===
Hotel getaway pair still on the run
NSW police have launched a nationwide manhunt for two men involved in a botched inner-Sydney hotel robbery and siege in which one police officer was shot and nearly killed.
Killers targeted my family: Brenda Lin
Orphaned teenager Brenda Lin believes those responsible for the murder of her family were targeting her parents but she has no idea why.
Labor backs down, splits climate bills
Labor has backed down on its hardline on emissions trading and will split the legislation allowing a vote on its renewable energy target as early as this week.
Discounts at Docklands in Melbourne as Costco opens
THOUSANDS of Victorians are expected to flood the first Australian warehouse of major discount chain Costco when it opens its doors in Melbourne.
Four children die in house fire
A YOUNG dad battled to save his wife and four children who perished in a house fire.
Murder trials 'to be screened on TV'
A STATE moves to allow filming and photographing of court hearings including sentencing and victim impact statements.
Hammer attack leads to twist of fate
ARMED robbers probably saved this man's health and even his life when they hit his jaw with a hammer, which led doctors to discover a bigger health scare.
Woman lied about 'killer' boyfriend
The eldest of three siblings found murdered in their home had repeatedly lied to her family about a relationship with her alleged killer.
Stay and fight at your peril: Teague
Victorians will be warned for the first time that they risk their lives by staying to defend their homes in a bushfire.
Ritual suicide attempt at Japanese parliament
A man has stabbed himself outside parliament in an attempted ritual suicide.
Kyle falls short on donation promise
On the eve of their return to the airwaves, embattled broadcasters Kyle and Jackie O are again under fire over $150,000 they pledged to a disabled boy and his family.
Ex-wife lit fatal wedding party fire
The ex-wife of the groom has admitted to lighting a fire that killed 43 women and children at a wedding party.
John Abi-Saab accused of blackmailing corrupt Strathfield mayor Alfred Tsang
A court's heard a corrupt Strathfield mayor was threatened by a councillor who wanted his job. Alfred Tsang was charged of corruption after an ICAC investigation in 2004.
Future tourism may include robot sex
IT sounds like science fiction, but robot bar staff, hotel rooms that change colour, cruise ships as big as aircraft carriers and even robot sex are part of the future for travellers, a tourism conference has been told. - doesn't the alleged use of vibrators mean that some are used now? - ed.
=== Comments ===
Labor stooges blow hot air on emissions
Piers Akerman
COURTESY of the ABC television program Q And A, I have been given a precious insight into the heart of the global warming scam and here’s how it works: lies and obfuscation and total confusion. - The Rudd government has yet to make a difficult decision. In policy terms, they followed the unions on Workchoices, They followed the cash on Education and spent up big on ALP supporting industry to little effect. They have failed to come up with answers on law and order or border or constitutional protection, but they have gotten rid of some effective operators like Keelty or GG Jefferies and replaced them with .. ?? They have an extensive cash for votes campaign.
Now, we don’t know what the transition arrangements are for when Rudd steps aside. He has to step aside before the bill comes in or he will never get the UN position he yearns for. Before interest rates skyrocket and unemployment shoots up. I note that I no longer need to wait in a dole queue each fortnight .. instead I phone in my details .. I work full time with no conditions for beneath the minimum wage.
I care about the environment. I want those in our future to enjoy what we have, and more. To that end, I think it important that industry (and small business) be strong and flexible. Something that will never happen so long as Rudd is PM and the ALP are in government. I note Mr Turnbull is doing a great job right now .. which is why so many ALP supporters are savaging him .. note the allegedly conservative writers who also savage him .. you can see their loyalties. - ed.
Once again our central bank (the RBA) has been forced to clean up Labor’s mess. Labor’s fiscal insanity - the injection of 340 billion into the circular flow has forced our central to ‘mop up’ by raising rates. Its an old wealth redistribution scam Labor does. These idiots also want a capital gains tax increase on houses worth more than 2 million ...whats next ? Death duties?DD Ball replied to Tim
JMK 101 even states that fiscal spends should only be initiated at the trough of a recession never in the beginning and NEVER before. Recessions (vile as they are) serve to remove dead wood, retire debt and reallocate resources to more efficient areas. Rudd blowing money now stops all the good bits and guarantees new businesses will have to pay higher interest rates.
