Activists faced heavy criticism after they glued themselves to the roadway in Germany.

A Sydney couple who received a parking ticket while in labour were initially told they needed to pay their fine by Revenue NSW.

Greg Mullins received a $120 parking fine for overstaying his time by 12 minutes while his partner Carly Earl was in the delivery room giving birth to their new baby girl Hazel.

"If I wasn't still technically in labour, I may have just given birth (at the time of receiving the fine)," Carly told 9News.

READ MORE: Aussie mother loses $1800 in sophisticated Taylor Swift ticket scam

"There were a few moments that were a bit scary, her heart rate dropped, there are certain elements of the labour that are unpredictable."

With Hazel home safe and sound, the surprise ticket arrived in the mail a few weeks later.

"We just figured it was laughable, we thought there was absolutely no way that a contested fine around someone going through labour was ever going to be rejected," Carly said.

READ MORE: NSW premier's shock NRL grand final call

But Revenue NSW did initially reject the application for the fine to be waived.

"We acknowledge your comments that your wife had been in labour and you had been unable to leave to pay for additional parking, however we are unable to cancel the fine," Revenue NSW told the Marrickville couple in a letter.

Carly said there was "no person on the face of the planet" who could go and move their car in that situation.

Revenue NSW has since tried to call Greg and Carly, leaving an apology on their voicemail.

It has now revoked the fine after 9News brought this story to their attention.

A major IT issue has left ANZ customers unable to access their accounts, just hours after another outage left some Woolworths stores unable to process eftpos transactions.

Woolworths shops in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT were forced to accept cash only this morning after eftpos systems were affected.

Stores in Sydney's south and west, as well as Woolworths in Mawson in the ACT, Pakenham in Melbourne, and Stafford in Brisbane all experienced an IT issue that interfered with the eftpos system. 

READ MORE: Former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce threatened with jail if he does not appear at Senate inquiry

Between 10 and 20 stores were affected by the outage. 

"We'd like to thank customers for their patience with an IT outage affecting eftpos in a small number of stores," a spokesperson for the supermarket told 9news.com.au.

"Stores remained open with cash still being able to be used.

"The cause has been identified and eftpos is being restored.

"Again we thank everyone for bearing with us this morning."

Stores resorted to handwritten signs explaining the situation.

"We temporarily have no eftpos due to no internet," one sign read.

"Cash only, sorry for the inconvenience."

READ MORE: Britney Spears' 'knife dance' video triggers police response

Just hours later, ANZ bank experienced a software issue that impacted thousands of customers.

The issue affected the ANZ banking app, internet banking, credit and debit card transactions, ATMs, contact centres and branch services.

More than 7000 customers reported issues using the ANZ website and app, according to outage tracking website Down Detector.

"ANZ experienced a software issue which impacted a number of our core systems from 1.37pm AEST today," the bank confirmed in a statement to 9News.

"By 5pm AEST, most systems were back online, including Contact Centres, Internet Banking, ATMs and the ANZ app.

"However we are still experiencing some instability across our Visa Credit Card transaction services.

"We recommend customers use debit card or cash wherever accepted while our teams are continuing to work to resolve.

"We apologise for any disruption or inconvenience caused to our customers.

A man accused of attacking an MP's sister at a medical centre has faced a Perth court.

Doctor Anna Chaney, who is the sister of Member for Curtin Kate Chaney, was allegedly attacked by Christopher Bernard Healey at View Street Medical in North Perth just before 9am yesterday.

It's alleged members of the public had to intervene to stop the attack.

READ MORE: Aussie mother loses $1800 in sophisticated Taylor Swift ticket scam

Chaney was assisted by patients and staff inside the clinic before being transported to Royal Perth Hospital with serious injuries.

Healey didn't apply for bail and is back in court at the end of October.

Chaney is now in a stable condition.

A gay-hate killer described as a "soulless monster" has shown no remorse for the death of Raymond Keam, more than three decades after the crime.

Stanley Bruce Early, 77, was convicted of murder by a jury in June for the fatal Sydney bashing of the 43-year-old married man, who he perceived to be gay.

The attack happened at Randwick's Alison Park on a night in 1987.

READ MORE: The last supermoon of the year will cross our skies tonight. Here's how to see it

On Friday, a person – who cannot be identified for legal reasons – had a statement read in court, accusing Early of only feeling sorry for himself and failing to acknowledge his actions.

"Early is a troubled person who not only murdered (Keam) and got away with it for many years but he also destroyed the lives of many other gay men for no reason," Early's NSW Supreme Court sentence hearing was told.

"The soulless monster that murdered him was still out there living his life while (Keam) was buried in the ground.

"Because of you and your desire to 'clean up' Alison Park, you stripped the world of a loving father, partner, friend and mentor."

READ MORE: Aussie mother loses $1800 in sophisticated Taylor Swift ticket scam on Facebook

The person hoped Early would live the rest of his life "miserable and broken" in a jail cell thinking about what he had done.

"Will you feel remorse one day? I don't know and to be honest, I don't care anymore," their statement said.

"I choose not to forgive you but to forget you and never think of you again as it's what you deserve."

