We’ve rounded up all the latest stories from Australia and around the world – so you don’t have to go searching.
1. ‘Wolf Creek’ rapist in court: “Do this or I kill you.”
A German backpacker who had recently arrived in the country was fed chocolate laced with sedatives, cable-tied and raped in a Queensland shearing shed.
Peter Van de Wetering, 48, faced a sentence hearing in Brisbane’s District Court yesterday after pleading guilty to multiple offences, including kidnapping and rape.
Fairfax Media reports that the court heard the man picked up the backpacker at a bus stop south of Warwick in August 2013 after she answered an advertisement for a nanny and farmhand position.
Van de Wetering turned up in a hired car wearing a disguise involving a beard, wig and moustache.
He fed the 19-year-old chocolate and had her hands cable-tied Crown prosecutor David Meredith said.
She was taken to a shearing shed where he also bound her legs and raped her, it was heard.
Mr Meredith said during the attack the man wrapped his hands around the girl’s throat.
“He told her…`You will do this or I will kill you’,” Mr Meredith said.
The girl lost consciousness and woke up in the early hours of the next morning on a road near Stanthorpe.
Van de Wetering has spent more than 590 days in pre-sentence custody his sentencing was adjourned until this afternoon.
2. Baby abandoned on doorstep of home.
The student residents of a share house in Herston in inner Brisbane were shocked to find a baby on their verandah on Sunday afternoon and tried to comfort the three-month-old with cartoons.. before finding she wasn’t really interested.