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Outback Wrangler star Matt Wright pleads not guilty to charges after fatal helicopter crash

Outback Wrangler star Matt Wright pleads not guilty to charges after fatal helicopter crash

The Guardian28-07-2025
Outback Wrangler star Matt Wright has pleaded not guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice more than three years after a fatal helicopter crash.
The celebrity croc-wrangler was charged after the crash that killed co-star Chris 'Willow' Wilson in February 2022.
Wearing a light blue shirt and blue jeans, Wright appeared calm when he fronted the supreme court in Darwin on Monday.
He entered not guilty pleas for three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice when he was arraigned, kissing his wife during an adjournment.
The 2022 crash in remote West Arnhem Land killed Wilson, with pilot Sebastian Robinson also seriously injured.
The trial is scheduled to begin on Wednesday and is expected to take four weeks, hearing from about 25 witnesses.
Wright rose to fame starring in National Geographic's Outback Wrangler and the Netflix series Wild Croc Territory.
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Country singer Lainey Wilson is bringing her Whirlwind tour to Australia and New Zealand in 2026
Country singer Lainey Wilson is bringing her Whirlwind tour to Australia and New Zealand in 2026

Daily Mail​

timean hour ago

  • Daily Mail​

Country singer Lainey Wilson is bringing her Whirlwind tour to Australia and New Zealand in 2026

Country singer Lainey Wilson is heading to Australia and New Zealand in February 2026. The Heart Like A Truck hitmaker will perform shows in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth to celebrate the deluxe edition of her record Whirlwind. 'AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND! I'm bringing the Whirlwind World Tour down under in 2026 and I want to see you there,' she wrote on Instagram on Sunday. 'Tickets & VIP Packages go on sale to the public Friday 15 Aug. @ 12pm local, but you can get first access to presale tickets starting Tuesday 12 Aug.' Lainey will perform in Auckland on February 6 and Christchurch on February 8 before heading to Australia and playing in Brisbane on February 11. She will also perform in Newcastle on February 14, Sydney on February 16, Melbourne on February 19 and Adelaide on February 22 before ending her tour in Perth on February 26. Frontier Members can access the presale for Lainey's Australian tour from 12pm local time. General tickets go on sale from 1pm local time on Friday 15th August. This show coincides with the release of the deluxe edition of her album Whirlwind, which will be released on August 22. It features five new songs including Somewhere Over Laredo and Bell Bottoms Up. Lainey was recently nominated for two 2024 Grammys, including Country Album of the Year and Best Country Duo/Group Performance. In 2023, Lainey was also nominated and took home many awards, including nine Country Music Association Awards nominations, where she won the coveted Entertainer of the Year along with four other categories, tying the one-year record first set in 1969. Lainey was the most nominated artist at the 2023 CMA Awards with a record-breaking nine nominations, and five wins including Entertainer of the Year. Her recent singles, 'Watermelon Moonshine' and 'Save Me' with Jelly Roll topped the Country charts marking her fifth and sixth No. 1's, making her the lead female artist with the most No.1's this decade. Her critically acclaimed album, Bell Bottom Country, rose up Billboard's Top Album Chart and Country Albums Chart, amassing over 700 million streams to date and has earned her the title of CMA and ACM Album of the Year and a Grammy nomination for Country Album of the Year. Adding to her growing list of endeavours, Wilson was honoured at Billboard's Women in Music Awards with the Rulebreaker Award, and most recently joined forces with Wrangler as the face of their 2023 fall/winter women's collection. She made her acting debut in Season 5 of the smash hit series Yellowstone as a musician character named Abby. She premiered her original Smell Like Smoke as well as showcased other hits off her recent album including Watermelon Moonshine and Hold My Halo on the show.

Inside the deadly Chinese school trip to Australia that ended in tragedy - as girl, 13, faces murder charge for allegedly stabbing her 14-year-old roommate to death
Inside the deadly Chinese school trip to Australia that ended in tragedy - as girl, 13, faces murder charge for allegedly stabbing her 14-year-old roommate to death

Daily Mail​

time2 hours ago

  • Daily Mail​

Inside the deadly Chinese school trip to Australia that ended in tragedy - as girl, 13, faces murder charge for allegedly stabbing her 14-year-old roommate to death

