Cancer surgeon Chris O'Brien dies from brain tumour
World-renowned cancer specialist Christopher O’Brien has died from a brain tumour.
Honeymoon killer to walk free in a year
An American man who admitted killing his wife while scuba diving on their honeymoon in north Queensland will walk free in just one year. - in recent years some who have raped Aboriginal children got smaller sentences. - ed.
Couple guilty of eczema baby's manslaughter
A homeopath and his wife have been found guilty of the manslaughter of their baby daughter by failing to get her proper medical treatment.
Carradine may have died from sex act: Thai police
A Thai police commander said on Friday that US actor David Carradine, found hanged in his Bangkok hotel room, may have died from a sex act gone wrong.
John Faulkner becomes Defence Minister
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has appointed Special Minister for State John Faulkner as his new defence minister. - Rudd's choice for now, but when he messes up? - ed.
Nicole Cornes to sue Channel Ten
Failed federal Labor candidate Nicole Cornes is suing Network Ten over comments made on air by comedian Mick Molloy. - did she know the budget deficit balance? - ed.
ABC apologises but says The Chaser will go ... on and on and on
The head of the ABC says there are no plans to scrap the The Chaser's War on Everything, despite its skit targeting terminally ill children. - There was never any doubt when they targeted the last conservative government. - ed.
World socialist leaders hail Obama speech
International socialist leaders have hailed US President Barack Obama's speech on relations with the Muslim world as opening a "new page".
Andrew Symonds had plenty of chances: Ponting
Ricky Ponting believes Cricket Australia did all it could for Andrew Symonds before banishing the wayward all-rounder from the World Twenty20 squad.
Rio shares drop on 'dead' Chinalco deal
Rio Tinto PLC says it is "pursuing a range of options" to shore up its debt-laden balance sheet amid growing speculation it is walking away from a deal with Chinalco.
Britney Spears 'grew up in a violent household'
Britney Spears’s uncle claims the popstar grew up in a violent household, with her father regularly lashing out in a drunken rage.
=== Journalist Corner ===
Tonight on Primetime
Hillary Clinton goes 'On the Record'!
U.S. policy, Mideast peace and Obama's all important speech from Egypt.
Greta's in Cairo with inside reaction from the secretary of state!
===
President Obama
President Obama was received very well by the audience here in Cairo. In the audience were Egyptian leaders, students and even famous Egyptian actors (pointed out to me by the woman sitting next to me.). The audience was excited to see the President. It will be fascinating to see how the people around the world react to the speech and even back home in the USA [...]
=== Comments ===
Hatchet man sent to attack Defence
Andrew Bolt
As I said this morning, given the boshie mood in Defence and the Rudd Government’s plans to slash billions from Defence programs, Rudd would need someone meaner and more experienced than one of the parliamentary secretaries to take over from Joel Fitzgibbon:
JOHN Faulkner has been announced as the new Defence Minister replacing Joel Fitzgibbon who resigned on Thursday over a series of careless errors involving his expenses and potential conflicts of interest.
This could get bloody.
UPDATE
Faulkner’s scalps already include Fitzgibbon’s own:
JOEL Fitzgibbon knew he was in trouble yesterday when Special Minister of State John Faulkner turned up at his office carrying a copy of the Code of Ministerial Conduct.
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The judge is a racist
Andrew Bolt
No, it wasn’t just one poor choice of words. President Barack Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court really is racist and sexist:
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor delivered multiple speeches between 1994 and 2003 in which she suggested “a wise Latina woman” or “wise woman” judge might “reach a better conclusion” than a male judge.
Those speeches, released Thursday as part of Sotomayor’s responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s questionnaire ... suggest her widely quoted 2001 speech in which she indicated a “wise Latina” judge might make a better decision was far from a single isolated instance.
A draft version of a October 2003 speech Sotomayor delivered at Seton Hall University stated, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion.” That is identical to her October 2001 remarks at the University of California, Berkeley that have become the subject of intense criticism…
In addition, Sotomayor delivered a series of earlier speeches in which she said “a wise woman” would reach a better decision. She delivered the first of those speeches in Puerto Rico in 1994 and then before the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York in April 1999.
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Racist gangs do exist
Andrew Bolt
If these gangs rob an Asian student as well, we’ll all be called racist. Meanwhile David Penberthy suggests that other attacks in Melbourne, many by African and Islander gangs, are either just robberies or ”race-based attacks where white supremacist miscreants are going after Indian kids”.
