Prostitution appealed, Murdoch gets it wrong, and the census drama continues

By now you've probably already heard about the reality TV show gaff heard round the world, as earlier this week Sarah Murdoch announced the wrong winner on the season finale of Australia's Next Top Model. Now Murdoch is admitting that she didn't actually know who the winner was at the critical moment, so she guessed. She claims nothing came through her earpiece, so she took a shot in the dark and got it tragically wrong. If you haven't seen the painfully awkward moment yet, check it out here. 

In the latest move in the surprisingly heated census debate, Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett yesterday introduced a private members bill demanding the government reinstate the mandatory long-form census. Ever since Stephen Harper and the Conservative party announced they would make the census voluntary, statisticians, policy makers, and language and religious groups have opposed the decision. They say the census provides invaluable data, and that making it voluntary will skew data and exclude certain groups less likely to complete the lengthy survey.

A recent ruling by an Ontario judge essentially legalizing prostitution in Ontario is being appealed by the Conservative Government. On Tuesday, Judge Susan Himel ruled that national laws banning brothels, solicitation of clients, and managing sex workers was a violation of sex workers' basic rights. Himel said that the Canadian government should regulate the sex trade industry rather than ban it, but the federal government apparently disagrees.

Apparently the mild hysteria that surrounded the H1N1 vaccination blitz last flu season was significantly less hysterical than previously thought. Statistics Canada yesterday reported that almost 60 percent of Canadians decided not to get the shot – most thought it unnecessary, some said they never got around to it, and a small proportion skipped out because they were scared.

For the first time in one hundred years, there are more young people in the United States that have never been married than that have. The American Census Bureau says this is the first time since they started recording this type of data that the number of never-married individuals has exceeded those who have tied the knot. Experts blame the economic downturn, but say it's also due to increased societal acceptance of unmarried cohabitation.