Coupled with this fiscal/monetary insanity is the carbon tax...sorry trading scheme. Did these guys have a meeting in 07 and decide which was the best way to f_ck the economy? When Labor is booted from office they will have left us with a structurally uncompetitive economy with little or no hope of regeneration.
Turnbull must stop dithering and stand against the proponents of GH/GW/CC. His watered down option is merely a ‘me too’ effort - a compromise between the polls and sound economic management. What he does not realise is that clarity is the only thing that will win voters over. Arguing details just glazes over the eyes of voters.
“A question must be asked”
The economy is always finely balanced between growth and spending, and rectitude. The ALP government likes to be seen to give out cash, and the reserve, as partner to the ALP, likes to be seen being responsible. Generally, at low interest rates, Banks don’t require a wide margin as a smaller margin is still a substantial percentage. So when Costello got lower rates, the banks lowered them further because of this truth.
However, under the ALP, the scare mongering was such that the banks could not lower their rates in line with proportional values because they were still exposed. In other words, ALP policy has forced banks to raise interest rates beyond ordinary costs. So when interest rates rise again and banks lift them as well, their take will be higher.
Meanwhile, talk of raising interest rates may encourage a substantial number to fix their loans. These rates are generally higher than floating rate loans and mean that the government can raise interest rates without lifting the carded rate .. because people are paying higher amounts anyways.
===
MOUNTAIN TOP CHERRY-PICKED
Tim Blair
Isolated warming causes general alarm:
Australian skiers may have to look overseas in search of suitable snowfalls, thanks to global warming.
The average snow cover at Australia’s highest altitude snow course, Spencer’s Creek in the Snowy Mountains, has declined by 30 per cent to 40 per cent in the last 50 years, a conference in Brisbane will be told today.
Global warming sure is selective; while Spencer’s Creek is thinning, everywhere else seems to be loading up. Why go overseas? More pre-conference panic:
Unlike skiers, specialised plants that have learnt to survive in the Australian highlands don’t have the option of seeking out higher ground and may face extinction, Associate Professor Catherine Pickering of Griffith University said.
See, that’s where you’re wrong, Professor. Australian plants have a well-known ability to run away.
===
CAR BRIE
Tim Blair
Costco is go:
Thousands of people have flocked to the opening of a new supermarket that threatens to break Coles’ and Woolworths’ stranglehold on the Australian grocery market.
As the doors opened at US retail giant Costco’s first Australian store in Melbourne this morning thousands of bargain hunting shoppers poured in on the promise of cheap goods from groceries to flat-screen TVs.
“There were people queuing halfway down Docklands this morning,” a Costco spokesperson told ninemsn from the store. “There are thousands of people in the store at the moment.”
We await Costco stores in NSW. A friend texts that the Melbourne outlet has “king crab claws from Russia for 32 bucks a kilo and a wheel of brie you could drive a car on”.
===
FINALLY, A CATCHY PHRASE ON FACEBOOK
Tim Blair
Maureen Dowd, back to her spitey best, attacks an attractive younger woman:
[Sarah Palin] took a forum, Facebook, more commonly used by kids hooking up and cyberstalking, and with one catchy phrase, several footnotes and a zesty disregard for facts, managed to hijack the health care debate from Mr. Obama.
“So,” asks William A. Jacobson, “why is Dowd on Facebook?”
===
COUSIN RODNEY’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND
Tim Blair
Johnny Dee surveys brief Amazon reviews, including:
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles: “My cousin Rodney is a better song writer than these clowns.”
This Is Spinal Tap: “If you’re going to make such an excellent documentary, why make it about about a band that nobody has ever heard of?”
Moby Dick, Herman Melville: “Too nautical for me.”
Via Brat, who recommends further one-star reading.
===
NEWS BRIEFLETS
Tim Blair
• Don Surber marks the 40th anniversary of Woodstock with an appropriate musical selection. Oh baby, hoggify!
