Hundreds of people gathered in Aotea Square this afternoon.

New Zealand has a maths problem. Our grades are getting worse. What is the solution?

Gallant season ends with loss.

The Parole Board chairman has apologised to the family.

Clearwater Wildlife Tours Ltd has applied for a marine mammal permit.

Police are investigating after an elderly man was found dead with serious injuries in Queensland.

A 75-year-old man was found unresponsive with serious injuries at The Esplanade in Torquay, Hervey Bay, following reports of an assault at 7.50pm.

Emergency responders tried to revive him, but he was unable to be resuscitated.

READ MORE: 100kg of pseudoephedrine uncovered as three arrested in Sydney

A crime scene has been established by police as they investigate the incident.

Anyone with information, dashcam or CCTV footage from the area are being urged to contact the authorities.

No arrests have been made. 

Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney who helped orchestrate the Trump campaign's 2020 fake electors plot, has pleaded guilty in the Georgia election subversion case to being part of a conspiracy alongside former President Donald Trump and others.

The plea deal is another blow to Trump and a major victory for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who charged Trump and 18 others in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. It comes one day after former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell also pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Chesebro pleaded guilty to one felony – conspiracy to commit filing false documents. Fulton County prosecutors recommended that he serve 5 years of probation and pay A$7900 in restitution, and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee imposed that sentence at Friday's hearing.

Chesebro has also agreed to testify in future court proceedings.

As part of his plea deal, Chesebro admitted that he conspired to put forward fake GOP electors in Georgia with Trump and former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman. Giuliani and Eastman have both pleaded not guilty in the Georgia case, and now face the prospect of Chesebro taking the witness stand against them.

The plea came shortly after jury selection in the trial began Friday morning as planned, but was short-lived. A source familiar with the discussions said the likelihood of Chesebro taking a deal increased after Powell made a surprise turn and pleaded guilty on Thursday.

Fake electors plot

An attorney who worked to undermine the results of the 2020 election, Chesebro helped develop the Trump's campaign's plot to put forward unauthorised slates of GOP electors in Georgia and six other states. (In previous court filings, Chesebro's lawyers have denied that he devised the plan.)

He wrote a series of memos in 2020 spelling out what the pro-Trump electors should do in their respective states. In one memo Chesebro acknowledged that he was promoting a "controversial strategy" that even the Supreme Court with its conservative supermajority would "likely" reject.

Chesebro and other Trump allies hoped then-Vice President Mike Pence would use the GOP electors to justify delaying Congress from certifying Joe Biden's victory – or even throw out Biden's lawful electors and recognize the fake GOP slates instead on January 6, 2021.

Prosecutors said in court that Chesebro acknowledged in the plea that he "created and distributed false Electoral College documents" to Trump operatives in Georgia and other states, and that he worked "in coordination with" the Trump campaign.

"The defendant provided detailed instructions to co-conspirators in Georgia and other states for creating and distributing these false documents," prosecutor Daysha Young said at the plea hearing Friday.

Chesebro was originally charged with seven crimes, including a violation of Georgia's RICO act, conspiracy to commit forgery and conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer. Six of the seven felony charges were dropped as part of the deal.

In addition to testifying at future trials, Chesebro agreed to write an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia.

Three defendants have now pleaded guilty in the sprawling racketeering case: Chesebro, Powell and Georgia-based bail bondsman Scott Hall.

Powell and Hall both admitted their roles in the January 2021 breach of election systems in rural Coffee County, Georgia. As part of her plea deal, Powell agreed to testify at future trials, which could hurt Trump's defence. Both Powell and Hall were sentenced to probation.

Ahead of their scheduled trial, Chesebro and Powell lost several bids to get the case thrown out, including earlier this week. In a spate of pretrial rulings, McAfee rejected their arguments that Fulton County prosecutors misapplied Georgia's RICO law and that the indictment failed to establish key elements of the crimes that have been charged.

Both Powell and Chesebro are unindicted co-conspirators in Trump's federal election subversion case, which was brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. Trump's federal trial is set for March 2024 in Washington, DC.

Steve Sadow, lead counsel for Trump in the Georgia case, said he believes Friday's developments will help the former president.

