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Bitten by a snake at daycare

A mother tells John Parrish about the day her daughter almost succumbed to a deadly dugite.

Brow furrowed in concentration, Michelle Nicholls examines her garden before she lets her kids out to play. She remembers all too well the moment, earlier this year, when her 14-month-old daughter Anais came face-to-face with death after being bitten by a deadly snake at daycare.

“It was one of those days where you’re rushing to do everything,” recalls Michelle. “Friends were coming for a barbecue.”

She asked husband Stephen, a farmer, to pick up Anais, her brother Oliver, 4, and sister Maya, 3, from their daycare centre in Bencubbin, 25 minutes away from their home in the wheat belt town of Koorda, 280km north-east of Perth.

He’d only just left when Tracy Tranter, owner of Bush Babes Family Daycare, called to deliver terrifying news – Anais had been bitten by a dugite, a deadly relative of the brown snake.

“Tracy said, ‘Anais has been bitten twice on the wrist by a snake. You better get here straight away,’” says Michelle. “I thought I’d misheard. Then it sank in.”

Fighting back panic, Michelle, a registered nurse, says her professional instincts kicked in. She instructed Tracy to keep Anais still and put a pressure bandage on the bite.

“Tracy said she’d already done it,” Michelle says. “That was really important. I knew that with snakebites the difference between life and death can come down to minutes.”

After calling the local hospital, and the toxicology department at Princess Margaret Hospital in Perth, she called Stephen.

“I’ve just got here. I’ve killed the snake,” he gasped. “You’ve got to get down here.”

Michelle leapt in her car and tore towards Bencubbin – only to intercept the ambulance carrying her daughter.

“I flashed my lights and they stopped and let me on board.”

While Anais was alive, Michelle held grave fears for her little girl.

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Lara and Michael: The nude photo, the footballer ex and the public meltdown

Lara Bingle and Michael Clarke

The Aussie cricket star is left red-faced after nude photos of his fiancée surface, just days after an embarrassing public spat at the SCG.

As the partner of Australian cricket team captain-in-waiting Michael Clarke, Lara Bingle worked hard to shed the title of home-wrecker she earned after a sordid affair with rogue AFL star Brendan Fevola.

But that scandalous past continues to haunt the model and is again threatening to bring down her high-profile engagement to the cricket superstar.

Woman’s Day can reveal exclusively how an explosive nude photo scandal is engulfing the often volatile union between Lara and Michael – just days after her public meltdown at the Twenty20 match against the West Indies at the Sydney Cricket Ground on February 23.

As Lara lost her cool with Michael in front of hundreds of SCG members, the Speedo model was also dealing with the embarrassing reality that a raunchy naked photo of her was being distributed to our elite sportsmen.

The revealing image, taken on a phone camera, was allegedly snapped by Brendan during their affair more than three years ago, according to one AFL player who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity.

It has been confirmed to Woman’s Day that the steamy image of Lara in the shower has become the electronic equivalent of a chain letter, being willingly sent via text message to and from AFL players, across multiple clubs.

“The image is on a lot of people’s phones,” confirms the footballer, who admits he received it from a third party.

The latest controversy engulfing Lara, 22, puts more pressure on her relationship with Michael. The couple have already delayed wedding plans as they spend less time with each other because of their respective careers.

Michael, 28, is understood to have stayed at Quay West apartments in Circular Quay with his team-mates last week, instead of travelling the 10 kilometres home to Bondi Beach, and Lara.

Certainly tempers were fraying at the SCG when a clearly distressed Lara lashed out at Michael in the Members Stand, while dozens of cricket fans watched and took photos of the couple on their mobile phones. Photographs showing the couple fighting were published in News Limited papers last week. “Michael was clearly embarrassed and tried to shield Lara from everyone who was craning their necks to see what they were fighting about,” confirms one onlooker.

“They went at it for about 10 minutes and Michael kept turning around to see who was watching. I felt really sorry for him.”

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Princess Mary a size six and shrinking!

Princess Mary of Denmark

Princess Mary appears worryingly thin after starting a new diet and fitness regime. Has she gone too far? Lucie Morris-Marr reports.

