RUSH HOUR: The stories you need to know today
THE haunting final image of British tourist Gareth Jones shows his legs dangling from the Sydney cliff edge where he later fell to his death.
Good morning, and welcome to our morning news coverage. We will be bringing you the best of what’s happening this morning, so you can get across the news quickly.
10am
That’s it for our live #RUSHHOUR news blog. You can get across the stories you need to know today below or go to news.com.au for the latest headlines.
9.45
BREAKING: Australia will now contribute money to the UN Green Climate fund.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop will announce the $200 million in funding over four years for the Green Climate Fund at the UN climate summit in Lima today.
The money will come out of the foreign aid budget.
The Foreign Minister is in Peru’s capital, Lima, meeting with world leaders on climate change negotiation.
MORE: Aussie $200m backflip on climate fund
9.35
A newborn baby flushed down the toilet by his mother has been rescued from a sewer after a passer-by heard his cries.
Rescuers uncovered the sewer in China’s Shaanxi Province to find the baby boy lying in a small pool of water.
The newborn, whose umbilical cord was still attached, miraculously survived the delicate rescue operation that was nothing short of a miracle.
“It was really a race against time because somebody could have flushed something down the sewer again at any stage, or the baby might have turned over and ended up face first in the filthy water and drowned” fire department leader Li Zhi said.
“But we didn’t want to smash the pipe because we thought that might also hurt or even kill the baby. So we had to use a mixture of tools in order to ease him towards the opening and then pull him out.”
The boy, nicknamed Xiaoxiao by his rescuers was taken to hospital and is said to be “perfectly healthy”.
Police had started a search for the baby’s mother.
9.15
A lot of us hadn’t even heard of it a couple of months ago but a term adapted from AFL terminology has been named Australia’s word of the year.
The Australian National Dictionary Centre has named ‘shirtfront’ the word of the year, 2014.
The language authority makes its annual selection “on the basis of having come to some prominence in the Australian social and cultural landscape during the year”.
Thanks to Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s threat that he would ‘shirtfront’ Russian president Mr Putin, the term rose to prominence in October.
Mr Abbott also contributed to another term that made the shortlist — ‘Team Australia’ joined ‘man-bun’ and ‘Ned Kelly beard’ on the list of words that rose to prominence this year.
9.00
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has defended his backdown on the $7 GP co-payment, saying it’s proof the parliamentary system is working.
The government has ditched plans for the mandatory co-payment and is instead introducing an optional $5 payment to be charged at the discretion of doctors to make up for a reduction in the rebate they’ll receive from Medicare.
Pensioners and other concession card holders, children under 16 and those living in aged-care facilities will be exempt from the charge.
Mr Abbott denied the new policy was a backflip, but said it was a sign of an effective Senate — which had been blocking the budget measure.
He said price signals were not a bad thing and the new “modest” charge would ensure Medicare flourished in the future.
“I’m a great supporter of Medicare,” he told Channel Nine.
“I used to say I was the best friend that Medicare had ever had.”
8.45
This has got to be the most extreme way to ride a roller-coaster.
It’s scary enough strapped to a carriage but French trial freestyle moto rider, Julien Dupont, rode the entire track of a 1.2km roller-coaster on his motorbike at a Mexico City amusement part.
The 34-year-old Red Bull rider performed backflips and used just the forces of gravity to climb up to 33m off the ground.
Nearly 50 years old, the Montana Rusa roller-coaster is a landmark in the Mexican capital and was once revered as the world’s tallest.
MORE: The most insane way to ride a roller-coaster
8.20
An alleged aspiring Islamic State fighter has been caught out by a rookie error.
Accused death cult hopeful Ahmad Saiyer Naizmand mistakenly wrote his own name on a passenger card at Sydney Airport after leaving the country using his older brother’s passport, a court was told.
The 19-year-old yesterday pleaded guilty to using a travel document not issued in his name to fly out of Sydney in August on a Malaysia Airlines flight on his elder brother’s passport, The Daily Telegraph reports.
Read more of this story at The Daily Telegraph
8.00
It is meant to be a Christmas symbol of love but a “mobile Mistletoe” at a restaurant got messy when an out-of-control drone sliced up a woman’s face.
The debut of “Mobile Mistletoe” at US restaurant chain TGI Friday’s ended in a Christmas disaster when an out-of-control drone hit a veteran photographer in the face with its blades.
“I have covered active crime scenes, terrorist strikes, etc. and survived them all, unscathed,” Georgine Benvenuto, who was on assignment for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, wrote on her personal Facebook page.
“The most dangerous assignment to date was covering this drone story.”
TGI Friday’s launched the promotion in select stores across the country hoping to spread some extra holiday cheer just in time for the holidays.
MORE: Mistletoe drone slices woman’s face
7.45
Gruesome details have emerged of the torture program set up by the CIA under former US president George W. Bush and the brutality goes beyond what anyone expected.
In a shocking report released by the US Senate investigators, it describes practices such as “rectal hydration” and “rectal feeding”.
The “lunch tray” for one detainee, which contained hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins”, was pureed and rectally infused, the report says.
