A television company approached a man to appear on a celebrity reality TV show on the grounds that he had been accused of murdering a toddler.

Granada productions is working on an Australian version of the British series, 'I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here'.

They approached Greg Domaszewicz, who was acquitted in 1998 by a Supreme Court jury of murdering toddler Jaidyn Leskie. A new inquest on the murder is currently underway.

(Source: Adelaide Advertiser)

 

U.S. online search engine Google will adhere to Beijing's censorship policies and limit certain search results in China to get broader access to the large market.

The Chinese government censors content that is considered politically sensitive. As a result, online users have been blocked from using Google or experienced delays in response time.

Among the taboo topics are Taiwan's independence and 1989's Tiananmen Square massacre.

(Source: CBC [Canada])

 

The head of an investigation into alleged CIA secret prisons in Europe has said evidence points to a system of "outsourcing" of torture by the US, and it is highly likely European governments knew about it.

"There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or 'outsourcing' of torture," Swiss Senator Dick Marty stated in a report to the Council of Europe, the human rights watchdog on whose behalf he is investigating.

"Acts of torture or severe violation of detainees' dignity...are carried [out] outside national territory and beyond the authority of national intelligence services." The report said "extraordinary rendition" - transferring terrorist suspects to countries where they may face torture - "seems to have concerned more than 100 persons in recent years".

"It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were aware," it says.

The investigation was launched after allegations surfaced in November that US agents interrogated key al-Qaeda suspects at clandestine prisons in Eastern Europe and transported some suspects to other countries through Europe.

Despite the lack of what he called 'formal evidence' of the existence of clandestine detention centres in Romania or Poland, as alleged by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, Senator Marty said "there are many indications from various sources which must be considered reliable, justifying the continuation of...investigative work."

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"This is the day that the Lord has made! We shall rejoice and be glad in the new Wal-Mart that the Lord has made."

Lester Packingham, Wal-Mart General Manager,
Richmond County, Virginia.

 

Sydney's reliance on cars and neglect of public transport is costing more than $18 billion a year and threatens to choke the NSW economy, a new study shows.

The independent Centre for International Economics study of the hidden 'social costs' of Sydney's ailing transport network shows commuters spend more than three days stuck in traffic every year.

About $12 billion is wasted in time spent in traffic and higher vehicle operating expenses, $4 billion in accidents and related health care, lost labour and vehicle repairs, and $1 billion each in air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

The survey found these costs could blow out to $24 billion by 2020 unless the state government invests more in public transport.

(Source: Herald Sun)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"Dead and wounded dissidents, if identifiable, must be removed immediately by the police ... When being reported, dissident and own casualties are categorised merely as dead or wounded. To inhibit propaganda exploitation by the dissidents the cause of the casualties (for example, 'shot') is not reported. A follow-up operation should be carried out to maintain the momentum of the dispersing crowd."

The Australian Army Manual of Land Warfare, on dealing with domestic 'dissidents'.

 

Australian companies can claim tax deductions when they pay bribes, according to a new report.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report also found that Australian diplomats were not required to divulge incidents of bribery involving Australian companies.

The OECD found that although bribes outright were now banned as a tax deduction, companies could still make what were termed "facilitation payments" - effectively small bribes - and claim them on tax.

The report came on the second day of an inquiry into Australian wheat exporter AWB's role in propping up former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime through the United Nations' discredited oil-for-food program.

(Source: The Age)

 

Bullying and harassment are prevalent throughout Victoria's Government departments and public agencies, and many workers are unwilling to complain because they fear it will do them more harm than good.

A government survey of 14,000 public sector workers found that more than one in five had been bullied or harassed by colleagues or managers in the past year. A further 40 per cent had witnessed others being abused.

Most respondents reported that the bullying took the form of psychological harassment and/or verbal abuse.

