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A second man has been charged over the shooting of a police officer during a bank robbery south of Brisbane almost 24 years ago.

The 54-year-old from Woodford has been charged with offences including armed robbery, deprivation of liberty and grievous bodily harm.

The accused remains in custody on other offences and is expected to face court on May 8.

Senior Constable Neil Scutts was shot when police responded to the National Australia Bank heist in Browns Plains on March 24, 1999.

The injured officer underwent emergency surgery after the bullet missed major arteries by millimetres.

His firearm, a Sturm Ruger .357 six-shot revolver, was stolen and is yet to be recovered.

The offenders wore off-white plastic masks and surgical-style gloves, and carried two-way radios. They fled on foot, taking two staff members as hostages before stealing a vehicle at gunpoint.

A third person acted as a lookout.

Police secured a breakthrough in the investigation in December 2020 after doubling the reward to $500,000 leading to the charging of a Browns Plains man with attempted murder.

That case remains before the court.

Detective Superintendent Brendan Smith said the investigation was ongoing and police were confident more people would be charged.

"No case is ever closed, we will follow leads whenever we have got a lead. It doesn't matter how long ago it occurred - we will chase down the offenders and bring them to court where we can," he said on Tuesday.

Police remain hopeful the arrests will encourage others to come forward.

"I think it will be a big step. I think people obviously are fearful, I mean, we've got people who have shot police officers, so they're not afraid to use violence.

"Now that they are off the streets ... I think people will feel more confident to come forward."

Det Smith recalled the day of the shooting and his involvement in the initial investigation.

"I actually worked on it as a young sergeant and I have vivid memories," he said.

"Recent events show we were in a dangerous profession - I don't think people understand that every day we have got good young people out there protecting the community and this is a potential consequence."

Almost a quarter of a century after almost losing his life in the line of duty, Sen Cont Scutts is still a serving officer and is grateful another arrest has been made.

"He's still at work - that's a testament to his character. He obviously recovered and he's still working on the front line, still protecting the community so what does that say about him?"

Anyone with information is urged to come forward with the $500,000 reward still on offer.

© AAP 2023

Several people are dead and hundreds more injured as new earthquakes shake Turkey and Syria, while the region responds to the devastation wrought by quakes two weeks ago that killed tens of thousands of people.

At least three people died after the latest earthquakes in the Turkish province of Hatay, while 213 people were taken to hospitals, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said on Monday.

His comments came after two quakes occurred, three minutes apart, measuring 6.4 and 5.8, according to AFAD, Turkey's disaster management agency.

The epicentre was in the district of Samandag in Turkey according to Turkish monitor Kandilli but it was felt by residents in Syria, Israel, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, according to media reports.

Soylu warned people not to enter buildings, saying there had been 26 aftershocks so far.

Rescue workers in the city of Antakya were working to free three people trapped under rubble in the evening, state news agency Anadolu reported.

Across the border in Syria, there were further injuries as people were gripped with fear and damaged buildings toppled.

"Hospitals and medical centres have so far recorded, according to the information I received, more than 125 injuries in north-western Syria after the earthquake that struck the region, most of which are injuries resulting from fear and panic, jumping from buildings, or fainting cases," Head of Syrian rescue group the White Helmets Raed Saleh tweeted.

People jumped off rooftops and balconies of houses as they tried to rush to safety in rebel-held northwest Syria, a monitoring group said.

There were also casualties from falling rubble in Salqin, Harem, Idlib, Khirbet al-Juz and rural areas near Aleppo, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In government-held areas, damaged buildings fell in Al-Midan and Al-Jamiliya neighbourhoods in Aleppo, the monitor said.

Buildings also collapsed in the small town of Jindiris, already hard hit by the earlier quakes, according to a spokeswoman for the aid organization SAMS.

Some 30 people were treated for injuries in five of the organization's clinics, including a child in cardiac arrest, she said.

People were roaming the streets in many areas, including in Damascus, fearful of further tremors, tweeted UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokeswoman for the region, Rula Amin.

There have been 20 aftershocks so far, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said on Monday evening.

The latest quake comes two weeks after a devastating earthquake in the same area that has killed more than 47,000 people in Turkey and Syria.

Abdel Kafi, a Syrian activist in northwest Syria said: "It was strong like the first one but did not last long ... it scared people and people rushed to the streets."

He was referring to the quakes on February 6 that killed 41,156 people in Turkey alone, AFAD said earlier.

The official death toll in Syria stands at 5900 but it has not been updated in days. Thousands more are feared dead in both countries.

The latest quake came hours after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, just before the Turkish leader flew to Hatay.

Blinken had met civilian aid workers from the White Helmets during his visit to the region, who told him about the desperate situation faced by survivors in areas where the decade-long civil war has complicated international efforts to deliver aid and assistance.

A tour of the earlier destruction in Turkey had left Blinken grasping for words to describe what he saw.

In Syria alone, 8.8 million people have been affected by the earthquakes, the deputy UN representative for Syria, Najat Rochdi, had tweeted on Sunday.

© RAW 2023

Prosecutors have downgraded the involuntary manslaughter charges against Alec Baldwin, reducing the possible prison time the Hollywood star may face for the 2021 fatal shooting on the set of the movie Rust, charging documents show.

New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies had charged Baldwin and the movie's set armourer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, with two counts of involuntary manslaughter last month for the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, with the most serious charge carrying a potential prison sentence of five years.

Carmack-Altwies filed altered charges for Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed on Friday, removing the firearm enhancement and reducing their possible prison sentence from a minimum of five years to a maximum of 18 months.

"In order to avoid further litigious distractions by Mr. Baldwin and his attorneys, the district attorney and the special prosecutor have removed the firearm enhancement to the involuntary manslaughter charges in the death of Halyna Hutchins on the Rust film set," Heather Brewer, a spokesperson for the New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney, said in a statement.

A lawyer for Baldwin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"We applaud the decision of the district attorney to dismiss the firearm enhancement and it was the right call, ethically, and on the merits," said Jason Bowles, an attorney for Gutierrez-Reed.

Lawyers for Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed had argued earlier this month that prosecutors were unjustly charging their clients under a version of the firearm enhancement law that had not been passed until May 2022, months after the incident.

When the incident occurred, New Mexico law stated that the firearm enhancement should be applied when a firearm was "brandished" in the commission of a noncapital felony, meaning the suspect had an intention to harm.

In 2022, the criteria for applying the firearm enhancement -with the 5-year minimum prison sentence - was expanded to include when a weapon was simply "discharged" in the commission of a noncapital felony.

Baldwin's case is remarkable in that there is little or no precedent for a Hollywood actor to face criminal charges for an on-set shooting.

The 30 Rock actor has denied responsibility for the shooting, which also injured the movie's director Joel Souza.

He has said he cocked the revolver but never pulled the trigger and it was the job of Gutierrez-Reed and other weapons professionals to ensure it was unloaded.

Videos from inside the church prior to the shooting show Baldwin with his finger on the trigger, the prosecution's special investigator, Robert Shilling, said in a statement of probable cause.

An FBI forensic test of the revolver found it "functioned normally" and would not fire without the trigger being pulled.

Gutierrez-Reed testified to New Mexico's worker safety agency (OSHA) on December 7 that the shooting might have been prevented had she had more time to train Baldwin. She said he had "poor form" when using the revolver.

Charging documents held Gutierrez-Reed responsible for "allowing live ammunition on the set," but did not accuse her of physically introducing them onto the production.

Baldwin and Gutierrez-Reed are both expected to make an initial court appearance in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on February 24.

© RAW 2023