Tuesday's news in under 5 minutes.

We’ve rounded up all the latest news from Australia and around the world – so you don’t have to go searching.

1. Australia to commit $800 million to help climate change.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has made a four-minute speech at the United Nations climate change conference in Paris where he committed an extra $800 million over five years to help poorer countries cope with climate change.

The money is earmarked to help vulnerable Pacific Island nations both adapt to climate change and curb carbon pollution reports AAP.

The additional $800 million will be redirected from the foreign aid budget.

“Some of the most vulnerable nations are our Pacific neighbours and we are helping them to build resilience through practical action and assistance,” Mr Turnbull told the UN summit.

“The impacts of global warming are already being felt and will continue to be so even after we reach global net zero emissions.”

The prime minister was among around 150 world leaders to outline their vision for climate action.

“We are not daunted by our challenge … We do not doubt the implications of the science, or the scale of the challenge,” he said.

Mr Turnbull said that Australia will ratify the second Kyoto Protocol period of 2012-2020 and he announced that we will beat the 20/20 emissions target.

2. Turnbull breaks ranks on fossil fuel agreement at climate change talks.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has made it clear that Australia won’t be signing an international agreement to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.

The agreement masterminded by New Zealand Prime Minister John Key is being signed by 40 countries and hundreds of businesses and calls for the ultimate elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, saying the cost should reflect both environmental costs and supply costs.

“The majority of fossil-fuel subsidies are also socially regressive, with benefits disproportionately skewed toward middle-and upper-middle income households,” the communiqué states.

A partial phase out could generate 12 per cent of the emissions reduction needed by 2020 to be on the path towards limiting global warming to two degrees, it says.

News Limited reports that the PM and Nationals are concerned the agreement could harm diesel subsidies claimed by farmers and miners.

3. Obama calls Paris climate talks an “act of defiance.”

In his address to the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris US President Barack Obama has said the negotiations represent an act of defiance after the barbaric attacks in the city two weeks ago in which 130 people were killed.

“We have come to Paris to show our resolve … to protect our people, and to uphold the values that keep us strong and keep us free. We salute the people of Paris for insisting that this crucial conference will go on.” He said.

Negotiators from 195 countries will try to reach a deal within two weeks aimed at reducing global carbon emissions and limiting global warming to 2C.

Mr Obama said “Climate change could define the contours of this century more than any other (challenge).

“I came here personally to say the United States not only recognises the problem but is committed to do something about it.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin also addressed the conference.

Echoing President Obama, Mr Putin said: “We have demonstrated we can ensure economic development and take care of our environment at the same time.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping told the conference he did not see the Paris talks as a turning point nor a “finish line, but a new starting point”.

He said that climate change went beyond national borders and that it was “a shared mission for all mankind”, before reiterating China’s pledge to start cutting its emissions from a peak in 2030.

4. Abortion may be allowed in Northern Ireland.

A court in Northern Ireland has ruled that abortion legislation in is in breach of human rights law.

The High Court judgment delivered could lead to the relaxation of the law on abortion in the region.

The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) brought the case to extend abortion to cases of serious foetal malformation, rape or incest.

The 1967 Abortion Act does not extend to Northern Ireland.

Currently, termination of pregnancy is only allowed if a woman’s life is at risk or there is a permanent or serious risk to her mental or physical health.

The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) brought the case to extend abortion to cases of serious foetal malformation, rape or incest.

A judicial review found the grounds for abortion should be extended in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland’s Attorney General John Larkin said in a brief statement that he was “profoundly disappointed” by the decision and was “considering the grounds for appeal”.

In his ruling on Monday, Mr Justice Horner said women who were the victims of sexual crime and cases of fatal foetal abnormality were entitled to exemptions in the law.

He said given that the issue was unlikely to be addressed by the Northern Ireland Executive in the foreseeable future, and that Northern Ireland citizens were entitled to “have their [European Convention on Human] rights protected by the courts”, the current legislation was in breach of their human rights.

5. Sexist Iranian father denied custody of his daughter.

The Australian reports that a family court has denied an Iranian father custody of his Australian daughter after the judge feared for the daughter’s future should the father have partial custody.

Judge Peter Tree found the father operated from a position of “male privilege”.

The mother, known as Ms Ghasemi, and the father, known as Mr Zoka, are both Iranian and divorced in 2003, with the mother now living in Australia and remarried.

According to Iranian law, a child of divorced parents will live with the mother until the age of seven or until the mother remarries.

According to The Australian in 2007, a court order in Tehran granted custody to Mr Zoka, based on the mother’s remarriage but in 2012 without her former husband’s knowledge she applied for an Australian visa for her daughter and brought the child to Australia.

In his reasons for granting sole parental responsibility to Ms Ghasemi, Justice Tree said there were risks in K’s relationship with her father. “The father appears to operate from a position of male privilege, which no doubt is likely to be partly — or perhaps even wholly — ­culturally derived,” he said.

The child had made recordings of her father calling her a “rude little runt” and “you dog shit”.

“The transcript of the father berating the child when she was still living with him in Iran is ­replete with ample evidence of such a view, demonstrative that the father believes the role of a woman is to assist a man and to be subservient to him, to the point where he belittles the value of any education for the child as she will inevitably be married off at age 18 or 19,” Justice Tree said in a judgment published this week.

“I can perceive no benefit to the child in being exposed to those sorts of views, whether ­expressed overtly or covertly.”

He found a “real and substantial risk of Mr Zoka absconding with K if he was allowed to have her visit him overseas” and said there was “potential for catastrophe” if K was required to live with the father again.

Justice Tree granted Ms Ghasemi sole parental responsibility.

“Moreover there remains the father’s problematic views as to the role of women in society” the Judge ruled.