Despite the Government's pledge that whistleblowers in the bureaucracy are protected by legislation, one-third of respondents believed they would suffer if they complained about workplace problems. Half were not aware of Victoria's whistleblower protection laws. Others suspected nothing would be done if they spoke up.

The research was conducted by the State Services Authority, Victoria's new public service watchdog.

Community and Public Sector Union secretary Karen Batt said the study reinforced what the union had long known - that bullying and harassment was one of the biggest sources of complaints from its members, particular in areas such as juvenile justice and prisons.

"This is a bit of a wake-up call for the Premier and the Government," Ms Batt said. "Bullying and harassment can include the way someone is spoken to, isolation, physical intimidation or even excessive or unachievable workloads."

The survey also found that one-third of public sector workers do not trust their managers' ability to deal with under-performers.

One-third believe selection processes are unfair.

Thirty-six per cent of staff said they had been bullied or harassed several times a month and one-fifth of cases went unreported. Indigenous workers and those with a disability are particularly likely to be victims.

Stress also remains a problem for the state's 250,000 public servants, with a third reporting that they are overworked.

The findings come after figures showed that Victoria's biggest government department - Human Services - cost taxpayers $2.4 million in WorkCover compensation for stress, anxiety or depression in 2003-04, with 195 employees affected.

(Source: The Age)

 

McDonald's has denied any wrongdoing in the case of a 16 year old employee who was humiliated and assaulted by a manager and her fiancee, on the orders of a man pretending to be a police officer.

18 year old Louise Ogborn began working at the McDonalds in Mount Washington, Kenutcky after her mother lost her job.

On April 9, 2004, Ogborn was called into assistant manager Donna Summers' cramped office and told that Summers was on the telephone with a police officer.

"She said, 'Here she is. This is the girl you described,'" said Ogborn. "She told me to shut the door."

Summers told Ogborn that the officer on the phone had their store manager on the other line and that he had described her and accused her of stealing a purse from a customer.

"I was like, 'Donna, I've never done anything wrong,'" Ogborn said. "I could never steal - I could never do anything like that. I don't have it in me."

"She said, 'Well, they said it was a little girl that looked like you in a McDonald's uniform, so it had to be you.'"

Ogborn was given the 'choice' of submitting to a search or being escorted to the police station.

"I was bawling my eyes out and literally begging them to take me to the police station because I didn't do anything wrong," Ogborn said later in a deposition. She had taken the $6.35-an-hour position after her mother lost her job. "I couldn't steal - I'm too honest. I stole a pencil one time from a teacher and I gave it back."

Summers, 51, conceded later that she had never known Ogborn to do a thing dishonest. But she nonetheless told her to empty her pockets and surrender her car keys and mobile phone, which she did. Then the caller demanded that Summers have Ogborn remove her clothes - even her underwear - leaving her with just a small, dirty apron to cover her naked body.

Summers says she never second-guessed what she was being asked to do, as she firmly believed the person she was talking to was a police officer, and she trusted her manager to do what was right.

Because it was a busy Friday night, Summers had to leave the office to check on the restaurant. The man on the phone demanded that another employee be left to watch Ogborn until the police arrived and Summers chose 27-year-old Jason Bradley.

"He [Bradley] takes the phone and they're telling him to have me do certain things and drop the apron," she said. "He wouldn't have any part of it."

Bradley walked out in disgust, leaving Summers with no one to watch Ogborn.

Summers then told the caller that she had to get back to the counter, and the caller asked if she had a husband who could watch Ogborn.

"She said no, I'm not married yet, but I intend to be," Bradley recalled in his deposition, adding that Summers "started laughing like she was talking to a friend." The caller told Summers to bring in her fiance, and at about 6 p.m., she called Walter Wes Nix Jr., at home.

"I asked if he would help," Summers said. "I said I had a situation."

Summers says she obeyed because "I thought I was doing what I was supposed to be doing."

