Mia from Sydney is a mum of two kids under three years old.

Last year she gave birth to her second, a girl, then went back to work four months after giving birth.

Now the cost to keep both her kids in daycare keeps going up, and at tax time, the hits keep coming for her young family.

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After enjoying a small tax return of $900 last year, this year she was slugged with a bill of $1800, a debt she says she "can't really afford."

"Daycare is now more money than I make, I'm operating at a huge loss," she told 9news.com.au.

"All my costs have gone way up – groceries, rent, daycare, health insurance, gas and electrical bills."

"Tax returns are an opportunity to get a little bit of relief and instead it's another large bill."

The crux of the issue for Mia, is the end of a tax policy that has left many young Australians unpleasantly surprised this year.

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The LMITO, or "Lamington offset"  was a temporary tax cut for anyone earning up to $126,000, with the greatest benefit of $1500 going to those taking home between $48,000 and $90,000 in 2021-22.

The median Australian yearly salary is around $65,000, meaning half of workers earn less than that.

While many might have seen the change coming, thousands of young Aussies have been taking to social media to vent about their surprising tax bills.

Mark Chapman, a tax expert at H&R block said all tax experts were aware of the policy expiry at the end of 2022.

"People like me can shout from the rooftops, but people just have other things on their minds," he said.

"That's just human nature and it's absolutely understandable."

In May, Chapman said the policy left "millions facing an effective tax increase in the current year of up to $1500".

Now that many middle-income earners have filed their returns for the year, the reality of the change is beginning to sink in.

Like Mia and her family, another young Aussie working two jobs told 9news.com.au that the timing of the tax returns was a burden. 

Trudy said her small tax return comes as a "slap in the face". 

She splits her working hours between a childcare centre and a café in Sydney, and said she was "very surprised" after filing her return.

She joked that she hoped to spend her tax return on "shopping", then admitted that her study loans, rent and spending on essentials like sanitary items would have to take priority with the small amount she would receive this year.

The temporary LMITO was introduced in the 2018-19 budget, extended during the pandemic, and then increased by the Morrison government (and supported by the then-opposition) during its pre-election March 2022 budget for a single year.

Neither Labor nor the Coalition had ever planned for it to be retained for 2022-23 or beyond.

The end of the policy is now having a human impact, as economic pressure continues to weigh on families.

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Russia unleashed intense drone and missile attacks overnight on Wednesday, damaging critical port infrastructure in southern Ukraine, including grain and oil terminals, and wounding at least 12 people, officials said.

The bombardment crippled significant parts of export facilities in Odesa and nearby Chornomorsk and destroyed 54,400 tonnes of grain, according to Ukraine's Agriculture Ministry.

It came days after President Vladimir Putin pulled Russia out of its participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a wartime deal that enabled Ukraine's exports to reach many countries facing the threat of hunger.

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It also followed a vow by Putin to retaliate against Kyiv for an attack Monday on the crucial Kerch Bridge linking Russia with the Crimean Peninsula, which the Kremlin illegally annexed in 2014.

Putin said Wednesday that Russia could return to the deal if the West offers Russian banks involved in servicing payments for the country's agricultural exports an immediate access to the SWIFT payment system, adding that Moscow wants its conditions met, not "some promises and ideas".

The Russian leader also listed other Russian demands, including a lifting of insurance and shipping restrictions that affect Russian agricultural exports and a resumption of Moscow's export of ammonia to Odesa via a pipeline, a section of which was blown up last month.

He said Moscow has shown "miracles of patience and tolerance" by repeatedly extending the grain deal while Western nations used it "shamelessly enrich themselves", violating its declared goal of helping relieve hunger in poor countries.

Further raising the stakes, the Russian Defence Ministry issued a statement that Moscow has declared international waters in northwestern and southeastern parts of the Black Sea "temporarily dangerous" for shipping. That follows Ukraine's pledge to continue grain shipments despite the Russian pullout from the deal.

