Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan addressed the party faithful on Saturday night, as vote counts trickled in following byelections in Werribee and Prahran.

Allan conceded the Werribee byelection – triggered after former treasurer Tim Pallas' resignation from politics in December – would come "down to the wire".

"It's very, very tight. It's going down to the wire," Allan said, adding the race is "too close to call".

READ MORE: Why Victorian byelection results could spell doom for Albanese government

The Victorian Liberals held on to hope with the results still so up in the air.

Deputy leader Sam Groth told the contingent in Werribee on Saturday night that the party still has a chance of taking the seat from Labor for the first time in decades, after a strong swing to the Liberals.

"We haven't given up tonight," Groth said, according to The Age.

"We know there's huge amounts of pre-poll numbers [to be counted].

"The swing that we've seen though, the swing that we've seen away from the government tonight, if we replicate that in 21 months' time, we will see a change in government in Victoria."

Labor's candidate for the outer-western suburb, John Lister, had 28.74 per cent in the primary vote compared to Liberal candidate Steve Murphy's 29.06 per cent, as of 11.45pm.

A leak in the roof at Victorian Electoral Commission's early voting centre, led to the delayed counting of pre-poll and postal votes, according to The Age.

This meant only one third of those votes had been counted by 10pm and 74.91 per cent of total votes counted by 11.45pm.

The state's second byelection came after former Prahran MP Sam Hibbins' resignation due to an affair with a staffer in November, with the seat "on a knife's edge", according to Greens MP Ellen Sandell.

As of 11.45pm there were 64.29 per cent of total votes counted in the progressive inner-city seat of Prahran.

Early figures have Greens candidate Angelica Di Camillo neck-and-neck with Liberal candidate Rachel Westaway, with both taking 36 per cent in the primary vote so far.

The Greens have maintained hold of Prahran since 2014 but, with Labor failing to put up a candidate, the seat may come down to preferences. 

Pallas and Hibbins' departures left voters to have their say today at ballot booths in both districts to determine their next members of parliament.

Voting closed at 6pm and counting is underway but results will take a while to be known in both byelections.

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As votes were counted, formerly ousted Liberal MP Moira Deeming spoke to Liberal Party supporters in Werribee.

She thanked the new Opposition Leader, Brad Battin, who replaced John Pesutto – the ex-leader who had exiled her from the state Liberal Party.

"Thank you especially to Brad for really putting the effort into fight for the west," she said, according to The Age.

"I can honestly say that the reaction to your leadership and the way you have taken the west seriously has been noticed."

Most eyes were watching the count in Werribee – a seat Labor has held since 1976.

In the last election in 2022, Pallas won the seat with a near 11 per cent margin.

When former premier Daniel Andrews retired in 2023, Labor suffered a 10 per cent swing meaning that a loss in Werribee could be terminal for the state government. 

Premier Jacinta Allan joined her candidate to campaign for votes in Werribee earlier today and knocked back concerns about losing the seat.

"I'm firmly focused on working hard for Victorians," she said.

"Working people need Labor governments who support them, who back them in, because working people know what Liberals do; they cut teachers, they cut nurses."

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The last time the Liberals flipped a Labor seat during a byelection was in 1948. 

Opposition Leader Brad Battin, who also joined his candidate down at Werribee, had told reporters a win would be difficult to achieve.

"I'm not going to predict how people are going to vote, as I've said quite publicly, the change of seat during a byelection is always difficult," he said.

"But we're out here working and listening and my message to those in Werribee, I encourage you to vote Liberal however, whatever the result is, I guarantee you over the next 650, 660 days towards the next election, we'll be out here meeting with those local businesses all the way through the west."

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Tens of thousands of dollars worth of Pokemon cards have been stolen during a string of attacks on collectable stores across Melbourne.

A group of thieves hit businesses in Thomastown on Monday, Moonee Ponds on Wednesday and Eumemmering yesterday.

They used crowbars to get into the locked stores and brought wheelie bins to fill with collectable items. 

READ MORE: Polls close for double byelections in Victoria

CCTV footage showed the group ignoring alarm-triggered lights and loud sirens to instead clear the shelves and load their getaway cars. 

