It took less than 30 minutes for a video of an alleged stabbing attack at a church in western Sydney to snake its way through WhatsApp groups across the city.

As chaos was still unfolding inside the Assyrian Christ the Good Shepherd church in Wakeley last Monday night, clips from the alleged attack – during a livestreamed memorial service where a 16-year-old boy allegedly stabbed Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel – were being shared.

Then, quicker than most news outlets could report on the incident, large WhatsApp groups that connect people across western Sydney – some with more than 800 members – were inundated with forwarded videos, photos and voice notes. Some with inflammatory messages, some with pleas for calm and others that were plainly wrong.

Outside the church, the situation spiralled quickly. Police believe about 2,000 people descended on the scene, smashing police vehicles and injuring a number of officers. Police officers and paramedics say they were stuck in the church for more than three hours.

Police had been called to the church at 7.10pm. Guardian Australia has heard indirectly of how quickly the first video of the alleged attack captured on livestream spread; the earliest verified time stamp on WhatsApp is at 7.38pm.

While false claims about the Bondi Junction attack spread widely on public and quasi-public platforms such as X, Telegram and Facebook, the encrypted nature of WhatsApp makes it difficult to track exactly where forwarded content comes from.

But the way the information spread on the night of the Wakeley attack shows how WhatsApp can go from being a way to communicate between friends and neighbours to a rapidly moving broadcast platform for unfiltered, unmoderated and unverified content.

The initial spread

Fadi* is in several large WhatsApp groups and said he was receiving content and information “very quickly”.

“People were sending things almost as it was being shot and it [was] going around many groups. You couldn’t really filter it out because of the speed at which it was coming through.”

Messages alleging the church-goers were holding the attacker and preventing police from entering the church were being sent at 8.03pm. They also claimed the 16-year-old was “bashed” and that “they chopped his finger off” – which authorities later said was not the case.

Laila* said her son was urged to go to the church almost immediately after the attack.

“His phone was going crazy literally minutes after we received the first video, because some of his friends are Assyrian,” she said.

That claim is backed by videos that began spreading before 8.30pm, showing a large police presence at the church.

“We just kept receiving things all night, and my son’s work mates almost immediately said they were going down [to the church],” Laila said. “It was literally minutes after. It was so quick.”

She said she was receiving footage “much faster” than was being reported in the media.

Videos that were circulating at about 8.30pm show huge crowds gathering in the streets surrounding the church and a mob trying to enter.

Videos of violence began circulating soon after, with clips showing damaged police cars and violence near the church just after 9pm. In one video people can be heard urging the mob to “get in” as the person filming eats popcorn.

Videos shot before 9.30pm feature a growing crowd that seems increasingly outraged, with one video showing people yelling “bring him out” and others show police standing guard around the church.

Rumours of backlash begin

Before 9pm on the night, rumours began circulating on the nature of the attack, and of alleged plans for retaliation against Muslim places of worship.

At 8.48pm, videos of a string of police vehicles parked on a street were being shared, alongside a message saying “this is at a masjid” and “I think they went to the local mosque” without any further details.

Such claims grew in number as the night wore on, with some spreading voice notes that expressed shock and anger that any mosques could be targeted in retaliatory attacks.

Fadi said what stood out to him throughout the night was the breadth of unverified claims that were flooding his group chats.

“The number of different theories and opinions people had about what was happening, none of them verified, was overwhelming,” he said. “Sometimes we would get the same picture or video, with different stories attached to them.”

In one voice note Guardian Australia has heard, prior to 9.23pm, a man can be heard saying he was “ready for jihad” and that he would “go down to anywhere”.

Only 10 minutes later, another voice note from an unknown man called for people to not “shy away from what needs to be done, but at the same time we don’t jump the gun and assume and run off emotion”.

“If they want to retaliate and go eye-for-an-eye, so be it,” he says in both English and Arabic. “We know that among the believers are men. Go be near your local mosque if you can.

“Let the facts come out.”

Earlier, at 8.03pm, a rumour was being spread that a firebombing threat had been issued against a mosque.

But those who heeded the calls and went to their local mosques found little to report.

In a video that was being forwarded just after 10pm, a man says he is at Green Valley mosque and that “there is nothing”.

“Please, stop spreading fake news,” he says.

The alleged attacker

Videos and photos that showed the face of the alleged attacker also spread quickly.

Other voice notes later in the evening were shared by people who claimed they knew the alleged attacker and described him as being “poisoned”.

By 9.25pm, a wrong name that had been circulating linked to the alleged attacker was also being debunked via a screenshot of an apparent Facebook post where a man denied it was him.

Later that night, claims circulated about the alleged attacker’s age, his high school and that he was Muslim.

Laila said there were many rumours that circulated very quickly, including that the alleged attacker had previously been in jail, or that he was “an Assyrian before, and turned to Islam”.

“My son was reading and sending screenshots of messages he was getting, and there was just lots of stories being spread,” she said.

“I was not coping with the anxiety in my house that night. I couldn’t sleep.”

‘A type of virality’

WhatsApp is a key platform for many groups, including diaspora communities and neighbourhoods, to share news and information. But while the platform is often characterised as a private messaging app, that’s not always accurate.

