Legally blind Sue Thoms sacked over vaccine refusal is returning to the job she loves.
Tag Archives: oceania
A vision: Rotorua youth tell elders their hopes for future
Head students from local Rotorua schools meet with elders at U3A forum
Simeon Brown in Tauranga: National’s transport spokesman targets Western Bay roading woes
Residents told National Party representatives how perilous local roads have become.
Introducing te reo Māori road signs would make them ‘more confusing’ – National’s Simeon Brown
Just ‘do your job’, Simeon Brown advises the transport agency.
Homeless family of five sleeping in car in Taupō as temperatures plummet
A homeless family of five, including a baby, are sleeping in their car in Taupō.
Perth teen faces court after gunshots fired at school
A teenager who allegedly fired multiple gunshots at a school, hitting a classroom as teachers and students scrambled for cover, has been ordered to have a mental health assessment.
The 15-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, briefly appeared in the Perth Children's Court on Friday via video link.
The youth could be seen on a courtroom television at Banksia Hill Juvenile Detention Centre sitting at a desk wearing a sweatshirt in an empty room.
READ MORE: Two teens come forward after fire rips through Sydney buildings
He was not required to enter a plea and was remanded in custody to reappear in the same court on Tuesday.
The court ordered mental health and bail suitability assessments ahead of a potential application for release when the matter returns to court.
During the hearing, the boy answered "yes" and "no" to a series of questions as the seven charges he is facing were read.
They include discharging a firearm to cause fear and possessing a prohibited weapon.
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The teen is also accused of unlawfully driving, three counts of unlicensed person possessing a firearm and ammunition and unlawful act with intent to harm.
Police alleged that the boy used two rifles to shoot three rounds at Atlantis Beach Baptist College about midday on Wednesday.
The incident, understood to be the first of its kind in WA, forced the school in Perth's north into lockdown, as students and teachers hid in a storeroom.
Police have also previously said the teen fired the shots from a car park while he was inside a vehicle, that is understood to belong to his father.
Forensic officers could be seen on Thursday analysing two bullet holes about five metres apart on the side of a demountable classroom.
One was above an external doorway and the other was beside a window, in clear view across a 30-metre-wide grassed courtyard adjacent to the car park.
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Body-worn camera footage showed officers called to the scene took the boy into custody without incident, with two rifles, .243 and .22 calibre, from a car along with three bullet shells.
The weapons are understood to be registered to the boy's father.
The incident has shocked the Perth community, with Premier Mark McGowan saying work had begun to dramatically reform the state's gun laws.
McGowan said it was "unthinkable" a US-style school shooting could have happened at a WA school and it was lucky no one was killed during the incident.
"The bullets went close," he told reporters on Thursday.
"It's a terrible, terrible thing and it could have been so much worse."
Journalists were cautioned during the court hearing to report the matter responsibly, with prosecutor Brad Hollingsworth saying some media had been erroneously reporting the boy had been expelled from the school.
Atlantis Beach Baptist College is a co-educational school for boys and girls from kindergarten to year 10.
It is located in the suburb of Two Rocks about 70km north of Perth.
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'Once-in-a-lifetime': Rare blue whale spotted off NSW Central Coast
A rare blue whale sighting in the waters off Terrigal has got locals excited.
The majestic mammal was spotted swimming 900m offshore, in what's believed to be the first time one's been spotted off the NSW Central Coast.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing," Ronny Ling from Marine Wildlife Rescue Central Coast told NBN News.
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"This is the holy grail, to see a blue whale in your own backyard is absolutely phenomenal."
Making it even more exciting for whale watchers is just how few such sightings have taken place over the last century.
"They're very rare and there's only been six sightings on the east coast of Australia in the last hundred years," Andrew "Skipper" Jones told NBN News.
Ahmet was on whale lookout duty with his friend Chris Dick when they spotted it on a drone.
"It's amazing – you see it on documentaries but you don't comprehend how big and graceful this creature is," Ahmet told NBN News.
It's believed the animal is a rare pygmy blue whale and is estimated to be around 25 metres in length.
However, the sighting has sparked some concerns among wildlife groups over the whale's weight.
"This animal itself did look rather thin, we could really see the spine on the animal as it went through," Ling said.
"So hopefully it's going to get something really nutritional to eat out there, have a lot of good feeds and get back on the good side of health."
Marine Wildlife Rescue Central Coast is using the sighting to issue a reminder.
They're warning boats to keep their distance from the animals across the migration season, as humpbacks and other species head north.
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Remorseless rapist jailed after graphic VHS tape found in garage
A NSW man who filmed himself raping a woman has been jailed for at least five years after his ex-wife found the tape.
Boghos Parizian, 58, filmed an hour and 54 seconds of the assault on a VHS tape in the 1990s.
More than 15 years later, he insisted on getting into his estranged wife's place, where locks had been changed after he was kicked out in 2009.
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She found the tape, labelled "big mama", among his belongings in the garage.
It was copied to a DVD and handed to police in 2015.
Detectives found the woman, who watched the footage in March 2016, the same month Parizian was charged.
Parizian's barrister Chris Watson argued at trial the footage was confronting but the acts depicted were part of a consensual role-play.
