Thousands of workers who cleared the World Trade Center site in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, have gone to court to demand payment of injury claims, saying that the company overseeing their insurance fund has spent millions of dollars fighting their claims and almost nothing on paying medical expenses.

Lawyers for the workers said that the company overseeing the US$1 billion insurance fund has paid out US$45,000.

By contrast, the suit alleges the company, charged by Congress with doling out money for treatment of people exposed to toxic dust at the site, has spent almost US$74 million on overhead and legal bills fighting the workers' injury claims.

New York City officials have argued that the company should litigate workers' claims before paying them.

(Source: CBC News website [Canada])

 

Police wrote the names of suspected terrorists in an arrested man's diary, and later questioned him about how the names got there.

Police interviewing Mohamed Haneef asked "in your diary, you had handwritten notes. Is this your writing?"

Dr Haneef denied that it was. Later in the interview police asked "now, as I was alluding to, or as I was going to show you, before...police who have been looking through your diary have found some handwritten notes in the back of your diary. And one of these handwritten notes is details for [suspected terrorist] Kafeel Ahmed. Telephone numbers and looks like an address. A couple of addresses. Now, that writing there, is that your writing?"

After Dr Haneef again denied it was his writing, the police officer left the room. He returned and said "thought that might have been the case. In fact, it's not. This is what's been written by police. So it's not your handwriting at all."

A report in the Australian newspaper has also shown inconsistencies between police affidavits to court and the official record of interview.

An ABC report has contradicted a commonwealth prosecutor's claims that Dr Haneef's mobile SIM card had been discovered in a burning car that crashed into Glasgow airport.

(Source: The Australian)

 

The Federal government knew that its Work Choices legislation would leave workers worse off but introduced it into Parliament anyway, according to a new biography of John Howard.

Based on interviews with two Cabinet Ministers, the biography says that Mr Howard ruled out further changes to the laws because he felt that time was short and he wanted the laws 'bedded down' well before the next election.

The book says that in 2005 Kevin Andrews, then the Workplace Relations Minister, was given the job of drafting the legislation.

"Each time he brought it before cabinet, Howard was concerned there were too many losers and the legislation required further amendment," the book says. "The model for reforms was presented to cabinet on no less than three occasions with Andrews sent away each time to improve the drafting."

"Even the final product raised concerns around the table that too many workers would be worse off, despite ministers ideologically supporting the legislation."

But the Prime Minister pressed ahead. The book says one cabinet minister recalled Mr Andrews telling Mr Howard and cabinet "that there was no getting around some workers losing out".

"Howard wanted to begin the process of getting the legislation through Parliament, conscious that the Government had a long way to go in selling the merits of the changes."

(Source: The Age)

 

A kilogram of beef causes more greenhouse gas and other pollution than driving for three hours while leaving all the lights in your house on, according to new research.

A team of researchers at the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan calculated the cost of raising and slaughtering cattle and distributing the meat.

Producing a kilo of beef causes the equivalent of 36.4kg of carbon dioxide.

A kilo of beef also requires the energy equivalent of lighting a 100-watt lightbulb for nearly 20 days just to produce and transport the animals' feed.

The Australian Conservation Foundation said that dairy and beef account for six percent of greenhouse emissions in the average Australian household, compared to 10 percent for petrol.

(Source: MX)

 

A growing number of Victorians are unable to afford food, according to new research.

Figures released by the McCaughey Centre show that more than 1 in 20 Victorian households were so broke they ran out of food at some stage in the past 12 months.

(Source: MX)

 

The Australian military has been given permission to use a weapon which overwhelmingly kills civilians.

A Parliamentary committee gave Defence permission to use cluster bombs. These weapons eject multiple smaller 'bomblets', which often fail to explode.

This means that people can detonate the bombs years after they're used. For example, up to 300 people die in Vietnam each year from cluster bombs and other objects left over from the Vietnam War.

Of 13,306 deaths from cluster bombs recorded with Handicap International, 98% are civilians.

(Source: The Age, Wikipedia)

 

A majority of Australian workers believe that their boss is completely useless, according to a new survey.

The survey, led by human resources and recruitment firm Talent2, found 57.7 percent of Australian workers describing their boss as completely ineffective.

(Source: news.com.au)

 

The number of Australians under financial stress from housing costs has reached a historic high, with more than a million households now spending at least 30 per cent of their income on loan repayments or rent.

Census figures show that the number of households officially declared under "mortgage stress" has almost doubled in five years, to 547,054.

At the same time, the number of households above the "rental stress" threshold - spending more than 30 per cent of their income in rent - has climbed to 520,598.

