1. National Day of mourning

Mo, Evie and Otis Maslin died on MH17

A National Day of Mourning is being held today to honour the Australian victims of MH17. Flags will be flown at half-mast around the country and memorial services will take place.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop shed tears yesterday as she told of the call she made to the parents of Mo, Evie and Otis Maslin who were on board the plane.

“When they said to me as I hung up, ‘just bring them home’, whatever we did over the next two weeks, was to do that”, she said.

Ms Bishop told a leadership conference in Perth that her focus was firmly on retrieving the bodies of Australian victims now.

2. Eight men threaten to cut school children’s throats

A horror attack has taken place on a Sydney school bus with 30 children terrified for their lives.

A gang of eight men threatened to slit the children’s throats and racially abused them.

Mothers have said the children thought they were going to die.

For more read this post here.

3. Gammy’s biological father abuse revelations

Gammy’s father’s abuse history

Trigger warning: This news story contains details of abuse and may be distressing for some readers.

New details have emerged about the abuse committed by the alleged father of Gammy.

David Farnell was convicted of 15 charges of indecently dealing with two girls and was jailed for three years. The girls were aged just seven and 10. The offences occurred in the 1980s, but the charges were brought against the man after the girls turned 18.

According to court documents and reported by News Limited, the man often took them into the garden shed where he rubbed and touched them. He also forced one of the girls to perform a sexual act on him.

District Court judge Ivan Russell Gunning said he did not consider the man’s offending was at the lower end of the scale.

Fairfax Media reports another judge said the girls went on to suffer depression. Judge O’Sullivan saidL “None of that is surprising because you, by your conduct, robbed these girls of their childhood and for that reason it’s fair to say that the law takes a strict view of offences of this kind.”

4. Two-year-old boy injured for two days before taken to hospital?

The ABC reports a two-year-old boy could have sustained critical head injuries up to two days before he was taken to hospital by his parents.

Child Abuse Squad detectives described his injuries as traumatic when he was taken to Westmead Children’s Hospital in Sydney yesterday.

The boy’s father has been charged with recklessly causing grievous bodily harm with intent. The boy’s 24-year-old mother was released without charge on Friday, but now has been has now been arrested and charged with recklessly inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent and hindering a police investigation.

The ABC report it’s alleged she witnessed the attack and did nothing. Police said the child’s parents told them the child had fallen down a set of stairs twice, and blamed some injuries on the boy’s three-year-old brother.

5. Australian toddler’s lucky escape

Lila Meredith was caught up in this crash

An Australian toddler on holiday in New York with her family has had a lucky escape after a bus crash caused a traffic light to smash down on her stroller, narrowly missing the three-year old.

The crash, in Times Square injured 14 people. Lila Meredith was taken to a nearby hospital, but News Limited reports she was given the all clear.

One of the bus drivers was arrested and charged with driving while impaired.

6. Lin family trial

A court has heard the man accused of murdering the Lin family may have been motivated by reported sexual abuse.

Lian Bin ‘‘Robert’’ Xie is accused of murdering Min Lin, 45, Lin’s wife, Yun Li Lin, 44, their sons Henry, 12 and Terry, 9 and Ms Lin’s sister, Yun Bin ‘‘Irene’’ Lin, 39, at their home on July 18, 2009.

Mr Xie, 50, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of murder. He is married to Kathy Lin, who is Mr Lin’s sister.

The Australian reports that Crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi said that Mr Xie engaged in “inappropriate sexual behaviour’’ towards a young female family member, this escalated after the murders when he began sexually abusing her in a “quite overt way’’.

7. Metadata “car crash” interview

The Government has struggled to explain the details of its “data retention” policy.

Attorney-General George Brandis’s interview with Sky News yesterday has been branded a car crash after he confused the issue on what a web address actually was.

For more on this story, read this post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDKovLg7xpM

8. Autism testing failing?

Calls today for changes in diagnostic testing of autism, with experts saying the current approach is failing to detect many girls with the disorder.

American psychologist Dr Lori Ernsperger, who specialises in working with girls with autism, believes the high ratio of boys to girls diagnosed with the condition suggests a flaw in current diagnostic questionnaires.

She told The ABC the diagnostic questionnaires doctors use for autism focus mainly on the male characteristics of the disorder and are yet to be adapted for girls.

“That doctor is going to do a diagnostic checklist … it may have 20 questions or so [but] they’re the sort of questions that lend themselves to male behaviour or boy behaviour,” she said.

9. Student charged over leaking Frances Abbott scholarship

Police have charged a 20-year-old University of Technology Sydney student, Freya Newman, with unauthorised access to restricted data held in a computer.

It is alleged she worked as a night librarian at the Whitehouse Institute of Design — and leaked details of the Prime Minister’s daughter Frances Abbott’s scholarship to the design school.

10. MH370 search

Five months after MH370 went missing, a new phase in the search for the Malaysia Airlines flight is set to begin.

Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss announced yesterday underwater vehicles will scan a 60,000 square km of the sea floor – an area approximately the size of Tasmania – in the southern Indian Ocean, off the west coast of Australia.

“We are cautiously optimistic we will locate the missing aircraft in the search zone,” he said.

11. Cervical cancer vaccine

Great news about the cervical cancer vaccine

A study has shown the cervical cancer vaccination program is a success — with also substantially reduced human papillomavirus (HPV) types since the national immunisation campaign was introduced in 2007.

The report shows it has even reduced infections in unvaccinated women with a 35% decline in HPV targeted types in women who were not vaccinated.

12. Older mums more likely to need caesareans than younger women

A new study has found new mums over the age of 40 are three times as likely as younger women to need an emergency caesarean section, even if they live a healthy lifestyle.

The research involving more than 160,000 first-time mothers found that older women had a 22.4 per cent chance of their pregnancy ending with an emergency caesarean section, compared with rates of 6.7 per cent among women aged 20 to 24. The study in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology also found those over 40 were far more likely to end up undergoing a forceps delivery.

13. Key to getting kids to do well at school

Ok Mums’s here is the answer

Research out shows that the key to well behaved children and to getting your kids to do well at school is to eat dinner together as a family.

Psychologists found that kids aged six to eleven concentrated more at school, acquired better social skills and got into much less trouble as teens if they regularly took part in family meals.

The study from the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University analysed the eating habits of more than 24,000 young children.

But the meals needed to take place at least four times a week to have any major benefit.

Meanwhile The Daily Mail reports Pope Francis has warned young people not to waste time on activities that are futile – like “chatting on the Internet or with smartphones”.

14. Kit Kats ‘healthy’?

Kit Kats and Coco Pops are classified as ‘healthy’ under food companies’ own nutritional standards– allowing companies to sidestep television advertising regulations for kids.

Fairfax reports

that a

nalysis by the NSW Cancer Council analysis found that most food that appeared in television advertisements between 6am and 9pm — 63 percent, to be exact — was considered unhealthy under Food Standards Australia New Zealand nutrient profiling.

Clare Hughes, who authored the study, said a significant 39 percent of food ads that met the companies’ criteria for ‘healthy’ food actually failed the government’s criteria.

[post_snippet id=324408]