• Pit bull is on the menu in New Zealand.
• A moment of liberty witnessed by Glenn Reynolds:
A man — late 40s, big, with a wife and a daughter — came in with an empty holster on his belt. As he sat down at the booth next to mine, the manager came by and asked him if he’d left his gun in the car. Yes, said the man, who had a permit but thought he wasn’t allowed to carry in restaurants in Tennessee. Well, they’ve changed the law, said the manager, and if you want to go get it that’s fine with us.
• Small-screen sadness:
“Reno 911!” won’t be answering emergency calls anymore …
“Reno 911! was canceled at 1:30 pm today,” the show’s co-creator/star Thomas Lennon wrote on his Twitter feed Thursday afternoon. “Won’t be wearing the shorts again.”
• Covered by soup, Harry Hutton’s thoughts naturally turn to Benjamin Franklin.
• A shock poll result among progressive online activists:
Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin proved to be extremely unpopular with conference attendees: Just 1 percent rated Palin favorably, compared to 88 percent who rated her unfavorably.
One per cent of them … like her? This is the equivalent of 99 per cent approval among normal people.
• Now that dissent is out of style, Jim Treacher modernises Rage Against the Machine: “Thank you, I will do what he tells me.”
===
Go fetch
Andrew Bolt
Kyle Sandilands will be back into the studio tomorrow to make more millions for his Austereo bosses, who earn their cash by pimping a man who does things like this:
2DAYFM and Kyle Sandilands broke a promise to provide a disabled child’s family with $150,000 in donations, an investigation by Nine’s TODAY show has revealed.
Wendy Koman went on the Kyle and Jackie O show in March as part of a segment to raise money for her paralysed four-year-old son Josh.
“The [producer] was saying to me you’ve got to sound ... emotional, people will donate more money that way,” Ms Koman told TODAY.
Kyle Sandilands promised on air to give the family $35,000 of his own money and several listeners also phoned in with their own pledges, making the total $150,000…
Wendy and her husband John, who have both quit their jobs to take care of their son, were overjoyed with the result… But when the family arrived at the radio station offices to collect their money, they said they were instead given a list of names and numbers to contact the people who had donated.
The family has now been forced to call every number on the list to try to chase up the donations themselves… So far the Koman family has managed to collect $50,204, a third of what they were promised during the radio segment.
The family said that after dozens of phone calls, Sandilands gave them $20,000 — $15,000 short of the $35,000 he promised.
That’s executive chairman Peter Harvie’s boy. Wonder who Harvie will get to sponsor this garbage. I’ll let you know.
===
A snapshot of Rudd’s emissions con
Andrew Bolt
Almost everything you need to know about Kevin Rudd’s useless plan to cut out gases - when temperatures are falling, not rising.
First, it will cost more than you’re told, even in the first year of its “soft” introduction, before food is included and squeeze goes on:
However, the Food and Grocery Council believes the increase in grocery prices would be much higher, about 5 per cent… Australian Retailers Association executive director Russell Zimmerman said the ETS would lead to a sharp increase in grocery shelf prices as costs increased at every stage of the production and distribution process.
“It’s going to be a high cost to the consumer - the food manufacturer gets an ETS charge, then there’s delivery, and the retailers use refrigeration and lighting, and the cost of that is all going to be handed on,” Mr Zimmerman said.
Next, few people dare to speak out against the madness:
Large retailers, while privately concerned, are believed to be hesitant to voice their objections to the ETS for fear of tarnishing their reputation among environmentally conscious consumers.
Third, carpertbaggers are pushing this scheme on us:
The peak group, the Business Council of Australia, is divided over its position on the plan to reduce carbon emissions..., with finance sector elements backing the ETS and the mining industry vehemently opposed. The split has led to the circulation of an anti-ETS paper from within the BCA that concludes 67 of its 109 members will not have a carbon permit liability under the government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
The overwhelming majority of the 67 are in the finance, legal or legal services sector, which the analysis says are expected to make huge profits out of the ETS.