WhatsApp group sizes can reach up to 1,024 members, and its channel function lets organisations broadcast content to multiple followers.

“Despite WhatsApp not having algorithmic curation … which happens on Twitter and Facebook, content can still be made highly visible to many people at one time by that content being forwarded rapidly between groups,” said Amelia Johns, an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney who has studied the app’s use globally.

“That creates a type of virality that’s more organic and user driven.”

Laila said she was getting all of her updates from WhatsApp, where information was being shared “much faster” than anywhere else.

“We were at least an hour ahead of anyone else reporting on it. And it was mostly coming from group chats.

“The amount of messages were making me very, very nervous. Eventually I just refused to open any of them any more.”

Fadi said the amount of misinformation being shared was “dangerous” and led to the escalation on the night, and community leaders have called “for increased vigilance and security measures” to protect religious institutions.

WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, limits the number of times a message can be forwarded to five chats at a time as part of efforts to “slow down the spread of rumors, viral messages, and fake news”. If a message has been forwarded through five or more chats, it is also labelled as “forwarded many times”.

WhatsApp messages are encrypted, which means they can’t be read by people outside the groups where they’re shared.

Meta did not comment on whether it had received any requests from New South Wales police regarding WhatsApp data linked to the attack or its aftermath.

“We regularly cooperate with law enforcement and comply with government requests in accordance with applicable law and our terms of service,” a spokesperson said.

* Names have been changed for privacy and safety

The former tabloid publisher David Pecker told the jury in the Donald Trump criminal trial on Friday that running coverage beneficial to Trump was in effect business as usual, as the defense tries to chip away at the claim that there was a conspiracy involved.

In cross-examination on his third day of testimony, Pecker was grilled by Trump’s defense attorney Emil Bove about whether he benefited from running positive stories about Trump and negative stories about other politicians even before the alleged catch-and-kill scheme.

Pecker testified that the Enquirer ran negative stories about the Clintons as part of the effort to help the Trump campaign, agreed in a meeting on August 2015.

Asked if there were negative articles before the meeting, Pecker said: “That’s correct.”

“And that’s because you’d made a business decision that it was good for the National Enquirer to run those stories, correct?” asked Bove.

“Yes.”

“And so before the August 2015 meeting, you had decided that it made sense for the business of AMI to run articles about Bill and Hillary Clinton?”

“Yes,” Pecker said.

“And those articles were negative?”

“Yes.”

Asked finally if running those stories was beneficial for AMI, Pecker again said yes.

Pecker was instrumental in coordinating three hush-money payments that were paid during the 2016 election campaign to quash negative stories about Trump. He has testified that American Media Inc (AMI), the publisher of the National Enquirer, paid $30,000 to a former Trump Tower doorman who said Trump had a child out of wedlock. Another $150,000 was paid to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Trump in 2006.

The third payment, worth $130,000, was paid by Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels in October 2016. Prosecutors have charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for this hush payment. They say Trump illegally marked reimbursements to Cohen for the hush money as payment for Cohen’s legal services.

Through yes-or-no questions, which Pecker largely confirmed, Bove on Thursday afternoon started outlining the defense’s argument that AMI has had a long relationship with Trump, one that began well before the election. Buying stories and not publishing them was also standard for the tabloid.

Bove also started questioning Pecker’s memory, saying that he listed two different time periods for when he first met Trump about his campaign.

“These things happened a long time ago – even when you’re doing your best, and I’m sure you are – it’s hard to remember what people said almost 10 years ago,” Bove said.

Earlier in the week, Pecker detailed how he operated as the “eyes and ears” for Trump’s campaign starting in 2015, right after Trump announced his candidacy. He promised Trump and Cohen that he would inform them of any people trying to sell negative stories about Trump.

While Pecker seemed eager to help Trump pay off the doorman, he started becoming wary of the hush payments as AMI was working on an agreement with McDougal. The former Playboy model was requesting $150,000 in payment for her story.

Pecker said Cohen told him: “I’m your friend, the boss will take care of it.”

Pecker was also nervous about potential campaign finance contribution violations, alluding to previous troubles the National Enquirer had when helping the former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger bury stories.

Though AMI would ultimately facilitate payments to McDougal, Pecker would decline to reimburse Stormy Daniels directly.

“I said I don’t want the National Enquirer to be associated with a porn star,” Pecker said. “This would be very damaging for the magazine, very damaging for American Media.”

Even though the Wall Street Journal would ultimately publish McDougal’s story, and the National Enquirer’s involvement in killing it, four days before the election in November 2016, Trump won the presidency. He would go on to thank Pecker on multiple occasions following his victory.

At the end of their questioning, prosecutors asked Pecker if he had any ill feelings toward Trump.

“On the contrary,” he said. “I felt that Donald Trump was my mentor. He helped me throughout my career.”

Pecker’s testimony continues on Friday, the eighth day of the trial, which is expected to last six weeks.

In regional Australia, a series of tragic deaths has rippled across a group of close-knit communities.

