Headlines Saturday 9th January 2010

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Happy birthday Dad
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Google's search engine returns common results to most queries as you type — but the company appears to be censoring its results when it comes to Islam.

Not Guilty Plea for Christmas Day Airline Terror Suspect
Not guilty plea is entered on behalf of Nigerian man charged with attempting to blow up airliner

F-16s Dispatched Over Flight Scare
Plane going from Atlanta to San Francisco diverted to Colorado due to drunk, unruly passenger, officials say

Model Seen Moments Before Murder?
Video shows ex-Playboy model leaving Miami nightclub hours before charred body found in Dumpster


Northern Territory police officer Brett Meredith is farewelled by his grieving widow Amee and family

Crime matriach loses turf war
JUDY Moran has allegedly lost a turf war against mum-in-the-boot accomplice Tania Herman.

Ady Gil promises to pay for new boat
ANIMAL-lover Ady Gil will help Sea Shepherd build new stealth boat in time for next whaling season.

Australian Idol 'first casualty' of 2010
STRUGGLING Australian Idol will be "rested" for 2010, according to an insider report.

Cartoonist defends his KKK cartoon

CARTOONIST who drew police as KKK members says racism "officially accepted" in Australia. - in failing to address the issue of Hamidur Rahman, the Australian governments involved in the apparent cover up open Australia to the charge of racism - ed.

I live in Sydney Australia and I am a whistleblower who has paid a very high price for appropriately reporting on the death of school boy Hamidur Rahman in 2002. The school boy died through apparent school negligence, but the coroner ruled it as an accident and assigned partial responsibility to the parents. My testimony would exonerate the parents of blame and focus on the school authorities who knowingly gave a boy allergic to peanuts peanut butter in front of his entire year when he had consistently said he was allergic.
Your fine paper has been criticized by the Australian press for running a cartoon gently poking fun at Australia's apparent racism. Let Australia deal with this issue first if it doesn't wish to be known for the racism that apparently exists.

Toddler tooth decay now an 'epidemic'
TOOTH decay in children and toddlers has now reached "epidemic" proportions.

No sure action against Japanese whaling
THE Government won't guarantee action against Japanese whaling, despite tougher anti-whaling rhetoric since Wednesday. - Rudd promised much and has failed to take any action, even appropriate measures - ed.

Supplies, services critical in arctic UK
WITH arctic-like temperatures in the UK, many businesses have had gas turned off and daily operations severely disrupted.


Brittany Murphy's mum begs for her daughter to come back to life after finding her unconscious in the shower, in a heartbreaking plea caught on a 911 tape / AP

Man 'drinks, sleeps' as woman dies
AS FRAIL Janet May Jackson lay dying in her home with broken legs, her companion Peter Gyory allegedly gave her a painkiller, drank booze and fell asleep.

Emmanuel Adebayor survives gunmen attack on Togo soccer team

GUNMEN have opened fire on a bus carrying Togo's national football squad to the top African tournament in Angola, killing the driver and wounding nine others, including two players.


Arctic blast sweeping the United States has pushed temperatures so low, it's even colder than both poles - the article is misleading, but entertainingly so. - ed.

=== Journalists Corner ===

It's the critical race to fill the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat!
So what's this underdog's plan to pull out an upset win?
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Guest: Mitt Romney
Health care reform - terror threats - & the president's first year performance! Mitt's speaking out on America's hot-button issues!
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Cold Weather Cash?
As the deep freeze heats up energy prices, will the cold weather end up saving taxpayers in the end?
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You Be The Judge
Does the "underpants bomber" deserve the same legal rights as you? The governor breaks it down.

=== Comments ===
President Obama Addresses Terrorism Again
By Bill O'Reilly
Late Thursday afternoon, the president once again talked about the failure to stop the underwear bomber on Christmas Day. The address was supposed to contain some sharp analysis, perhaps a firing or two. It did not.

Instead, the president mostly repeated his opinion that the federal counterterrorism operation pretty much failed across the board, but no individuals will be held responsible.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Now at this stage in the review process, it appears that this incident was not the fault of a single individual or organization, but rather a systemic failure across organizations and agencies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Can we have a moratorium on systemic failure, please? I don't want to hear it. Do you want to hear it again? No one wants to hear that again. It may be true. We've heard it 5,000 times.

Then the president went on to state the obvious, that America is at war with Al Qaeda.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Let's be clear about what this moment demands. We are at war. We're at war against Al Qaeda, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, and that is plotting to strike us again, and we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OK, fine. Another rallying cry to defeat Al Qaeda, but haven't we seen the movie before?

This is not a knock at President Obama, but there was absolutely nothing new in his presentation Thursday. America remains on the defensive in the War on Terror. We're not taking the fight to the enemy, with the exception of the drone attacks directed by the CIA.

The president, once again, went out of his way to state that most Muslims do not support Al Qaeda — I think we all know that by now — and that the terrorists will be defeated by bringing the world together against them.

But after one year in office, Mr. Obama is not even close to doing that. And his soft policies on interrogation and civilian trials for overseas terrorists surely have not made us safer.

"Talking Points" believes President Obama does indeed want to protect us and does indeed want to destroy Al Qaeda. The drone action proves it. But there is no question that his anti-terror policies are not nearly as tough as what President Bush put into effect. That will be a challenge for President Obama in the future.

If we do get hit again, all the serious speeches in the world, all the rhetoric in the world is not going to help him. The USA needs tough, bold action to defeat Al Qaeda. No spin.
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THINGS SCIENTISTS SAY VI
Tim Blair
Another sprint through the science-laden archives of the New York Times:

• 1948: “Whale Meat as Food; British Scientists Seeking Ways To Eliminate Fishy Taste.”

