The Public Transport Minister, Lynne Kosky, says she can not guarantee a man who stabbed his wife to death can be prevented from driving taxis in Melbourne. The man was acquitted of murder on the grounds of insanity.
The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal recently granted him a taxi licence against the advice of the Director of Public Transport.
Ms Kosky is vowing to change the law to prevent similar cases. "Now it will be mandatory refusal for anyone who has either a conviction, or if they're found not guilty by reason of insanity, so that will be now included in the legislation."
But Ms Kosky says her options are limited in the current matter. "As a result of this decision we are fixing the legislation going forward," she said. "We will look at every avenue of appeal so that I can actually fix that difficulty, so that everybody can feel safe when they hop in a cab. That's what I want to be able to guarantee."
Dr Bernhard Moeller and his family have had their application for residency in Horsham refused because of the costs associated with the care of their son...
the Whizzinator penis - a lifelike device used to emit clean, realistically warm urine instead of the user's true urine.
Two men who sold prosthetic penises enabling drug cheats to give fake urine samples have pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the United States, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
Puck Technology has stopped operating, the report said.
Russia's political leadership has undergone a total ideological transformation over the past decade. Long gone is its co-operation with the US and the EU. Instead, its leadership now emphasises its ideological hostility to the West. Somewhat like China, ultra-nationalism, suspicion of foreigners and a restoration of state power have become the regime ideology.
The first astronauts sent to Mars should be prepared to spend the rest of their lives there, in the same way that European pioneers headed to America knowing they would not return home, says moonwalker Buzz Aldrin.
[He] said the Red Planet offered far greater potential than Earth's satellite as a place for habitation.
With what appears to be vast reserves of frozen water, Mars "is nearer terrestrial conditions, much better than the Moon and any other place," Mr Aldrin, 78, said in a visit to Paris.The distance between the Red Planet and Earth varies between 55 million kilometres and more than 400 million kilometres. ...this means a round trip to Mars would take around a year and a half.
"That's why you [should] send people there permanently," Mr Aldrin said."If we are not willing to do that, then I don't think we should just go once and have the expense of doing that and then stop."
He asked "If we are going to put a few people down there and ensure their appropriate safety, would you then go through all that trouble and then bring them back immediately, after a year, a year-and-a-half?"NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are sketching tentative
plans for a manned mission to Mars that would take place around 2030 or
2040. ...the mission would entail about half a dozen people, with life-support
systems and other gear pre-positioned for them on the Martian surface.
Mr Aldrin said the vanguard could be joined by others, making a colony of around 30 people.
"They need to go there more with the psychology of knowing that you
are a pioneering settler and you don't look forward to go back home
again after a couple of years," he said.
"At age 30, they are given an opportunity. If they accept, then we
Many scientists argue that sending humans to Mars is a waste of money compared with unmanned missions that deliver more science and point out the risks from psychological stress and damage to DNA from fast-moving sub-atomic particles called cosmic rays.
train them, at age 35, we send them. At age 65, who knows what advances
have taken place. They can retire there, or maybe we can bring them
back."
Mr Aldrin, though, argued that given the time lag in communications between Earth and Mars, it made sense to have human explorers who could make decisions swiftly and on the spot.
I love my father as the stars - he's a bright shining example and a happy twinkling in my heart. ~Adabella Radici
There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself. ~John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994
Lord, but I am so tired of hearing "alcopops"! Alcopops, alcopops, alcopops!!! Will it ever go away?!! (It's really enough to drive one to drink...)
Burma's military regime is being stubborn and annoying:...delaying visas for UN workers and other relief agencies. While the regime said little, observers said the reason for hesitation was clear: the junta fears an influx of foreigners could spur fresh unrest following pro-democracy protests last September, which were put down violently.
The nation's military Government has refused permission for the US to send aid to the country, and its troops have been accused of doing little to help the clean-up.
Mr Rudd has told Fairfax Radio that it is "obscene" that Burma's junta is obstructing the world's efforts to help the cyclone victims.
"The Burmese regime is behaving appallingly," Mr Rudd told Fairfax Radio Network.
Mr Rudd spoke to Australia's ambassador Bob Davis this morning, who told him the Burmese military hadn't budged on the issue of foreign help overnight.
"(This is) not just frustrating our own aid agencies but frustrating the international community," he said.
Mr Rudd believes the junta may have even turned back two of four UN workers who arrived in Burma last night to carry out a critical assessment of the situation."This is an extraordinary reaction. What can we do about it?" he said.
"I'm hoping later today or over the course of the weekend to speak with the secretary-general of the United Nations to see what we can do globally to leverage the Burmese into a better course of action."
Oh, and there also looks like - apart from all the dead and the 1.5 million homeless - there's an outbreak of cholera.Four United Nations aid planes reached Burma overnight but there has been widespread criticism of the junta's reluctance to allow more aid in.
Rescue crews have been deported by Burma's military junta, just a day after arriving in the disaster-stricken nation.UPDATE 2:
The Burmese government declared it is "not ready" for foreign search-and-rescue teams following the devastating cyclone, which has left some 100,000 dead and millions without homes.
