Authorities are looking for a mother charged over the death of two children in a fire, after she failed to attend court and has not reported to police in weeks.

A magistrate issued a warrant for the arrest of Shania Lee this morning, about four months after she was released on bail.

The 27-year-old woman has been charged with two counts of negligent manslaughter and one of negligently causing serious injury, after the September 2024 house fire.

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A fire alarm sounded minutes after Lee left her three children aged under five home alone, prosecutors told a court previously.

Two young girls, a one-year-old and a five-year-old, were killed after fire engulfed the Sydenham property, in Melbourne's north-west.

Lee's three-year-old son survived but suffered injuries.

She was freed on bail in September, despite prosecutors objecting as she posed a risk to the safety of the community, had contravened bail and avoided police in the past.

This morning Lee's defence lawyer Nisha Patel told Melbourne Magistrates Court she had not been able to reach her client but spoke to her last week about today's court date.

Prosecutors applied for a warrant for Lee's arrest as she had not been complying with several bail conditions, including that she had not reported to police since December 22, the court was told.

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The prosecutor said there were several new charges to be filed against Lee relating to breaches of bail conditions.

Lee had been bailed to an address in Moama, NSW, was required to report to police in Echuca three days a week and notify police if she changed address.

Patel said Lee had offered to surrender herself into police custody this week but did not receive a response back and then prosecutors filed an application to revoke her bail.

Magistrate Kieran Gilligan said "given the serious nature of the charges" he would need to issue a warrant.

"If she was wanting to hand herself in, she could have handed herself into any police station," the magistrate said.

After the warrant was issued, her bail was forfeited and the matter was adjourned to a date to be fixed.

Lee's co-accused, her former partner Matthew McAuliffe, was charged with negligent manslaughter in September last year.

However, the case against him was discontinued in November as he died while on bail.

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Dozens of flights have been cancelled or delayed due to an air traffic controller shortage at Sydney Airport.

Airservices Australia has confirmed it is experiencing staff shortages in Sydney today, triggering delays for all airlines.

Virgin Australia said it expects flights across its network to be impacted.

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At least 25 flights scheduled between 6.30am and 9.40pm today have been cancelled, according to FlightRadar.

It is mostly impacting domestic routes.

Qantas, Virgin and Jetstar are among the airlines with cancelled departures.

Airservices said it had informed airlines of staffing issues impacting flights at Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport.

"Airservices has briefed airlines on the need for air traffic controllers to implement spacing intervals for aircraft arriving and departing Sydney today to safely manage operations while a number of our local staff are on short-notice sick and carers leave, some of whom have been covered through our resilience measures," a spokesperson said.

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"We will keep delays to a minimum and apologise for any impact to our customers and the travelling public.

"Airservices is continuing to recruit to ensure we have additional staff available as an on-call capability to cover these kinds of short notice absences."

More to come.

A leading white nationalist has distanced himself from the nation's most vocal neo-Nazi organisation in a bid to be bailed over a call to "rhetorically rape" a federal politician.

Joel Davis, 30, claims he was employing a "philosophical term of art" when he allegedly issued an edict to other neo-Nazis about independent Wentworth MP Allegra Spender.

Spender had condemned the National Socialist Network (NSN) for holding a police-authorised rally outside the NSW parliament in November.

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Davis – a key Sydney ally of NSN leader Thomas Sewell – was charged in November over a post prosecutors argue encouraged hate and abuse towards the parliamentarian.

In court today, he pointed to the NSN voluntarily dissolving this week ahead of new federal legislation to prescribe hate groups.

"I'm no longer a member, and I never will be a member," Davis told the Downing Centre Local Court.

"If they hadn't (disbanded), I would have left anyway in anticipation of the new legislation.

"That chapter is now closed."

He was not asked about whether he maintains the views held by the group.

Davis told a court his lack of membership was a significant change in circumstances that should favour him being granted bail after spending nearly two months behind bars on remand.

The 30-year-old needs to be released to help his partner with family duties and to attend a program aimed at helping him make better choices, his lawyer Sebastian De Brennan told the court.

While unsavoury and unpalatable, the alleged tweet was not reason enough to hold Davis on remand for months, the lawyer argued.

"(Rhetorical rape) is a philosophical term of art connoting robust debate," De Brennan said.