During the course of the past week, the death of Molly Ticehurst, a 28-year-old childcare worker in the New South Wales town of Forbes, sparked outrage just a day before the body of Emma Bates, 49, was found in Cobram, Victoria.

The mayor of Forbes, Phyllis Miller, says Ticehurst was loved by many and that her death had left many families and the children she cared for reeling.

“Molly was a very beautiful young woman and very highly regarded in our community,” Miller says.

“The whole system has let her down badly.”

This year, 26 women in Australia have been killed – a rate of one death every four days – according to data compiled by advocacy group Destroy the Joint’s project Counting Dead Women.

Of those, half occurred in regional parts of Australia, highlighting the vulnerabilities faced by women experiencing violence outside metropolitan areas.

Across Australia, frontline services, domestic violence advocates and police officers are demanding investment in violence prevention and a crackdown on law enforcement.

The NSW government also has ordered a review of the bail laws following Ticehurst’s death, over which her ex-partner Daniel Billing has been charged with murder. The NSW police commissioner, Karen Webb, has backed this review as an urgent priority, but she acknowledged that more needed to be done to stop domestic violence happening in the first place.

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This weekend, thousands are preparing to take to the streets in 17 rallies across the nation calling for greater action on a growing epidemic of women killed in violent attacks.

In Ballarat, Victoria’s third-largest regional city, the rally on Friday marked the second time in a month residents had marched the city’s streets demanding an end to the killing of women.

An earlier protest came a week after the body of Hannah McGuire, from the nearby town of Clunes, was found dead in a burnt-out car in a state forest, and within 48 hours of police launching a new and unsuccessful search for the body of Samantha Murphy, allegedly murdered on 4 February after leaving her family home to go for a run.

Ballarat has also been rocked by the death of 42-year-old Rebecca Young, who was killed in a suspected murder-suicide by her partner, in the small suburb of Sebastopol.

Wendy Sturgess, the chief executive of non-profit community service organisation Child & Family Services Ballarat, says the interconnected nature of regional and remote communities can add additional barriers.

“We hear about women in remote settings, who lived for years with family violence because they don’t have access to means of transport to leave, they don’t have access to legal services and the perpetrator can often be a mate of everybody’s,” she tells Guardian Australia.

Elise Phillips, the deputy chief executive of Domestic Violence NSW, says resourcing in regional and rural areas is a major issue. In particular, the lack of housing and crisis accommodation.

“Women are having to choose between being homeless or between continuing to experience abuse,” she says.

Phillips points out that the Victorian government spends more than all of the other states and territories combined on DVF services. The NSW government spends less than half of what Victoria does, despite supporting a larger population.

“This means that frontline services on the ground are struggling to meet demand and frontline workers are faced with having to turn vulnerable women and children away,” says Phillips.

Meanwhile, women in rural areas across Australia are 24 times more likely to end up in hospital due to domestic violence issues, she says.

“We’ve made it very clear to [the premier, Chris Minns that] changing the bail laws alone is not going to get the job done,” Phillips says.

Antoinette Braybrook, the chief executive of the Victorian Aboriginal-community controlled family violence prevention and legal service Djirra, also says data on the number of murdered and missing First Nations women is poor.

“The most recent national data suggests that Aboriginal women are 33 times more likely to be hospitalised and 11 times more likely to die from a violent assault than other women. But rarely are our stories covered or seen as newsworthy,” she says.

The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, has vowed to establish a taskforce to determine ways to curb the spate of women’s deaths.

Sturgess says solutions must be focused on early prevention and notes men’s behavioural programs are critical to help break intergenerational cycles of violence.

“There is a lack of support the further out you go for men, in particular in terms of behaviour change programs,” she says.

Such programs are critical, she says, for helping men, women and children.

“If we’re helping men, we’re helping women and children as well.”

Lauren Callaway, Victoria police’s assistant commissioner for family violence, says practical measures that could be considered include tougher penalties for perpetrators who breach family violence intervention orders.

Meanwhile, in NSW, an estimated 40% of police work is responding to domestic violence incidents.

A report released by the state’s police watchdog last year found there had been an improvement in how police respond to incidents, including introducing police teams that specifically focus on DVF in each of the state’s six policing regions.

But it found that in more than a third of complaint investigations reviewed by the commission, police failed to investigate reports of DVF properly, and the bulk of the work is still carried out by general police officers.

Though there is training related to responding to DVF, the training is not mandatory, and the lack of training was highlighted as an issue in the cases reviewed by the watchdog. The police agreed in principle to a recommendation from the report to make the training mandatory and increase the frequency.

The watchdog recommended that NSW follow Victoria and Queensland and establish separate commands which deal with DVF. But given the population and size of the state, it said a command for each region could be warranted.

In the Bega Valley region, Vesna Andric, who runs the region’s Staying Home Leaving Violence project, says police have one domestic violence liaison officer for the whole region and “it’s not enough”.

She wants to see more resourcing for police and domestic violence services, but also a greater focus on prevention.

“We need education in schools on healthy relationships,” she says. “We need something that allows men who are thinking about violence to come forward and get rehabilitation.”

