A BOY is missing from a swimming hole in the Northern Territory as police investigate reports the child was taken by a crocodile at Kakadu National Park.
"Police and Kakadu rangers are searching for a boy missing from a swimming hole near Mudginberri in Kakadu National Park," Parks Australia spokeswoman Margot Marshall told AAP on Sunday afternoon.
Duty Superintendent Sachin Sharma told the NT News police were investigating reports of a crocodile attack.
A missing camera attached to the helmet of a NSW base jumper who died may hold clues to his death. Source: AAP
A MISSING camera attached to the helmet of a NSW base jumper who died in Victoria may hold vital clues to his death.
Emergency services were called to an accident near the Omega tower, a 432m structure at Giffard, about 200km east of Melbourne, just before 2.30pm (AEDT) on Saturday.
Police believe a helmet was removed from the body of the 23-year-old man before emergency services arrived and are appealing for anyone with information to come forward.
A mount for a camera was attached to the helmet but the camera was not located at the scene, police said.
Police say the deceased man may have been with other people before he died, however there was no one else at the scene when they arrived.
"If a camera was used, investigators are keen to locate it as it may have information critical to the investigation," a police spokesperson said.
The Omega tower is a well known site for illegal base jumping, an activity where people jump from fixed objects and use a parachute to break their fall.
Ambulance Victoria spokesman John Mullens said ground crews and a helicopter were dispatched but the man was difficult to access.
"It came through as a base jump man in his 20s believed to be deceased," he said.
Emergency services workers had to be directed to the site by people who had been with the man, Mr Mullens told AAP.
"It took a little while to get in," he said.
"He was deceased."
Police described the death as a "parachute incident".
Mr Mullens said he believed the Omega tower, a navigation antenna and transmitter, was a base jump site.
The Omega tower is the tallest structure in Australia, more than 100m higher than the Q1 Tower on the Gold Coast and Sydney Tower.
BASE is an acronym for building, antenna, span (bridge), and earth (cliffs) - the four places where jumpers launch from.
A US jury has rejected a defamation case against Courtney Love over a Twitter post that suggested one of her lawyers had been "bought off" for not pursuing a lawsuit over her late husband's estate.
The verdict came after roughly three hours of deliberation in a case that spanned eight days and focused on the Hole frontwoman's postings on the social networking site.
The case centred on one 2010 post that suggested that San Diego lawyer Rhonda Holmes had been "bought off" and that was why she wasn't representing the singer anymore.
Love had hired Holmes to file a fraud case against the estate of her late husband, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. The lawyer contended during the trial that she was fired by Love and that the tweet and other statements the singer made against her have caused her substantial damage.
Love's tweet stated, "I was (expletive) devastated when Rhonda J Holmes Esq of san diego was bought off" in response to a question from user of the popular social media site.
The message was never meant to be public, Love told jurors. She said she meant for it to be sent as a direct message, which only the recipient would see, but it instead went public and was quickly deleted.
The swift verdict wasn't witnessed by Love, who had left court after closing arguments ended on Friday morning. She arrived just as the courthouse was closing down and met her lawyers, John Lawrence and Matthew Bures, in the hallway where she hugged them both.
Love praised her lawyers and the jury after the verdict. Asked about her social media presence, Love said she refrained from posting on Twitter during the trial. "I didn't tweet out of respect for the case," she said.
While the case was billed as the first "Twibel" trial in which Twitter and libel law intersected, Lawrence said it was tried by the same rules as traditional defamation cases.
Jurors determined that Love's tweet included false information, but the musician didn't know it wasn't true.
Holmes lawyer Mitchell Langberg said the jury's verdict meant the panel determined Love's statement was defamatory, but the singer couldn't be held liable for it. Holmes' side asked the panel to award $8 million in damages and send a message that false statements online had consequences.
Langberg said that while his client was disappointed with the verdict, her reputation was upheld and the world now knows that Love's statements were false.
"At the end of the day, her biggest asset in life is her reputation," Langberg said. "That she got back today."
Love's social media postings have gotten her into trouble several times.
In 2011, she agreed to pay $US430,000 to fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir over statements she posted on Twitter and Myspace.
Simorangkir sued Love again last year, alleging the musician libelled her when Love accused Simorangkir of theft on the Howard Stern's radio show and taunted her on the social media site Pinterest.
The case is pending, but Love said she's trying to be more careful about her online musings than she was when she tweeted about Holmes.
"I don't tweet like I did back then," Love said on Friday.
LABOR has accused the Abbott government of "manufacturing" a welfare crisis ahead of a planned crack down on young people claiming the disability pension.
