Tuesday's news in under 5 minutes.

1. Rolf Harris trial

The first witness has appeared in the trial of entertainer Rolf Harris in the UK.

The woman – who cannot be named — said that she was assaulted several times as a teenager by Rolf Harris, including once when his own daughter was in the same room.

Mr Harris, now aged 84, is alleged to have abused her from the age of 13 at her home and his as well as on holiday.

He denies all 12 counts of indecently assaulting her and three other girls from 1968 to 1986.

His alleged victims were aged between seven or eight and 19 when the offences are said to have taken place.

The witness said that Harris once performed a sex act on her while his daughter Bindi was asleep nearby.

Six of the seven charges relating to the woman are for assaults, which allegedly took place before she was 16.

She told the court that she then consented to various sexual encounters with Rolf Harris when she was an adult but felt unable to say no. She said she “felt dead” on these occasions and did not know why she let it continue, except that she was “terrified” of him.

The case continues.

2. Islamist militants release video of Nigerian girls

Terrorist group Boko Haram has released a video showing about 130 of the 276 girls kidnapped from a school in northern Nigeria. Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said the children would be held until all imprisoned militants had been freed.

Three of the girls – wearing full-length cloaks – are shown speaking in the 27-minute video, obtained by French news agency AFP.

For more, read this post here: “Video footage claims to show abducted Nigerian school girls.”

3. Pistorius’s trial’s last week

The trial of Oscar Pistorius is entering its last few days with the court hearing from a psychiatrist that the athlete has an anxiety disorder as a result of surgery at the age of 11 months to remove his lower legs.

Dr Merryll Vorster said it was a “traumatic assault” for an infant at that age.

The prosecution called for Pistorius to undergo mental observation.

If the prosecution’s request is granted, Pistorius may spend up to 30 days in a state mental health institution for observation and assessment of his mental health.

The BBC’s Andrew Harding writes, “The psychiatrist’s evidence is further proof that the athlete is changing his defence – from putative self-defence, to an accidental shooting, to something now linked to his state of mind.”

4. Call for life sentence for burglar who beat a baby to death

Crown Prosecutor Michele Williams SC has called for 19-year-old Hayden Hicks, found guilty of the murder of a 10-month-old baby, to be given a life sentence.

Last month, Hicks was found guilty of beating the baby to death with a homemade baton in the infant’s home in a suburb of Bendigo, Victoria.

For more, read this post here: “Prosecutors call for a life sentence for the man who beat a 10-month old baby to death.”

5. Budget job cuts

The budget will see 16,000 federal public servants lose their jobs as a part of massive restructuring, reports Fairfax Media.

Among other changes expected to be announced tonight include a deficit tax on high-income earners, the abolition or merging of up to 70 agencies, delayed pension eligibility until 70, new GP co-payments, cuts to family payments, harsher rules for the dole and disability support pension, a $2.4 billion rise in petrol excise and a one-year freeze on MPs’ pay.

6. Three-year-old boy murdered

A 25-year-old man charged with the murder of a three-year-old boy will face Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday.

Glenroy man Brok Hughes was arrested after his girlfriend’s son was rushed to hospital after suffering life-threatening injuries on Friday afternoon.

The toddler died in hospital.

The boy’s name was suppressed in court as his father was not yet aware of his death.

7. Mother of abandoned baby released on bridging visa

The mother of baby Mai, who was abandoned on a doorstep in the Sydney suburb of Auburn, has been released into the community on a bridging visa.

The police are still trying to locate the baby’s father.

“I can confirm the woman, from the People’s Republic of China, has been released to live in the community on a bridging visa pending the outcome of immigration matters,” a spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said.

 8. Rachelle Louise at Lin family trial

The girlfriend of balcony killer Simon Gittany has made a second appearance in court at the trial of Lian Bin ‘Robert’ Xie.

Xie is on trial for murdering his brother-in-law Min ‘Norman’ Lin, 45; Mr Lin’s wife Yun ‘Lily’ Li Lin, 44; and their sons Henry, 12, and Terry, 9, in their Sydney home in July, 2009. Xie, 50, is also alleged to have killed Lily’s 39-year-old sister Yun Bin ‘Irene’ Yin.

He has pleaded not guilty.

Commentators remain baffled as to why Rachelle Louise has now made two appearances at the trial.

9. Search for MH370

It is now believed that the electronic ‘pings’ initially thought to have come from missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 may not have come from a plane at all.

Australian naval Commander James Lybrand said yesterday that he ‘increasingly suspects’ some of the signals detected didn’t come from the jetliner’s black box flight recorders.

He said that of the four ‘pings’ picked up by the US Navy’s Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle, two were too weak to have been from a man-made device.

10. Call to raise drinking age

There are calls today to raise the legal drinking age in Australia to 21 – in line with countries such as the US.

Writing in the Medical Journal of Australia, John Toumbourou of Deakin University’s School of Psychology Ian Hickie of the Brain & Mind Research Institute, Kypros Kypri of the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Newcastle, and Sandra Jones from the Centre for Health Initiatives at the University of Wollongong, said there was increasing evidence that the accessibility of alcohol from the age of 18 was causing great harm to young people.

The professors report that studies in the US and Canada show a higher drinking age reduced the number of young people being hospitalised due to alcohol use disorder, alcohol poisoning, suicidal behaviour and road accidents.

Fairfax Media report that this call follow similar stances taken by the Australian Medical Association, Ita Buttrose, and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

11. NAPLAN stressing out our kids

Across Australia today, more than one million students in year Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 are expected to sit the NAPLAN exams, which test reading, writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation and numeracy over three days.

The Courier Mail reports that increasing number of parents are pulling their children out of the exams as a result of children vomiting, bed-wetting and losing confidence at the prospect of the NAPLAN tests.

The Australian Greens spokeswoman for schools Penny Wright has called for the NAPLAN tests to be moved to the start of the year to limit “cramming” sessions, relieve pressure on students and allow teachers to work with students on any weaknesses exposed by the exam results.

12. Pregnant drivers dangerous on roads

A study has shown that being pregnant may lead to a greater chance of having a serious car accident.

The Canadian study of more than half a million pregnant women looked at whether common features of pregnancy such as nausea, fatigue, insomnia and distraction could contribute to human error increasing the risk of an accident.

It found that one in 50 pregnant women were likely to have a car accident, with a 42 per cent increase in the number of serious accidents during the second trimester.

The study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal did, however, show that “the absolute risks among pregnant women, however, are still lower than among men of this age.”

13. Nurse gags baby with sticky tape in maternity ward

A baby in a maternity ward in the Philippines was muzzled with a strip of sticky tape because the nurse thought he was “crying too much”.

New dad Ryan Noval posted a photo on Facebook which showed his five-day-old son Yohannes sleeping with sticky tape stuck over his mouth.

The dad says that his wife, Jasmine, returned to the Cebu City hospital in the Philippines a few days after the baby’s birth to find her son gagged.

Noval wrote on Facebook: “This is not even close to being professional or humane… Jasmine immediately asked the attending nurse ‘why is there tape over his mouth?’ and the reply she got from the nurse was ‘your baby was TOO NOISY (crying) so I put that over his mouth…”

The father also claims that his son had wet himself – which might have explained why he was crying – and when his wife asked the nurses to remove the tape, she was told “you can go ahead and take it off yourself, ma’am.” Eventually, the nurse did remove the tape and allegedly hurt the baby’s lip in the process.

The couple complained about their baby’s treatment at the information desk and Cebu Maternity Hospital is currently investigating the claims.

What news are you talking about today?