Ben Roberts-Smith loses defamation case over war crimes accusations.

Australia's most decorated soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, lost a multi-million dollar defamation case against three newspapers who accused him of committing war crimes in Afghanistan, including the murder of unarmed prisoners. The judge ruled that the newspapers' reports met the standards of truth, and that there was substantial truth to the allegations that Roberts-Smith murdered an unarmed Afghan civilian by kicking him off a cliff and ordering troops under his command to shoot him, and that he shot dead a man with a prosthetic leg in Afghanistan with a machine gun, then took the prosthetic leg back to Australia and encouraged his soldiers to use it as a drinking vessel. The ruling is being celebrated by supporters of press freedom, who say it will harden the resolve of media companies to pursue high-cost investigative cases in a country with tough defamation laws.