RUSH HOUR: The stories you need to know today
When Krystina Butel impulsively decided to get her caricature done on holiday, she never thought she would spend the next fifteen years and almost AU$200,000 trying to look just like it.
GOOD morning, and welcome to our morning news coverage. We will be bringing you the best of what’s happening this morning, so you can get across the news quickly.
TODAY:
• Woman spends nearly AU$200,000 on surgery to look like caricature
• ISS releases incredible vision of the Northern Lights from outer space
• Comic book sells for whopping $3.2 million
• ‘Sex superbug’: highly resistant gonorrhoea strain found in Australia
• Devastating footage: captured Ukraine soldiers paraded before crowd
• “Medieval barbarism”: Tony Abbott talks terrorism
9:35am
If you’re a fan of True Blood, it’s likely you were just as miffed as everyone else by the series finale, which aired last night after seven seasons.
Turns out it was worse than the series finale of How I Met Your Mother - and that’s saying something.
Well the finale to #TrueBlood was boring 😒
— Kimberly (@LittleCutieKim) August 25, 2014I gave six years of my life to @TrueBloodHBO and for what? So Sookie can throw a freaking garden party? I wasted the best years of my life.
— Amy Stevenson (@amy_stevenson5) August 25, 2014No two ways about it, that #TrueBlood series finale was disappointing. http://t.co/DiQfw7vj9D pic.twitter.com/zZWhoYPIFA
— tv.com (@tvdotcom) August 25, 2014Absolutely disappointed with the writers of @TrueBloodHBO for allowing the final season to be so lackluster. #truebloodfinale
— Eric Junior (@ericjunior) August 25, 20149:10am
The parade of gorgeous gowns has begun for the 66th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, with Hollywood’s elite strutting their stuff for the second time this week.
Less than 24 hours after critiquing all the MTV VMAs fashion, news.com.au’s Charlotte Willis and Alison Stephenson are ready to do it all over again, this time with the biggest names in TV.
You can catch the Emmys LIVE from 10am.
8:40am
In case you missed it, there were glow-in-the-dark waves in Manly and Newport on Sunday night thanks to tiny bioluminescent marine animals.
Photographers and amateurs alike captured images of the eerie blue waves, describing the scene as “unbelievable”, reports the Manly Daily.
8:30am
Blue lobsters...they do exist, people.
The rare find was captured on the north eastern coast of the US in Scarborough, Maine, by lobsterman Jay LaPlante, who was hauling traps when his 14-year-old daughter Meghann spotted the crustacean.
She has since named him Skylar, where he will join three other rare blue lobsters at Main State Aquarium in West Boothbay Harbour.
8:00am
Speaking from Melbourne’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre this morning, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has confirmed there are at least 100 Australians working “to facilitate and support the ISIL movement” overseas.
“This is a movement of utter ferocity, medieval barbarism,” Mr Abbott said.
“That’s how serious and how dangerous this movement is.
“Because of the Australians, what might otherwise be a problem in a far away country is a problem for us.
Mr Abbott said there were a range of measures the government is putting in place, including “new laws to ensure people who are coming back from terrorist activity in the Middle East can be arrested and detained”.
“The enemy here is terrorism, it’s not any particular religion. We’re targeting extremism, not members of any particular community.”
Mr Abbott said he planned to work with Australia’s allies to “monitor them while they are overseas” and had plans on how to tackle the would-be terrorists if they returned to Australia.
“Certainly if they attempt to come back to Australia we want to be able to charge them and jail them where they have been working with terrorist groups overseas.
He added: “Every Australian, regardless of his or her faith understands that there is a place for him or her in this great country of ours.”
7:45am
Mourners at the funeral for a black teen whose killing by a white policeman ignited violent protest have told of a boy who wanted so much — and of their fears for a “free” America.
Activists, politicians and celebrities filled a Baptist church in the US city of St Louis overnight, joining family and friends to pay final respects to Michael Brown, the 18-year-old shot dead in Ferguson, Missouri, a St Louis suburb, on August 9.
AFP reports the youth’s grieving family appealed for calm as they buried their son, after two weeks of protests that have riveted the nation and reopened old wounds of racial discrimination and distrust.
7:35am
This is pretty devastating stuff.
Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine paraded dozens of captured soldiers before a jeering crowd on Sunday in mockery of Independence Day celebrations in the capital, AFP reports.
Ukraine’s pro-Western government had sought to boost morale with an upbeat military parade to mark the country’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
But it was markedly different scene in the eastern rebel stronghold of Donetsk, where around 40 or 50 captured government soldiers were paraded through the city’s central Lenin Square as onlookers hurled garbage and empty bottles at them.
“You are killing children!” screamed some in the crowd at the prisoners, who walked with heads bowed and their hands behind their backs before being placed on two buses and taken to an unknown destination.
