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Saturday'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. Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard allegations of genital mutilation taking place in a Sydney boys’ facility.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard that many children were severely abused and mutilated at Daruk Training School in Windsor, an institution which homed hundreds of state wards and juvenile offenders from 1960-1991.

According to News.com.au, Gordon Myers, 50, told the commission that he was 13-years-old when he was sent to the institution in 1978. In his submission, he detailed being raped and bashed by a number of staff members on a regular basis over the five years he stayed there.

At one point, Myers explained that one male staff member “didn’t like little boys with foreskins”, and so performed botched, illegal circumcisions on the children at Daruk.

“He cut my penis off,” Mr Myers told the publication.

“I had just turned 13. He took me into the clinic and said ‘we have permission to circumcise you’. I said ‘no you don’t’.

“He knocked me out with a needle and I woke up in the middle of it and there was (a second staff member there as well), I screamed in pain.

“Because I was so tiny, he probably thought, stupidly, ‘don’t give him as much anaesthetic to put him under’.”

boy looking out to the sea on a summer day
“Because I was so tiny, he probably thought, stupidly, ‘don’t give him as much anaesthetic to put him under’.” Image via iStock.
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Mr Myers explained there was “blood everywhere” and was subsequently sent to Windsor Hospital where a surgeon “sewed (his) penis back on”.

It’s an incident that Myers claims the hospital “covered up”.

A spokeswoman for Hawkesbury District Health Service — the service which replaced Windsor Hospital — told the publication there were no records of the incident expecting they had been destroyed.

“Having checked with our hospital’s Medical Records Department, the records for the old hospital would have been destroyed if the patient had not presented again within a certain period of time,” the spokeswoman commented.

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“The Medical Records manager confirmed that she has previously discussed the subject with the patient identified, and advised that unfortunately no records can be located.”

The injuries that Mr Myers sustained has drastically impacted upon his life.

“All the nerve endings aren’t there,” he told News.com.au. “It was a complete reattachment of the top of it.

“I can’t have children and I can’t have sex.”

Mr Myers provided news.com.au with copies of medical documents from an examination with Dr Philip Sutherland in March this year.

“I can confirm that the size of Gordon’s penis and scrotum are childlike,” the report read.

Mr Myers has said that his experience does not exist in isolation, and that many more children were abused by the same staff member during their stays at Daruk.

“Every now and then he’d grab a kid to rape or circumcise and I was one of them,” he said.

“(The staff member) wanted to have another go and rape me a second time,” he said. “He raped me heaps of time before that but I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

“I just lost the plot and flogged him. I turned very violent.”

According to Myers, dozens of boys were brutally, sexually and physically abused by Daruk staff, and that those members have gone wholly unpunished.

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child abuse example
Another issue before the Royal Commission is that of Child Abuse in the Catholic Church (Image via Network Nine: Sixty Minutes).

Focusing on sexual abuse of children in institutions that were supposed to care for minors, Australia’s Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse is the largest in the country’s history.

After being granted an extension in 2014, the commission’s conclusion will be sometime in 2017.

2. Fire destroys 101-year-old pub in south-east Queensland.

A pub owner and his wife have escaped a fire that inevitably destroyed their century-old pub in the countryside of Gympie, Queensland.

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The blaze ignited in the Kandanga Hotel around 5am this morning.

It was the pair’s neighbours who woke them while they slept in the timber building.

According to ABC, the local Fire Captain, Mark Clyne, said it is currently unknown how the fire started.

“Crews worked very well to contain it and to look after the surrounding buildings.

“We had a cellar full of spirits which was something that we really didn’t want to go up as well, so we managed to salvage that.

“It’s a very old building … so all timber frame, floors and roof structure and a corrugated iron roof which has all now collapsed.”

Emergency services remain at the scene, and what caused the fire will be under investigation.

3. ‘Historic’ deal in the works at climate change talks in Paris.

Host of the 195-nation climate-saving talks in Paris and French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, has said that a historic deal will be submitted to ministers today, one which he is certain will be approved.

