Here are today’s top stories.
1. Germanwings plane’s second black box confirms Lubitz’ deliberate action.
Analysis of the flight data recorder from Germanwings flight 9525 has confirmed that pilot Andreas Lubitz acted deliberately to crash the aircraft.
As previously reported, the second black box was found by the French Gendarme, buried beneath 20 centimetres of earth in an area searched several times before.
In a statement issued by the French Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses (or BEA), investigators have confirmed that Lubitz used auto-pilot to descend the aircraft towards an altitude of 30 metres.
“Then, several times during the descent, the pilot changed the automatic pilot settings to increase the aircraft’s speed,” they added.
As the Sydney Morning Herald reports, this information confirms the theory that Lubitz deliberately crashed the plane into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board. Data from the first black box revealed that due to the speed, all passengers and crew died instantly.
2. Blood and Tissue found on surgical instruments at Perth’s Fiona Stanley Hospital.
By David Webber
Blood and body tissue has been found on medical instruments at Perth’s Fiona Stanley Hospital, placing the contract to provide the sterilisation service to the hospital in jeopardy.
The Western Australian Health Department warned it could take back full responsibility for the sterilisation process after service and outsourcing company, Serco, was issued with a second breach-of-contract notice.
Health department staff have been supervising the process since February, following a number of issues.
Western Australia’s Australian Medical Association (AMA) president, Dr Michael Gannon, said problems have continued.
“These reports are absolutely mind-boggling and they’re something that we don’t repeat with any relish at all,” he said.
“We have had reports even since the takeover, of instruments containing body tissues, being seen to be obviously bloodstained.”
Dr Gannon said while the situation is now better under health department supervision, it is still not good enough.
“There’s no question that Serco has expertise in a whole variety of areas based on their experience in other industries – but when it comes to sterilisations, Serco failed,” he said.
“There’s been some improvements but unless Serco can guarantee that we’re not [going to] go back to where we were before, they can’t have their contract reinstated.
“We’ve got great fears if Serco was left to take over this issue alone.”
While health department staff are involved in supervising the provision of the sterilisation process, Serco technically still hold the contract.
But that could change.
The Western Australian Health Department’s acting director-general, Professor Bryant Stokes, said the current level of service was unacceptable.
“We are not happy with the level, and that’s why we’ve sent this breach letter and that is why we are taking the extra precaution of having our staff in there at the moment, but we have not fully taken over the service at this point in time,” Professor Stokes said.
“We have given a notice of breach to Serco which they are responding to and we have to let that process run until Friday next week, and depending upon the response from Serco, we will then make a decision through the Minister as to what we do.”
This article was originally published by ABC online. It has been republished here with full permission.
3. Hillary Clinton signs the lease on campaign headquarters.
Hillary Clinton has officially rented a premises to establish her campaign headquarters. Politico reports that the office is at 1 Pierrepont Plaza in Brooklyn Height, New York.
It is a timely purchase, as many of Clinton’s 35 campaign staff have been living and operating in transit.
The move is significant, as in accordance with US Federal Election Commission rules, potential candidates have only 15 days to begin filling in the official 2016 campaign paperwork after conducting campaign activities.
Clinton loyalist James Carville told Politico, “The infrastructure is one of those things, between setting up press, field, and fundraising — it’s just enormous…You don’t just flip a switch.”
The Pierrepont Plaza property may be the first step of many in Clinton’s Presidential campaign.
4. CCTV footage captures the stabbing of a bouncer outside a Melbourne nightclub.
It was one of two separate attacks on bouncers at bars in the CBD.
The first stabbing occurred after two men were ejected from a Swanston Street club about 10:00pm for disorderly behaviour.
Police said they assaulted security staff as they were thrown out of the venue.
CCTV shows the men leaving the bar with blood streaming from their faces.
One of the men returned about an hour later and stabbed a 29-year-old bouncer in the back with a small knife, before fleeing.
The bouncer was taken to the Alfred Hospital with non life-threatening injuries.
Detective Senior Constable Alex Brgoc said it was a cowardly attack.
“The security guard involved wasn’t even involved in the initial ejection. He had his back turned so he had no opportunity to defend himself,” he said.
“It was disgusting watching the footage.”
Police have appealed for anyone who saw the incident to come forward.