Burma's junta has impounded two United Nations food aid shipments at Rangoon airport, officials said, triggering more outrage at the military government's refusal to accept a major international relief operation.UPDATE 10/5: Some aid getting through (Tim Costello, World Vision). And Rudd tells UN "Australia will offer further aid to Burma after the initial commitment of $3 million."
"We're going to have to shut down our very small airlift operation until we get guarantees from the authorities," a furious World Food Program (WFP) regional director Tony Banbury told CNN.
"It should be on trucks headed to the victims. You've seen the conditions they are in. That food is now sitting on a tarmac doing no good," Mr Banbury said.
Not that she can compete with the Burmese junta...
"You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl," she said.
Democrats wait and wonder when Hillary Clinton will concede defeatAnd:
The latest on Hillary's journey to the exit
It's over
And the New York Post hit the streets with cruel tabloid succinctness: a picture of the home-state senator over a single word—“TOAST!”—in block letters three inches high.
Every mother loves her baby, every baby is valued and Mr Rudd should value all babies equally.
We should not live in Australia where Mr Rudd thinks that some babies are more valuable than others, it's very, very important that Mr Rudd understand that every mother loves her baby and this should be an Australia where all babies are equal.
"I thought, what an extraordinary situation where you can have someone who I know has a household income in excess of half a million dollars actually thinking about changing a vote on the basis of whether or not they will receive a non-means tested childcare cash rebate," he said.
"The whole point is any government needs to ensure that those who are most in need are the people who receive most of the benefits that government provides. You have to ask yourselves, have we lost the plot or haven't we?"
See, Rudd's not the only one who can ask himself (sensible) questions. Perhaps ol' 9%-Brendan should get back into the habit.
RECALLING British prime minister Harold Wilson's observation that a week is a long time in politics, Brendan Nelson says that the 23 weeks since the federal election have been a political eternity. It shows. The Opposition is displaying all the symptoms of relevance deprivation syndrome, as former Labor minister Gareth Evans once described it.
The Opposition's political strategy is not hard to divine. As quickly as it can, it wants to shift the blame for anything that goes wrong with the economy from the Coalition to Labor. ... But constructing this political edifice has strained his credibility. It is not only the Government taking inflation seriously. The Reserve Bank said on Tuesday that "inflation in Australia has been high over the past year" and it has been putting up interest rates to counter it. Everyone who buys petrol or does the shopping knows prices are going up. Yet Nelson is seriously suggesting that if only the Government stopped talking about it, it would go away.
THE woman at the centre of the seat-sniffing scandal involving West Australian Opposition Leader Troy Buswell says he writhed in mock sexual pleasure during the incident.
The woman... told The West Australian newspaper that Mr Buswell sniffed her chair twice within 10 minutes, while groaning and making "sexually satisfying noises".
"We finished the meeting (with a constituent), I walked the bloke downstairs and out of parliament, and when I got back I walked into the room to pick up my notepad from the desk and Buswell started grabbing the chairs going `aahww, which one did you sit in? I'll be able to tell'," she said.
"And then he picked them up and started sniffing them and groaning and making sexually satisfying noises. I went, `you're sick, knock it off', and grabbed my staff and walked out, but he didn't pay attention to a word I said."
The woman said she was standing with colleagues about 10 minutes later when one of them knocked on Mr Buswell's door to ask one of his staff to lunch.
"Buswell opened the door really wide, grabbed a chair and started sniffing it, lifted it above his head sniffing it and breathing in, going `aaww yeah'," the woman said.
"It was awful. My colleagues, the four men I worked with, were just stunned into silence."
Troy Buswell has been dealing with some difficulties lately. WA’s Liberal Party appears to be in competition with the federal party as they create new definitions for ‘leadership’.It was alleged that Mr Buswell lifted her chair and started sniffing it in front of her after she had finished interviewing a constituent.
He then allegedly repeated the act moments later in front of several Liberal staff members.
“I was just checking to see if the bitch was in heat”, the gentleman explained.
It's understood that the woman had warned Mr Buswell about his pranks before.
On a previous occasion, he had allegedly crawled around on his hands and knees in front of the same woman pretending to be her husband.
Shadow women’s interests minister Helen Morton said Mr Buswell, who had recognised his past behaviour was unacceptable, had her full support.
“There is an absolute commitment on behalf of Troy. He has made a huge effort to understand the insensitivities of (that) behaviour and has made a huge forward movement,” she said.
Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.
Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread...
Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week... They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.
Purported victims claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear,
Jeez. You'd think one salesman could recognise another.in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.
"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.
Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs.
"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," police chief Oleko said.
"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it?'," he said.
Good God!
Neither is this predicament greatly assisted by the tail end - the pointy end? - of the election campaign. I believe 'repetition' may now be more accurately defined as 'brain washing'. How dumb do these pollies think we are? And how dumb does Howard look repeating the same answers to every question? Blah blah interest rates? Not my fault but I can still control them best. (wtf?) Don't forget I'm the best one to steer the economy. Blah blah cost of living? I'm the best one to steer the economy. Blah blah AWAs? I'm the best one to steer the economy. Blah blah your favourite colour? I'm the best to steer the economy.