Within fifteen minutes, Summers' fiance, Walter Nix, entered the office where Ogborn tugged at the small apron that barely covered her top and exposed her legs up to her buttocks.

Again, Summers says she didn't question the caller and completely trusted her fiancé to be left alone with the girl.

Ogborn says she wanted to run, but that it would have been too humiliating to run through the restaurant naked.

Nix, a 43-year-old exterminator, began following the caller's commands, ordering Ogborn to drop her apron, bend over and stand on a chair.

He pulled the apron away from Ogborn, leaving her nude again, and described her to the caller. He ordered her to dance with her arms above her head, to see, the caller said, if anything "would shake out." He made her do jumping jacks, deep knee bends, stand on a swivel chair, then a desk.

He made her sit on his lap and kiss him; the caller said that would allow Nix to smell anything that might be on her breath.

Ogborn says that when she failed to address Nix as "sir," the caller tells him to hit her violently on the buttocks over and over. At one point on the video, Ogborn was "spanked" for almost 10 full minutes.

"He told me I was asking too many questions, so he was told to hit me," she said. "I just said, 'Please don't do this.'"

By the end, red welts could be seen on her body.

During it all, Summers periodically came back to the office, and each time, Nix threw the apron at Ogborn, telling her to stay quiet.

"I begged her every time she came in the room," Ogborn said. "'Get me out of here. Please get me out of here."

Ogborn says she even asked the assistant manager to call the police, but each time, she says, Summers told her, "No, we're still waiting for the cop."

Louise Ogborn had been in the back office for nearly several hours when the caller said she should kneel on the brick floor in front of Nix and unbuckle his pants.Ogborn cried and begged Nix to stop, she recounted in her deposition. "I said, `No! I didn't do anything wrong. This is ridiculous."

But she said Nix told her he would hit her if she didn't obey.

58 year old Thomas Simms, the Mount Washington store's maintenance man, had stopped by the restaurant for dessert and coffee when Summers pulled him into the office and handed him the phone. The caller told Simms to have Ogborn drop the apron and to describe her. Simms refused.

"He said, `Something is not right about this,'" Summers recalled in her deposition. Eventually Summers realised the same.

Summers called her manager, Lisa Siddons, who the caller claimed had been on the other line all along. But when Siddons answered her phone, she said she'd been sleeping.

Summers claims that it was only then that she realised she'd been tricked.

It turned out that the police had received several calls about investigations in multiple states for similar incidents. By early 2004, there had been more than 70 cases of hoax phone calls to fast food restaurants, dating as far back as 1994.

By the time the caller telephoned the company-owned McDonald's in Mount Washington in April 2004, supervisors had been duped in at least 68 stores in 32 states, including Kentucky and Indiana. The targets included a dozen different restaurant chains.

Police eventually arrested 38-year-old David Stewart. Stewart worked for Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company. Police also discovered that Stewart had attended a local police academy and even volunteered as a deputy with a small police department in western Florida.

Clinical psychologist Jeff Gardere says it was no accident that caller was targeting fast food restaurants.

"Everything is by the book," he explained. "This is how you serve it. This is exactly how you do it. You follow the book - you're OK. I believe he picked fast food restaurants because he knew, once you got them away from that book, once it was something outside the manual or the procedures, they would be lost."

In her book, "Making Fast Food: From the Frying Pan into the Fryer," Canadian sociologist Ester Reiter concludes that the most prized trait in fast-food workers is obedience.

"The assembly-line process very deliberately tries to take away any thought or discretion from workers," said Reiter, who teaches at Toronto's York University and who spent 10 months working at a Burger King as part of her research. "They are appendages to the machine."

Retired FBI Special Agent Dan Jablonski, a Wichita, Kan., private detective who investigated hoaxes for Wendy's franchises in the Midwest, said: "You and I can sit here and judge these people and say they were blooming idiots. But they aren't trained to use common sense. They are trained to say and think,`Can I help you?'"