It actually tastes more like a mammal. Whatever.

• 1950: “BALDNESS YIELDS TO NO SCIENTISTS … There is absolutely nothing that can be done to protect a man from the general patterned baldness, beginning at the temples and the crown of the head, which is characteristic of most men over 30 years old.”

Particularly among scientists over 30.

• 1958: “The existence of the ‘Abominable Snowman’ is being ‘confirmed little by little’ by a distinguished group of Soviet scientists."

Denialism has robbed us of so many scientific breakthroughs.
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SWIFT BOATED
Tim Blair
Sea Shepherd senior mollusc Chuck Swift, prior to this week’s ocean theatre:

“The Ady Gil gives us the speed necessary to catch and stay with the Japanese whaling fleet.”

But, curiously, not enough speed to avoid getting hit by lumbering whale ships.
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RETREAT TO REHEAT
Tim Blair
The Associated Press on recent chillification, and warmening’s resilience:

Beijing had its coldest morning in almost 40 years and its biggest snowfall since 1951. Britain is suffering through its longest cold snap since 1981. And freezing weather is gripping the Deep South, including Florida’s orange groves and beaches.

Whatever happened to global warming?

Such weather doesn’t seem to fit with warnings from scientists that the Earth is warming because of greenhouse gases. But experts say the cold snap doesn’t disprove global warming at all – it’s just a blip in the long-term heating trend.

“It’s part of natural variability,” said Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. With global warming, he said, “we’ll still have record cold temperatures. We’ll just have fewer of them.”

Fewer deaths due to record cold, then. And fewer falling iguanas. Bring on the life-saving warmth!

UPDATE:

Key West, Florida – the southernmost point in the continental United States – hit a 131-year low of 47 degrees Thursday and the forecast promised more of the same as icy cold swept across the Southeast.

Doesn’t prove anything, though. Does it, Peter?
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THIS COULD START A TREND
Tim Blair
The “most amazing thing” about Avatar, according to Joe Klein:The Americans were the bad guys.
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STILL ON OUR SIDE
Tim Blair
Maybe the greater surprise isn’t that Charles Johnson became a left-wing blogger, but that he’s become such an incredibly inept and error-prone left-wing blogger. The once-forensic Johnson hasn’t landed a punch since he changed teams (or reverted).

Then again, it could be argued that Charles is still hurting the left – by the ingenious tactic of first reinventing himself and then bringing himself down.

In fact, that could explain everything; Charles has become a leftoid in order to further discredit leftists. Because he sure isn’t going to crush conservatism by running pieces like this …
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THIS IS NOT HAPPENING
Tim Blair
“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past,” claimed the Independent, back in March 2000:

Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

What sort of kooky climate clown would ever predict such a thing?

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

They might be getting a vague idea now. David Viner, by the way, has since become the ”head of the British Council’s climate change programme”, whatever that means.
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GLUB GLUB
Tim Blair
Nature her bad self kills the Ady Gil:

In our list of forces working against the Sea Shepherd’s desperate struggle to save the foundering Ady Gil, weather was the number one concern.

Unfortunately, it now appears that Mother Nature has claimed the stealth boat.

Old Gil never was the lucky type. “At this point unfortunately the Ady Gil is on the bottom of the Southern Ocean,” says a SS spokeswhelk. Odd that no collision video was ever released from this high-tech wondercraft. Investigations are underway:

Criminal charges could be laid over Wednesday’s high seas crash which holed the anti-whaling ship in Antarctic waters.

Australia’s Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard has ordered the the Australian Maritime Safety Authority to investigate and promised to make the findings public.

Parallel investigations are taking place in New Zealand and Japan.

A specialist in maritime law at the University of Queensland says it is fairly likely that charges will be laid over the collision although it is too early to say against whom.

Place your bets, folks. Meanwhile, Terri Irwin is an idiot:

Australia Zoo wildlife warrior Terri Irwin says commercial whaling should be likened to cannibalism or slavery and yesterday gave her approval to violent protests to stop the hunt.

Here’s some background on Irwin’s hero:

[Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson] has been reported as referring to Greenpeace as “Yellowpeace” over its refusal to use violence, and in a 2007 interview with the New Yorker claimed credit for sinking – in port – 10 ships. The magazine’s assessment was that he and his crew had attempted to scuttle two vessels and had successfully sunk two others.

Even on that lower estimate, he’s got a better strike rate than the French.

UPDATE. Clean up your rubbish, Sea Shepherdesses:

Sea Shepherd spokespeople have repeatedly claimed the boat had sunk, and today the activist group abandoned the scene.

But Japanese authorities have released photographs which show the Ady Gil wreckage is still afloat in pristine Antarctic waters.

It would be terrible if a whale bumped into it and hurt itself.

UPDATE II. It’s only a little oil slick:

[Ady Gil captain Pete] Bethune, who was on board the Sea Shepherd ship the Bob Barker last night, said they drained hundreds of litres of diesel from the Ady Gil but admitted it was possible “a little bit of a [diesel] slick” was left behind.

“It’s a diesel boat but we did everything we could to remove the fuel,” he said. “It’s pretty rich of the Japanese whalers to be accusing us of environmental damage when we cleaned up their mess because they were the ones that caused the collision.”

We’ve seen the video, Pete. Maritime enthusiast Bob Brown is devastated by the loss of this twin-engined, 1000-horsepower wankboat:

Greens senator Bob Brown yesterday mailed a $2 million bill for the vessel to the Japanese ambassador.

“The Japanese fleet is entirely responsible for the destruction of the Ady Gil,” Senator Brown said.

Greens are usually happy when large carbon-generating machinery is destroyed.

UPDATE III. A caption argues with a photograph.