All Salon
- Let's not get too excited about Anthony Weiner Oh boy, here we go again: Anthony Weiner put on a show on the House floor last night, the clip went viral, and now left-leaning blogs are singing his praises.
- Paul Ryan: We must shrink the economy in order to save it Representative Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., is frequently talked about as one of the leading intellectual lights of the Republican party. As the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, his views would likely be influential if the GOP were to take over the House later this year. So I'm sure I was not alone devoting a little extra care to the positions he laid out in a recent interview conducted with him by Ezra Klein.
- Official: 2 dead in Los Angeles explosion A fire official says a second man has died after an apparent gas leak explosion shattered an industrial building in South Los Angeles.
- Sandra Bullock withdraws from Gulf video Sandra Bullock wants out of a public service announcement promoting restoration of the Gulf Coast. But before you start burning Bullock in effigy, know that the group that produced the campaign, Women of the Storm, is partnered with America's Wetland Foundation, which is financed by BP, Shell, ExxonMobil and other oil companies.
- 1 dead, 1 critical after L.A. explosion A suspected natural gas explosion Friday at an industrial plastic-coating shop collapsed part of the building and hurled two workers into the street, killing one and leaving the other in critical condition, fire officials said.
- Anthony Weiner wins the morning Last night, House Republicans blocked a bill providing billions of dollars for healthcare for first responders and others suffering due to breathing toxins on 9/11. They were able to do so because Democrats used a procedural maneuver to prevent Republicans from adding pointless, partisan amendments, but that maneuver meant the bill needed a two-thirds super-majority to pass. One hundred and fifty-nine Republicans then voted against the bill, even though most of those Republicans say they support helping the heroes of 9/11. So New York Democrat Anthony Weiner took to the floor to castigate the opposition party. You have probably seen it on the YouTube:
- The $2 camisole: How cheap is ruining our lives I looked at the price and thought, this is outrageous. This is far, far too little to pay. The heads up had come Thursday via one of the bargain blogs I regularly peruse, the notice that Old Navy was practically giving away camisoles for $2. Minutes later, the news broke that Amazon was launching a $139 Kindle, well under half its original cost. So why does this information, instead of making me want to run out and burn up some plastic, fill me with dread? It's not that I enjoy paying more, it's just that shouldn't some things -- like sushi, stereo systems and brand-new clothes -- be valued more?
- I never thought I'd be another single black mother It was raining when I left Michael's townhouse that Wednesday morning, Jan. 2, 2002. I had less than 10 minutes to get from Vienna, Va., to my job in D.C. I would be late for sure, but I didn't care. My life had changed forever. I knew even then, hours after the fact, that I was pregnant. As I navigated the Beltway gridlock, I wondered where I could get an E.P.T. along the way. It's too early. I'll have to wait a few weeks.
- Time to scrap BP brand? Gas-station owners divided BP gas station owners across the country are divided over whether the oil giant stained by its handling of the Gulf spill should rebrand U.S. outlets as Amoco or another name as part of its effort to repair the company's badly damaged reputation.
- Lady Business: I want to be a writer I'm moving to New York to get my MFA in nonfiction -- I hope to be a writer. How do I stay sane in a competitive field where success is basically "be famous"? What is the balance among work to be proud of, self-promotion, the numbers game (Twitter followers, Facebook friends, website stats, book sales, pounds gained from emotional eating), and other people always being better? How do I move to New York without the word baggage of "jealous," "inadequate" and "afraid"?
The Guardian
- Coalition more radical than Thatcher, says senior Tory Francis Maude defends scope and speed of reforms with claim earlier governments have not pushed ahead vigorously enoughThe coalition is trying to push through quicker and more vigorous reforms than attempted by either Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair in their first terms, Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister and senior Tory responsible for the party's transition into government, said today.There has been criticism that David Cameron risks overloading the Whitehall machine, and storing up political trouble, by quickly pursuing radical reforms on so many fronts simultaneously.But Maude, in a Guardian interview, said: "If you look at the last transitions of governments and the way they came in, I would say one of the things that Thatcher regretted was not pushing ahead vigorously enough, and quickly enough, in terms of reform. The big reforming Thatcher governments were not until 1983 and 1987."Similarly, the Blair government did not just waste its first 100 days – it wasted its first five years. By contrast we have prepared very carefully. So we are well equipped to hit the ground running"A member of the cabinet's "star chamber" on spending, Maude defended plans for a vast efficiency drive, including redundancies in Whitehall, saying it was the best way to ultimately protect frontline public services.He said he wanted to unleash a new wave of public sector entrepreneurs willing to take over public services as co-ops or mutuals. He also pointed to the 60,000 responses to the Treasury's call for suggestions on how to make government more efficient as proof that there is a thirst to take charge of public services.Maude, seen as one of the first modernisers of the Tory party, positively embraced the coalition with the Liberal Democrats, saying: "For a government facing a national crisis, to be a broad-based government is a huge advantage."He said the preparatory work he had undertaken for a majority Conservative government "had to be adapted for coalition purposes, but nonetheless we came in with a huge overlap between what we wanted to do and what the Lib Dems wanted to do. Obviously we had thought a lot more about it."Referring to the dismissive putdown of the coalition attributed to the leading rightwing backbencher David Davis last week, Maude said: "If I look at the 'brokeback coalition' jibe there is a bit of a compliment in there – relationships are good and it is kind of working. There is a lot of trust and a lot of stuff gets sorted out because they [Cameron and Nick Clegg] talk to one another and they have a strong personal relationship."Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, joined the call to keep up the pace of reform, saying: "The lesson you learn is that you only have limited time in government to make reform happen because after two years you often spend a lot of your time dealing with events. Time is very limited, and if you are going to make change, you have to make change early."There has been concern in some Tory circles that the coalition, since its formation in May, has been pursuing too much radical change on too many fronts.The issue was raised at a political cabinet earlier this month, but it is hard for Downing Street to contain cabinet ministers competing to produce radical agendas before the clouds of the autumn spending round dominate the landscape.The former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown called on the government this week to slow the pace of reform, urging it to try pilot projects to test the ground before embarking on full-scale change.Since the election, the government has announced plans to eradicate the structural deficit by the end of the parliament, reform welfare, put GP commissioning at the heart of NHS change, set up a wave of new academies and free schools, elect police commissioners to oversee police, impose radical reforms to the pay and conditions of public sector workers, and introduce the biggest wave of constitutional reform since the 1832 Great Reform Act, including a referendum next May on the alternative vote system.In a sign that the government recognises that public opinion is in a fragile state, Cameron is to not planning to relax in early August, but will be undertaking two "PM directs" in the regions next week to try to reassure voters that the cuts programme is necessary and not part of an ideological drive to shrink the state.The shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, who is due to launch a "Save our NHS" campaign tomorrow, said today that the Tories were making the major strategic mistake of reforming the structures of the NHS at a time when it was facing such financial challenge. "They will live to regret this. I think within a year or so, they will have a major crisis on their hands."He said government had no full mandate for these reforms as they had not been in the coalition document, which proposed no further significant upheaval.Maude rejected the charge that the NHS changes could be seen as a surprise. "I think the health reforms, such as GP commissioning, were all there. People should have read the words in the manifesto."In the BMA's fullest response to the white paper, chairman Hamish Meldrum said doctors would engage with the proposals, but warned: "Many are concerned that it will increase the role of the market in healthcare and result in the increased participation of the commercial sector."Liberal-Conservative coalitionConservativesFrancis MaudeMargaret ThatcherDavid CameronPublic sector cutsPatrick Wintourguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