“We need to set something up so an expert can talk to those men when violence is happening and, when they’re charged about what’s on their mind, what their plans are, rather than letting them stew and ruminate in the dark.”

Thousands of people are set to take to the streets this weekend in 17 rallies across Australia calling for greater action on a growing epidemic of women killed in violent attacks.

Organised by advocacy group What Were You Wearing (WWYW), the first rallies will be held in Ballarat and Newcastle on Friday.

Saturday’s rallies will be held in Sydney and Adelaide, and on Sunday rallies will take place across the country in Melbourne, Bendigo, Geelong, Coffs Harbour, Wagga Wagga, Orange, Perth, the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, Brisbane and Canberra.

“Enough is enough,” the rallies’ organisers posted to social media. “The number keeps going up and this is why we are protesting this weekend. Fight with us for change.”

South Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who is among those scheduled to speak at the Adelaide rally, has called for the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to designate violence against women “a national emergency”.

“This is an epidemic and it’s time we started talking about it not in terms of just ‘violence against women’,” Hanson-Young told Guardian Australia in an interview for the Australian Politics podcast. “This is the murder of women. This is the terrorising of women in their homes and on the street. Women don’t feel safe.”

WWYW’s founder, Sarah Williams, said the group had five demands including more funding for domestic, family and sexual violence support services as well as for Albanese to declare the violence a national emergency.

“I didn’t expect when I started organising the rallies that so many people from everywhere over Australia would be not only angry but wanting to stand together in solidarity to really see an end to this,” Williams told ABC News Breakfast.

“I think there is no better time than now to really put some pressure on change-makers to make some change.”

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Sarah Hanson-Young said that instead of political hand-wringing, there should be an “all-shoulders-to-the-wheel” approach, starting with better funding of support services and a “root-and-branch review of the justice system”, including apprehended violence orders and how well they protect women.

Asked if what she called “an epidemic” of violence against women should be designated as a form of terrorism, as some have suggested, Hanson-Young said Australians needed to “change the way we think about it and the way we talk about it”.

“Because what we’re doing isn’t working.”

Violence against women has long plagued Australia. There is no official counter for women’s deaths, but the number of women who die in gendered violence is collated by Destroy the Joint’s Counting Dead Women and Femicide Watch’s Red Heart Campaign. According to their figures, an average of one women a week was killed in domestic violence incidents last year. This year that average has grown to almost one women murdered every four days.

“Right around the country our communities are reeling from an increase in family and domestic violence,” independent senator David Pocock said.

“Find your nearest rally and get out there to show that enough is enough.”

Here are where the rallies will take place across Australia:

Friday

• Ballarat: Bridge Town Hall at 5pm

• Newcastle: Newcastle Museum on Nobby’s foreshore at 6pm

Saturday

• Sydney: Belmore Park in Haymarket at 1pm

• Adelaide: Parliament House at 11am

• Hobart: Parliament House lawns at 1pm

Sunday

• Melbourne: State Library at 10am

• Perth: Parliament House at 1pm

• Brisbane: King George Square at 11am

• Canberra: Commonwealth Park at 2pm

• Bendigo: Rosalind Park at 11am

• Geelong: Market Square Mall at 11am

• Coffs Harbour: Jetty foreshore at 11am

• Sunshine Coast: Foundation Park at 11am

• Gold Coast: Broadwater Parklands at 11am

• Orange: Robertson Park at 2.30pm

• Cobram: Federation Park at 11am

• Wagga Wagga: Victory Memorial Gardens at 11am

• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 988 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org

The Australian government has pledged $161.3m to establish the national firearms register, a proposal almost four decades in the making.

On Saturday the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, will reveal the four-year funding commitment in the May budget to establish the register and reform existing firearms management systems.

National cabinet agreed to the register in December 2023, in what Dreyfus called “the most significant improvement in Australia’s firearms management systems in almost 30 years.”

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In December 2022, the fatal shooting of two Queensland police officers and a neighbour in Wieambilla renewed calls for a national firearm register.

In a statement, Dreyfus acknowledged the “tragic events at Wieambilla … were a catalyst for progressing this outstanding reform from the 1996 Port Arthur massacre response”.

The register will allow law enforcement to assess risks by: providing frontline police officers with near real-time information on firearms, parts, and owners; and linking firearms information with other relevant police and government information, including from the national criminal intelligence system.

“Once established, police will know where firearms are, who owns them, and what other risks to the community and police may exist,” Dreyfus said.

“The Australian government is committed to protecting the Australian community and ensuring Australia’s firearms laws remain among the most effective in the world.”

In February, the alleged murder of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies renewed scrutiny on police handling of their own weapons.

New South Wales police allege that officer Beau Lamarre, who has been charged with murder, checked out a force-issued handgun from storage at the Miranda police station to work in a “user pays” capacity at a protest event.

In June 2023, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, praised John Howard’s “courage and determination” to legislate gun control in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre and said a national firearms register would be the “next step” for the reforms that began in 1996.

Bruce Lehrmann has agreed to pay the columnist and author Peter FitzSimons’ costs for complying with a subpoena during Lehrmann’s failed defamation proceedings against Network Ten and former Project presenter Lisa Wilkinson.

