RIO Tinto has suspended iron ore price talks with China over the detention of its company executive Stern Hu.
'Scalpel tourism' not what doctor ordered
A PUSH to make Australia a hub for medical tourism could lead to "doctor shopping" for operations.
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Maggot medicine
Medicinal maggots and leeches are saving lives and limbs in Australian hospitals.
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Filmmaker who exposed gang life slain
A FRANCO-SPANISH journalist has been shot dead in El Salvador just weeks before the release of his latest documentary on violent gangs that run drug and extortion rackets in San Salvador.
School hires minder for student menace
A SCHOOL has won permission for a male handler for a boy so violent the principal fears for the safety of teachers and pupils. - Rudd's education revolution. -ed
John Della Bosca - the two-minute man
JOHN Della Bosca is now cutting a forlorn figure as new details of his love affair with a woman half his age emerge and he is dubbed Labor's two-minute man.
Murder victim told to find boys for sex
A Sydney court has heard how an accused murderer pressured his victim to pick up young boys for sex.
PM wants pubs to shut earlier
RUDD says he's no wowser, but state governments should limit opening hours for pubs, clubs.
Son watched as dad shot dead in driveway
BUSINESSMAN caught up in a long-running property dispute shot dead outside luxury home.
Bus driver caught reading while driving
A TERRIFIED passenger used his mobile phone to film a bus driver barely glancing at the road.
Magazine shows the love for love handles
READERS have shown their support for a magazine that published image of "real" model.
Stars' salaries to be slashed at Nine
KERRI-ANNE Kennerley will be the first to face the razor gang as network tries to claw back $20m.
=== Comments ===
Sorry state of affairs may excuse adultery
Piers Akerman
DIALING across talkback frequencies and scanning the Letters to the Editor, it’s not hard to detect a strong current of sympathy for former health minister John Della Bosca. - On its own, the sexual conquest means nothing to me. I believe that the sacking is less to do about the sex and more to do with the related comments of denigration of Rees as Della Bosca moved to take the NSW Premiership.
However, of great concern for me is the incompetence of Della Bosca which is ignored by many because he is a secret's man. It is a slur to remind people that Della Bosca contacted Reba Meagher before the assassination of Newman, because it was Della Bosca’s job to do so regardless of Newman’s life status. But we know Reba got the job after having an affair with a senior ALP identity (by her proud admission to local high school students following her election). Was it the case that Della Bosca was promising things for lovers prior to Harmony? His untalented wife has found herself in federal parliament.
The indiscretion lacks detail for probity checks, and obscures what is needed for the effective running of a clean government.
But for mine I am concerned because Della Bosca was one of two ministers to threaten me for blowing the whistle over Hamidur Rahman, the other minister being Joe Tripodi who is also my local state member. They admitted as much to the Senate when my question was put before Parliament. They justified it with bureaucratic nicety, suggesting they weren’t to know they had threatened me, but the result of their threat must be disturbing to reasonable people.
I have blown the whistle over the possible cover up of the death of Hamidur Rahman, and I have clean hands. Yet the fiction has been circulated that it is not in the public interest to report on the issue. No justification has been given for the assertion, which has cost me my job, my livelihood, my superannuation. Is it the case that the argument supporting the public interest furphy that Della Bosca’s reputation would suffer when he wasn’t party to the death of Hamidur Rahman? Without the ability of demonstrating clean hands, as I have done, and with the appearance of corruption, what does it say about the modern press that this situation continues as it is, with the NSW government limping along? - ed.
Linda M. replied to DD BallDD Ball replied
We are also being told that it is not in the public interest for the claims of the whistleblower in the Orkopoulos matter to be publicly examined. That she suggests political interference in the manner in which both she and the information she reluctantly provided to Parliament of a criminal investigation were handled. Also that Orkopoulos was undoubtedly allowed by Parliament to protect himself in the middle of the supposedly covert police operation by locking her out of her workplace, having been tipped off as to her evidence collection. No-one has ever been questioned about this.
I feel very sorry for you to have suffered from doing nothing but the right thing in the public interest- I know Gillian Sneddon well and she has suffered beyond belief from the treatment which has been meted out to her not least from the ALP itself of which she was a long time member (a real indication of that party’s morality!. No-one knows, until they meet it head on, how innocent lives are destroyed in the name of political expediency. Good people who are nothing but casualties of power and who have little redress.
Are you as frustrated as she is at the failure of the ICAC Committee into the Protection of Public Sector Whistleblowers to speak to any actual whistleblowers in the twelve months they have been sitting?
Taking on the Government is almost an impossibility without strong media support. That the media largely remain detached from matters which go against the principles of open and accountable government in favour of the mildly amusing is deeply disapointing and frustrating.
Linda, you make some excellent points. The ICAC have told me they don’t think the death of the student and the Minister’s actions to warrant an investigation as they don’t think there would be a good chance of securing a conviction. The situation is very ugly.
The Ombudsman’s office have come up with a different lie. They claim it is an employer/employee dispute which they are not allowed to investigate.
The police really can not investigate because the coroner has ruled on the misinformation.
The coroner won’t look into their open investigation because they don’t find the evidence compelling.
Legal aide won’t help me because although I have Aboriginal ancestry I am not Aboriginal. They are too stretched for funds .. but assure me they will fax things if I need things faxed.
I have been timed out of Industrial relations while the Minister was carrying out a false investiagtion by sitting on his hands.
I have been threatened, smeared and I may well lose my home .. but I stand strong on my conviction.