The grim scene appeared designed to recall the famous moment in 1944 when thousands of captured Nazi soldiers were paraded through Moscow on Stalin’s orders.
7:25am
A Liberian doctor treated with experimental American anti-Ebola serum ZMapp has died.
AFP reports Dr Abraham Borbor had been improving but died on Sunday night, Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown said overnight.
“He was showing signs of progress but he finally died. The government regrets this loss and extends its condolences to the bereaved family,” Mr Brown said.
ZMapp is the same treatment given to American Ebola victim Dr. Kent Brantly, who was given the all clear last week.
Two other health workers receiving the serum are still in treatment, said the minister, adding that there were “signs of hope”.
The very small available stocks of ZMapp, which has never been through clinical trials on humans, have now been used up, according to the lab that produces it.
6:55am
Proof our world is stunning and awe-inspiring.
The International Space Station has released incredible vision of the Northern Lights from outer space.
The time lapse footage shows the aurora borealis, otherwise known as the Northern Lights, as the station flies over its green lights.
We flew right through a massive #aurora after last week's solar mass ejection http://t.co/eD661bPTTR
— Alexander Gerst (@Astro_Alex) August 24, 2014German Astronaut Alexander Gerst tweeted the footage after last week’s solar mass ejection — a burst of solar wind and magnetic fields that released into space.
The Northern Lights are caused by a reaction of the solar wind — a stream of electrically charged particles escaping the Sun — as they enter the earth’s atmosphere.
6:35am
Concerns are mounting over a powerful new form of gonorrhoea after a patient was found to have the highest level of drug resistance to the disease ever reported in Australia.
It is understood the patient, a tourist from central Europe, contracted the “sex superbug” in Sydney and was eventually treated in Cairns, reports AAP.
The discovery of the case in Australia, which resulted in a health alert in July, has also prompted warnings in New Zealand, where sexual health clinics are on high alert amid fears the new strain will spread there.
NZ Sexual Health Society president Edward Coughlan warned the patient involved, who is believed to have left the country, had the highest level of gonorrhoea drug resistance ever reported in Australia.
Gonorrhoea, colloquially known as the clap, is caused by Neisseria gonorrhoeae, a bacterium that can grow and multiply in the warm, moist areas of the reproductive tract, including the cervix, uterus and fallopian tubes in women and in the urethra in women and men.
Symptoms are often silent but the long-term effects can be devastating, causing painful pelvic disease in women and infertility in both sexes.
6:15am
Talk about an investment piece.
A copy of the world’s most sought after comic book, Action Comics no. 1, has sold for an incredible $3.2 million on eBay.
The comic features the first appearance of Superman, and this copy is thought to be the finest in existence.
“This is THE comic book that started it all. This comic features not only the first appearance of Superman, Clark Kent and Lois Lane, but this comic began the entire superhero genre that has followed during the 76 years since,” writes the blurb on eBay.
“It is referred to as the Holy Grail of comics and this is the finest graded copy to exist with perfect white pages. This is ... the Mona Lisa of comics and stands alone as the most valuable comic book ever printed.”
No word yet on the anonymous Superfan that made the final offer.
6:00am
When West Yorkshire’s Krystina Butel impulsively decided to get her caricature done on holiday, she never thought she would spend the next fifteen years trying to look just like it.
Krystina, 30, has forked out a whopping hundred thousand pounds (AU$178305.08) on plastic surgery to transform herself into the CARTOON that she bought for a tenner in Ibiza.
This has included five boob jobs, lip injections, Botox, teeth whitening and semipermanent make-up. She even has heart shaped nipples to complete the look.
“When I saw the caricature for the first time on holiday, I was jealous of it. She was so glamorous. She was everything that I wanted to be,” said Ms Butel.
“It was like she was holding the carrot out to me, showing me what I could be.
“I wanted to look like that cartoon. I felt envious of it and I got this urgent feeling in me. I wanted to look like that right now.
“Over the years, I’ve spent more and more on beauty treatments and surgery so I can look just like her.”
She now plans to have an eyebrow lift, butt implants as well as further breast augmentations, Botox, fillers and lip implants so she can resemble the artwork even more.
— words by Pesala Bandara
Last hope for Australia’s longest cold case
A final effort to find the remains of the missing Beaumont children has begun, almost 60 years after their disappearance.
Shock Higgins texts that sent man to jail
Vile texts threatening to “bury” Brittany Higgins and her husband David Sharaz, and “chop up” their dog Kingston can be revealed in full for the first time.
Dad escapes secretive, notorious Aussie cult
After being born into one of Australia’s most notorious cult-like churches, Ryan Carey escaped its controlling clutches and is now speaking out.