news round-up 13.10.15

 

In Australia

Doctors at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Victoria are refusing to send asylum seeker children back to detention centres post-treatment, as they believe it would be detrimental to the children’s health.

A 23-year-old rape victim from the Nauru detention center has been transferred to Australia to receive an abortion, following Malcom Turnbull’s decision to allow her to enter the country to receive the procedure.

Tony Abbott has been hilariously pranked by the Nationals member for Gippsland, Darren Chester, who placed a membership application for the National Party of Australia on the former PM’s desk during Abbott’s first day back in parliament after being knifed by his own party.

Speaking of Abbott, he also managed to spend a whopping $80,000 of Australian taxpayer money on food and catering during his final week-long visit to remote indigenous communities.

 

Elsewhere in the world

The latest Ridley Scott film, The Martian, has been slammed by The Media Action Network for ‘white-washing’ the Asian roles in the film.

A distressed domestic violence victim from Florida has been sentenced to jail for failing to show up to testify against her abuser. The women explained her depression and anxiety had hindered her attendance, but that didn’t stop Judge Jerri Collins from condemning her to jail time, saying, ‘You think you’re going to have anxiety now? You haven’t even seen anxiety.’

Nuns from Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity group declared that they would rather close down their 30 orphanages than allow single and divorced parents to adopt, saying they are afraid the children may not receive genuine love.

Captive orca and whale breeding has been banned in SeaWorld’s San Diego Park by the California Coastal Commission, with plans also being announced for a $100 million habitat expansion for the captive orca.

Kelsey Grammer has been photographed wearing a T-Shirt asking if people would be more concerned about abortions if they involved guns. The shirt reads, ‘would it bother us more if they used guns?’, and was distributed by the website Abort73, who claim they are helping protect children from abortions.

Julia Cordray, a founder of an app that allows users to negatively review other human beings, is bad at taking criticism.

Emma Watson has responded to one Twitter user who asked her, ‘Are you a white feminist?’ saying, ‘I’m glad this question came up. I’ve been thinking about it a lot . . . It implies that I am not aware of my own privilege but I mention my own good luck/fortune/privilege something like 5 times in my UN speech and my wish to make sure other women have access to the same opportunities that I have. It implies a willful ignorance or neglect of the issues surrounding intersectionality.’ You can read her full response here.