Your afternoon Briefing
Hello, readers. Here’s how Wednesday played out.
Trump salutes Democrat after Alabama win
Arguably the biggest story of the day was the upset victory of a Democratic Senate candidate in conservative Alabama.
Doug Jones will be the first Democrat Senator elected in Alabama in a generation after he defeated the controversial Republican evangelical Christian and accused child sex offender Roy Moore.
The narrow victory of Mr Jones will cut the Republican majority in the Senate to 51-49 and is a stunning blow to President Donald Trump, who tweeted his congratulations.
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PM ‘fuelling suspicions of Asians’
Back home, Kristina Keneally has accused Malcolm Turnbull of implying that Asian-Australians are not “fully-fledged members of Team Australia”, as the battle to win the northwestern Sydney seat of Bennelong intensifies ahead of Saturday’s by-election.
“It’s not just Chinese-Australians, but Korean-Australians too, who know they’re getting tarred by Malcolm Turnbull’s assertion that Asian-Australians are not fully-fledged members of Team Australia.
“The last time I heard this rhetoric was from Pauline Hanson and One Nation 20 years ago, and people think that we were all well behind it. But Malcolm Turnbull’s reviving it.”
Earlier, Turnbull refuted claims he was ‘China-phobic’, citing his own family links through his Chinese daughter-in-law.
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That’s not a lawsuit, THAT’S a lawsuit
Crocodile Dundee star Paul Hogan has thrown another court case on the barbie, launching action against burger chain Grill’d over its use of his most famous movie catchphrase.
Hogan objects to the use of the line “That’s not a knife, that’s a knife” — spoken by his bushman character Mick Dundee in the 1986 hit Crocodile Dundee — on cutlery sleeves distributed to Grill’d customers looking to carve into a burger.
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Don’t try this at home, kids
Could you lose 4kg in a day? It hurts just thinking about what Jeff Horn put his body through to make weight for his title defence.
Don’t miss tonight’s showdown as Horn defends his WBO welterweight title against Gary Corcoran in Brisbane. We’ll be live blogging here.