Under federal government plans to overhaul the welfare system, young people who are deemed partially fit to work will no longer be able to claim disability welfare payments, News Corp Australia reports.
Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews said under the previous Labor government, young Australians were able to claim the disability pension despite their condition being minor.
Labor MP Matt Thistlethwaite rejected the claim, saying the number of people on the disability pension actually decreased between 2012 and 2013.
He said there was no need for a planned overhaul of the welfare system because Australia didn't have a welfare problem.
"They are creating and manufacturing a crisis to ensure they look like they are a government that is doing something," he told Sky News on Saturday.
The federal government is facing criticism for excluding aged pensioners, who make up the majority of the welfare expenditure, in its welfare payments review as it grapples with a budget deficit.
Finance Minister Mathias Corman said increasing workforce participation among younger people claiming the disability allowance was part of the government's agenda to reduce the budget bottom line.
"We don't think that people with temporary health conditions should be put onto the Disability Support Pension for the remainder of their working lives," he told Sky News.
"We want to help people who are able to work back into the workforce. We think that is good for them and it's obviously good for the country."
Kevin Spratt, who was tasered by police in a Perth jail, has been charged with assaulting police. Source: AAP
THE Perth man who made global headlines after being repeatedly tasered by two policemen has been remanded for a week-long mental assessment, after being charged with assaulting and obstructing officers.
Lawyers for Kevin Spratt said a week in which former senior constables Aaron Grant Strahan and Troy Gregory Tomlin had been convicted of assaulting him five years ago had "taken a considerable toll".
On Thursday night, Spratt was arrested in Brookdale on suspicion of having committed several assaults, along with an aggravated assault in Cloverdale.
Spratt, 44, will face four charges of assaulting a public officer, two charges of obstructing police, one count of assault occasioning bodily harm, two charges of stealing, and one count of aggravated burglary.
Officers who responded to the incident on Thursday night reportedly drew their tasers, while a police dog was also in attendance.
A brief appearance in Perth Magistrate's Court saw Spratt sent to the Frankland Centre - Perth's maximum-security psychiatric hospital - until another appearance next Friday.
The court was told Spratt was not well enough to be read the list of charges.
Lawyer Mal Cook said outside court his client was "obviously not well".
His arrest came the day after Magistrate Richard Bromfield had found Spratt had been unlawfully assaulted in the East Perth watch house on August 31, 2008 after he refused a strip search.
Strahan, 45, and Tomlin, 34, were on Wednesday given suspended jail terms and fined after being convicted in Perth Magistrates Court of unlawfully assaulting Spratt.
CCTV footage showed Mr Spratt crying out as the constables tasered him nine times in just over a minute.
While defence lawyer Karen Vernon had asked the magistrate to impose a good behaviour bond or a fine, Magistrate Bromfield said imprisonment was the only appropriate sentence.
Tomlin and Strahan were given eight-month prison sentences, suspended for six months.
Tomlin also received a $3800 fine while Strahan must pay a fine of $3250.
A spokeswoman for WA Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan said one or both of the officers were considering appealing their convictions, while the police union criticised the verdict, saying they had been "wrongly convicted".
"Officers should not be backed into a corner like this. They should be able to use all reasonable force options required in the circumstances and should not be scared to use their taser when needed," president George Tilbury said.
Spratt said this week he was seeking compensation for the incident.
MELBOURNE'S troubled observation wheel is expected to turn again on Saturday after it shut down just weeks after reopening.
A software problem caused the Melbourne Star to close on Friday.
Technicians are now conducting final tests on the wheel and it is expected to reopen by 10am (AEDT) on Saturday, but it could even be open as early as Friday night.
Chris Kelly from the Melbourne Star Management Group said the wheel would be open for the Australia Day long weekend.
"Since opening on December 23 last year, Melbourne Star has welcomed in excess of 40,000 guests and we apologise sincerely for any inconveniences caused to our guests today," Mr Kelly said in a statement.
The 120-metre high Melbourne Star initially closed in January 2009 when a three-day heatwave caused the brace and supports to buckle and crack only a month after it opened.
Mr Kelly insisted in December the wheel was not a rebuild of the troubled former wheel, but a completely new wheel.
Just days after it reopened, one of the big wheel's 21 cabins was taken out of service while Victoria's workplace safety authority investigated a safety complaint.
The Victorian nurses' union says more than 2000 hospital beds have disappeared since 2011. Source: AAP
MORE than 2000 Victorian public hospital beds have disappeared since 2011, according to the nurses' union, but the government rejects the claim.
