Thursday's news in under 5 minutes.

1. Woman dies in truck rollover on Sydney’s North Shore

A woman has tragically died after a truck overturned in a suburban yard, crushing her.

The woman, in her 30s, was killed when the loaded trip tipped sideways down an embankment at about 5pm yesterday in Wahroonga, on Sydney’s North Shore.

Paramedics treated the woman at the scene, but she was soon after pronounced dead, the Daily Telegraph reports.

A four-year-old boy believed to be the victim’s son is reported to have witnessed the horrific incident. He was taken to hospital for treatment of minor injuries.

2. Scott Volkers to lose coaching accreditation in Australia

Swimming Australia has told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that former head coach Scott Volkers will not be granted accreditation to coach at an upcoming swim meet in Australia, the ABC reports.

Volkers was charged over three child sexual abuse complaints from the 1980s, but the charges were dramatically dropped in 2002.

He continued in various head coaching roles until 2010 after he was refused a working-with-children card.

He is now believed to be working as a swim coach in Brazil.

Read more on this story here.

3. Whale rescue efforts: baby whale free.

Efforts to save a young humpback whale stranded on a Gold Coach beach have finally been successful.

The whale, which is two to five years old, was freed at about 8:15 this morning and swam happily out to deep waters.

The juvenile whale, weighing between 15 and 20 tonnes, was though to be free briefly yesterday afternoon — but it then became stuck on a sand bank at Palm Beach.

4. Westfield stabbing victim a ‘loving father’

The man stabbed to death in the middle of Parramatta Westfield on Monday had just returned from a weekend away with a six-year-old son he ”adored”, Fairfax Media reports.

Sydney father Nabil Naser, 40, had flown to Melbourne several days before his death to introduce his son, Taha, to friends and family.

Naser was allegedly stabbed to death at the crowded shopping centre in western Sydney by his ex-wife’s new boyfriend.

5. Family trapped in house for 28 hours after car parked in driveway

A Brisbane family have called for action from council and police after a parked car blocked their driveway for more than a day.

Catherine Condon of Hawthorne told the Courier Mail the car, which was parked in her driveway for 28 hours, stopped her from attending business meetings and her husband from attending a conference.

The car also made her son late for an exam, she said.

“There has to be a message to all police (about the rules),” she told the Courier Mail. “If you don’t have clear and unfettered access to the road, the vehicle should be towed.”

6. Treatment of asylum seekers ‘like piracy’: human rights advocate

Human rights advocate Julian Burnside QC has said the Federal government’s decision to keep 153 asylum seekers detained on a customs boat in high seas ‘looks for all the world like piracy.’

“If they went onto the Australian vessel because they had asked for help and they were offered help, then they seem to have been taken under false pretences because the government not only publicly denied their existence it also seemed distinctly uninclined to offer them any help,” Mr Burnside told the ABC.

The Federal government confirmed to the High Court on Tuesday that the group of Tamils, which includes children as young as two, is in custody on the boat.

The government had refused to confirm or comment on the boat for weeks prior to that hearing.

Meanwhile, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has likened the case to the 2011 Tampa affair — and Mr Burnside has told the ABC Senator Hanson-Young may be right.

“It looks as though it’s gaining that sort of significance,” he said.

7. Judge compares incest to gay sex

 A judge in Sydney has compared incest and paedophilia to homosexuality, Fairfax Media reports.

District Court Judge Garry Neilson said the community may no longer see sexual contact between adults and children, and siblings, as “taboo” — just as  gay sex was criminal in the 1950s and 1960s but is now widely accepted.

Judge Neilson made the bizarre remarks in the case of a 58-year-old man charged with repeatedly raping his younger sister in 1981, in the family’s Sydney home.

He controversially added that the “only reason” that incest is still a crime is because of the high risk of genetic abnormalities in children born from consanguineous relationships.

8. Should the naughty corner be banned?

Two professors have called for the use of the ‘naughty corner’ as a discipline imposed by schools should be banned, saying it may breach childrens’ rights, Fairfax Media reports.

