Yanfei Bao was last seen about 10.30am on Wednesday.

Shane Jones wants the tribunal gone by 2025.

A man dubbed "the Easter bunny" by police has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for stealing 200,000 chocolate eggs.

On February 11, 32-year-old Joby Pool stole more than $59,200 worth of Cadbury Creme Eggs, after breaking into an industrial unit and making off with the haul in a stolen truck, the PA Media news agency reported.

The milk chocolate eggs, filled with a "yolk" of yellow and white fondant, have a cult following in the UK and are exclusively sold around the Easter period.

READ MORE: Congress unlikely to block Australian deal to buy US submarines: Marles

Cadbury, which is owned by US food company Mondelez International, told CNN it sells 220 million Creme Eggs in Britain every year.

According to PA, Pool was jailed by Judge Anthony Lowe for a year and a half at Shrewsbury Crown Court on Thursday.

Half of that is to be spent in prison and the other half on licence, with his previous six months in custody counting toward his time behind bars.

Pool had previously pleaded guilty to theft, criminal damage and driving without insurance.

The court heard Pool had used a stolen tractor to tow the trailer full of eggs away from the industrial unit, PA reported.

READ MORE: Brazen attempted robbery on 14-year-old boy caught on CCTV

In an earlier court hearing, Pool's then-solicitor John McMillan told the court: "He stopped the vehicle when he realised he was being followed. He realised that the game was up – he realised the police were behind him and pulled in when it was safe to do so."

McMillan added: "He wasn't offering any resistance and he was then arrested."

Tweeting after the arrest, West Mercia Police said they had "helped save Easter for Creme Egg fans" calling the incident an "eggs-travagent theft."

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The pig was surrounded near Te Atatu. But the swine escaped to live another day.

Dr Iryna Ovchar is being hosted by eye surgeons in Auckland.

Defence Minister Richard Marles has brushed off concerns the US Congress may block Australia's bid to buy American submarines.

A group of Republicans in the US Senate have expressed their fears that selling nuclear-powered submarines to Australia through the AUKUS arrangement would leave their own navy short.

The powerful Republican ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, called for more funding for the US military before they said they would support the sale.

READ MORE: Tanks, howitzers axed in major overhaul of defence spending priorities

His Democratic counterpart Bob Menendez lambasted Wicker's position as "foolish".

But Marles was confident the political back-and-forth was "business as usual" in Congress.

"We are actually really encouraged by the pace at which this is proceeding through the Congress, the attention that it is receiving," Marles told Today.

"So we are still very confident about this."

Marles said he knew there was a commitment to the Australian-US alliance across the political divide in Washington.

It comes as an American warship was commissioned in Sydney today, the first time such an event was held outside the US.

The USS Canberra was designed and built by Western Australian company Austral.

"There is Australian DNA right through this," Marles said.

"The USS Canberra is the story – it tells the story of the alliance and it is a real symbol of the closeness between our two countries."

Australia is set to buy five Virginia-class submarines from the US in the 2030s.

The purchases are a major part of the federal government's estimated $368 billion submarine deal.

READ MORE: Underwater volcano covered with 'up to a million' giant eggs found

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Bluebird offered to match the amount of the winner’s bid.

A man has failed to steal a boy's electric bike after he assaulted him on the Gold Coast.

CCTV released on Friday by Queensland Police shows the man walking along the footpath, then pushing a boy and his bike over on the Gold Coast Highway at Burleigh Heads near Gardenia Grove about 4.20pm on July 11.

Police said the 14-year-old boy was sitting on his bike and talking to friends when the man attempted to steal the bike.

READ MORE: US says our military exercise demonstrates unity to China

"The victim held onto his bike and refused to let go," officers said in a statement.

"One of the boy's friends kicked the man twice before grabbing the key from the bike and running off.

"The man chased the friend but was unable to catch him."

The boy has a bruised right eye from the assault.

Officers are urging anyone who has seen the man or the silver sedan to contact police.

"The man is described as having a tanned complexion, about 185cm tall, medium build and was wearing a black singlet and black shorts."

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Matariki in Wairarapa unveils a modern pou honouring a Māori chief and a midwinter dip.

A prominent Russian pro-war blogger who has criticised President Vladimir Putin and his military's mishaps in Ukraine has been arrested, in a move that suggested the Kremlin's patience with dissent has grown thinner in the wake of the Wagner mercenary rebellion last month.

Igor Girkin is a former KGB officer who helped Russia seize Crimea and was convicted of mass murder for his role in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine.

He was taken from his home in Moscow by security agents on Friday and charged with "extremist activity," according to state media and a post on his Telegram account attributed to his wife.

