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One of two Sydney nurses charged over an alleged anti-Israel video will fight the accusations in a trial.
In the John Maddison Tower Local Court on Wednesday, 27-year-old Sarah Abu Lebdeh pleaded not guilty to one count of threatening violence to a group and one count of using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend.
Abu Lebdeh and her 28-year-old colleague Ahmad Rashad Nadir made headlines in February when they were seen in a video allegedly saying they would refuse to treat Israelis and threatening violence towards them.
The pair were working a night shift at southwest Sydney’s Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital.
A further charge against Abu Lebdeh of using a carriage service to threaten to kill was earlier withdrawn.
Nadir has not yet pleaded to one count of using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence and will face court again in a week.
Abu Lebdeh will next face court in February for a trial date to be set.
Both nurses remain on bail.
Premier Jacinta Allan has formally apologised to Victoria’s First Peoples for the impact of colonisation.
Speaking in parliament today, Allan apologised for a raft of historic policies and decisions that hurt the lives of Aboriginal Victorians over the past two centuries.
The apology was one of the agreements of Victoria’s treaty process, the first of its kind in Australia.
Allan said that since the colony of Victoria was formed 174 years ago, those who had come to the state had dreamt of a better future.
But she said those better futures had come at the expense of others, and the full extent of these injustices was detailed in the state’s Yoorrook truth-telling commission.
“To ensure that the wrongs of the past are never repeated. We say sorry.”
Allan said the apology was one act, among many, as part of the state’s treaty process that would acknowledge previous injustices and build a better future.
“If this apology is to carry more than words and the intention of members today, then we must certify through what we do next, that treaty is not merely a gesture,” she said.
“It is a pathway to healing and change. It is how we begin to right the wrongs that apology alone cannot mend.”
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson spoke to the apology motion after Allan.
She said although the Coalition did not support treaty, all sides of politics believed in the need to improve outcomes for Aboriginal Victorians. Wilson pledged to continue working towards this goal if elected to government in 2026.
US President Donald Trump won’t be getting his wish after American network ABC signed late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel to a one-year extension.
The extension will keep him on the air until at least May 2027.
Kimmel’s future looked questionable in September, when the Disney-owned ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! for remarks the host made following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Following a public outcry, ABC lifted the suspension, and Kimmel returned to the air – with much stronger ratings.
He continued his relentless joking at the president’s expense, leading Trump to urge the network to “get the bum off the air”.
Kimmel will be staying longer than late-night host Stephen Colbert at CBS. The network announced it was ending Colbert’s show next May for economic reasons, even though it is the top-rated network show in late-night television.
Most of Kimmel’s recent renewals have been multi-year extensions. There was no immediate word on whose choice it was to extend his current contract by one year.
AP
A Senate inquiry has revealed another possible death linked to a customer’s inability to call Triple Zero, TPG Telcom chief executive Inaki Berroeta told a hearing yesterday.
The inquiry is interrogating a succession of failures in the emergency call system, including an Optus outage in September that resulted in the deaths of two people after they were unable to call Triple Zero.
Berroeta yesterday revealed a previously unknown incident from September, in which a customer from Wentworth Falls in New South Wales was unable to connect to emergency services after dialling Triple Zero with an old Samsung device.
While the customer got through to emergency services via an “alternative option” five minutes later and an ambulance was deployed, TPG was notified by a Telstra staff member that “there might be a person that passed away related to this incident”, he said.
Berroeta said NSW Ambulance had been contacted, but were unable to verify details of the incident.
2025 is currently tied with 2023 to be the second-warmest year on record globally, new data suggests.
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service also found that November 2025 was the third warmest globally, especially across Northern Canada and the Arctic Ocean.
The month was marked by a number of extreme weather events, including tropical cyclones in South-East Asia causing catastrophic floods.
2024 was the hottest year on record.
“For November, global temperatures were 1.54 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and the three-year average for 2023–2025 is on track to exceed 1.5 degrees for the first time,” Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at Copernicus, said.
“These milestones are not abstract – they reflect the accelerating pace of climate change and the only way to mitigate future rising temperatures is to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
A powerful 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck off northern Japan late last night, injuring 23 people and triggering a tsunami in Pacific coast communities, officials said. Authorities warned of possible aftershocks and an increased risk of a megaquake.