Two South Australian academics will argue the point at a national summit on child behaviour, the Behaviour in Australian Schools summit, next week.

Summit organiser Dr Anna Sullivan said shouting at students and sending them to “time outs” in classroom corners may breach the rights set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, under which school discipline must protect children’s “human dignity.”

Continually removing children from classrooms for disciplinary reasons may also breach children’s rights by interfering with their education, she said.

“(Schools) often give kids a warning and then you go to ‘time out’ and then you get sent to another classroom and then the principal’s office,” she said.

“The more they get behind, the more they get disconnected from their classmates and the problem just exacerbates.”

9. Outrage in Thailand over rape and murder of teen

A 13-year-old girl has been raped and murdered on an overnight train in Thailand, sparking outrage in the country.

Nong Kaem went missing on Saturday night as she slept during a return journey from a southern province  to the capital, Bangkok.

But the teenager — who was travelling with her sleeping sisters — was allegedly attacked and thrown onto train tracks in the Pranburi district, said the commander of the police’s Children and Women Protection Division Napanwut Liemsa-nguan.

A railway worker has been arrested, police said. The man, who told police he was intoxicated from methamphetamine and beer when carrying out the attack, faces charges including rape, concealing a body and murder.

Murder already carries the death penalty in Thailand, but the horrifying incident has prompted calls for capital punishment for rapists in the south-east Asian country.

10. Six dead after shooting

Six people, including four children, have been killed in a shooting in the US.

Three of the children and two adults died at the scene of the shooting in a suburban home in Spring, Texas, Harris County Precinct 4 Assistant Chief Deputy Mark Herman said.

Another child died after being airlifted to hospital, Mr Herman said.

A suspected gunman was cornered in a nearby cul de sac after a 25-minute car chase with police officers, Chron.com reports.

Live footage from ABC local news showed a man emerge from a car with his hands in the air. In the footage, he walks for a few yards then lay down on the ground and was apprehended by armed police, The Guardian reports.

The lone survivor told deputies the attacker was a family member, ABC 13 reports. The woman, who was shot in the head, added that the shooter was going to a restaurant to kill another family member.

Mr Herman told the Houston Chronicle that authorities were told that a domestic dispute had prompted the incident.

11. Legislation to repeal the carbon tax defeated

Legislation to repeal the carbon tax has been defeated in the Senate.

The Federal government today forced an urgent vote on the repeal bills.

It expected the three Palmer United Party senators and Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party’s Ricky Muir to give them the numbers, Sky News reports.

But in a surprise last-minute move, Clive Palmer pulled his party’s support.

The move by the PUP leader caused chaos in the Upper House and defeated the bill, as three PUP senators and Senator Muir sided with Labor and the Greens to defeat the legislation.

12. Clive Palmer walks out of ABC 7.30 Report interview

It’s been a big day for Clive Palmer.

First Palmer and his fellow Palmer United Party representatives in the Senate put a pin in the Coalition’s plans to repeal the carbon tax, and now he has reportedly walked out of an ABC 7.30 Report interview.

Palmer reportedly left the interview, which was conducted by video link, when the line of questioning turned to an ongoing legal battle with a former Chinese business partner.

The mining magnate is engaged in a dispute over royalty payments at an iron ore ore project in Western Australia with Citic Pacific.

Ms Ferguson questioned Mr Palmer over a deed that had recently been made public, which is at the centre of a court matter looking at whether the PUP leader used funds intended for a port in Western Australia for his election campaign.

In response to this line of questioning, Mr Palmer responded, “It’s a lie, everything you’ve just said is not true.”

When host Sarah Ferguson pressed him on the issue, he replied, “”Don’t talk to me about allegations and bullshit.”

“I’m not discussing it with you any further, Madam. It’s subject to court proceedings – we’re suing them for $600 million.”

The interview concluded when Mr Palmer announced. “I’m not answering any more for you, so goodbye, we’ll see you later.”

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