"It appears to me that the guilty plea to count 15 of the Fulton County indictment was the result of pressure by Fani Willis and her team and the prosecution's looming threat of prison time," Sadow said. "However, it is very important for everyone to note that the RICO charge and every other count was dismissed. Once again, I fully expect that truthful testimony would be favourable to my defence strategy."

Jurors asked about Trump rallies, January 6 hearings

Hundreds of potential jurors for the Chesebro trial were summoned to the Fulton County courthouse on Friday, where they filled out questionnaires that were designed to weed out people with conflicts-of-interest or anyone who couldn't act impartially.

CNN overheard a court official reading aloud from portions the jury questionnaire in a public area of the courthouse where the jury selection process was taking place. The questionnaire itself has not been made public.

The potential jurors were asked if they "express divisive political opinions," if they ever attended a Trump rally or any "MAGA events," or posted anything online about "Donald Trump's charges."

They were also asked specifically if they watched the highly publicised January 6 committee hearings last year, which presented in dramatic fashion how Trump tried to overturn the election.

The potential jurors were also asked if they voted in any federal elections over the past 15 years. There is no indication that they were asked who they voted for, and that is never typically part of a jury questionnaire.

At a hearing earlier this week, Fulton County prosecutors and attorneys for Chesebro haggled over how many politically charged questions should be included. Specifically, Chesebro's attorneys wanted to include questions that could tease out how jurors feel about "MAGA Republicans" and Trump's attempt to "steal the election." It's unclear if those questions made it into the questionnaire.

After Chesebro's plea, McAfee returned to the jury room to dismiss the jury pool, which responded with applause and cheers.

Warning: This story contains details and content that some readers may find distressing.

An assessment by French military intelligence indicates the most likely cause of the deadly explosion at Gaza City’s al-Ahli hospital was a Palestinian rocket that carried an explosive charge of about 5 kilograms and possibly misfired, a senior French military official said Friday.

Several rockets in the arsenal of the Palestinian militant group Hamas carry explosive charges of about that weight, including an Iranian-made rocket and another that is Palestinian-made, the intelligence official said.

READ MORE: Teens questioned by police after 18-year-old stabbed to death in Mildura

None of their intelligence pointed to an Israeli strike, the official said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity, but was cleared to discuss the assessment by President Emmanuel Macron in what was described as an attempt to be transparent about the French intelligence findings.

The assessment was based on classified information, satellite imagery, intelligence shared by other countries and open-source information, the official said.

The size of the blast crater in a courtyard of the hospital was assessed by French military intelligence to be about a metre long, 75 centimetres across and about 30 to 40 centimetres deep.

That is consistent with an explosive charge of about 5 kilograms, the official said. The official said the hole appeared to be slightly oriented on a south to north axis, suggesting a projectile that hit at an oblique angle on a south to north trajectory.

Officials in Hamas-ruled Gaza quickly blamed an Israeli airstrike for the explosion at the hospital Tuesday.

Israel denied it was involved and released live video, audio and other evidence it said showed the blast was caused by a rocket misfired by Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian militant group.

Islamic Jihad denied responsibility.

The death toll remains in dispute. Within just over an hour of the blast, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said 500 had died.

READ MORE: Father of American teenage hostage freed by Hamas says she is 'doing very good'

It then revised that number slightly to 471 on Wednesday, without giving details of the dead. The Israeli military told reporters that number was inflated.

While also cautioning that “I have no certitude,” the French military intelligence official said: "We don’t see at all that a rocket that size could have produced 471 dead. It is not possible.”

A United States intelligence report estimated that somewhere between 100 and 300 Palestinians were likely killed.

Even in Gaza there were conflicting estimates of the dead. Al-Ahli Hospital officials said only that the toll was in the hundreds, without giving a firm number.

The general director of Gaza’s largest hospital, Shifa, Mohammed Abu Selmia, said he thought the toll was closer to 250, based on the casualties he saw streaming into the triage center. Two witnesses said they thought the toll was in the dozens, not the hundreds.

All officials in Gaza have said the blast left body parts strewn everywhere, complicating the task of counting the dead.

The father of freed American teen hostage Natalie Raanan says she’s doing well after her release by Hamas.

