True comfort comes from character, not big budgets.

Thousands of people gathered in Sydney for a pro-Palestine protest, despite organisers being denied the chance to rally at the Sydney Opera House.

The Palestine Action Group had a request to march to the Opera House rejected by three judges in a court ruling on Thursday on the grounds of public safety.

This decision came after the NSW Premier Chris Minns and NSW Police initially blocked the move.

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Organisers were looking to replicate the August protest on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, where around 100,000 people braved the rain to protest against the war in Gaza, which has killed 67,000 people according to Gaza's Health Ministry.

Up to 40,000 were expected to turn out for this week's protest, which has become a regular occurrence on Sundays in Australia's major cities.

The demonstration began at around 1pm at Hyde Park.

That's despite a ceasefire being declared in Gaza.

There was a heavier security presence than normal, with security checkpoints being set up in and around Hyde Park.

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"Our right to protest is paramount in a democratic society," Damian Ridgwell, part of the Palestine Action Group, told reporters after Thursday's court ruling.

Brisbane and Melbourne also held marches.

Protests were also expected in Canberra, Cairns and Coffs Harbour.

Sydney also saw protest of another kind, as a convoy of boats sailed on Sydney Harbour as a demonstration against anti-semitism. 

The protests come as a ceasefire in Gaza has been held for a second day, with remaining Israeli hostages set to be released by Hamas as soon as tomorrow.

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Jacquie Grant leads the race by just 64 votes over Helen Lash.

Three players also won more than $26k in Powerball Second Division.

Maxwell becomes New Zealand’s longest-serving councillor. The Māori ward stays intact.

Darlene Dinsdale says she has three years to ensure Māori voices are heard.

He told the Herald he was a ‘great admirer’ of Winston Peters.

Ian Watkins, the former frontman of Welsh rock band Lostprophets who was serving a 35-year sentence for child sex offences, has been killed in prison by another inmate, British media has reported.

Watkins, 48, was serving his sentence at Wakefield Prison in northern England.

"At 9.39am this morning, police were called by staff at HMP Wakefield reporting an assault on a prisoner," West Yorkshire Police said in a statement.

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"Emergency services attended and the man was pronounced dead at the scene a short time later."

The statement did not name Watkins.

Police did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

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Watkins was convicted in 2013 after pleading guilty to 13 charges.

He had admitted two attempted rapes, sexually assaulting a child under 13, aiding and abetting the sexual assault of a child under 13, conspiring to rape a child under 13 and conspiring to sexually assault another child under 13.

He had also pleaded guilty to six counts of taking and possessing indecent images of children and one of possessing extreme pornographic images.

A delivery rider in Sydney has been hospitalised after being involved in a collision with a Porsche that was allegedly involved in a pursuit with police.

Police say the chase with the Porsche began after they tried to stop it for speeding in Sydney's south during a routine patrol on the Bangor Bypass at around 12.30am today.

The driver of the Porsche refused to stop, according to police.

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"The pursuit was terminated a short time later for safety reasons," a NSW Police spokesperson told 9news.com.au.

Police found the Porsche a short time later after it had been involved in a collision with a delivery rider.

The rider, who is in his 20s, suffered serious injuries and was treated at the scene by paramedics.

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He was then taken to St George Hospital.

Police say the driver of the Porsche, a 52-year-old man, was not injured.

He was taken to Sutherland Police Station, where he has been assisting police with their investigation.

At this point in time, no charges have been laid.

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Warning: This story contains details that some readers may find distressing.

"They actually take the skin off the skull, rebuild the head to the shape it would have been, and then put the skin… back over the head."

It sounds like a gruesome crime, but in actual fact it was the complete opposite: a crucial step undertaken by Australian Federal Police that helped track down a man who murdered hundreds of innocent civilians, including dozens of Australians.

That was then-AFP detective superintendent David Craig, who led the federal police response to the 2005 Bali bombings.

