Tuesday's news in under 5 minutes.

1. ADF promoting known rapists

The Australian Defence Force has promoted known rapists, according to a report on last night’s ABC Four Corners program.

They spoke to four former cadets who claim to have been raped or sexually assaulted while at the academy in the 1990s and 2009.

A former cadet known as ‘Jane’ told the investigative program she was raped while at ADFA. She stayed with the army after the assault but has watched in horror as her attacker moved up the ranks.

“To walk around the corner and literally bump into him again, was awful. I didn’t know how to react. I felt frightened, I felt powerless. He was standing right behind me to collect his meal. ”

“And that was awful, to know what he had done and to still have him standing there, laughing and joking with his mates and knowing that he’s still part of the organisation that I’m in,” she told Four Corners.

The program said that her case was not an isolated event. The women have called for a royal commission into the abuse.

2. Rik Mayall dies

British actor Rik Mayall, known to many of us from The Young Ones, has died aged 56.

“We are deeply saddened to announce the death of Rik Mayall who passed away this morning,” his manager announced.

For more on this and to see four of his funniest moments read this post here.

3. Coalition faces revolt over PPL scheme

The Australia reports that the Prime Minister faces defeat in the Senate over his paid parental leave scheme, with Nationals Senators Ron Boswell, Barry O’Sullivan and John Williams to vote against the PPL scheme.

The newspaper reports that at least five Coalition senators will also vote against the scheme to ensure its defeat.

The legislation for the PPL is set to be introduced after July 1.

4. Tony Abbott in Canada

The Prime Minister has met with his Canadian counterpart Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

During a meeting, the two said they won’t take any action to battle climate change that harms their national economies and threatens jobs.

Later this week, Mr Abbott meets with U.S. President Barack Obama, who has vowed to make global warming a political priority and whose administration is proposing a 30 per cent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 2030.

At a news conference, Prime Ministers Harper and Abbott both said they welcomed Obama’s plan. Abbott saying he plans to take similar action. But both leaders stressed that they won’t be pushed into taking steps on climate change they deem unwise.

5. Bayden-Clay Murder trial starts today

UPDATE: Bayden-Clay has now formally pleaded not guilty to the murder of his wife. 

When asked before the potential jurors how he wished to plead, he replied, “not guilty, your Honour.”

As the trial started, Allison Baden-Clay’s family issued a statement to the media, asking for privacy for the three children.

“We ask that you respect our privacy and our decision not to grant interviews and refrain from photographing or filming the children… We hope you can imagine the ongoing impact of these events on our granddaughters – it has been devastating and will be long lasting.”

“Our primary concern remains their emotional and physical wellbeing. We are trying to help them rebuild their lives and ask for your support and cooperation in this,” the statement concluded.

Previously, Mamamia reported…

Gerard Baden-Clay, a Brisbane real estate agent, will stand trial today for the murder of his wife, Allison.

Baden-Clay reported his wife missing from their home on Friday April 20, 2012, she was found dead 10 days later under a bridge at Anstead.

He has pleaded not guilty to murder and interfering with the mother-of-three’s corpse.

6. Mum to be sentenced for giving daughter chemo drugs

A mother who gave her daughter chemotherapy drugs and documented her faked illness on Facebook is due to be sentenced tomorrow.

The girl – now five – has made a full recovery as The Courier Mail reports.

“She’s at school, she’s dancing. She does tap, jazz and ballet. She’s a perfect little girl. There has been a clean bill of health from the specialists.” Her grandmother told The Courier Mail.

The 22-year-old mother has been in custody since her arrest.

Mamamia previously wrote about this here.

7. Gang raped teenagers victim of honour killings

Police in India have claimed that five of the men sought for the rape and murder of two teenage girls last month may be innocent.

The girls were said to have been raped and then hanged from a mango tree, in a case which shocked the world.

There are now claims that the girls were killed in ‘honour killings’ and that one of them was not raped.

Officers will investigate the victims’ families, with relatives undergoing ‘narco-analysis’, whereby they will be interviewed under the influence of ‘truth drugs’.

