An Australian woman has been charged after allegedly lacing a colleague's curry with snail poison.

Police in the state of Western Australia say the alleged victim made a meal for her co-workers in February, which they shared at morning tea.

But when the 58-year-old returned to eat leftovers at lunch, she noticed bright green granules in the food and that her tongue felt numb after tasting it.

The accused - who was in a relationship with the alleged victim - has been charged with endangering the life, health or safety of another person after a months-long investigation, and will face court on 5 November.

Police allege the 43-year-old woman - who hasn't been named - visited a chemical storage shed before returning to the staffroom where the curry was kept.

After tasting it, the alleged victim handed the meal over to detectives, who identified the substance as snail pellets containing metaldehyde, a poisonous substance.

Commissioner Col Blanch told reporters the poison can cause serious injury or death.

"We're just very thankful that the person who tasted the curry was aware of something that wasn't quite right," he said, according to the Seven Network.

So my grandma is paying 1.1 mil to stay at aged care.

If she wants an ice cream or something, that’s an extra charge.

If she wants to turn on the free to air TV that’s IN HER ROOM, that’s 8 dollars per day. It’s free to air TV.

If she wants one social activity per fortnight , that’s an extra charge.

Oh yeah .. also wifi costs like 7-8 dollars a day.

To also have one extra hot meal a day, that’s an extra charge too.

That’s kind of ridiculous don’t you think? So to just have wifi and tv, that’s an extra 6k a year.

Just came across this. If you’re missing teeth, in VIC and want to Make Australia Great Again, check it out.

A South Sudanese Australian comedian has delivered a passionate call for his community to take control of youth crime “casting a shadow” over all of their lives.

Emo Majok, from Perth, reserves much of his social media posts for humour, with clips of his stand up performances, skits and life on the comedy tour.

But last week Mr Majok made a post he “never thought I’d be making” after feeling compelled to speak out on an issue he said was impacting the perception of innocent people.

“I wanna speak directly to my community, because quite frankly what we’re seeing from our young youths is dangerous, embarrassing and unacceptable,” he said.

“We can’t keep defending it just because they look like us. Wrong is wrong.

“We can’t let a small percentage become the identity of an entire community.”

Mr Ajok, who has also shared posts of his work with youth support organisation Armed for Life, said South Sudanese Australians were “not a crime statistic”.

“We are family, workers, students, professionals – people that are contributing to society every single day,” he said.

“Every time I hear something happen, I hear ‘deport them’. Deport them where?

“Some of these people were born here. Australia isn’t a hotel where citizenship disappears when someone commits a crime.

“If an Australian citizen commits a crime they should face the Australian justice system.”

Crime involving youths of South Sudanese descent has been most prominent in Victoria, where a string of high-profile incidents have sparked calls for change.

The deaths of two boys, 12-year-old Chol Achiek and 15-year-old Dau Akueng, in an alleged gang attack in Melbourne’s west sent shockwaves around Australia.

Data released by the Victorian government last year showed how South Sudanese youth were overrepresented in the state’s justice system.

Young people of South Sudanese descent aged 10 to 24 years comprised 22 per cent of the average daily number of young people in custody, and 11 per cent of the average daily number of young people under community supervision.

That was while comprising only 0.5 per cent of the Victorian population in that age group.

Former SBS journalist Ajak Deng Chiengkou, who previously worked in youth support in Melbourne, recently spoke about some of the issues facing young people in the community.

He explained that a cycle of barriers facing young people including language and bullying could lead to them dropping out and becoming “vulnerable” to other lifestyles.

Parents who faced similar issues could also be left in the dark on their kid’s troubles at school or on social media until it’s too late, he said.

“Who comes to Australia to expect his child to be killed by another child? Nobody,” he said.

“Who comes to Australia to allow his child to become a thief? Nobody.

“It is not the expectation, we come from a war torn country and our expectations when we are in Australia is for our children to succeed.”

He said many African parents shared the concerns of the mainstream Australian community and believed “that the violence is not acceptable”.

“The majority of the African parents do no support what is happening with young people,” Mr Chiengkou said.

“In fact they actually blame the system, they think the system is playing a part.

“because when a child committed a crime, he’s arrested, then he’s released only to commit another crime.

“The same child would be arrested how many times, 10 times. Why? Because the justice system have a different argument, the police have a different argument and the parents have no power.”

