The dangerous driving was captured on dashcam.
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Residential street in Melbourne's Bayside being targeted by thieves
Long time residents of a street in Melbourne's Bayside are on high alert after a spate of break-ins and car thefts.
One burglar cleaned out a home on Bay Street in Brighton before he casually got into a taxi with bags of stolen goods at 5.40pm.
The man was even seen carrying a guitar when he left in a taxi after ransacking Noah Webb's home, stealing $10,000 worth of possessions, including computers, shoes, clothes and even a bicycle helmet.
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"It was pretty bizarre," Webb told 9News.
"I had these gold coins on my table and all the gold coins had been taken and apparently he paid the taxi in my gold coins."
Webb's elderly neighbour has also been targeted.
The widow's late husband's $400,000 Rolls Royce was stolen before thieves came back and smashed into her BMW.
Another neighbour, 79-year-old Irene Brown, has told 9News she is worried.
"Lately it's become something you can't ignore," she said.
"I don't feel as safe as I used to."
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Since November, five Bay Street homes have been targeted by thieves.
One resident was asleep when thieves snuck in through an unlocked garage and stole an Alfa Romeo.
In 2022, criminal incidents jumped 12.9 per cent in the Bayside council area.
Brighton topped the list with 954 incidents, including 169 burglaries.
Residents now want extra patrols in the suburb.
"It's more than property, it's the way we feel – our lack of feeling safe in our home," Brown said.
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Chinese ship accused of plundering shipwrecks had 100 old shells
Malaysia's maritime agency said on Tuesday a Chinese barge likely plundered two World War II British shipwrecks in the South China Sea after discovering 100 more old artillery shells on the detained vessel.
Malaysian media reported that illegal salvage operators are believed to have targeted the HMS Repulse and the HMS Prince of Wales, which were sunk in 1941 by Japanese torpedoes days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
A total of 842 sailors perished, and the shipwrecks off the coast of Malaysia's central Pahang state are designated war graves. Fishermen and divers alerted authorities after spotting a foreign vessel near the area last month.
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The maritime agency detained the barge, registered in Fuzhou, China, on Sunday for anchoring without a permit off southern Johor state. Upon investigation, the agency found piles of scrap metal and an artillery shell believed to be from World War II on the vessel.
The agency said a thorough search on Tuesday found 100 more artillery shells of various sizes on the Chinese vessel. It said the shells were taken by the police bomb disposal unit to be detonated.
It said it "does not rule out the possibility that the vessel … is the same ship that plundered the British warships".
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Britain's National Museum of the Royal Navy said last week it was "distressed and concerned at the apparent vandalism for personal profit".
Known as prewar steel, the material from the two warships is valuable and could be smelted for use in manufacturing of sensitive scientific and medical equipment.
The maritime agency said it believes the artillery shells are linked to the police seizure of dozens of artillery shells and other relics at a scrapyard in Johor earlier this month. The New Straits Times newspaper said the shells are believed to be from the warships and that police conducted on-site controlled detonations of them.
The agency said there were 32 crew members aboard the barge — 21 Chinese, 10 Bangladeshis and a Malaysian.
READ MORE: Chinese jet intercepts US spy plane over South China Sea
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters that the government has asked Malaysia to "handle the case fairly in accordance with law". She said Chinese citizens' safety and legitimate rights and interests must be protected and urged Malaysia to notify Beijing of the progress of the investigation.
It is not the first time the two shipwrecks have been targeted.
The New Straits Times reported that foreign treasure hunters used homemade explosives in 2015 to break the heavy steel plates on the ships for easy plundering. Other media said authorities detained a Vietnamese vessel involved in looting the wreckage at the time.
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Inflation in Australia rises 6.8 per cent annually
Inflation in Australia continues to exceed market expectations, rising in April 2023.
New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed that on an annual basis inflation rose to 6.8 per cent, up from 6.3 per cent the month prior.
This month's annual increase of 6.8 per cent is higher than the 6.3 per cent annual rise reported in March 2023, but is below the high of 8.4 per cent recorded in December 2022.
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Michelle Marquardt, head of price statistics at the ABS, said the soaring price of fuel was primarily to blame for consistently high inflation in April.
"It's important to note that a significant contributor to the increase in the annual movement in April was automotive fuel," she said.
"The halving of the fuel excise tax in April 2022, which was fully unwound in October 2022, is impacting the annual movement for April 2023."
The Consumer Price Index – or CPI – tracks the change in the prices across a representative basket of goods and services.
Today's increase largely surprised market expectations, and increases the chances that the Reserve Bank of Australia will increase the official cash rate when it meets next week.
More to come…
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Voice referendum bill passes House of Reps
The bill to allow the referendum on the Voice to Parliament to go ahead has passed the House of Representatives.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney confirmed the result on Twitter.
Both the government and the majority of the Liberal party voted in favour of the constitutional alteration bill.
