Quote of the Moment:

"We're entitled to it."

American financier Thomas Boone Pickens, speaking of Iraqi oil. Mr Pickens told Congress that US firms were entitled to Iraq's oil because of American casualties and money spent in the invasion and subsequent insurgency.

 

Almost every cigarette smoked in the Western world contains tobacco picked by children as young as five, who are slowly poisoned by their work.

Children's charity Plan said that child tobacco pickers in the African country of Malawi absorb up to 54 milligrams of nicotine a day. This is equivalent to smoking 50 cigarettes a day.

It is estimated that more than 78,000 children work on Malawi's tobacco estates. Some work up to 12 hours a day, many for a few cents an hour and without protective clothing.

The children reported common symptoms of green tobacco sickness (GTS), or nicotine poisoning, including severe headaches, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, coughing and breathlessness.

"Sometimes it feels like you don't have enough breath, you don't have enough oxygen," one child said. "You reach a point where you cannot breathe because of the pain in your chest. Then the blood comes when you vomit. At the end, most of this dies and then you remain with a headache."

Tobacco production in the United States declined by 89% between 1954 and 2002. Today, almost all cigarettes sold in the Western world contain some tobacco from Malawi.

(Source: The Guardian [UK])

 

The federal government is considering giving extra compensation to Victoria's high-polluting power stations after lobbying by the State Government, according to leaked documents.

Confidential state cabinet papers obtained by The Age newspaper show that the Federal Government agreed to review the $3 billion compensation for Victoria's brown coal-fired stations under the emissions trading scheme, after the state intervened on the generators' behalf.

Senior Federal Government sources said that Victorian Premier John Brumby had this year become "the leading advocate" for more compensation for coal-fired plants.

An industry consultant said that "I think Brumby and a couple of his ministers do more lobbying than the industry."

A Federal Government report last year found that, while coal plants could shut by 2020 due to emissions trading, this would not affect energy supply as extra lower-emission generation was expected to be built.

The Energy Users Association of Australia, which represents big energy users such as Bluescope Steel, said compensation was not justified.

Its executive director, Roman Domanski, queried the generators' warnings about being unable to refinance large debts.

"If they can't refinance, surely what they will do is sell their asset to somebody else who can refinance" he said.

"They will have to sell it in a fire sale, but so what? Are we going to feel sorry for them?"

The State government declined to comment.

(Source: The Age)

 

Young Aboriginals are more likely to be arrested, if arrested are more likely to go to court, in court are more likely to be convicted, and if convicted are more likely to be jailed, than other young Australians accused of crimes.

A new study by the Australian Institute of Criminology aims to explain why indigenous 10 to 17-year-olds are 28 times more likely to be in detention than non-indigenous people of the same age.

In Western Australia, the one state that issued statistics on sentencing, young Aborigines are more than twice as likely as non-indigenous juveniles to be given a jail term after being found guilty.

The study, "Juveniles' contact with the criminal justice system in Australia", also found that in NSW, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, police are more likely to arrest and refer to court young Aboriginals, compared with other young people. Information from Victoria and Tasmania was not available.

In NSW in 2007-08, 48 per cent of indigenous juveniles were transferred to court, compared to 21 per cent of non-indigenous juveniles. 32 per cent of non-indigenous juveniles received warnings compared with 18 per cent of indigenous juveniles.

In Queensland in 2006-07 indigenous juveniles were more likely to be processed by way of arrest than any other method, while non-indigenous juveniles were more likely to be dealt with via a caution than any other method of processing.

In Western Australia, where half of all juveniles arrested are Aboriginal, 71 per cent of the cautions issued in 2005 were to non-indigenous youths, 29 per cent to Aboriginal juveniles.

In South Australia in 2005 (the most recent data available), 55 per cent of juveniles of "Aboriginal appearance" were transferred to youth court compared with 41 per cent of those of "non-Aboriginal appearance", while in the Northern Territory last year 23 per cent of non-indigenous youths received a caution compared with 16 per cent of Aborigines.

AIC director Adam Tomison said it was unclear "how much of this is an issue of Aboriginality and how much is poverty and disadvantage."

He added that "authorities in states with more remote communities have fewer options to divert juveniles from detention. If there are two young offenders, and one is from a relatively good home in an urban environment with plenty of treatment options around him and the other is from a remote location where similar options are extremely limited, who is more likely to be put in detention?"

Only Western Australia and South Australia provided figures on indigenous outcomes in court.

In South Australia, 29 per cent of juveniles of 'Aboriginal appearance' were found guilty of charges of larceny and receiving offences, 21 per cent of offences against good order and 20 per cent of criminal trespass. This compares with 18 per cent of juveniles of non-Aboriginal appearance found guilty of larceny and receiving, 17 per cent of offences against good order and 12 per cent of criminal trespass.

In Western Australian 82 percent of indigenous males were found guilty compared with 76 per cent of non-indigenous males before the children's court. For female juveniles the figures were 79 percent for indigenous females and 66 per cent for non-indigenous females.

22 percent of indigenous juveniles found guilty were sentenced to custodial penalties in 2005, compared to 9 percent of non-indigenous juveniles.