At least five men in CIA detention received “rectal rehydration,” a form of feeding through the rectum. The report found no medical necessity for the treatment.
The detention and interrogation program was authorised by former president George W. Bush six days after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
The program was part of the CIA’s global counterterrorism effort to dismantle al-Qaeda and prevent another mass-casualty strike on American soil.
MORE: US Senate report on CIA interrogations condemns torture tactics
7.35
Police are searching for a missing 11-month-old boy on Tuesday after his mother’s corpse was found stuffed inside a refrigerator in their Houston apartment, the New York Post reports.
The identity of the woman, 27, who was fatally stabbed, is pending verification by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, Houston police said.
Patrick Lambert, 38, the child’s father, is a person of interest in the case and wanted for questioning in both the disappearance of his son and the death of the child’s mother, police said.
The power in the apartment had been shut off since Nov. 20 due to a late payment, according to media reports.
Read more of this story at the New York Post
7.20
Beauty vlogging sensation Zoe Sugg's millions of followers can rest easy — she’s not quitting YouTube.
Less than 24 hours after the blogger, known as Zoella, announced she was “taking a few days out from the internet” following criticism over her best-selling book, she returned to Twitter saying she wasn’t abandoning her online life completely.
The stuff press write about it literally ridiculous! I AM NOT QUITTING YOUTUBE. Yet again, twisting stuff to gain views. Sad.
— Zoë (@ZozeeBo) December 8, 2014
“I AM NOT QUITTING YOUTUBE,” she wrote.
The 24-year-old was just about trolled off Twitter after it emerged her best-selling debut novel Girl Online was actually penned by a ghostwriter.
The beauty book outsold both JK Rowling and Dan Brown’s debut novels shifting almost 80,000 copies in its first week on shelves.
Sugg has defended book being ghostwritten with her publisher’s support, and loyal fans have also leapt to her defence.
This might answer some of your tweets! X pic.twitter.com/NCuC3VhxiG
— Zoë (@ZozeeBo) December 7, 20147.00
The family of a two-year-old autistic boy in Perth who went missing on Tuesday morning are desperate to find their son as the search for Sam continues.
Sam Trott walked out of the family home in Landsdale about 10.30am through a door accidentally left open.
His parents say it took only 30 seconds for their son to disappear.
The boy’s father has made a desperate plea to urge the community to help in the search for his son.
“Check your backyards, check your front yards, check in your bushes,” he said.
“If you’ve got little drains, you know, he’s autistic, so he may not play with normal toys so he could be hiding in the garden.”
Police continue to search on foot and on horseback.
The fair-haired boy was last seen wearing a blue polo top and police have warned he may not answer to his name.
Anyone who sees Sam should phone police on 131 444.
6.45
POLICE are to begin questioning 11 people over the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann in 2007.
Four women and seven men will be quizzed by Portuguese police, observed by their British counterparts, about the disappearance of the British girl from a hotel room in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz seven years ago.
Among those being questioned will be British expat Robert Murat, who was first questioned when the toddler was reported missing by her parents, reports said.
Employees of the holiday complex where Madeleine disappeared on May 3, 2007 are also among those being questioned.
Scotland Yard inspectors are believed to have flown to Portugal to meet with Portuguese detectives handling the case.
Madeleine, then aged nearly four, disappeared from her bedroom as her parents were dining with friends at a nearby tapas bar.
Portuguese police closed their investigation in 2008 after 14 months, which at one point implicated her parents in her abduction before their names were cleared.
After two years studying the case, Britain officially opened its own investigative review of the evidence in July last year and the Portuguese authorities reopened their case shortly afterwards.
6.25
A man has been crushed to death at a Carols by Candlelight event in Queensland.
Emergency services were called to Collingwood Park State School in Ipswich about 9.30pm on Tuesday night where a man had become trapped by a ride at the Christmas event.
The man, believed to be an employee of the ride’s operator, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Read more of this story at The Courier-Mail
6.10
The haunting final image of British tourist Gareth Jones shows his legs dangling over the North Head cliff edge where he later fell to his death.
Mr Jones, 25, from Brighton in England, fell 90m from a cliff at North Head early last Sunday morning.
On his Instagram page just two days earlier on Friday, he posted the photo with the caption: “Another day another happy place”.
A keen BASE jumper, Mr Jones regularly posted videos and photos of people BASE jumping at the same location, the Manly Daily reports.
It is believed Mr Jones was trying to get a better view of the sunrise when he tragically plunged to his death on Sunday morning.
In January this year, he posted a silhouetted figure at sunrise with the caption “Epic sunrise at North Head yesterday morning”.
Police don’t believe Mr Jones was BASE jumping when he died, but his death has uncovered an unknown subculture of BASE jumping at the Manly cliff.
‘Hey dumbass!’: Brothers’ Palestine posters charge
Two brothers charged with pasting “troubling” pro-Palestine posters throughout a major city CBD have faced court.
Crumbl’s cheeky dig amid Aussie announcement
The news follows a ‘scam’ pop-up where a group allegedly spent more than $13k importing and reselling the cookies.
Dangerous act against posties on the rise
More and more Australia Post drivers are being subject to this concerning act, and it’s prompted a plea from the national service.