Monday's news in less time than it takes to drink your coffee.

 1. Jodhi Meares faces jail

Jodhi Meares faces possible jail time after allegedly being caught driving three times over the limit and crashing into three parked cars while rolling her own 4WD on Saturday night.

The 43-year-old, who is engaged to former INXS singer Jon Stevens, had to be rescued. Police said she recorded a 0.181 blood alcohol reading, almost four times the legal limit.

Meares’ license had already been suspended when she had the accident.

2. Iraq crisis

The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, who has arrived in Egypt to conduct talks, has said that the United States wants the Iraqi people to find an inclusive leadership to contain the Islamic militants overtaking the country.

Meanwhile Iraqi military officials say the Sunni militants have captured two border crossings, one with Jordan and another with Syria. The capture of the two border crossings follows the fall since Friday of the towns of Qaim, Rawah, Anah and Rutba.

3. Baden-Clay trial

A Supreme Court jury will today be taken to the family home of Allison Baden-Clay and also to the bridge where her body was discovered, to help them better understand the evidence.

Gerard Baden-Clay is accused of murdering his wife Allison and dumping her body under the bridge. He has pleaded not guilty.

4. Peter Greste

The Australian journalist Peter Greste will learn his fate tonight.

The Al Jazeera journalist was arrested in December alongside two Egyptian colleagues, and has been tried for spreading false news and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood of ousted Prime Minister Mohamed Morsi.

Prosecutors are seeking a 15-year sentence.

5. MH370 Captain under scrutiny

It has been revealed that the pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 had plotted a flight path to a remote island far into the southern Indian Ocean where the search is now focused.

The route, which was deleted before MH370 disappeared on March 8, was made on a home flight simulator machine used for practice by its captain, Zaharie Shah.

6. Woman tries to save ducks, faces jail time after car accident.

A woman in Canada who has tried to save some ducklings from being hurt on a busy highway has been convicted and may face 15-years in jail after two motorcyclists crashed into her car and died.

For more read this post here.

7. Mums work for $3.44 an hour

A study, reported by News Limited, has shown that some working mothers bring home less than $5 an hour once they pay childcare costs, income tax and forfeit government benefits they would otherwise have received by staying home.

According to the Childcare Affordability in Australia report increases in the costs of childcare have outstripped petrol price rises over the last five years.

News Limited report that the modelling shows a low-income mum working part-time, who returns to full-time work, gets to keep $4.09 an hour from her $16.37 hourly wage for the extra 20 hours she spend at work each week.

“A middle income mum in the same situation gets to keep just $7.83 from her $30.70 hourly wage for the additional hours, while a low-income single mum would pocket just $3.44 an hour for the additional time if she decided to move from part-time to full time work,” the report says.

8. Teenager survives fall

A teenager trying to avoid a cover charge for a music festival has survived an 80-metre fall down a cliff.

It took 12 hours to rescue the 17-year-old from the Watagan State Forest in NSW overnight Saturday. Westpac rescue helicopter crewman Graham Nickisson told The Newcastle Herald, ‘‘Looking at the size of that cliff, I seriously do not know how he is not dead.’’

Acting Lake Macquarie local area commander, Superintendent Murray Lundberg, said the group of teens had found the rave party known as a “bush doof” only to be refused entry because they didn’t have enough money.

“They thought they would go around the back way and that’s when he got into trouble,’’ he said.

‘‘He is a lucky boy.’’

He is in a critical condition in hospital.

9. Daycare centre under investigation

A mother says she is shocked after being told her three-year-old had been duct taped to a mat at his day care because he would not stay still.

The Montessori Academy in Texas is being investigated by police after photographs showed a child wrapped in a blanket and bound to a mat by duct tape around his legs and chest, Reuters reported.

The photos were reportedly taken by a day care staffer who quit.

10. Orangutan with Nicole Kidman fetish

An orangutan named Hsing Hsing who lives in Perth Zoo has a thing for Nicole Kidman, according to AAP.

Hsing Hsing, who celebrated his 39th birthday on Saturday, regularly pulls out pictures of Nicole Kidman from magazines and keeps them to one side.

“He understands that he’s attracted to a lovely redhead female orangutan and then he sees a lovely redhead in a magazine and goes, “oh yeah, close enough – Nicole Kidman, I’m going to rip that page out and put it to one side,” Primate supervisor Holly Thompson told AAP.