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The ministry warned it will see any incoming vessel as laden with military cargo starting from midnight. "The countries whose flags those ships will fly will be seen as involved in the Ukrainian conflict on the side of the Kyiv regime," it said.

Ukraine's Agriculture Ministry, citing experts, estimated it would take a year to restore the facilities damaged Wednesday. The destroyed grain was supposed to have been loaded onto a vessel and sent through the grain corridor two months ago, the statement said.

"Such attacks by Russian terrorists are not only affecting our country but also global stability," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a briefing with the visiting Irish prime minister in Kyiv. He said Ukraine needs more anti-aircraft defence systems to protect the port.

Zelenskyy said his government is trying to find a way to maintain a corridor to keep grain exports flowing despite Russia's decision to abandon the deal brokered with the UN and Turkey.

"The corridor must be secure. In fact, knowing Russia, it won't be safe unless the UN starts working very clearly and firmly at the level of the secretary-general," he said.

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Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskyi warned that if Ukraine cannot export food, "the population of the poorest countries will be on the brink of survival! The price of grain will increase, and not all countries will be able to afford buying agricultural products, which means food prices will significantly rise: flour, cereals, meat."

Wheat prices rose more than 2.5 per cent on Tuesday and nearly 8 per cent on Wednesday amid the attacks in Odesa, a key hub for exporting grain, illustrating jitters in global markets. Wednesday's trading price of $7.23 a bushel still was nearly 80 per cent below last year's peak.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock tweeted that "Putin hasn't just blown up the Black Sea Grain Initiative; now he has hit the port city of Odesa with a hail of bombs for the second consecutive night".

"In doing that, he is robbing the world of any hope of Ukrainian grain. Every one of his bombs also hits the world's poorest," she said.

Governor Oleh Kiper said Oniks and Kh-22 missiles were used to hit grain and oil terminals. Debris from those that were shot down struck apartment buildings, seaside resorts and warehouses, sparking fires and injuring several people.

Video from warehouses elsewhere in Odesa showed firefighters extinguishing blazes, as thick, black smoke billowed from the explosion.

The attacks were part of what Russia's Defence Ministry described as a "strike of retribution" after Monday's attack on the Kerch Bridge, a key span used for military and civilian supplies. The attack, apparently by maritime drones, damaged part of the roadway on the bridge but rail traffic continued.

Ukraine's top security agency appeared to tacitly admit a role in the attack but stopped short of directly claiming responsibility, echoing a response after a strike on the bridge in October 2022 that took months to repair.

Russian emergency officials in Crimea, meanwhile, said more than 2200 people were evacuated from four villages because of a fire at a military facility.

The blaze forced the closure of an important highway, according to Sergey Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed head of the peninsula. He didn't specify a cause for the fire at the facility in Kirovsky district.

Elsewhere across Ukraine, authorities reported that drones and missiles were sent against more regions than in recent days.

"A difficult night of air attacks for all of Ukraine," said Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, in a statement on Telegram.

He said the attacks were especially fierce in Odesa for a second consecutive night. The Ukrainian army's Operational Command South reported at least 12 civilians were wounded in the region.

The attacks on Odesa injured at least six people, including a 9-year-old boy, showering them with shattered glass and other debris. The remnants of a downed Kh-59 missile created a large crater in another part of the city, wounding three civilians and damaging several buildings.

Eight Iranian-made Shahed drones were also shot down in the wider Odesa region, where two warehouses containing tobacco and fireworks were reported damaged.

Russia also attacked Kyiv with Shahed drones without result, Popko said. Air defences intercepted all the drones aimed at the capital and a preliminary investigation showed there were no casualties.

Strikes elsewhere in Ukraine in the past 24 hours that killed one person and wounded 21 others.

The death occurred in the northeastern Kharkiv region, near the volatile Kupyansk area, while 10 people were injured in the shelling of seven cities in the Donetsk region, including Avdiivka, Mariinka and Chasiv Yar. Two people were wounded by shelling in the Mykolaiv region and one person was injured in the Kherson region.

