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Schapelle Corby could be free by August.
CORBY GRANTED CLEMENCY Convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby, who always protested her innocence on charges of taking 4.3kg of marijuana to Bali, has had her prison sentence slashed by five years after Indonesian authorities recommended her application for clemency be granted. Schapelle has been in prison for eight years and has suffered publicly from what [read more]
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Daily Buzz: Is this mag cover sexist?
SEXIST MAG COVER? BRW Magazine has faced a mini-backlash over its cover featuring muesli queen Carolyn Creswell. The complaints prompted an interesting discussion by reporter Georgie Dent about the representation of women in business. “Oddly enough our cover is something we take seriously. The subjects who grace it are invariably proven [read more]
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This is what Jane Lynch told uni students. Brilliant.
You might know her as Sue Sylvester from Glee. Or as the hilarious actor who pops up in comedies here and there. She’s one funny lady but really, you have to watch what she told a group of commencing Smith College students in the United States. It is equal parts belly-clutching hilarious, sad, poignant and [read more]
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Daily Buzz: Insecure women have more handbags.
WOMEN WITH POOR BODY IMAGE LOVE HANDBAGS AND SHOES It’s research that may well confirm what you already know: women tend to buy more accessories like handbags, shoes and jewellery when it isn’t related to their ‘core’ body image, specifically weight. The study of nearly 290 New Zealanders found women who felt more insecure after [read more]
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Runaway kids found by police after property raid
UPDATE [May 22] Police have raided a Queensland property, locating the four missing children and their great grandma who was hiding them after a protracted, international custody dispute. The girls’ mother had been ordered to return them to Italy so that the custody matters might be heard in the local courts. Update: The Judge who [read more]
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Anti-vaccination safe houses. WTF?
by RICK MORTON This woman wants to hide children from ‘evil’ doctors who are trying to save their lives. Let’s all take a moment to let that sink in. Here’s an example of one child the anti-vaccine campaigner wanted to save, not from Hepatitis B, but from a life without [read more]
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Daily Buzz: Court orders parents to ‘urgently’ vaccinate baby
SUPREME COURT ORDERS VACCINATIONS Brisbane Supreme Court Justice Jean Dalton ordered two parents to urgently take their 40-hour-old child to the hospital for Hepatitus B vaccinations because the child had a 20 per cent chance of being infected with the virus. The baby’s mother had a chronic form of Hep B. Doctors said if the [read more]
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Daily Buzz: ‘Ovulation Goggles’ make you pick bad boys
WHY WOMEN PICK ‘BAD BOYS’ A(nother) study had apparently revealed why women choose to hook up with, and even date, so-called nasty boys: ovulation goggles. That’s the term used by researcher Kristina Durante, of The University of Texas, after she studied the way women reacted to ‘sexy’ and ‘reliable’ men on [read more]
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The program that pays drug addicts to be sterilised.
“She has her daddy’s eyes … and her mummy’s heroin addiction.” That’s an actual tagline from an advertising campaign created by Project Prevention, the organisation targeting drug addicts in the United Kingdom and United States and bribing them to get ‘sterilised’. That usually involves permanent birth control methods like vasectomies, tubal [read more]
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Daily Buzz: Penny Wong defends her family
Watch Penny Wong stick up for her family on Qanda: The same sex marriage issue was raised on on television last night which resulted in this exchange between Joe Hockey and Penny Wong on same sex marriage on the ABC’s QandA. It’s well worth a watch for Wong’s closing line: ANTI GAY DOC RESIGNS FROM [read more]
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An appalling story. Is this really Australia, 2012?
Young Sri Lankan widow Ranjini and her two little boys aged six and nine, are trapped. In every sense of the word. She’s a refugee, granted asylum in Australia in September last year. Ranjini’s first husband was killed in Sri Lanka in 2006. She and her children arrived in Australia on Christmas Island in 2010 [read more]
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Daily Buzz: Mum leaves kids in car, ends up in court
DASH TO THE SHOPS LANDS IN COURT A Brisbane mother has pleaded guilty to leaving her three children in the car, with engine running and air-conditioning on, while she ducked into the shops for 10 minutes. A bystander noticed the children – the eldest of whom was 10 – in the car and watched them [read more]
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Got a budget question? Ask Minister Bill Shorten now.
Capital Hill in Canberra might seem a world away from the lounge rooms and kitchens of everyday Australia. But the people who sit around the Cabinet table (or the Shadow Cabinet table for that matter) or walk into the House of Reps to vote on legislation – these politicians are as [read more]
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Daily Buzz: When teenagers become sex offenders
TEEN SEX OFFENDERS: IT’S EASIER THAN YOU THINK It only takes one ‘wayward’ sext. A lewd pic sent to a friend, or uploaded on to the Internet. It happened to one 17-year-old when he sent a picture of him and his former girlfriend, also 17, to some mates after they broke up. It was ‘dumb’, [read more]
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The week in pics + the week in frocks.
