Man charged with murder of 11yo girl in Wangaratta

PHOTO: A candlelight vigil was held for Zoe on Tuesday in Wangaratta. 

A Mildura man has been charged with the murder of an 11-year-old girl in Wangaratta, in Victoria's north-east.

A party was held at the girl's home on Saturday night and she was found dead in the morning.

The 29-year-old man has been charged with three offences, including murder and the sexual penetration of a child under 16.

He will face an out-of-sessions remand hearing in Wangaratta before appearing at the town's Magistrates Court today.

The man has been in custody in Wangaratta Hospital's psychiatric ward after he was picked up by officers on an unrelated matter when he was reported behaving erratically and walking along the Hume Highway at 6:00am on Sunday.

On Wednesday, the girl's family thanked police and the local community for their "extraordinary support".

"Zoe's family would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank Wangaratta Police, the homicide squad and paramedics who attended the scene," the family said in a statement.

"Their continuing support during this terrible time in our lives has just been extraordinary."

The community held a candlelight vigil for Zoe on Tuesday night.

"[We] would like to say a huge thank you to those who organised and attended the candlelight vigil at the park that Zoe always enjoyed playing at," the family's statement said.

"We are so very touched and thankful for all the personal messages and tributes and for the concern which has been shown for the wellbeing of the family."

The family asked for their complete privacy to grieve privately over their "beautiful little girl".

22 more elephants poisoned to death in Zimbabwe

Latest deaths came less than two weeks after 26 elephants died from poisoning in two separate incidents

An elephant crosses the road in Hwange National Park, about 700 kilometers south west of Harare, Zimbabwe. Cyanide poisoning has killed 22 elephants in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority said. This brings to 62 the number of elephants poisoned by poachers in this southern Africa country in October.

Harare: At least 22 more elephants have died from suspected poisoning by poachers near Zimbabwe’s main game reserve, a parks official said Tuesday, as conservationists struggle to stem a spate of attacks.

“We recovered 22 elephant carcasses in the Sinamatela area yesterday and so far we have also recovered 35 tusks,” Caroline Washaya, spokeswoman for the parks and wildlife management authority, said.

“Initial investigations indicate that there was cyanide poisoning. We continue to lobby for deterrent penalties for people found with poisonous substances such as cyanide.“We can’t continue to lose wildlife at such a rate.”

The latest deaths came less than two weeks after 26 elephants died from poisoning in two separate incidents outside Hwange National Park, in the resort town of Kariba and near Zimbabwe’s border with Botswana.And last month, at least 14 elephants died of poisoning in various attacks.

Poaching is common in Zimbabwe’s game parks with elephants and rhino as the main targets for their tusks and horns which are smuggled to eastern Asian countries.Last year, more than 300 elephants died after suspected poachers placed cyanide near their watering holes.

Coles employee wins right to appeal over union workplace deal

PHOTO: A Coles supermarket worker has won the first round of a battle against a major union. 

A Coles supermarket worker has won the first round of a David and Goliath battle which exposes a major union to claims it sold out its own workers.

Duncan Hart, a student who works part time at a Coles supermarket in Brisbane, took action in the Fair Work Commission claiming that the enterprise bargaining agreement between Coles and his union, the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), left thousands of workers worse off.

In a decision published on Tuesday, the Fair Work Commission granted Mr Hart the right to appeal the approval of the EBA, saying there was an argument to be made the deal failed what is known as the 'better off overall test' (BOOT).

For a workplace agreement to be legal, all employees must be made better off when an agreement is compared to the award.

Starbucks’ New Halloween Frappuccino Looks Like a Delicious Forbidden Mess

It's called the Frappula

If you’re looking for a fun seasonal beverage at Starbucks this week, you’ll probably go for a pumpkin spice latte or some kind of cinnamon cider apple thing. But if you want to go a spookier route, Starbucks just released a limited-edition Halloween-themed drink called the Frappula Frappuccino.

