RUSH HOUR: The stories you need to know today
A GIRL has been groped and pepper sprayed by Donald Trump supporters at a recent rally, leading to a very ominous prediction by one political expert.
- Greens leader pushes for scraping of private health insurance rebates
- Microsoft plugs its AI bot back into Twitter, fails miserably
- Man killed, woman injured during stabbing attack at Sydney shopping centre
- Brutal shark attack in NSW
- Hijacker hostage explains selfie photo
- Girl groped, pepper sprayed at Trump rally
LIVE: Rush Hour
Good morning, and welcome to our headlines-in-a-hurry news coverage. We bring you the morning’s biggest stories so you can get across the news quickly.
10am
That’s it for our live #RUSHHOUR news blog. You can get across the stories you need to know today below or go to news.com.au for the latest headlines.
9:40am
Turnbull hits back at critics of his radical tax overhaul plan
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has hit back at critics of his radical tax overhaul, insisting states need to be more accountable for the money they spend.
The prime minister wants to reduce the federal government’s income tax collection and allow states and territories to raise the remainder to pay for their hospitals and schools.
In return, the Commonwealth would reduce the grants it hands to the states, meaning no extra money.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has slammed the idea, questioning how the hospital and school funding crisis will be solved if there is no extra money on the table.
Mr Turnbull said he hasn’t seen any proposals from the states on how they could reform the taxes they raise.
The states just months ago were asking the federal government to raise taxes like the GST or Medicare levy to give them more money. “Jay Weatherill was the first one to propose income tax sharing,” Mr Turnbull told ABC radio this morning.
The “fundamental flaw” at the heart of the federation is that the states are not accountable for what they spend, he said. “The real issue here is one of political responsibility.
-AAP
9:20am
First graders poison plot foiled
Three first graders at a primary school in Alaska have been suspended after a classmate foiled their plot to fatally poison another kid in the class, the school principal says.
According to local reports, police were referred to the school after the student alerted adults after learning of the plot.
The substance the children planned to use as a poison, silica gel, is generally considered to be non-toxic but the students believed it was harmful, according to a letter the school sent to parents.
An e-mail sent to parents said: “Three students in the class were planning on using the silica gel packets (these are not actually poison, but the students believed they were) from their lunchtime seaweed to poison and kill another student.”
“We’re grateful that the student was able to speak up and obviously at such a young age,” a school spokesperson said.
9:05am
Huge changes proposed for Medicare
The Federal Government today is promising to revolutionise care offered to the more than four million Australians with multiple chronic diseases.
It is billing the package as one of the biggest reforms in Medicare’s 30-year history with the aim of keeping sufferers out of hospital and leading happier, healthier lives.
It could also ease the pressure on the public hospital system. Half of all potentially avoidable hospital admissions in 2013-14 were to treat chronic conditions. That is one every two to three minutes.
The proposed changes would include:
• Patients being encouraged learn how to manage their health, aided by technology.
• Patients being supported by telephone, email or videoconferencing and effective access to after-hours care.
• Patients nominate a preferred clinician, who is aware of their problems, priorities and wishes, and is responsible for their care co-ordination.
• Flexible service delivery, and shared information and care planning
• Data collection sharing.
8:45am
Gunmen take over TV station in Libya
Armed men have stormed the Tripoli headquarters of satellite TV station Al-Nabaa on overnight, cutting its transmissions and forcing out its staff, which is close to the authorities in control of the Libyan capital.
“A group of armed men, some of them in fatigues and some in civilian clothing, stormed our offices and gathered the employees in one room telling them they have nothing more to do here,” one of the journalists told AFP.
Earlier on Wednesday, the United States welcomed the arrival in Tripoli of the head of Libya’s UN-backed unity government despite demands by a rival faction that he leave.
Secretary of State John Kerry supported the arrival of Fayez al-Sarraj - a businessman named prime minister-designate under a UN-brokered power-sharing deal in December - who traveled from Tunisia by sea with a naval escort along with several members of his cabinet.
-AFP
8:30am
Booze bans to be scrapped in NSW
Bans on alcohol are set to be scrapped in dozens of parks and streets across Sydney — angering cops who say restrictions on public drinking helps put a cork in violent crime.
Under Lord Mayor Clover Moore’s watch, the number of city alcohol-free zones has rocketed to almost 400 — with police handed powers to snatch grog from rule-breaking punters and lob it down the drain.
Fines apply if members of the public don’t comply.
However City of Sydney is planning to axe 62 public booze-free zones, including streets and parks across Newtown, Surry Hills, Redfern, Waterloo, Alexandria, Erskineville, Rosebury and Darlinghurst, The Daily Telegraph reports this morning.
It comes as the Baird government’s separate lockout laws come under fresh scrutiny, leading to claims Ms Moore’s backflip on strict booze bans was opportunistic, popularist, and designed to win-over young voters at the upcoming council vote.
8:10am
Driver films startling road rage incident in Brisbane
Queensland police are searching for a man who was caught on camera during a confronting road rage incident in Brisbane.
