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In your briefing today:

• There are calls to toughen Australia’s gun laws after the Hanukkah mass shooting. Commentators say dealing with the country’s anti-semitism is a higher priority.

• Famed Hollywood director Rob Reiner, and his wife, have been found dead

• St Mirren fans are celebrating their side’s win over Celtic in the Scottish League Cup

📣 Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has proposed tougher gun laws after a mass shooting at at Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach left at least 15 people dead, including a 10-year-old girl, a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor.

At least 38 people were still being treated in hospitals at send time, after an attack which was called an act of antisemitic terrorism by Albanese.

• Father and son gunmen kill at least 15 people (AP)

• Minute by minute: how the Bondi Beach shooting unfolded (🎥 BBC)

• Pigs heads were placed on Muslim graves in retribution after the attack (Mail)

• The hero: bystander tackles and wrestles rifle from gunman (Guardian)

• The warnings that weren’t heeded: global media reacts, below ⬇️

📣 Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife have been found dead in their LA home, reportedly with knife wounds. Reiner was one of Hollywood’s most prolific directors, having created classics including When Harry Met Sally, This is Spinal Tap and A Few Good Men. (Mail) (AP)

• Reiner’s career spanned more than six decades, and included some of the most iconic titles in movie history. (LA Times)

📣 The “brutal” flu wave has seen Scotland suffer its worst death toll from the illness since records began almost 50 years ago. Since January, 582 people have died from the flu, including 11 people under 40, according to figures from National Records of Scotland. A total of 722 death certificates mentioned flu, and in one week at the start of this month there were 30 deaths - all of people 50 and over. (Mail)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 Former staff at Rockstar Games, the studio behind Grand Theft Auto, claim they were sacked because they tried to unionise. In October, 31 employees were sacked for what Rockstar North, based in Edinburgh, called “gross misconduct”. (BBC)

📣 Ian Murray says his wife was “absolutely f**king furious” after he was sacked as Secretary of State for Scotland. He has also said he still doesn’t know why he was removed from the job. (Holyrood Magazine) (Full interview)

📣 There’s “shock” in Moray after an historic local railway bridge, the Garmouth Viaduct, collapsed into the River Spey yesterday morning. The bridge was no longer used by trains, but was a popular walking and cycling route. (Herald)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 Britain’s military chief will tell the whole of the UK later today that it needs to step up to deter the Russian threat, warning of a wider war in Europe. (Sky News)

• The new head of MI6 will also speak today, warning Vladimir Putin that the UK will never abandon Ukraine. (Independent)

📣 Hong Kong tycoon and pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai has been found guilty of colluding with foreign forces, and now faces life in prison. Lai, 78, had pleaded not guilty to the charges, brought under the city’s controversial national security law, after a trial branded “a cruel judicial farce” by campaigners. (BBC)

📣 Details have emerged of the Assad family’s luxury life in Russia after the former Syrian dictator fled to Moscow last year. Bashar al-Assad is said to be brushing up on his ophthalmology. (Guardian)

SPORT

⚽️ St Mirren fans will be waking with heavy heads but light hearts after their side’s win over Celtic in the Scottish League Cup final yesterday. If the Saints are in heaven, though, the result plunges Celtic into a hell, of sorts: it’s a third defeat in a row for new manager Wilfried Nancy. (🎥 Highlights)

• Five talking points after sensational St Mirren’s win (Daily Record)

• Tom English: “In marching on towards a storied victory against all odds, St Mirren trampled Celtic underfoot. Out-thought them tactically. Out-fought them emotionally.” (BBC)

• Alan Pattullo: “These are extraordinary times in Scottish football”. (Scotsman)

• Thousands of St Mirren fans welcome their heroes back to Paisley (The Sun)

• Angry Celtic fans gathered outside Parkhead after the defeat (Herald)

⚽️ In England, an own goal gave Sunderland a win over Newcastle that they savoured in full. And a comfortable win for Nottingham Forest over Spurs piled the pressure on the London' side’s manager, Thomas Frank. (🎥 Match of the Day 2)

IDEAS
The Hanukkah massacre: commentators agree the warnings were not heeded

📣 Looking across commentary on the Hanukkah massacre, a theme emerges: that an atmosphere in Australian politics made an attack like this more likely, perhaps even likely. And that warnings were not heeded.

🗣️ In the New York Times (🎁 gift link), columnist Bret Stephens says the massacre on Bondi Beach is what “Globalise the Intifada” looks like. He takes a “measure of comfort” that the heroic figure who disarmed one of the two terrorists - a local shopkeeper called Ahmed al-Ahmed - reminded us “humanity can always transcend cultural and religious boundaries.”

“But the Hanukkah massacre also represents the continuing inability of the government of Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, to safeguard the country’s Jewish community,” he writes.

Stephens said he heard “an earful of alarm” from Jewish community leaders when he last visited Australia in 2024. They felt their government wasn’t listening.

“They are probably listening now,” he writes.

“But the problem for the Albanese government, which in September recognized a Palestinian state and has been outspoken in its condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza, is that the moral line between the routine demonization of Israel and attacks on Jews who are presumed to support Israel isn’t necessarily clear.”

🗣️ In the Times of Israel (£) Giovanni Giacalone - an analyst of Islamist extremism and terrorism at the University of Milan - says there had been warnings “for years” about “the unceasing antisemitic vitriol on the streets of Australia that would eventually evolve into antisemitic violence if left unchecked.”

“We have warned that verbal abuse becomes graffiti, becomes arson, becomes physical violence, becomes murder,” he quotes on Australian Jewish leader as saying, and warns of escalating abuse and other anti-Semitic incidents around Europe, including in his native Italy.

“It’s wrong to wait and intervene only when a cell or individual is about to take action. The ideology that fuels violence must be nipped in the bud. The Trump administration understood this, and, albeit belatedly, Washington is beginning to move in this direction by banning the Muslim Brotherhood, Antifa, and groups supporting Hamas.”

🗣️In the Sydney Morning Herald (£) columnist Jacqueline Maley also notes the warnings that preceded yesterday’s attack - “the natural consequence of what the author Simon Sebag Montefiore calls ‘the end of the taboo on antisemitism’” but adds that ”most Australians would never have expected it.”

“This sort of thing is not supposed to happen in Australia,” she writes. Especially after former Prime Minister John Howard clamped down on gun ownership after the 1996 massacre that saw 35 people murdered.

Big questions will, therefore be asked: not least, how did the two gunmen get their weapons? “Why would any outer-suburban fruit shop owner need six deadly weapons?” she asks. Especially when his son, Naveed, “was known to ASIO for his association with ISIS cell members.”

🗣️ Writing in The Australian (£), Josh Frydenberg brands the attack “an unprecedented failure of leadership”.

“The Director General of our national security and intelligence agency ASIO even rang the alarm bell himself warning that the dangerous rise in antisemitism was his ‘number one priority’ in terms of threats to life. Why didn’t our leaders listen and why didn’t they act?” he writes.

“From the disgraceful scenes on the steps of the Opera House just hours after Hamas’s attack on October 7 to the firebombing of synagogues and child care centres, the doxxing of Jewish artists, harassment of Jewish students and daily violent protests on our streets, the last two years has seen a tsunami of hate that has left the local Jewish community feeling abandoned and alone.

“Our leaders must now finally stand up, accept responsibility for what has happened on their watch and close this shameful chapter in our nation’s history. Every Australian must demand nothing less.”

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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