TRANSCRIPT:
- Hecklers interrupt the events of Labor and the Coalition on the first full day of election campaigning;
- An airshow re-opens after a serious crash on Friday afternoon;
- Novak Djokovic on the verge of breaking a key record.
Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have both been interrupted by protesters on the first full day of their respective election campaigns, ahead of the ballot on May 3.
The Prime Minister was heckled by a far-right anti-immigration vlogger during his first appearance, which took place at an urgent care clinic in Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s Dickson electorate.
Mr Dutton was confronted by a protester from the climate activism group Rising Tide.
It's the fifth such interruption by the group in the last fortnight, after disrupting Angus Taylor’s press conference, Peter Dutton’s Lowy Institute speech, Jim Chalmers’ pre-budget talk, and a Liberal Party fundraiser.
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International aid has begun to arrive in Myanmar after a devastating earthquake that has now killed almost 700 people.
A 37-strong team from China has landed in Yangon, Myanmar's former capital, carrying medicine and equipment to detect signs of life during the search and rescue operations that are now underway.
Russia has also said it's sending 120 experienced rescuers as well as doctors and search dogs.
Much of the devastation is understood to be in Myanmar's second-largest city, Mandalay, which lies close to the epicentre of the 7.7 magnitude quake that struck at lunchtime and was followed by a powerful aftershock and several more moderate ones.
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Australia's biggest airshow has resumed after a serious crash that has left an experienced pilot fighting for his life.
The pilot from the Newcastle-based Paul Bennet Airshows team remains in a serious condition after his plane hit the tarmac during a solo aerobatic display at the Airshow near Melbourne.
The doors to the Avalon airshow reopened this morning after being abandoned late on Friday so the Australian Transport Safety Bureau could investigate what happened.
ATSB boss Angus Mitchell says that inquiry could take some time to complete.
"I suspect it'll be a number of months before we have anything to say regarding what occurred yesterday, and most importantly, is there anything else that we can work with industry to make sure that occurrences like this are lessened. And we maintain the highest safety standards of all aviation operations."
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Communities in the north of Western Australia are bracing for potential flooding as Tropical Cyclone Dianne passes through the region.
The Bureau of Meteorology says heavy rainfall with six hourly totals of up to 100 millimetres is likely, along with flash flooding in northern and western parts of the Kimberley.
The Bureau says the cyclone has already triggered damaging wind gusts up to 100km/h in coastal areas.
But spokesperson Christie Johnson says the Cyclone is predicted to weaken within hours.
"We are expecting the system to move inland and rapidly weaken back into a low pressure system, it's likely to continue to move southwards through Saturday, and then on Sunday tend more south to south. Easterly as it moves into the interior of Western Australia."
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An Indigenous man has lost a court bid aimed at halting government-approved plan on how to rebury the Mungo Man and other skeletal remains.
Jason Kelly had argued the remains should be kept in a way to ensure preservation, with simple monuments and the construction of a cultural centre.
He said if the remains of Mungo Man and Mungo Lady or the other 106 ancestral remains were secretly reburied without memorials, they would be under threat of being treated in a manner inconsistent with the burial tradition.
But the Federal Court has ruled that the plan for the 42,000-year-old remains should proceed along the lines of a 2022 New South Wales Heritage and Willandra Lakes Region Aboriginal Advisory Group proposal.
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The moon will appear to take bites out of the sun this weekend during a partial solar eclipse in the Northern Hemisphere.
Astronomers say the eclipse will be visible on Saturday across Europe, western Africa, eastern North America and northern Asia.
Auriane Egal with the Planetarium of Montréal says the moon passes between the sun and Earth during a partial solar eclipse.
"Solar eclipses or lunar eclipses are just a game of light and shadow that are played by the sun, the moon, and the earth. So, during a solar eclipse, what happens is that you're going to have a kind of an alignment between the sun, the moon, and the earth, in that precise order."
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To sport,
Novak Djokovic is one win away from a hundredth career singles title after breezing past Grigor Dimitrov to reach the Miami Open final.
Djokovic has played 307 A-T-P Tour-level tournaments in his storied career and triumphed in 99 of them.
Ahead of the final, he has said he's in good shape to achieve the career-defining feat.
"I'm going to go all in. I haven't dropped a set. I'm playing really good tennis. As good as I've played in a long time. So hopefully, it (100th title) can come here."
