Daily News Roundup

MONDAY MARCH, 9

Hannah Clarke and her three children will be laid to rest in a single shared coffin as hundreds gather to remember the family who were brutally murdered last month. 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk are among the mourners at the service. 

Ms Clarke, 31, and her children, Aaliya, 6, Laianah, 4, and Trey, 3, were murdered after their father doused them with petrol and set alight the car they were in. 

Ms Clarke died later that night in hospital due to her injuries. 

In the wake of their deaths there has been a national outrage over the failure of the nation’s domestic violence system to protect families. 

Fiona Cunningham, a family friend, began the ceremony, saying it was a time to “celebrate Hannah and her children’s lives and honour their memory.”

“Today we’re navigating the grief of losing this family under horrific circumstances,” Ms Cunningham said.

“It’s their deaths that have brought us together, but it’s their lives we’re here to remember.

“This is an occasion for sorrow, but may the occasion not be wasted trying to make sense of why we are here, but rather may it be one where we are thankful for the gift of life and that our lives intersected theirs.” 

The service is being live streamed on ABC Brisbane’s Facebook Page. 

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In Italy the death toll from COVID-19 is over 300, France has banned gatherings of more than 1,000 people and a school in Sydney will close after two students were diagnosed with the disease. 

In Italy the total known number of COVID-19 cases is more than those in South Korea, making it the country with the second-highest number of infections after China. 

Italian authorities say the country has 7,375 cases, which is 62 more than South Korea, but far less than China, which has more than 80,000 cases. 

The death toll from coronavirus in Italy’s northern region of Lombardy, which has been affected the most by the nationwide contagion, has risen past 250.

The Governor of Puglia made a plea for people in the north not to travel south. 

“I speak to you as if you were my children, my brothers, my nephews and nieces: stop and go back,” Michelle Emiliano said.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has announced restrictions on the movements of approximately 16 million people in Lombardy. 

Meanwhile, a boy and a girl in Year 10 at St Patrick’s Marist College in Dundas, in Sydney’s west, have been confirmed as having coronavirus.

The school is currently open, however parents have been asked to come and collect their children and the school will be closed tomorrow. 

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Two Sydney women have been charged over a physical altercation over toilet paper, which occurred at a Western Sydney supermarket on Saturday morning. 

NSW Police said officers were called out to a Woolworths in Chullora, near Bankstown, after an argument broke out between two women in an aisle over toilet paper.

The two women went to Bankstown Police Station at 8:00pm and were then issued court attendance notices for affray. 

The fight was captured on video where it has since been viewed over 4 million times on social media and has been featured on newscasts around the world. 

Supermarket shelves were stripped bare the past week as shoppers stockpiled items amid a panic about the spread of coronavirus.

Bankstown Police Area Command duty officer Acting Inspector Andrew New said on Saturday that supplies were being replenished and there was no need to panic. 

“There is no need for people to go out and panic buy at supermarkets, Paracetamol and canned food or toilet paper,” he said.

“It isn’t the Thunderdome, it isn’t Mad Max, we don’t need to do that.”

Coles said on Sunday morning that it had applied a one-pack purchase limit on toilet paper, both in-store and online, to help improve access for customers.

“This additional measure will allow us to maintain stock levels in stores so more customers will be able to purchase the products they need,” a Coles spokesperson said. 

The two women charged over the fight are due to appear at Bankstown Local Court in late April.