- Potters Bar criminal case reopens Rail watchdog to look into criminal charges after jury says maintenance failures led to accident in which seven diedThe official rail regulator, the Crown Prosecution Service and British transport police are to reopen investigations into whether criminal proceedings could be brought over the deaths of seven people in the Potters Bar rail crash eight years ago.The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR), the independent safety watchdog, today told the Guardian it was to look again at the crash. In October 2005, the CPS said no charges of manslaughter by gross negligence could be brought.Today's announcement came after an inquest at Letchworth, Hertforshire, found the crash had been caused by unsafe points.A spokesman for the ORR said: "We welcome the conclusion of the Potters Bar inquest and note the verdict of the jury."We will now proceed to determine whether any criminal proceedings for health and safety offences should be brought in accordance with the work related deaths protocol." That would include detailed discussions with prosecutors and police.The protocol exists because the CPS can only prosecute in relation to serious criminal activity, such as manslaughter, while the ORR can prosecute for health and safety offences.A CPS spokeswoman said: "We will be looking to see whether any evidence came out of the inquest which would require us to review the decision."The coroner said he would file a report warning of continuing potential risks to travellers, and the Department of Transport said it would consider this carefully. Judge Michael Findlay Baker QC, criticised the "indefensible" length of time families of the victims had had to wait for inquest to be held, saying they were due an apology.More than 70 people were injured when the 12.45 King's Cross to King's Lynn train came off the rails as it approached the station, where it was not due to stop, at about 1pm on 10 May 2002.There had been inspection and/or maintenance failures in the period before the crash, the inquest jury concluded, after a seven-week hearing.Six passengers who died were in the fourth carriage of the train, which became detached and airborne, while the seventh victim, who had been walking nearby, was hit by debris.The train was travelling at a legal speed – 98mph – and the driver, Gordon Gibson, was cleared of any blame.The inquest was investigating the deaths of passengers Austen Kark, Emma Knights, Jonael Schickler, Alexander Ogunwusi, Chia Hsin Lin and Chia Chin Wu, and the pedestrian, Agnes Quinlivan.The coroner said he would file a report under Rule 43 of the 1984 Coroners' Rules, which allows coroners to express concern that circumstances continue to create a risk of other deaths."Whatever the causes, the passage of over eight years from the derailment to the conclusion of the hearing of the inquest is indefensible."The families are due a public apology, and as the current representative of the system whose abuse has led to this delay, I offer that apology. It feels wholly inadequate, but it is all that it is within my power to do. I hope a line may begin to be drawn, and a sad and lengthy chapter in many lives may be closed."Kark's widow, the writer Nina Bawden, said: "I would like to feel that the inquest has served the purpose of leading to improvements in safety on the railways."Quinlivan's daughter Pat Smith said: "We've waited eight long years for this. We all wanted a public inquiry we didn't get. We've all had to sit through eight long weeks now of questions. We've listened to a catalogue of inadequacies and shoddy maintenance and shoddy management systems that should have been rectified a long time ago. We hope now they will put them right."We thank the jury because they seem to have listened but again they were limited as to what they could do."John Knights, father of Emma, 29, said: "We are somewhat disappointed that the jury was not allowed to consider systemic failures of the accident, as opposed to being allowed to consider immediate causes."Bob Crow, the general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union, described the delays as an absolute scandal, and said the verdict "confirms what we already knew – that this tragic loss of life at Potters Bar could have been avoided if safety rather than profits had been the priority on our railways back in May 2002."Basic failures of inspection and of maintenance, driven by the greed and fragmentation of rail privatisation, led us to Potters Bar. Those responsible for creating that lethal culture – the politicians and their business associates – will never share the pain of the victims of their gross mismanagement. They have escaped prosecution for their role in this avoidable disaster."In the eight years between the Potters Bar tragedy and today's inquest verdict, two of the main players, [maintenance firm] Jarvis and Railtrack, have gone out of business. That makes a mockery of justice."Crow said new cuts to maintenance could lead to the "the same poisonous cocktail" of conditions that led to Potters Bar.A Network Rail spokesman said much had changed and railways were almost "unrecognisable" since the days of the tragedy."Private contractors are no longer involved in the day-to-day maintenance of the nation's rail infrastructure as NR took this entire operation, involving some 15,000 people, in-house in 2004. All of the recommendations made by both the industry's own formal inquiry and the health and safety investigation have been actioned. Today, the railways are safer than they have ever been."Potters Bar train crashRail transportTransportJames Meikleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
- Berlusconi in peril as ally deserts him • Italian premier puts brave face on defection• Parliamentary majority ebbs away in new crisisSilvio Berlusconi's third term as Italian prime minister was in crisis today after one of his main allies and 33 MPs deserted him, stripping his party of its parliamentary majority.The move by the supporters of Gianfranco Fini to set up a new group cuts the number of Freedom People party MPs to just above 300, short of the 316 required for a majority, meaning that on some controversial policy issues the prime minister may no longer have his way.Fini, the former post-fascist turned liberal conservative who co-founded the Freedom People party with Berlusconi but who has fallen out with the prime minister, notably over ethics within the party, said his group would only vote with the government if measures proposed upheld the party's electoral promises and "the general interest".Berlusconi and his aides were putting a brave face on the defection tonight, promising to retain in government ministers loyal to Fini, and thereby see out the administration's term through to 2013.But the split was a serious blow to Berlusconi, who has been under siege since revelations last year that he hosted parties attended by a prostitute, and more recently by a wave of corruption scandals. "It's always difficult to say for how long artificial respiration can last, but the government is no more," said Pier Luigi Bersani of the opposition Democratic party. "He can't think it is August and everything will end up with wine and roses.""Berlusconi emerges substantially weakened from this row," said Alessandro Campi, a professor of political science at Perugia university. "The government will have serious problems if it has to negotiate the passing of every law in the coming months." Fini has been in dispute with Berlusconi for months over issues ranging from immigration to the prime minister's attempt to restrict the use of police wiretaps and punish journalists who publish transcripts of them.After Berlusconi issued a statement on Thursday describing Fini's views as "absolutely incompatible with the founding principles" of the party, Fini fought back in a hastily called press conference."Last night, in two and a half hours, without being able to give my views, I was effectively expelled from the party I helped found," he said. Explaining his rift with Berlusconi, Fini said the party's defence of scandal-hit members of the government "too often meant an expectation of impunity." Fini added that he was fighting for legality "in the fullest sense of the word, that is fighting crime as the government is meritoriously doing, but also public ethics, sense of state and playing by the rules." Fini also railed at Berlusconi's bid to force him to resign his post as speaker in the lower house.Among the supporters of Fini who have joined the new parliamentary group, called Future and Freedom for Italy, are European Affairs minister Andrea Ronchi and deputy Giulia Buongiorno, a lawyer who gained notoriety defending former prime minister Giulio Andreotti against mafia charges and Italian student Raffaele Sollecito against charges of murdering British student Meredith Kercher.As chairwoman of the lower house justice commission, Buongiorno has been instrumental in battling Berlusconi's wiretapping clampdown, which will now be voted on after the summer break."With the wiretap vote coming up in the autumn, Berlusconi has got a month to find 10 or so deputies," said James Walston, a political analyst at the American University of Rome. "He will be going on a shopping spree with the Union of Christian Democrats in his sights." The small UDC party is led by Pier Ferdinando Casini, a former Berlusconi ally.Alessandro Campi traced the break-up between Fini and Berlusconi to a shouting match the two had at a conference in April, which culminated in Fini demanding "What will you do? Get rid of me?""Berlusconi probably never forgave Fini for challenging him in public," he said.Berlusconi: The highs and lowsMarch 1994 Berlusconi's Freedom Alliance wins election. Falls after seven months.June 2001 His Forza Italia party returns to power.May-June 2003 Berlusconi put on trial on corruption charges but granted immunity from prosecution.January 2004 Berlusconi's immunity ruled unconstitutional and trial resumes in AprilDecember 2004 Berlusconi is cleared of corruption after a four-year trial.April 2005 A resounding defeat in regional polls leads to the coalition's fall and Berlusconi's resignation, but after receiving a presidential mandate he forms a new government.November 2006 Berlusconi collapses at a rally. He is fitted with a pacemaker.April 2008 Berlusconi wins general election, securing a third term as premier.May 2009 Berlusconi's second wife says she wants a divorce after revelations about his antics with other women including 18-year-old Naomi LetiziaJune 2009 Tape recordings of Berlusconi and escort girl Patrizia D'Addario are released to the press.October 2009 Constitutional court overturns a law which granted Berlusconi immunity while in office. December 2009 Berlusconi suffers two broken teeth and a fractured nose after being hit by a souvenir model of Milan's cathedral during a visit to the city. March 2010 Berlusconi's coalition does well in local elections, winning four areas from the opposition.Silvio BerlusconiItalyTom Kingtonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