With her achingly slim frame, tiny pinched waist and shrinking hips, Princess Mary has become a wisp of her former self.

Attending a formal engagement at a Danish school recently, Mary’s once feminine curves seemed to have vanished. Despite wearing a thick jumper beneath a woollen dress, she looked considerably thinner than she has at previous public appearances.

Now royal watchers are asking whether the Tasmanian-born princess is buckling under the pressure of the constant talk she may become Queen of Denmark within months.

Knowing she may soon be catapulted onto the world stage – if rumours are true that Queen Margrethe will abdicate on her 70th birthday – the stress is said to have prompted Mary, 38 to embark on an “extreme” diet that’s causing the kilos to melt away. But such rapid weight-loss is “a great worry”, warns Sydney nutritionist Joanna McMillan Price.

“She looks quite tiny,” Joanna tells Woman’s Day. “I would not want her losing any more weight at all – even her arms look thin. If I was her trainer, I would be worried.”

While Mary has always maintained a slender yet healthy size 8-10 figure, Joanna believes Mary may have lost 6-8 kilos in recent weeks, and as a result has now shrunk to a size 6.

“If you are doing extreme exercise, you have to have the diet to support it, otherwise you can lose weight very quickly and not always healthily,” she says. “I see all too often women who go too hard at it and then get sick with fatigue or a virus, as they have stressed out their body.”

The princess is said to have shown “great dedication” to a tough training method called HardCORE, developed specially for the mother-of-two by her former trainer Jacob Sondergaard. And it’s certainly not your average gym session. A typical HardCORE workout includes push-ups, as well as muscle-building exercises including throwing 15-kilogram sandbags.

Such hefty loads would cause Mary’s body to strengthen, which in turn would increase her metabolism – meaning she’s burning fat faster. But these new pictures have left many wondering whether she should ease up.

Although incredibly challenging, Jacob says Mary took to the exercise program with gusto.

“Mary was very committed and goal-oriented in her training,” says Jacob, who worked with Mary for a year after she gave birth to her second child, daughter Isabella.

As well as spending hours training, Mary has also made significant changes to her diet. She now avoids even occasional treats and sticks to raw vegies, low-fat milk, fish, chicken and fruits, and lots of water.

Read the full story in Woman’s Day (on sale March 1, 2010)

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Maria Korp’s Daughter lahses out: “Shame on you Rebecca!”

Rebecca Gibney

Laura De Gois tells Patrice Fidgeon why she’s disgusted the actress agreed to play her mum in a movie.

Rebecca Gibney has won the hearts of Australians as beloved mum Julie Rafter on popular sitcom Packed to the Rafters.

But a new sexy role has caused her nothing but heartache and viciously raked over a family’s painful memories.

Barely recognisable in the role of Maria Korp, with dyed hair and racy attire, in controversial new telemovie Wicked Love, Rebecca says she relished the challenge of playing a more sultry character. The movie chronicles the final months of Maria’s life after the Melbourne mum-of-two was strangled and left for dead in 2005 by her swinger husband and his young mistress.

“This is very sexy. I have lots of cleavage and you couldn’t get more different from playing Julie on Rafters,” she says. “It’s fun because all of a sudden, as a woman as well, you are heading towards that age when you don’t think you can be sexy any more.

“Julie is a mum. I don’t ever think for a second anyone is ever going to look twice,” she adds in her interview with The Daily Telegraph.

“Then, in this role, I put on the high heels and low-cut tops and I’m getting wolf whistles. I’m like, ‘I can do sexy, even for a 45-year-old I’m OK, I can pull if off’.”

It’s precisely these comments that have outraged Maria’s children, Laura and Damian, who are devastated to hear Rebecca describe playing their dead mother as “fun” and brag about feeling “sexy” in the role.

“She’s been quoted as saying that playing Maria was ‘fun’,” Laura tells Woman’s Day in an exclusive interview. “She is talking about a role that is supposed to be my mother.

“How do you think I feel when I read it was ‘fun’ to play my mother? The mother I lost in the worst imaginable circumstances, brutally attacked and left to die the way she was?”

Playing the ill-fated Maria was seen by many as a career-defining role for the leading lady of Australian television.