The international talks have been extended beyond the original deadline in a concerted effort to secure a substantial deal and ultimately curb global warming.

“I will be in a position (on Saturday) morning at 9:00am (7:00pm Saturday AEDT) to present to all parties a text, which, I am sure, will be approved and will be a big step forward for humanity as a whole,” Mr Fabius said.

“We will never again get such momentum as we are feeling now in Paris. But now responsibility for reaching agreement rests with the ministers, who are going to have to make a choice tomorrow. I’m going to present a text to them which is the most ambitious and the most balanced possible.

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“We are almost at the end of the road and I am optimistic.”

Two weeks have been spent by negotiators in the hopes of getting an agreement on a worldwide climate change plan.

Negotiators have spent two weeks trying to get agreement on a worldwide plan to tackle climate change.

According to Mr Fabius, the mood has been overwhelmingly positive, and he is optimistic about the possibility of making meaningful change.

It’s an outlook that is shared by China, the world’s biggest polluter of greenhouse gases.

“We are quite confident, I think with joint efforts by tomorrow we shall have a Paris agreement,” senior envoy Liu Zhenmin said.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who is leading the Australian delegation at the talks, this morning said she too was confident a deal was in sight.

“There were some very detailed negotiations overnight. We anticipate the presidency will deliver a final text at 9:00am tomorrow morning and thereafter we will be in the final stages.”

4. Husband’s body found wrapped in plastic in backyard after 18 years.

It is suspected that a wife killed her husband and concealed his body in plastic in their garden 18 years ago.

A skeleton has been found in plastic sheets in a quiet village in the south of Wales, and has been identified as missing husband John Sabine, who was last seen in 1997.

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His body was found just three weeks after his wife, Leigh Ann Sabine, passed away aged 74 from cancer. Detectives have said Ms Sabine, who carried on living in the same apartment block until the the time of her death, is the main suspect in their investigation.

Detective Chief Inspector Gareth Morgan said this case is unlike any he’s seen.

 ‘This is an extraordinary set of circumstances and we are working tirelessly to put together the pieces of what is a complex investigation.’

According to police, John Sabine, who was a local fireman, would be 85-years-old if he were still alive today.

Despite not being seen for 18 years, Mr Sabine was never reported as a missing person. Further, he was still listed on the electoral register as living at the same residence. The couple’s estranged children did not list Mr Sabine as missing either, a spokesman said.

“Their estranged children have been located and informed. Mr Sabine was not reporteed as being missing. The circumstances of where the body was concealed is part of the ongoing investigation.

“DNA evidence has confirmed the identity of Mr Sabine, who was last seen in 1997.

“Mrs Sabine passed away on 30th October 2015 and is currently the main suspect in this investigation.”

It has been established, via a post-mortem examination, that Mr Sabine had sustained injuries consistent with an assault.

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A post-mortem examination established John Sabine had injuries consistent with an assault.

Police confirmed the body was lying above ground but was wrapped in plastic sheeting.

5. Man reunited with lost dog after two years.

It was two years ago Jason Brandon’s pet dog, Polo, was stolen.

After the Shih Tzu disappeared without a trace, Brandon thought he’d never see his dog again. Amazingly, the day before Thanksgiving, he was proven wrong.

Image via Washington Humane Society Facebook.

According to a Facebook post by the D.C.-based Washington Humane Society, Polo was found on the 25th of November “locked [in a] crate next to a dumpster.”

The organisation explained that Polo showed signs of severe neglect, “His hair was matted and his toe nails were so long that they had curled under his feet and impeded his ability to walk.”

Thankfully, Brandon had Polo microchipped as a puppy, leading the animal welfare group to Brandon, who now lives in New York City.

The happy photos of the reunion say it all.

The day before Thanksgiving, our HLE officers found a severely neglected Shih Tzu in a locked crate next to a dumpster….

Posted by Washington Humane Society on Saturday, December 5, 2015