and we think there might be seven or eight leaders there, we don’t know,” he told ABC’s Radio National Breakfast.
“The whole thing has sort of become a farce”.
Asked if he agreed more attention should be paid to climate change in these island nations, he said Australia has to ensure it’s doing “good, practical things… in a sensible way”.
“And it’s very hard to see how this, in any way, is getting value for money for the Australian taxpayer, and the reason we know that is because the government won’t come clean with the costs,” he said.
Earlier on the program, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen dodged a question about how much the event was costing taxpayers before saying a reported $20 million figure was “keeping with estimates”.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen says the government has sought to “elevate the importance of Pre-COP” and lift Pacific voices ahead of COP31.
This includes going to Tuvalu, where “sea levels have risen already by around 15 centimetres over the last three decades, and the capital Funafuti is likely to be submerged at high tide by 2035 unless serious action is taken”.
“So we have around 4000 people coming, and we have an unprecedented series of events – 133 events… which is much more than a normal Pre-COP,” he told ABC’s Radio National Breakfast.
Australia and its Pacific island partners hoped the conference would attract some of the world’s most recognisable leaders. However, few leaders from outside the region confirmed their attendance.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has defended Australia’s spending on the Pre-COP meeting to be held in Fiji and Tuvalu from today.
He and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will attend the preparatory multi-day climate summit being held ahead of next month’s main UN Climate Change Conference (COP) in Turkey.
Asked this morning by ABC’s Radio National Breakfast host Sally Sara how much the event was costing taxpayers, Bowen said it was part of the broader $147 million set aside for climate issues in the Pacific.
Pushed on the actual cost of this event – which most world leaders will not attend – Bowen confirmed that reports of $20 million were “keeping with the estimates at this point”.
The woman who has alleged that she was drugged and raped by Cornell University students has been the target of threats, her lawyer said overnight.
The warning came as the university’s president called for stronger sexual assault laws in New York following a national outcry over her allegations.
Thomas Giuffra, who represents the woman known as “Jane Doe”, told CNN that people have threatened to silence or harm her if she did not withdraw her civil lawsuit alleging that several members of a Cornell fraternity drugged and raped her in 2024.
“She’s received multiple threats,” Giuffra said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Beirut: The Saudi-backed government of Yemen on Sunday announced a major military campaign against the Houthi militia, a key Iranian ally, plunging the Middle East even deeper into war.
In a televised speech, Rashad al-Alimi, the leader of the internationally recognised, Saudi-backed government, said that the government was seeking to reclaim all territory it had lost to the Houthis over the past 12 years.
The government and the Houthis have been engaged in fierce battles in recent weeks, after the Iran-allied militia took control of the country’s Red Sea coast, increasing pressure on shipping routes and energy markets unsettled by the US-Israeli war with Iran.
The Houthis and Saudi Arabia, which supports the government financially and militarily, have also attacked each other directly.
Alimi’s announcement appeared to eliminate any hope that a truce would be reached.
Read the full story here.
Brazilians queued in long lines to vote on Sunday in the first round of a tight presidential election, following a campaign dominated by corruption scandals, economic anxiety and accusations of US meddling.
The field of 13 candidates has been led by two clear frontrunners — leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 80, who is seeking a fourth term, and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the 45-year-old son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who hopes to return his father’s right-wing movement to power.
A victory for the senator would extend a wave of wins across Latin America by right-wing candidates aligned with US President Donald Trump, while Lula’s reelection could create a headache for Washington, which has clashed with his government over trade and security.
Despite growing worries over the public finances and sluggish economic growth of Brazil, the campaign has offered meager policy discussion, as both leading candidates skipped the major TV debates.
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news for Monday, October 5. Here’s what is making headlines today.
-
Sadistic and nihilistic online networks are using Australia’s most popular gaming platforms to coerce children into self-mutilating and committing violence against their siblings and pets, experts warn.
-
Reality TV star and fitness guru Sam Wood is behind bars in Queensland after being charged with alleged domestic violence offences in Noosa. Queensland Police said they had charged a 46-year-old Victorian man with assault occasioning bodily harm (domestic violence) and strangulation in a domestic setting after they were called to an address in Noosa on Saturday at around 9pm.
-
The federal government has thrown down a challenge to state premiers over the rampant illicit tobacco trade, dangling fresh cash and pointing to Queensland’s dramatic crackdown as a blueprint for the rest of the country.
- Tenants who rely on credit cards to pay their rent could soon be forced into arrears, advocates warn, after a major rental payment platform blocked the method of payment in response to a new ban on card surcharge fees.