- Rights groups target EU over Roma Criticism comes in wake of France's decision to expel illegal Roma immigrants and destroy hundreds of their encampmentsThe European Union was today accused of "turning a blind eye" as countries across Europe carried out a wave of expulsions and introduced new legislation targeting the Roma.Human rights groups criticised the EU for failing to address the real issues driving Europe's largest ethnic minority to migrate in the first place and for choosing not to upbraid countries for breaking both domestic and EU laws in their treatment of them.The criticism came after France announced it would round up and expel illegal Roma immigrants and destroy hundreds of their encampments.Elsewhere, it emerged that the city of Copenhagen had requested Danish government assistance to deport up to 400 Roma, and that Swedish police had expelled Roma in breach of its own and EU laws.In Belgium a caravan of 700 Roma has been chased out of Flanders and forced to set up camp in French-speaking Wallonia in the south.Italy, which in 2008 declared a state of emergency due to the presence of Roma, and evicted thousands of them, mainly to Romania and Bulgaria, is continuing to implement the policy to this day.Germany is in the process of repatriating thousands of Roma children and adolescents to Kosovo, despite warnings they will face discrimination, appalling living conditions, lack of access to education as well as language problems, because many of them were born in Germany and do not speak Serbian or Albanian.In eastern European countries that are EU members, such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, accounts are rife of widespread discrimination against Roma, including physical attacks.Amnesty International said the EU had "turned a blind eye" to what it called a "serious breach of human rights" towards Europe's Roma, who are roughly estimated to number about 16 million."There is a clear and systemic programme of EU governments targeting Roma," said Anneliese Baldaccini, a lawyer at Amnesty's EU office.The Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), which monitors the situation of Roma in Europe, called on the EU to be "much more forthright" in pointing out to member states "the clear requirements of the free movement law"."Poverty, discrimination and a whole host of things make life unbearable for Roma in their countries of origin," said the ERRC's executive director, Robert Kushen. "We would welcome strong EU involvement to address some of these issues," he said.The campaign groups were responding to the European Commission's insistence this week that the issue was one for individual states to handle."When it comes to Roma and the possibility of expelling them, this is up to the member states to deal with – in this case France – and for them to decide how they are going to implement the law," said Matthew Newman, spokesman for the European justice commissioner, Viviane Reding.French president Nicholas Sarkozy was this week accused of pursuing a "xenophobic" and "discriminatory" crackdown on the country's 400,000 Travellers, Gypsies and Roma – most of whom have French citizenship.Interior minister Brice Hortefeux announced new measures including the dismantling of about 300 encampments and the "quasi-immediate" expulsion to Romania or Bulgaria of Roma with a criminal record.Amnesty said the EU should penalise countries that have persistently failed to uphold the human rights of Roma. Among the harshest measures applicable under the charter of fundamental rights that came into force with the Lisbon treaty last year is the withdrawal of voting rights, or even expulsion from the union."The EU under the Lisbon Treaty...has the responsibility to address human rights within the 27 member states," said Amnesty's executive officer for legal affairs in the European Union, Susanna Mehtonen.Campaign groups say the EU's failure to intervene calls into question its commitment to the Charter of Fundamental Rights that came into force with the passage of the Lisbon Treaty last year, and was heralded as a "new dawn" for human rights in Europe.They have accused Brussels of cowardice when it comes to the Roma. While the commission has no competence to defend gay rights, either, it has frequently been ready to criticise homophobic legislation in eastern Europe – largely, it is believed, because gay rights are well established in western European countries, unlike the rights of Roma.RomaEuropean UnionHuman rightsAmnesty InternationalFranceKate ConnollyLizzy Daviesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
- US embassy car in fatal Kabul crash Angry mob torches vehicles, chants slogans and confronts police, sparking fears 2006 city-wide riots will be repeatedThe Afghan capital is on high alert after rioting sparked by the death of four civilians when a US embassy vehicle crashed into their car. There are fears of a repeat of the city-wide riots that struck Kabul in 2006.Police fired shots into the air in a bid to disperse an angry mob that torched two embassy vehicles and threw stones at police and Nato soldiers who rushed to the scene near the centre of Kabul's diplomatic quarter.Sayed Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada, the head of Kabul's crime investigation department, said six Afghan civilians were involved in the accident and four died. The US embassy said the vehicle had been carrying four US contractors who "co-operated immediately with local Afghan security forces after the incident"."Our sympathies go out to the families of those Afghans injured or killed in this tragic accident," the embassy statement said.A western official said two embassy vehicles went to the scene to rescue the contractors but after one of the rescue cars got stuck on a central embankment everyone was forced to get into a single car.The stranded rescue vehicle and the original car were left at the scene and torched by the rioters.According to local news agency Pajhwok, despite efforts to cordon off the area an angry crowd of hundreds of civilians soon appeared chanting slogans against foreign troops and Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.Witnesses said several Afghan police were wounded after being hit by stones thrown by protesters in an area close to a US military base and a few minutes' walk from the main gate of the US embassy.It is one of the most serious outbreaks of public anger in the capital since 2006 when Kabul was struck by hours of rioting after a US military convoy ploughed into a group of pedestrians. Buildings run by foreign aid charities were ransacked and torched during that unrest.In the latest case, most organisations with foreign staff ordered all of their expat employees into lockdown, banning them from movement around the city. Restrictions were mostly lifted by evening.One foreign executive working in the capital described the drive down the Jalalabad Road to his guesthouse as "very hairy .... with crowds stoning vehicles with foreigners in them although fortunately not mine. But the car immediately behind me was battered."AfghanistanUS foreign policyUS militaryUnited StatesJon Booneguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
- Slowdown fuels US double dip fears • Fears that US economy is heading for double-dip recession• Barack Obama's congressional election hopes damaged• White House economist Christina Romer expresses concernThe US recovery appears to be faltering after a slowdown in consumer spending dampened growth and fuelled fears of a double dip recession.President Barack Obama's hopes of a strong showing in November's congressional elections took a blow as official figures revealed that the US economy grew at an annualised rate of 2.4% in the second quarter compared with 3.7% in the first three months of the year.Slower growth across the US, where almost one in 10 are out of work, was expected by economists. But many expressed surprise at the extent of the slowdown and the continued anxiety among consumers. While business investment grew strongly, consumers sat on their hands. Spending on services was especially weak with figures showing a meagre 0.8% annual rise.Christina Romer, chair of the White House council of economic advisers, said the growth had averaged more than 3% in the first half of the year, but expressed concern at a slowing trend."This solid rate of growth indicates that the process of steady recovery from the recession continues. Nevertheless, faster growth is needed to bring about substantial reductions in unemployment. Much work clearly remains to be done before the economy is fully recovered," she said.Gerard Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered, said the US was continuing to grow but unlike previous recoveries was failing to gain momentum."Normally at this stage of the recovery we see confidence returning, but that just isn't happening at the moment. Instead we see anxiety about the future and the outlook for sub-trend growth," he said.Lyons warned that while a policy of low interest rates and support for the banking sector was keeping the economy from slipping back into recession, there would need to be further injections of funds by the Federal Reserve by the end of the year to maintain growth."I think we will see further monetary easing in the US and the UK in the second half of the year."In the first half of the year the US government maintained subsidies for homebuyers and a range of other spending programmes to stimulate the battered economy.However, the injection of federal funds has increasingly been outweighed by steep cuts in local spending as individual state's wrestle with huge fiscal deficits.California is struggling to pay its bills amid a row over $11bn of cuts in spending. State finance minister John Chiang has threatened to pay for services with IOUs until governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reaches agreement with state legislators.The debt crisis enveloping the state has already prompted ratings agencies to downgrade its bonds.Other states are pushing through cuts to balance their books after they protected public spending during the downturn last year.Republicans have demanded the democrat-led Congress and President Obama withdraw the fiscal stimulus that reflated the economy in the second half of last year and provided support for much of the growth in the first half of 2010.Economists said the withdrawal of public funds at federal and state level would slow growth in the second half. Some critics, including leading liberal economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, have argued the administration risks pushing the economy back into recession.Major revisions to the GDP figures showed growth was stronger in the first half, up from an original estimate of 2.7% to 3.7%. However, the commerce department said revisions showed the recession caused a bigger dent in growth and output contracted 4.1% peak to trough versus 3.7% previously reported.US economyUS economic growth and recessionEconomicsFinancial crisisGlobal recessionUS politicsBarack ObamaPhillip Inmanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
