AAP Rolling News Bulletin for June 5 at 1730
Legal: Ahmad (MELBOURNE)
The uncle of an accused Islamic State bride has told a magistrate he hates the "evil" terrorist group as he supported his niece's bid for bail.
Abraham Abbas gave evidence in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday as Zeinab Ahmad's bail application went into a second day.
Ahmad, 31, is accused of using a teenage girl as a slave while living in Syria with her family in 2017.
It's alleged she moved to the country with her husband Dawod in January 2015 and he became a member of IS before he was killed in a drone strike in May 2016.
Ahmad and her mother Kawsar, 52, were among a group of alleged "ISIS brides" and their children who returned to Australia in May.
Hollingworth (MELBOURNE)
The family of a former governor-general who resigned over his handling of child sexual abuse in the Anglican church has reflected on the shadow cast over his final years.
Peter Hollingworth served as the Archbishop of Brisbane for more than a decade before being appointed governor-general in 2001.
He died after a fall on May 19, aged 91, and was farewelled at a requiem eucharist at Christ Church, in Melbourne's South Yarra, on Friday.
Friends, former colleagues and family paid tribute to Dr Hollingworth's years of service as a cleric and social welfare advocate and organiser.
The funeral was attended by Governor-General Sam Mostyn, Victorian Governor Margaret Gardner and former prime minister John Howard.
Delivering a eulogy on behalf of the family, Deborah Hollingworth reflected on the "long shadow" overhanging her father's final years.
Legal: Graham (BRISBANE)
A woman jailed for orchestrating a horrific woodchipper murder plot claims she is the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
Sharon Graham is serving a life sentence after being found guilty of murder following her grisly plan to kill her ex-partner Bruce Saunders for insurance money.
Graham has appealed against her conviction, years after Mr Saunders was fed into an industrial woodchipper on a Sunshine Coast property in Queensland.
In an attempt to make it look like an accident, all that was left of his body were the legs.
Graham's partner Greg Roser is also serving a life sentence for murder after he beat Mr Saunders with a metal bar and fed the body into the machine with the help of another man, Peter Koenig, in November 2017.
Legal: Bryant (SYDNEY)
A wail has rung out through a court room as a police officer was sentenced for killing an Indigenous teenager in a NSW-first.
Benedict Bryant was found guilty in November of dangerous driving occasioning death after he parked his unmarked car in front of a stolen trail bike ridden by Jai Wright in 2022.
The 16-year-old Bunghutti man was thrown off the bike when he collided with the car, sustaining critical head injuries. He died in hospital the following day.
An overflow court room in Sydney's Downing Centre District Court was required to accommodate Wright's family and friends as they gathered to hear Bryant sentenced on Friday.
Many were wearing T-shirts bearing the teenager's face.
An emotional cry rang out from the teeming gallery as the officer was sentenced to a two-year intensive corrections order - a term of imprisonment served outside jail.
Housing (CANBERRA)
Pauline Hanson has been forced to confirm how One Nation's housing policy would work after multiple party members misspoke or could not provide crucial details in separate interviews.
Under the party platform, foreign owners of homes in Australia would have two years to sell their property or have it repossessed by the government.
When asked if the measure also applied to permanent residents who were not citizens, One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce said they would also be forced to divest their properties.
"Become an Australian citizen and that's going to deal with the issue, right? Become an Australian citizen," he told Sky News on Thursday night.
Mr Joyce later conducted a second interview on Sky, in which he confirmed the party's policy did not extend to permanent residents, after making several phone calls to verify the platform.
Legal: Plane Boy (MELBOURNE)
A teen who allegedly attempted to hijack a plane may become the first child in Victoria to face trial accused of planning a terrorism plot after his matter was uplifted to a higher court.
He was aged 17 when he allegedly carried weapons, including a shotgun, knives and a fake bomb, onto a Jetstar flight bound for Sydney in March 2025.
As the aircraft was in its final stages of boarding at Melbourne's Avalon Airport, with 173 passengers onboard and six crew members, he walked up the plane's front stairs, a children's court was told on Friday.
The teen, who cannot be named for legal reasons, allegedly told crew he had a bomb and demanded access to the cockpit before it's claimed he began to assemble a shotgun.
Legal: Cheng (SYDNEY)
A teenager showed no signs of radicalisation before carrying out a religiously motivated killing outside police headquarters, a coroner has found.
NSW Police civilian employee Curtis Cheng was gunned down in October 2015 while leaving work by 15-year-old Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar in an act of religious extremism.
Farhad was then killed by a special constable after he fired more shots at the police headquarters.
Despite his association with persons of interest to terror investigators in the months leading up to the shooting, there was no evidence Farhad held violent extremist beliefs before the attack, Deputy State Coroner Derek Lee found on Friday.
Police found material on the Year 10 student's phone linked to Islamic State but Farhad had only accessed much of the material in the month leading up to the shooting, Judge Lee said.
