Crash at Perth Motorplex compounded by erroneously ‘doing what an adult told her to do’, court told
An eight-year-old girl who died after crashing her drag racer in Perth was going too fast when an official appeared to wave her towards the exit gate, an inquest has heard.
Anita Board suffered a catastrophic brain injury in the crash at Perth Motorplex on 11 November 2017, two days after her birthday when she reached the minimum age to compete.
Continue reading...A man who has delivered more than 26,000 white crosses to sites around the US, largely to remember victims of gun violence, has now found himself doing the same in his hometown: Aurora, Illinois, where five people were killed and six injured in a workplace shooting on Friday.
Related: Aurora shooting: background check failures let gunman keep firearm
Continue reading...Foreign ministry spokesman says speculation and sanctions will only ‘poison the atmosphere for cooperation’
China has hit back at suggestions it was behind a sophisticated cyber attack on Australia’s political parties, warning “irresponsible” and “baseless” speculation will heighten tensions.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, revealed on Monday cyber experts believe a state actor was responsible for the attack, which also targeted the networks of federal parliament, but didn’t say which country.
Continue reading...Tuesday: Seven MPs leave the British Labour party, citing antisemitism and Brexit. Plus: Facebook accused of breaking privacy and competition law
Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 19 February.
Continue reading...Many are calling for the Isis recruit to be shown no mercy, but treating at-risk young people as individuals has to be the better path
The CCTV images of the three teenage girls Shamima Begum, Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase passing through Gatwick airport four years ago en route to join the Islamic State “caliphate” were shocking for much of the British public. That Isis was radicalising people online was no surprise, but the fact these three girls were as young as 15 and from the same academy school in Bethnal Green, east London, cast the risks of radicalisation closer to home.
The discredited counter-radicalisation strategy, Prevent, was meant to stem the recruitment of “homegrown” terrorists, including those recruited into the far right, but has disproportionately focused on Islamist extremism without yielding any significant concrete results. Last year, for example, an essay by the late Marxist political theorist Norman Geras on the political uses of violence was deemed so dangerous under the Prevent programme that Reading University students were warned not to leave it lying around where it could be seen “by those who are not prepared to view it”. The university flagged the text as an extremist piece of work that should only be read in a secure setting.
Continue reading...