Australia news LIVE: Rogue migration lawyers to be targeted in federal crackdown; US sends thousands of additional troops to Iran as Trump weighs new strikes

Hello and welcome back to our rolling coverage of national and world news for this Friday, October 2. Here’s what you need to know today.

Nashville: Christa Pike was critically ill and receiving “life-saving medical care” in hospital after she survived two attempts by Tennessee to execute her with lethal injections, her lawyers said.

Pike, 50, was sentenced to death in the 1990s after being convicted of a murder she carried out as a teenager. Her botched execution at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the second this year in Tennessee, highlights the difficulties US states face in carrying out lethal injections and finding suitable alternative methods of capital punishment.

“Christa is alive right now,” Randall Spivey, one of Pike’s lawyers, said on Thursday (US tome) after witnessing the execution attempt the night before.

“We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment, but we do know that she is alive right now.”

Opposition spokesman for education Julian Leeser says he has sought clarity on how the government’s Thriving Kids program will roll out in schools, but has received “very little”.

Thriving Kids is the initiative that seeks to provide early intervention support outside the NDIS. It was announced alongside a raft of changes to Australia’s disability support system in the Albanese government’s May budget.

Asked whether he was satisfied with the information the government had provided about how the program, which launches today, would roll out to schools, Leeser told ABC Radio National:

“Ever since Thriving Kids was announced, I’ve been asking state education teachers and administrators. I’ve been asking people in the Catholic and independent sector, and people can tell me very little.”

He said there were more questions than answers about its implementation.

“The website doesn’t tell you very much. I mean, how does it help a parent who is not sure whether their child needs moderate or high support? Where is the line to be drawn there? What is the role here for teachers and schools, and how does this actually create any additional services in terms of occupational therapists or speech therapists?”

Washington: The US military is dispatching about 9000 troops aboard ships to the Middle East, a US official said.

The bolstering of the American military presence comes as US President Donald Trump warned anew that new strikes against Iran could be on the horizon.

The troop movement, which includes a third aircraft carrier, underscores the rapidly evolving dynamic of Trump’s war against Iran as he ponders his next move, with US midterm elections looming large and new signs that the nature of the conflict may be becoming more complex.

In a Time magazine interview published overnight, Trump said it was “possible” that he would ramp up bombing in Iran after the November 3 elections.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has slammed the Albanese government’s $200 million bailout of Rio Tinto’s Bell Bay aluminium smelter, saying it was an example of “net zero lies and madness killing Australian manufacturing”.

“Yet another smelter is on the brink. And Albanese hands out a taxpayer-funded Band-Aid while Chris Bowen keeps piling on costs through his climate safeguard mechanism,” she wrote on social media.

The leader of the minor party also repeated her vow to scrap net zero and abolish the government’s climate change programs.

“We must use our own resources and stand on our own two feet,” the post said.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor also criticised the bailout during a press conference yesterday, but said the Coalition would have done the same if it were in government.

London: Police have arrested a dual UK-Iranian national on suspicion of plotting a terror attack following a security incident at a US-run military air base in England that British authorities have linked to Tehran.

The 25-year-old man was arrested in central London overnight, and police have searched two properties in the city.

Five men, all British nationals in their 20s and from London, were arrested last weekend on suspicion of explosives and terror offences close to the RAF Fairford air base, which has been used by American bombers to strike Iran. The suspects have since been released on bail.

Police later said they had found a quantity of an accelerant – petrol – in three vans linked to the five suspects, but no explosives.