WA Brekkie Blog | Thursday, January 19, 2017

PERTH: Fremantle Docker Michael Johnson made a brief appearance at Perth Magistrates Court on Wednesday over an allegation of assault on a Bunbury school teacher following a bizarre incident at Leederville kebab shop Cosmos in November. Read more. 

MANDURAH: Mandurah’s Labor MP David Templeman met with Allambee Counselling manager Nicole Lambert on Wednesday morning to announce his funding promise for the organisation, if elected.

Mr Templeman said not enough Royalties for Regions funding went towards bettering Mandurah’s crucial health services, such as the domestic violence crisis counselling Allambee provides. Read more.

NORTHAM: A Northam lady is on a mission to gather and donate 500 beanies to cancer patients by the end of the year. 

The journey came about when Karen Ducat started sewing for the wheatbelt initiative Comfort Quilts. Read more. 

Need a national news snapshot first thing – well, we have you covered. 

►GOULBURN, NSW: Tales of devastating losses have been shared at The Loaded Dog pub after fires sweep through the region.  Employee Vicki Bowes said she heard of one landowner who had lost 200 head of sheep at Lower Boro: “He lost stock in the fire before Christmas. He had just replaced those and now he’s lost more in this fire.”...read the full story. 

►MELBOUNRE, VIC: Rainbow Serpent Music and Arts Festival organisers are calling for a fresh approach to recreational drugs laws after a horror weekend in Melbourne resulted in three deaths…full story here.

►SYDNEY, NSW: 40 years on the memories of the Granville train disaster are still raw for rescuers like Gerry Buchtmann who pulled both the living and the dead from beneath a road bridge that had collapsed onto two commuter train carriages in the nation’s worst rail disaster.

► WAGGA WAGGA, NSW: If it’s so hot outside you wouldn’t walk your dog, why would you race a horse? animal activists ask.  This comes after a full cart of races went ahead on Tuesday in temperatures above 40 degrees...catch up on the full story. 

►Properties have been damaged and other homes remained under threat as bushfires raged into the evening across the Hunter Valley and near the ACT...catch up on the latest here.

►A toddler has been taken to hospital in a serious condition after he was pulled unconscious from a backyard swimming pool in Sydney's west.  The boy is the latest victim in a string of water-related incidents this summer...full story here.

► 2016 has been declared the hottest year on record.  The World Meteorological Organisation said temperatures in 2016 were about 1.1 degrees higher than the pre-industrial period...That beat the 2015 record by 0.07 degrees.

► Now will Julian Assange be extradited to the US to face charges? Last week, the WikiLeaks Twitter account, widely believed to be run by Julian Assange, tweeted: "If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition.”  But he has in the past promised much more than he delivered.

►INDONESIA: Permadi Arya became famous – or infamous, depending on how you look at it – for his satirical YouTube videos lampooning extremism.  One of them, You are Shiite, sends up those who preach that only Sunni Muslims will be guaranteed a plot of land in heaven.  But not everyone was amused.

With two generations of leather tanning in her blood and a love of nature, taxidermy was a natural progression for Hillston local Cassandra Hall.

Her grandfather was a drover and the source of Cas’ skills in leather working.

Not scared to get her hands dirty as a child, Cassandra would go out hunting with him and help mount his prized catches.

Full story and photos here.