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Wednesday's News in 5 Minutes.

We’ve rounded up all the latest stories from Australia and around the world – so you don’t have to go searching.

1. Further distressing details of newborn baby’s death at hands of teen Dad.

Warning: This item contains details of child abuse and death and may be distressing for some readers.

The teenage father of a newborn baby had been left with his son for just minutes at Bunbury Hospital when he smashed his 27-day old baby’s head against a wall twice.

The teenage father has admitted his guilt.

The father who was 15 at the time has admitted to manslaughter.

The teenager told police he had ‘bumped’ the baby on a door frame.

PerthNow reports that the surgeon who examined the baby said he had suffered the worst head and brain injuries she had ever seen.

The baby boy died in his mother’s arms days later.

The teenager, now aged 16 will be sentenced next month. It is reported he was sobbing in the dock as he faced court on Monday.

 2. Disability support payment overhaul.

The final recommendations of the sweeping review of Australia’s welfare system conducted by Patrick McClure is to be released today.

Social Services Minister Scott Morrisson

It will recommend that the current system of government payments be simplified into five types of assistance.

The overhaul calls for a working age payment, a supported living pension for people with a severe and permanent disability, age pension, child and youth payment and carer payment.

The reports suggest that income support should not be available to young people in their own right until they are 22 but go to their parents instead.

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Social Services Minister Scott Morrison will release further details today at an address to the press club.

3. Knox Grammar School provided reference for known abuser.

The second day of hearings into the elite boys school, Knox Grammar at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard the former headmaster provided a glowing reference for a teacher he had sacked for indecently assaulting one student and hitting two others – the reference meant the teacher could work for another 20 years in schools before he was arrested by police.

The Royal Commission inquiry continues today.

The reference former headmaster Dr Ian Paterson wrote for the teacher Damien Vance in 1991, tendered in evidence said “Mr Vance is a strong teacher and personality. He is highly experienced and he knows the art and craft of teaching, both in the classroom and the sports field.”

Vance was sacked after he was accused of indecently assaulting a student known as ASD in a room under the Knox Chapel.

Fairfax Media reports that a former boarder have evidence that four former staff members including Vance shared cigarettes and alcohol with students while watching explicit films.

He said he was repeatedly assaulted by teacher Craig Treloar and Vance and had to barricading himself into his cubicle at night.

The hearing continues today.

 4. Fifty Shades of Grey rape.

A man in the the US accused of rape has said he was just re-enacting the movie “Fifty Shaded of Grey”.

The alleged rapist, 19-year old Mohammad Hossain is accused of tying up his victim, whipping and punching her before raping her in his room at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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For more read this post here. 

5. California commuter train derails injuring dozens.

Train derailment in California.

At least one person is dead and 30 people have been injured after a train struck a vehicle in Ventura County, California, derailing the train.

The incident happened just before 5.45am local time.

 6. Teenager woke from coma pregnant after attempted kidnapping.

A teenage girl from NSW who was the victim of an attempted kidnapping last year has told ‘A Current Affair’ how she woke from a coma and was told she was pregnant.

April-Lee Gillen

On April 20 last year 17-year old April-Lee Gillen was found unconscious on the side of a road. Police believed she was dragged into a black BMW SUV in an attempted abduction by two men as she left her boyfriend’s house.

She had uploaded a Facebook status “Phones on 1 per cent walking from warrawong to berks and some Asian guy just stopped me telling me to come home with him cause it’s safe and I need help wtf sos.”

April was rushed to hospital and placed in an induced coma. When she woke up she was told she was pregnant.

She told A Current Affair that her sister told her of the pregnancy.

“I woke up from my coma she goes ‘April you’re pregnant did you know that?’”

April replied “Am I pregnant oh my goodness.”

“I had that thing still where I’d forget each day and then I forgot each day and I’d say ‘Oh my god am I pregnant am I pregnant’ when they’d tell me each day and then when visitors used to come in I’d say ‘Oh I’m forty weeks pregnant I’m forty weeks pregnant’”.

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She gave birth on Christmas Eve to a baby boy.

There was an appeal for information and a manhunt, but still neither of the two men have been found.

Police ask anyone with information to call Crime stoppers on 1800 333 000.

7. Gillian Triggs: Opposition calls on AFP to investigate allegations George Brandis offered Human Rights Commission president ‘inducement to resign’

By Susan McDonald and Eliza Borrello

The Federal Opposition has asked the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to investigate if a job offer made by the Government to Human Rights Commission (HRC) president Gillian Triggs was an inducement to resign.

