1.The woman who spent three days trapped next to her dead boyfriend in the wreckage of their car has died in hospital.
Lamara Bell, 25, and boyfriend John Yuill were driving along a main road in Stirling, Scotland, last week when they were involved in a crash. John was killed instantly but Lamara survived the initial impact and was left lying next to her dead lover for three days.
Despite a witness calling emergency services to alert them to the crash, police took more than 72 hours to respond to the scene and rescue Lamara, a mother-of-two, who was critically injured.
She was taken to hospital but died soon afterwards, her brother revealed on Facebook yesterday.
“My sister just passed away,” Martin Bell wrote.
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The families of the couple have criticised police for their failure to respond to the crash sooner, with Lamara’s father telling STV News his daughter was conscious when she was found.
“She thought she had been there for 30 minutes,” he said.
Lamara’s mother said she the family was “angry, devastated and disgusted” by the way her daughter was treated.
Police have apologised to both families, saying a failure in communication prevented any search and rescue attempts.
“It has come to light that a call was made to police late on Sunday morning regarding a car which was reported as being off the road,” said Scotland Police in a statement, “For reasons currently being investigated, that report was not followed up at the time.”
2.A dying woman is desperately searching for the son she was forced to give up for adoption 46 years ago.
Irene Spencer, 70, has terminal cancer but doesn’t want to die without seeing her son again.
“From the day he was taken from me, I’ve never given up searching for my son,” Irene told The Daily Record.
“But after being diagnosed with cancer, I’m terrified it will take me before I find Stuart.”
Irene was 24 and newly divorced when she gave birth to Stuart in a hospital in Dundee, Scotland, on May 28, 1969. The baby was the result of a holiday fling and the shame caused Irene’s parents to kick her out of their Grangemouth home.
She moved to St Ronan’s mother and baby home shortly after the birth, where she endured weeks of harsh treatment.
“I wasn’t allowed to pick Stuart up other than when I breastfed him,” she said. “He was a beautiful big baby, 9.5lbs and 22in long.
“Four weeks later, my parents collected me. I was howling but mum told me to ‘stop snivelling’.”
Stuart remained in the home until he was two when he was forcibly adopted. The only thing Irene has to remember him by is his birth certificate.
“I was told I was selfish and it was in Stuart’s best interests to go to a married couple who couldn’t have a baby of their own,” she says. “When he was two, I was called to a meeting with the couple who wanted to adopt him.
“I remember my boy running to the woman and calling her ‘mummy’. He was playing with a toy telephone, having a pretend conversation with her. I felt broken inside.
“Her name was Mary and her husband was called Albert and she begged me to sign the papers so Stuart could stay with them.
“She showed me pictures of Stuart playing with two little girls she described as his cousins and told me she would feel as if there had been a death in the family if she had to give my son back.
“My last sighting of my boy was of him being driven away in the back of a black car, his little hand waving at me.”
Irene later married and three subsequent children but never stopped searching for Stuart. She has tried everything, including a private investigator, and is now appealing for the public’s help.
“I don’t want to prise him away from his adopted parents and the family he has now. I just want to know he’s safe and happy.
“He’s 46 now – surely he has a right to know who his real mother is and that I never wanted to let him go?
“But I’m told there’s nothing I can do unless Stuart comes forward and registers to trace me.”
Irene is one of at least 50,000 single mums in Scotland who were forced to give up their children for adoption between the 1950s and 1980s.
Jennifer Lawrence.
3.Amazing news for one of Australia’s favorite novelists, Graeme Simsion: superstar Hollywood actress, Jennifer Lawrence, has signed on to play Rosie in movie version of The Rosie Project.
Variety magazine reports that industry giant, Sony, has high hopes for the movie version of Graeme’s amazing best seller, which centres on a socially awkward genetics professor who devises a 16-page, highly scientific survey to find the perfect mate.
Graeme wrote the original Rosie as a screenplay, before turning it into novel. His original screenplay has now been revised for Sony by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, who teamed on (500) Days of Summer.
Some fans may be dismayed to hear that the film version probably won’t be set in Melbourne.
On Twitter yesterday, Graeme said: “I think as soon as Sony acquired it that (a Melbourne setting) became unlikely. I’m ok with it – the story does not rely much on location.”
He described Jennifer’s interest in the project as “great news” while cautioning that it was still “early days” in Hollywood.
4.How would you celebrate a $25 million win in court?
Mining heiress Olivia Mead has told Seven’s Sunday Night program that she celebrated her victory over her family by having a cheap, flat glass of champagne.
Olivia was awarded $25 million by the West Australian Supreme Court, which ruled her father, Michael Wright, did not make adequate provision for her in his will.
Michael is the son of Peter Wright, who formed Hancock Prospecting and Wright Prospecting with iron ore magnate in the 1950s.
When Peter died in 1985, a $900 million fortune was left to Michael and his sisters. Olivia was described in court as a ‘secret daughter’ who had very little warm or meaningful contact with her father.
“There were a lot of times I thought he could help us out a bit,” Olivia told Sunday Night.
Michael paid Olivia’s school fees and gave her some pocket money, but never a home to live in. Her Mum, who was with him only briefly, rented.
When Michael died in 2012, his wealth was estimated at $1.53 billion but Olivia received just $3 million in the Will, and she couldn’t take any of the money until she was 30.
The judge ruled that she deserved better, and Olivia told Sunday Night: “We went to the pub after. We had a glass of the cheapest champagne there was — it was flat.”
Alan Morison and Chutima Sidasathian.
5.Two journalists including one who has worked on a freelance basis for The Australian Women’s Weekly, are facing lengthy prison terms in Thailand for the strange crime of defaming the Thai Royal Navy.
News Limited reports that Australian journalist Alan Morison, who has worked for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and News Ltd, and his colleague, Chutima Sidasathian, a feisty interpreter and journalist known by the nickname Oi, who worked on a freelance basis for The Weekly on a story involving the disappearance of Queensland woman Carmel Brookes from a yacht off the coast of Thailand, have been told to face court on July 14.
The two journalists have been working on award-winning articles about people smuggling.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has asked the Thai prime minister, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, to drop the charges, which were laid after Alan’s Thai website, called Phuketwan, published a story with the wire service Reuters about the human trafficking of Burmese migrants.
Alan said that both he and Oi were dismayed by the prospect of being sent to prison for the crime of journalism. Now 67, he fears being forced into a crowded cell on the Thai island of Phuket “where up to 300 underfed men are forced to sleep on their sides.”
He said his father, who was a World War 2 veteran and the son of Gallipoli veteran, “would have wanted me to fight this.”
Bill Cosby and wife, Camille.
6.Bill Cosby’s wife has long been aware of his cheating but doesn’t accept that he’s a rapist.
Jezebel reports that Mrs Camille Cosby, who has been married to Bill for 51 years, believes that the women who have complained about Bill took stupefying drugs willingly, and had consensual sex with him while under the influence.
New court documents show that Bill Cosby has admitted under oath to buying Quaaludes, which can cause confusion and drowsiness, and which were also celebrated in the 1970s as a party drug, “with the intent of giving them to young women he wanted to have sex with.”
The report says Camille is “well aware of his cheating, but she doesn’t believe that her husband is a rapist. You can say that she’s standing by her husband, but really, the more people stand against him, the more she perceives it as an affront to her and all that she’s done to make him a star.
“They are making him out to be such a bad guy, a monster,” Camille claims.
Nearly 50 women have now come forward with accounts of drugging followed by sexual assault.
