Proposed by-laws in Alice Springs would allow rangers to take and destroy homeless people's blankets.

Many Aboriginal people live rough in Alice Springs, where the temperature often drops down to about zero degrees Celsius on winter nights. They often stash their blankets somewhere during the day.

Rangers can currently remove the blankets but the new by-laws would let rangers throw them away, rather than return them to an indigenous organisation.

(Source: ABC News website)

 

Hospital errors claim the lives of 4550 Australians a year, according to a new report.

The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report says that adverse events including hospital-borne infections, medication mix-ups, drug side-effects and patient falls, affect about one in six patients.

(Source: The Age)

 

Bush administration officials attempted to suppress investigations into the mass execution of prisoners in Afghanistan by a warlord allied with the United States, according to reports.

The New York Times reported that senior officials from the administration of president George W. Bush discouraged separate probes by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department and the Pentagon, into the killing of up to 2000 prisoners by the forces of General Abdul Rashid Dostam.

The killings took place in late November 2001, shortly after the invasion that ousted Kabul's Taliban government.

Prisoners captured by General Dostam's forces after a major battle in northeastern Kunduz province were allegedly packed into shipping containers and left to suffocate, or were shot through the container walls, before being buried in mass graves.

Estimates on the number of people killed have ranged from several hundred to several thousand.

(Source: news.com.au)

 

British intelligence and police officers arranged for a terrorism suspect to be arrested and tortured overseas, according to new evidence.

MP David Davis said that British authorities allowed Rangzieb Ahmed to leave Britain and fly to Pakistan, despite having evidence he was involved in terrorism. Instead of arresting him themselves, they contacted Pakistani intelligence and suggested that they arrest him.

Ahmed says he was whipped, beaten, deprived of sleep and sexually humiliated. At one point three fingernails were ripped out of his left hand.

British authorities drew up a list of questions for Pakistani intelligence to ask him.

The officers from MI5 and MI6 who interrogated Ahmed should have known his detention was unlawful because he had not been brought before a court. Ahmed says he told these officers he was being tortured and that signs of his mistreatment would have been evident.

Davis told the House of Commons that "a more obvious case of outsourcing of torture, a more obvious case of passive rendition, I cannot imagine. He should have been arrested by the UK in 2006. He was not. The authorities knew he intended to travel to Pakistan, so they should have prevented that. Instead, they suggested the ISI arrest him. They knew he would be tortured, and they organised to construct a list of questions and provide it to the ISI."

Ahmed says he was recently visited by an MI5 officer and a police officer who said they could arrange for his sentence to be reduced, or for him to be paid money, if he withdrew his complaints about torture.

(Source: The Guardian [UK])

 

Quote of the Moment:

"The ABCC's primary responsibility is to ensure that workplace laws are upheld in the building and construction industry."

The website of the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner, which is charged with investigating breaches of the law by both employers and employees. As of June 25th, their list of current cases shows 30 cases against unions and/or individual unionists, and 1 against an employer.

 

Members of the Aboriginal community near the new Four Mile uranium mine say that they were ignored during negotiations for the mine.

Community member Jillian Marsh has completed a PhD on the Beverley mine and says the native title process is flawed.

Ms Marsh said that "the native title process is not a process that offers any decision making power for Aboriginal people."

Ms Marsh says Aboriginal women who took part in the exploration work area clearance under the group's native title say their concerns are not being addressed.

"Quasar Resources has actually formally stated in one of their archaeological reports that they don't want women participating in work area clearance" she said.

(Source: ABC News website)

 

A Sydney bus company is investigating claims that one of its drivers told a female passenger to remove her Muslim headscarf.

HillsBus has confirmed it has received a complaint from the Parramatta woman.

The woman says that when she tried to board the bus at Merrylands, wearing a floral headscarf, the driver told her to "remove her mask."

(Source: ABC News website)

 

Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson says it is inevitable that uranium will be mined in Queensland.

"Just as there's going to be uranium mining on an increasing basis in Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory, we'll see uranium mining in Queensland in due course" he said.

(Source: ABC News website)

 

Support services for vulnerable children are so swamped that some have been forced to refuse to take any new cases.

Connections UnitingCare, in Melbourne's south, recently refused to take any new cases for three weeks, to reduce a waiting list that was consistently at about 120 families.

The Children's Protection Society has also had to restrict its intake.

These services and others like them help families who often have a history of domestic violence, or mental health, drug or alcohol problems.

Jim Walton of the Community Public Sector Union said that WorkSafe has upheld seven workplace notices against the child protection section of the Department of Human Services this year. Most of them were related to workload.

Ray Cleary of Anglicare Victoria said that child protection officers had put pressure on Anglicare and similar organisations to take on more cases than they could manage, but that Anglicare had refused.

(Source: The Age)

 

The majority of people with mental illness have trouble paying for their medication, according to new research.

In a survey of almost 400 people diagnosed with mental illness, 96 percent said that at times they were forced to choose between buying medication or food.

(Source: Herald Sun)

 

People who are sympathetic, kind, co-operative and warm are less likely to end up as bosses, according to new research.

"People who aren't very nice are more likely to become managers," said Michelle Tan, a researcher in the economics program at the Research School of Social Science at Australian National University, and co-author of the study.

The research, which used a sample of 5397 men and women, found a strong link between personality type and many jobs: the more "agreeable" a person rated themselves on a personality test, the less likely they were to be managers.

(Source: The Age)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"There is no safe way to dispose of nuclear waste. Our generation has the responsibility...all we will be handing to our offspring is a scarred wasteland."

Peter Garrett, 1986.

"I visited the shrine at Hiroshima. I know the history of Maralinga. And I've witnessed the struggle at Jabiluka. I have long been opposed to uranium mining, and I remain opposed to it. I am unapologetic about this. In fact, I am proud of it."

Peter Garrett, 2007.

Mr Garrett, now Minister for the Environment, recently approved a new uranium mine, Four Mile Mine in South Australia.