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https://twitter.com/LindaBurneyMP/status/1663693903504211969
The final vote count was 121 to 25 in favour.
Along with National MPs, a smaller amount of Liberal MPs voted against the referendum legislation, which is likely to give the party some input when it comes to drafting the official "no" case in a pamphlet which will be distributed to voters ahead of the actual poll later this year.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has previously said he will not stand in the way of Australians having their say on the constitutional amendment.
The bill will now head to the Senate in a fortnight.
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No date for the referendum has been set but it is expected to take place in October or November.
People will be asked to vote on whether or not to constitutionally enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament as an advisory body on issues that affect Indigenous Australians.
READ MORE: What is the Indigenous Voice to parliament and what would a referendum entail?
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'Risk of extinction' from AI should be 'top global priority'
Dozens of AI industry leaders, academics and even some celebrities today called for reducing the risk of global annihilation due to artificial intelligence, arguing in a brief statement that the threat of an AI extinction event should be a top global priority.
"Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war," read the statement published by the Centre for AI Safety.
The statement was signed by leading industry officials including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; the so-called "godfather" of AI, Geoffrey Hinton; top executives and researchers from Google DeepMind and Anthropic; Kevin Scott, Microsoft's chief technology officer; Bruce Schneier, the internet security and cryptography pioneer; climate advocate Bill McKibben; and the musician Grimes, among others.
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The statement highlights wide-ranging concerns about the ultimate danger of unchecked artificial intelligence.
AI experts have said society is still a long way from developing the kind of artificial general intelligence that is the stuff of science fiction; today's cutting-edge chatbots largely reproduce patterns based on training data they've been fed and do not think for themselves.
Still, the flood of hype and investment into the AI industry has led to calls for regulation at the outset of the AI age, before any major mishaps occur.
The statement follows the viral success of OpenAI's ChatGPT, which has helped heighten an arms race in the tech industry over artificial intelligence.
In response, a growing number of politicians, advocacy groups and tech insiders have raised alarms about the potential for a new crop of AI-powered chatbots to spread misinformation and displace jobs.
Hinton, whose pioneering work helped shape today's AI systems, has said he decided to leave his role at Google and "blow the whistle" on the technology after "suddenly" realising "that these things are getting smarter than us."
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Dan Hendrycks, director of the Centre for AI Safety, said in a tweet today that the statement first proposed by David Krueger, an AI professor at the University of Cambridge, does not preclude society from addressing other types of AI risk, such as algorithmic bias or misinformation.
Hendrycks compared the statement to warnings by atomic scientists "issuing warnings about the very technologies they've created."
https://twitter.com/DanHendrycks/status/1663475992323850242
"Societies can manage multiple risks at once; it's not 'either/or' but 'yes/and,'" Hendrycks tweeted.
"From a risk management perspective, just as it would be reckless to exclusively prioritise present harms, it would also be reckless to ignore them as well."
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Chinese jet intercepts US spy plane over South China Sea
A Chinese fighter jet conducted an "unnecessarily aggressive manoeuvre" during an intercept of a US spy plane in international airspace over the South China Sea last week, the US military said in a statement today.
The Chinese J-16 fighter cut directly in front of the nose of the US RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft on May 26, forcing the US plane to fly through the wake turbulence of the intercepting aircraft.
In video of the incident released by the US military, the turbulence is evident as it disturbs the US aircraft along its flight path.
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The RC-135 was conducting "safe and routine operations" in international airspace, US Indo-Pacific Command said.
"The United States will continue to fly, sail, and operate – safely and responsibly – wherever international law allows, and the US Indo-Pacific Joint Force will continue to fly in international airspace with due regard for the safety of all vessels and aircraft under international law," said the statement from INDOPACOM.
The intercept comes amid strained relations between the two countries following former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to the self-governing island of Taiwan last August and the US' decision to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon that transited over sensitive US military sites in February.
The US is looking to arrange high-profile visits to China by senior officials to reengage with Beijing on substantive issues but yesterday the Pentagon said China had rejected a proposal for Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to meet with his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu at the Shangri-La Dialogue Security Forum in Singapore this week.
The intercept is similar to another encounter between US and Chinese military aircraft in late December.
A Chinese Navy J-11 fighter jet intercepted another RC-135 Rivet Joint over the South China Sea in what the US called an "unsafe manoeuvre."
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The Chinese fighter came within six metres of the nose of the US spy plane, forcing the larger, heavier US aircraft to take evasive manoeuvres, US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) said at the time.
INDOPACOM video of the incident showed the J-11 flying off the nose of the RC-135.
The J-11 appeared to be shifting closer to the US jet before the two aircraft moved apart.
The US has seen an alarming increase in the number of risky aerial intercepts conducted by Chinese aircraft, according to INDOPACOM.
