标签： Oceania

A violent, orchestrated attack on a 17-year-old in North Queensland has led to eight new charges, bringing the total number of accused individuals facing criminal proceedings to 11, Queensland Police have confirmed.

The incident unfolded on July 18, when the injured teenager was discovered by passing joggers around 6:35 a.m. in remote bushland just off Cape Pallarenda Road in Town Common, near Townsville. When found, he was tied to a tree with severe, life-altering injuries, and was immediately transported to Townsville University Hospital in stable condition. Law enforcement later confirmed the victim required surgical intervention to treat his wounds.

Initially, three suspects were taken into custody and charged shortly after the attack in July. That group includes a 13-year-old boy from Deeragun, who faces four charges: unlawful deprivation of liberty, assault causing bodily harm while in company, grievous bodily harm, and torture. A 14-year-old girl from Kirwan faces the same four offences and has been processed under Queensland’s Youth Justice Act. The third original suspect is a 35-year-old Kirwan woman, who faces the same four core charges plus an additional count of driving with a suspended Queensland driver’s license. She is scheduled to appear in court on September 28.

On Monday, police announced that eight more people have now been arrested and charged in connection with the brutal assault. Five adult suspects were taken into custody: a 40-year-old Heatley woman, a 36-year-old Cranbrook woman, a 32-year-old Kirwan woman, a 30-year-old Heatley man, and a 24-year-old Heatley man. All five face one count each of the same four core offences: unlawful deprivation of liberty, grievous bodily harm, assault causing bodily harm in company, and torture. They are set to appear before Townsville Magistrates Court this coming Monday.

Alongside the five adults, three 15-year-old boys were also charged with the same four offences. Two of the teens are from Kirwan and already appeared at Townsville Children’s Court on August 8, while the third boy, from Mount Low, is scheduled for a court appearance on August 14.

Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Miles, head of the Townsville Child Abuse and Sexual Crime Unit, shared key details about the investigation and the nature of the attack. He confirmed the attack was not random, but a pre-planned act coordinated by the group of suspects against the 17-year-old victim. Only some of the accused are known to the victim, he added. Miles also revealed that after abandoning the injured teen, the suspects engaged in dangerous driving around the Townsville Strand area, which ended in a vehicle collision.

Queensland Police investigations into the incident remain ongoing. Law enforcement is urging any member of the public who has information related to the attack, regardless of how minor it may seem, to contact investigators to assist with the case.

South Australia is grappling with a troubling upward trend in dangerous close calls between trains and road users, newly released government data and compiled security footage have revealed. Released to mark national Rail Safety Week, the collection of closed-circuit and on-train footage captures a series of heart-stopping near-disasters that have underscored growing risks along the state’s busiest commuter rail lines.

In one of the most viral clips from the compilation, a woman hesitates mid-step while crossing active tracks before reaching the opposite side, only for a speeding passenger train to emerge from around a bend mere seconds after she clears the rail bed. A second incident shows a cyclist darting across tracks just as an oncoming train approaches at full speed, narrowly escaping a catastrophic collision. These clips are far from isolated: official statistics for the 2025-26 fiscal year show 163 dangerous near-miss incidents were recorded across Adelaide’s Metro rail network, marking a 4% year-on-year increase. That works out to an average of one near-disaster every two days.

The data also pinpoints one particularly high-risk corridor: the Gawler line, which connects central Adelaide to growing northern suburban communities including Elizabeth, Mawson Lakes and Salisbury. The busy commuter line accounted for 72 of the state’s total near-miss incidents, or 44% of all cases, with incidents jumping more than 20% compared to the previous year. In a contrasting trend, Adelaide’s tram network recorded a major 30% drop in near-miss incidents over the same period.

Further breakdown of the data reveals other alarming patterns. Incidents at designated pedestrian rail crossings jumped 54% to 98 total cases in 2025-26. Cyclists were involved in 35% of all recorded near-misses, and the most dangerous window for risky behavior around tracks falls between 7pm and 8pm daily.

South Australia’s Transport Minister Joe Szakacs described the compiled footage of near-misses as truly terrifying, warning that reckless behavior around rail lines carries far-reaching consequences for entire communities. “The irresponsible actions by a few reckless individuals can have a lasting impact on those around them,” Szakacs said. “We are seeing an alarming rise in these close calls which can have a traumatic effect on our train drivers and cause injuries to passengers when emergency brakes are activated.”

Szakacs emphasized that the timing of the public release of footage and data is intentional, coinciding with Rail Safety Week to remind commuters and local residents of the deadly risks of distraction and impatience around active rail lines. He urged all people crossing tracks to remove headphones, put away mobile devices, and stay fully focused on their surroundings to avoid preventable tragedies.

What began as a grisly reported discovery of a body in a suitcase quickly unravelled into one of the most unusual police cases of the year in regional New South Wales, Australia, after forensic tests confirmed the supposed corpse was actually an incredibly realistic doll.

The incident unfolded on Sunday afternoon, when two men out for a casual weekend drive pulled over for a rest near the tiny rural village of Oallen, roughly 230 kilometers southwest of Sydney. Spotting a discarded suitcase by the side of the road, the pair opened it to find what appeared to be the body of a woman, complete with realistic hair, a nose piercing, and markings that mimicked bruises and abrasions. Shaken by the find, they immediately contacted local police to report their discovery.