READ MORE: US says our military exercise demonstrates unity to China

Girkin, who also goes by the nom de guerre Igor Strelkov, is among the best-known of Russia's "milbloggers", a group of war correspondents who support the invasion but have grown increasingly critical of the military's faltering operations in Ukraine.

Girkin had in recent months taken his criticisms to another level, lambasting the Russian state and even Putin himself.

He co-founded an ultra-nationalist political group called the Angry Patriots Club this spring, and told Reuters that Russia was "on the cusp of very grave internal political changes of a catastrophic character".

The day after Wagner's brief insurrection ended, on June 25, Girkin said that if Putin "is not ready to take the leadership over the creation of war-ready conditions" in Russia, "then he really needs to transfer the powers, but legally, to someone who is capable of such hard work".

But the final straw for Putin may have come on Tuesday, when Girkin called the president a "lowlife" and a "cowardly bum" in a blistering post on his Telegram channel.

"For 23 years, the country was led by a lowlife who managed to 'blow dust in the eyes' of a significant part of the population. Now he is the last island of legitimacy and stability of the state," the post read.

"But the country will not be able to withstand another six years of this cowardly bum in power."

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Miroslava Reginskaya, Girkin's wife, said in the Telegram statement attributed to her that agents of Russia's Investigative Committee arrived at their apartment at 11.30am local time on Friday and took him away "to an unknown direction".

State news agency Ria Novosti later reported that Girkin had been charged with inciting extremist activity, citing the Meshchansky Court of Moscow.

"Strelkov is charged with Part 2 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (public calls for extremist activity)," the court said, according to Ria.

If found guilty, Girkin could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.

Another post on Girkin's Telegram account, attributed to his "associates," said that his arrest Friday coincided with an attempt to split the Angry Patriots Club over differing opinions about Wagner and its attempted uprising in Russia in June, which posed the most significant challenge to Putin since he took power more than two decades ago.

Girkin "openly and reasonably criticised the actions of government officials, including the president," the statement from his associates read.

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They said that confidence in Russia's "freedom of speech" was being compromised, and that "processes are taking place in our country that indicate the departure of government representatives from basic values".

Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that Girkin had "overstepped all conceivable boundaries a long time ago," and that his arrest was the result of the Ministry of Defence reasserting control in the wake of the Wagner rebellion.

"This is a direct outcome of [Yevgeny] Prigozhin's mutiny," she said on Twitter, referring to the Wagner boss.

"The army's command now wields greater political leverage to quash its opponents in the public sphere.

"It's unlikely that there will be massive repressions against 'angry patriots,' but the most vehement dissenters may face prosecution, serving as a cautionary tale for others."

'Internal confrontation'

Girkin is a former colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and served as defence minister in the separatist so-called Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine, territory captured by pro-Russian forces in 2014.

It was during his time in the DPR that he contributed to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, a court in the Netherlands found.

All 298 people onboard were killed.

The court last year found Girkin guilty of mass murder for his role in the incident and he was sentenced in absentia to life in prison.

According to the court, Girkin participated in the conflicts in Chechnya, Transnistria and Bosnia.

Girkin was remanded in custody until September 18 following his arrest on Friday, after the judge rejected his request to be placed under house arrest due to an apparent heart condition.

The prosecution said Girkin was a flight risk citing his connections to law enforcement agencies, Russian media also reported.

In his statement to court, the prominent blogger argued he could not flee abroad, calling the claims "frankly ridiculous".

His detention comes just three days after Russian state media TASS reported that retired Russian colonel Vladimir Kvachkov, an associate of Girkin's, was facing criminal prosecution for "discrediting the Russian Armed Forces".

While TASS did not specify which of Kvachkov's comments sparked the charges, Kvachkov has also been openly critical of Putin, describing his government is "virtually non-existent" in on-camera remarks at an Angry Patriots event following the Wagner rebellion last month.

Ukraine's Defense Intelligence later claimed Girkin's arrest signals there could be growing disputes within the Kremlin.

READ MORE: Chinese hackers breached US ambassador to China's email account

"The issue is not with Girkin himself, who has never acted as an independent figure before.

"Neither have many other military correspondents or military bloggers, or members of Girkin's group.

"These are not independent figures," a representative for Ukraine's defence intelligence, Andriі Yusov, told Ukrainian broadcasters on Friday.

Yusov went on to say it was "paradoxical" that Girkin had been arrested but not Wagner founder Prigozhin.

"Prigozhin was marching on Moscow and shooting down airplanes and helicopters, but Girkin is the one who got detained," he said.

"This is a specific feature of the Putin regime."

"This all suggests that the members of the Kremlin towers are already coming to an active phase of internal confrontation," he added, without providing evidence.

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