Wednesday's news in under 2 minutes.

1. Nathan Parker, the little boy who went missing from his school yesterday afternoon, has reportedly been found safe and well.

Nine-year-old Nathan reportedly left Canley Vale Public School at around 3pm. At 7pm last night, his parents reported him missing.

Nathan has apparently turned up at his school in Canley Heights this morning.

More to come.

2. The Taliban in Pakistan have vowed to attack 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai if they ever get the chance again. Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban while campaigning for girls’ right to education last year, but survived the assassination attempt. A spokesperson for the group, Shahidullah Shahid, told the Agence France-Presse, “She is not a brave girl and has no courage. We will target her again and attack whenever we have a chance.”

He reportedly continued, “She accepted that she attacked Islam so we tried to kill her, and if we get another chance we will definitely kill her and that will make us feel proud. Islam prohibits killing women…except those that support the infidels in their war against our religion.”

3. A video of a woman hitting her boyfriend has gone viral – and has resulted in the woman’s arrest. The five-minute video reportedly shows the 20-year-old woman’s reaction to the news that her 23-year-old boyfriend had cheated on her. As he kneels on the ground, she hold his head and slaps his face. It’s received more than 130,000 views in just a few days.

4. Russia has created a surveillance system which is intended to allow security to listen  in on, and watch, athletes and visitors at next year’s Winter Olympics. The surveillance system is known as SORM, and will also give Russian security the ability to access all phone and internet communications at the Games. The Russian government has recently come under fire for their anti-gay laws, and many activists have called for a boycott of the Olympics in February.

5. An editor in the US has blamed single mothers for falling newspaper circulation numbers. Yes, really. Chris Powell, the managing editor at a local Connecticut newspaper called the Journal-Inquirer, wrote an op-ed in which he said that, “Even in a supposedly prosperous and well-educated state like Connecticut, how strong can demand for [the news] be now that half the children are being raised without two parents at home and thus acquiring developmental handicaps…”

Powell charmingly continued, “. . . Indeed, newspapers still can sell themselves to traditional households – two-parent families involved with their children, schools, churches, sports, civic groups, and such. But newspapers cannot sell themselves to households headed by single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they’re living in, and couldn’t afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read.” With op-eds like that, you’ve got to wonder is maybe people aren’t buying the Journal-Inquirer because it’s riffled with inaccuracies and offensive material.

6. A 73-year-old man was reported missing on a cruise ship that was bound for Darwin yesterday. His wife reported him missing at 9am. . The vessel had been turned around to retract its path but the search has since been called off. Authorities say there is no way the man could have survived.

7. Divers have found a body in the wreckage of the Costa Concordia. The ship sunk on January 12, 2012, killing 32 people. Two bodies were never recovered – that of Italian passenger Maria Grazia Trecarichi and Indian waiter Russel Rebello. A spokesperson for the civil protection agency said: “Several elements lead us to say it could be the body of the young Indian waiter.”

8. The US has now entered its second week of shutdown. Speaking at a press conference yesterday, President Barack Obama said backing down and not raising the government debt would ultimately lead to a worse result than the shutdown. “As reckless as a government shutdown is, the economic shutdown caused by America defaulting would be dramatically worse.”

Have you seen anything in the news that you want to talk about?