Thursday's news in less than 2 minutes.

UPDATE: Adrian Bayley, the man who raped and murdered Melbourne woman Jill Meagher, has lost his bid to reduce the minimum-35-year jail sentence he was given earlier this year.

According to documents that have been obtained by The Age newspaper, it’s believed Bayley’s lawyers argued that the judge who sentenced Bayley, Justice Geoffrey Nettle, was incorrect when he said that Bayley derived pleasure from the murder and that the attack was  “one of the worse kinds conceivable”.

2. Book publisher Random House yesterday announced that they would be publishing former Prime Minister Julia Gillard‘s memoirs in October 2014.

Random House’s publishing director Nikki Christer said that, “In any reckoning of her achievements, both before and after becoming Prime Minister, this book, written by her and told in her own words, will be essential.”

Gillard explained her motivation for writing the book, saying that, “I want to share my perspective on the issues of our times and how I strove to make a difference for the better every day I had the privilege of serving as Prime Minister. I will also write about changing our nation and future challenges in the years ahead.”

3. Earlier this week, Gillard gave her first public interview since since being toppled from the Labor leadership. You can watch that full interview here.

4. Bill Shorten has admitted to rigging a question for his debate on Tuesday with Anthony Albanese. Mr Shorten reportedly had a man who he referred to as “Big Boy” ask both the Labor leader hopefuls what kind of Prime Minister they would like to be. Shorten’s admission came after a Sydney taxi driver who drove Mr Shorten told a Sydney radio station that the conversation had occurred in the back of his taxi, and said that Shorten had been rude and dismissive of him.

5. The new Health Minister Petter Dutton has said he supports raising tobacco taxes but not alcohol taxes because it’s not been proven as an effective way to cut consumption.

Mr Dutton has also said that one of his main priorities while Health Minister is to improve community-based health services, which includes merging the Mental Health Commission  back into the Health Department.

6. In some of the more discomforting news for the day, a 66-year-old politician from Colombia has had his penis amputated after “enthusiastically [overdosing] on Viagra.” The politician, who asked to remain anonymous, visited the hospital after his penis became sore after a few days of having an erection. Doctors found that his penis was fractured and inflamed – and beginning to show signs of gangrene – which left them with no choice but to amputate.

7. Why do human beings have a tendency to grab little babies and say things like, “You’re so adorable I just want to EAT you!” or “I could gobble you right up!”, even though that would actually be cannibalism? A group of scientists from Germany have published a paper in Frontiers in Psychology claiming that it is because of how babies smell, as their particular scent was shown to trigger reward circuits in women’s brains. Obviously.

8. Team Oracle USA have won the 34th America’s Cup. The team – which is led by Australian skipper James Spithill – reportedly came back from behind to win the almost-three-week-long race.

Have you seen anything in the news that you want to talk about?