Russian drone attacks in the Zhytomyr region damaged some infrastructure and private homes, but no casualties were reported, said Governor Vitalii Bunechko.

Attacks also were reported in the Poltava and Kirovohrad regions.

USAID chief Samantha Power said the agency will work with the US Congress to provide an additional $US230 million ($339 million) to boost Ukraine's economy and reconstruction.

The new funding will help businesses to meet European Union regulations to export more products and services to Europe, an agency statement said. On Tuesday, Power said USAID would provide $US250 million ($369 million) in other funds for Ukraine's agricultural sector.

Separately, South Africa's president announced that Putin will not attend an economic summit next month in the country, which faced a legal quandary over whether to arrest the Russian leader on an International Criminal Court warrant related to Ukraine.

Although Moscow has dismissed the warrant and Russia doesn't recognise the court's authority, Putin has not traveled to any country that is a signatory to the court's treaty since he was indicted by the ICC in March for war crimes relating to the abduction of children from Ukraine.

South African authorities had given strong hints they would have likely not executed the arrest warrant against Putin, but South Africa's main opposition party has taken the government to court to try to compel it to arrest the Russian leader if he sets foot on South African territory.

Russia will be represented instead Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, according to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's office. All the other leaders will attend, it said.

Firefighting aircraft and ground crews from other countries are headed to Greece to help battle wildfires that have intensified as a heatwave baked much of southern Europe in temperatures above 40 degrees.

New evacuations were ordered on Wednesday as wildfires raged near Athens. In a round-the-clock battle to preserve forests, industrial facilities and vacation homes, evacuations continued for a third day along a highway connecting the capital to the southern city of Corinth.

In the small town of Mandra, located 25 kilometres west of Athens, resident Varvara Paraskevopoulou said the flames reached her doorstep before the Fire Service personnel did. She described fleeing the fire on Tuesday and then returning to help a group of residents trying to protect their properties themselves.

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"We extinguished what we could by ourselves and managed to save some homes. As you'll see further up, three or four houses – residences and storage spaces – were burnt completely," Paraskevopoulou said.

Firefighting teams from Poland, Romania and Slovakia were due in Greece on Thursday, and Israel pledged to send two firefighting planes, adding to the four from Italy and France that were already operating outside Athens.

Southern Europe's second heatwave in as many weeks has brought extreme temperatures to Mediterranean countries. Temperatures in southern Greece were expected to reach 44 degrees by the end of the week.

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Alessandro Miani, president of the Italian Society of Environmental Doctors, warned that the ageing populations in Italy and other countries are a concern because heat-related deaths most commonly happen in people over age 80.

"The excessive heat together with humidity can make difficult for sweat to evaporate, interfering with the body's ability to regulate its own temperature," Miani said.

The heat in Rome eased only slightly after a sweltering 42-43 degrees on Tuesday, while highs in Sicily and Sardinia reached 46 degrees. Parts of Spain were as high as 45 degrees on Wednesday.

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Amador Cortes, a resident in the southern Spanish city of Jaen, said people were doing their best to avoid the sun during midday hours and the early afternoon.

"The truth is, they take shelter at home with the air conditioning, with the fan. In the street, the elderly suffer a lot. Anyway, we have to put up with it," he said.

In the southern Turkish city of Adana, a group of residents handed out desserts in the street, and many paid tribute to the late US engineer Willis Carrier, who invented the air conditioner in 1902.

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"The people of Adana really need air conditioners. God bless him for making such an invention," city resident Mehmet Saygin told Turkey's DHA news agency.

The latest heatwave added to concerns about climate change. The World Meteorological Organisation, a United Nations body, said preliminary global figures showed last month was the hottest June on record.

"The extreme weather, an increasingly frequent occurrence in our warming climate, is having a major impact on human health, ecosystems, economies, agriculture, energy and water supplies," WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said on Wednesday.

"This underlines the increasing urgency of cutting greenhouse gas emissions as quickly and as deeply as possible."