By Monday morning, NSW Police had formally launched a full murder investigation, a announcement that triggered widespread media and public attention across the country. But just hours after the investigation was announced, authorities issued a rapid correction: forensic analysis had ruled out any human remains at the scene.

Superintendent Linda Bradbury, commander of the Hume Police District, explained that the hyper-realistic design of the doll had understandably led investigators to misidentify it initially. “They are very realistic in terms of looking like human remains, so the original call that this was a body was completely understandable,” Bradbury said.

The superintendent emphasized that police followed all proper protocols from the moment the report came in. Forensic teams and investigators secured the site immediately to preserve potential evidence, a step Bradbury defended as necessary to protect investigation integrity. “I have no regrets about how we handled this case,” she stated. “Our priority when any report of potential foul play comes in is to treat it seriously, and that is exactly what we did.”
Bradbury also noted that the two men who made the discovery were left shaken by the incident, saying “it has been quite a shocking discovery” for the pair, who were just enjoying a routine weekend outing. She added that the men made the correct choice to alert police immediately, and officers have since followed up with them to confirm the doll was not human remains, closing the case.

Police have not yet released information about how the realistic doll ended up abandoned by the roadside, but the investigation into any potential criminal activity has now been formally closed.

Nestled among the sun-scorched ruins of the Cavustepe fortress in eastern Turkey, 86-year-old Mehmet Kusman has built a life mission few would dare take on: keeping the long-lost language of the ancient Urartu kingdom alive, despite never completing formal education.

Running his fingers over cuneiform inscriptions carved into solid black basalt, Kusman deciphers lines written nearly 3,000 years ago: *”Before me there was nothing. But by the power of the god Haldi I founded this city.”* For six decades, he has devoted himself to this forgotten Iron Age civilization, its forgotten deities, and its lost written language.

Kusman’s connection to Urartu began in the 1960s, shortly after he finished military service. Hired as an unskilled laborer for the initial archaeological excavations at Cavustepe, he stumbled across his first ancient stone stele and was immediately captivated by the elegant, unfamiliar script. When the excavation’s lead archaeologist warned him the cuneiform writing system adapted from Assyrian was far too complex for an untrained man to learn, the brush-off only fueled his determination. *”His telling me ‘No’ hurt me,”* Kusman recalled to AFP. *”I became relentless, thinking: ‘In my lifetime, I will learn it.’”*

With no academic training or formal linguistic guidance, Kusman set out to teach himself the language. He spent years traveling across the historic territory of Urartu, which once spanned parts of modern eastern Turkey, Iran, and Armenia, copying every inscription he found at excavation sites. In just three years, he had memorized the full Urartu cuneiform alphabet, though mastering the limited surviving vocabulary took far longer: it took 22 years for him to commit 650 known Urartu words to memory.

Today, the silver-haired guardian is a local legend, who refers to himself as one of only seven people in Turkey who can work with the Urartu language. Academics across Turkey have mixed assessments of his claims, but nearly all praise his unwavering passion for bringing Urartu to public attention.

To contextualize Urartu’s place in history, Istanbul University ancient history professor Erkan Konyar explains the kingdom was one of the most dominant powers in the ancient Near East between the 9th and 7th centuries BCE. Emerging after the early Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria, Urartu unified scattered mountain tribal communities under a centralized government, building sophisticated fortresses, cities, irrigation systems, and large-scale food storage infrastructure. Konyar, a leading specialist on Urartu’s original capital Tuspa, notes that even after retiring from his official role at Cavustepe in 2005, Kusman has never left the site.

“For 60 years, he has lived amid the excavations and introduced thousands of visitors to the history of Urartu,” Konyar said. Still, he pushes back on Kusman’s claim to speak the language: the full pronunciation of Urartu has been lost to history, and only around 100 words have their meanings confirmed with certainty. Unlike modern living languages, Urartu was only used for official inscriptions, not everyday conversation, even during the kingdom’s peak. Mehemet Isikli, head of the Department of Near Eastern Archaeology at Ataturk University, echoed this clarification, noting Kusman’s work is public outreach, not formal academic research.

“I admire him,” Isikli said. “He has worked hard and brought Urartian culture to light. Mehmet Kusman provides a sort of publicity for Urartu, but it has nothing to do with academic work: he knows only a few alphabetical signs, or a few letters, and some very, very general information about them.”

Undeterred by academic skepticism, Kusman remains proud of his work guarding the Cavustepe site and welcoming guests from his small stone hut at the excavation entrance. Calling himself a literal descendant of the Urartu people, he says his life’s work proves the civilization has not been entirely lost to time. His passion has even taken him across the globe: he has lectured five times in the United States, as well as in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, and is now planning a trip to Japan to share his love for Urartu with new audiences.

As ongoing excavations like the one at the Ayanis fortress, 22 miles north of Lake Van, continue to uncover new clues about how the Urartu kingdom collapsed (recent research points to a massive earthquake as a key contributing factor), Kusman remains the public face of the civilization for visitors and casual enthusiasts. Standing to greet a new group of tourists at Cavustepe, he declared, *”They disappeared, but look, they are not all dead.”*