1. A young bride-to-be has been accused of tampering with the plug in her fiance’s kayak so he would drown.
Angelika Graswald and Vincent Viafore were paddling on the Hudson in New York when he got into trouble. She said it was an accident.
Police have now said they believe she removed the plug so the kayak would fill with water, and then pushed him away with a paddle when he started to drown.
They say she waited 30 minutes before calling for help, and jumped out of her own kayak into the water only after being spotted by other people on boats.
She is reportedly the beneficiary of his life insurance policy.
2. Imagine your grandkids, stuck in the horror that is Syria, being raised by an Islamic State terrorist.
That’s the reality for Karen Nettleton, whose daughter, Tara, converted to Islam at age 17, and whose children are now stuck in a war zone with their terrorist father.
Karen is now pleading with the Australian authorities to led the kids come home.
Their father, Khaled Sharrouf, is fighting for Islamic State. Karen says his wife and kids are at risk.
“I am gravely concerned for their safety. Media reports can make them vulnerable to attacks from all sides,” she said.
“I plead with the Australian government and its institutions to put politics aside and do everything in their power to assist my family’s safe passage and return to my home.”
Tara met her killer husband at Chester Hill High School in Sydney’s west. One of their daughters, aged just 14, has apparently been married off to another terrorist.
3. Is a free vote on same-sex marriage coming to the Australian parliament?
The Australian says maybe, with senior Liberals telling the newspaper that there is “a strong chance of a majority within the Coalition in favour of a conscience vote.”
This means all politicians would be allowed to vote in accordance with their beliefs, as opposed to how the party tells them to vote.
The news comes just days after the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, introduced a Private Member’s bill to bring the matter before parliament.
He called yesterday for a free vote, saying: “What is the argument against marriage equality? If we genuinely believe that being gay is not wrong — and it is not wrong — then what is the argument against excluding people from the ability to marry someone they love?”
Australia got a little shove along the same-sex marriage path when Ireland – where even divorce was recently frowned upon – voted in favour.
4. There have been remarkable scenes in Switzerland, with multi-millionaire officials behind the soccer organisation, FIFA, taken from their hotel rooms and arrested on corruption charges.
FIFA boss Sepp Blatter was not among those detained.
The plan is to extradite the officials to the United States on federal corruption charges.
The officials were gathering for their annual meeting when police arrived at the five-star resort on Lake Zurich.
The US alleges widespread corruption in FIFA over the past two decades, involving bids for World Cups.
Australians may remember how they sank millions into the bid to host the World Cup. And got one vote. Billionaire Frank Lowy, who backed the idea, was livid. But presumably he’s much happier today.
5. Child brides in India are turning to a new, feisty band of female lawyers to get them out of their marriage contracts.
The Guardian reports that child rights campaigner Kriti Bharti, 27, who runs the Saarthi Trust in Jodhpur, has arranged for 27 annulments of child marriages since 2012.
It is illegal for girls under 18 to marry in India, but the Guardian says that 2014 figures from Unicef, the UN children’s agency, show that 47% of girls in India were married before they turned 18.
The Guardian’s report quotes Devi Meghwal, who was promised in marriage at 11 months of age. Upon turning 16, she was supposed to turn up to live with her husband and his mother, neither of whom she’d ever met before.
“My strongest emotion was the unfairness of it. Why should I go along with something I wasn’t party to, or even aware of? I couldn’t face being treated like a parcel,” she said.
6. The world’s ugliest rapper Chris Brown has apologised for sending threats to a man spending time with his ex girlfriend, over Twitter.
Brown was apparently livid, when his ex turned up in Vegas with famous male model, Tyson Beckford.
He Tweeted: ‘U wanna keep walking them runways. I need ta legs for that.’
Beckford responded with a picture of him shooting a high powered assault rifle.
Brown then Tweeted: “No drama! People are really starting to make this s**t an issue.’
Brown is most famous for belting ex girlfriend Rihanna before the Grammy awards in 2009. Much was made of the fact that he recently went three months without hitting somebody.
7. Cold Chisel has announced plans to play Hanging Rock.
They are the first Australian band to get permission to play there.
Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, the Eagles and Rod Stewart have all played Hanging Rock. The Rolling Stones have cancelled there, twice.
Chisel’s chief songwriter Don Walker said: “It’s a location with incredible history and mystery. I hope we can add something to that, and I hope no-one goes missing.”
8. And in State of Origin news, it went to Queensland.
Easily, to Queensland.
The series now heads to Melbourne and the MCG where NSW will almost certainly win because otherwise, what’s the point of a best-of-three series? Not that anyone thinks it’s rigged.
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