1. Amanda Knox’s second trial for murder has begun in Italy, even though 26-year-old Knox remains in the USA. Knox and her ex boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito have been accused of the murder of Knox’s former roommate Meredith Kercher, who was found in a pool of blood at the home they shared in 2007.
Knox and Sollecito served four years in an Italian jail for the murder, but their convictions were overturned in 2011 on appeal.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial because of the “numerous deficiencies [and] contradictions” that took place in the first trial.
On the first day of the retrial, the judge ordered a DNA test on the knife that was believed to be the murder weapon.
2. Julia Gillard has given her first Australian interview since losing the Prime Ministership. In a candid conversation with author and journalist Anne Summers, Gillard discussed her time at leader of the Labor party, what it was like to be ousted from her position, and what the future has in store.
Mamamia has compiled the best quotes from the evening here.
3. A boat carrying suspected asylum seekers landed on Christmas Island yesterday morning, with up to 80 people on board. Passengers have been moved to the immigration detention centre inland. The Government has not announced this arrival formally to the media, as per their new information blackout policy.
4. Prime Minister Tony Abbott is in Indonesia. Mr Abbott reportedly held a one-on-one meeting with Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono yesterday and described the talks as “very warm and constructive”.
Abbott said, “We had a very frank discussion about issues of sovereignty … and about issues of people smugglers. We are determined to end this scourge which is not just an affront to our two countries but which has so often become a humanitarian disaster in the seas between our two countries.”
5. A team of scientists from 13 countries – including Australia – are saying that the recent discovery of genetic variants that affect the chance of a person getting multiple sclerosis (MS), brings the profession one step closer to finding a cure for this debilitating disease.
Professor David Booth from the Westmead Millennium Institute, said that, “… What they suggest is that even though multiple sclerosis is a neurological disease, it’s damage to the brain that characterises it … It looks like susceptibility is mainly due to the variation in people’s immune response.”
6. A 37-year-old American man has been accused of injecting his 4-year-old son with heroine, among other restricted drugs. Eric Emil Lehtinen from Washington injected himself and his son on the day when his divorce from the boy’s mother was going to be finalised.
When the mother showed up at the house to collect her son, she was horrified to discover both Lehtinen and her son unconscious – the boy with a needle resting on his chest. The boy is currently in hospital, and it is not clear whether he will suffer longterm damage.
7. TV series Breaking Bad ended last night and the world collectively lost its mind. Were you watching?
8. In the recount for the seat of Fairfax, billionaire Clive Palmer is leading the LNP candidate Ted O’Brien by just three votes.
The recount was ordered by the Australian Electoral Commission after the first result showed a win by Palmer by just 36 votes.
It’s not known when the recount will be completed.
9. An Adelaide chiropractor has faced criticism after she reportedly posted a photo of herself giving chiropractic care to a baby who was less than one day old.
The chiropractor apparently captioned the photo with ““first chiropractic adjustment at just 5 hours old” but has since told News Corp she was simply conducting health checks.
It comes in the wake of the Chiropractors’ Association of Australia denial that another chiropractor broke a baby’s neck. You can read more about that story here.
Have you seen anything in the news that you want to talk about?
Top Comments
Why on earth would healthy babies need chiropractic adjustments? Where is the scientific evidence showing the benefits of such "treatment"?
Hmmm. After watching Amanda Knox's interviews and repeated weepy declarations of innocence, I suspect "something is rotten in the state of Denmark" (sorry Marcellus).
I just feel she is playing 'us'.
Oh no. I read her book & have read a few others on it (including ones accusing her), and I think she was an extroverted, naive young school girl out in the big world for the first time, in the wrong place at the wrong time. The evidence absolutely does not add up pointing to her or her boyfriend, it points clearly towards Rudy Guede, whose DNA was found all over the crime scene, whose semen was found inside the victim & who fled the country to Germany shortly after the murder. But the prosecution only conceded that "he must not have acted alone" when that evidence came forward (& Guede is currently serving 16 years).
I agreed with you until I read a really long article in Rolling Stone magazine earlier this year about the what happened, the trial and the Italian justice system. Now I'm inclined to believe that she's innocent.
The problem with deciding people's innocence or guilt purely on how likeable or believable they are is that sometimes unlikeable, unpleasant, or weird people are innocent and are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can't convict someone because they're unpleasant. It has to be based on evidence. Yes Knox is strange. Yes her reactions were alien. Yes it's true that we may never have the whole story. However, based purely on the evidence; there was not enough to convict her and her boyfriend and it really was a farce and a witch hunt. Rudy Guede left forensic evidence everywhere and repeatedly said that she and her boyfriend were not involved. It was only when he was offered a reduced sentence for saying that they were involved that he did so. I don't know what was going on with Knox, but I cannot conclude that she was guilty based on the evidence that was offered in the trial.
You are going to judge someone's guilty solely by their demeanour. God help us if you ever make your way onto a jury.