Wednesday's news in two minutes.

1. An inquest into the death of a woman in Ireland who was refused an abortion  has begun in Galway. Thirty-one-year-old Savita Halappanavar was 17 weeks pregnant and miscarrying when she arrived at the Irish hospital last year. She needed a medical termination to save her life but doctors refused on the basis that Ireland is “a Catholic country”. She died a week later from septicemia. The court heard Ms Halappanavar has already been told her foetus would not survive when she was refused the termination. (You can read her full story here.)

2. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has locked in a “strategic partnership” with China that will see the  Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Foreign Minister hold annual leadership talks with the communist state. The only other countries that have similar agreements with China are Russia, Germany, Britain and the EU.

3. The funeral for Margaret Thatcher will be held on April 17. It will be a ceremonial funeral, the second highest honour after a state funeral.

4. A four-year-old boy has reportedly shot and injured his six-year-old friend in the US state of New Jersey. The boys were playing outside when the four-year-old went inside the house and retrieved his family’s gun. It’s unknown whether the boy accidentally shot his friend or intentionally pulled the trigger.

5. The half-brother of champion race horse Black Caviar has sold for $5 million and he hasn’t even run a race. Black Caviar’s half sister was sold last year for $2.6 million.

6. A 25-year-old US diplomat, who was travelling in Afghanistan to deliver donated textbooks to a new school, has died when a bomb set off by the Taliban exploded. Anne Smedinghoff was a public diplomacy officer for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and was one of four Americans killed in the suicide bomb attack. She usually lived in a safe compound but according to her father was “always finding projects and assignments that took her outside to the various provinces within and around Afghanistan”.

7. A pet shop in Adelaide is reportedly seeing ‘Droolia Julia’ toys for dogs. In an interview with the Adelaide Advertiser, feminist Lesley Cannold was critical of the the toys saying: “It’s hard to look at the dog toy and not think that the person on whom it’s based is not an object of ridicule.” The owner of the shop said they were purely a “memento”.