The bizarre true story of Maria’s murder had it all: sex, violence and criminal intrigue. And her gruesome death gripped the nation five years ago as the “body in the boot” case played out in headlines across the country.

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Torah Bright: Love helped me win gold!

Torah Bright

Her Olympic dream fulfilled, the Aussie golden girl can now concentrate on her June wedding. Rose Fylder reports.

Snowboard queen Torah Bright stood nervously on the lip of the halfpipe at Vancouver’s Cypress Mountain, searching for one face in the crowd. From the moment she locked eyes with American Jake Welch, her fiancée of six months, the 23-year-old seemed transformed.

Calm and composed, Torah bravely executed a dazzling series of tricks to win gold in the Ladies’ Halfpipe, and a place in the nation’s heart – although hers belongs to Jake, a fellow pro snowboarder and Mormon from Salt Lake City, Utah. “He’s the coolest guy – sweet, kind and gentle. He’s helped me so much.

From the moment we clicked two years ago we’ve been joined at the hip,” beams the golden girl.

“It goes beyond being in love. Being with Jake has balanced me in every way – in my personal life, and when I’m on my snowboard. Things seem to be easier these days,” says Torah, who stands to become Australia’s top-earning female athlete, with her agents predicting she could attract up to $5 million in sponsorship annually.

The win feels all the sweeter given she placed fifth at the 2006 Winter Olympics, despite being a favourite for gold at the time.

“I’ve had to keep busy, biding my time for the last four years,” jokes Torah, who also had to contend with a fractured jaw, concussions and migraines in the lead-up to the Games.

Not that life looks like slowing down because now there’s a June wedding to organise.

“When you find the person you love, you don’t wait,”grins Jake, 23, who met Torah at a soccer game in his hometown, where the Cooma, NSW, girl had moved as a 14-year-old to follow her boarding passion.

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Ange at breaking point: I can’t keep pretending

Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie fears she can’t keep up her façade of happiness with Brad much longer. Jackie Brygel reports.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie act for a living, but the strain of also pretending off-camera took its toll on Ange last week. In a break from filming The Tourist on the streets of Paris, the normally composed 34-year-old was fighting back tears.

The star quickly covered her face with her hand, but it was clear she was struggling to cope with the publicity spin she’d set in motion.

Since news broke seven weeks ago that Ange’s relationship with Brad was in trouble, the pair have orchestrated public displays of unity.

They appeared at the Directors Guild Awards in Los Angeles and had a make-out session at the Super Bowl. But their most obvious PR exercise came last week when they took their six kids to Venice for a working holiday.

“All Angelina cares about is not having anyone find out what a terrible state her relationship with Brad is in,” an insider has told In Touch magazine.

“They have made more public appearances in the last few months than they’ve made in five years together – and especially with all six children,” a friend agreed.

Arriving in Venice on February 16, the Jolie-Pitts piled their luggage into two water taxis and sped to the ritzy Palazzo Mocenigo, a grand house right on the water.

Followed by hordes of paparazzi, Brad and Ange were all smiles and – for the first time since January 27, 2009, when the whole family were spotted at an airport near Tokyo – all eight of them made the photo call.

Twins Knox and Vivienne, who’ve only appeared twice publicly since their birth in July 2008, were suddenly front and centre as the world watched. Two days later, Ange’s estranged father, Jon Voight, emerged too.

More cynical observers claim these weren’t chance encounters.

“It was suggested that Angelina try to repair her public image before filming started,” a friend told In Touch magazine. And Brad just had to tag along.

“She pretty much knew that he wouldn’t want to be away from the children for weeks, if not months. That’s why she decided to uproot the family to Italy.” While they are all kisses and hugs for the cameras, things are different behind closed doors.

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Oprah exposed

Oprah

The talk show queen is terrified her innermost secrets are about to be laid bare by infamous biographer Kitty Kelley, Honie Stevens reports.

Oprah Winfrey is rarely rattled, but with the release of an explosive unauthorised biography just weeks away, terror reigns at her company, Harpo Productions, as staff frantically try to second-guess what revelations will come to light.

And according to sources, the talk-show superstar is just as worried.