- India moves to restrict surrogacy World centre of 'surrogacy tourism' will introduce radical legislation to regulate £1.5bn industryShabnum Nur Mohammed Sheikh's reasons for bearing another woman's child are straightforward: the 60 rupees (80p) her husband earns from his food stall each day buys dinner but little else.Shabnum's first surrogate pregnancy got her out of a shared shack in a slum and into a small flat. Her second will pay for uniforms, books, bags and eventually, she hopes, university fees for her three young daughters."I hope my kids will work in computers or something like that," Shabnum, 26, said. "Then they will look after me when I'm old."Pushpa Pandiya, 33, also left the slums after buying a small apartment with money earned from, in her case, two surrogate pregnancies. She too has a bright young daughter."Education is getting very costly but it is essential," she said, explaining that she was about to embark on her third pregnancy for some "very nice" foreigners.Since 2002, when the practice was legalised, India has become a world centre of "surrogacy tourism".A relative lack of red tape and prices that are a quarter of those in the US or Europe have brought thousands of childless couples to Indian clinics to be matched with women like Shabnum and Pushpa.The Confederation of Indian Industry predicts the business will generate $2.3bn (£1.5bn) annually by 2012. A recent report by the Indian Law Commission described it as a "pot of gold".Radical legislation is to be introduced to bring some order to this booming but almost unregulated sector.One measure will make it compulsory for prospective parents to carry proof that any infant born to a surrogate mother will have automatic citizenship in their home countries in an attempt to avoid messy legal battles.A second will stop clinics that perform the clinical procedures from sourcing, supplying and taking care of the surrogate mothers themselves."The IVF clinics' job is to do IVF. We want them away from the potential areas where corruption and malpractice take place," said Dr RS Sharma, secretary of the bill's drafting committee and deputy director general of the Indian Council for Medical Research.Wise spendingThe clinics are likely to resist such a move, citing the welfare of the mothers. Dr Nayna Patel, who runs the Akshanka clinic in Anand, the small town in the western state of Gujarat where Shabnum and Pushpa gave birth, said it was only her close involvement that guaranteed their safety and welfare."We know all the women personally. We exclude many after psychological assessments, after learning of social problems, and we make absolutely sure that the money that they earn is well spent," Patel, who pioneered the industry in India, said.If all goes well, Pushpa and Shabnum will earn about 300,000 rupees (£4,200) with a bonus if there are twins. If they miscarry during the first term, they will get a third of the cash. "We don't release the money until we see the deeds of the house they want to buy, the bank account that has been set up or whatever," Patel said.Dr Harsha Bhadarka, an embryologist at the clinic, said mothers spent their earnings on a house, education, to set up a business or on medical expenses. The last of these is one of the principal reasons for debt among poor Indian households, recent studies have shown.So too is dowry. Bhardarka tries to dissuade women such as Shabnum from using money earned from surrogate pregnancies to pay a "bride price" for their daughters."Do you want them to have do the same as you?" she asked. "This is my family, my community, my custom," shrugged Shabnum.Mothers at Patel's clinic – there were 190 last year, a vast increase on previous years – live in a hostel so they are not forced to do housework and are sheltered from inquisitive neighbours or drunken husbands.One couple who used the clinic are Nikki and Bobby Bains from Ilford, Essex. Within a week they will fly to Anand to pick up their second child. Their first, Daisy, was born to a surrogate mother nearly two years ago after "a 13-year struggle".Bobby, 46. said: "It's very difficult to find surrogates in the UK. There are lots of delays and surrogates are very rare. We had a couple of bad experiences too. So we ended up with 10 attempts, all in India. It has cost around £80,000 in medical fees."We call Daisy little Miss India. We are Sikh, the surrogate was Muslim, the egg donor was Hindu. So she encapsulates the whole country."No one can say we are exploiting anyone. They get paid the equivalent of 10 or 15 years' salary. At least you know the money goes to a good cause."Such care is rare in the sector, say campaigners.Instead, there is "rampant use of unethical practices", with mothers and prospective parents being exploited by unscrupulous middlemen.The bill limits the age of surrogate mothers to 35, imposes a maximum of five pregnancies, including their own children, and makes medical insurance mandatory.The proposed changes have provoked fierce debate in a society that remains broadly conservative. Many refuse to believe that a woman can carry a child without sexual intercourse. Few of the surrogate mothers have the full backing of their families."My community should be proud of me for what I'm doing, not criticise me," said Shabnum, whose parents have disowned her.Emotional distanceThe draft bill bans post-natal contact between a surrogate mother and the child she has borne."It is natural that when it is inside you for nine months you have some feelings. But from the beginning we are conditioned not to involve our emotions," Pushpa said. "When they take the child, those days are a bit tough. I know I have done a good thing in helping someone have a child and a happy life but I think about them a lot."Shabnum, 26, said text messages and photos from the parents of the child to whom she had given birth made her very happy – until they tailed off.The bill makes any such contact a criminal offence punishable by fines or imprisonment of up to two years "or something appropriate like that", Sharma said.Case studyWithin a week Nikki and Bobby Bains from Ilford, Essex, will fly to Gujarat, in India, to pick up their second child from the Akshanka clinic in Anand.Their first, Daisy, was born to a surrogate mother nearly two years ago after "a 13-year struggle"."It's very difficult to find surrogates in the UK. There are lots of delays and surrogates are very rare. We had a couple of bad experiences too," said Bobby, 46. "So we ended up with 10 attempts, all in India. It has cost around £80,000 in medical fees."We call Daisy Little Miss India. We are Sikh, the surrogate was Muslim, the egg donor was Hindu. So she encapsulates the whole country."No one can say we are exploiting anyone. They get paid the equivalent of 10 or 15 years' salary. At least you know the money goes to a good cause."The Bainses write about their experiences on the website on their have now launched a website, oneinsix.comabout their experiences.Jason BurkeIndiaFertility problemsFamilyChildbirthChildrenJason Burkeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
- Iran stoning woman's reunion hope Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani's supporters call for support to free her from prison, after sentence was changed to hanging The Iranian woman whose sentence of death by stoning was commuted to hanging after an international campaign, today sent a message from inside Tabriz prison calling for further support so that she might be reunited with her children.Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, said she thinks of nothing other than hugging her children and that she was mentally broken when authorities flogged her 99 times in front of her then 17-year-old son, Sajad.She thanked the world for launching the campaign for her release but said part of her "heart is frozen". "Every night before I go to sleep, I think who would throw stones at me?", she said.The message was read by Mina Ahadi, of the Iran Committee against Stoning (ICAS), at a press conference in Conway Hall, in London, this morning ."Put Sakineh's picture beside Neda Agha-Soltan's and don't let Iran repeat what it did with Neda again with Sakineh," said Ahadi, an Iranian human rights activist. Agha-Soltan was shot to death in the aftermath of Iran's disputed election in June 2009 and became a symbol of Iran's post-election rebellion.Yesterday, Iran allowed Mohammadi Ashtiani's family to have a full contact visit with her in the prison."When I told her about the world's support for her, that the world doesn't think she has done any crime even if she had had an adulterous relationship, I had the feeling that once again she regained her honour ... after all those humiliations from the Iranian officials," Sajad, now 22, said.After weeks of imposing a media blackout over Mohammadi Ashtiani, Iran's state-run TV broadcast a report this week that tried to link her campaigners to "the west and Israel", and accused them of calling for the release of someone who had been convicted of murder.At the conference, ICAS presented a document showing Mohammadi Ashtiani had in fact been convicted of adultery. She was originally sentenced to 99 lashes, but her case was reopened when a court in Tabriz suspected her of murdering her husband. She was acquitted, but the adultery charge was reviewed and the death by stoning sentence handed down on the basis of "judge's knowledge".The documents provided by ICAS show that two of five judges who investigated Mohammadi Ashtiani's case concluded that there was no forensic evidence of adultery. "It's shocking, she's sentenced to death by stoning because three judges think, just think, that you had an illicit relationship outside marriage," said Maryam Namazie of the ICAS.This week, Iran issued an arrest warrant for Mohammad Mostafaei, the lawyer who volunteered to represent Mohammadi Ashtiani. Mostafaei has gone into hiding, but Iran has taken his in hostage to force him to reappear. The Guardian has learned that Mostafaei is safe and plans to publish an open letter to Tehran's prosecutor.ICAS also issued a warning over the case of Mariam Ghorbanzadeh, 25, whose stoning sentence was commuted to hanging this week.Ghorbanzadeh is pregnant and human rights activists believe that Iranian authorities are putting pressure on her in prison in the hope that she miscarries. They would then be allowed to execute her.IranCapital punishmentSaeed Kamali Dehghanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
- Prescott doubted Iraq 'tittle-tattle' Blair's deputy prime minister tells Chilcot inquiry he doubted claim that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutesThe former deputy prime minister, Lord Prescott, has described how he had doubted intelligence reports about Iraq before the invasion but dismissed what he called "fashionable" criticism of Tony Blair for taking the country to war.Offering fresh insights into the run-up to the invasion, he told the Chilcot inquiry: "When I kept reading them [intelligence reports], I kept saying to myself, 'Is this intelligence?' It was not very substantiated but clearly was robust."Joint Intelligence Committee assessments contained conclusions "based too much on too little evidence, that was my impression at the time," he said. There was "a bit of tittle tatttle there, and a bit of judgment here".Prescott said he felt "nervous" about the notorious claim in the government's September 2002 dossier that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. He said he adopted a sceptical approach but was not in a position to say to intelligence chiefs: "You are wrong."He had asked Robin Cook, former foreign secretary then leader of the Commons, not to resign but said: "In the end of the day he was right." He admitted that Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, warned after the invasion in 2003 of the increased danger of a terrorist attack, but suggested she was simply trying to obtain additional funding for MI5.He did not see private letters Tony Blair wrote to President George Bush at the time, but said the Labour prime minister persuaded the US administration to go down the UN route of diplomacy. The inquiry panel reminded Prescott he had written there was "no alternative but to stick by America". "If you look at the Falklands we could not have done that without American assistance," Prescott replied, referring to US satellite intelligence during the 1982 conflict.It had been wrong for the government to blame French president Jacques Chirac for the breakdown of negotiations in the UN. "The French easily come to mind in the Brits' mind when we want to blame people," he said. "There is a lot of history for that."Prescott did not think the cabinet should have been shown the detailed advice of the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, on the legality of the conflict. "All I wanted to know, and I think the Cabinet and the prime minister, is is it legal and can you legally justify military intervention? He said yes."Dismissing as fashionable criticism of Blair, he said: "True leadership is not about having the benefit of hindsight. It is about having the gift of vision, courage and compassion, and I believe that Tony Blair had all those three."Inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot said his team hoped to visit Iraq "to see for ourselves the consequences of UK involvement" before publishing its final report around the turn of the year.Iraq war inquiryIraqJohn PrescottRichard Norton-Taylorguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
