By MAMAMIA NEWS
1. Notorious black market website Silk Road, has been shut down by US law enforcement agencies.
The website sold illicit drugs such as heroin and cocaine as well as dangerous weapons. The site was also used to facilitate the hiring of hit men and other illegal activities.
The FBI has arrested the website’s alleged proprietor, 29-year-old Ross William Ulbricht in San Francisco. It is alleged that Ulbricht operated under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts.
2. There’s been a push in Victoria for the installation of unisex bathrooms in high schools. The push has come from the Victorian Student Representative Council and it’s hoped that non-gendered bathrooms would help students who are suffering form gender dis-morphia.
3. A woman has been shot in Washington DC, sending the city into a brief lock-down. The woman was reportedly shot by police after she slammed her car into a barricade at the White House and then sped through the city while police chased her. Authorities initially through it could be a terrorist attack, but they have since ruled out that theory.
There was a child in the car with the woman. The child was reportedly injured in the commotion but will recover.
4. The new Tourism Australia commercial has been released – and it’s a little bit different from what we’re used to. The ad has been voiced by Sydney performance poet, Bravo Child. Take a look:
The footage for the ad was gathered from Tourism Australia’s Best Jobs In The World campaign earlier in the year, where seven winners from all over the world tried different jobs – such as park ranger and lifestyle photographer.
5. At least 94 people have reportedly been killed, and hundreds more injured, after a ship carrying African migrants to Europe caught on fire and capsized near an Italian island yesterday. The crossing from Africa is across the Mediterranean Sea and is apparently notoriously dangerous. While over 150 have been rescued, about 200 others are still missing.
Pietro Bartolo, chief of health services on the island, told a radio station: “We need only caskets, certainly not ambulances.” Search operations continue.
6. Thirteen people have been killed in a plane crash in Nigeria. The plane nosedived into the ground and burst into flames, only minutes after taking off from Lagos airport. There were 20 people on board; 6 others were injured and one is still missing.
7. Apparently, we need to be preparing for a world without antibiotics. Or so that’s what health professionals are saying after a two-day conference on the Gold Coast this week, run by the Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control. President Marija Juraja said that because super bugs – also known as drug-resistant bacterium – are on the rise, antibiotics to treat life-threatening infections could no longer be able to fight them off. They are considering alternative methods for preventing and controlling infections.
8. An ABC exclusive has revealed that the Catholic Church tried to reach an agreement with NSW Police that would have resulted in helping to shut down investigations into pedophile priests. According to the ABC, police records – accessed by Greens MP David Shoebridge – show two instances in which the church and police looked to finalise memorandums of understanding in regards to complaints of sexual and physical abuse.
9. A US man has claimed to have spotted two Bigfoots in the woods of Pennsylvania. Fifty-seven-year-old John Stoneman was returning from a festival with his girlfriend when he spotted two tall animals through the woods, and took pictures of them. He told a local news outlet: “I’m a skeptic myself. I’m not a believer, but this was not a bear and you can see fur on it … It’s wider at the shoulders and tapers down whereas a bear is bigger in the middle and stands differently with its paws out — this was standing like a man, like a Bigfoot.”
Have you seen anything in the news that you want to talk about?
Top Comments
Whilst enough news hasn't come to light as yet - I'm keeping my eyes out. On the surface it disturbed me that this Capitol Hill woman has been shot dead (I read a report that the police were shooting to kill). As if that child in the car is her own, basically the police have deprived that child of their mother. The child has been punished for the mother's mistake.
And who knows why she did what she did. Maybe she went into some sort of psychosis which caused her to lose any rational decision making ability.
Unisex bathrooms are just wrong. Men and women need a bit of privacy at times. It ain't rocket science.
Apart from that, I cannot see the point of disadvantaging 10,000 people for the benefit of 1.
So use the cubicle. Anything I do in a bathroom that I don't want a man seeing, I do in the cubicle. Anything I do in the bathroom but outside the cubicle - washing my hands, reapplying make-up, brushing my hair - who cares? I'd do all that out in the open.
I think you can make a case against unisex bathrooms but the privacy objections are not convincing at all to me.
I'm pretty sure the deal is not to have bathrooms at all - just individual cubicles that you access from the outside. That way you can bully or abuse a person in a private 'room' away from the teacher's gaze - an individual cubicle only has so much space. A few places have trialled this approach with success.
So it is not just for gender dysmorphia people but for everyone who got abused in a toilet.
I agree - individual cubicles, just like we have for disabled toilets at the moment.
I think this is an absolutely fantastic idea, for a number of reasons, including the ones you have outlined here, Jill.
Would probably save money and water on girls leaving taps running while they pee so no one can hear them as well... (I'm pretty sure they still do that!)
There are unisex toilets everywhere in Paris, France and they seem to work quite well.