The firefighters were being sent to Greece as part of a European Union civil protection mechanism that includes the planned deployment of international crews to parts of southern Europe over the summer.

Wendy Monk was sorting through a pile of her late mother's belongings last year when an old newspaper clipping caught her eye. 

The article dated back more than half a century and showed newborn twins in the premature ward of Victoria's Bendigo Hospital in 1969.

It was the same year and same hospital where Monk herself was born a month later.

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"My parents moved around the state, from Bendigo to Warrnambool and to Maryborough, and they chucked almost everything out every time they moved," Monk said. 

"But, for some reason, my mum always kept this newspaper article.

"In the article, the twins aren't named but one is described as being 'in care'."

The article tugged at Monk in a powerful way, because of something she had long suspected about herself – that she had a missing twin.

"It struck me, 'Oh my god, maybe one of those twins is me'," she said.

Her suspicion that she had a twin was one that Monk put to her mother before her death in 2011 – long before she even saw the newspaper article.

Two weeks before her mother died, Wendy said she asked her for the truth, only to receive a cryptic reply.

"We were on the phone and I asked her if I had a twin – she said she had promised somebody she wouldn't talk about it," Monk said. 

"They had told her it was better for me if I didn't know. 

"All she would say was that she wasn't going to break her promise."

'I always felt something was missing'

Growing up, Monk said she always felt a little bit wrong.

"I always felt something was missing. I always felt alone," Monk said. 

But it was only through a series of bizarre events, in which people consistently mistook Monk for another woman or vice versa, that the idea she might have an identical twin began to take shape. 

Contact reporter Emily McPherson at Sign up here to receive our daily newsletters and breaking news alerts, sent straight to your inbox.

Exclusive: Queensland businesses will be invited to bid for tens of billions of dollars in Olympic and government contracts via a new scheme set up by the state government, 9News can reveal.

Called Q2032, a website has tonight gone live to invite tenders from local businesses on everything from stadium stands and seating to catering and furniture in the Olympic village.

Providers will also be sought for security, computers and technology, transport, towels and bed linen, housekeeping, catering and even the Brisbane 2032 flags.

'GLOBAL POWERHOUSE': $7 billion Olympic fund unveiled

Businesses though will have to meet standards set by the government to bid for contracts.

Requirements include having a local workforce, demonstrating supply capability, having an emissions plan.

Women-led businesses and those with a diverse workforce will also be looked upon favourably.

Another key feature of the plan, is any business that is approved for Olympic tenders, will automatically be allowed to bid for any Queensland Government contract.

The government will launch Q2032 at an Olympics breakfast tomorrow.
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A witness has described an "explosion of fire" after a major multi-vehicle crash involving an army tank on a Queensland highway.

Emergency services rushed to the Bruce Highway in Bajool, near Rockhampton, when seven vehicles, including a semi-trailer carrying the military tank, were involved in a crash just before 11.30am.

The serious crash also involved a B-double truck, a flat-bed truck carrying two caravans, three cars, and a four-wheel-drive towing another caravan.

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When police arrived at the scene, three vehicles had caught fire and the other four were extensively damaged.

Six people were transported to the Rockhampton and Gladstone Hospitals, three with suspected spinal injuries.

A fire spread to nearby grassland following the crash but was soon brought under control.

It is believed a US tanker was onboard one of the semi-trailers.

The US Army is currently visiting the area for the Talisman Sabre war games that will take place this weekend.

The road is a major route for grey nomads and caravanning is a big tourism industry in central and northern parts of the state.

Witness Naomi Wells told 9News she was behind the tanker when it crashed.

"All of a sudden there was a massive explosion of fire, I called triple zero immediately," Wells said.

"What we could see though was there was a caravan and a truck seemed to be parked on a road.

"As I was talking to the emergency people there were at least four or five explosions that had been going off and they thought at the time it might have been the gas bottles in the caravan.

"After about the third or fourth, the popping became continuous and quite loud.

"Even the service personnel I was talking to actually said, 'Oh my gosh, I can hear that', like, 'Move back', so they were getting quite loud and consistent."