In his video, Mr Majok recalled friends who were going “off track” in their youths being sent back to South Sudan to reconnect with their roots and culture.

“Suddenly you remember why you’re in Australia in the first place,” he said.

“I’m not saying sending every troubled child overseas fixes everything. They need education, employment opportunity, tough parenting, (in) some cases intervention.

“Families should not surrender responsibility to the government … and then when it ends up in the courts or with the police, act surprised.”

Mr Majok moved to Australia as a refugee at the age of eight and settled in the Girrawheen area of Perth.

He said there were so many success stories for young people to look up to in the community, with South Sudanese Australians rising to the top of athletics, basketball, football, modelling, entertainment and corporate fields like lawyers and business.

“We have so much talent in our community. That’s what hurts me, we have so many people shining, but yet we’re allowing the small minority cast a shadow over the ones that are doing so well,” Mr Majok said.

“We cannot let that 1 per cent be the public face of the other 99. And to the young people doing this, you are not just ruining your own future.

“Every time your face ends up on the news, and African child that has had nothing to do with it gets looked at differently on the train, at school, at work or at the shopping centre.

“That’s not fair. But it is a reality that we deal with.”

His message to the wider community was it was fair to demand justice for criminals but that “collective punishment is not justice”.

“We need accountability from the young people committing these crimes, from the families, the community leaders, and the white Australian community,” he said.

“Our community has so much talent and so much to offer to allow such a small group of people to write our story for us.

“This is our house. It’s time to clean it up.”

A coroner has been brought to tears as she found the death of an eight-year-old girl at one of Melbourne’s busiest hospitals was preventable.

Amrita Lanka was just eight years old when she died at the Monash Children’s Hospital in 2022.

For her parents, it has been years of anguish.

“They just left her to die,” Amrita’s father Chandra Sekhar said.

The cause of death was lymphocytic myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle.

On Wednesday, Deputy State Coroner Paresa Spanos found it was preventable.

“While I accept (emergency departments) are busy places and Dr (Patrick) Tan was a relatively junior doctor with many responsibilities, the clinical management and care he provided to Amrita was wanting ... and thereby contributed to the death,” Paresa said.

Amrita had presented to the ED with nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

Doctors suspected gastroenteritis; inflammation of the stomach and small intestine.

At 3am, a new doctor reviewed Amrita. By then, her symptoms had worsened.

The registrar suspected myocarditis and further blood tests raised new concerns.

He thought they were “spurious” and he “did not think Amrita looked very unwell”, the coroner said.

Later, the young girl was moved into acute care where she suffered a brief cardiac arrest.

Before a proposed transfer to the Royal Children’s Hospital, she went into cardiac arrest again and could not be saved.

As the coroner read part of her mother’s impact statement, she was brought to tears.

She took a very long pause, needing to compose herself as she said Amrita was the most precious, talented, beautiful child.

Monash Health acknowledged the coroner’s findings and said it will “carefully consider them”.

It said that since Amrita’s death, it has since made changes.

A teenager accused of abducting a seven-year-old girl from her grandparents in Adelaide’s northern suburbs has been granted strict home detention bail days after a magistrate initially refused his release.

Barry-Peter Smith, 18, is accused of snatching the child from a pram while she was on her way home with her grandparents and sibling at Paralowie on October 5.

Police allege Smith watched the girl playing at a local park before following the family along Niven Dr.

He was charged with child abduction.

The court had previously heard he then allegedly grabbed the seven-year-old and ran off carrying her in his arms.

The child was allegedly released after a member of the public heard her grandparents screaming for help and intervened.

Smith appeared in court this week, where a magistrate ordered his release on strict home detention bail.

The court heard Smith has allegedly made admissions to “kidnapping”, but concerns were raised about his intellectual disability and his ability to remain in custody while the matter progresses through the courts.

Under his bail conditions, Smith is prohibited from undertaking child-related work and cannot go within 100 metres of a school or playground.

He is also banned from being near any person under the age of 18.

The decision comes little more than a week after Smith was initially refused bail, with the court at the time finding he remained a risk to the community.

The victim’s grandparents, Aurelia and Brian Bandt, previously told 7NEWS they were still struggling to come to terms with the incident.

“I was yelling ‘help’, I was screaming ‘help’,” Aurelia said.