During the hearing, Justice Dina Yehia indicated she would find that Early attacked Keam due to a hatred or prejudice against homosexuals and this was an aggravating factor in her sentencing.

Public defender Troy Anderson SC said Early targeted his intended victim through a desire to inflict grievous bodily harm but did not intend to kill.

He said it was unclear whether Early himself or others in his criminal group delivered the fatal blow.

Evidence during the trial showed Early was the ringleader of a gang who beat up men they perceived to be homosexual at Alison Park, which was known as a gay beat.

"It seems that the modus operandi of this gang was to obviously assault their victims but this is an instance where it went beyond what normally occurred," Anderson said on Friday.

Yehia heard that Early had no criminal history after 1991 and that he would be sentenced based on jail terms handed down at the time of the hate crime.

"The sentences that were imposed for murder in the late '80s and early '90s were lower than the sentencing practices currently," she said.

The 77-year-old is housed in Long Bay Prison and had been admitted to the psychiatric ward for three to four months while there, the court was told.

Anderson said his client recognised that he was likely to die in jail due to his age.

Early had been diagnosed with depression and was the victim of sexual assault himself earlier in life, his barrister said.

"He's a person who's had some difficulty with his family over the years and seems to have lived a fairly isolated and sad life."

Crown prosecutor Ken McKay SC rejected defence submissions that Early would have good prospects of rehabilitation, saying the court should be "guarded" about this.

Yehia will hand down her sentence on October 20.

The man who created Facebook as a way to share text updates with friends has taken part in a demonstration of the technology being developed by parent company Meta which could change the way people communicate remotely in the future.

‌While today we have video calls, the immersive future of the Metaverse has until now been the home of cartoon versions of ourselves, making a virtual meeting or catch-up with family as much of a fun thing than anything even close to realistic.

‌Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down for an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman which has been published as a video showing the real situation (two men sitting in conference rooms, probably in different cities in the US), a computer model of each of them and a photorealistic avatar which they each are seeing while wearing the Meta Quest Pro headset.

READ MORE: Jail threat for ex-Qantas boss if he dodges inquiry

‌Zuckerberg told Fridman that through tests of these remote interactions, Meta "got some feedback that people have a hard time with the fact that the avatars are so expressive and don't feel as realistic in that environment. So I think something like this could make a very big difference for those remote meetings."

‌The "this" he refers to is the process and situation Fridman and Zuckerberg were experiencing.

‌To make this happen, both men had to undergo detailed computer scanning at a facility in Pittsburgh.

Data from that is then used by the Meta Quest headsets, along with sensors and cameras inside and outside the headset to take what you are expressing with your mouth, eyes and eyebrows and represent it to the person or people at the other end of the Metaverse or conference call experience as a photorealistic version of you.

‌Within the podcast, Fridman was able to publish very clear side-by-side representations of Zuckerberg and himself wearing the headset, the compute model of them, and the photorealistic version being seen by the other person.

‌It is quite possibly the most advanced demonstration of the future of remote connection and the Metaverse.

READ MORE: Teen arrested over 'deliberate' felling of famous tree in England

‌Following some big announcements from Meta yesterday around Artificial Intelligence and new smart glasses and mixed reality headsets, this demonstration sets Meta up as a genuine leader in Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR).

They are regarded as critical areas, with tech giant Apple setting up to enter the space early next year with their Vision Pro headset.

‌The future, according to Zuckerberg, could see us doing this all ourselves using the technology we hold in our hands.

"The goal, and we have a project that's working on this already, is just to do a very quick scan with your cell phone where you just take your phone, kind of wave it in front of your face for a couple of minutes, say a few sentences, make a bunch of expressions, but overall, have the whole process just be two to three minutes and then produce something that's of the quality of what we have right now."

Police are hunting for a gunman after an officer was shot at in Victoria.

A senior constable's police car was rammed by another vehicle on Springvale Road in Wheelers Hill, south-east of Melbourne, before a single shot was fired in his direction at 3.50am.

The gunman fled the scene and the officer was not injured.

READ MORE: Jail threat for ex-Qantas boss if he dodges inquiry

Detectives used metal detectors to comb through the scene in an attempt to find the bullet, hoping it would lead them to the offender.

"Obviously, that's a horrific attack on law enforcement," Commissioner Shane Patton said

"It's just a blatant disregard for the law and to think they can do that and if they think they're getting away with it, they're kidding themselves."

Anyone with information can contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

He was last seen wearing a black jacket and blue Adidas tear away track pants.

An infrastructure expert says it could’ve been avoided with proactive checks of sewerage.

A man in his 20s has died after his motorcycle crashed into a bus in Sydney's east this afternoon.

The bus and motorbike collided on Alison Road and Doncaster Avenue in Kensington about 3pm.

"NSW Ambulance paramedics treated the rider – a man believed to be in his 20s – before taking him to St Vincent's Hospital in a critical condition," police said in a statement.

READ MORE: Aussie mother loses $1800 in sophisticated Taylor Swift ticket scam

The man died in hospital a short time later.

"The bus driver – a 34-year-old woman – was uninjured and taken to Prince of Wales Hospital for mandatory testing," police said.

A crime scene has been set up and investigations are ongoing.