North Shore Gilmours driver Ben has already undergone a number of surgeries.

Officials say some products may contain small wire-like metal pieces.

‘I just fired a shot into the air,’ Tiaki James Wahanga O Te Rangi Riki told police.

Police have warned the property attracted crime and potential squatters.

The law change halted 33 active pay equity claims across key sectors.

Judge says feuding whānau had 85-year-old’s best interests at heart but couldn’t agree.

A 29-year-old man was arrested in New South Wales' north after a woman was found dead.

Police were called to a unit on Poinciana Street, Mullumbimby, at around 11.55pm following reports of a domestic dispute.

Upon arrival, police found a deceased woman in her 20s who has yet to be identified.

The 29-year-old was arrested at the scene and was taken to Byron Bay Police Station.

Police have established a crime scene, and investigations are ongoing.

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President Donald Trump said Friday the U.S. military has carried out its third fatal strike against an alleged drug smuggling vessel this month.

Trump in a social media posting said the strike killed three and was carried out against a vessel "affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organisation conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility."

He did not provide more precise details about the location of the strike.

READ MORE: Estonia says three Russian fighter jets entered its airspace

The Pentagon deferred questions about the strike to the White House, which did not respond to a request for clarity about the origins of the vessel. 

"Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics, and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage en route to poison Americans," Trump said in the post. 

Trump also posted a video of the latest strike that shows a vessel speeding through waters before it appears to be struck by a pair of missiles from overhead and sink in a fiery explosion. 

"It was at this moment, the narcoterrorists knew they screwed up," White House communications director Steven Cheung said on X in a posting with the video. 

Trump on Monday announced the US military had carried out a strike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela. That strike also killed three on board. 

That followed a September 2 military strike on what the Trump administration said was a drug-carrying speedboat that killed 11. 

Trump claimed the boat was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang, which was listed by the US as foreign terrorist organisation earlier this year. 

The Trump administration has justified the military action as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States. But several politicians, Democrats and some Republicans, as well as human rights groups have questioned the legality of Trump's action. 

They view it as a potential overreach of executive authority in part because the military was used for law enforcement purposes. 

The Trump administration has yet to explain how the military assessed the boat's cargo and determined the passengers' alleged gang affiliation before the attacks on the vessels. 

National security officials told members of Congress that the first boat taken out was fired on multiple times after it had changed course and appeared headed back to shore. 

The strikes follow a buildup of US maritime forces in the Caribbean. It marks a dramatic shift in how the US is willing to combat drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere. 

In Venezuela, some are speculating whether the strikes are part of a plan to try to topple President Nicolás Maduro, a notion that the Venezuelan leader has echoed. 

Maduro claimed after the first strike that a US video released by Trump was created with artificial intelligence and that a boat of that size cannot venture into the high seas. 

But earlier this week Maduro lashed out at the US, accusing the Trump administration of using drug trafficking accusations as an excuse for a military operation whose intentions are "to intimidate and seek regime change" in the South American country.

READ MORE: Trump pushing to retake Afghan air base from Taliban

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Commonwealth Bank customers were left unable to access services as planned maintenance took longer than expected this morning.

The bank put out a statement at 8.30am apologising for the delay the scheduled maintenance was taking, stating that multiple services were affected by the outage.

While customers were still able to use debit cards, lower amounts applied to some purchases and withdrawals.

READ MORE: Pilot's body recovered from plane crash wreckage in NSW national park

Some CommBank app features were also limited, including payments and transfers.

Commbank put out a statement at 10.25am stating that all banking services are now available, apologising for the disruption it caused to customers.

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Republican Sen. Ted Cruz has denounced Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr's threats to pull ABC's broadcast licence as "unbelievably dangerous" and compared some of his rhetoric to "mafioso" tactics.

In an episode of his podcast, "Verdict with Ted Cruz," released on Friday, the Texas Republican said he was "thrilled" Jimmy Kimmel was pulled off the air by ABC over his comments about conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.

But he said he strongly disagreed with the government policing speech, asserting it could come back to bite conservatives when Democrats retake power.

READ MORE: Judge tosses Trump's $22B defamation lawsuit

"I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that he was fired," Cruz said.

"But let me tell you: If the government gets in the business of saying, 'We don't like what you, the media, have said. We're going to ban you from the airwaves if you don't say what we like,' that will end up bad for conservatives."

Though Carr's comments have drawn widespread condemnation on the left, Cruz's remarks represent one of the strongest denunciations of the threats against broadcasters by an elected conservative.

Cruz also chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which has broad authority over the FCC.

"Going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again – wins the White House … they will silence us. They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous," Cruz said.

Asked later by reporters on Capitol Hill if the Commerce Committee will hold hearings into the matter or investigate Carr if he continues in the same vein, Cruz left the door open to the possibility.

"There's no doubt the Commerce Committee has oversight, authority and responsibility over the FCC, and when the Democrats had the majority, they did not engage in oversight … We will do our job and engage in oversight."

READ MORE: Estonia says three Russian fighter jets entered its airspace

President Donald Trump has also vaguely threatened to pull networks' licences if they air overwhelmingly negative coverage of him, though Cruz did not rebut the president's remarks directly on the podcast.

Trump offered praise for Carr when pressed on the scathing remarks from the Texas Republican. "I think Brendan Carr is a great American patriot. So I disagree with Ted Cruz on that," he said.

The president also continued to lament what he described as "dishonesty" from network broadcasts that are critical of him.

Cruz played recent remarks Carr made on far-right podcaster Benny Johnson's podcast, in which the FCC chairman threatened to take action against broadcasters who don't "find ways to change conduct" the government considers disagreeable.

"I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way," Carr said. "These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead." ABC pulled Kimmel's show off the air indefinitely the day after Carr made those comments.

READ MORE: Late-night shows address Jimmy Kimmel suspension

Responding to Carr's comments, Cruz said: "No, no, no, no, no."

"Look, look, I like Brendan Carr," the senator said. "He's a good guy. He's the chairman of the FCC. I work closely with him. But what he said there is dangerous as hell."

"He says, 'We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.' And I got to say, that's right out of 'Goodfellas.' That's right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, 'nice bar you have here. It'd be a shame if something happened to it.'"

Cruz later added: "I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying, 'We're going to decide what speech we like and what we don't, and we're going to threaten to take you off air if we don't like what you're saying.'"

"And it might feel good right now to threaten Jimmy Kimmel," the senator said. "But when it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it."

READ MORE: Trump pushing to retake Afghan air base from Taliban

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