Lehrmann lost his defamation case against Network Ten and Wilkinson in the federal court earlier this month. Justice Michael Lee found on the balance of probabilities that Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins on a minister’s couch in Parliament House in 2019. Lehrmann has consistently denied the allegation and pleaded not guilty at the criminal trial into the matter which was aborted due to juror misconduct.

As part of the defamation proceedings, FitzSimons, who is Wilkinson’s husband, was issued with a subpoena relating to a $325,000 book deal he was instrumental in negotiating for Higgins with Penguin Random House.

The publisher was also issued with a subpoena to produce Higgins’ contract.

Federal court orders for Lehrmann to pay FitzSimons’ costs, amounting to $4,616, were made by consent of the parties and publicly released on Friday.

The orders are part of an ongoing process to determine who should pay how much of the ultimate legal bill.

Network Ten has argued in a submission to the federal court that Lehrmann should pay the broadcaster’s legal costs because suing The Project for defamation was “deliberately wicked and calculated”, given Lee had found Lehrmann would have known when he filed for defamation “that he had raped Ms Higgins”.

Ten had made a “walk away” offer to Lehrmann to settle in August 2023, before the trial began, on the basis that no admissions would be made by either side and no money change hands.

The network said Lehrmann’s rejection of the offer was “unreasonable in the circumstances” and meant the court should make an indemnity costs order, meaning Lehrmann must pay all the costs incurred.

The network also argued the Ben Roberts-Smith v Fairfax decision in a previous defamation action had set a precedent for an applicant being ordered to pay indemnity costs because they abused the legal process in bringing the claim.

Wilkinson, a former Project presenter, has filed a crossclaim against Ten over a dispute about payment of more than $700,000 in legal costs and won, so she will be for the most part covered by Ten.

Legal experts have estimated the bill for Ten and Wilkinson’s legal counsel alone would be $8m, and some have estimated the entire costs bill could be as high as $10m.

Lehrmann is understood to be jobless and lacking significant means, which may affect whether he can pay the bill, even if ordered to.

A costs hearing is scheduled for 1 May.

The founder of the #MeToo movement, Tarana Burke, has called the women who spoke out against Harvey Weinstein “heroes” and said such campaigns for justice and equality will continue to bring about progress in society.

Burke, who nearly two decades ago coined the phrase “Me too” from her work with sexual assault survivors, found herself again declaring – after New York’s highest court in a shock decision on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction in the city – the #MeToo reckoning was greater than any court case.

A strong sign that the movement is still there, is international, and is still working was that, Burke said, “10 years ago we could not get a man like Harvey Weinstein into the courtroom.”

The movement, she said, was responsible for that huge cultural shift – regardless of the Hollywood mogul’s ultimate legal fate.

Thursday’s announcement was a huge blow and a worrying development for those who have been assaulted or sexually harassed, including by superiors in the workplace, and a setback that is also coming as Donald Trump is running for president again despite multiple accusations of sexual assault and predatory conduct over the years – and being found liable by a civil court for sexual abuse.

But Burke and other advocates joined Hollywood figures who were victims of Weinstein to express distress at the decision and declare that the movement goes on and will continue to change society, while prosecutors said they would seek a new trial of the movie mogul in New York.

“I can understand how devastating and disgusted and angry, just the range of emotions that so many of them must feel,” Burke said. “And I hope they understand for those of us survivors who will likely never see a day in court, that they are still heroes to us,” Burke said.

Anita Hill, who testified against Clarence Thomas during his 1991 supreme court confirmation hearing, becoming the face of the fight against sexual harassment more than a quarter-century before the Weinstein revelations fueled the #MeToo movement, said on Thursday: “The movement will persist.”

Hill added that it would be “driven by the truth of our testimonies. And changes to our systems and culture will follow.”

And Burke stressed in an interview with the Associated Press that while legal advances are necessary for progress, “the judicial system has never been a friend of survivors. And so it’s the reason why we need movements, because movements have historically been what has pushed the legal system to do the right thing.”

Burke said she spent Thursday morning speaking to accusers, including the actor Annabella Sciorra, who testified at the 2020 trial that Weinstein raped her, as she called the witnesses heroes.

Burke, who has spoken out about her own past as a survivor of abuse, added she could never imagine facing her own perpetrator in court.

“So just the fact that they got to do that, to bring a person, a man like Harvey Weinstein, to account for his crimes, is incredible,” she said.

The founder of the #MeToo movement, Tarana Burke, has called the women who spoke out against Harvey Weinstein “heroes” and said such campaigns for justice and equality will continue to bring about progress in society.

Burke, who nearly two decades ago coined the phrase “Me too” from her work with sexual assault survivors, found herself again declaring – after New York’s highest court in a shock decision on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction in the city – the #MeToo reckoning was greater than any court case.

A strong sign that the movement is still there, is international, and is still working was that, Burke said, “10 years ago we could not get a man like Harvey Weinstein into the courtroom.”

The movement, she said, was responsible for that huge cultural shift – regardless of the Hollywood mogul’s ultimate legal fate.

