TRANSCRIPT
- Australia officially recognises a Palestinian state at the United Nations
- Charlie Kirk memorial brings out the MAGA faithful
- Penrith crushes Canterbury-Bankstown to keep their premiership hopes alive
Australia has officially recognised a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly, along with Canada and the United Kingdom, with more countries due to follow soon.
The decision brings Australia into line with the international majority, with more than 140 out of 191 member states of the General Assembly now recognising Palestine.
It comes as Israel continues to bombard famine-hit Gaza City, with the Gaza health ministry reporting the death toll from Israel's war with Hamas now passing 65,000.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made the announcement in New York on Sunday.
"The Commonwealth of Australia recognises the state of Palestine. We have had, in Australia, a long term position on a bipartisan basis of two states. One of those states is, of course, Israel. The other, of course, is Palestine, and this recognition being announced today in sync with our international partners, the United Kingdom and Canada, means that three of the Five Eyes nations are all making this decision today."
France, Belgium, and Portugal are among the other countries due to recognise Palestine at the General Assembly this week.
**
An Israeli strike on a house in Gaza City has killed four members of the one family.
Their grandfather, Mosllam Mohammed Al-Haddad, says a pregnant woman and her two children were killed.
“At 1am I was on the fifth floor, and they were on the third floor. We heard an explosion and loud banging, so we came down and found this situation. My children were sleeping here, and we found them martyred. The mother, the boy, the girl, and the baby in her womb—we found them all gone. The husband was in critical condition; we took him to the hospital, and his leg has been amputated.”
This week, Israel began an intensified military demolition campaign targeting high-rise buildings in Gaza City alongside a ground assault.
**
Western Australia police say Optus did not contact them about customers' inability to reach emergency services for almost 24 hours and did not brief them about the scale and impact of an outage, before issuing a public press release.
WA police say Optus first told them on Thursday night that 26 people had tried to call the police and failed.
Detective Superintendent, Simone Van Der Sluys, says it took the telco until Friday to tell the state's police that a further 149 calls had not made it through the triple zero phone service to reach them in the outage between Wednesday and Thursday.
"Sadly, throughout the course of checking on those 149 West Australians, it was identified that a second person attempting to contact triple zero during that outage has died."
Both fatalities linked to the Optus outage in West Australia will be investigated by the state's coroner.
**
Tens of thousands of people have gathered at a stadium in Arizona to honour conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated at a university in Utah nearly two weeks ago.
Among those paying tribute to the 31 year-old founder of the youth action campaign Turning Point USA are Vice President JD Vance and President Donald Trump, who spoke briefly before travelling to the service.
“He was a young man, but a great man. And we look forward to it. It really is. We want to look at it as a time of healing, a time of ... whatever. That something like this could have happened is not even believable. So we'll be– we’re going to have a very interesting day. Very tough day. "
Mr Kirk's widow, Erika Kirk, is to address the audience at the 63,000-seat stadium outside Phoenix.
A 22-year-old man has been charged with his murder, with prosecutors saying they will seek the death penalty.
In response to the killing, the White House last week declared it would crack down on what it called "domestic terrorism" by leftist activists.
**
The Philippines and Taiwan are preparing for possible flooding and landslides as Super Typhoon Ragasa gains strength.
Residents on the Philippines' Batanes and Babuyan Islands have been told to leave, and severe flooding is expected in northern areas of the main island, Luzon.
In Taiwan, authorities said nearly 300 people are being evacuated from Hualien County in the east.
Scientists warn storms are becoming more powerful as the world warms due, in part, to the effects of human-driven climate change.
**
Penrith has crushed Canterbury-Bankstown 46-26, keeping their hopes of a fifth consecutive NRL premiership alive.
The Panthers played a near-perfect first half, going to the break nearly 30 points up - scoring six tries to one and destroying any hope the Bulldogs had of rescuing their season.
Jacob Preston added some respectability for the bulldogs late in the second half, with Bronson Xerri and Jacob Kiraz also scoring.
But it was too little, too late.
Penrith captain Nathan Cleary said the victory has given them confidence for Sunday the 5th of October when they'll face the Broncos at Lang Park.
"It's sort of been weird the last two weeks. I probably felt much more nerves going into the games, just not really knowing how they're going to go and but to the young guy's credit, like the way they started the game today, in particular, under a fair bit of pressure. So it's given I think it's given all of us a lot more confidence that you know those guys can perform in big games and they've proven that throughout the year too and they just seem to be getting better and better."