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) says a bed count across the system shows more than 100 extra beds disappeared and more than 1100 beds have been closed since its last audit in 2011.
A further 800 beds promised before the election by the Victorian government have not been provided, bringing the total shortfall to 2017 beds, the union says.
But Health Minister David Davis rubbished the figures, saying bed numbers are increasing.
"Bed numbers are growing in Victoria, the government has delivered on its promises there," he told Fairfax Radio.
"But more and beyond that, we're building enormous new capacity across the system."
However, Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews called for Mr Davis to resign as health minister, saying hospitals have gone backwards on every measure under the coalition.
"Denis Napthine and David Davis' cutbacks mean there are less beds in our hospital system today than there were three years ago," he told reporters in Melbourne.
"If they're wrong, Mr Davis, then provide the list of where all your extra beds are located.
"This government talks the talk but they haven't provided the resources that they promised.
"What that means is Victorians are dying, patients are suffering."
Premier Denis Napthine says the most recent figures show there has been an increase in beds under the coalition.
"Right across the system we are investing billions, upon billions of dollars," he told reporters.
"Drive past hospitals around the state and you will see new capital works going on to expand the system."
Dr Napthine says the government inherited a system from Labor that was significantly under-invested.
The premier added Mr Davis was doing an outstanding job and would remain as health minister.
A 22-MONTH-OLD toddler and her mother have been rushed to hospital with four others after a two car accident in Sydney's west.
One of the cars smashed through a brick wall into the front yard of a Bankstown home on Thursday evening, police said.
No one was seriously hurt, the Seven Network reports.
Emergency services are at the scene.
No further information was available.
A CUP of tea and a lie-down was once the Catholic Church's attitude towards rehabilitation of victims of abuse.
But times and the church have changed, the director of the church's Professional Standards Office for NSW/ACT told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Wednesday.
Michael Salmon defended Towards Healing, the church's internal process for dealing with abuse complainants.
He has facilitated hundreds of sessions with victims and at Wednesday's hearing denied he kept the fact he was employed by the church from a victim identified as DK - a now 49-year-old man abused by three different members of the clergy while a student at St Augustine's College in Cairns in 1976.
DK went through Towards Healing in 2009-2010 and Mr Salmon was the facilitator.
At a commission hearing in December, DK described the process as a "sham".
He said he only discovered the supposedly independent mediator assigned to his case, Mr Salmon, was the director of the NSW Professional Standards Office when he saw something on television after the hearing.
Mr Salmon told Wednesday's hearing he understood that Brother Alexis Turton, who asked him to facilitate, had explained to DK his role with the church.
He also said that he himself did so in a telephone conversation with DK and later in a private session.
Towards Healing protocols advise that directors of professional standards not be facilitators and that complainants should have a say in their appointment.
Earlier in the hearing, Mr Salmon was asked several times by commission chair Justice Peter McClellan about the potential conflict of interest of a church employee mediating a hearing in which the church was a party.
Mr Salmon said he would give thought to his future role.
He added that Towards Healing was not classic mediation and he stressed the church's desire to provide pastoral support for victims.
He said at one time the general attitude towards abuse would have been have a "cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie-down and you will get over it".
Mr Salmon said it was important the church have a procedure like Towards Healing, and was confident it equipped people "to be better placed to deal with abuse, and the effects of abuse in their journey of healing."
The hearing on Wednesday also heard from Brother Gerald Burns, who was principal at the college when DK was there. He also attended the Towards Healing session in 2010 with DK.
Br Burns, now retired, said at the time he would have seen the touching of the genitals as a moral lapse, not a criminal act.
"I had a much more simplistic and incomplete view of the situation."
He said when he interviewed Ross Francis Murrin, who had molested DK, he accepted Murrin's reassurance it would not happen again. Murrin has been jailed for offences at Sydney schools.
"The whole question of sexual behaviour and so on in our church has been seen in terms that are not necessarily criminality terms," Br Burns said.
The hearing continues on Thursday.
Former MP Craig Thomson's union labelled payments to escorts as meetings, a court has heard. Source: AAP
FORMER MP Craig Thomson's union-issued credit card made payments to escorts which were labelled meetings, entertainment and teleconferencing in the union's accounting records, a court has been told.
Thomson, 49, has been charged with dozens of dishonesty offences over the alleged misuse of his credit cards while general secretary of the Health Services Union (HSU) and a federal MP.
Victoria Police forensic accountant Gerard Curtin, who compiled a report based on bank statements and HSU records, said $5993 had been paid to six escort agencies from Thomson's Commonwealth Bank MasterCard.
He said the payments were classified as "Meetings National Office", entertainment or teleconferencing in the HSU's accounting files.