Speculation is rife that the autobiography, penned by the notorious writer Kitty Kelley, will lift the lid on Oprah’s eventful past and focus on her rumoured lesbian encounters, her troubled relationship with Stedman Graham, and the enduring talk about her intimate friendship with Gayle King.

Back in 2006, when Kitty’s literary intentions were first announced, even respected UK newspaper The Times conceded that the daytime doyenne may have cause for concern.

“It takes a lot to make Oprah Winfrey tremble, but even the chat show queen and cultural icon must be quaking in her Manolos at the news that she is in the sights of the poison pen biographer,” The Times wrote.

Kitty, an American investigative journalist, has published unflattering biographies of the British royals, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and the Bush family. Her research is extensive and thorough.

For the past four years, Kitty has been travelling back and forth from her home in Washington, DC, to Chicago, where Harpo is located, collaring anyone with an Oprah connection. She’s also been spotted in Oprah’s home town of Kosciusko, Mississippi.

Finding dirt cannot have been easy, since every Harpo employee is contractually banned forever from speaking about what they have done and seen while working for Oprah. “Whatever Oprah does to her cringing underlings, she must cut out their tongues with a hot iron, because you never, ever hear them dishing dirt,” notes Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg.

“So it’s one of two things: Either they will line up to anonymously find an empty spot on her back to stick the [knife] in; or, and this is my bet, they’re so inculcated with fear that Kitty will come up with a dry well.”

Kitty herself, however, remains tight-lipped on details, saying only that, “Oprah Winfrey has fascinated me for many years – as a woman, she has wielded an unprecedented amount of influence over the American culture and psyche.”

Oprah’s story has more twists and turns than most – and Kitty is sure to have lots to talk about.

The rape and sexual abuse Oprah suffered as a child is believed to have been covered.

She’ll also most likely discuss the baby Oprah lost after becoming pregnant at 14, a secret she lived with for years – until her half-sister told the tabloids, leaving the star shattered.

Read the full story in Woman’s Day (on sale March 1, 2010)

In pictures

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In the mag – March 8, 2010

On sale Monday March 1, 2010

Ange at breaking point: I Can’t keep pretending

Angelina Jolie fears she can’t keep up her façade of happiness with Brad much longer. Jackie Brygel reports.

Princess Mary a size six and shrinking

Princess Mary appears worryingly thin after starting a new diet and fitness regime. Has she gone too far? Lucie Morris-Marr reports.

Lara and Michael: The nude photo, the footballer ex and the public meltdown

The Aussie cricket star is left red-faced after nude photos of his fiancée surface, just days after an embarrassing public spat at the SCG.

Oprah exposed

The talk show queen is terrified her innermost secrets are about to be laid bare by infamous biographer Kitty Kelley, Honie Stevens reports.

Maria Korps daughter lashes out: “Shame on you Rebecca Gibney!”

Laura De Gois tells Patrice Fidgeon why she’s disgusted the actress agreed to play her mum in a movie.

Torah Bright: Love helped me win gold!

Her Olympic dream fulfilled, the Aussie golden girl can now concentrate on her June wedding. Rose Fylder reports.

True Life

Bitten by a snake at daycare

A mother tells John Parrish about the day her daughter almost succumbed to a deadly dugite.

From the food pages

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Sade back on top

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Most A-list artists who return with a new album after nearly a decade away from the celebrity glare are apt to show signs of nerves, or at least offer some excuses. Not Sade.

The imminent release of Soldier of Love – only her 6th studio collection in a career stretching back 27 years – seems to be a cause of raucous hilarity. On the afternoon we meet in her spacious house in leafy north London, Sade is chuckling at a photograph of a graffitied poster photographed in New York by her guitarist Stuart Matthewman. Above an image of her glamorous self somebody has sprayed the caustic legend This bitch sings when she wants to. Never one to miss a chance to laugh at herself, Sade thinks this is hilarious.

As a broad summary of her last two decades, it’s hard to fault. She is very much her own person, unswayed by managers or her record company. Since the start of the 1990’s, Sade has released just 3 albums of new material. There’s been a 10 year gap between Soldier Of Love, which arrives in February, and her 2000 offering, Lovers Rock. The third Love Deluxe dates back to 1992. For much of that time she has been, as is her habit nowadays, virtually invisible. Her friends have taken to calling her “Howie” after the millionaire recluse Howard Hughes.

