Good morning and welcome to your morning wrap of news, sport, and weather around Sydney for Thursday, December 28. There’ll be cloud increasing today with the slight chance of a shower in late afternoon and into the evening. Temperatures are expected to reach 29 in the city and up to 38 in the west. Enjoy your day!
Northmead family finds rusty blade inside Christmas bon-bon
Christmas Day at one family home in western Sydney this year was a flick of the wrist away from going horribly wrong, after a child found a sharp, rusty blade resembling "something from a prison" inside a bon-bon.
The McNeilage family was sitting down to lunch at Northmead on Monday afternoon when 11-year-old Bobby alerted the adults to what he had discovered after ripping his bon-bon in half with his older brother.
"I pulled it out and I tipped it upside down to get it out onto the table," Bobby told Fairfax Media. "I noticed that it was a knife thing, so then I showed everybody else." Read more
Triple-fatal driver was heading home from methadone clinic
The motorist suspected of causing the horrific south coast crash that killed himself and a Sydney couple, and left actress Jessica Falkholt and her sister fighting for their lives in hospital, was driving home from a methadone clinic.
Crash investigators are looking into why the Toyota Prado being driven by Ulladulla man Craig Anthony Whitall, 51, veered onto the wrong side of the Princes Highway on Boxing Day and collided with a car carrying the Falkholt family from Ryde. Read more
Japanese woman froze to death after parents confined her for 15 years
Japanese police have arrested a couple whose 33-year-old daughter froze to death in a tiny room where they had confined her for years because they believed she had a form of mental illness that made her violent.
Western Japan's Osaka Prefectural Police Department said Airi Kakimoto's body was found in a state of extreme malnutrition after her parents reported the death on Saturday. Read more via SMH
Man dies after being trapped in charity clothing bin in Germany
A 40-year-old man has died in a used-clothes container in Germany, while in Chicago a man was rescued after being trapped in one.
In the Germany incident, the unidentified man became stuck head-first in the container's chute in the western German town of Wetzlar on Christmas Day, police said on Thursday. Read more via SMH
Self-interest turned upside down and inside out on fluctuating day
"In the race of life, always back self-interest; at least you know it's trying", said the long-ago NSW premier Jack Lang. Lang was born in the same year as Test cricket, a pursuit in which the inherent self-interest of the competitors is sometimes overturned by the game's sheer perversity.
Self-interest was turned upside down and inside out during Thursday's fluctuations at the MCG. It had been this kind of Test match since Boxing Day. This event has been staged on a platform, more a false floor than a pitch, that has minimised and perhaps even nullified the home team's advantages, while preserving Australian curators' reputation for bloody-minded independence. If this was pitch doctoring, it was the kind of medicine that is, after all, becoming legal in Victoria. Here, groundsmen do what they do, national self-interest be damned. Read more
LDV Comanche new Sydney to Hobart winner
LDV Comanche is the new line honours winner of the Sydney to Hobart after successfully protesting against Wild Oats XI after a near collision between the two yachts just outside Sydney Heads on Boxing Day.
Wild Oats XI was penalised an hour for the infringement, enough to wipe away the 26 minutes and 34 second winning margin it had when it crossed the finish line on Wednesday evening. Read more