Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news for Friday, September 4. Here’s what you need to know today.
- Foreign Minister Penny Wong has said a group of specialist drone operators will be deployed to Nepal “in the coming days” to help ongoing search and rescue efforts after catastrophic floods. There are still 38 Australians unaccounted for in Nepal and Tibet, and the death toll in Nepal has reached 1252 people. More than 4200 are still missing. China has put the death toll in Tibet at 21, with 541 others listed as missing.
- The deadline to deliver the findings of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has been pushed back four days so the final report does not overshadow the first anniversary of the Bondi terror attack. Commissioner Virginia Bell will deliver the findings on December 18.
- Opposition home affairs minister Jonno Duniam has dismissed suggestions the Coalition had copied One Nation in its plan to slash the tobacco excise after it vowed to cut the tax by 80 per cent.
- And American journalist and second-wave feminism leader Gloria Steinem died at age 92, according to a post on her official Instagram account. Steinem was a leading activist for the second-wave feminism movement in the late 1960s and 70s, which focused on sexuality, reproductive rights, and critiquing patriarchal social structures and institutions, among other issues.