Grand J Games' Jason Zhe said he had just locked up his store and left when the thieves broke their way in.

"That's what really scares me. These people were stalking me, they've figured out my routine and they've attacked when I left," he said.

"They had a wheelie bin, they had this entire thing planned out," he added.

Blacklist Cards and Collectables' Umit Berkant said what happened was "shattering".

"They're just animals," he said. 

"I don't think they seem to understand that these are small businesses."

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In total, each store has lost thousands of dollars in stock and more for damages. 

The most expensive cards were worth up to $600 each.

Police are searching for the trio and, in the meantime, the collectable stores are keeping in contact to make selling and profiting from the cards a lot harder.

"There's that many people that are now keeping an eye out for everyone around us that eventually something's gonna pop up or one mistake's gonna be made and all of a sudden, we've cracked the code," Berkant said.

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A woman has died after lightning strikes during a storm in New South Wales sent fragments of a tree flying.

Emergency services were call to a home on Old Razorback Road, south-west of Sydney in Cawdor, about 5.30pm following reports two people were hit by the tree fragments.

A woman in her 40s was treated at the scene, located in the Wollondilly Shire, but could not be revived, NSW Police said in a statement on Saturday night.

READ MORE: Human remains found inside croc during search for missing man in Queensland

https://twitter.com/BOM_NSW/status/1888097481738563989?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

A second woman, also aged in her 40s, was treated by NSW Ambulance paramedics and taken to Liverpool Hospital where she remains in a serious but stable condition.

The tragedy comes after parts of the state were hit with a severe weather warning for a "very dangerous thunderstorm" bringing intense rainfall, large hailstones and damaging winds.

Following the Bureau of Meteorology's weather warning, the SES asked residents in High Range, Robertson, Colo Vale, Hill Top and Bowral to "stay indoors" as the storm passes.

The system impacted Nattai National Park, Yerranderie and the Nattai Tablelands before moving northeast towards Oakdale, the western parts of the Wollondilly Shire and the area west of Picton.

A severe thunderstorm warning is currently in place for people in parts of the Hunter, Illawarra, Central Tablelands, Southern Tablelands and North West Slopes and Plains Forecast Districts.

The severe thunderstorm, which are likely to produce heavy rainfall that may lead to flash flooding, is gradually easing, the bureau said in its latest update to residents.

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An 18-year-old man said he is relieved to have been rescued after spending three brutal days missing in mountain ranges west of the Gold Coast. 

Nathaniel Green slept in his car at Mount Barney on Wednesday night so he could hike and catch the sunrise in the morning.

But things began to go wrong, leaving him lost.

READ MORE: Human remains found inside croc during search for missing man in Queensland

"My phone died and I ran out of water so I got lost and I thought I was going down the route that I needed to go home and turned out it wasn't," he told 9News.

Emergency services were alerted to his disappearance when he didn't return home that day and a search mission, comprised of some of Green's friends, began.

"I saw choppers going above at night and during the day," he said.

"Sort of seeing the helicopters fly over, even though they may not have seen me straight away, the most hopeful thing was knowing I was being looked for."

Green ended up spending two nights out in the cold.

He was able to survive on a muesli bar, some lollies and running creek water.

After spending days crying for help, he was finally heard this morning.

"I don't know who it was but whoever it was saved my life probably," he said.

READ MORE: North Queensland facing more major flooding as government widens financial aid

Green was winched to safety. Besides being exhausted and starving, he was okay. 

"At no point did I think I was going to die on this mountain, it was more a point of when was I going to get rescued, or am I going to get myself out of this situation," he said.

Green admitted he is not an experienced hiker and this was his first time up Mount Barney. 

"As seen by the fact I got stuck on the side of a mountain," he said.

"Someone was like 'oh you should try Mount Barney because me and my mate climbed a different peak a month ago.' I thought it'd be chill. It was not chill."

Green will be spending the rest of his weekend recovering from the ordeal.

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US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the US will aim to deliver its first nuclear submarine on time to Australia after the Federal government sent $798 million to Washington as part of the AUKUS deal.