This makes a combined total of 1.068 million households under financial stress from their loan or rental payments.

(Source: The Age)

 

Government censorship of the internet has increased dramatically, according to a new study.

A study by research groups at the universities of Toronto, Harvard Law School, Oxford and Cambridge on so-called 'internet filtering' found evidence of state censorship in 25 countries of the 41 it studied.

John Palfrey, of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, said that "in five years we have gone from a couple of states doing state-mandated net filtering to 25."

"Few states restrict their activities to one type of content," said Rafal Rohozinski, Research Fellow of the Cambridge Security Programme.

He added that "once filtering is begun, it is applied to a broad range of content and can be used for expanding government control of cyberspace."

Mr Palfrey said that "what's regrettable about net filtering is that almost always this is happening in the shadows. There's no place you can get an answer as a citizen from your state about how they are filtering and what is being filtered."

In addition, a number of states in Europe and the US were not studied, because the private sector rather than the government tends to carry out 'filtering'.

(Source: BBC News online)

 

John Howard has estimated that Australian troops will be fighting in the Middle East for the next 20 years.

The government has increased Defence spending by 48 per cent, despite Mr Howard saying Australia did not face any "foreseeable conventional military threat".

(Source: Herald-Sun)

 

The federal government has confirmed that oil is a factor in Australia's continued military involvement in Iraq.

Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said that "the entire region is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world", and that "energy security" was a reason for continuing to stay in Iraq.

Dr Nelson also said it was important to support the prestige of the United States.

(Source: The Age)

 

Innocent people are almost three times more likely to have their DNA details stored on the British national police database if they're not white, according to new figures.

Figures released by the Home Office show that a quarter of those whose DNA details have been stored on the national police database after being arrested, but not charged or convicted, were black, Asian, Chinese or Middle Eastern. These groups together form 9% of the British population.

In some rural areas, non-white people who have not been charged with any crime are eight times more likely to have their details recorded than white people in similar circumstances.

Black Britons are also five times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched - 14 times more likely in predominantly white suburbs. Stops of black people are more likely to involve searches, including strip searches, and to end in arrest. When police action is challenged further down the line, for example when the Crown Prosecution Service decides if cases are worth pursuing, those involving black people are more likely to break down.

(Source: The Guardian [UK])

 

Quote of the Moment:

"Death and injury on the roads is the world's most neglected public health issue. Almost as many people die in road accidents - 1.2 million a year - as are killed by malaria or tuberculosis. Around 50 million are injured. Some 85% of these accidents take place in developing countries. The poor get hurt much more often than the rich, as they walk or cycle or travel in overloaded buses. The highest death rate is among children walking on the roads. "

"The annual economic cost to developing countries, in lost productivity alone, is $65-$100bn, roughly the same as the amount they receive in foreign aid. I caught a glimpse of the human cost when I was hospitalised in northern Kenya. Some of the men on the ward had bullet or axe wounds inflicted in tribal wars, others were dying of HIV/Aids, but over half had been smashed up in road accidents. They could not afford good painkillers, and sobbed and screamed through the night. It looked like a scene from the first world war. "

"The problem is likely to become much worse. By 2020, according to the World Bank, deaths from road accidents are expected to fall by 28% in rich nations but to rise by 83% in poorer ones. By 2030, they will overtake the deaths caused by malaria. But while $1.9bn of foreign aid will be spent on tackling malaria over the next five years, the annual global aid budget for road safety is less than $10m. This issue has been neglected partly because it is something the rich inflict on the poor, and partly because it is widely perceived as an unavoidable price of doing business - as the global transportation industry expands, so must its human costs."

George Monbiot.

 

The British government deported an estimated 2000 islanders, not for any crime, but in order to lease their island to the United States to build a military base.

A British court has ruled that the British government was guilty of "abuse of power" for attempting to prevent the surviving Chagos Islanders from reclaiming land which was leased by the British goverment to the US in the 1960s.

An estimated 2000 Chagos Islanders were driven from the island between 1967 and 1971 by tactics such as encouraging them to leave on temporary trips and not allowing them back. At one point American soldiers rounded up all the islanders dogs and gassed them, as part of a campaign to intimidate the remaining islanders.

The departing islanders were loaded on to boats, allowed to take only one bag with them, and deposited in Mauritius, where most have lived in poverty ever since.

The military base has served as a refuelling stop and base for air raids in a succession of wars, most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. Human rights groups also allege that the base is used as used for 'extraordinary rendition' of prisoners (removing prisoners to other countries, without any legal process).

(Source: The Guardian [UK], Wikipedia)