Thursday's news in under 5 minutes.

1. Second Texas Ebola diagnosis

A second Texas health care worker from the hospital that treated Liberian Thomas Duncan has tested positive to Ebola.

The young nurse has been identified as Amber Jay Vinson a 29-year old from Ohio.

Concerns are mounting in the US after reports that she flew on a commercial flight from Cleveland to Dallas the day before her diagnosis.

The Daily Mail reports that she flew to Ohio to plan her wedding.

Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she should not have been on the plane.

Officials are trying to track down and interview all 132 people on the flight.

NBC News reports that the Centre for Disease Control has admitted that mistakes were made with Duncan and that a quicker response might have prevented the virus spreading to hospital workers.

2. Madeleine McCann breakthrough

A paedophile who has preyed on young girls in Australia and Europe has been arrested in Malta and is being extradited to the UK where he will answer questions about the case of Madeleine McCann.

British man Roderick Macdonald, 76, is believed to have been in Portugal when three-year-old McCann went missing in 2007 police believe he has knowledge of paedophile gangs operating in the area at the time.

 3. Surrogacy devastation

An Australian couple have discovered they have no genetic link to their surrogate baby born in India.

Woman’s Day report that the twins were meant to have been conceived using the father’s sperm and a donor egg, but a test has shown the Australian man is not the twins’ biological father.

4. Mel Greig speaks of her grief

Former DJ Mel Greig has told a radio festival in Manchester that the suicide of nurse Jacintha Saldanha made her feel like she deserved to die.

She told the conference “’It was horrific. And at the time I felt that I deserved it, people were saying you deserve to die and I honestly thought I do deserve to die.

“I had failed as a human being – someone has taken their own life because of something I was involved in.

“And I believed that I deserved all those tweets, it went on for months and because I was in lockdown all I did was read the comments.”

She says that when she went in to hospital for major surgery for endometriosis she was convinced it was karma

“I took a mother, and now I don’t deserve to be a mother.” She said she thought at the time.

She has urged for other radio professionals to put in place a more “stringent process” for playing practical jokes on emergency services and hospitals.

 5. Oscar Pistorius sentencing

A cousin of Reeva Steenkamp has told the court during Oscar Pistorius’s sentencing hearing that Reeva’s death has “ruined” her whole family.

“It is the worst experience I have ever, ever, ever been through,” Kim Martin said

She said that Reeva’s mother, June was hysterical, “she was very medicated, shrugging her shoulders the whole time and Barry was crying, crying, crying…”

The sentencing hearing continues today.

6. Author claims men who watch child porn are not paedophiles

American author John Grisham has said in an interview that American is wrongly jailing too many people for viewing child pornography,

“There’s so many of them now. There’s so many ‘sex offenders’ “ he told The Telegraph.

“We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who’ve never harmed anybody, would never touch a child,

Mr Grisham said that current sentencing policies failed to draw a distinction between real-world abusers and those who downloaded content, accidentally or otherwise.

7. Bad taste Halloween costumes

In the ultimate bad taste Ebola themed costumes are being sold in preparation for Halloween.

News Limited report that “Ebola zombies, bloody Ebola patients and faux protective gear” are being sold for the big day.

Many on social media have slammed the fad saying it is too much too soon.

“Wrong and sick on so many levels: Ebola-Themed Halloween Outfits Expected to Go ‘Viral’” wrote one

8. Young people see sexting as the norm.

A study by a British anti-bullying charity has found that sexting is on the rise and is having a serious detrimental effect on young people.

62% of young people said they had been had been abused through a Smartphone app, 37% had sent a naked pic, 24% had seen that image shared without their consent.

Girls were twice as likely to send a naked photo to someone than boys. 49% said they believed sexting was just a bit of harmless fun and 16% said it was “the normal thing to do”.

9. Four too young to start school

Teachers have said that four-year-olds lack basic school-ready skills and many of them are too young to start school.

Surveys conducted by the Australian teachers Education Union and the SA Primary Principals Association have shown that many of the four year olds (you can start school at four years and nine months in South Australia – as long as you have turned five before May 1.) can’t cope with the day.

Teachers said in some cases children did not make it to the toilet in time, and they were struggling to cope with the long day – becoming tired easily reports The Advertiser.

Many students were not able to sit still, were unable to write their name and had poor fine motor skills.

10. Aussie kids go hungry

A report out today shows that 24,00 Australia kids go hungry every day and food banks can’t keep up with the demand.

The Foodbank Hunger Report shows that 516,000 Australians rely on food relief each month.

This is an 8% increase from last year.

1/3 of those are children.

The demand for relief is outpacing supply the 60,000 Australians seeking support unable to be assisted, 24,000 children.

Family economic circumstances were identified as the main driver for people requiring food relief with general low income and unexpected expenses and events forcing people to turn to charities.

 11. Convicted murder kills his mother

A man in the US, released from prison after serving 30 years for shooting a neighbour, murdered his own mother within 48 hours of his release.

Steven Pratt was 15 when he killed Michael Anderson, who had hit him in the face with a lead pipe.

His mother picked him up from prison on the day of his release.

Elite Daily reports that she was found beaten to death 48 hours later.

Steven Pratt was charged with murder.

12. Doctor calls for parents to leave babies to cry.

A Doctor due to visit an expo in Melbourne has had his visit cancelled after major public backlash to his controversial baby sleep methods.

Dr Brian Symon – author of a book that recommends babies are left to cry in order to sleep train them – was to have visited Melbourne next weekend to appear at the Pregnancy, Babies and Children’s Expo, but his appearance was cancelled by organizers after mothers inundated their Facebook page with complaints.

His recommendation to leave babies as young as four months old to cry all night and not to enter their room between 7pm and 7am fueled much controversy reports The Herald Sun. 

13. Family Feud slammed for sexism

An episode of Family Feud has been slammed for being misogynistic after host Grant Denyer asked contestants to “name a woman’s job.”

The correct answers to the women’s job question were cooking, washing clothes, cleaning, nursing, doing the dishes, hairdressing, domestic duties.

A man’s job had responses such as builder, plumber, mechanic, carpenter and being a tradesman in general.

Fairfax Media reports that viewers reacted angrily – one writing on social media “Women can do whatever the f— they want, not just what they’ve been told to do throughout history.”
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14. Julia Gillard’s “wrestling video” goes viral

Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s infamous fall has come back to bite her yet again.

It’s being previewed in a viral YouTube video in which WWE wrestler Randy Orton slams her face down into the ground.

With 600,000 views and counting on YouTube, the video’s combination of politics and wrestling is proving to be a popular one.

See it here:

What news are you talking about today?