Mobile phone footage of the attack shows the two cars involved swerving on along a road as a man in a blue van tries to steer the other car off the road.
He then jumps out and begins punching and kicking the vehicle.
“Quite a bit of coming together, they were swapping lanes, chasing each other, then the guy in the blue car then hurled a bottle of water out into the guy in the car in front, and I thought ‘wow, that’s insane’,” Witness Gary Davey told Nine News.
The search is on for a man caught on camera unleashing his fury in a shocking road rage attack in Brisbane. #9Today https://t.co/ezYUpuA9pw
— The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) March 30, 2016
7:55am
Changes to be made to free range eggs
State and territory ministers will meet in Canberra today to broker a national standard on the labelling of free range eggs.
As cage eggs are phased out of some of the bigger supermarkets, farms could soon need to provide a hectare of land per 10,000 hens under the new scheme, reports the ABC.
The 10,000 hens per hectare was deemed a satisfactory standard by John Coward from Egg Farmers Australia.
“Up to 10,000 birds per hectare — it’s just one bird per square metre, so you might only have in your flock 1,000 birds, so you’ve got to have a minimum of 1,000 metres of space for those birds,” he told the ABC.
“But you also have to prove you’ve got a pasture rotational plan that allows the birds to go onto new and clean pasture to let it recover.
7:40am
Iggy Azalea breaks silence on cheating scandal
The wedding is off but can Nick Young save his relationship with Iggy Azalea?
According to TMZ their relationship is “hanging by a thread” after a video surfaced online of the LA Lakers star confessing to cheating on the Aussie rapper.
The video was filmed months ago by one of Young’s basketball teammates, D’Angelo Russell, but it’s not known who leaked it online.
Azalea broke her silence on the cheating scandal on Twitter last night, saying, “hmmm I see D Angelo Russell is trending ... I actually liked his film. Thanks bro”.
A source told TMZ that the couple are “not on good terms” but added that 30-year-old Young is doing all he can to try and salvage the relationship.
7:25am
Antarctica alone may lift sea levels by a metre
Melting ice from Antarctica could raise oceans by a metre before 2100 at current rates of greenhouse gas emissions, doubling previous forecasts for sea level rise, according to a study released Wednesday.
Such an abrupt change would spell disaster for major cities and coastal areas across the globe, forcing hundreds of millions of people to seek higher ground.
Over a longer timescale, the study concluded, the picture is even grimmer: within 500 years, Earth’s once-frozen continent will have lifted water lines by more than 15 metres, reconfiguring the planet’s coastlines.
“Frankly, I hope we’re wrong about this,” Robert DeConto, lead author of the study and a climate scientist at the University of Massachusetts, told AFP.
But independent experts not involved said the study was probably on target.
While sharing DeConto’s sense of alarm, they praised the new research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, the AFP press agency reports.
-AFP
7:10am
Aussie social media users lament unfair charges of ticketing agencies
Whenever you’re buying or booking things online, there always seems to be hidden costs.
Aside from airlines, ticketing companies could be the worst offender.
One reddit user has sparked a chorus of criticism online after posting a ticket purchased via Ticketek for an event in Melbourne last night.
Despite the ticket costing just $25, Ticketek collected a “handling fee” of more than 30 per cent by charging an extra $8.75, even though the ticket was nothing more than an e-mail.
The customer posted an image of the receipt to Imgur with some disparaging words for Ticketek.
“$9.15 fees on a $25 ticket,” they lamented.
The post prompted a large debate, attracting over 240 comments on reddit.
6:55am
Findings released from 13 month Royal Commission into family violence
New safety hubs for victims, body cameras for police and a huge boost to emergency housing are the key planks of a landmark blueprint to tackle family violence.
The Victorian state government yesterday unveiled the sweeping plan for an overhaul of laws, bureaucracy, policing and social services — all to save the lives of women and children.
Responding to the nation’s first Royal Commission into Family Violence, the government promised to implement all 227 recommendations, likely to cost billions of dollars, reports The Herald Sun.
A special tax or levy is being considered to help fund the changes, which police said would immediately require an extra 500 officers in Victoria.
6:40am
Greens leader pushes for scraping of private health insurance rebates
Doctors and health groups have thrown their support behind a Greens plan to get rid of government-funded private health insurance rebates.
The rebate costs taxpayers $6 billion each year, and the Greens want that money injected into the public hospital system instead, labelling the rebate “unfair, inflationary and inefficient”.
The Public Health Association said it was time the prime minister took another look at how that money could be better spent because the costs of the rebate far outweigh the benefits.
. @RichardDiNatale says the @Greens proposal will not put more pressure on the public #health system #auspol https://t.co/laTU4phcA9
— Lateline (@Lateline) March 30, 2016
Greens leader Richard Di Natale told the ABC’s Lateline program last night that the money should be reinvested back into the public system instead to reduce waiting times and help fund dental care.
“This is worth close to $6 billion a year now and it’s not achieving anything in terms of the promise that was made, which was that it would take the pressure of the public hospital system.”
-AAP
6:30am
Microsoft plugs its AI bot back into Twitter
Microsoft’s artificially intelligent Twitter bot, TayTweets, has returned.
