Fuel excise to be halved for three months | ABC News Top Stories

National Cabinet has agreed to halve the fuel excise for three months, saving motorists about 26 cents a litre at the bowser.

The price of fuel has reached record highs in recent weeks due to supply disruptions triggered by the Middle East war.

The road user charge for heavy vehicles will also be suspended for three months to take pressure off the trucking industry.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the government is temporarily making fuel cheaper to alleviate cost-of-living pressures.

Police have shot dead a man believed to be fugitive gunman Dezi Freeman following a three-hour stand-off in Victoria's north-east this morning.

Victoria Police is yet to officially confirm the identity of the man but the ABC understands it was Freeman, who had been on the run since the fatal shooting of two police officers last August.

Freeman was shot at a property near Walwa, nearly 200 kilometres north-east of the site of the police shootings at Porepunkah.

US President Donald Trump claims Iran's new Supreme Leader is seriously wounded.

Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei took over from his father, Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US and Israeli strikes at the beginning of the Iran war.

Iranian state media today said that Mojtaba Khamenei has thanked ‌the Iraqi ⁠people and ‌religious leadership ​for ‌their support during the war, without saying ⁠how this message was conveyed.