Jablonski also said some of the strip-searches weren't even reported to police, because restaurant officials were reluctant to publicize them. Rival chains were also reluctant to talk to each other.

Even supervisors at fast-food restaurants made ready targets, said Milton Prewitt, national editor of Nation's Restaurant News, a trade publication. "You dot your `i's, cross your `t's' and push the buttons, and after a year of that," he said, "you might be an assistant manager."

By the time of the incident, managers of at least 17 McDonald's stores around the US had been conned, and the company already was defending itself in at least four lawsuits stemming from such hoaxes.

But Summers, who had worked for the McDonald's 25 miles southeast of Louisville for about eight months, said she had never heard a thing about the hoaxes. Neither had the store's manager, an assistant manager, or McDonald's area manager, according to court depositions they gave later.

McDonald's said they "take this matter very seriously" and that their training manual includes a section which cautions employees that no legitimate law enforcement agency would ever ask you to conduct such a search.

Employees at the Mount Washington McDonald's interviewed by 'Primetime' all said they didn't recall seeing such a warning.

Although a McDonald's security executive had sent a 10- to 15-second voice message to every store in the region about hoax calls about a week before the Mount Washington incident, the message apparently didn't mention strip-searches.

The company also failed to execute a plan it had developed to send warning stickers to be placed on the headset and cradle of the phone in every store, Peaster, McDonald's global security director, said in a deposition.

A McDonald's spokeman, asked what additional steps the company has taken since the incident, said it would be "inappropriate to discuss in detail specific security and safety measures."

In court papers, McDonald's also has blamed Ogborn for what happened to her - saying that her injuries, "if any," were caused by her failure to realize the caller wasn't a real police officer.

Stewart, Summers and Nix have yet to be tried.

Summers was fired - for violating a McDonald's rule barring non-employees from entering the office.

(Source: ABC News website [US], Louisville Courier-Journal, oneangrygirl.com, )

 

Deaths such as that of a Sydney scaffolder who fell eight stories from a building site in the CBD could become more common, according to unionists.

Paul Hughes, 41, was working on a new electricity substation when he fell to his death on January the 5th.

The CFMEU says similar incidents could happen more often, because new legislation will give unions less ability to inspect workplaces.

(Source: Yahoo news)

 

A train guard may lose his job for detaining a passenger who punched him, according to his union.

The guard has been stood down with pay until the incident is resolved.

The Rail Tram and Bus Union says the guard is being investigated for detaining a man who had punched him on a train near Westmead, last September.

Union spokesman Phil Kessey says guards have been threatened with disciplinary action if they leave their cabins to pursue violent passengers.

"RailCorp are saying that our guards have to be locked away in their cabin and can not get involved," he said.

RailCorp says guards are not sacked for intervening in violent situations. However they also say they are not allowed to endanger themselves.

(Source: Yahoo news)

 

Melbourne Deputy Lord Mayor Gary Singer escaped facing serious misconduct charges after cutting a $10,000 deal with a legal watchdog.

The news of the 2003 deal comes two months after the Melbourne councillor was forced to pay $18,000 after pleading guilty to financial misconduct in Victoria over hoarding cheques.

Cr Singer and his business partner escaped prosecution in Tasmania after agreeing to pay $10,000 in costs, not to practise in Tasmania for at least a year and removing their names from the roll of legal practitioners.

The agreement so incensed the legal ombudsman in Tasmania she twice complained, using her annual report to highlight her misgivings and urging the Law Society of Tasmania to reconsider.

A lawyer prominent in the arts and restaurant scene, Cr Singer was elected to the Melbourne City Council in November 2004 on Lord Mayor John So's ticket.

It has since been discovered that he has a number of black marks against his name from legal watchdogs in two states for overcharging and financial mismanagement, including one dating to 1999.

During the 2 1/2 years that Cr Singer and his partner ran the law firm many formal complaints were made to the Law Society about the firm's conduct.