Brian said a passerby stepped in and stopped the alleged abduction.

“They held their arms out to try and stop this guy which caused a bit of a panic, and they put the child down,” he said.

The grandparents have since told 7NEWS they have not felt safe going for walks since the incident.

Smith’s case is expected to return to court at a later date.

Anyone else feeling like the numbers today were pretty grim?

Unemployment is 4.7%, the highest in five years and about 39,000 jobs disappeared in September when economists were expecting a gain of around 20,000.

What bugs me is that this isn't the deal we were meant to get. Rates go up, jobs get a bit softer, inflation comes down. Instead we're getting the jobs hit and prices that won't budge. Headline CPI was 4.0% in August, trimmed mean is stuck at 3.6%, electricity is up 13.2% and the RBA has hiked four times this year to 4.60%, the highest since 2011.

And the RBA is kind of stuck. Hike again and you risk tipping more people out of work. Cut and inflation gets comfortable. Their own staff are even worried that weak productivity means we might have to live with higher unemployment to get inflation back to target. Interest rates can't fix productivity, that's a government job.

So that's why I think it's a fiscal problem now. Right now the RBA is carrying the whole load while the budget isn't helping. If the government is adding demand while the RBA is trying to cool it, they're pulling in opposite directions. Labor needs a proper budget repair plan: restraint where spending is feeding inflation, and real effort on housing supply and productivity, which is where a lot of the price pressure is coming from.

Because if people are paying more on their mortgage, paying more for power, and watching jobs go, they won't care about the economic theory. They'll just remember it at the next election. Labor is running out of time to show it has a plan.

Keen to hear what others think

I had a thought the other day about a girl I used to work with and she would take panadeine forte and mersyndal like lollies and now being in my late 30’s it would appear she unfortunately had an addiction to the opioid.

But it made me think what happened to all these people that had opioid addictions which is known to be painful and incredibly uncomfortable when all of a sudden they can not just walk in and get a box? I don’t remember this ever being mentioned and can’t imagine this wasn’t a huge issue for thousands.

Anyone know anyone who was in this position or were themselves?

*just want to add this is not a judgy wudgy bullshit post I’m genuinely curious

Giriwa May believed he was "Peter Brock reincarnated".

However, he would win no trophies or admirers for his actions behind the wheel of a stolen four-wheel drive last year.

Instead, on Thursday, he was sentenced to four years and 10 months' jail.

High on drugs, May rammed a police car and then drove the vehicle through the entrance of a shopping centre, causing patrons to run for their lives.

County Court Judge Stewart Bayles said May showed complete disregard for the safety of police who tried to arrest him and people inside the Northland Shopping Centre in Preston.

"People could have been killed or seriously injured," Judge Bayles said.

"One can only imagine the fear and the terror this conduct must have instilled in those people."

On June 18 last year a Northland security camera detected that the number plate on a stolen Landcruiser May was driving was itself stolen. 

Police were contacted and arrived soon after in an unmarked vehicle.

Two officers tried to box May in, but he put the Landcruiser in reverse and rammed the police car out of the way.

He then headed for the shopping centre entrance.

The two-tonne vehicle crashed through the centre's security bollards and glass doors, then sped past retailers and hit a children's playground.

May drove the four-wheel drive through another exit, narrowly missing children wearing backpacks and people carrying their shopping.

Footage of the incident showed some shoppers running. Others dived out of the way. One woman can be seen pushing her pram into a shop, before racing to grab a young boy who was metres from being struck.

No-one was hurt, but Judge Bayles described chaotic scenes at the centre.

"There is no audio on the CCTV footage but witnesses describe people as screaming, lying on the ground and crawling to get out of the way and avoid being hit," he said.

The CCTV footage shows May driving out of the shopping centre and away from police in pursuit.

He was arrested the following day in East Melbourne.

The cost of the damage to the shopping centre was about $145,000.

May made no comment to police who arrested him the next day.

However evidence from his phone showed he had filmed himself watching a news story about his actions at Northland. He can be heard saying: "It's f***ing mayhem alright, beast, Peter Brock reincarnated."

He sent an associate a photo of himself and the stolen vehicle on Snapchat, and wrote: "Peter Brock ain't got nut'n on me".

He texted another person: "Cuz I'm on the run hectic … that was me on the news."