Uri Raanan told The Associated Press that he spoke to his daughter by telephone.

“She’s doing good. She’s doing very good,” said Uri, who lives in the Chicago suburbs. “I’m in tears, and I feel very, very good.”

The 71-year-old said he saw on the news on Friday that an American mother and daughter would be released by Hamas, and he spent the day hoping they meant his daughter and her mother, Judith.

READ MORE: Israel says it doesn't plan to control life in Gaza after destroying Hamas

Knowing Natalie may be able to celebrate her 18th birthday next week at home with family and friends feels “wonderful. The best news,” Uri Raanan said.

He said he believes Natalie and Judith to be in transit to Tel Aviv to reunite with relatives, and that both will be back in the US early next week.

Raanan was among many celebrating the stunning news that Hamas had freed an American woman and her teenage daughter it had held hostage in Gaza for two weeks.

An Israeli army spokesman said the two Americans were out of the Gaza Strip and with the Israeli military. Hamas said Friday it released them for humanitarian reasons in an agreement with the Qatari government.

They were the first hostages to be released since Hamas militants, according to Israel, abducted roughly 200 people during their October 7 rampage.

“I am overjoyed that they will soon be reunited with their family, who has been wracked with fear,” Biden said in Washington.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which transported the freed Americans from Gaza to Israel, said their release offered "a sliver of hope” for those still being held.

Judith and Natalie Ranaan had been on a trip from their home in the Chicago suburb of Evanston to Israel to celebrate the Jewish holidays, according to family members.

They were in Nahal Oz, near Gaza, on October 7 for Simchat Torah, a festive Jewish holiday, when Hamas and other militants stormed into southern Israeli towns, killing hundreds of people and abducting others.

Their family had heard nothing from them since the attack and were later told by US and Israeli officials that they were being held in Gaza, Natalie’s brother Ben has said previously.

“The news that Judith and Natalie have been released from the hands of Hamas is overwhelming.

"It brings us a tremendous amount of gratitude to the Almighty, to God, for this incredible miracle,” Meir Hecht, Judith Raanan’s rabbi, said at a press conference outside his home in Evanston, Illinois, on Friday afternoon.

“At the same time we hold our pain very deep,” said Hecht, who called for the other hostages to be released as soon as possible.

“We need to continue besieging whoever we can and however we can, and praying for their release.”

Judith came regularly to Meir’s congregation and felt like “part of our family,” the rabbi said.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth expressed relief at news of the Raanans’ release while asking people to remember other families whose relatives were abducted.

READ MORE: Albanese confirms he will not go to Israel as world leaders visit amid conflict

“After being held against their will for nearly two weeks, they are now safe and receiving necessary medical treatment,” Pritzker said of Natalie and Judith. “I cannot wait to welcome them back home after demonstrating immense strength and bravery in the face of unthinkable terror.”

Qatar said it would continue its dialogue with Israel and Hamas in hopes of winning the release of all hostages “with the ultimate aim of de-escalating the current crisis and restoring peace.”

Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Israel was continuing to work to return hostages and find the missing, and its goals had not changed.

“We are continuing the war against Hamas and ready for the next stage of the war,” he said.

An elderly Brisbane man is being forced out of his home as the state government resumes his property for The Gabba redevelopment.

Trevor Connolly has been living on his street in Coorparoo for more than 80 years but he has been told he has until Christmas to be out.

The 93-year-old retired electrician, who is now living with early dementia, lived in the house with his late wife for 60 years.

READ MORE: Why this 'mannequin' fell foul of the law

"My father-in-law built the house and we've been living in it ever since," Connolly said.

"The government often has deaf ears, haven't they? And if it doesn't suit them, they don't hear you," Connolly said.

"Dad's health has declined a little bit because of all of this," his daughter Anne said.

The department of education sent him a resumption notice last week.

READ MORE: One in 10 Australian children move back in with parents

His property will be used as an access road for the new East Brisbane State School, which is being relocated to make way for an Olympic stadium.

The state government is still yet to release its plan for the Gabba redevelopment, including what the new stadium will look like and how much of this existing site will have to go.

An education department spokeswoman said it was the only property they required.

"The government is committed to negotiating in an open, compassionate and conciliatory manner".