Chinese aircraft have been more aggressive, drawing closer to US and allied aircraft, prompting concern about a potential unsafe incident or miscalculation.
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Over the past several years, the South China Sea has emerged as a major potential flashpoint in the Asia Pacific.
Not only does the strategic waterway hold vast resources of fish, oil and gas, but about a third of global shipping passes through it – worth about $5.2 trillion in 2016, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies' China Power Project.
China claims historic jurisdiction over almost the entirety of the vast sea, and since 2014 has built up tiny reefs and sandbars into artificial islands heavily fortified with missiles, runways and weapons systems – sparking outcry from the other claimants.
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'Really rare' bone discovery on seaside Aussie cliff
Bones found on a seaside cliff in south-east Victoria decades ago once belonged to an ancient flying reptile, and are the oldest of their kind ever found in Australia.
A newly-published study concluded the bones date back 107 million years ago, a time when pterosaurs – the earliest vertebrates known to evolve powered flight – dominated the skies.
The remains were found at Dinosaur Cove in the late 1980s by a team from Museums Victoria Research Institute, led by Dr Tom Rich and Professor Pat Vickers-Rich, and confirm the existence of the first ever Australian juvenile pterosaur.
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At the time, the duo believed the bones belonged to two different individuals: a partial pelvis bone belonged to a pterosaur with a wingspan of more than two metres, and a small wing bone belonged to the juvenile pterosaur, the first ever reported in Australia.
Lead researcher and PhD student Adele Pentland, from Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, confirmed the findings after analysing the bones.
She said the remains are extremely rare and provide an invaluable insight into Australia's ancient wildlife.
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"To have concrete evidence that these are indeed pterosaurs and they are the oldest in Australia and were living in a very unique time was a bit of a relief," she told 9news.com.au, explaining pterosaurs were close cousins of the dinosaurs.
"Pterosaurs are really rare compared to dinosaurs because their bones were hollow, which was an adaptation that helped them fly.
"But as you can imagine hollow bones can get broken very easily, before and after they get fossilised. They're so fragile.
"If you grabbed all the bones (found in Australia) together you could probably fit them in a large display cupboard."
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To date, only four pterosaur species have been named in Australia – however Pentland said there are more than 100 known species that once glided around the globe.
The researcher explained the fossil-bearing coastal site where the bones were found would have looked vastly different in the Cretaceous Period, when the animals lived.
"When these animals were alive Victoria was at a really high paleolatitude, it was about 75 degrees south, so within the polar circle," Pentland said.
"There would have been months of continual darkness.
"Based on the fossil plants we know it was a temperate forest with conifers and some angiosperms (flowering plants) but not a lot, and ginkgo, which were native at the time.
"It was a lush forest."
Rich welcomes the findings after the hard work that was done at Dinosaur Cove.
"These two fossils were the outcome of a labour-intensive effort by more than 100 volunteers over a decade," he said.
"That effort involved excavating more than 60 metres of tunnel where the two fossils were found in a seaside cliff."
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Pentland added pterosaurs hold a unique fascination for her as they are so "weird and wonderful".
"Some had wingspans conservatively of 10-metres," Pentland said.
"If I could travel back in time to see them I think it would be absolutely breath-taking.
"They flew millions of years before birds took to the skies."
The bones are destined for public display at Melbourne Museum's Research Institute Gallery.
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BNZ accused of relying on Wikipedia during attempt to close Gloriavale accounts
BNZ wants to terminate its 40-year banking relationship with the West Coast community.
Young students inside classroom when bullet shot through window
Year one and two students were inside a classroom when a bullet smashed its window at a school in Sydney's south-west on Tuesday afternoon.
Investigators have confirmed the incident at Macquarie Fields Public School just after 12:45pm was not a targeted attack on the school, and that no students or teachers were injured.
Detective Superintendent Grant Healey labelled it a "totally reckless act".
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"For the little kids at the time, they just heard a smashed window," Healey said.
"It is a totally reckless act by someone who is acting in a way with a firearm that is very dangerous for the community."
He said the bullet didn't hit the classroom window with much force.
"Early investigations revealed the projectile might have come from some distance away," Healey said.
"The bullet has come into the classroom but it has been stopped by the blind so it hasn't come into the classroom with enough speed or velocity, it is just enough to smash the window."
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Initially the police were called after a reports that a "classroom window had been broken by a metal projectile".
"Investigations have revealed that the object is a small calibre bullet, which has been seized and will be forensically examined by specialist police," NSW Police said in a statement.
Officers are asking anyone with information to come forward as the ballistic's team continues to investigate.
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A parent at the school told 9News it was "a scary incident", as his daughter's room was close to where the bullet was found.
"I will be giving them extra hugs and kisses tonight," the parent said.
9News understands families were sent a letter just after 4pm saying children had been removed from the classroom.
The letter did not tell parents and caregivers it was a bullet that was shot through the window.
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