Headlines Thursday 15th January 2009

HAMAS SPEAKS
Tim Blair
We now cross live to the Gaza Strip:

===
SLASHIMI
Tim Blair
Ever seen a sushi chef at work? Those guys are brilliant. You sure wouldn’t want to take on one of those sea kitten slicers in a knife fight. Except that a pair of idiots in Paris actually did:
Two men carrying a knife and an electronic stun gun stormed the Planet Sushi restaurant in the city’s Latin Quarter on Sunday night, demanding money from the till.
Big mistake.
The team of Japanese staff turned on the men, stabbing one to death with a fish knife used for preparing sushi dishes, while the other was pinned to the ground outside the restaurant.
===
PRO JOYCE
Tim Blair
Barnaby Joyce sticks it to global warming religionist Malcolm Turnbull:
“The view across the National Party is that the reasons put forward to justify an emissions trading scheme are just a load of rubbish,” Senator Joyce told The Australian, in the strongest reservations to be expressed by a senior Coalition figure about an ETS.

“Malcolm Turnbull will probably come on board with the ETS but that doesn’t mean the National Party will support it.”

Senator Joyce was derisive of the Rudd Government’s 5 per cent reduction target for emissions. “Australia accounts for 1.5per cent of emissions worldwide, so 5 per cent of that is three-fifths of five-eighths of nothing,” he said.

“It’s nothing but blatantly ridiculous tokenism.”
===
FLASHPOINT REACHED
Tim Blair
Joe Hildebrand reports from the mean streets:
The soaring temperatures and booze-fuelled atmosphere meant the air was heavy with menace in the mean streets of inner-western Sydney.

Police had long feared that Newtown was a ticking time bomb: A long-established and staid radical anarcho-socialist culture had absorbed the first wave of vegetarian lesbians from Enmore but with an influx of violently aspirational young families just across the border in Erskineville it looked like the suburb was reaching flashpoint.

Then on Monday night, the unthinkable happened.
===
MOVE AWAY FROM THE SOUTHEAST - PROBLEM SOLVED
Tim Blair
Perhaps you thought honour killings had some kind of religious component. Turns out, though, it’s a regional thing:
In “honour killings”, generally prevalent among Turkey’s Kurdish community, a so-called family council names a member to murder a female relative considered to have sullied the family honour. In most cases this is because of an extra-marital affair.

But there have been cases where those killed have been rape victims or women who simply talked to strange men or requested a song on the radio.

In recent years, the government and civic groups have stepped up efforts to stamp out honour killings, but the practice still has considerable public support in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
Big Presbyterian numbers in that area. Just coincidentally.
===
Nathan Rees refuses to acknowledge leadership rumblings
Nathan Rees says he is not going to be distracted by reports senior members of his own party are planning to get rid of him.
===
Steve Jobs takes leave of absence from Apple, citing medical concerns
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs will take a medical leave of absence until the end of June, saying his health issues "are more complex than I originally thought".
===
Marrying 10-year-old girls OK, says top Saudi cleric
A newspaper quotes Saudi Arabia's most senior Muslim cleric as saying it is okay for 10-year-old girls to marry and those who think they're too young are doing the girls an injustice.
===
Gaza toll passes 1,000 amid peace hopes
Israel has carried out a fresh wave of air raids across Gaza overnight and ground forces waged more street battles as the death toll from its war passed 1,000.
===
Obama: Osama still the No. 1 threat
President-elect Barack Obama says al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden remain the "number one threat" to US security, after a new voice recording emerged from the terror group's leader.
===
40 degrees! Sydney scorcher prompts bushfire fears
Four charged with dragging woman off bus by her hair, robbing her
Ford to axe credit arm, 160 jobs lost
Scientists find 'Marilyn Monroe' hormone