UPDATE
Just as well the ethnicity of attackers and attacked weren’t reversed in this stabbing, too.
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Better to have sung and lost
Andrew Bolt
HERE’S the real question, with YouTube sensation Susan Boyle committed to a clinic on Sunday after a nervous collapse.
Isn’t it better to have sung and lost, than never to have sung at all?
An estimated 200 million people around the world have watched Boyle over the past two months sing herself into such a state that guys in white coats had to take her away.
And now, with the Britain’s Got Talent star in seclusion at a London clinic, recovering from “exhaustion”, the remorseful audience is demanding the guilty be punished.
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The Minister of no defence
Andrew Bolt
IT’S embarrassing to lose a minister, but if Kevin Rudd had to boot one, Joel Fitzgibbon sure was the best.
The Defence Minister in the end had to go not for any single offence, but because he was a running joke.
Not one minister in this tightly controlled Government has given the Prime Minister so much grief so often. And more was certain to come because Fitzgibbon was a factional hack promoted more for loyalty than talent.
In the end, what finished Fitzgibbon was this week’s revelation that one of his generals, in charge of defence health services, had been ordered to attend meetings with Fitzgibbon’s brother to discuss defence health contracting.
It’s hardly a big scandal. It wasn’t Fitzgibbon himself but his junior minister, Warren Snowdon, who told Maj-Gen Paul Alexander to meet Mark Fitzgibbon, chief executive of insurer NIB Health. Nor did Alexander steer any business to NIB. But it was beyond sloppy for Fitzgibbon to have claimed he just let his brother leave his bags in his office, when one of the meetings was actually held in that office, and attended by his own staff.
But by then it was just too much, anyway. The list of Fitzgibbon’s fumbles had grown too long.
===
That bad, huh?
Andrew Bolt
It must be a first. The New York Times agrees with me on Obama - and says in one paragraph what it took me a whole essay in the post below to explain:
Mr. Obama offered few details for how to solve myriad problems and conflicts around the globe, but he offered up his own biography as a credible connection to his audience. While the message touched upon a litany of challenges, it boiled down to simply this: Barack Hussein Obama was standing at the podium as the American president.
===
Christ had one Judas, but poor Joel three
Andrew Bolt
In a war between a Minister and his department, back the bureaucracy. Just ask Joel Fitzgibbon, forced to quit yesterday as Defence Minister:
“I have at least two or three Judas’ in my midst, and they have the drip [sic] on me,” he said. “Sadly, I’m not able to rule out my own ministerial office.”
The next Minister had better be a lot tougher and smarter than Fitzgibbon, or a lot more diplomatic. And one more thing to watch out for: a few more revelations yet.
===
Obama offers Islam himself
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama’s speech to the Muslim world yesterday started with this bizarre and self-debasing account of tensions between the Muslim world and the US:
We meet at a time of tension between the United States and Muslims around the world – tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.
Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims. The attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights. This has bred more fear and mistrust.
Note that all but one of the factors Obama cites or suggests have Muslim countries as the victims of the wicked West. The only other factor, terrorism, is described by Obama as merely a reaction to the West’s aggressive values, and even then he seems to say that the West’s fear of terrorism is a bigger problem than the terrorism itself.
This is profoundly wrong and almost certainly dishonest. Missing from this part of Obama’s analysis is the aggressive wars launched by Muslim nations on each other, on Israel and, covertly, on the West through sponsored terrorism such as the Lockerbie bombing. Missing is the tyranny imposed for so long on most Muslims by their own leaders, and the manipulation of the resentment of citizens into hatred of Jews and the West. Missing is the failure of so many Muslim nations to educate their own citizens and make them wealthy, leaving them to resent the richer West. Missing is that the Muslim world has tense relations not only with the US, but with Israel, Russia. India and Europe.
This is the Big Lie of Obama’s speech, and to support it Obama marshalls a fleet of little lies, too, to flatter rather than illuminate:
===
A dozen chances says rules are for wimps
Andrew Bolt
For more than the sake of the team, Cricket Australia must draw a line under Andrew Symonds’ career:
ANDREW Symonds’ international cricket career is over with news that he is being sent home from England for another drinking offence.
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