1. Did you hear about the royal baby?
2. A 24-year-old Norwegian woman who was sentenced to 16 months in jail for unlawful sex after she was raped in Dubai has been pardoned. Marte Deborah Dalelv has reportedly been given back her passport and is free to leave Dubai. Dalelv was reportedly raped by a colleague while on a business trip in Dubai. When she reported the rape to police, she was charged with unlawful sex and consumption of alcohol – both of which are prohibited under Sharia Law. You can read Mamamia’s full post about Dalelv here.
3. Nelson Mandela‘s condition is continuing to improve. A government statement released recently read: “Former president Mandela is still in a critical condition in hospital but shows sustained improvement.” Mandela was admitted to hospital six weeks ago and has been in a critical condition ever since.
4. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship has come under fire after it released images of the first asylum seekers to arrive in Australia since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the new plan for people arriving to Australia to boat. Under the the plan, any asylum seekers arriving in Australia will be forced to resettle in Papua New Guinea. The images published on the department’s site are captioned with words like: ‘A female asylum seeker comes to terms with the fact she won’t be settled in Australia.’ You can read Mamamia editor Jamila Rizvi’s reaction to the images here.
5. A new study has found that plain packaged cigarettes have an effect on the amount that people smoke. The study of 536 smokers (72.3% of whom smoked from plain packages) found “those smoking from plain packs perceived their cigarettes to be lower in quality, tended to perceive their cigarettes as less satisfying than a year ago, were more likely to have thought about quitting at least once a day in the past week and to rate quitting as a higher priority in their lives.”