Ebola (KINSHASA)
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has raised the number of confirmed Ebola cases to 389, including 63 deaths.
DR Congo Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba said Ebola infections had now spread across 17 out of 36 health zones in Ituri province.
Ituri remains the epicentre of the outbreak declared in the eastern part of the country on May 15, accounting for approximately 95 per cent of reported cases.
North Kivu has reported 19 infections, and South Kivu has reported three.
The steady increase of confirmed cases come after residents attacked an Ebola burial team in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo's South Kivu province this week, forcing responders to abandon a coffin and raising fears of further transmission, the health ministry said.
In finance ...
Scams (SYDNEY)
Australians lost almost a quarter of a billion dollars in the first three months of 2026, with online cons driving the largest losses.
Scammers cheated Aussies out of $248.3 million in the period, according to 60,657 reports received by Scamwatch and ReportCyber.
However, the number of scam reports and losses fell by roughly a sixth compared to the same three months in 2025, in a sign that efforts by governments, regulators, industry, and police are working.
"That said, we caution against drawing too much from one quarter of data as reports and losses typically move around somewhat," the consumer watchdog, which oversees Scamwatch, said in a statement.
"We will continue to monitor closely to see whether this quarter's data represents the beginning of a trend."
Markets Aust (SYDNEY)
Australia's share market is on track to wipe nearly two weeks of gains in two sessions, as soft metals prices weigh on mining stocks.
The S&P/ASX200 fell 53.2 points by midday on Friday, to be down 53.2 per cent, to 8,632.9, as the broader All Ordinaries lost 53.4 points, or 0.6 per cent, to 8,863.5.
The top 200 is now down 1.1 per cent since Monday, after a sharp midweek turnaround in mining stocks and continued weakness in the banking sector.
"The materials sector, which has been the backbone of the ASX200 this year, was hit hard as metal prices retreated," IG market analyst Tony Sycamore said.
"Adding to the gloom, concerns mounted over accelerating iron ore exports from Guinea's giant Simandou project, a development expected to pressure Pilbara volumes."
In entertainment ...
Obit Handy (LOS ANGELES)
Police have arrested the son of actor James Handy's girlfriend in his death after he was found stabbed in the chest in Los Angeles.
Officers responded to a home on Wednesday morning after an emergency caller said: "I am the son of man, I just killed the man of sin," according to the The Los Angeles Police Department.
They found the 81-year-old who appeared in films such as Jumanji and Top Gun: Maverick in the front yard stabbed in the chest and unconscious, according to police.
He was taken to the hospital and later pronounced dead.
Michael Gledhill, 44, who is the son of Handy's girlfriend and lives at the home with his mother, told officers he was the person they were looking for, according to police.
Television (MELBOURNE)
Australia's once-thriving children's television industry is facing collapse despite a legacy of producing Hollywood stars and shaping generations of young people.
RMIT University research published on Friday reveals the industry remains under pressure due to a significant drop in investment paired with rising production costs.
The sector has helped shape culture for decades through programs such as H2O: Just Add Water, Round the Twist, Blinky Bill, and more recently, Bluey, launched in 2018.
Lead author Jessica Balanzategui believes screen policy settings are failing to support the local stories young audiences need.
"Commercial broadcasters have retreated, streamers are not commissioning new children's programs, and public institutions are being left to carry an increasingly heavy load," she said.
The report reveals there has been a 97 per cent drop in commercial children's television investment since a 2020 decision to remove commercial quotas.
In sport ...
Com26 Swi (SYDNEY)
Australian swimmer Shayna Jack has added her voice to growing calls for Olympic prize money, believing athletes are missing out on what they financially deserve.
International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry lit a fuse just days after the controversial Enhanced Games were staged last month, declaring she didn't believe in awarding cash bonuses for medals.
The pro-doping Enhanced Games had offered a total prize pool of US$25 million, dangling carrots of $US250,000 for event winners and a $US1 million bonus for breaking official world records.
While winners of Olympic and Commonwealth Games medals aren't financially compensated by the IOC, some member nations have incentive programs.
Through the Australian Olympic Committee's medal incentive fund, athletes can earn $20,000 for winning gold, $15,000 for silver, and $10,000 for bronze.
Ten Open Aust (PARIS)
Maya Joint, Australia's No.1, has opened up on her calamitous year, admitting there have been moments during her alarming slump in form when she's asked herself if she should be playing at all.
But the 20-year-old Queensland-based youngster, given a boost by the encouragement of her BJK Cup captain Sam Stosur, is determined to kick start her revival this week in the Netherlands, promising "I'll be back."
Joint goes into the 's'Hertogenbosch grass-court tournament on a nightmarish run, her first-round thrashing by Anastasia Potapova in the French Open being her 10th successive defeat in an injury-affected losing streak that drags back to January.
It's all a far cry from last year when, as a teenager, she was arguably the breakout player on the women's tour, winning two tournaments and shooting up the rankings from 118 at the start of 2025 to No.28 by this February.
Ends Bulletin
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