”Particularly troubling is his assertion that education for women is not significant because their true role is to marry and to serve their husband.”

6. Changes to TV Code of Practise mean programming with an M classification can be broadcast from 7.30pm

From today parents sitting down to watch TV with their kids after 7.30pm might need to be vigilant about what’s on in front of them.

A change to the TV Code of Practise now means programming with an M classification can be broadcast from 7.30pm.

Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) president Professor Elizabeth Handsley told News Limited that another concerning change is the scrapping of G timeslots meaning that commercial networks can now show PG-rated content in the previously G rated slots of 6am and 8.30am and from 4pm to 7pm.

“It means there’s now no time a parent can sit their child in front of the TV with confidence … knowing that everything shown will be appropriate and not upsetting or disturbing.” She said.

Shows with an MA15+ rating can now also be broadcast from 8.30pm.

Harold Mitchell from Free TV Australia said the new code is a “real win” for viewers. “It will mean a greater variety of programming, while preserving key community safeguards.”

The new code says that there must be clear promotion of a show’s classification and the type of ads that can be shown between 7.30pm and 8.30pm are limited.

7. Sibling violence a threat reports says.

The invisible victims in Australia’s family violence epidemic are those who have sibling violence inflicted on them.

Children’s Commissioner Megan Mitchell has tabled a report in federal parliament about the impact family and domestic violence is having on a generation of children.

In the report violence children suffer at the hands of siblings is addressed.

“The needs of children affected by family and domestic violence have been somewhat incidental or peripheral to the public policy approach to family and domestic violence, and increasingly folded into child protection responses,” the report said. “It is my view that children’s experiences of family and domestic violence must be understood in their own right and not just as part of an adult situation.”

Ms Mitchell said 14 per cent of calls made to Kids Helpline about family violence relate to sibling perpetrators.

Teenage girls are most often the victims of physical violence inflicted by siblings. The Commissioner said that children who lived in homes characterised by violence were often  “silent, unintended, invisible victims”.

8. Parents paying for more in-demand formula.

More than $26 million of powdered baby formula, almost triple the value of two years ago, was sent this year to China.

The Courier Mail reports that one brand, Bellamy’s Australia has lifted its recommended retail price for 900g Step 3 toddler milk drink to $26, up $6.50 up 33 per cent.

Bellamy’s says the price rise is due to the cost of higher ingredients.

Other formulas in the Bellamy’s range, Step 1 and 2 900g saw price rises of $3.30 per tin.

9. Teachers fail to make the grade.

A trial exam, due to be introduced next year assessing the numeracy and literacy skills of our teachers shows that 10 per cent of teaching students failed to meet required standards of literacy and numeracy.

From July next year, education students will have to pass a new literacy and numeracy test to be registered as teachers.

5,000 students sat the test as a trial and 92 per cent passed the literacy test and 90 per cent passed the numeracy test.

The bad news is that almost 2000 new teachers each year appear to have been graduating with substandard basic literacy and numeracy skills.

If the trial results were replicated nationally around 1800 people would have failed this year’s test.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham said “Parents, principals, all stakeholders in school education should have complete confidence that graduates from our universities with teaching qualifications are among some of the best and brightest in the land.

“We’re really putting it on the universities who are training our teachers to make sure they have confidence in the capabilities of teachers before they graduate.”

“We think that it’s quite fair and reasonable that universities, as the providers of teaching graduates, should be providing teaching graduates that are of the highest possible standard.”

Fairfax Media reprinted two of the questions:

1. Which of the following words has the closest meaning to “explicit”?

A. extensive

B. simple

C. hands-on

D. clearly stated.

2. If one box of stationery weighs 3.2 kilograms, how much would 100 boxes weigh?

How did you go?

9. Should you put your tree up today?

For many people December 1 is the first day of Christmas and the time to get out the tinsel and put up the tree.

The Age spoke to Monash University Professor Gary Bouma, a sociologist who specialises in religious diversity, on what the day to put up your tree should be. He said that while in Australia the majority of people put up their tree on December 1st “for some of us it is also when you have the time to throw the thing up”.

He said that some Christians do not decorate their Christmas trees until December 23rd.

“Traditionally, for many Christians, Advent is a time of fasting – none of this extra food that we do normally in Australia – and you can’t sing Christmas carols,” Professor Bouma said.

“But in Australia I’ve noticed that the partying starts about now,” he said.

In the US President Barak Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will “flip the switch” on December 3 on the White House tree therefore giving the signal to many Americans its time to do the same.

For us Aussies the big debate is whether to go fake or real? What’s your preference?

A man has been fired for posting an abusive comment on Clementine Ford’s Facebook page.

A Sydney-based hotel supervisor was fired for leaving a misogynistic message on the Facebook page of Fairfax columnist Clementine Ford.

Michael Nolan labelled the journalist a “slut” after she wrote about the kind of online harassment she receives for being an outspoken women with an internet connection.

Ford made a series of posts on her Facebook for White Ribbon Day, which aims to prevent men’s violence against women (in all it’s forms), including several examples of the kind of abuse she receives online and posting screenshots.

Mr Nolan replied in the comments thread with the word: “Slut”.

A rightfully unimpressed Ford tracked down Mr Nolan’s employers, The Meriton Group, via his own Facebook page and contacted them with details of his online misconduct, which also included a series of racist and offensive status updates.

They responded in a statement to Ford explaining that Mr Nolan’s employment had been terminated:

“Meriton Group have now investigated the matter relating to the complaint made about Michael Nolan using inappropriate language on Facebook.

“Meriton Group does not condone this type of behaviour. Michael Nolan was removed from the Meriton site on Saturday 28th November pending an investigation, and as of 2:30pm today 30th November 2015, he no longer works for the Meriton Group.”

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