- Couple jailed for making children beg Speranta Mihai amd Gheorghe Mihai plead guilty to child cruelty and benefit fraud for activities across south-east EnglandA Romanian couple who exploited their seven children as beggars and thieves in and around London have been jailed at Reading crown court for two and a half years for child cruelty.Speranta Mihai, a Roma who lived in Slough and took her children, now aged between two and 16, begging and stealing across south-east England in a systematic operation, was sentenced by Mr Recorder Whittaker alongside her husband, Gheorghe Mihai, who pleaded guilty to child cruelty, benefit and tax fraud and money laundering.The Mihais were arrested in a dawn raid by officers from Operation Golf, the Metropolitan police's investigation into what it believes is Europe's largest human trafficking ring. It is centering on the small Romanian town of Tandarei from which as many as 1,000 children have been trafficked across Europe for the purposes of benefit fraud, begging and theft.In the year preceding his arrest, Gheorghe Mihai, 36, passed £47,000 through his bank accounts, including £35,000 in tax credits, housing and child benefit that he defrauded from the state.When the police arrived, most of the children were found sleeping on the floor of the sparsely furnished house in the Berkshire town with little food.Four required dental treatment and three suffered from infestations of headlice. One of the youngest children was later found to have scarring consistent with cigarette burns and another with a lesion. The injuries happened while the children were in their parents' care, the court was told.The prosecution said the evidence added up to a general pattern of "neglect and cruelty" and that – despite defence denials that the children were trafficked from Romania for exploitation – the children had been brought to the UK expressly for that purpose.Speranta Mihai, thought to be aged around 33, would take her children begging in Luton, Wembley, Southall, Soho, Hyde Park, Edgware Road and Oxford Street, as part of what the court heard was the Mihai "family business"."It is an act of cruelty to bring children up in a life of crime," said Gareth Branston for the prosecution. "The Mihai family business is begging or stealing and that is the education they gave their children."None of the children were in school and the couple were both convicted of child cruelty for failing to educate them. Speranta Mihai was convicted on a second count of child cruelty for "causing her children to be engaged in begging".She was warned repeatedly by the authorities not to beg, but that turned out to be pointless, the prosecution said.One day she was stopped by police at Edgware Road and placed on a train at Paddington back to Slough. Three hours later she was found begging with her children outside Bayswater underground station in London.It was part of "a relentless pattern of movement to exploit their children as tools for begging and stealing", the prosecution said.Members of the Mihai family were stopped by law enforcement agencies for begging and theft 99 times, following their arrival in the UK in 2007.Their behaviour was consistent with "complex grooming and behaviour patterns that keep children locked in a cycle of exploitation", according to a statement read out in court from child trafficking expert, Christine Beddoe, the chief executive of ECPAT UK, the anti-trafficking charity.The children are now in local authority care.Officers from Operation Golf said the traffickers' own estimates suggest each child can earn as much as £100,000 a year in the UK. In recent years, as many as 100 lavish new homes have sprung up alongside the shacks and mud tracks of the Roma enclave in Tandarei, eastern Romania, thought to have been built with the proceeds of child exploitation.In April, officers from Operation Golf made 18 arrests in Tandarei during dawn raids with Romanian police and senior members of a gang suspected of having trafficked 272 children, many to the UK. They found dozens of guns, including AK-47s, pump-action shotguns and rifles, travel documents, thousands of pounds in £50 denominations, and bundles of euros and local currency.CrimeChild protectionHuman traffickingRomaniaRobert Boothguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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- This is Burning Man [Infographic] The history of Burning Man has always been a complex entity that has survived, nay, mutated over the years. And because of this, it has grown rapidly since its humble beginnings of a simple gathering on a beach.
- Tired of "Liberal" Google & AOL? New... @Reagan.com e-mails Conservative talk radio host Michael Reagan, eldest son of former president Ronald Reagan, is selling @Reagan.com e-mail addresses on his website with an appeal to conservatives to stop giving their money to companies he casts as tied to liberalism.Writes Reagan: "People who believe in true Reagan Conservative Values are unwittingly supporting...
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- Apple Enters the Battery Game, Releases Battery Charger Apple's got a new product, again, but this time it's not a computer, digital music device, or tablet, it's... a battery charger.
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- Report: RIM unveiling 9.7 inch Blackpad in November Apparently, RIM is gearing up to unveil a tablet sometime in November and guess what? It actually will be called the Blackpad.
- Oregon Considers Plastic Bag Ban The Oregon Legislature may impose a plastic bag ban statewide next year.
- 400 Killed in Flooding in Pakistan, Officials Say Hundreds of thousands of people were believed to be unable to evacuate to safer ground.
Twitter Search
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- What is this new "Who to follow" feature on Twitter from ... What is this new "Who to follow" feature on Twitter from the web? Twitter is about to be just like facebook. Smh....
Yahoo!
- Book says many U.S. universities are waste of money ... Reuters - Spending as much as $250,000 on a bachelors degree from world-renowned U.S. universities such as Harvard University and Yale is a waste of money, a new book asserts.
- "Jersey Shore" star Snooki arrested for bad conduct ... Reuters - President Barack Obama has not heard of Snooki, but New Jersey police certainly have after arresting the "Jersey Shore" reality television star on Friday.
- Chelsea Clinton's wedding declared a no-fly zone (AP) AP - Chelsea Clinton's wedding along the Hudson River will be under a no-fly zone.
- Paris police: Tear gas in letter for US Embassy (AP) AP - Two men who work for the U.S. Embassy in Paris underwent medical tests after handling a suspicious letter Friday, the embassy said, and Paris police said it appeared they had been exposed to tear gas fumes.
- Vitaminwater's Sugar Content: Are Shoppers Being Misled? ... Time.com - The popular sports drink is being sued for its name, which fails to mention its sugar content. Are consumers being misled?
- Great white shark sightings close Cape Cod beach (AP) AP - Officials have closed five miles of a Cape Cod beach after a spotter pilot saw three more great white sharks, including one swimming about 100 yards from a party on the sand.
- Paperwork nightmare: A struggle to fix new law (AP) AP - Talk about a paperwork nightmare: Tucked into the massive new health care law is a demand that nearly 40 million U.S. businesses file tax forms for every vendor that sells them more than $600 in goods.
- Chelsea Clinton's wedding: An instant guide (The Week) The Week - Neither Chelsea Clinton nor her fiancé, Marc Mezvinsky, are speaking publicly about their plans to wed this weekend, and Chelsea's tabloid-savvy parents have offered few clues. Yet, America being America, the internet has been abuzz with questions and rumors about Chelsea's upcoming nuptials — and the first glimpse of her "sizable" engagement ring on April 25 (not to mention reports that Bill's dieting) have only fueled the speculation. Here's what's been reported to date:
- Mia Farrow to testify on Naomi Campbell 'blood diamond' ... AFP - Actress Mia Farrow and models' agent Carole White will testify next month about a "blood diamond" Naomi Campbell is said to have been given by Liberia's Charles Taylor, court papers showed Thursday.
- Dems hope for first lady's stardust in campaign (AP) AP - She's not a political animal, Michelle Obama is quick to say.
ESPN.com
- Lorenzen Wright case: Armed men were looking for Wright, ... Three armed men looking for Lorenzen Wright showed up at the home of the former NBA player's ex-wife about six weeks before he was found shot to death, an attorney said Friday.
- Baltimore Ravens' Domonique Foxworth suffers season-endin... Baltimore Ravens starting cornerback Dominique Foxworth torn his anterior cruciate ligament in Thursday's practice and will miss the coming season.
- Washington Redskins' Albert Haynesworth fails test again,... Albert Haynesworth has failed his conditioning test for a second consecutive day and is being forced to sit out practice again at Washington Redskins training camp.
- New York Yankees talk to Houston Astros about Lance Berkm... With the New York Yankees' pursuit of Adam Dunn stalled, they have engaged in talks with Houston for first baseman Lance Berkman, according to a baseball official with knowledge of the discussions.
- West Virginia coach Bub Huggins' fall blamed on meds, emp... West Virginia University says basketball coach Bob Huggins' rib-breaking fall occurred because medication taken on an empty stomach left him lightheaded.