(Source: The Australian)

 

Leading educators have endorsed fast-food companies such as McDonald's being more involved in schools, even if it means exposing students to brand advertising, because governments can no longer be solely relied on to boost the education system.

Speaking at a conference in Melbourne yesterday, a panel of education and policy leaders said it was entirely appropriate for schools to turn to business for investment and sponsorship, even if meant exposing students to corporate advertising, provided students ultimately benefited from their support.

One example highlighted was an online maths tuition program sponsored by McDonald's, which provides students with a range of numeracy exercises.

Institute of Public Affairs executive director John Roskam said that "I think we can all be a bit too sensitive about the couple of seconds that a golden arch or a can of fizzy drink is flashed in front of our kids."

(Source: The Age)

 

Newspapers including the New York Post ran a series of entirely invented stories, apparently without any fact-checking.

Documentary maker Chris Atkins says he "wanted to show that celebrity journalism is nonsense and this has infected all parts of journalism."

"I thought that quite a fun way to illustrate this was to see if we could invent some stories - utterly fabricated stories - and try to sell them to the newspapers."

Atkins' team called the newsrooms of several daily tabloids posing as members of the public seeking to sell tabloids gossip about celebrities.

Atkins said he deliberately chose outlandish stories that could be easily checked with a quick telephone call to a celebrity or their agent. He did not receive payment for the fake stories, but was offered up to £600 in return for the information.

One story printed in the Sun suggested that the director Guy Ritchie received a black eye while juggling cutlery. Another detailed the enthusiasm of a member of pop group Girls Aloud for quantum physics.

Atkins believes that tabloid newspaper stories about celebrities often contain serious inaccuracies which, within hours, are picked up and republished across the media without corroboration.

"Stories that are not true spread across all news media, from the BBC to Channel 4 to the Guardian, I'm afraid to say, to all sorts of places where you expect responsible, serious, ethical journalism," he said.

"They have now almost [all] been infected by the celebrity style of reporting, where everything is about entertainment, making people laugh and selling newspapers."

(Source: The Guardian [UK])

 

A priest who brokered a settlement for victims of sexual abuse by clergy, has himself been arrested for possessing and importing child pornography.

Bishop Raymond Lahey has been ordered to stay away from parks and from children while on bail.

Lahey brokered a $15-million settlement for victims of sexual abuse by priests of the diocese of Antigonish in Nova Scotia.

(Source: CBC [Canada])

 

Many Australian employees are dangerously overworked, according to new figures.

A recent Australian Bureau of Statistics report revealed that 58 per cent of two-parent, working families were forced to work extra hours, at night and on weekends, to get their work done, according to South Autralian trade union peak body SA Unions.

They said that workers were under increasing pressure during the global economic downturn amid fears of losing their job.

"More than a million Australians report they regularly work over 50 hours a week" said SA Unions secretary Janet Giles.

Michelle Hogan from SafeWork SA said that "we hear of workers who arrive home after a double shift and can't remember the drive and wonder whether they went through a red light."

(Source: The Australian)

 

Sixteen cleaners working for an Adelaide were underpaid almost $90,000, an investigation has found.

The Fair Work Ombudsman said the Adelaide company had agreed to reimburse the workers but could still face legal action.

The latest case followed the payment of $87,000 to 26 cleaners at a Port Lincoln motel in January, and the $288,000 fine imposed on another Adelaide company in February for underpaying staff.

(Source: ninemsn)

 

Australians in general, and Queenslanders in particular, hold liberal views on abortion, yet politicians' fear of small religious minorities appears to have stymied decriminalisation of the procedure in some states, according to new research.

The Australian Election Study found that 57 per cent of Australians support women's right to obtain an abortion "readily when they want one". One-third supports abortion "in special circumstances", and only 4 per cent oppose abortion outright.

Queenslanders are even more pro-choice than Australians as a whole, and the residents of Brisbane, with 63 per cent support for unrestricted access to abortion, the most liberal in the country.

The Queensland Government is refusing to decriminalise abortion despite the furore surrounding the arrest of Tegan Simone Leach, 19, and her partner, Sergie Brennan, 21, who were committed to stand trial last month on abortion-related charges. Ms Leach is believed to be the first woman in 50 years to be charged with procuring her own miscarriage, and Mr Brennan has been charged with supplying drugs to procure an abortion, after Ms Leach used RU486 that had been smuggled into Australia. The drug, widely and legally used in the US and Europe, is available here through only a few approved doctors.

The author of the study, Katharine Betts, an adjunct associate professor of sociology at Swinburne University, said that politicians "feel it's dangerous to try to change the status quo in the face of a very vocal anti-choice lobby."

"But they're wrong. Voters are more likely to vote for a pro-choice candidate than an anti-choice candidate." Polling of federal candidates in the 2007 election showed 77 per cent of winning candidates supported an unrestricted approach to abortion.

Dr Betts said it was possible state MPs were more anti-abortion, had been 'bluffed' by small anti-abortion groups, "or are cowardly."

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

 

Quote of the Moment:

"Don't you know who I am?...I'll have your fucking job."

Tasmanian Infrastructure Minister Graeme Sturges, to a security guard who stopped him from walking straight through a security checkpoint.