Hegseth said Trump was "supportive" of the $3 billion deal in a meeting with Australia's Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles at the Pentagon on Friday (Local time).

The Albanese government made a $US500 million ($798 million) payment to Washington as part of the AUKUS deal ahead of the meeting between Marles and Hegseth.

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The plan will provide Australia with three Virginia-class submarines from the US, which is supposed to boost America's lagging rate of submarine production.

"The president is very aware, supportive of AUKUS and … the investment Australia is willing to make," Hegseth said.

He also said the Trump Administration "sure hopes" to have them delivered on time, with the first one due by the early 2030s.

It's the first time the administration has expressed the President's opinions on the deal, which was made under Joe Biden's presidency.

"We're really pleased that the first payment in respect of that half a billion dollars we've been able to make in the first couple of weeks of the Trump administration," Marles said ahead of the meeting.

"We're really pleased to make it in the first week of your tenure as the Secretary of Defence."

Australia, the US and Britain signed the AUKUS pact nearly four years ago, with the aim of maintaining a "free and open Indo-Pacific", amid growing assertiveness by China in the region.

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The deal meant Australia would purchase three submarines from the US and build five of a new AUKUS-class submarine in cooperation with Britain.

However, there were doubts that Australia would ever receive a submarine at all.

Concerns were sparked last year over the US's ability to produce nuclear-powered submarines for its own military needs, aside from its deal with Australia.

However, Hegseth seems to have confirmed today that the Trump administration would hold up America's end of the bargain.

The winning beach has marked one state's first-ever win in the competition

Voters are heading to the polls today for two crucial state byelections in Victoria that could provide a clue to the next federal government, with the Liberals threatening to flip the historically Labor seat of Werribee and the Greens seat of Prahran.

Former treasurer Tim Pallas' resignation from politics triggered the byelection in the outer western suburb of Werribee, where Labor candidate John Lister hopes to retain the seat strongly held by the party since 1976.

Lister said he wants to make a difference and fight for investments for Werribee while Liberal candidate Steve Murphy claims the only way for the region to have new outcomes was to throw Labor out.

READ MORE: Voting under way for double byelections in Victoria

In the last state election, Pallas won the seat with 45.36 per cent of the primary vote.

Over in the inner-city suburb of Prahran, Greens candidate Angelica Di Camillo is vying to maintain the seat her party has held since 2014 against Liberal candidate Rachel Westaway.

Di Camillo is promising to bring Queensland's highly popular 50-cent public transport fares to Victoria, make unlimited rent increases illegal and deliver climate ambition.

The Liberal party points to Di Camillo having no history of local involvement, having recently moved to the area, adding that their candidate Rachel Westaway has real-life experience and is ready to serve.

Labor has not put up a candidate for the seat.

READ MORE: Aussie state with worst hospital wait times revealed

The byelection is being held due to the resignation of former Prahran MP Sam Hibbins, who won in 2022 with 36.40 per cent of the primary vote, over an affair with a staffer. 

Tony Barry, communications director at RedBridge, a research and polling company, said the Greens have a tough fight with preferences against them.

The party may need to secure a 42 to 43 per cent primary vote.

"Hanging over that is the fact that the former Greens MP for that seat left in highly controversial, very unsavoury circumstances," he said.

How much Labor will need for the seat of Werribee is harder to say, according to Barry, as there are more candidates from different parties running.

RedBridge's latest polling figures for Victoria reveal the Liberal Party is ahead on the two-party preferred basis with 51 per cent compared to Labor's 49 per cent at state level.

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Barry believes the Liberals could walk away with both seats after today's byelections.

"Labor's primary vote is collapsing because of a perceived lack of outcomes and concerns about the state of the economy and the personal financial insecurity that comes from that," he said.

The results of today's byelections will be a crucial test for Premier Jacinta Allan, who Barry said has failed to differentiate herself from her predecessor Daniel Andrews, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ahead of this year's federal election.

Albanese, who has still not announced the date of the federal election, dropped to 34 per cent as the preferred prime minister in the latest January Resolve poll compared to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton's 39 per cent.

