THE nine-year-old son of a spectator king-hit at a children's rugby match punched and hit the alleged attacker to try to get the strongly-built steel worker off his father.

A mother and her three young children fled to a neighbour's house after a balaclava-clad man invaded their home in Melbourne's east last night, police say.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has reported a full year $US3.4 billion ($A4.03 billion) loss after it was hit by the downturn in advertising and impairment charges.

Police say they have smashed two movie piracy rings and seized 35,000 pirated DVDs in Sydney.

A $5 million free bike scheme for Melbourne proposed by the State Government will have too few bicycles, according to the world's biggest provider of public bicycle systems.

Some taxi drivers are telling passengers the cab's electronic banking machine is not working because of last week's Silver Top Taxi fire, in an attempt to either take cash fares only, or to take manual swipes of credit cards.

Melbourne's historic lanes are being auctioned, with sections of eight lanes sold to private developers in the last three years.

Police last night refused to rule out a link to this week's terrorism raids after a bullet was found lodged in a front window at Fawkner police station.

Curtis Levy took his love of Waltzing Matilda into a race for a Senate seat, and filmed it for our benefit, and amusement.

Decades of fighting and the absence of any true government in Somalia have bred a society based on the rule of the gun.

A review of security at Australian military bases will examine whether unarmed civilians can provide adequate protection against terrorists with automatic weapons.

Somali community leaders have attacked the Australian Federal Police, while otherwise strongly supporting law enforcement agencies.

Three inquiries are under way into how details of a secret investigation into an alleged Melbourne-based terrorist group were leaked to the media.

They stood among dozens of other supporters who had come to see the accused terrorists. With them in line outside Court 11 stood men dressed in suits, teenage boys with iPod earplugs glued to their ears, teenage girls furiously texting on their mobile phones and older women with headscarves.

A magistrate has warned five accused terrorists and their supporters to behave themselves in court, after a second day of fiery hearings.

Pauline Hanson and former governor-general Peter Hollingworth were treated harshly and unfairly by the Australian media, former prime minister John Howard says.

Three men have been stabbed after being confronted by 15 men in Sydney's west.

Police are appealing for help to catch a man who followed a woman after she left a suburban Melbourne train and assaulted her.

Four men remained in custody overnight awaiting further questioning over an alleged suicide plot to kill Australian soldiers at a Sydney army barracks.

The government is expected to keep up its attack on Malcolm Turnbull over the Ozcar affair, with suggestions he could have treated the Senate with contempt.