RUSH HOUR: The stories you need to know today
DO YOU burst into a white, hot rage every time your train is delayed? You could try what this guy does to get revenge.
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TODAY
● Creative commuter gets revenge over frustrating train delays
● Cheeky seals in the Southern Ocean could help lead to the next big scientific breakthrough
● Why is Barack Obama flashing the devil’s horns?
LIVE UPDATES
10am
That’s it for our RUSH HOUR live news blog for this morning and this week. You can get across the stories you need to know today below. We’ll be back with another live news blog bright and early on Monday morning.
9.40am
The Aussie dollar has recovered a little after disappointing unemployment data damaged it yesterday.
At 7am, the currency was trading at 93.95 US cents, up from 93.69 cents.
The Australian dollar fell yesterday after labour force figures showed the unemployment rate hit 6.0 per cent in June.
9.25am
Reclusive Australian pop star Sia is on track to debut at No. 1 on the US album charts.
The new LP from the Adelaide singer, who has captured attention in the US by promoting her music without revealing her face, is projected to sell 50,000 copies in its first week, according to Billboard, which might be enough to land her the top spot.
The album 1000 Forms of Fear, which contains the hit Chandelier, is currently sitting at No. 1 on the Australian iTunes charts also.
9.15am
There is another heartbreaking story concerning young children this morning.
A New York mother appears to have made one of the sickest Facebook status updates ever, posting pictures of her dead baby’s corpse after allegedly smothering him.
Nicole “Nikki” Kelly uploaded an image of 11-month-old Kiam Felix Jr lying in a white suit and tie with the caption “RIP Tinkabutt”, alongside a picture of his body in a hospital bed, the New York Post reports.
According to officials, she killed the boy on Sunday by putting a sheet over his face as she tucked him into bed.
Read the full story here.
9am
The super typhoon has hit the Japanese mainland, bringing widespread flooding, uprooting trees and burying homes in mud.
Typhoon Neoguri has left several people dead and ravaged small communities as residents struggled to keep waves of dirty water from destroying their homes.
More than 500 houses were flooded due to the typhoon and heavy rain, with about 490,000 households urged to seek shelter.
The storm hit the mainland this morning near Akune City on the southern main island of Kyushu, home to 13 million people.
8.45am
Fantasy epic Game of Thrones leads the nominations in the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards, with a whopping 19 nods.
The HBO series will go up against Breaking Bad, Mad Men, House of Cards, True Detective and Downton Abbey in the best drama category.
There has already been some backlash over Orphan Black’s remarkable Tatiana Maslany being overlooked in the best actress category, and many have criticised the Emmys voters for snubbing The Good Wife in the best drama stakes, given it has been widely praised for producing its best series yet.
The winners will be announced in Los Angeles on August 25.
Read the full list of Emmy nominations here.
8.30am
The jury in the Baden-Clay murder trial has been censured by a judge after one of the jurors downloaded information from the internet to help them reach a verdict.
Former Brisbane real estate agent Gerard Baden-Clay, 43, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his wife Allison Baden-Clay and to dumping her body at Anstead on April 19, 2012.
A jury of five women and seven men retired yesterday to consider a verdict in the five-week murder trial, but they were called back soon after to be warned against seeking outside help.
The judge revealed that a juror had downloaded overseas material on how a jury might approach its “great responsibility of deliberating on a verdict”.
Read more here.
8.15am
In yesterday’s RUSH HOUR, we promised that the carbon tax would have been repealed on Thursday. Sorry! Clive Palmer had other ideas, spectacularly reneging on his promise to vote down the pollution price.
The Abbott Government has now set its sights on repealing the carbon tax next week after a political shambles foiled yesterday’s bid.
In a major embarrassment for Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the government will bring the bills back to the lower house on Monday after further talks with the Palmer United Party.
Mr Palmer blocked the bills yesterday when his desired amendment that would ensure savings were passed onto consumers was not included.
The mining magnate also stormed out of an interview with ABCTV’s 7.30 program last night when questioned by host Sarah Ferguson about his legal battle with a Chinese business partner.
7.55am
DO YOU burst into a white, hot rage every time your train is delayed? You could try what this guy does to get revenge on the man who runs Britain’s train system.
A commuter named Oli is getting his own back against First Capital Connect by Photoshopping its chief executive officer’s face every time his train is delayed, The Independent reports.
He has created a Tumblr page that shares all of his glorious distortions of Tim O’Toole’s face.
“The trains are pretty rubbish. You have to admit,” he says on the page. “Old. Knackered. A bit smelly. There is NEVER a seat on the way home after work and sometimes there isn’t one on the way in.” Sound familiar?
For the record, Mr O’Toole took the campaign in good humour. “This is definitely one of the most creative complaints that I’ve seen and Oli’s work is an improvement on my photo!” he said.
Check out his blog here.
7.20am
Confirmed that the light streaking across southern Australia was a meteor, despite thoughts that it was 'space-junk' pic.twitter.com/TXM1cpeoKR
— Nine News Australia (@9NewsAUS) July 10, 2014Social media lit up last night as an unidentified object blazed across the Australian sky.
The fireball streaked over NSW and Victoria about 10pm sparking speculation that it was a flaming piece of space junk.
Nine News is reporting this morning that the item was in fact a meteor.
Read more here.
7.05am
Wait a minute. Is Barack Obama pledging his allegiance to Satan?
The US President caused a minor stir when he flashed the devil’s horns while on a tour of Austin Texas yesterday.
But it turns out he wasn’t invoking the Dark Lord, nor was he expressing a latent appreciation for Black Sabbath.
Obama was gesturing the “hook ’em Horns”, which honours the University of Texas Longhorns football team and their mascot Bevo. The gesture pretty much amounts to saying “hello”.
So, to be absolutely clear, he was not praising the Devil, he was just saying “hi”.
6.45am
A nine-month-old boy is not expected to survive after he was seriously injured in western Sydney.
His mother’s partner told staff at Westmead Children’s Hospital that he dropped the boy inside his Lalor Park home, which has since become a crime scene.
The boy is in a critical condition with serious head injuries.
Police are investigating but no one has been arrested.
6.30am
Yes, you’re seeing it right. That’s a computer glued to the head of a seal. And these cheeky fellas could help Australians make the next big scientific breakthrough.
Scientists backed by the Australian Government in the Southern Ocean have equipped southern elephant seals with data loggers that can relay information as they swim to dark, cold depths inaccessible to humans, The Daily Telegraph reports.
The information they gather when they dive up to 2km under the surface allows researchers to gather information about water salinity and temperature, which can give us more accurate climate change models.
This research gets our seal of approval.
6.01am
It’s every parent’s worst nightmare.
A young boy was playing with in the shallows of a beach when he was swept deep into the ocean.
Police will resume a full-scale search this morning for the five-year-old who was playing near the water’s edge at Pearl Beach on the NSW central coast yesterday afternoon when he was taken into the surf by a large wave.
An air and sea search was halted about 6.15pm yesterday, but will resume this morning at 8 with police divers and officers from the Marine Area Command, Polair, Brisbane Water Local Area Command, Surf Life Saving Australia, NSW Ambulance Service and the Westpac Life Saver Helicopter.
6am
Good morning, and welcome to our headlines-in-a-hurry news coverage. We’ll be bringing you the morning’s biggest stories so you can get across the news quickly.
Originally published as RUSH HOUR: The stories you need to know today
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