Ex-MP says blogger’s urging to put images on 4Chan is ‘like trying to get me killed’.
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Supermarkets shut, schools closed as dangerous tropical cyclone heads to WA
Supermarkets and schools have been closed and residents warned to prepare for the worst as severe Tropical Cyclone Zelia barrels towards the Western Australia coast.
The cyclone has developed into an intense category five system and is expected to make landfall on the Pilbara coast tomorrow, the Bureau of Meteorology said today.
Zelia is forecast to bring extremely destructive winds and intense rainfall which will likely lead to flash flooding.
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"Category five cyclones have wind gusts exceeding 280km/h, we could expect to see wind speeds of this magnitude at the core," WA Bureau of Meteorology manager James Ashley said.
"This is a very dangerous system that will cause significant impact."
A dangerous storm surge is also expected to hit when Zelia makes landfall tomorrow, persisting into Saturday.
WA Department of Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner Darren Klemm said Zelia is expected to trigger dangerous flash flooding across impacted regions including Karratha, Port Hedland and Dampier.
Major retail shops and 12 schools are shut, along with regional airports.
Several roads have also been closed in preparation for flooding.
"Impacts to secondary and unsealed roads are expected, which will result in some communities being isolated," Klemm said.
"DFES will undertake resupply missions after the cyclone makes landfall."
Klemm warned residents to prepare for wild weather, to take shelter or evacuate if necessary and to keep across alerts.
Less than an hour ago, 40,000 messages were sent to residents following an upgrade of the watch and act alert.
One evacuation centre has been opened in South Hedland and a second is being prepared in Karratha.
Klemm said DFES has secured aircraft and extra flood boats in preparation for emergency evacuations.
There are 50 mobilised incident management teams in place to prepare for Zelia.
The Bureau of Meteorology earlier today warned Zelia was "rapidly intensifying" as it moved west, just off the Pilbara coast, after reaching category four overnight.
There is a cyclone "watch and act" alert in place for residents in Bidyadanga to Dampier, including Port Hedland, Karratha and Dampier, and extending inland to Marble Bar.
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Those living between Karratha and Bidyadanga, including Port Hedland, have been warned to watch for a dangerous storm tide as the cyclone rolls towards the coast.
Senior meteorologist Dean Narramore said Zelia was a "very organised" and "very intense" tropical cyclone and already well on its way to reach the WA coast.
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Damaging wind gusts reaching 290km/h and more than 500mm of rain are forecast for communities across the Pilbara coast from tonight, with the wild weather set to intensify tomorrow.
"Currently, a category four system has rapidly intensified overnight and likely to become a category five system later today," Narramore said.
"We're already seeing falls of 80 to 90mm around Port Hedland and even isolated falls in excess of 100, and we're likely to see many more millimeters on top of that."
The destructive inner core of the cyclone is expected to cross the coast between Whim Creek and DeGrey, reaching Port Hedland, tomorrow afternoon and evening.
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Tropical Cyclone Zelia is now about 140km north-west of Port Hedland and 240km north-east of Karratha.
An extra 40 emergency services personnel have been deployed to the Pilbara region as well as five flood boats with 10 crews, and four additional aircraft are on standby, including a rescue chopper with a winch.
Residents near the DeGrey river catchment and around the Shaw and Pilbara rivers have been warned to be on alert for flash flooding.
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Man dead, toddler fighting for life after house fire in regional Victoria
A man is dead, a toddler is fighting for life, and three others have been been injured after they escaped a burning home in Victoria's north-west.
Firefighters spent almost half an hour extinguishing the blaze at the single-storey home on Barr Street in Maryborough, north of Ballarat, after it caught fire just after 11.30am.
A man, who is yet to be formally identified was pulled from the home suffering cardiac arrest, but could not be revived.
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A two-year-old child was also pulled from the home by firefighters and was airlifted to the Royal Children's Hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Two women in their 30s and 60s and a three-year-old child all managed to escape the home.
They suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
It's understood the victims of the fire are related.
Police said it was too early to determine the cause of the fire.
"Well do a thorough investigation … and we'll be able to advise further once we progress the investigation," Senior Sergeant David Flood said.
"For a rural country town, obviously people are well known and well connected, so this is tragic… It's unexpected."
A crime scene has been established around the home, where police and the arson squad are expected to remain for several hours.
The fire is not being treated as suspicious at this stage.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or submit a confidential report online at www.crimestoppersvic.com.au
Loraine drained her bank account and lost $500k. She’s far from alone
Loraine Carpenter should be getting ready to settle into a comfortable retirement, having worked hard over the years to build up her own business.