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Three of the most important pieces of the puzzle in tracking down the men behind the deadly attack were the heads of the trio of suicide bombers, which had been quickly retrieved by Indonesian authorities.

"The heads had been found in each bombsite, which they quite often are, because they're using a backpack," Craig told bombing survivor Joe Frost on the latter's podcast, Forgotten Bombs.

"It will usually just take out the middle torso… the blast then leaves, usually from the hips down and from the mid-shoulders, mid-neck up."

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With Indonesian police getting no leads after issuing the gruesome images of the bombers' deformed heads, Craig had the AFP's forensics team reconstruct them to get pictures the public were actually able to recognise.

"Being able to identify who the bombers were, it's just a very important line of inquiry," he said. 

"So I spoke to our head of forensics as to what he would be able to do.

"And so I sent them up to Jakarta and they… did rebuild the heads."

Sometimes referred to as the "second Bali bombings" or just simply "Bali two", the 2005 terror attack is far less well-known than its 2002 predecessor that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

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On the evening of October 1, 2005, three bombs were detonated in quick succession: one in the heart of Kuta, and two at Jimbaran Beach. 

Four Australians – as well as 15 Indonesians and one Japanese citizen – were killed and more than a dozen more injured.

One of them was Frost, who had been at Nyoman cafe at Jimbaran, on holiday from the NSW city of Newcastle, when the bombs went off.

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Two people to his left had to be flown to Singapore for treatment for their injuries, while two to his right – Colin and Fiona Zwolinski – were killed by the blast.

"I had come away with blown-out eardrums," Frost, whose legs were also significantly scarred, said on Forgotten Bombs. 

"Beyond 'wow, that's lucky', I had no explanation for how it was that I hadn't ended up in a hospital bed – or in the morgue."

The two main suspects behind the attack were Noordin Top – who was tracked down and killed by police in 2009 – and Azhari Husin.

Both were members of the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, and both were also involved in the 2002 Bali bombings.

After the AFP had reconstructed the bombers' heads, police received a string of leads which eventually led Indonesian police to a home in East Java, and a shootout with Azhari.

"An Indonesian police officer I know yelled out through the loudspeaker saying, you know, 'Azhari, we know you're in there. You need to come out. We have you surrounded, come out quickly,'" Craig said.

"And that was answered simply with automatic gunfire coming from the house almost immediately."

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The bomb-maker threw 11 explosives at police as he attempted to kill as many officers as possible, before he was shot and – as best as authorities could ascertain – ordered an associate who was with him to run out with a suicide vest.

"But unfortunately for Azhari… and quite fortunate for all of us, he actually flicked the wrong switch and detonated himself instantaneously, which definitely killed Azhari," Craig said.

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"Azhari was alive at the time of that bomb, I'm sure… I've also read things that he detonated himself and things like that, but he didn't."

Released in the lead-up to the 20th anniversary of the terror attack earlier this month, Frost said Forgotten Bombs had originally been planned as a story about survivors.

But it morphed into a long and wide-ranging project that included interviewing both a Jemaah Islamiyah founding member and former prime minister Tony Abbott, who was in Bali when the attack was carried out.

"The seemingly simple question of 'who did this?' became far more complex and engrossing than I had ever imagined, spanning the globe from Bali to Guantanamo Bay, Australia to Afghanistan," he said.

"I wanted to properly tell the survivors' stories – not just the tragedy and the trauma, but also the experiences of bravery, mateship and even humour," he added.

The restaurant where Frost had been during the attack reopened a few weeks later, when one of its first post-bombing customers was Craig.

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"I wanted to send a message that Australians aren't going to be bullied," he told Frost. 

"And so I booked the very table that you would have been sitting at that night, on the night that it opened, and I invited the Indonesian police as well. 

"It wasn't a particularly relaxing meal, but for me, as an Australian, I wanted to stick it in the face of these pricks…

"There was shrapnel marks on the table and none of us really felt like eating, but we sat there and we talked and we, you know, just showed a unified front."

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