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The drunk and drugged driver who killed four children walking along a Sydney footpath to buy ice-creams has failed in his final bid to reduce his sentence. The High Court on Friday refused special leave to hear Samuel William Davidson's appeal that he had been subject to an unfair amount of jail time due to the incorrect use of sentencing principles. Davidson was driving erratically and speeding when he struck Veronique Sakr, 11, and her cousins, Sienna Abdallah, eight, and her siblings Angelina, 12, and Antony, 13. READ MORE: Aussie city lurching towards 165-year-old weather record Sienna Abdallah, Veronique Sakr, Antony Abdallah and Angelina Abdallah were killed in 2020. (AAP) The professional truck driver ploughed into them after his ute mounted a kerb at Oatlan...

French President Emmanuel Macron has imposed a highly unpopular bill raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 by shunning parliament and invoking a special constitutional power. Lawmakers were shouting, their voices shaking with emotion as Macron made the risky move, which is expected to trigger quick motions of no-confidence in his government. Riot police vans zoomed by outside the National Assembly, their sirens wailing. The proposed pension changes have prompted major strikes and protests across the country since January. Macron, who made it the flagship of his second term, argued the reform is needed to keep the pension system from diving into deficit as France's population ages and life expectancy lengthens. READ MORE: US releases footage of Russian fighter jet coll...

A gargantuan mass of seaweed that formed in the Atlantic Ocean is headed for the shores of Florida and other coastlines throughout the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to dump smelly and potentially dangerous heaps across beaches and put a big damper on tourist season. The seaweed, a variety called sargassum, has long formed large blooms in the Atlantic, and scientists have been tracking massive accumulations since 2011. But this year's sargassum mass could be the largest on record — spanning more than 5,000 miles from the coast of Africa to the Gulf of Mexico. The blob is currently pushing west and will pass through the Caribbean and up into the Gulf of Mexico during the summer, with the seaweed expected to become prevalent on beaches in Florida around July, according to Dr Brian L...

An escaped pet monkey has been shot after it ripped a woman's ear in half in the United States. Brittany Parker told a local reporter in Oklaholma she was sitting on her couch when the monkey launched at her front porch and tried to rip the door handle off so she called police. "I looked out the window and saw a monkey looking at me," Parker told Oklahola's local news service KOKH. READ MORE: Aussie city lurching towards 165-year-old weather record Police said they received a call about a monkey on someone's porch. (Dickson Police Department) "He crawled, jumped up my back, grabbed handfuls of hair and just ripped it out. "Then just ripped my ear almost completely off of my head." The monkey ran away after the attack. Parker said she can't work...

Australia was one of only 13 countries and territories with a "healthy" air quality last year, according to a new report, as air pollution surged to alarming levels. The report by IQAir, a company that tracks air quality worldwide, found that average annual air pollution in roughly 90 per cent of the countries and territories analysed exceeded the World Health Organisation's air quality guidelines, which are designed to help governments craft regulations to protect public health. IQAir analysed average air quality from 131 countries and territories, and found that just six countries — Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland and New Zealand — and seven territories in the Pacific and Caribbean, including Guam and Puerto Rico, met the WHO air quality guidelines, which call f...

The City of Light is losing its lustre with tons of garbage piling up on Paris sidewalks as sanitation workers were on strike for a ninth day. The creeping squalor is the most visible sign of widespread anger over a bill to raise the French retirement age by two years. The stench of rotting food has begun escaping from some rubbish bags and overflowing bins. Neither the Left Bank palace housing the Senate nor, across town, a street steps from the Elysee Palace, where waste from the presidential residence is apparently being stocked, was spared by the strike. More than 7000 tonnrs of garbage had piled up by Tuesday. Some of that was seen being tossed into white trucks from a private company along the protest route ahead of a planned march Wednesday, the third in nine days. Polic...