Fourth, even many Labor figures have no faith in Rudd’s plan - or even in global warming theory:
The paper’s author also names at least 12 senior Labor figures - seven of them frontbenchers, including three cabinet ministers - who they say have expressed doubts about the government’s ETS privately to either BCA member companies or their industry group representatives.
UPDATE
Reader Soldier suggests the question the Liberals should be asking (if only they dared to oppose this insanity):
‘Exactly what will be the price increase for a birthday cake under the ETS?
Kevin Rudd will have as little clue as did John Hewson:
UPDATE
Reader Don is now convinced that Kevin Rudd has found a new use for an old cure:
===
Something has not been taught
Andrew Bolt
I don’t know who is right and who is wrong in this standoff between two teachers and the Northern Territory Education Department. But it does seem there’s a terrible problem with this Central Australian school and the culture of its community. For instance:
This dog was kicked so hard by students that it died shortly after this photo was taken. Animal abuse on school grounds by school students during school hours, was common. A DET executive ordered us not to discuss the issue of dogs on school grounds for cultural reasons.And, about Floyd, the school’s donkey:
Question: Would the serial abuse of an animal on school grounds by groups of students during school hours—punching, slapping, poking it with sticks, hitting it with stones, broken glass, clubbing it with bottles, ramming it with garbage bins--be allowed at an urban school? On one occasion, a student walked up to the donkey and shoved a thumbtack into its nose, slapped it and ran off. On another occasion, a student took a sharp knife, slashing the donkey’s leg resulting in considerable bleeding. A young girl from Upper Primary even grabbed the donkey’s penis using her hand which was underneath her shirt and tried to push it into its anus as several students stood around urging her on. I am not raising this issue to simply complain – I was the one who was gotten rid of and deemed to have had behavioural management issues without being told for the first 8 months, without producing any written evidence, and without a single specific example after having over a year to do so.Then there’s the truancy (more than 50 per cent last year), the lack of respect for elders, the vandalism....
The question isn’t so much whether these teachers were incompetent or not - and I concede the tone of this website is at times manic. The real question is whether anyone in authority - from Canberra to Darwin to the Alekarenge community itself - is doing a competent job to in creating functioning citizens of these children, despite all the programs funded there.
There are others, however, who claim the school in fact is ”noted for its high acadamic achievement”, so it may be that things have improved lately. And, who knows, maybe a new $2 million pavillion at Alekarenge school will not just stimulate the economy, but get children better guidance and education.
I mean, a pavillion can teach, can’t it?
===
What’s happening to us?
Andrew Bolt
I could have highlighted any one of the many recent assaults in our streets that warn of a growing viciousness, but here’s just the latest:
The brawl took place at the preliminary final of an under-16 match between Tullamarine Football Club and the Northern Saints.
Players and supported from the Tullamarine team had to barricade themselves in the changerooms after the match with spectators and players involved in a massive fight on the ground....Neil Mitchell says three kids were taken to hospital with one of these knocked out after being struck by a hammer.
UPDATE
The Australian Institute of Criminology last year noted a steady increase in the rate of assaults over the past decade, from an already historic high:
Recorded assault increased again in 2007, to 840 per 100,000, compared with 623 per 100,000 in 1996. The 2007 rate was the highest recorded since 1996… The rate of recorded sexual assault increased between 1997 and 2007, from 78 to 94 persons per 100,000 per year.
===
New consensus: No proof we’re warming the world
Andrew Bolt
More than 50 physicists, including a Nobel laureate and many others prominent in their field, have signed a new petition warning against the great warming hoax:
As physicists who are familiar with the science issues, and as current and past members of the American Physical Society, we the undersigned urge the Council to revise its current statement* on climate change as follows, so as to more accurately represent the current state of the science:
Greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, accompany human industrial and agricultural activity. While substantial concern has been expressed that emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today. In addition, there is an extensive scientific literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals.
Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth’s climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.
UPDATE
More than 80 physicists have now signed the petition. How many signed the society’s pro-AGW declaration that they want rewritten?
