–With AAP.
1. “You haven’t said no.” The chilling messages between Grace Millane and her killer.
The text messages between Grace Millane and the man who murdered her have been publicly revealed after they were presented to the jury during the trial.
Last week the 27-year-old man, who cannot be named due to a suppression order, was found guilty of murder for strangling the 21-year-old British backpacker to death.
The text messages, exchanged on the dating app Tinder, show the man being persistent in his requests to buy her birthday drinks for her 22nd birthday, whilst Millane was more reluctant.
Published by the New Zealand Herald, they show the man sent the first message, writing: "Hi Grace how are you?? Much planned for your weekend?"
"Hey, I'm good thanks and it's actually my birthday tomorrow but I have no plans," Millane responds.
He then suggests the two get a drink together to celebrate, to which Millane responds "yeah maybe".
"Maybe yes??"
"Convince me," Millane writes.
The man goes on to say he will pay for the drinks if she goes to dinner with him, before he says: "How about we meet at SkyCity?"
"I haven't said yes yet?" Millane responds.
The man writes back: "You haven't said no either. So what's it gonna take to make this happen then?"
Millane says she only has casual attire, which he says is "fine".
"So that is a yes? Meet up near SkyCity?" he continues.
Millane says "okay".
The two met on December 1, 2018, and visited a number of bars in the city centre.
They kissed, before walking arm-in-arm a short distance to the lobby of the CityHigh hotel where the man was staying.
CCTV footage showed Grace follow him out of the lift at 9.41pm toward his apartment.
Sometime that evening or early the following morning Grace Millane died as a result of pressure on her neck.
During a police confession prior to the man's arrest, the man said he had sex with Grace, and later woke to find her unresponsive. He claimed he then "panicked" and disposed of her body.
However a jury of seven men and five women confirmed that Grace Millane did not die by accident. She was murdered.
2. Save the Children call for Australian children to be taken out of Syrian refugee camps.
Leaving children languishing in refugee camps in Syria risks not only traumatising them but radicalising another generation.
Save the Children chief executive Paul Ronalds used a speech to mark the centenary of the humanitarian organisation at the Australian War Memorial on Monday night to make a fresh call for dozens of Australian children to be taken out of camps in north-east Syria.
"No one is defending the actions of their parents, who must face justice," Mr Ronalds said.
"But we must defend the rights of every child to live, to be protected and to be educated.
"Australia has the power to repatriate these children and support their recovery; their reintegration into our society."
He said his organisation would not stop speaking out on the issue, especially given at least 400 children had died in the camps.
"Punishing these children for the crimes of their parents only risks traumatising and radicalising another generation."
Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week rebuffed a United States offer to rescue Australian families of Islamic State fighters from Syria.
He says Australian officials should not be placed in danger in order to remove women and children in the conflict zone.
More than 60 Australians are in the al-Hawl camp, including 44 children, most of whom are aged under five.
Mr Ronalds said in his speech the Australian government could be proud of its contribution to alleviating the tragic toll that war has on the lives of children, but more must be done.
"One hundred after our founders first told the hard truth about the toll of war on children we have to confront the fact that things are getting worse," he said.
New research from Save the Children has found that more children are being exposed to armed violence than at any time in the past 20 years.
More than 420 million children worldwide are living in a conflict zone, up 30 million in the past three years.
For every fighter killed in conflict between 2013 and 2017, five children have died.
3. Scott Morrison says the link between the government's emission plans and the bushfires is an 'outright lie'.
Scott Morrison says anyone linking his government's emissions plan with the bushfires destroying homes around the country is telling outright lies.
Greens MP Adam Bandt asked the Prime Minister on Monday to apologise to bushfire victims for Australia's coal exports.
"Prime Minister, if exporting pollution was an Olympic sport you'd be on the podium with a medal around your neck," Mr Bandt told parliament.
"We're not some 1.3 per cent minnow, we're the world's third-largest exporter of climate pollution."
Mr Morrison hit back, saying that Australia was doing its part with emissions cuts of 26-28 per cent his government has stuck to under the Paris agreement.