5. Kenyan Government says they will not be intimidated by terrorists.
The Kenyan Government has promised to not fall to the threat of terrorists, one day after the University massacre which left 147 people dead at the hands of Al Shabaab gunmen.
On Thursday four fighters with links to Al-Qaeda stormed the campus of Garissa University College, killing 147 people and leaving 79 injured.
The siege lasted a day, ending in heavy artillery .
ABC reports, interior minister Joseph Nkaissery said, “Kenya’s government will not be intimidated by the terrorists who have made killing innocent people a way to humiliate the government.”
“The government is determined to fight back the terrorists, and I am confident we shall win this war against our enemies.”
Emergency workers have begun gathering the bodies that still litter the university grounds, which are now being patrolled by Kenyan soldiers.
“Our security officers are mopping up the college, to ensure it is safe to for students to come back to secure their documents and other property,” Mr Nkaissery said. He also announced that the university would remain “closed indefinitely”.
THose students who escaped the gunfire did so with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Accommodation and food was provided for them in nearby military barracks.
Family members have begun to arrive at Nairobi’s main mortuary to identify their relatives.
6. Former Tasmanian paramedic has admitted to working while high on Ice.
A Tasmanian woman has admitted she carried out her work as a paramedic and drove ambulances while high on the drug ice.
Cristy Collins decided to speak out about her addiction to ice because she wanted people to realise how easily it can happen. Ms Collins did a tour of duty in Iraq in 2006 as an army medic, being part of an Australian Army mentoring team that provided training to the local army. But when she returned to Australia she struggled to cope.
“I’d jump in a car and I’d be looking for IED’s — that was a habit,” she said.
“I didn’t realise how much it had affected me. I’d hear a loud noise and I’d shudder, or fireworks and I’d shudder.”
She turned to drugs as a means of escape.
“I started using ecstasy and speed — they were my escape routes,” she said.
Ms Collins decided to leave both the army and Darwin’s party culture for a fresh start in Tasmania, where her family were living. But it did not go as planned and soon she “fell in with the wrong crowd”.
“Ice was something that was easily and readily available, and one of the only drugs I could get my hands on, so it became a party drug — use it there, weekends, just a bit of fun,” she said.
Ms Collins’ recreational use spiralled out of control, to the point where she was spending $500 a week on the drug.
“It made me Superwoman. It was easy to function and to do everything,” she said.
Only she was not Superwoman; she was a paramedic with the Tasmanian Ambulance Service, working and driving an ambulance under the influence of ice.
“When I look back it’s disgusting that I was doing that to people and their families and going and treating these people, because I would hate someone to go to my family that way,” she said.
Ms Collins said she used ice for the entire five years she was employed as a paramedic but was “highly addicted” and using ice daily for two years before she ultimately resigned.
During that time Ms Collins went to the local emergency department at least half a dozen times suffering drug-induced psychosis.
7. American man rescued after 66 days at sea.
37 year-old Louis Jordan was missing for over two months after his yacht over turned of the coast of North Carolina.
SBS reports that he was found by a German container ship, dehydrated and with an injured shoulder, but otherwise stable.
“I waved my hands real slowly, and that’s the signal ‘I’m in distress. Help me,”‘ he told WAVY-TV. “I blew my whistles. I had three whistles. They never heard them. I turned my American flag upside down and put that up. That says, ‘Rescue me.”‘
Jordan went missing on the 23rd of January, and coast guard called off the search after 10 days. Few people believed it possible that he could have survived. Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Ryan Doss believes that he sustained himself on fish he caught while stranded.
8. A nine-year-old girl pens letter to Barack Obama.
Australian Women’s Weekly reports a nine-year-old girl wrote a letter to the American President, asking him why there were not any women on the US currency.
Sofia was studying historical figures in class when she noted the absence.
“I was studying Ann Hutchinson, who stood up for women’s rights,” she says. “Almost everyone who chose a boy, on their poster they had pictures of different dollar bills or coins with their person on it. So I noticed, why don’t women have coins or dollar bills with their faces on it?”
She posted the letter, along with a list of suggestions for women who would make excellent candidates, including Anne Hutchinson, Rosa Parks, Emily Dickinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Harriet Tubman.
The President responded thanking her for her letter, and saying, “I’ll keep working to make sure you grow up in a country where women have the same opportunities as men, and I hope you stay involved in issues that matter to you. ”