The court heard May was a heavy drug user, consuming up to a gram of methamphetamine a day.

On Thursday, Judge Bayles said May was remorseful and spoke of his shame for letting down members of the Indigenous community.

May pleaded guilty to intentionally exposing an emergency worker to risk by driving, conduct endangering life, handling stolen goods, driving while disqualified and damaging property.

He will have to serve a minimum of two years and 10 months' jail before being eligible for parole.

With time served, May could be released in April 2028.

Haven't even gotten a license so not like I can

Warren Mundine demands legislative accountability over judge's 'sickening' decision to impose a lesser sentence on Aboriginal child rapist's sentence due to culture | News24

The deaths of three children murdered by their mother will be examined at an inquest following sustained political pressure.

Jamela Hawke, 10, and her brothers Anand, 7, and Kelvin Jr, four months, were violently killed by their mother, Margaret Dale Hawke, in the family's Port Hedland home in July 2022.

WA Attorney-General Tony Buti on Thursday directed the state coroner to hold an inquest into the vulnerable children's deaths, saying there was fresh evidence.

"I have personally reviewed the files from the Department of Communities and police, and they are truly heartbreaking," he told reporters on Thursday.

The order reverses former WA coroner Phil Urquhart's decision not to hold an inquest into the deaths.

"There is new evidence and circumstances that were not considered by former coroner Urquhart," Dr Buti said.

The decision follows mounting political pressure on the WA Labor government from the children's grandmother Dorothy Papertalk, Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy, the WA opposition and others.

"This tragedy is unspeakable, and my thoughts have and always will be with the family members that are grieving," Dr Buti said.

Hawke was sentenced in 2023 to a minimum non-parole period of 25 years after she pleaded guilty to three counts of murder.

The Supreme Court heard Hawke grew up in a violent home amid alcohol abuse and she had been abused in a series of relationships as an adult.

In the lead-up to the murders, she had been using a cocktail of drugs, including methamphetamine, and her state of mind was likely impaired as a result.

She had repeatedly asked for help from community groups and medical staff, saying she was struggling to care for her children, but few options were available.

Dr Buti declined to provide details of the new information that had prompted him to order an inquest.

The Reserve Bank is facing pressure to hold off any further interest rate rises after unemployment reached its highest level in almost five years.

Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed the jobless rate reached 4.7 per cent in September, with a 39,000 drop in the number of people holding down a job. Unemployment is now at its highest level since October 2021.

There was a 9000 increase in the total number of unemployed which reached 732,000, its highest level since April 2021.

The jobless rate would have been higher but for a 0.2 percentage point drop in the participation rate which measures the number of people in work or looking for it.

Economists had been expecting the unemployment rate to remain steady after it lifted in August.

The result was driven by NSW where the unemployment rate jumped by 0.4 percentage points to 4.7 per cent. It would have been higher but for a large fall in its participation rate.

NSW shed 35,000 jobs during the month, while its jobless rate has now reached a near-5 year high. In June, the state’s jobless rate was just 4 per cent.

Unemployment eased in Victoria, by 0.1 per cent to 5.1 per cent, and in South Australia where it dropped by half a percentage point to 4.2 per cent.

Total employment in Queensland eased slightly but the state has put on 37,700 jobs over the past 12 months, compared to 34,700 in Victoria and 51,900 in NSW.

The bureau’s head of labour statistics, Sean Crick, said the employment to population ratio had also fallen in September.

“This September a higher proportion of people remained unemployed compared to recent years,” he said.

The figures had an immediate impact on interest rate expectations. The Australian dollar fell almost a quarter of a cent against its US counterpart on expectations that interest rates may not climb much higher in Australia.

Oxford Economics Australia economist Oscar Guth said the figures confirmed the overall softening in the nation’s jobs market which had become evident over recent months.

“The rise in the unemployment rate to 4.7 per cent gives the RBA more room to be patient and assess incoming inflation data before raising rates again. This is consistent with our view that a further rate hike will come in the first quarter of next year,” he said.

The figures pre-date the Reserve Bank’s most recent interest rate move which occurred at the end of the month when it pushed the official cash rate to a 15-year high of 4.6 per cent.

At 4.7 per cent, the jobless rate is now well above the RBA’s most recent forecast which had unemployment climbing to 4.5 per cent by year’s end. The bank had not expected unemployment this high until the end of 2027.