news

Saturday's news in less than two minutes.

A class action is potentially being pursued against Bayer.

 

 

 

 

 

1. Over 200 Australian women are in the process of pursuing a class action against a major provider of the contraceptive pill. The women have approached legal firm, Tindall Gask Bentley, in the hope of pursuing an action against Bayer, the manufacturer of contraceptive pills Yaz and Yasmin, claiming that the pill is unfit for prescription. As a group, the women have suffered from side effects including heart attacks, severe blood clots and strokes.

2.Papua New Guinea has rejected a significant part of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s proposed asylum seeker policy. PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has told Fairfax that PNG has not agreed to settle all asylum seekers who are found to be refugees, and that a proportion will still need to be sent to Australia, as well as other countries that are signatories to the UN convention on refugees.

3. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has hung up on Sydney radio host, Ben Fordham during a tense interview on the government’s new asylum seeker policy. Fordham asked if she took responsibility for the deaths at sea that had occurred since the Rudd Government revised John Howard’s immigration policies, to which Ms Hanson-Young replied: “I don’t know why you bother to invite me on to interview me. You can have your own opinions. Don’t invite me back on your show just so can sit on your soapbox. You can do that without inviting people on your show. I’m sure you do it day in, day out.” Ms Hanson-Young then hung up the phone.

4. 50 people are dead after renewed violence in Cairo, dubbed a “Friday of Rage.” Thousands of members of Islamist organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood, took to the streets in protest over a recent raid of two Brotherhood-managed protest camps by the Egyptian military and police forces, which resulted in the deaths of over 600 people. The Muslim Brotherhood were supporters of President Mursi, who was removed from office earlier this year. The nation’s government has called a state of emergency.

5. A 6.2 magnitude earthquake New Zealand’s South Island yesterday. The quake occurred 10km south-east of Seddon. No injuries have been reported.

6. London’s High Court has sanctioned the sterilisation of a man with the mental age of a 6-year-old. In an unprecedented decision, the court ruled that the man’s family and doctors could go ahead with the sterilisation as it was in the 36-year-old’s “best interests.” The man had already had a child with his girlfriend in 2010, but was deemed incapable of making decisions about contraception.

7. Police officers in Seattle have developed a new technique for informing people about recreational drug usage: Doritos. At the city’s Hempfest, the world’s largest annual event advocating for the decriminalisation of marijuana, police officers will hand out bags of Doritos, with information sheets regarding the city’s new legal pot law attached.

8. A Chinese zoo has come under fire for disguising a dog as a lion. The zoo in the People’s Park of Luohe had placed a Tibetan mastiff in the lion’s cage. Unfortunately, the zoo was found out when patrons complained about the lion’s barking.