Calls for AFP to investigate allegations George Brandis offered Gillian Triggs ‘inducement to resign’

The Opposition said the offer of another government position to Professor Triggs by the secretary of Attorney-General George Brandis’s department on his behalf could constitute corrupt and unlawful conduct.

Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus wrote to the AFP Commissioner seeking an immediate investigation and possible prosecution regarding the conduct of Senator Brandis.

“The Attorney-General’s offer to an independent statutory officer of an inducement to resign her position as president, with the object of affecting the leadership of the AHRC to avoid political damage to the Abbott Government may constitute corrupt and unlawful conduct,” he wrote.

“Professor Triggs said there was ‘no doubt in her mind’ that the request to resign and the offer of further work were ‘very clearly linked’.

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“I request this matter be investigated by the Australian Federal Police as a priority.”

Professor Triggs said she preferred not to use the term “inducement”.

But Mr Dreyfus said that was because it had direct meaning in the law.

“She’s not wanting to characterise it herself, that’s a matter for investigation by the Australian Federal Police,” he said.

Tensions between the Government and the HRC have been on display recently, with Prime Minister Tony Abbott saying the commission’s damning report into children in detention was “a blatantly partisan, politicised exercise”.

Professor Triggs revealed on Tuesday during a Senate estimates hearing that Senator Brandis’s department asked her to resign during a meeting on February 3.

According to Mr Dreyfus’s letter, the Attorney-General’s department secretary, Chris Moraitis, did not offer a reason as to why the resignation was requested.

“Professor Triggs drew her ‘own conclusions’ that it was because the Prime Minister was unhappy with the AHRC’s report The Forgotten Children: National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention,” he wrote.

 A version of this story was originally published on ABC and has been republished with full permission.

8. Australia to send further troops to Iraq.

The ABC reports that the Government is poised to commit additional troops, likely to number in the hundreds to Iraq as a part of a joint Australia and New Zealand mission to train Iraqi soldiers.

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New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key announced on Tuesday the deployment of 143 Kiwi personnel to Iraq.

“This is likely to be a joint training mission with Australia, although it won’t be badged an ANZAC force,” he said.

 9. Gunman kills eight people in Czech town.

A gunman has killed eight people in a restaurant in the eastern Czech Republic town of Uhersky Brod before shooting himself dead.

The man burst into the restaurant in the eastern town of Uhersky Brod around lunchtime, “shooting indiscriminately”, the town’s mayor Patrik Kuncar said.

Locals say the man, believed to be 60 and mentally unstable, had two guns.

The town’s mayor has ruled out the possibility it was a terror attack.

 10. Babies who eat peanuts have lesser chance of developing allergy.

Eat peanuts earlier to avoid allergies.

A study has found that early consumption of peanuts may significantly reduce the risk of developing the allergy by 80% in high-risk infants.

The trial, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, focused on babies as young as four months who had already developed eczema – an early warning sign of allergies.

It found that by eating peanut products when first introduced to solids the risk was cut by over 80%.

The King’s College London researchers said it was the “first time” that allergy development had been reduced.

 11. Divorced Mum told to get a job.

A British woman who divorced her millionaire racehorse surgeon husband in 2008 has been told by a judge to get a job.

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Lord Justice Pitchford said divorcees with children aged over seven should work for a living in a decision which signals an end to leisurely living for ex partners of wealthy spouses.

Mother told “just get on with it” and get a job.

Mother-of-two Tracey Wright, 51, chose not to be a working mother when she split up with her husband top equine surgeon Ian Malcolm Wright.

They were married for 11 years and upon divorcing sold their £1.3 ($A2.5 milion) million, seven-bedroom home in the British countryside,

Mr Wright, 59 was ordered to pay her and the children £75,000-a-year in maintenance ( A$150,000) and school fees.

He went to court last year last year saying it was not fair that he have to keep supporting his ex-wife, even after his retirement, whilst she made “no effort whatsoever to seek work”.

The London Standard reports that the judge told the mother to “just get on with it” and get a job, like “vast numbers of other women with children.”

 12. Couple falls into sinkhole.

A couple in South Korea have been captured on CCTV as they stepped from a train.

Emergency workers rescued the man and woman, who were then taken to a nearby hospital in Seoul with minor injuries.

City officials and the Korean Geotechnical Society are looking into the cause of the sinkhole.

 

 What news are you talking about today?

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