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Friday afternoon's news in under 5 minutes.

 

We’ve rounded up all the latest stories from Australia and around the world – so you don’t have to go searching.

1. Celebrities support campaign to stop the closure of Aboriginal communities.

By ABC.

Hugh Jackman has joined AFL stars in calling for Indigenous people to be allowed to stay in their remote communities.

The international film star used Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to make the plea as the Western Australian Government moves to close some of the remote communities.

WA Premier Colin Barnett said up to 150 out of 273 communities may be shut down after a cut in Commonwealth funding.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Perth and around the state on Thursday to hold protests against the planned closures.

Jackman held up a handwritten note which said: “While living in a remote community I came to understand that connection to land is a fundamental part of Indigenous identity”.

“Think about the past, have quality conversations. I support you.”

In the late 1980s, Jackman lived in the remote central Australian community of Areyonga, about 150 kilometres from Alice Springs, building homes for Aboriginal people as part of a Lutheran mission.

Jackman has kept in contact with the friends he made there and only last year treated two teenagers from the community, who were on a school excursion to America, to a barbecue at his New York apartment.

He joins a host of AFL players who have also posted their support on social media for Aboriginal people to stay connected to their country.

Shaun Burgoyne, who captained the Indigenous All Stars, and fellow Hawthorn Football Club players Bradley Hill, Cyril Rioli and Jed Anderson linked arms saying “stop the forced closure of Aboriginal communities”.

Former Essendon player Nathan Lovett-Murray and Neville Jetta, Jay Kennedy-Harris and Jeffrey Garlett from the Melbourne Demons also took to social media to voice their support.

This article originally appeared on the ABC and was republished here with full permission.

2. Radio shock jock John Laws humiliates an 80-year-old survivor of sexual abuse.

Controversial radio veteran John Laws has viciously belittled a survivor of sexual abuse on his radio show.

The 80-year-old caller was reduced to tears recounting his experience of being sexually assaulted as an 11-year-old boy in Goondowindi in the 1940s.

He said he never told his parents, and attempted to report the abuse in the 1960s and 70s but they told him to “go away”.

While Laws initially appeared to be trying to support his caller, only identified as Brian, he descended into diminshing the concerns of his emotionally traumatised guest.

“Don’t be down all the time, don’t be a wet blanket all the time, try to have a laugh, go to the pub, have one beer; it’s not going to hurt you,” Laws advised.

“Go to the pub and have a lemonade, for God’s sake.”

Related content: NSW reviews the statute of limitations on child sex abuse claims.

Laws has since been slammed by child abuse support organisations for being “unhelpful”.

“The danger with someone like John Laws is that he has a very broad audience and he’s very influential therefore, and if he perpetuates myths at the time when the royal commission [into institutional child sexual abuse] is trying to change societal attitudes and views and educate among other things, tha’ts very counterproductive,”

Dr Kathy Kezelman from Adults Surviving Child Abuse told Fairfax Media.

3. The father of Masa Vukotic glares at her alleged killer during court hearing.

By ABC.

The father of 17-year-old stabbing victim Masa Vukotic has attended the second court appearance of his daughter’s accused killer Sean Price in Melbourne.

Price was charged with the murder Ms Vukotic as she walked through Koonung Creek Linear Reserve in Stanton Street near her home in Doncaster on Tuesday night.

Neighbours called triple-0 after they heard screaming, but paramedics were unable to revive the girl, who had been stabbed in the upper body.

Price, from Albion, glared wide-eyed at reporters and put his hands to his mouth as he sat in the dock for his brief appearance in the Melbourne Magistrates Court.

Related content: Masa was a student. She was a daughter. She was a friend. She could have been any one of us.

Ms Vukotic’s father stared at Price throughout the hearing.

Price was also charged with rape, robbery and assault relating to an alleged crime spree just before he handed himself into Sunshine police station on Thursday morning.

Prosecutors said they needed to examine extensive amounts of CCTV footage through several suburbs taken over a week.

Magistrate Charles Rozencwajg remanded Price in custody until June 6.

This article originally appeared on the ABC and was republished here with full permission.

4. Monica Lewinsky wants to stop cyber bullying.

She describes herself as “patient zero” of cyberbullying.

After Monica Lewinsky was found to be having an explicit affair with then-US President Bill Clinton in 1998, she received unprecedented public vitriol, thanks to a new tool called the Internet.

Since then, Lewinsky, 41, has kept her public appearances to a minimum, only recently summoning up more courage to use her notoriety for the better.

 

Today she delivered a TED Talk in Canada reflecting on her time as a young White House intern.

“At the age of 22, I fell in love with my boss. At the age of 24, I learned the devastating consequences,” she told the Vancouver conference.

“Now, I admit I made mistakes – especially wearing that beret – but the attention and judgment that I received, not the story, but that I personally received, was unprecedented.

“In 1998, I lost my reputation and my dignity… I lost my sense of self.

“When this happened to me, 17 years ago, there was no name for it. Now we call it cyberbullying. It was the first time traditional news was usurped by the internet, a click that reverberated around the whole world.”

 

 

She went on to eloquently deconstruct the Sony hacking scandal and the Jennifer Lawrence nude photo leaks.

“Public humiliation is a commodity and shame is an industry. And what is the currency? Clicks.”

She encouraged people to stop this “culture of humiliation” and to move towards compassion in cyberspace.

5. Internet campaign to support young boy with rare disease.

A five-year-old boy with a rare disease has recorded a video asking people to wear yellow for him as he enters another operation.

Seth Lane from England suffers Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) or “bubble boy” disease.

The condition requires he live in sterile environments, which has lead to Seth spending much of his life in hospital.

In his young life, he has already undergone one bone marrow transplant, and is about to face another.

After the operation he will be required to spend several more months in a single, sterile room.

His parents have co-ordinated a video message, in which Seth asks people to wear yellow on March 27 — the date of his operation.

In the video posted to YouTube, Seth asks people to post a picture of themselves wearing yellow on Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #wearyellowforseth.

His parents plan to print the pictures for him to have in his room.

Just try not to cry…

What’s making headlines for you today? Leave us a comment below.

 

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Top Comments

Nom DePlume 10 years ago

That may be the cutest child I've ever seen.


Guest 10 years ago

#5. "Just try not to cry". I didn't make it. Just so unfair how rough some people get it. But the little ones. Just so unfair.