While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Feb 20 edition

Massive approaching cyclone will be 'calamity': Australian officials

A monster cyclone roaring towards a heavily-populated area of Australia will be a "calamity", officials said Friday while warning residents to prepare for "a harrowing and terrifying experience".

Tropical Cyclone Marcia is expected to slam into the Queensland coast Friday morning and cause significant damage after being upgraded to a category five, the most severe.

Current forecasts have the tempest, which is around 70km in width, making landfall near the town of Yeppoon, some 670km north of Brisbane.

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Football: Chelsea to ban three people over Paris metro racism

Chelsea suspended three people from attending the club's Stamford Bridge stadium on Thursday as part of the Premier League team's investigation into a racist incident on the Paris Metro.

A black commuter was pushed back by what appeared to be a group of Chelsea fans travelling to the Parc des Princes for the 1-1 Champions League last 16 first leg against Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday.

A chant of "We're racist and that's the way we like it" from the Chelsea fans was clearly audible on a video of the incident at the Richelieu-Drouot Metro station.

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German nurse says 'sorry' for killing over 30 patients in thrill-seeking game

A German former nurse who has admitted killing over 30 hospital patients with lethal injections in a thrill-seeking game to try to revive them apologised on Thursday to relatives of the victims.

"I am honestly sorry," the 38-year-old said at his trial, where he so far faces three murder charges, adding that he had usually acted on impulse when he injected patients with lethal drug doses.

The court heard his motive was to spark medical emergencies so that he could then demonstrate his resuscitation skills, but that he also acted out of boredom.

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French government survives no-confidence vote

France's Socialist government won a confidence vote tied to its economic reform package on Thursday that could in theory have caused its collapse amid a damaging backbench rebellion.

A total of 234 mainly opposition deputies voted for the motion of no-confidence, far short of the number required to bring down the government.

The emergency vote was sparked when Prime Minister Manuel Valls (above) on Tuesday employed a rarely-used constitutional device to force through a key package of reforms without a parliamentary vote.

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Rapper Iggy Azalea gives up on online 'pettiness'

Rapper Iggy Azalea, who has built a fan base through social media but frequently engaged in bitter feuds, says she's taking a break from the Internet and its "pettiness."

The Australian rapper told her 4.3 million Twitter followers that she would "be taking some time away from social media," with her management running her accounts unless Azalea initials a tweet.

"I feel the hatred and pettiness I see online at all times is making me become an angry person and I cannot be that," she tweeted. "The Internet is the ugliest reflection of mankind there is," she tweeted.

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