Good afternoon. Brittany Higgins was back in the witness box today, where she was cross-examined over a white pencil dress she wore on the night of the alleged rape.
Bruce Lehrmann has brought a defamation case against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson over an interview with Higgins on Ten’s The Project in which she alleged she was raped by a Liberal staffer in Parliament House. Network Ten and Wilkinson are defending the case and Higgins is a witness for the defence.
Lehrmann’s barrister, Steve Whybrow SC, suggested she wore the dress at a Liberal party function – after the alleged rape – “because you hadn’t been sexually assaulted in that dress”.
Higgins said that was “incorrect” and that she wore it at the Liberal party event because she was “trying to reclaim it”, but she couldn’t and never wore it again. The case continues.
Top news
Hamas claims responsibility for Jerusalem bus stop shooting | Hamas has claimed responsibility for a deadly gun attack at a busy bus stop in west Jerusalem in which three Israelis were killed, prompting the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to pledge to eliminate the Palestinian group whenever the hostage release halts. The attack comes amid concerns of renewed fighting in Gaza, with the head of UNRWA warning an Israeli assault on southern Gaza could push 1 million refugees to the Egyptian border. Meanwhile, this analysis looks at the mixed messaging coming out of the Biden administration on the conflict.
Smithsonian returns Indigenous remains to Australia | The ancestral remains of 14 Indigenous people have been returned to Australia from the Smithsonian natural history museum in Washington DC. The Indigenous Australians minister, Linda Burney, welcomed the repatriation of the ancestors as an “important step towards reconciliation”.
Flood warnings for Gippsland | Victoria has major flood warnings on four rivers – the Avon, Buchan, Genoa and Thomson – and moderate flood warnings for the Mitchell and Macalister rivers, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Rains across eastern Australia have left much of the region with a wetter-than-average November, the BoM says.
NSW paramedics strike | The NSW Australian Paramedics Association is taking part in a 12-hour strike today, from 7am to 7pm, despite the threat of legal action. The union says more than 90% of its members voted to support the strike and that NSW paramedics are the lowest paid in the country.
Review seeks reforms to national security secrecy laws | A landmark review into “oppressive and unnecessary” national security secrecy laws that allowed a government official to be secretly imprisoned in a Canberra jail has recommended major changes to prevent the “shameful tale” happening again. The review was sparked by the prosecutions of former intelligence official Witness K and his legal counsel, Bernard Collaery, along with the matter of Witness J, also known as Alan Johns, who was secretly imprisoned for 15 months after being found guilty of disclosing confidential government information.
First LGBTQ+ couple to be legally married in south Asia | The couple in Nepal said they want to “scream to the world that we are husband and wife at last” after becoming the first in south Asia to have their marriage legally recognised. Maya Gurung, 38, a transgender woman, and Surendra Pandey, 27, were given a legal certificate in Nepal’s Lamjung district this week.
Record number of couples tied the knot in Australia in 2022 | Figures released by the ABS today show there were 127,161 couples who married in 2022, an increase of more than 13,000 than in 2019. At the other end of the spectrum, 49,241 couples divorced in 2022, with a rate of 2.4 divorces for every 1,000 people aged 16 years and over.
Latin America remembers Kissinger’s ‘profound moral wretchedness’ | Henry Kissinger’s death has brought out some bitter epitaphs from Latin America, where the legacy of US intervention helped saddle the region with some of the most brutal military regimes of the 20th century. Nowhere has the reaction been more damning than in Chile, where Kissinger was instrumental in the 1973 coup that led to the death of a democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende, and the installation of a dictator, Gen Augusto Pinochet, and his military junta.
Cristiano Ronaldo faces US$1bn lawsuit | The class-action lawsuit, filed in a US federal court in the Southern District of Florida, alleges the footballer’s promotion of world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange was “deceptive and unlawful”.
In pictures
Maria Callas, the life of a diva
To celebrate the centenary of the soprano’s birth, an exhibition of rarely seen photographs from the Intesa Sanpaolo Publifoto archive showing her life on stage, and off, is at Gallerie d’Italia Milan until 28 February 2024. Click here to see some of the images.
What they said …
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“Gas extraction in WA will only drive further global warming. For the sake of our children’s health and to safeguard their future, we must act urgently” – Dr Tim Leahy, Doctors for the Environment Australia
Western Australian health professionals gathered on the steps of state parliament, urging action on climate change to protect the health of Western Australians.
In numbers
The latest UBS billionaire ambitions report for 2023 shows that Australia has five new billionaires – and one dropout.
Before bed read
Christmas is drawing near, and we’ve added more gift ideas to our annual Christmas gift guide. Check it out.
Daily word game
Today’s starter word is: DEFI. You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.
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