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Saturday's news in under two minutes.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison

 

 

 

 

 

1. A profoundly disabled four-year-old girl will be transferred to an offshore detention facility in the latest controversy to hit the Federal Government’s Operation Sovereign Borders. According to The Global Mail, the Tamil girl – who is currently being held in a Brisbane detention centre – will be transferred offshore along with her father, most likely to Nauru.

Sources at the Brisbane centre have reported that the girl is unable to walk and talk, and was strapped to her father as they travelled by boat from Sri Lanka. Her disability is the result of an injury her mother sustained in a bomb blast while she was in utero.

The news comes after the story of an asylum seeker unable to visit her newborn baby in ICU made headlines earlier this week.

Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Scott Morrison, has responded to the controversies, saying: “It doesn’t matter whether you’re a child, it doesn’t matter whether you’re pregnant, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a woman, it doesn’t matter if you’re an unaccompanied minor, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a health condition – if you are fit enough to get on a boat, then you can expect you’re fit enough to end up in offshore processing.”

2. Turkey has issued a warning to NSW MPs, telling them that they will not be welcome at Anzac Cove for the 100th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli in 2015. The hostility has arisen from the NSW Parliament’s formal recognition of the Armenian Genocide, an action undertaken by Turkey’s Ottoman Government during WWI, killing over a million people. The warning, from Speaker of the Turkish Parliament, Cemil Cicek, says that if formal recognition of the genocide is adopted by other Australian governments, similar sanctions will apply.

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3. Airdrops have seen aid begin to reach the worst affected areas of the Philippines, following the destruction of Typhoon Haiyan. Mass burials have also begun in the midst of the cleanup. Over a million people are still displaced in the region, as the official death toll of the disaster climbs to over 3000.

4. An American couple have been indicted after returning their adopted son. They left the nine-year-old boy, whom they adopted at three months, at Butler County Children Services in Ohio last month before fleeing the area with their two other children. The couple are facing 6 months jail and a $1000 fine.

5. Missing mail has delayed Schapelle Corby’s parole bid as authorities in Australia and Indonesia communicate by snail mail to determine the Australian citizen’s parole terms. Indonesian authorities are reportedly waiting for confirmation of Corby’s immigration status from Australian officials. With the rate that communication has slowed, it appears unlikely that Corby’s parole will be granted until early 2014.

6. China’s ‘one-child’ policy is to be relaxed as part of new reforms introduced by the county’s Communist Party. Under the new rules, couples in which at least one parent is an only child will be allowed to have two children. Certain ethnic minorities and disabled people will also be allowed to have two children.

San Francisco’s Batkid!

7. San Francisco has been transformed into Gotham City as part of a five-year-old leukaemia patient’s wish through the Make-a-Wish Foundation. For one day Miles became Batkid and was able to save the city from villains such as The Riddler and The Penguin. Click here for full coverage.