Instead, the 75-year-old from Brisbane says she is now looking to move overseas because she can no longer afford to live in Australia.
Up until last year, Carpenter had a sizeable nest egg to fall back on.
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That's now almost all gone, thanks to scammers who fleeced her of half a million dollars in the space of five months.
The nightmare began for Carpenter in September 2022 when she was searching for somewhere to invest that nest egg.
"I had $700,000 because I had just sold my mother's house and my house," she told 9news.com.au.
At the time, interest rates were at rock bottom, and term deposits were offering very little in the way of returns.
Carpenter said it was a dodgy celebrity deepfake advertisement on Facebook that caught her attention.
"I think the one I saw was (tennis player) Ash Barty, but they were rife at the time," Carpenter said.
Carpenter followed a link from the ad, which directed her to a website where she was told to pay a deposit of $US250 to begin investing with TBX Titanium (also known as the Exchange Bank), which billed itself as an online broker of cryptocurrencies.
Not long after, a man with an American accent called her.
"His name was Mike and he told me he was in a trading room. It was very noisy and all the voices in the background had American accents," Carpenter said.
Carpenter said she was reassured that the bank account she was told to transfer her investments into was an Australian one, at Bendigo Bank.
However, an investigation by the NSW Police Cybercrime Squad and the St George Area Command later revealed the woman who set up the account had been used as a mule.
Police discovered the woman had responded to a job ad on Facebook from a fake UK employment agency, who requested she open up the bank account and register the business.
Carpenter said she did a search online about the Exchange Bank and only saw positive reviews.
She began making weekly, and sometimes even bi-weekly, deposits of $25,000 into the Bendigo Bank account.
Carpenter said her bank, ANZ, made a call to her after the first withdrawal to check the transaction.
"They phoned up and said there is a big chunk of money going out. And I said yes, I authorised that. They didn't ask again."
To see her investments, Carpenter was directed to a fake website, which showed an elaborate, but bogus trading platform.
There were market surges and falls.
At one point, Carpenter said her investment plunged $US17,000 ($27,000) overnight.
"That reassured me, actually, that the whole thing was operating as a trading platform should," Carpenter said.
Carpenter said the man she was speaking with would also reassure her that the money was in safe hands.
"I quite often said to him, 'I'm playing with a big chunk of my money here.'"
"Towards the end, I said, 'We are now playing with my house.' And he said, 'Look, it's all fine.'"
Wanting to split the risk of her investments, Carpenter said she requested $US150,000 be transferred into a bonafide Exodus wallet, and the scammer agreed.
However, Carpenter said when she tried to take some money out of the Exodus wallet, the transfer kept bouncing back.
Things unravelled further when she called Exodus, and a staff member told her what she thought was $US150,000 was just a worthless token.
"He said, it's not real money," Carpenter said.
The Exodus staff member also identified 87 other transactions that had been made from the same Bendigo Bank account, suggesting the scammers were walking away with tens of millions of dollars from Australian victims.
Do you know more about the 'Exchange Bank' scam? Contact reporter Emily McPherson at
When ANZ followed the matter up with Bendigo Bank, Carpenter was told the money was no longer there and had been moved overseas.
Devastated to learn the truth, Carpenter said she lodged multiple reports and complaints to Australian authorities, including the police and the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) in a bid to get some justice, but they all led to dead ends.
Carpenter said she was appalled that Bendigo Bank had not detected the account was opened by a mule, and that the amount of money being sent overseas did not raise any red flags.
"For five months, hundreds of thousands of dollars was going through that account, disappearing overseas on a day-to-day basis, and nobody picked it up. Nobody. It just went on and on and on," she said.
Carpenter said she was hoping to get in touch with other victims of the same scam in the hope of launching a class action against Bendigo Bank.
A spokesperson for Bendigo Bank said the bank could not comment on specific matters due to the privacy of its customers.
However, the bank was actively using proactive money mule detection measures including multi-factor identification, removing unexpected links in messages from the bank and a dedicated security team monitoring suspicious activity, the spokesperson said.
The bank had also tightened transaction rules blocking high-risk payments to cryptocurrency exchanges, the spokesperson added.
New scam-prevention laws pass parliament
Australians lose billions of dollars to scams each year, with reported financial losses to Scamwatch reaching $2.74 billion in 2023.
Investment scams like Carpenter's accounted for almost half of those losses and are overwhelmingly the most common way victims are fleeced.