Part of a Chinese school exchange trip has been abandoned after one of the girl students was allegedly stabbed to death by another at a suburban Australian home. A 13-year-old girl accused of murdering her friend, 14, remains in custody while her parents are expected to fly in from their home in China to speak to detectives. They were part of a group of 15 Chinese students on an exchange trip from schools in China associated with the Newcastle Waldorf School in the NSW Hunter region. The two teenagers had been staying with hosts Steve Moloney and Tracey Taylor at their home in Edgeworth, Newcastle. The couple had gone to bed on Monday evening when they allegedly heard a commotion and discovered the 14-year-old fatally wounded. Police arrested the 13-year-old at the scene. The Newcastle Waldorf School this week held a candlelit ceremony but classmates revealed the other Chinese students on the trip were too traumatised to attend. They have not been seen since the tragedy unfolded, one student revealed. 'There are around 15 of them, across a few year groups, but none of them came back to school again,' they told the Daily Mail. 'Some had made good friends here, but I don't think we will see them again before they leave on Saturday. 'We sang, lit candles and laid flowers to remember the girl who lost her life. 'The school has offered counselling to us and we have been making cards for the other students who came with them.' It is believed the alleged victim and her alleged killer did not know each other before making the trip to Australia on the study program. 'Most of the kids met for the first time at the airport in China,' said the student. 'But they had ten hours together before arriving in Australia and saw each other every day, so the news was really shocking to all of them.' The Newcastle school's co-principals, Peter Muddle and Tracey Ashton, said they had arranged extra counselling to support everyone through this very difficult time. 'We are deeply shocked and saddened by the tragic incident involving two visiting Chinese students who have been in Australia since last week as part of a tour group,' they said in a joint statement. 'Our priority has been to ensure care and professional support is in place for our school community, as well as for the visiting students and their carers who find themselves dealing with grief far away from their families.' They also confirmed the teenagers' host couple were not affiliated with the school. 'The tragedy occurred at a residence where both students were billeted,' the statement continued. 'Although the host family is not connected with our school, we are thinking of them as they too must cope with this ordeal.' It's understood the group were from various Waldorf schools across China and are scheduled to leave Newcastle on Saturday before spending a further week in Australia. A Waldorf or Steiner school is based on the educational philosophy of German Rudolf Steiner, which emphasises a holistic approach to education. The school focuses on intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual development rather than just academic performance. The program is held by Beijing-based tour agency Depu and run by Italian Amerigo Sivelli. The tour in Australia is the second this year, with another group of students enjoying the same three-week itinerary in April. After the planned two weeks in Newcastle, the students were due to visit more of Australia before returning home. 'After a marvellous time at the Newcastle Waldorf School, we took our Chinese students travelling to Sydney and Melbourne,' the company posted to Facebook in April alongside images of the trip. 'We focused on the relationship between First Nations People (Aboriginal people) and Western colonisation in Australian art as well as on nature connection activities. 'Opening up to new questions makes us more vulnerable and fragile, but it's also a courageous step towards our future.' It is not known if the remaining tour - which is understood to include a tour of the Great Ocean Road in Victoria - is going ahead. Strike Force Aggnes has been established and an investigation is underway with the assistance of the State Crime Command's Homicide Squad. The 13-year-old has been charged with murder and remains in custody after appearing before a Children's Court on Wednesday. The court heard that the 13-year-old was travelling with an 'extraordinary,' amount of medication. Daily Mail contacted the program organisers, who said they were 'too busy' to comment on the death of the child.

You can mute – but you can never leave. Why have WhatsApp groups become so stressful?
You can mute – but you can never leave. Why have WhatsApp groups become so stressful?

The Guardian

time2 hours ago

  • The Guardian

You can mute – but you can never leave. Why have WhatsApp groups become so stressful?

It's the new last taboo. Officially added to the list of topics you absolutely must not discuss, along with politics, money and religion: the WhatsApp side group. Apparently nobody told Melanie C from the Spice Girls though, because she has just revealed far too much about theirs. 'There are subgroups within the group,' she told the Sydney Morning Herald's Sunday Life magazine. 'I definitely know there is a chat group that doesn't contain me, but somewhere else we keep Ginger or Posh out.' Staying up to date with your side chats – not least ensuring each message you send doesn't go on the wrong thread – is the most anxiety-ridden full-time job most of us have ever had. A friend of mine has a group with five mums from her daughter's class, and another whittled down to four of them, then more with three, two and one. How she keeps track without the use of a murder investigation board with red strings pinned to photographs is genuinely a mystery. The latest data tells us what we already knew: WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world with more than 3 billion monthly active users. I think at this point I'm in a group with all of them. There's no faster, easier, more convenient way of staying in touch and making arrangements – and that's the problem. It's so quick and simple to set up a group that any social situation including more than two participants seems to result in one being formed. Often the conversation goes on, whether out of desire or politeness, long after the event has passed. This method of interacting can lead you down some ludicrous avenues, such as the recent debate I found myself in about whether 'hearting' an invitation means you're simply thanking the person for their kind offer or formally accepting it in a legally binding manner. (For the record, it's the former, right?) Complicating matters further is that we're not only in groups with our mates, but also those we know only barely, or sometimes not at all. I'm on a local WhatsApp group, formed to support quarantining neighbours in 2020, that's now a forum for questions that could have been Googled, passive-aggressive comments, and generous offers of free furniture people can't be bothered to take to the tip. It's filled with characters I've mostly never met but feel intimately acquainted with, and I have several side groups with friends on my road discussing the more controversial posts. Even the profile picture is divisive – one member's cat, Daisy, who half the street love and enjoy sharing sightings of, and the other half (secretly) hate because she defecates on their doorsteps. Recently a newcomer who'd left his back door open in the hot weather reported that Daisy had strolled into his house and started eating his dinner, with photographs to prove it. My phone got so hot through side-chat action I was worried it might explode. Worth it. It's fast becoming second nature to double check that each message is being put on the correct thread before posting, like the modern equivalent of the adage 'measure twice because you can only cut once'. Deleting, even if you're so lightning quick nobody had yet read it, leaves a notification that's such a clear admission of guilt you may as well have not bothered. Imagine what everyone would be saying in the side chats about you then! I took a vow of silence on our school chat when a fellow mum's husband read ours over her shoulder and observed sagely: 'No one comes out of this looking good, do they?' Legend has it that another class has a note pinned to the top of their group with the rules that must be abided by within, including, 'No LOLs.' The author's ears must have been warmer than my phone the day she typed that. And anyway, there's only one real law when it comes to WhatsApp groups and subgroups – muting the thread is fine, but actually exiting is not the done thing. Whatever you preface your farewell with, those you leave behind will get the message '*Your name* has left the group', with all the hair flicking and flouncing out that implies. Etiquette-wise, it's a no. You've made/been added without consent to your WhatsApp bed, and now you will lie in it for the rest of your life. A la the Hotel California, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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