Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
ACT Liberal leader Elizabeth Lee is trying to change legislation to explicitly criminalise the act amid a rise in disturbing rhetoric
One in three women and one in five men globally have been the victim of “stealthing”, the non-consensual act of removing a condom during sex, yet the term has only recently entered public awareness – and courtrooms.
“Anecdotally, stealthing was something that felt yuck, confusing, violating and wrong,” the Australian Capital Territory’s Liberal opposition leader, Elizabeth Lee, says. “But victims of it didn’t even know it had a name, let alone that it negated their consent.”
A group of eminent scientists has cast doubt on the guilt of Kathleen Folbigg, jailed in 2003 for killing four of her children
Prominent scientists are calling for the release of convicted New South Wales child killer Kathleen Folbigg, saying there’s strong evidence she is innocent.
Folbigg was jailed in 2003 for murdering her children Patrick, Sarah and Laura, and for the manslaughter of her son Caleb.
A third woman has come forward to allege she was sexually assaulted by the same political staffer accused of raping a colleague inside Parliament House.
The woman says she was assaulted while working as a Coalition volunteer during the 2016 election campaign, after a night out drinking with the then-political staffer. She was barely out of school at the time.
Prime minister says his wife, Jenny, urged him to respond to Higgins’ allegation ‘as a father first’
Scott Morrison has drafted one of his own MPs and a deputy secretary of his department to develop options to improve “the environment” of Parliament House after allegations from former government staffer Brittany Higgins that she was raped by a colleague in 2019.
The prime minister told reporters on Tuesday he had asked Liberal backbencher Celia Hammond, a former university vice-chancellor, to lead a process of internal consultation about how to improve “professional behaviour” in political offices.
NSW and Victoria report no new local Covid cases as hotel quarantine worker in Melbourne diagnosed with UK variant. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
On the vaccine distribution in Australia, Paul Kelly says it is still on track for the first injections to be happening before the end of February, but will not put an exact timeline on it.
The aim will be to get 20 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine before the end of this year, in weekly deliveries. Kelly said the AstraZeneca and Novovax vaccines will also be used if and when they are approved by the TGA:
We don’t want a lot of vaccines sitting out in warehouses, so we will be looking to roll out particularly for those priority populations that people will know about now, as soon as we can. But then will be going back to the same population, those people, to give them a second dose. That is really important.
We will await the TGA advice in relation to AstraZeneca but some of the information that has been coming up in the last few weeks is that it may actually be a longer interval for that second dose.”
Australia’s chief medical officer, Prof Paul Kelly, is also moving to reassure people about the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
He said it was still in the process of being approved by the Therapeutics Goods Administration, and talked down claims it was less effective in treating the South African variant of the virus.
I just want to make a very clear statement about people taking small amounts of information quickly, without looking at it carefully. And making conclusions. At the moment, I can absolutely say, and this may change in future, and we will be nimble in the way we look at that information, and putting that into our planning, but at the moment, there’s no evidence anywhere in the world AstraZeneca effectiveness against severe infection is affected by any of these variants of concern.
And that is the fact. What we have at the moment is a small group of people in a study not yet peer-reviewed or published in South Africa where there was an effect on the mild or moderate disease in relation to that variant of concern in that country. But there were no severe infections in any of the people that received the vaccine in regards to any of those types of the virus.”
Kayley Ketley and Latia Henderson allegedly detained the 24-year-old victim in Sydney before driving south on the Hume Highway
An alleged kidnapping victim who was rescued after waving through a hole in her own car’s boot had been detained for 13 hours, a NSW court has been told.
The 24-year-old woman was found with multiple stab wounds in the boot of her Holden sedan after it was pulled over on the Hume Highway at Berrima, south of Sydney, on Wednesday.
Jason Renwick had pleaded not guilty to sexual assault over the 2019 incident in Brisbane, which he said was a ‘workplace accident’
A jury has been unable to reach a verdict in the case of a police sergeant charged with indecently touching a female colleague during a training exercise.
