1. From the depths of her grief, Sheryl Sandberg chooses life. She has no choice.
In a poignant post Ms Sandberg – chief operating officer at Facebook, and author of the feminist manifesto, Lean In – says she learnt much about love and grieving since the sudden loss of her husband, Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, who died after hitting his head after falling from a treadmill.
In particular, she has “gained a more profound understanding of what it is to be a mother, both through the depth of the agony I feel when my children cry” and “from the connection my mother has to my pain.”
“She has tried to fill the empty space in my bed, holding me each night until I cry myself to sleep,” she says.
“She has fought to hold back her own tears to make room for mine.”
Ms Sandberg speaks candidly of what she has learned, while grieving: “I have learned that I never really knew what to say to others in need. I think I got this all wrong before; I tried to assure people that it would be okay, thinking that hope was the most comforting thing I could offer.
“A friend of mine with late-stage cancer told me that the worst thing people could say to him was “It is going to be okay.” That voice in his head would scream, ‘How do you know it is going to be okay? Do you not understand that I might die?’
“I learned this past month what he was trying to teach me. Real empathy is sometimes not insisting that it will be okay but acknowledging that it is not.”
Ms Sandberg reveals that she has returned to work, and “work has been a savior” because she feels “useful and connected.”
“But I quickly discovered that even those connections had changed. Many of my co-workers had a look of fear in their eyes as I approached. I knew why – they wanted to help but weren’t sure how.
“Should I mention it? Should I not mention it? If I mention it, what the hell do I say?”
She realised that she “needed to let them in. And that meant being more open and vulnerable than I ever wanted to be. One colleague admitted she’d been driving by my house frequently, not sure if she should come in. Another said he was paralyzed when I was around, worried he might say the wrong thing.”
Ms Sandberg also says she is “truly grateful to the many who have offered their sympathy. A colleague told me that his wife, whom I have never met, decided to show her support by going back to school to get her degree—something she had been putting off for years. Yes!”
And reaffirms her commitment to life, saying she was “talking to one of these friends about a father-child activity that Dave is not here to do. We came up with a plan to fill in for Dave.”
“I cried to him, “But I want Dave. I want option A.” He put his arm around me and said, “Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of option B.”
“Dave, to honor your memory and raise your children as they deserve to be raised, I promise to do all I can to kick the shit out of option B.”
2. Stephanie Scott’s accused killer has today been charged with aggravated sexual assault of the Leeton school teacher, a magistrate has confirmed.
Vincent Stanford, who was a cleaner at the school Scott worked at, had already been charged with the 26-year-old’s murder, but the second charge of aggravated sexual assault came this morning, as Stanford appeared via video link.
It is alleged the 24-year-old raped Scott on the day she went missing before killing her and leaving her burnt body at Cocoparra National Park.
Scott was missing for days before her body was found by police and Stanford was later arrested and charged with her murder.
The Leeton school teacher was meant to marry her fiance, Aaron Leeson-Woolley, days after she disappeared and the 26-year-old had gone into school on Easter Sunday to finish off work before her wedding and honeymoon.
Scott’s mother and father attended Griffith Local Court today while Stanford was reportedly expressionless in his video link appearance.
3. Alan Bond, 77, is fighting for life in a Perth hospital.
In a statement, Mr Bond’s three children said he had gone to hospital to have open heart surgery, after which he was placed in an induced coma.
His former wife, Eileen (Red) Bond is en route from London to be by his side.
Mr Bond has lived the best and the worst of times, winning the America’s Cup for Australia; and ending up on a prison farm; and – perhaps most famously – buying Channel Nine from Kerry Packer for $1 billion, only to have to sell it back when he went bankrupt.
In their statement, his children said: “We are told his prognosis is at best uncertain.”
Mr Bond’s second wife, Diana Bliss, who suffered from depression, was found dead in the family’s swimming pool in 2012.
4. How bad is the age gap between male leads and their female love interests in Hollywood films?
Perhaps not as bad as you think.
In response to recent stories about women being turned down for roles because they were too old to play the love interest, researcher Stephen Follows decided to crunch the numbers.
His reports suggests that male leads are, on average, less than five years older than their female love interests.
The age gap is only “slightly smaller on films directed by women.”
That said, it depends on who the male lead is: Dudley Moore was 49 when he played opposite Amy Irving in Micki and Maudie. She was 31.
Gene Wilder was 51 when he played opposite Kelly LeBrook in The Woman in Red. She was 24.
The survey comes after Maggie Gyllenhaal revealed that she was turned down for a role in a film for being “too old” to play the love interest of the 55-year-old male lead.
She is 37.
5. You thought Married At First Sight was a bit much? Wait until you see The Briefcase.
Critics across the US are pretty much united in opposition to this new reality show in which the desperately poor, the sick and the struggling, live on handouts and hope, are presented with a briefcase containing $US 100,000.
But there’s a twist. The family is then taken to meet other families struggling in even more desperate circumstances, and they are then forced to decide whether to give them the money, without knowing that family is making the same decision.
One reviewer says it’s “hard to argue with the integrity of the two families featured, or the value of their choices when faced with a six figure prize, but it was also pretty hard to keep my breakfast down, watching this exercise in judging the financially distressed.”
Classy stuff from CBS, whose $54 million per annum boss, Les Moonves, made headlines earlier this week for refusing to tip the valet because he only had $100 bills in his wallet.
6. THE BBC has apologised after one of its reporters sent out a tweet, saying the Queen had been taken to hospital and – worse – that she had died.
Queen Elizabeth II is very much alive, and active.
The tweet was picked up by news agencies abroad, who contacted Buckingham Palace, which quickly corrected the error.
The BBC said the error was “a result of a training exercise” while the reporter said it happened when a prankster grabbed her phone.
7. The Tokyo Government has offered citizenship to Godzilla.
The big lizard – or is he a dinosaur? – has been rampaging around the city for more than 30 years and now it seems they want him to stay.
The Anime News Network says the former menace has been “promoted to tourism ambassador and made an honorary citizen of Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward.”
Being Japanese and therefore a bit quirky, they even had a ceremony, where the mayor presented a giant Godzilla with his papers.
The Japanese are said to believe that any city destroyed in a Godzilla will actually become lucky in real life.
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