The jury rejected that argument and found Parizian guilty on 11 counts of sexual intercourse without consent in February.
Judge Jane Culver said Parizian still denied the crimes and had shown no contrition or remorse, sentencing him in the NSW District Court on Friday to seven-and-a-half years in prison, with an non-parole period of five years.
The footage was the only way to truly understand the gravity of his offending and showed she was clearly not in a fit state to consent, the judge said.
"She was obviously and apparently affected by something, that's not to say it was the offender who spiked her drink to give rise to that appearance," the judge said after prosecutors withdrew a submission urging her to find Parizian had spiked her drink.
Sometime between October 1991 and March 1993, the woman had dinner with Parizian to tell him to leave her alone.
He had been calling incessantly after their brief relationship ended, while she was trying to reunite with her husband.
READ MORE: Staggering drone footage shows extent of 'once in a decade' inferno
She began to feel "out of sorts" and "not herself" after drinking orange juice at dinner.
He drove her to his unit at Liverpool in Sydney's southwest, saying his father was ill.
She remembers finding a mattress on the floor of his bedroom, angled differently to face towards the wardrobe, with the doors slightly ajar.
She does not remember what happened next, when Parizian repeatedly raped and threatened her throughout the hour-long assault.
"You can't stop me," he told her after she repeatedly protested and asked to leave.
"I want everything my way today… don't try to stop me from anything," the judge quoted, reading excerpts of the footage establishing Parizian knew she was not consenting.
Parizian later called the woman and threatened to show the video to other people but she did not believe the footage existed.
The woman said she attempted to take her own life after learning the footage did exist, telling Parizian he "destroyed my life as a young woman".
In the footage, she sees the camera, and Parizian lies to her that it is broken and not filming, increasing his crime's seriousness, the judge said.
Some in the public gallery left the court while Judge Culver detailed the graphic offending depicted in the footage.
Parizian is eligible for release on February 26, 2028.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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Staggering drone footage shows extent of 'once in a decade' inferno
Drone footage has revealed the extent of the destruction a massive inferno caused when it tore through two abandoned heritage-listed buildings in central Sydney.
The NSW Fire and Rescue vision looks down into the Randle Street building, showing the hollowed out property after the blaze which started just after 4pm in Surry Hills yesterday.
A heat image shows parts of the buildings walls are still warm more than 12 hours after the blaze ignited, and a highest priority 10th alarm was raised.
READ MORE: Two 13-year-olds assisting police after fire gutted two buildings in central Sydney
Windows of the adjacent apartment buildings were shattered by the heat, with multiple office floors littered with debris and exploded wine bottles, which were sitting on a window ledge.
The street below is covered in a carpet of bricks, completely surrounding a ute parked beneath.
Dashcam footage of firefighters rushing to the scene shows plumes of smoke billowing above buildings in Surry Hills, near Central Station.
Two 13-year-olds have come forward to police after the arson squad began investigating the blaze.
NSW Police are waiting for others to come forward.
More than 120 firefighters and 30 fire trucks from multiple stations across Sydney battled the blaze.
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Acting assistant commissioner Paul Dunstan described the inferno as a "once in decade type of fire".
The building had been vacant for about 12 months while deconstruction work was taking place.
It was a 100-year-old building made out of dry timber that was the "perfect set of conditions for an intense fire".
It was due to be converted into a new hotel, according to a development proposal made in 2019.
Some residents are still evacuated and diversions are still in place around the buildings.
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Truck driver found not guilty over 400kg cocaine plot
A man accused of driving his truck from Melbourne to collect more than 400kg of pure cocaine in far-north Queensland has been found not guilty by a jury.
Osman El-Houli, 35, was arrested when police found his truck parked near Mareeba in July 2020 – the same day a plane loaded with drugs crashed in Papua New Guinea.
El-Houli told police a man called "The Professor" hired him for $10,000 to drive almost 3000km and collect bags of cash.
However, police alleged El-Houli had driven more than three days to pick up $141 million worth of cocaine from a plane set to arrive from PNG.
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The drugs never arrived after a plane bound for Mareeba crashed attempting to take off at a remote PNG air strip, the Crown says.
It is believed the operation was run by a syndicate consisting of a Colombian group and Melbourne mafia, the Brisbane Supreme Court jury was told.
Defence barrister Tony Kimmins said the courier for a prior "black flight" from PNG was in custody in July 2020.
He suggested the syndicate hired a "dupe" courier in 2020, a cleanskin who would not raise suspicion at COVID-restricted border controls.
READ MORE: Two teens come forward after fire rips through Sydney buildings
El-Houli was a devout Muslim of good character who hated drugs and would not "sell his soul" to be a cocaine courier, Kimmins said.
El-Houli told police he had been hired for "a lousy $10,000" by someone called The Professor to drop off plasterboard in Queensland, the court heard.
However, he said en route he was given a different task.
El-Houli said he was told he would be picking up "bags of cash", putting them in concealments cut into the plasterboard in his truck then returning to Melbourne.
Crown prosecutor Daniel Caruana said he would have known "deep down" that drugs were involved after being given an encrypted phone for a last-minute interstate trip transporting bags in concealments.
The jury took about four hours to find El-Houli not guilty of attempting to possess an unlawfully imported border-controlled drug.
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