WA news LIVE: Community vigil held for Mosman Park family

Dozens have turned out to a vigil in Mosman Park in memory of the Clune family, who died in a double murder-suicide last week.

Mosman Park Sisterhood spokeswoman put on the community event last night.

“We noticed that a lot of community members needed a pace to reflect, and a space to have a conversation and heal,” spokeswoman Fariba Fanaian told 9News Perth.

Town of Mosman Park mayor Paul Shaw was among the mourners.

“There’s a great deal of shock of what happened and people are trying to process that and events like this I think give people the opportunity to do that processing,” he said.

The Mosman Park Sisterhood plans to run the gatherings each Wednesday until the end of the year.

Here’s what’s making news across the nation and around the world today:

• Australians are accessing a controversial technology that ranks embryos created during IVF based on disease risk and predicted traits such as intelligence, height and hair colour using a genetic testing method experts say is not ready for clinical use.

• Australia should be willing to risk a backlash from Beijing by deepening defence and economic ties with the self-governing island of Taiwan, a group of leading foreign affairs and national security experts has urged.
• Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Jeffrey Epstein asked an exotic dancer for a threesome and “various sex acts”, legal letters claim.

Good morning readers, and welcome to our live news blog for Thursday, February 5.

Making headlines today, a Supreme Court fight between siblings at the centre of a troubled NDIS provider has taken a fresh turn after a lawyer told the court he could not take instructions from a company’s acting director after learning of his overseas bankruptcy.

And Perth teenager Austin Appelbee has become the “heart of the country” after the remarkable story of how he swam four kilometres in rough seas to save his stranded family emerged this week.

The 13-year-old year 9 student’s first week back at school has come with national and international attention for his tale of survival, with he and his family making headlines across the globe, featuring on the BBC, CNN and The Washington Post.

Stay with us as we bring you the news of the day, as it happens.