1. Size 24 model Tess Holliday has been forced to apologise after saying in a recent interview “black men love me.”
The US model, who recently appeared in a Guardian magazine feature, has faced widespread criticism after she told staffers at the shoot: “I do admit that black men love me. I always forget that, and then I come to a black neighbourhood and I remember.”
In response to criticism online and on social media, Holliday, 29, posted an apology on Facebook. It read:
“Firstly, I apologise for any hurt that my flippant comment has caused. I’ll try to provide some context which hopefully will change the way in which it is being viewed, but I have to also accept that being followed and quoted is something new for me and I am going to occasionally say or do things that make people unhappy. For that I am sorry, your opinions are important to me.
“The incident in question occurred when I was on the street, feeling rather exposed in my underwear for the shoot, and an older black man cat called me as I was walking behind the team. I replayed the incident to the team once we were set up for the next shot, and jokingly said some semblance of what appeared in print. It was in relation to being cat called by black men significantly more than by white, but perhaps my tone and wording didn’t convey this clearly. It was also meant to play into the idea that black men like bigger women, but the humour of that doesn’t come through. To further add context, the team included two talented black women – so it was clearly not something intended to cause offence.”
2. A young woman who once bore the title Miss Slitz is about to become a real-life Swedish princess.
Sofia Hellqvist is set to marry Prince Carl Philip in what’s been described as a lavish Stockholm wedding on Saturday.
Sofia, 30, is a commoner who once worked as a yoga teacher. Her fiance, Carl Philip, 36, the second child of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia, is third in line to the throne.
Sofia first came to fame when she appeared in the Swedish reality show “Paradise Hotel” in 2005. The show’s contestants had to stay at a luxury resort, where they competed to be the last voted off the show.
She has posed topless with a snake for men’s magazine Slitz, which went on to crown her Miss Slitz.
3. Watch this clip only if you have a very strong stomach.
It features a former rugby prop, Ben Ross, in an arm-wrestle challenge with ex-Kangaroos winger Wendell Sailor, and that snap you hear?
It’s the arm, breaking.
The clip is taken from last night’s Footy Show, which was going out live when the two men sat down for the arm wrestle.
A Nine spokesman said late Thursday night: “It was all done properly … it was just an unfortunate accident.”
Ross was then taken by ambulance to Royal North Hospital, accompanied by one of the show’s producers. He’s apparently fine.
4. He’s an octogenarian, so who can really blame Rupert Murdoch for wanting to slow things down a little?
Rupert, 84, is reportedly preparing to step down as chief executive of 21st Century Fox, perhaps as early as next week.
The New York Times was among the first to report the move saying that Rupert is apparently ready to hand the company’s reins to son James.
Not that he’s going off to play golf. Oh no. Rupert plans to stay on as executive chairman. His other son, Lachlan, will become co-executive chairman, which will entail a move to LA, where his good friend, James Packer, is also now living.
Mr Murdoch controls some of the world’s largest and most successful entertainment companies. He also publishes quite a few newspapers, and his grip on those is apparently firm.
5. An elderly widower who donated his late wife’s wedding dress to a charity shop has become an internet sensation, after including a note wishing the new owner all the love and happiness that he’d once known.
Charity workers posted a photograph of the note they found pinned to a 1950s wedding gown that had been handed to St Gemma’s Hospice Charity Shop.
The note said: I wish any lady who takes this dress to have a life with her loved one 56 years like I did happy years I was a lucky man to marry a lady like mine.
The dress is now for sale on Ebay.
6. Some people are just wonderful, aren’t they? Take James Harrison, whose story appears in today’s Herald.
James – also known as the ‘man with the golden arm’ – has a very rare blood type, which can save the lives of unborn babies.
Ever since finding out, he’s made it his business to be a blood donor, not just once, but every single week.
Doctors say the 78-year-old Australian has saved the lives of more than two million babies by donating 800mL of blood plasma weekly for the last 60 years.
The exceptional antibodies in Mr Harrison’s blood plasma can prevent miscarriages in cases where a mother has rhesus-negative blood (RhD-negative) and her fetus inherits the father’s RhD-positive blood type.
7. A nobel prize winning scientist has resigned from his post after complaining about the presence of women in the lab.
The Herald reports that Tim Hunt has resigned from his honorary professorship at University College London.
Hunt, 72, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on cell division, was speaking at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, when he suggested that labs be gender-segregated.
“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” he said. “Three things happen when they are in the lab. … You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry.”
8. Here’s a fun report from London: a 15-year-old kid on work experience has apparently discovered a new planet.
News Limited reports that Tom Wagg was doing work-experience at Keele University in the UK when he spotted the planet by finding a tiny dip in the light of a star as a planet passed in front of it.
“I’m hugely excited to have a found a new planet, and I’m very impressed that we can find them so far away,” said Tom, now aged 17.
He hopes now to be able to name it.
9. Whatever happened to Blanket?
You know, the kid that Michael Jackson dangled from that balcony in Berlin?
A celebrity news site in the US claims to have found his picture in the yearbook for the Buckley School in LA, where Paris Hilton was once a student.
You can decide for yourself whether it’s him.
Blanket’s real name is Prince Michael II, but in the yearbook, he’s Bigi Jackson, he’s 13, and here’s wishing him a normal life.