Today, new legislation was passed in parliament which will see banks and social media companies face fines of up to $50 million for failing to prevent scams.
The legislation was supported by the Coalition and described by Labor as the strongest anti-scammer protection in the world.
However, the new laws fall short of mandating compensation for victims, including only "redress mechanisms".
The omission was criticised by consumer advocates and several independent MPs, including Monique Ryan and Allegra Spender, who would prefer Australia follow the UK's lead of making banks solely responsible for protecting consumers.
Carpenter said the laws did not go far enough and would not help victims like herself.
The divorcee said she felt lucky she had not lost all of her money, as some people had, but she would soon be forced to take the drastic measure of moving overseas to make ends meet.
"I'm planning to leave the country and go to Ecuador because I can't afford to live here, and I can't rent or buy anything," she said.
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Music festival boasting international line-up cancelled days before event
Souled Out music festival, which boasted an international line-up including Don Toliver, Jhene Aiko and Vince Staples, has been cancelled just a little over a week before the event.
Festival organisers made the announcement in a social media post today, citing their disappointment in having to pull the plug.
"Despite our best efforts, the event did not reach the level of support needed to remain financially viable," organisers said.
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"Like many festivals in Australia, we have faced ongoing challenges in the current market.
"After exploring every possible option, we've had to make the tough call to cancel this year's edition of Souled Out."
All ticket holders will receive an automatic refund. Organisers did not say if they hope to return next year.
Souled Out is Australia's biggest R&B music festival and was scheduled to take place in Melbourne on February 22, Sydney on February 23 and Brisbane on February 28.
Just a few weeks ago, the festival added 250 new VIP tickets to their Sydney and Melbourne shows due to "popular demand".
Last year, the festival's presale sold out in just two hours.
It is the latest music festival to succumb to economic pressures facing the industry, following the likes of Groovin in the Moo and Splendour in the Grass.
Ending the announcement in a message to would-be festivalgoers, Souled Out organisers encouraged them to use the returned funds to continue to support live music and events across Australia.
"Your passion and commitment help keep the culture alive," organisers said.
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NSW nurses condemn ‘abohorrent’ alleged hate video
NSW nurses today ditched their planned pay dispute picket outside state parliament to stand in solidarity against hate speech and antisemitism.
The NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNMA) held a demonstration outside NSW parliament after two Sydney nurses were stood down from their jobs at Bankstown Hospital over alleged antisemitic remarks made in a video.
Around 100 nurses and midwives gathered with signs at a rally in the Sydney CBD with messages such as "no hate in health care", "care without bias" and "be kind, be inclusive".
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"The NSWNMA reiterates its condemnation of all forms of racism, bigotry and hatred, including acts of antisemitism and Islamophobia," the association said in a statement.
NSWNMA said it decided against its pay dispute picket today in favour of promoting "cultural harmony" following NSW Health's decision to stand down the two nurses.
The message of "we stand against hate in healthcare" was echoed by NSWNMA members during the rally.
NSWNMA acting general secretary Michael Waites said he was "disgusted" after footage emerged of two nurses, Ahmad "Rashad" Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh, allegedly claiming they would kill Israeli patients if they had to treat them.
"We find the comments to be abhorrent, and I want to reassure the people of Australia, of NSW, of our Jewish communities, our Israeli communities, that they do not speak for nurses and midwives, they do not speak for our profession," Whaites said.
"Health practitioners are bound by codes of conduct to care for all people, regardless of their circumstances. There is no room for this type of behaviour in our healthcare systems."
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Whaites added: "The alleged conduct portrayed is deplorable, unacceptable and cannot be tolerated.
"We are supporting our members at Bankstown Hospital who have been affected by the alleged actions of the two nurses involved."
Nadir and Lebdeh were on shift at Bankstown Hospital when they had a conversation that was being recorded with Jewish influencer Max Veifer via the social website Chatruletka.
NSW Health immediately stood down Nadir and Lebdeh when their comments came to light yesterday.
Police swiftly interviewed other staff on shift at the time the video was recorded and seized CCTV from the hospital.
Speaking on 2GB this morning, NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said the investigation would hinge on the full unedited video to be provided by Veifer.
"We need this to be watertight and critical to that is the evidence from the influencer," she said.
She said police had not spoken to either of the nurses seen in the video, but had been in contact with their lawyers.
Neither Nadir or Lebdeh have been charged with any criminal offences, and Webb said the decision on whether to do so would depend on the evidence gathered.
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