"You always want to have momentum and, in politics, you're either applying pressure or you're absorbing pressure and if the Allan government loses Werribee, then they'll be under pressure, which is never a great place to be in terms of the federal election," Barry said.

READ MORE: US Defence Secretary says Trump's 'supportive' of AUKUS deal

"A loss in Werribee would confirm, more than the public polling, that the Labor brand has significant brand damage in Victoria which means federal Labor in Victoria might really struggle in some seats where they have historically not such as Bruce and Isaacs.

"So if Werribee survives, then it would give Labor some hope that they can scrape through with the next election, but if it's a very significant swing against them in the double digits then it would suggest that they are in the final death throws."

So far, more than 13,400 residents across both the Werribee and Prahran districts have cast their early votes.

Voting is open from 8am to 6pm today, with counting to begin shortly after. 

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A refugee who established the first lifesaving club in Gaza says Palestinians still "dream" of returning home after US President Donald Trump vowed to take over the region.

Mohammad Saleh escaped from Gaza in May last year, but not before he helped establish the first surf lifesaving club in the Middle East, operating out of the Gaza Strip.

Saleh trained with the North Steyne Surf Lifesaving Club on Sydney's Northern Beaches in 2020 before returning to his home in Palestine and establishing his own Nippers club.

READ MORE: NSW home builder placed into administration with houses left unfinished

"The quality of life in Gaza isn't like here in Australia but there's a lot of people like me trying to make life better for the community," Saleh said.

"We started to establish a surf lifesaving club, a club in Gaza.

"We succeeded in that, it was successful.

"[For] around 11 weeks every Saturday, a lot of children participated in it." 

He says things in the region quickly turned following the October 7 attacks carried out by Hamas and Israel's response.

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"Sadly everyone knows what happened on the 7th of October," Saleh said.

"There were a lot of airstrikes against innocent peoples, against civilians, buildings, even hospitals.

"Unfortunately, we lost a lot of people … especially people who were participating in the Nippers program in Gaza.

"We lost about 10 per cent of our team and participating children, we lost four children – their ages between six years old and 12 years old.

"They had dreams.

"One of them, he wanted to be a robot engineer, he was nine years old … and his sister, unfortunately, both of them were killed with their entire family."

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Before he was granted a protection visa to Australia, Saleh and his family moved from region to region within Gaza, searching for somewhere safe.

"The home is everything for us, we were forced to leave our home and everything inside it, our memories, our stuff, our clothes," Saleh said.

"The IDF mentioned many times there are safe places in Gaza, 'Go to these places'.

"I witnessed there was no safe place in Gaza in the period of time before I escaped.

"For seven months, there was no safe place."

Now back in Australia, Saleh spoke out about Trump's alarming announcement that the US would take over the Gaza Strip.

This week, Trump said the US would take over the region and "level it" with the goal of relocating more than 2 million people to other countries.

READ MORE: Second US judge halts Trump's birthright citizenship ban

Saleh said Palestinians deserved the right to return to their home and land, and despite the destruction, they dream of returning home.

"The Palestinian issue, it's not real estate … the Palestinian people are not projects," he said.

"We're supposed to return to our homes, our lands, our historical lands.

"Palestine can hold every person to live there – Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist, any person can live in Palestine.

"For hundreds of thousands of years, we lived together."

"I assure you … every Palestinian who had to take refuge, it's their dream to come back to their homes."

A small aircraft crashed on an avenue in Sao Paulo on Friday morning (Friday night AEDT) shortly after taking off from a nearby private airport, killing the pilot and the plane's owner, authorities said. The two were the only people on board.

The plane went down in the busy Barra Funda neighbourhood on the west side of the Brazilian city, near its downtown.

A piece of the plane hit a bus, injuring one woman inside, while a motorcyclist was struck by another piece of wreckage, the firefighters' statement said. Both were receiving medical care.

READ MORE: Search underway in Alaska for plane carrying 10 people

A later statement said that four more people who were injured were taken to hospitals in the area with minor injuries.

Gov. Tarcísio de Freitas said on X that the two dead were the pilot, Gustavo Medeiros, and the owner of the aircraft, Márcio Carpena.

A CCTV video obtained by the local television network TV Globo showed the moment of the crash.