Does anyone really care who Big Dumb Dell was r--ting? As many commentators have pointed out Australia is distinctly different from America and the UK when it comes to hanky panky. In Britain he would have been hung drawn and quartered before having to resign from parliament, in the US he would be reduced to a blubbering mess on some talk show while being made to ask god for forgiveness. The only thing that annoyed me about Dell’s choice was the dereliction of duty - The guy blew off government business to get a polish. As for using his desk as a work bench ...well who hasn’t done that?DD Ball replied to Tim
All this is a distraction. Federal Labor has finally owned up to destroying the Australian economy by stimulating too soon. Tanner has come out and said our imports have blown out as has our current account deficit. What did you expect you goose? You pumped in billions and are now pissed off that people spent it? Big Delling the economy is becoming this government’s favourite hobby.
Tim of BluePillVille
Excellent points Tim, but I feel that the US and UK reserve their worst for conservatives who are indiscreet. Could you imagine Costello getting away with what Swan has done without journalists writing of the end of the world? Kennedy posthumously admitted his behavior was inexcusable re Mary Jo. Yet his supporters excused him often.
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METHOD ACTING
Tim Blair
Don’t feel bad for laughing. It’s not as though she can hear you.
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CREATED AND APPROVED
Tim Blair
If you publish a claim that is later revealed to be inaccurate, yet decline to correct or update that initial claim even though you now know it to be wrong, would that not be a form of intellectual dishonesty? Just asking. Meanwhile, the Guardian reports:
Conservation charity WWF and an ad agency have admitted that a press campaign comparing the loss of life in the New York 9/11 attacks and the Asian tsunami “should never have been made” …
WWF’s ad, which also shows the World Trade Center towers destroyed in the terrorist attacks of 2001, was created and approved at the end of last year and appeared briefly in the Brazilian press.
In a joint statement yesterday from WWF Brazil and DDB Brasil, posted on the ad agency’s website, they admitted that the press ad was “created and approved” for use.
For some reason, I have a powerful desire to fly a jet aircraft into a panda bear.
UPDATE. In a third media statement (click for links to the previous two) WWF headquarters in the US puts further distance between itself and WWF Brazil:
Earlier this week, WWF-US issued a statement based on information provided by WWF Brazil, a separate and independent organization within the international WWF network, that the ad was created by an outside agency and was not authorized by anyone within their organization.
WWF Brazil has subsequently issued statements that have raised doubts about whether the ad concept was approved at some level within the WWF Brazil organization.
We have now re-launched a renewed inquiry into the circumstance surrounding the creation of the ad.
It wasn’t merely created. It was also published and entered in a New York advertising competition.
UPDATE II. After denying that is had anything to with a video version of the WWF 9/11 ad, agency DDB Brasil is now trying to have the ad removed from YouTube:
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by DDB BRASIL.
“Got that?” writes Simon Scowl. “DDB Brasil had nothing to do with the ad and has no idea who created it, which is why DDB Brasil is now claiming copyright.”
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PROP WAVED
Tim Blair
Following the arrest in the UK last month of seven carbon traders who are suspected of using ill-gotten carbon dollars to “finance lavish lifestyles and the purchase of prestige vehicles”, another possible carbon outrage emerges:
An Australian company has been swept up in a $100 million carbon trading scandal in Papua New Guinea after claims fake carbon certificates were given to landowners to help persuade them to sign over the rights to their forests.
Fake carbon certificates? Got ‘em right here. Who’d ever have thought they might be worth something?
An investigation has begun and the head of PNG’s Office of Climate Change, Theo Yasause, has been removed.
Dave Sag, the chief executive of the company involved, Carbon Planet, admitted yesterday that his PNG partner, Kirk Roberts, had used mocked-up carbon certificates signed by Mr Yasause as ‘’props’’ when negotiating with landowners. But he denied media reports in PNG the certificates were stolen or were intended to mislead.
Sag’s reported explanation:
‘’Those certificates are worthless … No one who knows anything about carbon would take them in any way seriously,’’ Mr Sag said. ‘’They ended up in Kirk’s hands because they would have been produced as a prop to be taken out and waved in front of people in order to provide some physicality to what is essentially an ephemeral thing.’’
Rich white guy waves magical money paper at poor black people. This isn’t a good look. Nor, in the light of this prop-waving, is a 2007 statement from Carbon Planet:
Carbon Planet is not a charity. Carbon Planet is a business whose mission is to enable every individual and organisation on the planet to eliminate their global warming impact. When we started Carbon Planet, we had to decide whether it was going to be a company, a charity, or a non-profit organisation. We chose a company structure because it could be financed by investment, would require less paperwork, would be a more flexible entity, and because it one day might make us some money …
That declaration was subsequently revised:
Carbon Planet is not a charity. Carbon Planet is a full spectrum carbon management company whose mission is to enable every individual and organisation on the planet to eliminate their global warming impact. We want to be part of the market economic solution to global warming and effect change on a planetary scale.
And, presumably, to make some money.
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FURBALL WARMING
Tim Blair
PETA merely wanted to create harmless and friendly sea kitties. But Greenpeace demands the Frankenstein-like construction of nothing less than a planet-destroying feline behemoth:
Treasurer Wayne Swan should press his G20 colleagues to create a $170 billion global climate change kitty when they meet in London this weekend, Greenpeace says.
That’s one fat kitty. Your era of domination is almost over, monster duck. Make your time! Britain’s gigantic fake trees should look out as well, lest they be exposed to fatal kitty-scritchin’.
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YOU SOUND SO DISTANT
Tim Blair
Joe Hildebrand’s routine bugging of a Sydney apartment building reveals the final conversation between former NSW health minister John Della Bosca and his cute comedy companion. Also, Joe observes the Della action outside state parliament:
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NO CASABLANCA FOR KIDS
Tim Blair
Among the many ways our betters would seek to protect us:
Make smoking classifiable in movies
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