- Chicago White Sox trade Daniel Hudson to Arizona Diamondb... The Chicago White Sox traded Daniel Hudson to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Edwin Jackson.
- Vomit-assault perpetrator at Philadelphia Phillies game s... A 21-year-old New Jersey man was sentenced to jail Friday for vomiting on another spectator and his 11-year-old daughter in the stands at a Philadelphia Phillies game.
- Eric Berry agrees to deal with Kansas City Chiefs Safety Eric Berry, the fifth overall pick in last spring's draft, says on his Twitter account that he's reached a deal with the Kansas City Chiefs.
- New York Knicks' Amare Stoudemire in Israel to trace Hebr... The New York Knicks' Amare Stoudemire says he has come to Israel to explore whether he has Jewish heritage.
- Tim Sypher says during trial Louisville Cardinals coach R... Karen Cunagin Sypher's former attorney told jurors at her extortion trial he had sexual relations with the former model before writing a letter to Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino demanding $10 million.
BBC News
- Coroner raises rail safety fears A coroner raises ongoing safety fears as an inquest jury blames a points failure for the Potters Bar train crash.
- UK soldiers push to clear Taliban Hundreds of UK soldiers launch an operation to clear Taliban insurgents from a key stronghold in southern Afghanistan.
- Huntley to sue over prison attack Soham killer Ian Huntley is to sue the Prison Service after another attack by an inmate.
- BP boss scaling back oil effort The incoming BP chief executive has said it is time to scale back some parts of the oil spill clean-up in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Venables' identity must be secret The new identity of Jon Venables must be kept secret because there is "compelling evidence" of a threat to his safety, a judge says.
- Child, 3, drowned in garden pond A toddler drowned after falling into a garden pond during a visit to a house in Edinburgh, it has emerged.
- Immigrant worker limit criticised Government plans to limit the number of skilled foreign workers allowed into the UK are criticised by the Lord Mayor of London.
- Lebanon urged to resist violence Syria's president and the Saudi king call on Lebanon's rival factions to avoid turning to violence amid mounting political tensions in the country.
- Israel launches Gaza air strikes Israel launches air strikes into the Gaza Strip, reports say, hours after a Palestinian rocket hit the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.
- Girl, 9, dies in rafting accident A nine-year-old girl from Wales has died in a rafting accident while on holiday in Turkey.
New York Times
- Reprimand for Rangel Is Recommended in Ethics Case The congressman who led an inquiry into Representative Charles B. Rangel’s ethics said he and others recommended the relatively moderate punishment.
- With Recovery Slowing, the Jobs Outlook Fades With growth at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter and the stimulus fading, an analyst says the rest of the year will feel like a recession.
- Obama Touts Car Revival as He Is Dogged by a Slowdown The G.D.P. report provided a lesson in how hard it is going to be to turn around the perception and the reality that the recovery is sputtering.
- 400 Killed in Flooding in Pakistan, Officials Say Hundreds of thousands of people were believed to be unable to evacuate to safer ground.
- Afghan Women Fear Loss of Rights if the Taliban Return Those who have gained a measure of freedom and financial independence see little effort by officials to look out for their future.
- Jewish Group Opposes Ground Zero Mosque The Anti-Defamation League said that the location of the mosque is “counterproductive to the healing process.”
- More Veterans Turn to Suicide Hot Line for Help Critics call it a Band-Aid, but supporters say the suicide hot line has become a gateway into government services.
- Old Debts Never Die; They Are Sold to Collectors Collecting old consumer debts has become a labyrinthine industry involving buyers, lawsuits and abusive tactics.
- July’s Toll Worst for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan The 63 deaths have made July the deadliest month for American troops in the nine-year war in Afghanistan, according to a Web site that tracks casualties.
- Senator Seeks Data on Complaints About Artificial Joints Senator Grassley requested data from Zimmer Holdings, a maker of artificial hips and knees, on how it responded to complaints from surgeons.
Wall Street Journal
- The New Credit-Card Tricks Just months after historic legislation banned certain billing practices, card issuers have dreamed up new ones designed to trip up consumers.
- U.S. Growth Slows U.S. economic growth slowed in the second quarter to a 2.4% annual rate. Business investment was strong, but imports were a big drag and consumers contributed less.
- Nokia Siemens in Talks to Sell Stake Nokia Siemens Networks is talking to several buyout firms about a potential cash infusion of at least $1 billion in exchange for a minority stake in the telecommunications gear maker.
- Google: Not Sure If Beijing Behind China Disruption Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company doesn't know if what now seems to have been a minor disruption of the search engine's availability in China Thursday was evidence of Beijing's power.
- Intel Nears Deal for Infineon Unit Intel is in advanced talks to acquire Infineon's wireless chip unit, whose products include cellular baseband chips used by Apple and other cellphone makers.
- Deal Boosts Li's Standing in U.K. Tycoon Li Ka-shing's $9.1 billion acquisition of three U.K. power grids from Electricite de France will give him control of about a quarter of the country's power distribution.
- Release of Toyota Documents Blocked, Ex-Official Says Senior officials at the Transportation Department have temporarily blocked the release of findings by auto-safety regulators that could favor Toyota in some crashes related to unintended acceleration, a recently retired agency official said.
- Blue Chips Rose 7.1% in July The Dow industrials overcame an early 120-point decline to finish down by just one point on the day, but for the month of July the index rose 691.92 points or 7.1%. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were up 6.9% for the month.
- General Motors To Boost Volt Production By 50 Percent General Motors says it will boost production capacity for its Volt electric car due to increased consumer interest.
- Merck's Profit Falls 52% Merck reported a 52% drop in profit, as the drug maker booked merger and restructuring costs.
CNN.com
- No charges for Gore over alleged sexual assault Former Vice President Al Gore will not face prosecution on an allegation of sexual assault from 2006, according to the Multnomah County district attorney's office.
- More than 400 people dead in Pakistan flooding Flooding caused by monsoon rain has killed more than 400 people across Pakistan, a provincial government official said Friday.
- Earthquake hits northeastern Iran, injuring more than 100 A 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck northeastern Iran on Friday, injuring at least 110 people, according to state-run media.
- 3 wildfires burn more than 25,000 acres in Southern Calif... Hundreds of firefighters -- backed up by more than a dozen aircraft -- battled one wildfire in the Los Angeles area Friday as two more raged within 60 miles of one another.
- Ex-mayor injects race into primary Forty-two years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while promoting the importance of the content of one's character. Today, an African-American candidate who marched with King is hoping the voters in a Democratic primary race will look at the color of his skin.
- Progress made in cleaning up Michigan oil spill Michigan's governor and the boss of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency planned Friday to fly over the location of an oil spill on the Kalamazoo River.
- Blast destroys Los Angeles welding shop; 1 dead An explosion at a welding shop in south Los Angeles killed one man and critically injured another person Friday morning, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
- Israeli airstrike hits Gaza City, witness reports Israel launched an airstrike near a former presidential compound in Gaza City late Friday, according to a CNN stringer at the scene. The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately confirm the strike.
- Airmen killed in Alaska plane crash identified The Air Force has identified four airmen who died Wednesday when a cargo plane crashed during a training mission near Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska.
- New wedding trends shake things up Former President Clinton's daughter, Chelsea Clinton, took great pains to keep the details of her wedding extravaganza a secret even as the media pointed cameras at the posh estate in Rhinebeck, New York, where the ceremony will be held.
Sydney Morning Herald
- Dungowan row continues Plans for an oceanfront property at Manly have produced a tale of the high life, fraud and lawsuits, writes Joel Gibson.
- Spoilt brats get iRate Miranda Devine The more we humans have, the more we want, the more dissatisfied and ungrateful we are.
- Light after black days Robbie Deans says the Wallabies can turn the corner against New Zealand tonight, writes Greg Growden.
- The watermelon party Green or red, it is not necessarily the Greens' political colours that should interest voters, but their economic philosophy, write Nick O'Malley and David Humphries.
- Abbott seizes the lead Latest Herald/Nielsen poll shows Tony Abbott and the Coalition would be swept to power if the election were held today.
- Ghost of Rudd turns Gillard honeymoon into worst nightmare The Julia Gillard experiment is failing. The Gillard government has received its first political death threat. For the first time since she took the prime ministership 37 days ago, a credible national poll has Labor losing power.
- Sydney house prices off the boil Sydney home values slumped in June with prices reflecting the national downward trend.
- Sham marriage stopped reprisals Centrelink unwittingly revealed a clash between Islamic laws and Western life, writes Bellinda Kontominas.
- Gloves off in brawl at Vinnies The war inside St Vincent de Paul is out in the open. "It's scandalous," says the former NSW president.
CNET News.com
- Microsoft rushes fix for Windows shortcut hole Attackers exploiting a Windows hole for a fast-spreading virus prompt Microsoft to rush out an emergency patch.