Props to Starbucks for creating a Halloween beverage that really does look spooky. Or at least, a beverage that looks like blood is one of the key ingredients.

The vampire-inspired drink “is made with white chocolate sauce, milk and ice blended together then layered between mocha sauce and a dollop of whipped cream. A drizzle of raspberry syrup oozes from the rim, which is finished with whipped cream on top.”

The Frappula will be available in U.S. stores from Oct. 28 to Oct. 31. It’s available in Canada for one extra day.

Americans Fear Most, According to Their Google Search Histories

The Google search engine is reflected in a woman's eye.

Just in time for Halloween

When you’re a human, there are so, so many things to be scared of. Poisonous spiders. Snakes. The idea that nobody outside your immediate family will ever love you. The dissolution of the middle class. Instagram going down. The Really Big One. Losing your basic human rights. Losing your mind. Losing your HBO GO access.*

For Americans, the biggest fear, apparently, is corruption of government officials, according to a recent survey. (Other biggies from that study included cyber-terrorism, economic collapse and corporate tracking of personal information. Basically, we’re all really paranoid.) But actually, when use the super-scientific metric of Google searches, Americans are mostly afraid of things like God, heights and other people.

To gear up for Halloween, which is obviously the spookiest day of the year, we decided to look for the most common Google searches for the words “scared,” “afraid” and “fear” to see what really terrifies people the most. Unfortunately, data was not available for smaller states, but we like to think the results were indicative of what’s going on in the collective American psyche. So, with that in mind, here are some of the most common fear-related Google searches in the country.

Melbourne's NGV sets up first Lego drop-off point for Ai Weiwei outside of Beijing

PHOTO: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has called for Lego collection points to be set up in cities around the world.

Melburnians are being urged to donate Lego to the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), after the Danish toymaker refused to supply building blocks for Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei's upcoming installation.

The NGV said a collection point, which would take the form of a car with an open sun roof in the gallery's sculpture garden, would be the first outside Beijing.

Last week, Weiwei said Lego refused his studio's request for a bulk order of blocks to create an artwork to be shown at the gallery.

A spokeswoman for the National Gallery of Victoria said the blocks were required for a "room-scale installation" the artist was planning, highlighting Australian human rights and free speech advocates.

The gallery is planning to bring the works of Andy Warhol and Weiwei to Melbourne from December 11, in its largest ever international contemporary show.

Egg-humed: Russian police bust caviar smuggled in coffin

Prized delicacy fetches around $100 for a tiny 125 gram jar

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• Moscow: Russian traffic police have busted a caviar smuggling operation after stopping a speeding hearse with half-a-ton of black caviar hidden in a coffin.

  The driver of the funeral home vehicle told police that he was transporting a dead woman to the far-eastern city of Khabarovsk, but upon inspection it turned out that “there was no dead body in the car,” regional police said in a statement.

  Policemen found plastic containers with caviar under the funeral wreaths and even inside the coffin, with the total haul amounting to 500 kilogrammes (1,100 pounds).

  The prized delicacy - the salt-cured eggs of sturgeon fish that were originally found mainly in the Caspian Sea - fetches around $100 (Dh367) for a tiny 125 gram jar.

  Catching the fish in the wild has been banned as sturgeon numbers have dropped perilously low after over-fishing during the Soviet era and only farmed caviar is legal to sell.

  Poaching, however, remains a major problem and smuggling is thought to be widespread.

  Police footage from the night time raid showed officers pick through the hearse’s cargo, holding up tupperware containers with the greenish-black fish roe inside.

  The officers then pry the lid off a purple coffin with frilly trim to reveal several tightly wrapped packages with more caviar inside.

  The driver and his accomplice swore they had no idea they were loaded with an illegal caviar cargo instead of a corpse, according to the police statement.

  A man had approached them, asking to come and pick up the coffin and drive it to a morgue, paying them 25,000 rubles (Dh1,469 or $400) and “the coffin was loaded into the hearse by men they didn’t know”, it added.