"A reasonable inference would be … Davis was not encouraging or inciting anyone to embark on what might be construed as real rape."

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But the crown prosecutor argued the social media post went beyond the academic to incite Davis' followers, some of whom interpreted the words as meaning literal rape.

"It wasn't a spur of the moment … response (in) anger. I would suggest it was a careful, political phrase," the prosecutor said.

Davis was on bail for charges related to hate symbols in South Australia at the time of the tweet, the court was told.

The magistrate dismissed his application, noting Davis's failure to show a significant change in circumstances, required after a previous bail refusal.

Davis has been knocked back for bail three times in as many months.

He is charged with using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend.

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Former All Blacks staffer Don Tricker linked Baseball NZ with the MLB club.

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Anti-government protesters are demonstrating across Iran – and being killed and arrested in their thousands, many of which will have been carried out by a shadowy volunteer paramilitary group that infiltrates the country's society.

The Basij – officially the Organisation for Mobilisation of the Oppressed – has carried out a raft of human rights violations against Iranians, and is part of a listed terror group in Australia.

This is what we know about it.

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What is the Basij?

Established in 1979 as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for a "20 million army" to defend the revolution, in 1981 it was incorporated into the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), which Australia listed as a state sponsor of terrorism last year. 

Initially, its members were deployed in the Iran-Iraq War, suffering heavy casualties as they were used in human wave attacks designed to overwhelm enemy troops and minefields through sheer weight of numbers.

Reports vary as to whether the organisation was disbanded following the war and revived in later decades or continued uninterrupted, but the ultimate outcome is the same: today, the Basij is predominantly focused on domestic societal control.

Estimates on the number of members vary.

In 2022, when the Basij was involved in the crackdown on the protests in the wake of Mahsa Amini's death, Reuters put the figure at 1 million active members, and potentially millions more overall volunteers.

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They are young, incredibly loyal to the supreme leader – active members go through 45 days of ideological training – and monitor citizens' behaviour throughout Iranian society.

Membership isn't just driven by loyalty to the ayatollah; there are significant perks on offer to those who sign up.

"Completing the training in Basij is a prerequisite to receiving social privileges… financial bonuses, loans on favourable terms, discounts on religious trips to holy places, social welfare or access to universities," the Journal of Modern Science reported last year. 

"Depending on their rank, Basij members also receive financial compensation."

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How does the Basij respond to protests?

According to the US-based thinktank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the Basij is one of three Iranian organisations typically tasked with restraining protests, alongside the Law Enforcement Command (LEC) – the country's national police force – and the wider IRGC.

The paramilitary force was particularly noticeable in the response to protests over the 2009 presidential election, as well as in major demonstrations in both 2017-18 and 2022.

During the latter, an Amnesty International report detailed how Basij agents disguised themselves in the crowds, before breaking cover to assault protesters with batons, stun guns and rifle butts, and arrest them.

That Amnesty report also outlined how sexual violence was used by Iranian security forces, including the Basij.

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"Agents repeatedly took [a protester] and the other women into different rooms for 15-30 minutes at a time to rape them and then throw them out into the hall in a degrading manner when they had finished with them," a mental health worker who treated several survivors said in the report.

"She said the rape was systematic, that it was very clear they knew what they were doing, as if they had planned this," the health worker added.

The Basij was rapidly mobilised during the current protests, and while an internet blackout has strangled the flow of information out of Iran recently, eyewitness accounts have emerged of its agents firing at demonstrators and driving into people, including those not involved in the rallies.

Exactly how many Iranians have been killed is unknown at this stage.

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The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has put the death toll so far at more than 2600 – with another 18,470 arrested – while the exiled son of the last shah, Reza Pahlavi, claims the figure stands higher than 12,000.

"The Iranian regime is using an unprecedented level of brutality to suppress protests," the ISW said, without putting forward an exact number of deaths. 

"Security forces have fired on crowds indiscriminately – in some cases with machine guns – and killed scores of citizens across numerous locations," it added.

"Some Iranians who have bypassed the internet shutdown have reported very high volumes of dead protesters on the streets and in hospitals and morgues.

"Some reports alleged the presence of 700-1000 dead protesters at just one morgue in Tehran, not accounting for other locations around the capital or the country overall…

"This anecdotal information is most consistent with the regime killing many thousands in its crackdown."

– with CNN, Reuters

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