11. Feud between Clintons and Obamas

A new book by journalist Edward Klein claims that the Clintons and Obamas have a long running feud.

Writing in ‘Blood Feud’ he says that that Bill Clinton despises President Obama. “I hate that man Obama more than any man I’ve ever met, more than any man who ever lived,” the book claims Bill Clinton said to a friend after Obama suggested he was a racist in 2008.

Excerpts in The New York Post say that Michelle Obama would regularly refer to Hillary Clinton as the ‘Hildebeest’.

12. World’s ugliest dog

A two-year-old ex-shelter dog has been crowned the World’s Ugliest Dog. Peanut, who is from North Carolina, is a victim of abuse who was burned in a fire.

The two-year-old was in an animal shelter for nine months before he found a home.

“He doesn’t have lips anymore. His eyelids are also gone, and so he can’t close his eyes so therefore his eyes water. The tears drain into his nose and so he has nice little snot bubbles because of it. So it’s great, that adds to his character,” Holly Chandler, Peanut’s owner told CBS San Francisco.

13. Gadgets stunting kids speech

There are reports that more and more children are starting school with delayed speech, because parents are increasingly using iPhones and iPads as babysitters and they are not exposed to enough language at home.

Up to one in eight children starting school need speech therapy because they have been starved of conversation, The Advertiser reports.

SA Primary Principals Association president Pam Kent said digital devices were “a fantastic tool” but “they should not be a babysitting device”.

“It’s not that we’re sledging parents but all these (electronic) activities need to be monitored in moderation. They are quite addictive and children can become quite obsessive about them,” Preschool Directors Association of SA president Marilyn Clark told The Advertiser.

“They are exposed to a large amount of electronic input rather than human input sometimes”.

14. Opera Australia sacks singer after homophobic rant

Opera Australia has fired Georgian opera singer Tamar Iveri over homophobic comments posted on her Facebook page.

A post on the singer’s Facebook page 18 months ago compared LGBT people to sewage, imploring Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili to “stop vigorous attempts to bring West’s ‘fecal masses’ in the mentality of the people by means of propaganda”. 

“I was quite proud of the fact how Georgian society spat at the parade,” the post said, referring to a gay pride parade that took place in the country last year.

Opera Australia said in a statement today that Iveri would not be performing in its Sydney production of Otello, due to start next month.

“Opera Australia has agreed with Tamar Iveri, to immediately release her from her contract with the company,” it said.

“Ms Iveri has unreservedly apologised for those comments and views… Opera Australia believes the views as stated to be unconscionable.”

The company’s move comes after Qantas, one of its biggest sponsors, tweeted yesterday afternoon it was “deeply concerned” with the comments. Angry subscribers have also been threatening to boycott the company in its Facebook page.

Iveri on Saturday said the post was written by her husband, whom she desribed as ” a very religious man with a tough attitude towards gay people.”

15. North Korea threatens to “punish” Julie Bishop

North Korea has threatened to “punish” Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop after she criticised its leader Kim Jong-un in an interview.

North Korea “will never pardon but resolutely punish anyone who dares slander the dignity of its supreme leadership”, a foreign ministry spokesman told Pyongyang’s official news agency on Sunday, Fairfax Media reports.

Last week, Ms Bishop criticised Mr Kim and his pursuit of nuclear weapons  in an interview with US radio station Voice of America, saying she had “very serious concerns” with the country’s policy on the issue, and that Kim Jong-un could “hardly claim the legitimacy as a leader”.

North Korea, often called the “hermit kingdom,” was the subject of a year-long UN inqury into human rights abuses that concluded that security chiefs should face international justice for torture, starvation and extrajudicial killings.

17. Trishna and Krishna – 5 years on from their operation.

It has been 5 years since 7-year-old Trishna and Krishna, the conjoined Indian twins, who were the first in the world to have separation surgery were operated on. The girls, who now live with their adoptive guardian Moira Kelly in Australia, spoke to Seven’s Sunday Night last night and revealed that they were continuously getting better. Trishna, who has progressed faster than her sister, is about to start school.

Both twins, who are in contact with their biological mother Lovely Golda, also welcomed a baby brother this year. Lovely and the twins biological dad, Kartik , welcomed their son Matthew in April.

The twins, who were born in a remote village in Bangladesh were adopted by Kelly and separated in 2009.

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