A client who complained of overcharging took his account to the Supreme Court and succeeded in having the court order the bill to be reduced.

The doors to the law firm were closed permanently late on a Friday afternoon and some clients were not adequately informed. A lawyer employed in Hobart took the partners to the Tasmanian Industrial Commission claiming they had failed to pay benefits and entitlements when the office closed. The industrial commission hearing ended when the pair paid the woman.

Tasmania's legal ombudsman, Judith Paxton, reported on Cr Singer's case in her latest two annual reports, tabled in Tasmania's Parliament.

Ms Paxton said in her 2003 annual report that several clients had complained that they had failed to properly respond or communicate, failed to do work they had promised, failed to account and made false statements. "In addition, many clients were unhappy their files had been offered to other practitioners without consultation," Ms Paxton reported.

"Of particular concern to me is that many . . . were seeking compensation for injuries through accidents at work or things such as medical negligence.

"(They) are more vulnerable than a lot of others . . . as they are unwell due to their injuries and have limited means."

Ms Paxton said the Law Society had asked its disciplinary tribunal to, among other things, find them guilty of professional misconduct.

"However, before the matters could be heard, the practitioners applied to the Supreme Court to have their name removed from the roll of practitioners," she reported.

In her most recent report, tabled in State Parliament late last year, Ms Paxton said she had urged the Law Society to go ahead with the prosecution even though the pair had removed their names from the roll.

Ms Paxton said that "such decisions have the potential consequence that members of the profession from whom the public should have protection can take shelter in other jurisdictions."

Cr Singer's business partner said Cr Singer was not to blame for the situation in Tasmania.

"I was running the Tasmanian business at the time through an employee solicitor," the partner said.

However he also claimed that "we were not found guilty of anything and we did nothing wrong."

(Source: Herald-Sun)

 

It is now easier than ever for full-fee paying students to enter university based on their ability to pay.

School leavers who can afford fees of several thousand dollars are accepted for courses with scores up to 10 percentage points lower than students applying normally.

Entry scores for full-fee paying students in 16 Victorian courses dropped even further last year.

Victorian Tertiary Admission Centre's 2006 entry guide revealed scores for full-fee places fell by up to 7.2 points between 2004 and 2005.

The Australian Catholic University's exercise science course recorded the biggest drop in entry levels for full-fee paying students between 2004 and 2005, with the minimum ENTER score falling from 71.15 to 63.95. This three-year degree costs full-fee paying students about $25,800.

Melbourne University's arts and sciences course offered the biggest discount. School leavers who wanted to get into the popular degree normally had to achieve an ENTER score of 91.60, whereas full-fee paying students needed only 81.50.

The number of full-fee courses also increased, with La Trobe University introducing them for the first time.

Federal Education Minister Dr Brendan Nelson is considering whether to increase the 35 per cent cap on full-fee places after a request from Melbourne University in December.

While entry scores for most HECS courses also decreased last year, full-fee studies dropped significantly more.

Two undergraduate degrees dropped their full-fee entry requirements but increased their ENTER for HECS students.

(Source: Herald-Sun)

 

Coca-Cola has denounced a boycott of its products based on alleged murder and torture of trade unionists at its bottling plants in South America.

Several North American and European universities have stopped stopped Coke being sold on its campuses, because of trade union claims that a Colombian bottler for the company conspired with conservative paramilitary groups to harass workers.

The 'Killer Coke' website says that 8 union leaders at Coke's Columbian bottling plants have been murdered and hundreds more have been tortured, kidnapped or illegally detained by paramilitary groups, "often working closely with plant managements".

Javier Correa, president of Columbia's National Union of Food Industry Workers, said that the boycott campaign aims "to force Coca-Cola to prevent further bloodshed and to provide safe working conditions".

Coca-Cola has dismissed the boycott as "misinformed" and "trying to use the brand to push a political agenda".

(Source: Herald-Sun, campaign website)