Sade doesn’t look to have aged at all during her long absence. On the eve of her 51st birthday, her face is unlined and she still possesses a striking physical presence. She is taller in person than she appears on stage; and her height (about 5′ 8″) in combination with her large, domed head, the coil of jet black hair which frames it and those wide set almond-shaped eyes, still lend her an exotic allure which she professes not to care a fig about. “People always used to say, what’s it like to see your face on the cover of a magazine? I don’t really see it. I don’t connect with it.”

She has years of privacy to prove it. And given that she has only done a handful of interviews and one tour in the past 15 years, you can’t help wondering what has now lured Sade back to the pop marketplace. Having sold 50m albums – the biggest tally by a British female artist ever – she has earned all the money she will ever need. And her needs are, as she points out, modest. When she laughingly remarks that “I’m not someone who needs a lot of money. You could break into this house and leave after half an hour without finding anything worth stealing,” it’s hard to disagree.

Her allegiance to these long cherished throwbacks lends a clue as to how she operates. Sade is a creature of obstinately loyal habits, and when her band – the same trio she’s worked with since 1983 – began to agitate to make a new record as the Noughties wore on, she responded to the pressure. “The band were keen to do it, I’d been writing in London but initially I didn’t want the pressure of everybody flying in. I wanted to work at my own convenience. Then after I moved, and the band were still antsy, I said OK let’s do it. I did think maybe it had been zapped out of me. I always think that after every album, but then I just went headlong into it.”

Soldier Of Love was mainly written and recorded in 2008/9 over series of fortnightly sessions at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studio, near where she lives.

Although her personal circumstances were much happier by now, thanks partly to a new relationship begun in 2005 with her present partner , a former Royal Marine, the songs still bore the unmistakably melancholic imprint of classic Sade. Why? “It’s what I do, I can’t help it. Sadness dealt with well brings happiness, I think. It purges you and enables you to leave it behind. Happy songs can actually make you feel worse. I’m not a moper but I do have a tendency towards melancholia. Somebody told me once that I’m a Capricor born under the saddest star. Who knows?” Sade says she loves the old English expression “Into every life a little rain must fall.”

Soldier Of Love is out now after debuting at No. 4 on the ARIA charts.

Your say: What do you think of the new Sade album, Soldier of Love? Who is your favourite artist on the charts at the moment? Share with us below…

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Are 3D glasses bad for you?

With the success of James Cameron’s blockbuster ‘Avatar‘ looking like it knows no bounds, attention is being focused on the safety of 3-D glasses.

There have long been those who contend that the 3-D glasses give headaches and blurred vision to users, but now the Italian Government has officially intervened on health grounds, confiscating 7000 sets of glasses from Italian cinemas showing Avatar, Movieline.com reported, on health grounds.

The health ministry made the move citing “hygiene risks” from glasses not being disinfected between screenings, as well as lack of research proving they do not cause short-term vision problems for users.

The medical evidence behind why ‘Avatar’ can make you feel sick

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And despite rumours that the move could be a cynical attack on controversial Italian filmmaker Tinto Brass, who is set to direct a 3-Dd remake of his 1979 erotic film, ‘Caligula‘, new research from the US backs up the Italian Government’s position.

The study, from the University of California, Berkeley, confirmed what many people suspected, that 3-D viewing can cause headaches and blurred vision.

These are caused by viewers trying to focus on things in the foreground and background, causing the eyes to converge and separate simultaneously, an effect called “vergence accommodation conflict”, Movieline.com reported.

The worrying thing for parents is that the side effects of this are more pronounced in younger people and children.

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However, movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg disputed the findings saying: “We’ve performed studies on hundreds of toddlers outfitted in tiny 3D glasses, and even after 70 straight hours of ‘Monsters vs. Aliens’, the findings have been utterly inconclusive!”

Surely 70 hours of watching anything would be bad for you…

Your say: Did you or your children get headaches from watching ‘Avatar‘ in 3-D? Would it make you avoid 3-D in the future? Share your thoughts below.

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