We’re kicking off this week’s pics with the magazine cover of Tom Cruise we can’t stop looking at. He is pictured on W Magazine (in eyeliner, nail polish and is covered in tattoos) to promote his new movie, Rock of Ages. Also in this week’s gallery is the make-up free photo of Hilary Clinton that’s [read more]
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Daily Buzz: The great work debate as smokers shunned
SMOKERS TOLD NOT TO APPLY FOR JOBS It’s technically discrimination, but more and more job ads are cropping up telling smokers they need not apply for work. And they’re not just jobs in the health industry, either. They’re for positions as receptionists, disability workers, drivers, personal trainers. Acting Victorian Equal Opportunity Commissioner Karen Toohey said [read more]
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Addicted to the pokies at age 18.
When I think of gambling addicts, the images in my mind are of decrepit old men with fistfuls of slips at the races or pensioners in dated gaming rooms at soulless, suburban pubs. I never thought for a second that I could become one… a gambling addict… at the ripe [read more]
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‘You better make it look like an accident’.
Stella Young tells of a dark joke in disability circles. “If you have an accident in a lake and you injure yourself then you had better get your friends to drag you to a car and make it look like an [car] accident. It’s a bit dark. But it’s true.” That’s because people living with [read more]
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Daily buzz: What killed this liposuction patient?
LIPOSUCTION INQUEST HEARS DETAILS Lauren Edgar was 28 when she booked herself in for liposuction surgery. She died five days later. Now an inquest into her death has heard she likely died from a rare, one-in-a-million infection called gas gangrene. The ABC reported: Dr Phillip Griffin, a senior plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Flinders Medical [read more]
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Daily Buzz: Phone credit for sex checks
GET AN STI CHECK, TOP UP YOUR PHONE CREDIT. Young people in Queensland’s mining town Mt Isa will be offered $20 mobile phone credit vouchers if they go and get STI checks. The Queensland Government is offering the deal after a nine-fold increase in syphilis cases since January 2011. Chief health officer Jeannette Young said [read more]
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The Federal Budget. (Without the boring bits)
It may be Stockholm syndrome, or possibly the subliminal messaging of about 12,000 pages of budget documents, but I feel an overwhelming urge to tell you that the Budget will return to surplus “on time and as promised”. The government keeps its promises. As promised. They promised a surplus. You’ve got [read more]
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Mobile phones and brain cancer. Are you worried?
Dr Charlie Teo isn’t a kook. He is the best brain surgeon in the country. He knows the inside of your head like you know the back of your hand. He’s seen the rise in a certain type of brain cancer. And he’s worried. Here’s what some of [read more]
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‘I swear, I’ll never do THAT again…’
What I’m about to confess happened when I was starting out as a cub reporter. Even now, nearly eight years later, it’s hard to write about what I did, what I said. I should probably just pretend it never happened. But maybe it’ll serve as a cautionary tale to other cub journos. I’ve sworn on [read more]
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Daily buzz: Generation XXX. Do kids need porn?
WHY DO KIDS USE PORN? Do you discuss porn with your kids and, more to the point, do they talk about it with you? Tonight’s episode of Insight on SBS brings together a mix of parents and their children (alongside some experts) and achieves something remarkable: it gets them to talk openly. Charlie Kay, that’s [read more]
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Single parents told: ‘Get back to work’
How long should single parents receive welfare payments? Until their child is 16? That’s how it is now. Or until their child turns eight? That’s how it will be soon. Raiding single parent payments might have been the last thing you’d expect from a Labor Government, but then, nothing about this Government [read more]
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A surprise announcement from Vogue
BY MIA FREEDMAN When Vogue talks, the fashion industry listens. So I was ecstatic to hear that the iconic magazine brand has finally addressed the issue of underage, underweight models and acknowledged that they send a damaging message to their readers. “Vogue believes that good health is beautiful,” Jonathan Newhouse, [read more]
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Daily Buzz: Her virginity is for sale, but at what price?
ESCORT AGENCY OFFERS TEEN’S VIRGINITY A Sydney agency is offering to sell a Chinese-born, Melbourne high school student’s virginity to a client, for the right price. So what’s the going rate for what the agency calls a ‘rare opportunity’? $12,000. The move has been resoundingly criticised with many saying the offer is cashing in on [read more]
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From businessman to refugee: one man’s heartbreaking story
Hikmat Shah was just doing what any normal father would, taking his daughter – almost 4 – to school. He had her backpack in one hand, and her hand in the other. By his own admission, he was still half asleep. That made it hard to see the men. One was crouched behind his car [read more]
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Daily Buzz: The massages at this kindy are for the kids
DID YOUR KINDY OFFER FOOT-RUBS? So, this is a bit edgy. A German kindergarten is offering its charges, as young as three, foot-rubs, massages and other relaxation techniques – like walking through wet grass with their shoes off – as part of its overall package designed to take the stress out of the little tacker’s [read more]
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The week in pics + the week in frocks.
Kicking off this week’s pics, we have Mariah Carey’s tight pants (perhaps she could use one of these?), the incredible shot of a brown bear falling from a tree in the US, and the unveiling of Australia’s Opening Ceremony Olympic uniform (which has us thinking Melanie Griffith in Working Girl). If frocks are more your [read more]