Jason Scott Renwick, 49, pleaded not guilty to one count of sexual assault over the incident at a Brisbane training facility in February 2019.
Victoria police say the woman’s husband – the father of the children – is assisting detectives but it would be unfair to presume culpability
A woman and her three young children have been found dead at a home in Melbourne’s north.
Victoria police said the woman’s husband, and the father of the three children, was assisting with the investigation but people should not presume culpability on that basis because “that would be grossly unfair”.
Drug baron remains in jail while he appeals other guilty verdicts citing involvement of lawyer-turned-police informant Nicola Gobbo
Little time was wasted on pleasantries during the first meeting between the gangland lawyer Nicola Gobbo and the police officers who were handling her as an informant in 2005.
“Tell us everything you know about Tony Mokbel,” was how the police handler known as Mr White started the meeting.
Prosecutor alleges pair chased intruder down Sydney street before one pulled him to the ground and the other struck his head with a sword
A home invader who had been “armed to the teeth and full as a goog” with the drug ice was holding a gun at a woman before her boyfriend sliced his head open with a samurai sword, a Sydney jury has been told.
A picture “more bristling with menace” could hardly be imagined for a young woman of 23, the barrister Tom Hughes said in his opening address on behalf of Hannah Quinn on Tuesday.
Police say armed man tried to box in the car and chase the teenagers in a pursuit that could have ‘easily ended in tragedy’
A man armed with a tyre iron pursued a stolen car driven by young teenagers until they crashed into a power pole in Townsville, police say.
On Saturday night about 10pm, police say a 48-year-old man was driving along McLean Street in the suburb of Gulliver, when he saw a Hyundai Santa Fe that had been stolen from the neighbouring suburb of Aitkenvale.
The St George Illawarra NRL player has pleaded not guilty to aggravated sexual assault at his Wollongong trial
NRL star Jack de Belin raped a teenager after ignoring her protests to stop undressing her and later asked why she was being “so emotional”, a jury has been told.
The St George Illawarra player, 29, and his friend Callan Sinclair, 23, have pleaded not guilty to the aggravated sexual assault of the woman, then 19, after meeting her in a Wollongong bar in December 2018.
Judge says the former Telstra technician is guilty of the murders of Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon but acquitted him of the murder of Sarah Spiers
Bradley Robert Edwards, a 51-year-old former Telstra technician from Western Australia, has been found guilty of the murders of Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon but acquitted of the murder of Sarah Spiers in the Claremont serial killings case, Australia’s longest-running and most expensive criminal investigation.
The Claremont serial killings refer to the deaths of Rimmer, 23, Glennon, 27, and Spiers, 18, between 1996 and 1997. All three women went missing after a night out at the Claremont entertainment district in Perth’s eponymous western suburb.
NSW Firearms Registry officer didn’t read into allegations on police profile during an assessment for gun training permit, court told
A NSW Firearms Registry clerk who told investigators John Edwards’ police profile hadn’t “rung alarm bells” for her has been forced to admit she didn’t properly look at the profile.
An inquest was told on Tuesday the pensioner was granted a gun licence about a year before he murdered his estranged children, Jack and Jennifer Edwards, with a legally owned pistol in July 2018.
Investigator says woman raped in front of her children shouldn’t have driven alone
The gang-rape of a woman in front of her children after her car broke down on a motorway has prompted outrage and protests in Pakistan, with anger further fuelled by police, who appeared to blame the victim for travelling alone.
Fifteen people have been arrested in connection with the gang-rape, which happened at about 1.30am by the side of a motorway in Lahore.
The Chinese billionaire did not challenge the freeze on his Australian assets, including two Sydney homes worth an estimated $3.28 million
A freezing order on the worldwide assets of Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo over a $140m tax bill was unlawful, an appeal court has ruled.
The property developer, whose association with Sam Dastyari led to the Labor senator’s downfall in 2018, had challenged the international element of the order on the grounds it was unenforceable in China and Hong Kong, where most of his assets lay.