News: Asylum seekers reach Australia ... want to skip it

Asylum seeker boat reaches Australia … wants to keep going

A seaworthy boat filled with Chinese asylum seekers, from the persecuted Falun Gong, have been hauled into Darwin but refuse to declare asylum.

They want to keep going to New Zealand where processing conditions are more humane.

“And we’ve got to have mandatory detention,” the Opposition Leader told reporters in western Sydney.

“It’s only because New Zealand lacks mandatory detention that that boat is apparently headed there.”

Neither the Department of Immigration nor the office of Immigration Minister Chris Bowen could comment on why the Chinese nationals, who set out from Malaysia, want to keep going.

The Prime Minister said Australia was not in a position to detain the asylum seekers against their will as their boat was fit for the journey and they had not asked for asylum.

The Internet crowns latest meme sensation

When Zeddie Little entered this 10km marathon with hopes of just making it to the end. Instead, someone snapped his photo and was so enamoured with his photogenic mid-marathon smile at the camera they posted it online. The rest, as they say, is viral history.

The photo became a meme (a themed idea that gets tweaked and changed by Internet users over time) called Ridiculously Photogenic Guy and in no time Zeddie Little (that is his real name) became an Internet sensation. Who knows how long the fame will last, but it’s interesting to watch.

Ridiculously Photogenic Guy has spawned a ton of altered versions of the original photo, with commentary like, “Goes For Run: Inadvertently Teaches World How To Spell “Ridiculously,” “Photobombs Wedding Picture: Nobody Minds,” and “Picture Gets Put Up As Employee Of The Month: For A Company That He Doesn’t Work For.”

Zeddie has taken to the role with aplomb, answering banal questions directed at him on Twitter. He loves jokes, Ireland and saying ‘gosh’.

Perhaps his most salient tweet: “I’m not a celebrity guys I’m just a normal person!”

Not right now, Zeddie, not right now.

Matthew Newton arrested again

The trouble-prone son of Australian showbiz stars Bert and Patti Newton, Matthew Newton, has been charged with resisting police arrest and trespassing. The actor was wrestled to the ground by police after being warned several times about his behaviour in the early hours of Saturday morning, a local bar manager said. ”He was a belligerent drunk and the cops asked him to leave several times,” Jason, the manager of Mr Moe’s Restaurant and Bar, told The Age.

His resistance was ‘non-violent’ and he posted a $2000 bond for release and will reappear in court in the following days. He was in Miami trying to rebuild his career, taking acting classes with Arrested Development’s Jeffrey Tambor.

But any criminal record in the United States makes it extremely difficult for foreigners to even remain in the country, let alone get work.

While Newton has himself racked up a few mugshots, he’s not alone. You may or may not recognise some of these:

Should pregnant women be breath-tested for cigarettes?

The science has been in for a while on the damage smoking can cause to mother and child during a pregnancy, but that hasn’t stopped all mothers from puffing away during gestation. It’s a problem because many feel so stigmatised they won’t even raise the issue with their doctor or GP. Director of Quit Victoria Fiona Sharkie said Victoria, or even Australia, could follow the lead of the United Kingdom and perform carbon monoxide breath tests to determine if pregnant women are smoking so that they may be counseled. But should they?

Fairfax reported:

New data on smoking rates for pregnant women in Victorian public hospitals shows 14.6 per cent or 10,286 said they had smoked in the first 20 weeks. This dropped to 5.6 per cent or 3945 after 20 weeks.

About 4 per cent of women attending private hospitals also smoked in the first five months, reducing to 2 per cent after 20 weeks, the state government figures for 2009-10 reveal.

The report did not define how much the women smoked, so it could include some who smoked until they realised they were pregnant. Population surveys in Victoria have estimated about 15 per cent of all women smoked in 2008.

Crackdown on sexy pop music videos

British politicians want overly gyrating popstar hips to be a thing of the past, at least for under 18s, as Tory Prime Minister David Cameron looks at ways to prevent youngsters from viewing hyper-sexualised music content online.

The PM is looking at rules that would force websites hosting such videos to install age verification systems similar to those used for online gambling, The (London) Sunday Telegraph reports.

Around 200 million videos are watched each month on Vevo, a video website that, unlike YouTube, does not ask viewers to confirm they are over 18 before watching a video.

The video for Rihanna’s song “S&M” has been viewed more than 37 million times on Vevo alone. Ofcom, the UK’s broadcasting regulator, warned last year that the “highly sexualized” video produced for “S&M” contained scenes of “sexual bondage, dominance and sadomasochism.”

– Mia Freedman has a few choice words about the trend for pop music toward the over-sexualised.

Dad-to-be loses case to stop ex-girlfriend from having abortion

A man lost a court injunction aimed at stopping his former girlfriend, who was 16, from having an abortion. He also asked the court to keep her in Queensland and for access to the birthing suite when the child was born, plus medical test results. The teenager claims she has no intention of terminating the pregnancy. The man asked for full responsibility for the child once it was born.

Tony Abbott’s lesbian sister fails to soften gay marriage stance

Christine Forster is a lesbian and Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott’s sister. She came out publicly over the weekend and told the nation she was in a happy, live-in relationship with her partner Virginia.

“We’ve had a lot of interesting discussions and we’ll keep those discussions going, but fundamentally I want to be a politician that keeps my commitments,” Mr Abbott said.

“We went into the election with a position and as far as I’m concerned, that’s the position we will keep.”

Mr Abbott said he has grappled with the issue greatly.

“It’s easy to be torn on a subject like this,” he said.

“I have close family members as well as lots of close friends who are gay. Many of them strongly support gay marriage.”

Oh, and Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion

But if you’re a fan of the photo-sharing social media app, nothing will change. For now.

Miranda Kerr’s model friend says you don’t have to suffer cancer if you don’t want

Model Liana Werner-Gray wrote on Miranda Kerr’s website in a blog that people ‘don’t have to die if they don’t want to’. She noted she cured herself of cancer due to fresh air, positive thinking, enemas and bath salts. As the Daily Telegraph reported, there was an uproar on the site:

Some Kerr fans have reacted angrily to Werner-Gray’s blog, branding it “cruel” for giving people “false hope”.

“Although your frame of mind helps to an extent, it is a gross falsification to try and say that you can cure aggressive cancers through mind power,” one wrote. “Use positive thinking techniques to help these people enjoy what time they have left, not to give them false and misguided hope.”

Kerr’s spokeswoman Carlii Lyon said Werner-Gray was not employed by the model.

“The blog written by Liana Werner-Gray entitled Is There Already A Cure For Cancer is a reflection of Liana’s personal beliefs and ideas only,” she said.

“The blog is monitored for obscene language and defamatory material, however the bloggers are free to express their ideas and personal research.”

– Positive thinking won’t cure cancer.

– Google is not the same as science.