A woman has died in the street outside her Gold Coast home after being bashed in the head

Police are investigating after a woman has been found dead in the street outside her Gold Coast home after being hit in the head. Photo / AAP file

Australia: A woman has died in the street outside her Gold Coast home after being savagely bashed in the head. A man, believed to be the victim's ex-husband, was found injured nearby and taken to hospital. He's believed to be co-operating with homicide detectives. A neighbour found the 51-year-old woman's body in Arthur Payne Court at Worongary about 11.15pm local time on Sunday. Police could not immediately confirm reports that the woman was a mother of three, and that her children were at home when she was attacked. One neighbour, a young man, said the woman's death was a terrible shock. "I just saw some blood ... heard the choppers," the man told the Nine network. "I've been here 11 years, 12 years and nothing like that (has happened) before." The street and the woman's home remain a crime scene and the man is in hospital.

United States: Gossip columnist Liz Smith, whose mixture of banter, barbs, and bon mots about the glitterati helped her climb the A-list as high as many of the celebrities she covered, has died. Literary agent Joni Evans told AP she died in New York of natural causes. She was 94. For more than a quarter-century, Smith's column - titled "Liz Smith" - was one of the most widely read in the world. Its success was due in part to Smith's own celebrity status, giving her insider access. She started her own column at the New York Daily News in 1976. Known as the "Dame of Dish," Smith helped usher in the era of celebrity journalism in print and television. Her reporting on Donald and Ivana Trump's divorce made front-page news.

Iran: The husband of a British woman imprisoned in Iran said that his wife discovered lumps in her breasts and he urged the British Government to step up efforts to free her. Richard Ratcliffe said his wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, had seen a doctor but was on "the verge of a nervous breakdown." Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a 38-year-old dual British-Iranian citizen, is serving a five-year sentence for plotting the "soft toppling" of Iran's Government. Her husband spoke by phone today to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who has been under fire for making misleading statements about the case. This month, Johnson told MPs that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was "teaching people journalism" when she was detained last year. Her family and her employer, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, insist she was on holiday taking her toddler daughter to meet relatives in Iran. Today British Environment Secretary Michael Gove said "I don't know" when asked what Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing in Iran. Family and friends say the confusion has put Zaghari-Ratcliffe at risk of a longer prison sentence.

Australia: A man has died a horrific death after falling into a woodchipper while clearing a driveway near Gympie. The 54-year-old was working on a rural property at Goomboorian about 7.40pm local time on Sunday when he fell into the machine. He died instantly. Police and workplace health and safety officials are investigating.

Brussels: More than 20 police officers have been injured, shops looted and cars set ablaze in downtown Brussels after Morocco qualified for the 2018 football World Cup with a 2-0 over Ivory Coast. The Belga news agency said that some 300 people took part in the violence which saw 22 officers injured. Brussels has a large North African community.

A lion yawns inside his cage at a zoo in Frankfurt, Germany. Photo / AP

Australia: A South Australian zoo is reversing the traditional visitor experience by putting people in a cage surrounded by lions. The Lions 360 exhibition at Monarto Zoo, opening today, is expected to attract thousands of visitors keen to get up close to the king of the jungle. "With a number of tickets sold already, Lions 360 is set to be incredibly popular so we're encouraging people to get in early and book their experience," Zoos SA chief executive Elaine Bensted said.

United States: The former wife of the man responsible for killing 26 people in a Texas church last week said he had threatened to kill her over the course of their relationship, once putting a gun to her head and asking her whether she wanted to die. The comments, the first public statements made by gunman Kelley's first wife, Tessa Brennaman, add to the growing portrait of Devin Kelley as an unstable young man whose path through life was marked by disruption, anger and the potential for violence. In an interview with Inside Edition published in part on CBS' website, Brennaman, 25, described her former husband as someone with "a lot of demons or hatred inside of him"and said he once threatened her for getting a speeding ticket.