Thursday’s announcement was a huge blow and a worrying development for those who have been assaulted or sexually harassed, including by superiors in the workplace, and a setback that is also coming as Donald Trump is running for president again despite multiple accusations of sexual assault and predatory conduct over the years – and being found liable by a civil court for sexual abuse.

But Burke and other advocates joined Hollywood figures who were victims of Weinstein to express distress at the decision and declare that the movement goes on and will continue to change society, while prosecutors said they would seek a new trial of the movie mogul in New York.

“I can understand how devastating and disgusted and angry, just the range of emotions that so many of them must feel,” Burke said. “And I hope they understand for those of us survivors who will likely never see a day in court, that they are still heroes to us,” Burke said.

Anita Hill, who testified against Clarence Thomas during his 1991 supreme court confirmation hearing, becoming the face of the fight against sexual harassment more than a quarter-century before the Weinstein revelations fueled the #MeToo movement, said on Thursday: “The movement will persist.”

Hill added that it would be “driven by the truth of our testimonies. And changes to our systems and culture will follow.”

And Burke stressed in an interview with the Associated Press that while legal advances are necessary for progress, “the judicial system has never been a friend of survivors. And so it’s the reason why we need movements, because movements have historically been what has pushed the legal system to do the right thing.”

Burke said she spent Thursday morning speaking to accusers, including the actor Annabella Sciorra, who testified at the 2020 trial that Weinstein raped her, as she called the witnesses heroes.

Burke, who has spoken out about her own past as a survivor of abuse, added she could never imagine facing her own perpetrator in court.

“So just the fact that they got to do that, to bring a person, a man like Harvey Weinstein, to account for his crimes, is incredible,” she said.

Broadcaster Channel Nine has been sent to the doghouse for its “sensationalist” reporting of a custody dispute over an Insta-famous cavoodle from Sydney’s ritzy lower north shore.

The network will have to pay Oscar’s owner, barrister Gina Edwards, $150,000 including in aggravated damages after a hotly defended defamation proceedings in the federal court.

Edwards sued Nine over two TV broadcasts and two articles by A Current Affair regarding the custody dispute with former friend Mark Gillespie over the cavoodle.

On Friday, Justice Michael Wigney called Nine’s reports from May and June 2021 “extravagant, excessive and sensationalist”.

“The broadcasts and accompanying articles were produced and edited in such a sensationalist way as to unnecessarily and unjustifiably deprecate and humiliate Ms Edwards,” he wrote in a 130-page judgment.

The reports wrongly portrayed the barrister as a dog thief who had stolen Oscar for her own financial benefit which included claims she was “living the high life” rolling in endorsements from pet companies.

Nine and ACA journalist Steve Marshall pursued and harassed the Sydney barrister at a park and at her chambers with the footage used in the television reports, he found.

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The demeaning tenor and tone towards Edwards, including describing her as a “dog-sitter”, aggravated the hurt and suffering she felt as a result, the judge said.

Nine made no effort to independently investigate Gillespie’s claims and failed to contact Edwards to get her side of the story, he found.

This “blind acceptance” of Gillespie’s allegations, and the refusal of Nine to remove the broadcasts from the website as requested, further aggravated the hurt and distress caused, Wigney said.

The judge found Edwards ultimately obtained Oscar by deception in 2019 by falsely claiming he was to be on a Channel Seven show Pooch Perfect.

However, the barrister did not steal the cavoodle because she held a genuine but incorrect belief at the time that she was the dog’s co-owner, he said.

“Ms Edwards could not be said to have been guilty of larceny or stealing in circumstances where it could not be said that she did not have a genuine and honest claim of right in respect of Oscar,” he wrote.

During a hearing in December 2022, the barrister said Oscar had been jointly taken care of by her, her husband, Ken Flavell, and cruise worker Gillespie as “one mummy and two daddies”.

Before the falling out, the three had lived life as a “strange little urban family” and held lavish parties for birthdays, Halloweens and other occasions, when pooches from across the city came decked out in costumes and bow ties, she told the court.

The custody battle between Edwards and Gillespie went to the NSW supreme court before settling in November 2021, with the Kirribilli couple retaining ownership of the dog.

The defamation case will return to the federal court on 16 May when final orders will be made.

This will include arguments about whether Nine should be ordered to remove the articles and how the legal costs will be paid.

Nine has declined to comment on the judgment.

The arrest and interrogation of a leading Palestinian legal scholar based at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem marks a new threat to civil liberties in Israel, her legal team and employer have said.

Prof Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian was detained by police on the afternoon of 17 April over comments made on a podcast more than a month earlier and held overnight in conditions her lawyers described as “terrible” and designed to humiliate.

“This case is unique,” said Hassan Jabareen, her lawyer and the director of the human rights organisation Adalah. “This is not only about one professor, it could be a [precedent] for any academic who goes against the consensus in wartime.”

Shalhoub-Kevorkian was released on bail the next day when a magistrate and a district court judge both ruled she did not pose a threat, but has been called for further questioning on Sunday.