The plane slammed into the avenue a few metres past an intersection, where a line of cars was waiting to move forward.

Images on local media showed the plane's fuselage and the bus on fire, with firefighters working to extinguish the blaze.

The avenue is home to office buildings and there is a key bus, train and subway station nearby.

There was no word as to what had caused the plane to lose altitude less than 5 kilometres from the private airport from where it had departed a few minutes earlier.

It was bound to Porto Alegre, in the southern Rio Grande do Sul state.

The Brazilian Air Force said it would investigate the accident as fast as possible.

Brazil has had a number of deadly, small aircraft crashes in recent years, including one last August in Vinhedo, near Sao Paulo that was particularly shocking.

Images from that crash showed a passenger plane falling in a flat spin before crashing into the backyard of a home in a gated community, killing all 72 people on board.

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US officials kept around 100 deported Indian migrants in shackles for their 40-hour flight home, including during bathroom breaks, in the latest incident to spark anger overseas at President Donald Trump's migration crackdown.

Indian lawmakers demonstrated outside parliament on Thursday (local time), some wearing shackles and others mocking the much-touted friendship between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Elsewhere in New Delhi, members of the youth wing of India's main opposition party burned an effigy of Trump.

READ MORE: Search underway in Alaska for plane carrying 10 people

Last month, the spectacle of Colombian deportees being shackled as they boarded a US deportation flight sparked a bitter dispute between the two countries, with Colombian president Gustavo Petro initially refusing the military plane permission to land.

The anger in India comes days ahead of an expected visit by Modi to meet Trump – whom he has called a "true friend" – at the White House.

S. Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, a government minister in the western state of Punjab, where the deportation flight landed, urged Modi to "now use his friendship to resolve the issue."

Dhaliwal also questioned "the usefulness of this friendship if it cannot help Indian citizens in need," his office said in a statement.

READ MORE: Trump blames 'obsolete' system for Washington air disaster

The flight to India was the longest in distance since the Trump administration began deploying military aircraft for migrant deportations, according to a US official.

"Our hands were cuffed and ankles tied with chains before we took the flight," said 23-year-old Akashdeep Singh, who arrived in Punjab on Wednesday with 103 other deportees.

"We requested the military officials to take it off to eat or go to the bathroom but they treated us horribly and without any regard whatsoever," Singh added.

READ MORE: Aussie state with worst hospital wait times revealed

"The way they looked at us, I'll never forget it… We went to the bathroom with the shackles on. Right before landing, they removed (the shackles) for the women.

"We saw it. For us, they were removed after we landed by the local police officials."

US Border Patrol Chief Michael W. Banks posted a video of the Indian deportees being put onto a plane on X.

https://twitter.com/USBPChief/status/1886946028185682347?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

In the video, shackles are seen on the wrists and ankles of several men who shuffle slowly up the ramp.

CNN has reached out to the Pentagon and US Customs and Border Protection for comment on whether the deportees were held in shackles for the duration of the flight.

'Better life, better future'

Deportee Sukhpal Singh, 35, also said the shackles were kept on throughout the flight, including during a refuelling stopover on the Pacific island of Guam.

"They treated us like criminals," he said.

"If we would try to stand because our legs were swelling due to the handcuffs they would yell at us to sit down."

Young Indians looking for work opportunities have made up a sizeable portion of undocumented migrants in the US, many after making the dangerous trek through Latin America to reach the US southern border.

Many say they see no future at home where a jobs crisis is stifling young hopes in the world's most populous country.

READ MORE: Man killed while crossing road had been visiting friend with dementia

In just four years, the number of Indian citizens entering the US illegally has surged dramatically — from 8,027 in the 2018-19 fiscal year to 96,917 during 2022-23, government data showed.

Families have previously told CNN how they sold off land to raise the tens of thousands of dollars charged by "travel agents" to take migrants on the risky journey to the US.

"I had gone for work, for better life, for a better future," said Sukhpal Singh, who has a son and daughter and hoped to better provide for them by getting a job in the US.

"You see it in movies and you hear from people around you that there's work there and people are successful there so that's why I also wanted to go."