The state’s Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan told media that rape was a ‘trivial incident’. “Rape is a trivial incident and it should not be blown out of proportion by the media. The media should also look into the incidents where people have been falsely implicated in such cases.”

8. Nigerian gunmen kidnap 20 women

There are disturbing reports that Boko Haram gunmen have kidnapped 20 women from a nomadic settlement in northeast Nigeria near the town of Chibok, where the Islamic militants abducted more than 300 schoolgirls and young women on April 15.

The group also kidnapped three young men who tried to stop the abduction.

According to AFP the women and men were kidnapped on Thursday.

9. Transgender student initiative

Under an initiative to be rolled out this week across Australia, transsexual and intersex students will be able to use either boys’ or girls’ toilets and change rooms and play with the sports teams they identify with.

News Limited report that the Safe Schools Coalition will also see schools encouraged to stop dividing students into boys’ and girls’ groups in order to help gender-diverse students.

10. World’s oldest man dies

The world’s oldest man, a retired chemist and parapsychologist, has died in New York City at the age of 111.

Alexander Imich was born in 1903 in a town in Poland that was then part of Russia.

He and his wife fled after the Nazis invaded in 1939. They moved to the United States in 1951.

He told his niece that his longevity could be attributed to good genetics, proper nutrition and exercise and the fact that he and his wife, who died in 1986, did not have children.

11. Heat makes ecstasy more lethal

A study has shown that doses of MDMA that would not be fatal in cool conditions, can kill people when taken in hot, crowded settings such as nightclubs because the drug interferes with the body’s ability to regulate temperature.

The study by the National Institute of Health showed that the drug may be more dangerous than previously believed.

12. Miss Thailand resigns after social media backlash

One month after being crowned, Miss Thailand has given a press conference announcing her resignation after she was widely accused of being ‘too fat’ for the crown on social media.

The 22-year-old claimed it was her decision to give up the crown after being subjected to insults and abuse which have affected her family emotionally.

“It is my own decision to resign,” Waluree “Fai” Disayabut said. “I don’t regret it at all. At first, my family was happy that I won, but when society did not agree, all of our happiness was gone. My mother cannot sleep, and I can’t either.”

Last month, Fai was heavily criticised on the Internet as many felt she was “too fat” to represent the country in the Miss Universe competition. She has also come under pressure for making Facebook comments in which she said red shirt protesters ‘should all be executed.’

13. Rodney Clavell’s “hostages” were not hostages at all.

In fact, she told Channel 7’s Today Tonight, they were trying to convince the “gentle giant” not to take his own life.

“He did not keep us hostage, he did not threaten us, he did not hurt us … If it wasn’t for us he would have got shot by the police and it was by him shooting first.”

She told the program that when she left the building, she knew that Clavell was about to shoot himself. “I knew what he was going to do — that’s why I walked out and that’s why I was crying, that’s why I was hysterical,” she said.

She told the program that she was “really, really good friends” with Clavell.

14. ‘Love locks’ cause Paris bridge railing to collapse; bridge evacuated.

A 2.4 metre section of the mesh wire across the railing was torn loose this weekend, and police ordered tourists off, before closing the footbridge.

Although beloved by tourists in Paris, the love locks are not looked on so fondly by the locals, with anti-love lock activist groups petitioning the Paris mayor to have them removed, saying they are “like a plague on our city’s historic bridges and sites”.

The Parisienne authorities themselves are slightly more tactful, and have stated “It is wonderful to see such a vast amount of devoted couples; however the ritual is posing several problems due to the weight of the thousands of small steel padlocks.”

Let’s just hope the collapse of the railing isn’t a bad omen for the couples who locked a symbol of their devotion to the bridge.

15. More women are becoming the main breadwinner in their household.

New data from Ray Morgan, commission by NAB, has revealed that more women are now the main breadwinner in 39.5 per cent of households. That is an increase of 10.7 percent in 2008, when women accounted for 28.8 percent of the main breadwinners.

One of the most interesting details of the study, was that the increase of women identifying themselves as the main breadwinner in the household, was not matched by a fall in men identifying themselves as the main breadwinner in the household.

The number of men who identify as the main breadwinner in their house, has stayed at around 85 per cent.

What news are you talking about today?