The Japanese government was still assessing damage from the tsunami and quake, which struck about 11.15 pm (1.30 am Tuesday, AEDT) in the Pacific Ocean, about 80 kilometres off the coast of Aomori, off Japan’s main Honshu island.
A tsunami of up to 70 centimetres was measured in Kuji port in Iwate prefecture, just south of Aomori, and tsunami levels of up to 50 centimetres struck other coastal communities in the region, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said 23 people were injured, including one seriously. Most of them were hit by falling objects, NHK reported, adding that several people were injured in a hotel in Hachinohe and a man in Tohoku was slightly hurt when his car fell into a hole.
The meteorological agency reported the quake’s magnitude as 7.5, down from its earlier estimate of 7.6. It issued a tsunami alert for surges of up to 3 metres, but later downgraded to an advisory.
AP
Victoria’s opposition will not support an apology to the state’s Indigenous Australians by Premier Jacinta Allan today, and have not ruled out boycotting the historic ceremony altogether.
Allan will today make an apology to First Peoples, one of the conditions of the treaty the state recently signed which is the first of its kind in Australia.
But the Liberals and Nationals do not intend to support the apology because it mentions the treaty as the key policy solution to improving outcomes for Indigenous Victorians. The Coalition did not support treaty legislation when it came before parliament, and have instead proposed a standalone government department dedicated to these improvements.
Opposition Indigenous Affairs spokeswoman Melina Bath said the Coalition had sought to collaborate with the premier on the wording of the apology to ensure they could support it.
But she said that after receiving the speech in its current form, they would not back the apology and would discuss what steps to take at a joint party room meeting this morning. Bath did not rule out the possibility of abstaining from the ceremony, but said this would be determined with her colleagues.
The Opposition also have a slot to speak after the apology motion, which they could also abstain from or use as an opportunity to critique what has already been said in parliament.
“The Liberals and Nationals urge the government not to proceed with their motion as drafted,” Bath said.
“There is still time for the government to do the right thing, and to enable the opportunity for a great unifying moment in the parliament.
“The differences in approach between the Liberals and Nationals and the government in relation to treaty represent a policy disagreement on the most effective way to close the gap, not a disagreement on the urgent need to close the gap.”
Allan said the decision was “shameful”.
“The Victorian Liberal leader will forever be remembered for turning her back on the opportunity to join across the parliament to apologise for the past,” she said.
Deputy opposition leader Ted O’Brien has said this morning that revelations of Communications Minister Anika Wells’ blown-out travel expenses over the past week show a “complete lack of judgement”.
“Whether or not she loses her job, that’s a matter for the prime minister. Certainly, the Parliamentary Expenses Authority should have all of her expenses reviewed. It should be referred to them.
“For me, it just goes to a complete lack of judgement, firstly, on her part, but secondly on the part of the prime minister for defending her,” O’Brien told Sky News this morning.
He also said it was insensitive to Australians struggling with cost of living pressures before Christmas.
“I don’t think just the average Australian, especially those who are struggling ahead of Christmas would support this, and I think that, that’s the real issue here.”
Staying with Joyce on ABC News Breakfast, he says his policy agenda with One Nation will focus on housing access and affordability and limiting the threat of Chinese influence in the region.
“The first thing, my number one position, is to serve people of New England for the last two years, which I’ll do diligently, as I said, with laser-like focus. The next thing is to put myself before the people of New South Wales in a quest to win a Senate seat. And the people of New South Wales will make up their decision about me and basically determine my political future,” he said.
“And the final thing is, in regards policy … I will work with the team, as I always have to drive a policy agenda that gives a greater capacity for Australians to have their own house …
“We are also in a position which we weren’t in maybe 20 years ago, where we have China projecting power into our region in a provocative way. And if we do not become as strong as possible, as quickly as possible, no matter what your political beliefs are, you’re putting your whole nation at threat, and we cannot do that,” Joyce told the ABC.
Barnaby Joyce is insistent he has not abandoned his electorate, following his announcement yesterday that he would join One Nation and run for the Senate in NSW at the next election.
Joyce rejected the suggested that his decision let down voters who elected him to the seat of New England.
“No, I haven’t. I will maintain a laser-like focus on the New England [electorate] for the next two years,” he told ABC’s News Breakfast this morning.
“And what’s behind that, of course, is subsequent to the election, it was quite apparent that my relationship with the leadership of the National Party in the House of Representatives had broken down in an irreparable way.”