Although there have been widespread detentions of Palestinian citizens of Israel who publicly criticised the war in Gaza, this is the first time an academic has been targeted over speech related to their work.

Shalhoub-Kevorkian is a leading feminist scholar whose work focuses on trauma, state crimes, genocide, gender violence and surveillance. She is the Lawrence D Biele chair in law at Hebrew University and the global chair in law at Queen Mary University of London.

All prosecutions relating to freedom of speech have to be approved by the attorney general’s office, so her detention was signed off at the heart of government. Police said they were investigating Shalhoub-Kevorkian on suspicion of incitement to terrorism, violence and racism over comments on a podcast published in early March.

Jabareen said: “They could have asked her to come to the police station for two or three hours to discuss, investigate. To carry out the arrest like that, as if she was a dangerous person, shows the main purpose was to humiliate her. It was illegal, that’s why the magistrates court accepted my argument that she should be released and the district court confirmed it.”

Police had immediately appealed against the decision of the first court, so there were two hearings about Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s release in quick succession.

When police arrested her, they confiscated books and posters from her home and during interrogation she was questioned extensively about her academic work, including articles published years ago, Jabareen said. Academic writing has special legal protections in Israel.

Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who is in her 60s, was strip-searched, handcuffed so tightly it caused pain, denied access to food, water and medication for several hours, and held in a cold cell without adequate clothing or blankets. Conditions in Israeli prisons have deteriorated since the start of the war and Shalhoub-Kevorkian is concerned about her health if she is detained again.

More than 100 faculty members from Hebrew University published an open letter backing Shalhoub-Kevorkian and criticised the university for not supporting her.

“Regardless of the content of Nadera’s words, their interpretation and the opinions she expressed, it is clear to everyone that this is a political arrest, the whole purpose of which is to gag mouths and limit freedom of expression,” the letter was quoted in the newspaper Haaretz as saying. “Today it is Nadera who stands on the bench, and tomorrow it is each and every one of us.”

Her lawyers and international academics have condemned Hebrew University for fuelling months of political attacks on one of their faculty in the run-up to her detention. The rector called on her to resign in late 2023 after she signed a letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and describing Israel’s campaign as genocide, and she was briefly suspended over the podcast cited in her interrogation.

Despite that history, her arrest set such a damaging precedent that it drew public condemnation from the university. “We strongly object to many of the things that Prof Shalhoub-Kevorkian said. Nonetheless, as a democratic country, there is no place to arrest a person for such remarks, however infuriating they may be,” it stated, according to Haaretz. The university did not respond to questions from the Guardian.

Queen Mary University of London has not condemned the arrest. A spokesperson said the university was “following the events surrounding Prof Shalhoub-Kevorkian … and remains concerned about her wellbeing”.

More than 250 academics at Queen Mary have published an open letter in support of their colleague and calling on the university to stand by her. “Academic freedom [in Israel] has come under sustained attack,” they said.

Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s arrest comes against a backdrop of political persecution of critics of the country’s war in Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel have been arrested and jailed, or lost jobs or access to education, because of social media posts or comments condemning the military campaign.

At the same time, authorities had ignored “extensive and blatant” incitement to genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza from prominent members of the Israeli establishment, influential public figures said in a letter to judicial authorities.

The arrest of Shalhoub-Kevorkian was designed not only to intimidate her, but to stifle criticism of the war, Jabareen said, and the decision on whether to move forward would be an indicator of the country’s respect for basic freedoms.

“If they indict her, this might have a deeply chilling effect,” Jabareen said. “Its very difficult to prosecute a person for academic work … but the political situation in Israel is starting to not really be based on the rule of law.”

Ellen DeGeneres has addressed the controversial end of her eponymous daytime talkshow after allegations that it was a toxic workplace.

While performing the opening night of her new Ellen’s Last Stand … Up Tour at the Largo in Los Angeles on Thursday evening, the former daytime host joked about getting “kicked out of show business” for being “mean”.

The set, first reported by People and Rolling Stone, referred to a July 2020 investigation by Buzzfeed News based on interviews with numerous employees who alleged racism, sexual misconduct and intimidation at the hands of executive producers at The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

The report painted a portrait of a workplace at odds with Ellen’s “be kind” mantra; several employees feared taking medical leave for risk of penalization, and faced retribution for raising complaints, among other allegations.

The investigation led the show to fire three top producers and DeGeneres to issue an on-air apology. Though she said she wasn’t aware of inappropriate behavior from staff, I’m in a position of privilege and power and […] I take responsibility for what happens at my show.”

The show never recovered from the scandal, and ended its 19-year run in May 2022.

Onstage at the Largo, the 66-year-old comedian mused about becoming “the most hated person in America” saying: “I got kicked out of show business. There’s no mean people in show business.”

She lamented how the headlines reduced her television legacy. “The hate went on for a long time and I would try to avoid looking at the news,” she said. “The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind,” DeGeneres continued. “I became this one-dimensional character who gave stuff away and danced up steps. Do you know how hard it is to dance up steps? Would a mean person dance up steps? Had I ended my show by saying, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ people would’ve been pleasantly surprised.”

