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Seven teenagers have been charged with murder after the stabbing deaths of 15-year-old Dau Akueng and 12-year-old Chol Achiek in Melbourne’s west earlier this month.
Dau and Chol were walking home from a basketball game on 6 September when they were allegedly attacked on separate streets in Cobblebank by masked assailants armed with machetes and long-edged weapons.
At the time, Victoria police Det Insp Graham Banks said the case had “the hallmarks of youth gang crime”, though the duo were not members.
Chol’s father, Chuti Ngong, described his son as a “lovely” and “peaceful boy” at a candlelight vigil last week, saying “he loved everybody – loved all the family, siblings, everybody”.
Terry Koumides, who met Dau in 2020 through a youth basketball program, remembered him as “a sweet kid”, “a contributor”, “well-mannered” and “polite”.
The three adults will face the Melbourne magistrates court this afternoon, police said. While the four children will face a children’s court this afternoon.
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In pictures
The winner of the 2025 William & Winifred Bowness photography prize – now in its 20th year – is a work by Anna Higgins. Judge Anne Zahalka said: ‘The stand-out work … is a poetic evocation on the Australian landscape, where layers of archival and captured moving images are melded with great sensitivity through her observations of light and atmosphere.”
What they said …
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“People across the country are shocked by this blatant assault on the freedom of speech.”
In his opening monologue on Thursday night, Stephen Colbert joined his late night show brethren including Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon and David Letterman to rally behind Jimmy Kimmel after ABC’s decision to indefinitely suspend his popular late-night show after his comments about the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.
Full Story
Newsroom edition: Albanese gears up for a tricky Trump test
This week Anthony Albanese left the comforts of his high approval rating at home to land in the Pacific, hoping to sign historic defence agreements with Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. But he has returned to Australia empty-handed, with the influence of China looming large over negotiations. The prime minister now heads to the US where a high-stakes meeting with Donald Trump poses its own challenges.
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Before bed read
The powerful owls’ grisly crime scenes in urban parklands remind us we share suburbia with a magnificent predator; forced out of forests into urban landscapes, now confronting yet another silent killer: rat poison, writes Guardian Australia’s Wendy Frew.
Daily word game
Today’s starter word is: ABRI. You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.
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