Congo: A train crash in Congo killed at least 34 people and injured at least 26 others in Lualaba province in the country's southeast, a government official said. The injury and death toll is likely to rise because some train cars are on fire and some were carrying fuel, Lualaba Governor Richard Muyej Mangez said. The wounded were sent to Lubudi hospital about 30km away from the crash site in Buyofwe, he said. Radio Okapi reported that the National Railway Company of Congo train was carrying passengers and cargo from Lubumbashi to Luena, and 11 of its 13 cars caught fire. The cause of the accident is not yet known.

Britain: The UK will not offer a figure or a formula for how much it believes it owes the European Union, Brexit Secretary David Davis says, after the EU demanded that London spell out its approach to the final bill to unblock talks. With no movement in the negotiations to unravel more than 40 years of union, Britain may miss a December deadline to move the talks to a discussion of future trade ties, which businesses say is vital for them to make investment decisions. Davis told Sky News the EU had agreed Britain would not need to offer "a number or a formula" for the financial deal when London accepted the bloc's schedule for the talks - first a discussion about the divorce and second, about future ties.

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy speaks during a Catalan regional People's Party meeting in Barcelona, Spain. Photo / AP

Spain: Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy urged voters in Catalonia to defeat the separatists who led the region's recent drive for independence when they go to the polls in an early election next month. Rajoy, who used previously untapped constitutional authority to call the December 21 regional election, told members of his conservative Popular Party at a Barcelona hotel that "we want a massive turnout to open up a new period of normalcy" in Catalonia. Rajoy's visit to Barcelona, Catalonia's main city, was his first to the region since he used the constitutional powers to stifle the secession push led by the regional government.

Israel: Officials in Israel are giving a lukewarm reaction to an international agreement laying out principles for post-war Syria. The agreement, announced in a US-Russian statement on Sunday, confirmed the importance of "de-escalation areas" as an interim step towards reducing violence, enforcing ceasefire agreements, facilitating humanitarian aid and setting conditions for the "ultimate political solution" to a war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. It also affirmed what it said was a US-Russian-Jordanian understanding calling for "the reduction and ultimate elimination, of foreign forces and foreign fighters from the area to ensure a more sustainable peace". Israel has said it will not accept a permanent military presence by Iran and its Shia allies in Syria. Israeli Cabinet Minister Tzachi Hanegbi said that the agreement "does not answer Israel's unequivocal demands that there will be no developments that bring Iranian or Hizbollah forces closer to Israel's border with Syria in the north". Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said that an international agreement on Syria would be a positive development, but stressed that Israel is not a party to this deal and would defend its interests.

Orbital ATK's Antares rocket lifts off from Nasa's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia. Photo / AP

Space: A stash of frozen treats and other supplies rocketed towards the International Space Station today, this time from Virginia's cold eastern shore. Nasa's commercial shipper, Orbital ATK, launched the cargo ship just after sunrise local time from Wallops Island, aboard an unmanned Antares rocket. The Cygnus capsule should reach the orbiting lab tomorrow. It's loaded with 3355kg of cargo, including sweet treats for the six station astronauts. There are frozen fruit bars, ice cream bars, ice cream sandwiches and cups of chocolate and vanilla ice cream - about 80 in all, according to Nasa. The crew expects pizza as well. Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli has been craving pizza for months.

India: At least 13 people have drowned and others are missing after a crowded ferry capsized on the Krishna River in India, a government official says. Another 20 people swam to safety or were rescued by villagers in the Krishna district, Andhra Pradesh state Home Minister N Chinnarajappa said. Police said the ferry riders were not wearing life jackets, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. Thirty-eight people were on board.

Somalia: The US military command in Africa says it carried out three drone strikes against Islamic extremists in Somalia within 24 hours, stepping up their campaign against al-Shabaab and Isis (Islamic State). A spokeswoman for the US Africa command said that the attacks killed several extremist fighters. She said that with these three attacks, the US has now carried out 26 strikes in Somalia against extremist targets in 2017.

- agencies