"To suggest that there is some trade-off, that if the government had adopted economy wrecking ... emission reduction cuts that were put forward by the Labor Party at the last election, then these fires would not have taken place - that is an outright lie," he said.
"It is an untruth and it is misleading those going through some of the most difficult times of their lives."
4. David Leyonhjelm has been ordered to pay $120,000 in defamation damages to Sarah Hanson-Young.
David Leyonhjelm has been ordered to pay $120,000 defamation damages to Sarah Hanson-Young, after a judge found he was motivated by malice and intended publicly shaming the Greens senator.
The then Liberal Democrat senator, who demanded she "stop shagging men", had portrayed her as a hypocrite and misandrist, Justice Richard White ruled in the Federal Court on Monday.
Mr Leyonhjelm had also wrongly stated she had made an absurd claim along the lines that "all men are rapists", the judge said.
He found those meanings were defamatory, rejected Mr Leyonhjelm's defences of justification and statutory qualified privilege, and adjourned the case to December 17 to deal with legal costs and interest.
Senator Hanson-Young later said she would donate the damages to charity.
"I took this action because my daughter and her peers deserve to grow up in a society where women, young and old, married or single, rich or poor are treated with respect, free of discrimination, harassment and sexist slurs," she said in a statement.
She sued her then colleague over comments he made in a press release and in interviews with Sky News, Melbourne radio station 3AW and the ABC's 7.30 program between June 28 and July 2, 2018.
In the material, he elaborated on his comment to her on the floor of parliament to "stop shagging men" amid a debate on a motion for women to have access to non-lethal weapons as a means of self-defence.
While Senator Hanson-Young said his comments amounted to "sl*t-shaming", she testified she didn't sue on this basis as it wasn't defamatory to suggest a woman has had sex with more than one man.
The judge said the question of whether the Greens senator had made a comment tantamount to claiming all men were rapists, as alleged by her then colleague, was the heart of the issues in the case.
In finding she did not but said words to the effect that "more guns on the streets won't protect women from men", Justice White found Mr Leyonhjelm likely "heard" that which he was predisposed to hear due to his regarding her as a person who made "collectivists" statements.
But he acted recklessly, not attempting to verify its accuracy with her and with other senators, meaning his conduct in publishing the meanings was not reasonable.
"I have also accepted that the respondent was actuated by malice in that he published his claim concerning the applicant to a mass audience with the intention of publicly shaming her."
His repeated references to her "shagging" men, and his statements that "the rumours about (her) in Parliament House are well known", that "Sarah is known for liking men" and that she "is known for having lots of relationships with men" were calculated to embarrass, the judge said.
Other references to her sexual behaviour indicated his malice.
"Each of these had a gratuitous quality and seemed calculated to belittle or shame the applicant."
The judge accepted some harm was suffered by Senator Hanson-Young by the "promiscuity imputation" upon which she did not sue.
5. Greenhouse gases surged to a record high in 2018.
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere hit a new record in 2018, rising faster than the average rise of the last decade and cementing increasingly damaging weather patterns, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) says.
The UN agency's Greenhouse Gas Bulletin is one of a series of studies to be published ahead of a UN climate change summit being held in Madrid next week, and is expected to guide discussions there.
It measures the atmospheric concentration of the gases responsible for global warming, rather than emissions.
"There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline, in greenhouse gases' concentration in the atmosphere - despite all the commitments under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
"This continuing long-term trend means that future generations will be confronted with increasingly severe impacts of climate change, including rising temperatures, more extreme weather, water stress, sea level rise and disruption to marine and land ecosystems."
The concentration of carbon dioxide, a product of burning fossil fuels that is the biggest contributor to global warming, surged from 405.5 parts per million in 2017 to 407.8 ppm in 2018, exceeding the average rate of increase of 2.06 ppm in 2005-2015, the WMO report said.
Irrespective of future policy, carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for centuries, locking in warming trends.
"It is worth recalling that the last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5 million years ago," Taalas said.
Levels of methane - a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 - and nitrous oxide also hit new records, the report said.
The UN Environment Program's annual "emissions gap" report, due on Tuesday, assesses whether countries' emissions reduction policies are enough.