===
Mentioning the elephants in the room
Andrew Bolt
Our retreat from reason is more extensive than even I feared:
(ANZ chief executive John) McFarlane and (ANZ institutional banking head Steve) Targett differed over more than just banking matters. “You’ve read in the press (that) John liked things like feng shui,” Targett says. “He loved that sort of stuff. I guess I am a different person. It worked for him but it wasn’t for me.
“I didn’t need to see the feng shui consultant come around and put little elephants in the corner of my office and tell me to give money to 10 beggars in 10 days and the like, otherwise I would have bad luck. I’m not that sort of person.”
UPDATE
The Advertiser’s Samela Harris gets the treatment:
Uncle Rupert Peters and Uncle Toby Ginger are famous men in their field and in high demand not only in Aboriginal communities but, increasingly, in the city by non-Aborigines. Their mystical medicine has joined a panoply of alternative treatments sought by a troubled world…
After tentative exploratory probes, they take a firm, sharp-fingernailed grip of the flesh and they pull hard, capturing what is, to us, some invisible mystery. To them it is a black clot.
“Like a stone,” explains Uncle Toby. It is a block to health, a wellspring of illness…
The Ngangkari can work only in the open air or by a window. They have to throw those nasty little nesting “stones” far, far away.
Today, it is from the top floor of the Native Titles Offices in King William St… I am told by Native Titles Services project officer Lynette Ackland that most of the staff have had treatment and the Ngangkari are brought to the city from their home on the APY Lands at regular intervals to maintain the wellbeing of the workers…
The sense of wellbeing they seem to elicit in city workers, however, prompts Native Titles Services CEO Parry Agius to suggest that perhaps the South Australian health system should take Ngangkari aboard.
===
The real crisis is the spin
Andrew Bolt
Biggest-ever downturn since the Great Depression, or just the biggest-ever spin?
Julia Gillard clings to the myth of the great downturn while talking to Laurie Oakes on the Nine Network yesterday.
I think people understand that this nation is dealing with the impact of the biggest global economic downturn in our lifetime, Laurie; the biggest global economic downturn since the Great Depression.
RBA Governor Glenn Stevens on Friday in his opening statement to the House of Representatives standing committee on economics:
AT this point, the fall in hours worked looks larger than what occurred in 2001, but not as large as in 1991. In fact, that is probably a reasonable characterisation of this downturn in general. On the basis of the information to hand at present, this may well turn out to be one of the shallower recessions Australia has experienced.
Kevin Rudd in The Monthly in March:
FROM time to time in human history there occur events of a truly seismic significance, events that mark a turning point between one epoch and the next, when one orthodoxy is overthrown and another takes its place ... There is a sense that we are now living through just such a time ... barely 30 years since the triumph of neo-liberalism, that particular brand of free-market fundamentalism, extreme capitalism and excessive greed which became the economic orthodoxy of our time. The agent for this change is what we now call the global financial crisis. In the space of just 18 months, this crisis has become one of the greatest assaults on global economic stability to have occurred in three-quarters of a century.
Bill Emmott in The Times on Friday:
CLAIMS that this is the worst slump since the 1930s, or in a century, were way overblown. It has been bad, very bad ... But the “worst since the 1930s” label has not, thus far, been merited on any measure for Britain barring the GDP performance in just one three-month period (January to March this year), which for most people is meaningless ... The biggest implication of a recession that ends now is that the obituaries written last year for liberalism, for the 30 years of policy domination by the ideas of Reagan and Thatcher, will prove premature.
===
Jihad against jihadists. Allah confused
Andrew Bolt
My fundamentalist Islamist state is better than yours:
DIVISIONS within the Palestinian side of politics reached crisis point yesterday after 24 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in a seven-hour shoot-out in the Gaza Strip between Hamas and hardline Islamists linked to al-Qa’ida.
Security officers from Hamas, which runs Gaza, moved against Jund Ansar Allah - also known as Jihadi Soldiers of God, or Soldiers of the Partisans of God - after its leader Sheik Abdel-Latif Moussa, declared Gaza was “an Islamic emirate”.
Now, if Israel had attacked those jiahidsts… But when it’s Muslims yet again killing Muslims, it’s barely a story.
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