During an audience Q&A session after the routine, DeGeneres was asked if she continued to “dance” during tough times. “No … It’s hard to dance when you’re crying,” she responded, noting that she “had a hard time” and “didn’t get out” during the scandal.

DeGeneres described this period as “laying low” and becoming “persona non grata” for the second time in her career – the first being in 1997, when she publicly came out as gay. She said she had come to terms with what happened and was “dancing now”.

“I’m making jokes about what happened to me, but it was devastating, really,” she said. “It took a long time for me to want to do anything again.”

She also noted that she “just hated the way the show ended. I love that show so much and I just hated that the last time people would see me is that way.”

The final question of the night came from a woman who asked: “Do you think you’ll seek revenge for those who have wronged you?” To cheers from the roughly 200 people in the audience, DeGeneres responded: “I don’t know who wronged me. I don’t even know who these people are, so I can’t seek revenge, but I really don’t hold on to stuff. It’s just not who I am.”

Since the end of her show, DeGeneres has mostly stayed out of the public eye, with the exception of her 2023 Discovery Channel documentary Saving the Gorillas: Ellen’s Next Adventure and some social media activity. Ellen’s Last Stand … Up Tour is her first major return to the comedy scene. The tour will pass through San Diego, Washington, Oregon and the Bay Area before culminating in a new special for Netflix, to be taped this fall.

Stem cells have become a favoured miracle treatment among the rich and famous, with Kim Kardashian reportedly a fan of stem cell facials and Cristiano Ronaldo turning to stem cell injections after a hamstring injury.

The latest to extol their benefits is the Monty Python actor John Cleese, who suggests that stem cells could hold the secret to eternal youth – or, at least, buy him “a few extra years”.

In an interview with Saga magazine, the 84-year-old revealed that for the past two decades he has been paying a private Swiss clinic £17,000 every 12 to 18 months for stem cell therapy that he credits for looking “not bad” for his age.

So is Cleese making a sound investment? Stem cells have remarkable medical potential. They are the body’s master cells that, in the embryo, go on to produce every cell type in the body. Even in adulthood our body retains reserves of less versatile stem cells that mobilise to repair injuries and continually regenerate skin and other tissues.

Stem cell transplants have long been used in treating leukaemia and there are a wealth of groundbreaking trials using stem cells to treat genetic skin disorders, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

However, there are also private clinics making far-reaching claims that fall into a regulatory “grey zone” because these therapies use patients’ own cells rather than drugs that would need to be licensed.

“There’s not a single clinical trial indicating that these treatments are safe or effective,” said Prof Darius Widera, a stem cell biologist at the University of Reading. “All of these clinics are exploiting a regulatory loophole.”

It is not clear what type of therapy Cleese has been receiving, although he described something like a biological MOT, saying: “These cells travel around the body and when they discover a place that needs repair, they’ll change into the cells that you want for repair, so they might become cartilage cells or liver cells.”

Typically, clinics extract stem cells from fat tissue, multiply them in the lab and re-infuse them. Widera is blunt in his verdict on the likelihood of stem cells achieving the intended effects: “No, they won’t do that.”

Adult stem cells are already somewhat specialised and so won’t readily turn into liver cells, for instance. And the body becomes less efficient at recruiting stem cells as we get older, whether they are injected or not.

“If you transplant a stem cell into an old environment it won’t work as well,” said Prof Ilaria Bellantuono, co-director of the Healthy Lifespan Institute at the University of Sheffield. “They will be influenced by their old environment.”

There are also concerns about the safety of such therapies. Several patients lost their sight after receiving stem-cell treatment for degenerative eye conditions at an unregulated clinic in Florida. Other complications from unregulated treatments include life-threatening infections, tumours, heart attacks or even death.

Prof Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell expert at the University of California, Davis, said: “I love John Cleese, but I worry that his stem cell anti-ageing attempts could do more harm than good.

“First, the stem cells he regularly gets could pose health risks to him. It’s not clear that any particular kind of stem cells are safe or effective unless they’ve undergone careful clinical trials. Also, the claims he makes about anti-ageing are unproven.

“The second thing is that over-exuberant statements made by celebrities about what stem cells might have done for them can encourage everyday people to follow their lead with both health and financial risks.”

Cleese says he has been receiving stem cell therapy for 20 years, which would make him an early adopter but now leaves him behind the curve. In the last few years, the field of longevity research has shifted away from stem cells as scientists and Silicon Valley billionaires have turned their focus to the potential of various molecules to “rewind the clock” on cells throughout the body. There is compelling evidence that such life-extending treatments work in animals at least, with one team reporting the oldest living lab rat last year.

“Small molecules in the field is really the future,” said Prof Evelyne Bischof, who carries out research into longevity at Jiaotong School of Medicine in Shanghai.

It remains to be seen whether longevity drugs have similarly impressive rejuvenating effects in humans as in rodents. But unlike stem cell infusions, which require bespoke preparations that are administered by medical professionals, such anti-ageing pills could become mainstream rather than remaining the preserve of Hollywood stars.

“It will be small molecule drugs that will make the real change,” said Bischof. “Not just for the patient, but also for accessibility.”