Of the $164,556 spent on the card, some $35,634 was not reconciled in the HSU's books, Mr Curtin said.
Under cross-examination from Thomson's barrister Greg James, Mr Curtin said the union's classification for expenses was slipshod.
"I would not put them down as reliable," Mr Curtin told the court.
Thomson has pleaded not guilty to 145 charges of obtaining financial advantage by deception over the alleged misuse of $28,449 between 2002 and 2008.
The hearing continues on Thursday before Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg.
Viagra pills are among the most stolen items from military barracks in the UK, a reports says. Source: AAP
NEARLY STG6,000 ($A11,261.26) worth of Viagra and 100 bayonets are among millions of pounds worth of military stock stolen from the British military since 2007, it has been reported.
Figures released by the British ministry of defence show alleged thefts have totalled more than STG7 million ($A13.14 million) over the last seven years.
The Times newspaper reported that the stolen items include thousands of anti-impotence Viagra pills, also used for conditions including blood pressure, and equipment from nuclear submarines.
In the past year 100 bayonets, thousands of rounds of live and blank ammunition, a Bedford truck and an industrial washing machine have all been taken.
Metal thieves have also stolen lead flashing and roofing, copper piping, electrical cables and radiators, as well a STG25,000 ($A46,921.92) silver statue and STG7,000 ($A13,138.14) worth of silver cutlery.
A Chinese noodle bar chain has been accused of underpaying its staff by more than $600,000. Source: AAP
A CHINESE noodle bar chain is facing legal action for allegedly underpaying its staff by more than $600,000.
The Fair Work Ombudsman accuses W.X.Z. Enterprises of underpaying six workers at four of its stores in NSW and Queensland.
Court documents allege the company paid its Chinese workers a flat weekly wage of as low as $530 between July 2010 and March 2013.
The staff generally worked up to seven days a week and often more than 60 hours a week, it is alleged.
The ombudsman is seeking penalties and back-payment to the employees, who the agency says are owed $642,311.
One of the workers, who was a 457 visa holder and a cook at a Dubbo restaurant in regional NSW, was allegedly underpaid almost $190,000.
An investigation was launched into the business after the ombudsman received complaints from staff.
W.X.Z Enterprises faces penalties of up to $51,000 per contravention and its two managers could each face penalties up to $10,200 per breach.
FIREFIGHTERS have contained but not controlled a bushfire burning in Perth's north-eastern suburbs.
An emergency warning has been downgraded to a watch and act alert for people in Ellenbrook, Bullsbrook and The Vines in the City of Swan.
"There is a possible threat to lives and homes as a fire is in the area and conditions are changing," the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) warned.
The fire is burning in bushland near Pineroo Terrace, Feredy Loop and Maralla Road in Ellenbrook.
It is moving slowly in a south-westerly direction at 100 metres per hour.
DFES warns burning embers are likely to be blown around homes and spot fires are starting up to 500m ahead of the fire.
Two lanes of Melbourne's West Gate Bridge have been closed after a crack appeared to have developed. Source: AAP
VICROADS believes the large crack in Melbourne's WestGate Bridge is heat related but says drivers can have total confidence in the bridge's structure.
The crack, about five metres in length, appeared on Monday morning on the bitumen surface of a steel section of the bridge.
VicRoads acting chief executive Peter Todd said engineers immediately climbed into the bridge and determined the structure was sound.
He likened the crack in the road to a carpet tear in a house.
"We believe there's been a separation of the asphalt from the membrane underneath," he said.
"It's a bit like getting a tear in your carpet, the floor underneath is still sound.
"I can say the bridge is sound and motorists should have full confidence."
VicRoads believe last week's record heatwave, where temperatures reached more than 41C for four days in a row, caused the damage.
The crack is in the inbound lanes one and two of the bridge, which temporarily closed in the afternoon for emergency roadworks.
Victorian Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews says the damage was evidence that the bridge, the only direct freeway connection between the city and its western suburbs, was overworked.
"What we know without any doubt is if you can get 5000 trucks every single day off the West Gate Bridge that's a good thing for safety, it's a good thing for the longevity of the West Gate Bridge," he said.
All five lanes of the bridge reopened for the afternoon peak hour, but three lanes will close overnight as crews complete a more thorough repair job.
"We don't expect any more cracks on there, but of course we want to know why this happened," Mr Todd said.
"We'll be having some specialists go with the workers tonight to look at it."
The bridge will be reopened in time for Tuesday morning peak hour traffic.
The West Gate was recently closed overnight for four nights while scheduled resurfacing works took place.
