State of the Nation | Thursday, July 28, 2016

►VICTORIA: Police are investigating child-abuse allegations against Australia's most senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal George Pell, the ABC has reported. Read more

►WOLLONGONG:  Every medical gas outlet installed at an Illawarra health facility in the last five years is being checked after the death of a newborn boy who was mistakenly given the wrong gas at a Sydney hospital. Read more

►MANDURAH: Caleb Davenport has left on a 320km walk from Secret Harbour to Augusta with his four-legged friend Morrison to raise $2,000 towards food and necessary goods for the Dogs Refuge Home WA in Shenton Park. Read more

► TAMWORTH: The man accused of murdering a Tamworth mother whose body hasn’t been found has sacked his Legal Aid solicitors. Troy Jason Ruttley appeared via video link in Tamworth Local Court from a Wellington prison on Wednesday morning and asked for an adjournment to December. Read more

► SOUTH COAST: Five shark listening stations – capable of detecting tagged marine predators and alerting the public of their presence  – will be installed near Illawarra and South Coast beaches by summer. Read more

► TASMANIA: Two grassroots campaigns designed to re-elect two Tasmanian senators shunned by party preselectors have achieved contrasting results, with just one retaining their seat. Read more

►JERVIS BAY: In 60 years after the crash of two navy Fairey Firefly aircraft over Jervis Bay, which cost the lives of two young flyers, North Nowra diver Greg Stubbs has found wreckage of one of the missing planes. Read more

► BALLARAT: A magistrate has been persuaded not to jail a 27-year-old Ballarat North man who was found with hundreds of child exploitation images. Read more

►HUNTER: Devastated water polo star Nathan Power was returning home to Newcastle to recover after a fall into a glass window ended his Rio Olympic debut dream. It was announced on Wednesday that the former Hunter Hurricane had been ruled out of the Games because of a severe hand laceration sustained in Croatia. Read more

►SHOALHAVEN: A meeting will be called of all three levels of government, church leaders, stakeholders and community housing to discuss options for emergency accommodation for homeless people in the Shoalhaven during extreme weather conditions. Continue reading

►BORDER: Sydney Thunder and Melbourne Stars will play a Big Bash practice match at Lavington Oval in December. Read more

► A man previously identified as a person of interest in the disappearance of toddler William Tyrrell is facing historical child sex offences in Victoria. Read more 

► Lawyers who have battled for Aboriginal rights for decades fear the Northern Territory government is manoeuvring to play a central role in the royal commission into youth detention. Read more

► Census analysts are expecting a huge rise in new, entrepreneurial jobs that didn't exist the last time we stopped to record the state of our nation. Read more

National weather radar

International news

►BRAZIL: Two Brazilian highway patrol officers accused of kidnapping New Zealand jiu-jitsu champion Jason Lee in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday have been arrested and placed under investigation. Read more

►UNITED STATES: On a day when Democrats made history, formally nominating a woman for the US presidency, the party urged Americans to get on board the Hillary express which, it announced, would not be stopping in the mean and dangerous America of Donald Trump's imagining. Read more

►UNITED STATES: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be mightily rewarded by our press."

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he hoped Russia had hacked rival Hillary Clinton's email, essentially sanctioning a foreign power's cyberspying of a secretary of state's correspondence. Read more

►FRANCE: Before the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January 2015, Adel Kermiche was a cheerful, music-loving and devout French teenager. But that terrorist atrocity, and the suspicion-filled aftermath, "acted like a detonator", his mother said. On Tuesday, Kermiche was identified by prosecutors as one of the young men who slit the throat of a Catholic priest during mass in a church in northern France. Read more

1902: Australian Aboriginal painter, Albert Namatjira, is born.

1923: Construction begins on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

1945: A B-25 bomber, lost in fog, crashes into the Empire State Building, killing 14.

1976: Hundreds of thousands of people are killed as China is hit by an earthquake.

1993: The opal is made Australia's national emblem.

People told Debbie Threlfo she could not be a cheerleader. 

“They said ‘oh you have to be able to walk, you have to be able to do all this fancy stuff’,” Ms Threlfo, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, said. 

“I thought no, I can do this. I’m going to prove you guys wrong.” 

And prove them wrong she did. Read more