John Pappas from Queensland Fire and Emergency Services said a multi-agency response was required at the scene.

"It's been quite a significant incident today, closing the highway with the fire spreading to surrounding grassland areas," he said.

"We've had crews from Fire and Rescue and Rural Fire Service working this afternoon alongside Queensland Police Service and Queensland Ambulance Service in order to combat this incident."

An earlier emergency declaration made by police establishing an exclusion zone encompassing the Bruce Highway, McLean Road and Bobs Creek Road at Bajool has since been revoked, however the Bruce Highway is expected to stay closed for some time.

Members of the public are urged to avoid the area or expect lengthy delays.

Police say the investigation into the crash is ongoing.

Witnesses or anyone with relevant vision is urged to contact police.

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A family of an elderly man is devastated after he and his dog were killed after being hit by a car in Melbourne's south-east.

Toni Jensen, 87, and his dog Rusty were just metres from their home when they were struck by a Toyota Crusier at the intersection of Heatherton and Power roads in Endeavour Hills just after 7.30pm yesterday.

The driver immediately stopped to help the 87-year-old, but he and his dog sadly died at the scene.

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Neighbours have told 9News the great-grandfather would walk that same route every morning and night.

He was just a few metres away from a pedestrian crossing when he was killed.

"I turned around and I saw the man on the road. There were a few people taking care of him, checking on him," nearby resident Harpretgill said.

Detective Sergeant Peter Romanis said the driver, a 37-year-old man from Endeavour Hills, is cooperating with police.

"The Major Crash Investigation Unit is looking at all avenues of enquiries and are working to piece together what has gone on here," he said.

"The driver is assisting police and we are hoping to understand how this tragedy unfolded."

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Romanis said safety on Victorian roads was everyone's responsibility.

"This is a tragic reminder for all users to drive to the conditions, be aware of your surroundings and be aware of vulnerable road users," he said.

"We want to avoid circumstances like this wherever possible."

The driver has been released pending further inquiries.

Police are calling on anyone who may have witnessed the collision or who may have dashcam footage to come forward.

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‘We want them to be able to train on the best facility possible…’

‘Whatever mistakes I made, I have fixed,’ the accountant said.

The family of a grandmother who died after being Tasered at an aged care home in regional NSW have read "shocking" details of the incident in a briefing of the facts against a police officer facing court.

Senior Constable Kristian White was charged over the Tasering of Clare Nowland at Yallambee Lodge aged care home in Cooma in May.

He was suspended from the NSW Police Force after 12 years following the incident, when he was charged with recklessly causing grievous bodily harm, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and common assault.

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Nowland, who was diagnosed with dementia, later died from injuries sustained in the incident.

"See you are going to get Tasered," White allegedly said to Nowland after a warning arc, showing the electrical arc of the device.

"Clare stop," he allegedly said.

Nowland was holding a knife pointed at another officer, who was standing about two metres away.

"Stop just … na bugger it," White then said before deploying the Taser, according to the police statement of facts.

Still holding her walking frame, Nowland fell backwards, hitting her head heavily on the wooden floor.

She was found to have an inoperable bleed on the brain when taken to Cooma Hospital, where she later died.

NSW Police standard operating procedures for the device indicate it is not to be used against elderly or disabled people unless there are exceptional circumstances.

Nowland's family was provided a copy of the police facts sheet following a bail hearing in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, before it was released on Wednesday afternoon.

READ MORE: Twin or doppelganger? One woman's search for answers

Through lawyers, the family asked for privacy and space as they consider the information.

"The facts alleged against White are extremely confronting and shocking," solicitor Sam Tierney said.

Following Tuesday's bail hearing, White is required to be of good behaviour, attend court as ordered, and not contact Nowland's family or prosecution witnesses except through a lawyer.

The conditions requested by the Crown were not opposed by White or his legal team.

A plea has not been entered on any of the charges and the matter will return to Cooma Local Court on September 6.

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