7 Thursday news bites (July 28)

Morning Team Mamamia! The week grinds on and the news doesn’t stop. If you need a refresher on what’s been happening, pull up a pew and check out our summaries of the most interesting stories going around. Here goes:

1. Details emerge of the Norway terror victims

They were faceless until yesterday when the Norwegian Government began releasing names, details and photographs of some of the victims of the terror gunman and bomber. These included the photo of Gunnar Linaker, 23, who was on the phone to his father when the shooting started. His last words were: “Dad, dad, someone is shooting.” And that was it.

This comes as police in Australia have urgently ordered YouTube to remove an official police video which contains graphic vision of the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, including footage of the victims where they were gunned down. The footage was uploaded by the user ‘FreeMartinBryant’.

2. Bridge throw father denied appeal on murder sentence

Arthur Freeman, convicted in April of throwing his four-year-old daughter from the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne in 2009, has been denied an appeal on his 32-year-sentence. Freeman’s team argued the sentence was manifestly excessive but the Justice dismissed the claims.

3. Is a sex injury covered under worker’s compensation?

That’s the question the Federal Court has begun pondering. A Federal Government employee, who can’t be named, was in the throes of passion on a work trip when the rocking bed dislodged a light fitting and it fell on her. The woman suffered injuries to her nose, mouth and face and a ‘consequent psychiatric injury’. The argument from the woman’s reps is that she was there for work and the Government, of course, hit back by arguing that having sex is not a ‘usual’ requirement of being on a Federal Government work trip. What do you reckon?

4. Doctors call on chiros who refer patients to anti-vacc network to be banned from Medicare

Doctors have called on ‘science sell-outs’ to stop receiving the Medicare rebate for chiropractic work if they continue to refer patients to the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) for advice on immunisation. The AVN was discredited last year when the Health Care Complaints Commission told the AVN to put  ‘a statement in a prominent position on its website’ outlining its anti-vaccination stance. The AVN is made up of professional members, the majority of whom are professional chiropractors. Dr Brian Morton from the Australian Medical Association said it was ‘reprehensible’ that chiropractors continued to support the AVN and should be barred from receiving taxpayer funded rebates.

5. 50-year-old Queensland woman gives birth without IVF

That’s an impressive achievement and one that makes Anthea Nicholas the oldest woman in Australia to do so. The Australian Woman’s Weekly featured the Gold Coast real estate agent’s delivery of her son and what a ‘miracle’ he truly was, given the rate of complications as women age.

6. Cocaine use among educated women on the rise.

Smoking is on the way out, but cocaine is the new drug of choice for smart, inner-city living women a new survey has found. One in 20 women aged in their 20s used the drug last year, according to Government statistics. That’s a 70 per cent rise on four years ago. Recent users were more likely to be educated and live in big cities. Males still used cocaine more, but the growth in use was less steep. Overall, 14.7 per cent of Australians said they used drugs last year, up more than a per cent from 2007 but more than 1 per cent below the highest level in 1995.

7. Couples who paid surrogate mothers could face prosecution

Two couples who paid surrogate mothers in Thailand and returned to New South Wales seeking custody orders could face criminal charges because the law says that commercial surrogacy is illegal both here and overseas. Laws were passed in March this year that did, however, make altruistic surrogacy legal in New South Wales. These stipulated that the surrogate could not be paid beyond the cost of medical expenses.