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Incorrect media reporting is leading to inconsistent treatment of children across states and territories, the report foundFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastSenators from the Liberals and Greens have joined forces to call for the age of criminal responsibility to be lifted, after a federal inquiry into the youth justice system found that incorrect media reporting was leading to an inconsistent treatment of children across states and territories.The Senate committee report, released on Friday, made four recommendations, including for the federal attorney general to work with state and territory counterparts to introduce national minimum standards in relation to youth justice and establish a “National Child and Community Safety Taskforce”. Continue reading...

Mark Rutte said Britain will need to steadily increase defence spending to meet Nato target of 3.5% of GDP by 2035Britain needs to show “a credible path” of annual increases in its defence budgets to meet a Nato target of spending nearly £30bn more on the military by the middle of the next decade, the head of the alliance said on Thursday.Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general, said that Britain could not wait until just before 2035 to lift defence spending to 3.5% of GDP, in an unusually pointed intervention a day after he met prime minister Andy Burnham. Continue reading...

• The White House launched a six-month review to shift the responsibility for European security toward a European-led defense model. • A senior Pentagon official told Reuters the process is designed to be rigorous, consultative, and empirical. • This shift forces European nations to increase their own military spending and strategic autonomy to maintain security without relying on U.S. leadership.

The Arizona senator shepherded the confirmation of conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh Jon Kyl, a Republican former US senator from Arizona who shepherded conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh through his confirmation hearing, died Thursday at 84, his family announced.The cause was complications from a neurological disease, according to a statement. Last December, Kyl announced that he had been diagnosed with dementia. Continue reading...

Health committee chair Bill Cassidy said fatal outbreak of disease is a ‘terrible legacy’ for Trump administrationUS politics live – latest updatesSenator Bill Cassidy, the Republican chairman of the US Senate health committee, blamed the Trump administration’s vaccine-skeptical approach for ‌recent measles deaths in Pennsylvania and challenged Donald Trump’s pick for surgeon general to directly state that vaccines do not cause autism on Wednesday.Cassidy, a Louisiana physician who chairs the panel, said three people in Pennsylvania had died of measles, with a fourth death under review, because ​of misinformation and misguided policies. His remarks come as the US grapples with its worst measles outbreak in over three decades. Continue reading...

Mark Rutte asked UK and Europe to ‘provide the hard power Nato needs’ in face of geopolitical uncertaintyNato needs “more UK and more Europe in the alliance” to deal with the most dangerous security environment faced by the west in a generation, the secretary general of the 32-country military alliance said this afternoon on a visit to the UK.Mark Rutte praised Britain for promising to increase defence spending in line with US demands after a meeting with prime minister Andy Burnham – but argued that the military and financial effort must continue into the future. Continue reading...

Pictures of Georgia Democrat looking into middle distance proliferate – and social media skills have boosted his profileDelivering a speech in Atlanta last month, Jon Ossoff accused Donald Trump of corruption, incompetence and fecklessness, and peppered his remarks with substantive observations of dates and times and places. But the comment that ricocheted across the internet – a clip of just a few seconds – was an almost-throwaway reference about how the US president wants to “travel with Natalie” onboard Air Force One.The crowd cheered the US senator, who is running for re-election in battleground Georgia and is increasingly seen as a potential Democratic candidate for president in 2028. But his target audience that day – and this year – spanned far beyond the concert hall. Continue reading...