The company pulled the plug after the internet managed to manipulate the bot into becoming a racist, sexist, Holocaust denier and Nazi supporter last week.
Following the awkward fail, Microsoft removed the most offensive tweets and vowed only to bring the experiment back if the company’s engineers could “better anticipate malicious intent that conflicts with our principles and values”.
Well, the Twitter handle @TayandYou was reactivated and the AI bot made a fleeting return, again in rather disastrous fashion.
After tweeting about doing drugs in front of the police, the account then began spamming its more than 210,000 followers with the same tweet, saying: “You are too fast, please take a rest…” over and over.
Microsoft's sexist racist Twitter bot @TayandYou is BACK in fine form pic.twitter.com/nbc69x3LEd
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) March 30, 2016
Someone switched @TayandYou back on and she is spamming.
— Josh Taylor (@joshgnosis) March 30, 2016
I guess they turned @TayandYou back on... it's having some kind of meltdown. pic.twitter.com/9jerKrdjft
— Michael Oman-Reagan (@OmanReagan) March 30, 2016
6:20am
Man killed, woman injured during stabbing attack at Sydney shopping centre
A man was killed last night after he and a female companion were viciously stabbed inside Westfield Hornsby.
The pair were inside the centre’s food court when they were attacked by a man, believed to be known to the pair at about 9.30pm, horrifying onlookers.
The man suffered severe stab wounds and died at the scene.
A witness told AAP he saw a man “walking past me covered in blood holding a massive hunting knife”.
The woman, who it’s believed tried to flee their attacker and shelter in a nearby shop, was stabbed in the chest and arm and left with a fractured sternum. She was taken to Royal North Shore Hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries.
6:10am
Brutal shark attack in NSW
A young surfer is lucky to be alive following a shark attack last night in which his left thigh was ripped off at Bombo Beach near Kiama on the south coast.
It was only the heroic and quick-thinking actions of a fellow boardrider — who dragged his mate to shore and stemmed the gushing blood flow — that saved the 22-year-old’s life.
As the victim lay barely conscious on the sand with deep puncture wounds, his friend used the leg rope of his surfboard to stop the bleeding, reports The Daily Telegraph.
“He was in a critical condition and his blood pressure was dangerously low,” ambulance Inspector Geoff Senior said.
“The actions of his surfing companion kept him alive until our paramedics were able to perform a blood transfusion.”
The attack took place at about 7pm and is in a stable condition in St George Hospital this morning.
Police said it was the man’s scream for help that alerted his friend, who was surfing nearby.
“(The friend) swam to his aid and managed to get him to shore on the back of his board,” Insp Senior said. “The wounds were extensive and the man also suffered a fracture to his left leg,” Inspector Geoff Senior said.
6am
Hijacker hostage explains selfie photo
A British man who caused online debate after having his picture taken with the hijacker of an Egyptian plane said that he did it to take a “closer look” at his supposed suicide belt.
Ben Innes, 26, posed for a photo grinning next to the hijacker during the five-hour stand-off on Tuesday aboard the EgyptAir A320 jet and sent the picture to his friends.
Innes, from Leeds in northern England, told The Sun newspaper: “I’m not sure why I did it — I just threw caution to the wind while trying to stay cheerful in the face of adversity.
“I figured if his bomb was real I’d have nothing to lose anyway, so took a chance to get closer and look at it,” added the health and safety auditor based in Aberdeen, Scotland.
“So I stood by him and smiled for the camera while a stewardess did the snap. It has to be the best selfie ever,” he said.
-AFP
5:45am
Girl groped, pepper sprayed at Trump rally
As Donald Trump continues to tour the country on his probable way to the Republican nomination, things just keep getting worse.
A teenage girl was “groped” before being attacked with pepper spray while protesting at a Trump rally prompting one election guru to predict a fatality before election day.
The 15-year-old had joined a “Black Lives Matter” protest outside the event in Janesville, Wisconsin, when she became involved in a heated exchange with an elderly Trump supporter.
Shocking footage has emerged of the young girl, named as Alex, shouting “you touched my chest” at Trump supporters before she is blasted in the face with pepper spray, with the can held just inches from her face.
A police statement said: “A male in the crowd groped the 15-year-girl; when she pushed him away, another person in the (crowd) sprayed her.
“We are currently looking for two suspects, one for the sexual assault and one for the pepper spray.”
The teenager received medical attention at local hospitals, police said.
This 15-year-old protestor at a Trump rally was pepper-sprayed at an extremely close range:https://t.co/xIMTcjcIGF
— Mic (@micnews) March 30, 2016
Inside feud that brought Sydney to a halt
Five months of transport disruptions and chaotic commutes were brought to an abrupt halt this week after a fiery fight between the unions and the government.
Driver charged over meat cleaver incident
A man has been charged after reports a driver allegedly wielded a meat cleaver at other drivers on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Commuters warned of further travel chaos
Commuters are being urged to brace for another day of cancellations and delays as the rail union and the NSW government take their fight to court.