1. Prince Harry has hosted Michelle Obama and her daughters at Kensington Palace.
The BBC reports that Mrs Obama, her teenage daughters Malia, 16, and 14-year-old Sasha, and Michelle’s mother Marian Robinson had tea with the fifth in line to the throne during the Obamas’ visit to England.
In a statement, Kensington Palace said the prince was “very pleased” to host Obama and “delighted” to meet her daughters and her mother.
Michelle Obama and Julia Gillard in conversation.
Earlier Mrs Obama addressed students at the Mulberry school for girls. She described “growing up in a small apartment with her parents, her father working as a pump operator”.
Almost all the students at Mulberry are Muslim and of Bangladeshi origin.
Obama told them that – as someone who is black, female and also comes from a working-class background – she understood the need for a good education.
“With an amazing education from this amazing school you all have every chance you need to rise above the noise and fulfil every one of your dreams,” she told the audience.
And guess who else was there? Julia Gillard, who Tweeted: “So very pleased to join @FLOTUS in London to support #LetGirlsLearn Educating girls improves our world. JG.”
2. Can you be black if you’re not?
Embattled civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal says she can, and some people are actually taking her seriously.
In case you missed it, Rachel, 37, was forced to step down from at least one of her jobs earlier this week, after her parents came forward to say that she was white, not black.
In a stunning interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer earlier today, Rachel – who appeared with dark, curled hair and self-tanned skin – said she identified as black.
She married a black man. She had a son with him. She is the legal guardian of another black child.
Therefore, she claimed to know the “black experience.”
“I identify as black,” she told Lauer.
“[As a 5-year-old child] I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of peach crayon [with] black curly hair.”
An hour or so later, Rachel appeared on MSNBC, where she was interviewed by Melissa Harris-Perry, who actually is black.
Melissa asked her: “Are you black?”
Incredibly, Rachel said: “Yes.”
US viewers appeared divided, with some saying that Rachel must be mentally ill, while others agree that race is a social construct, not a colour.
3. Australia’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, is fighting to retain control of her most prized asset, the $10 billion Roy Hill mine site.
Mrs Rinehart, whose fortune is estimated at $14 billion, has always claimed to have pegged the land at Roy Hill herself.
Now her daughter, Bianca, and her son, John, are fighting for proceeds from the site, with lawyers arguing that the land was actually pegged by Gina’s father, Lang Hancock, a year before died.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that John and Bianca’s lawyers had been bullied into signing over their rights to the income from the mine site.
Bianca has said she felt “isolated, threatened and bullied” into signing away her rights.
4. Idi Amin’s fifth and favourite wife has died.
The Guardian reports that Sarah Kyolaba, who was the last surviving widow of the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, died of cancer at the age of 59.
She has lived in London for three decades, and once ran a hair salon.
Sarah’s official title was Lady Sarah Kyobala Idi Amin. She was formerly a go-go dancer who caught the dictator’s eye when she was just 19. They were married in a lavish ceremony in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, in 1975, with Yasser Arafat was best man.
Amin cut the wedding cake with a sword. He was forced out of Uganda in 1979, after appalling human rights abuses, including the murder of millions of people, became public knowledge.
5. Donald Trump has thrown his hat into the Presidential running race.
He has no chance.
“We need somebody that literally will take this country and make it great again,’ Trump said during a campaign launch.
“We can do that … so ladies and gentleman, I am officially running for president of the United States.”
Trump, 69, is a billionaire businessman, who once threatened to sue somebody for saying he was merely a millionaire with a good nose for publicity.
He says America is on the decline and he can reverse her fortunes. It is not and he cannot but he’s running anyway.
6. The big winner from Chris Bath’s decision to step away from Channel Seven is Mel Doyle.
Mel will take Chris’s job as host of Sunday Night, and the weekend newsreader gigs.
That’s a big step up from reading the 4pm news and doing the odd story for Sunday Night, which is what Mel has been doing since she quit the morning show with David Koch.
Mel says she’s going to keep her job on SmoothFM radio, too.
In a formal statement, Chris said she quit Seven because 20 years was enough.
Gossips – and there are plenty of them in TV land – say she was unhappy with her pay packet (she was making $800,000 a year; they wanted to cut that to a cool half-a mil, and who can live on that?)
Chris says that’s rubbish. She also talked down rumours of a feud with Sam Armytage, who took Mel’s old job on Larry’s couch, who apparently calls her “Bath Vader.”