- Reporters' Roundtable: How to start a tech business today Got a great idea for your own tech company? Today we're talking about how to make it a business, with two great guests: XMarks CEO James Joaquin, and Mahalo CEO (and This Week in Startups host) Jason Calacanis
- AOL exec: 'We have a big f-ing problem!' Former Yahoo "Peanut Butter Manifesto" author Brad Garlinghouse is known for being colorful. At AOL, unlike Yahoo, he's confident that the company can do more than talk the talk.
- Microsoft to challenge to Google-Yahoo Japan deal So guess what Microsoft thinks of Yahoo Japan's decision to swap it out for Google as main search partner? Yeah, it's not too happy about it.
- Did Dell tech support display woman's naked pics? A woman calls Dell tech support to ask for help in locating pictures of herself on her computer. The pictures end up on a newly created Web site. She accuses the support representative of creating the site.
- Redbox rolls out Blu-ray rentals The quickly growing movie rental company is now bringing Blu-ray movies to its kiosks. They'll cost $1.50 per day.
- Report: RIM's Blackpad set to take on iPad BlackBerry maker will launch a tablet with similar dimensions as the iPad, but with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities only. To connect to the Web, the device has to be paired with a mobile phone.
- NASA hopeful, but not confident, about ailing Mars rover Spirit, in electronic hibernation to endure a harsh Martian winter, has not phoned home since March 22, but engineers are hoping for a miracle from Mars.
- How to use App Tabs in Firefox (video) Mozilla has given tabs some long-overdue love in the second Firefox 4 beta with App Tabs, a feature that annihilates your scramble to search for that one elusive open tab. Watch what it does in this How To video.
- 'Smart window' maker Soladigm to build factory Soladigm, which adds thin films to glass to block light and heat, plans a manufacturing plant in Mississippi to make its green building gear.
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- Discovering Who To Follow - With more than a hundred mill... Carolyn / Twitter Blog: Discovering Who To Follow — With more than a hundred million users on Twitter, there are sure to be at least dozens of accounts out there that will reflect your interests. The trouble is finding all of them. Today we're beginning to roll out a simple, but powerful new feature to help address that — “Suggestions for You”.
- The Irony - Black Hat Video Stream Hack (Michael Coates/.... Michael Coates / ...Application Security: The Irony - Black Hat Video Stream Hack — Free access to the Black Hat Video Stream? Yep, that was the case. Read on for the whole story. — I was unable to attend Black Hat in person this year. Instead, I decided I would closely monitor twitter, blogs and the Black Hat page itself to stay up to date.
- Android Wallpaper Apps Falsely Accused of Spyware and Ste... Antonio Wells / Android Tapp: Android Wallpaper Apps Falsely Accused of Spyware and Stealing Sensitive User Data [FUD] — Wow! A recent VentureBeat article put the blogosphere and smartphone industry on its heels when a reported score of wallpaper Android apps were accused of being malicious by mobile security software maker Lookout …
- Steve Ballmer on the iPad: The transcript (Philip Elmer-D... Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune: Steve Ballmer on the iPad: The transcript — “We'll talk about about slates and tablets and blah, blah, blah, blah.” Ballmer at the financial analysts meeting. No, those aren't the notes of a reporter who couldn't keep up. That “blah, blah, blah, blah” — taken from the official transcript …
- Spotify Denies Reported Setback to U.S. Launch (Eliot Van... Eliot Van Buskirk / Epicenter: Spotify Denies Reported Setback to U.S. Launch — A report surfaced Thursday evening that the Spotify music service, popular for years in Europe, is “back to square one” in its negotiations with record labels to launch in the United States — another apparent setback in a series of delays for the service …
- 360 Panorama does instant, awesome panoramas (Josh Lowens... Josh Lowensohn / CNET News: 360 Panorama does instant, awesome panoramas — Shooting panoramic photos with a mobile phone can be difficult. Often times it requires doing all the work in a software app when you get back from wherever you are, as well as trying to make sure that the phone's camera does not change its white balance or exposure between shots.
- Microsoft Will Take Steps To Block The Google-Yahoo Japan... Jay Yarow / Silicon Alley Insider: Microsoft Will Take Steps To Block The Google-Yahoo Japan Partnership — Microsoft is going to try and block the Yahoo Japan - Google partnership, a company rep told us late last night. — “We plan to present evidence to the Japanese FTC explaining why we believe that this deal is substantially …
- RIM Said to Plan Tablet for November to Take on IPad (Hug... Hugo Miller / Bloomberg: RIM Said to Plan Tablet for November to Take on IPad — Research In Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, plans to introduce a tablet computer in November to compete with Apple Inc.'s iPad, according to two people familiar with the company's plans.
- New York Subway Stations Will Go Wireless, Catching Up Wi... Bloomberg: New York Subway Stations Will Go Wireless, Catching Up With Tokyo, Berlin — After an almost three-year delay, work is set to begin on a $200 million plan to bring mobile- phone and Wi-Fi service to New York's subway stations. The project was rejuvenated after the group that won …
- Update and Clarification of Analysis of Mobile Applicatio... Kevin / The Official Lookout Blog: Update and Clarification of Analysis of Mobile Applications at Blackhat 2010 — This week at Blackhat, we released the first findings from the App Genome Project. Our goal with this research is to help make people aware of the capabilities of mobile apps so that they can be vigilant while downloading.
Slashdot
- Justice Department Joins Fraud Lawsuit Against Oracle suraj.sun writes with news that the US Department of Justice has joined a lawsuit alleging Oracle of overcharging the federal government for its software products. Quoting: "In a nutshell, the lawsuit argues that Oracle's government customers — a wide array of agencies, including the State Department, the Energy Department, and the Justice Department itself — got deals 'far inferior' to those the enterprise software giant gave to its commercial clients. The allegations stem from a software deal between Oracle and the federal General Services Administration that the Justice Department says involved 'hundreds of millions of dollars in sales' and that ran from 1998 to 2006. Under the contract, Oracle was required to inform the GSA when commercial discounts improved and to offer those same discounts to government buyers. Oracle misrepresented its true commercial sales practices and thus defrauded the US, the lawsuit contends. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- ISC Offers Response Policy Zones For DNS penciling_in writes "ISC has made the announcement that they have developed a technology that will allow 'cooperating good guys' to provide and consume reputation information about domains names. The release of the technology, called Response Policy Zones (DNS RPZ), was announced at DEFCON. Paul Vixie explains: 'Every day lots of new names are added to the global DNS, and most of them belong to scammers, spammers, e-criminals, and speculators. The DNS industry has a lot of highly capable and competitive registrars and registries who have made it possible to reserve or create a new name in just seconds, and to create millions of them per day. ... If your recursive DNS server has a policy rule which forbids certain domain names from being resolvable, then they will not resolve. And, it's possible to either create and maintain these rules locally, or, import them from a reputation provider. ISC is not in the business of identifying good domains or bad domains. We will not be publishing any reputation data. But, we do publish technical information about protocols and formats, and we do publish source code. So our role in DNS RPZ will be to define 'the spec' whereby cooperating producers and consumers can exchange reputation data, and to publish a version of BIND that can subscribe to such reputation data feeds. This means we will create a market for DNS reputation but we will not participate directly in that market.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Google Adds Licensing Server DRM To Android Market eldavojohn writes "According to AfterDawn, Google has given app makers the option to use a license server as DRM to ensure the user has paid for an app before they can download it. Reportedly, the Market app will communicate with a Google license server using RSA encryption. It is important to note this is only available for non-free apps (built with SDK 1.5 and later), and it was instituted to provide a better solution to the old and widely criticized copy protection scheme that was susceptible to Android app piracy (like sideloading). For better or for worse, Android's Marketplace appears to now have an optional, phone-home form of DRM." Following news of the new licensing service, Hexage Ltd, makers of a popular Android game called Radiant, released the data they had collected on piracy of Radiant over a 10-month period beginning last October. A series of charts shows total users, paid users and the piracy rate, by region. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Tribalism Is the Enemy Within, Says Shuttleworth climenole points out a post from Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth about internal strife in the free software community. He wrote, "Tribalism is when one group of people start to think people from another group are 'wrong by default.' It's the great-granddaddy of racism and sexism. And the most dangerous kind of tribalism is completely invisible: it has nothing to do with someone's 'birth tribe' and everything to do with their affiliations: where they work, which sports team they support, which Linux distribution they love. ... Right now, for a number of reasons, there is a fever pitch of tribalism in plain sight in the free software world. It's sad. It's not constructive. It's ultimately going to be embarrassing for the people involved, because the Internet doesn't forget. It's certainly not helping us lift free software to the forefront of public expectations of what software can be." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- What's Wrong With the American University System ideonexus writes "The Atlantic has an excellent interview with Andrew Hacker — co-author with Claudia Dreifus of a book titled Higher Education? — covering everything that's wrong with the American university system. The discussion ranges from entrenched tenured professors more concerned with publishing and parking spaces than quality teaching; to 22-year-old students with unrealistic expectations that some company will put them in a management position after graduating with six-figures of debt; to football teams siphoning money away from academic programs so that student tuitions must increase to compensate. It really lays out the farce of university culture and reminds me of everything I absolutely despised about my college life. Dreifus is active in the comments section of the article as well, lending to a fantastic discussion on the subject." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- New Mars Rover Rolls For the First Time wooferhound writes "Like proud parents savoring their baby's very first steps, mission team members gathered in a gallery above a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to watch the Mars Curiosity rover roll for the first time. Engineers and technicians wore bunny suits while guiding Curiosity through its first steps, or more precisely, its first roll on the clean room floor. The rover moved forward and backward about 1 meter (3.3 feet). Mars Science Laboratory (aka Curiosity) is scheduled to launch in fall 2011 and land on the Red Planet in August 2012. Curiosity is the largest rover ever sent to Mars. It will carry 10 instruments that will help search an intriguing region of the Red Planet for two things: environments where life might have existed, and the capacity of those environments to preserve evidence of past life." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- An iPhone App Store That Apple Doesn't Control waderoush writes "Princeton's Ed Felten has criticized the iPhone and iPad as Disneyland-like 'walled gardens' and says there's no way the iTunes App Store can 'offer the scope and variety of apps that a less controlled environment can provide.' Now there's a central marketplace where developers can sell iPhone-optimized apps without going through Apple's gatekeepers. Launched today, it's called OpenAppMkt and it's a showcase for mobile Web apps — not just the type seen back in 2007-2008, before the advent of the App Store, but also for new games and other apps developed using HTML5/CSS/JavaScript (in some cases, the same apps compiled and sold as native iPhone apps). Xconomy has a behind-the-scenes interview with OpenAppMkt's creators, who say they're not out to compete with the native App Store, but that developers deserve new ways to reach users." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Woman's Nude Pics End Up Online After Call To Tech Support Tara Fitzgerald couldn't find the nude pictures she planned on sending to her boyfriend, but instead of just taking more, she decided to see if a Dell tech support call could fix her problem. Apparently the tech support guy found them. Unfortunately, he then put them up on a site called "bitchtara." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Dell and HP To Sell Oracle Operating Systems angry tapir writes "Oracle has announced that rival hardware vendors Dell and Hewlett-Packard intend to certify and resell its Solaris and Enterprise Linux operating systems as well as Oracle VM on their x86 servers. The announcement 'demonstrates Oracle's commitment to openness,' company co-president Charles Phillips said in a statement." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- The Science of Caddyshack astroengine writes "Thirty years after the release of the cult classic comedy Caddyshack, Discovery News has geeked out and gone on the hunt for any trace amount of science they can find in the movie (video). From gopher territoriality to seismic deformation, from pool poop bacteria to the color of lightning, it turns out there's quite a lot of science to talk about..." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Scientific American
- Can fMRI Really Tell if You're Lying?
- Minding Mistakes: How the Brain Monitors Errors and Learn...
- Reviews: "The Universe in a Nutshell"
- What is sarcoidosis?
- Hacking Memory to Break Drug Addiction
- ADV: Le PCC: Podcast de la Cabane au Canada Le PCC vous emmène en balade dans Montréal et parfois un peu plus loin...
- The Science of Star Wars
- Poisoned Pot Roast?: Plastic Storage Containers Also Cont...
- Tone Deafness and Bad Singing May Not Go Hand in Hand
- Cancer Drug Costs May Help Doctors Select a Treatment
Wired
- Analysis: Google Stumbles, Again, With China Outage Report Google mistakenly reported Thursday that China began censoring its web search again. It's a blunder that adds to a list of missteps over the last six months that have the net's top tech company looking unprofessional.
- Physicists Dream Up the Antilaser Fifty years after physicists invented the laser, ushering in everything from supermarket scanners to music CDs, scientists have conceived its opposite — the "antilaser."
- Cheaper, Better Satellites Made From Cellphones and Toys Instead of investing in their own computer research and development, engineers at the NASA Ames Research Center are looking to cellphones and off-the-shelf toys to power the future of low-cost satellite technology.
- DIY Wearable Computer Turns You Into a Cyborg A Swedish researcher and entrepreneur has taken the first step toward becoming a cyborg by creating a wearable computer that can be slung across the body.
- WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious 'Insurance' File In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks' recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled "insurance."
- Sharp Shooting Sony Cam Guides You, Even When Lost A camera that's equal parts handsome sharpshooter and capable GPS guide? That would be the Cyber-Shot DSC-HX5V.
- Former NSA Director: Hold Nations Responsible for Cyberat... Attribution is one of the biggest problems on the internet when it comes to cyberwarfare. How do you hold a nation responsible for malicious attacks if you can't determine whether or not the activity was state-sponsored? It doesn't matter, former NSA Director Michael Hayden says. Do it anyway.
- Porn Industry Aroused by FaceTime Possibilities You will not be surprised that the porn industry is all over the iPhone 4 -- and the latest business opportunity is, almost inevitably, FaceTime.
- iPad Popular With Aviation Crowd Developers and pilots are embracing the gadget, with apps that do everything from tell you the weather to show you the way.
- Spotify Denies Reported Setbacks to U.S. Launch Spotify's longstanding effort to launch in the United States was reportedly sent "back to square one" due to the derailment of its negotiations with one or more major labels. However, the company tells Wired.com that the report is bogus, and that it is still on track to launch here by the end of the year.
The Independent
- Lobbyist cleared of male rape charges A political consultant and lobbyist was cleared of rape today by a jury.
- Prescott reveals Iraq invasion 'doubts' Former deputy prime minister John Prescott privately harboured doubts about the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he disclosed today.
- Fraud probe police officer found dead A police officer who was being investigated over fraud allegations has been found dead, police said today.
- Tycoon Asil Nadir granted bail if he returns to UK Fugitive tycoon Asil Nadir was given bail today on condition he returns to the UK.
- Businessman accused of £115m 'ponzi' scam A businessman was accused today of masterminding a sprawling £115 million scam that claimed a series of high-profile victims.
- Partner quizzed over stab death of woman The partner of a woman found stabbed to death in her home was being questioned on suspicion of murder today.
- 'Illegal immigrants' held in nursing home raid Thirteen suspected illegal immigrants have been detained following a raid at a nursing home, the UK Border Agency (UKBA) said today.
- Potters Bar coroner warns of risk of further deaths A coroner warned of more potential carnage on the railways today as an inquest jury blamed a points failure for the deaths of seven people at Potters Bar.
- Why James Bulger killer's new identity must stay secret, ... The new identity of killer Jon Venables must be kept secret because of the "compelling evidence" of a threat to his safety, a judge said today.
- Rail crash caused by unsafe points, says jury Seven people died in the Potters Bar rail crash as a result of a points failure caused by their unsafe condition, an inquest jury decided today.
The Nation
- Palestinian Roads: Cementing Statehood, or Israeli Annex... New evidence indicates that the PA's ambitious road-building program--heavily funded by the United States and Europe--is being used by Israel to facilitate settlement expansion.
- Oil Rig Sinks, as Does Senate Climate Bill Two environmental disasters flared up this week: oil from a sunken rig is reaching land, and Senator Lindsey Graham has backed off from his bipartisan climate bill.
- The Breakdown: Will Financial Reform End Bailouts? The Senate has finally opened debate on Dodd's financial regulatory reform bill--but misperceptions about the bill's impact abound. On this week's podcast, Washington Editor Christopher Hayes asks, will the bill end bailouts? Or just reinforce a broken system?
- Garzón on Trial Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón has revolutionized international law--and now faces a suspension that could end his career.
- Goners Was Wall Street short-sighted--or did it know full well the financial crisis was coming?
- Noted. Jon Wiener on honoring Walter Moseley; John Nichols on Jim Hightower's populism
- Arizona Burning The state's incendiary new immigration law has created a police state.
- Learning to Love the Healthcare Bill It took time for people to appreciate Medicare and Social Security, but they did.
- Talking With Tony Judt A discussion with the author of Ill Fares the Land about social democracy, trains and our desiccated ethical vocabulary.
- Counting on the Census Will 2010's tally reflect the changing face of America?
South China Morning Post
- A tale of two defence lawyers: similar challenges and big... Zhu Mingyong and Yang Kuangsheng are two lawyers of very different backgrounds, but their remarkably similar tales of challenges, risks and loss when defending clients in Chongqing highlight the difficult path trod by defence lawyers.
- For China, war games are steel behind the statements China reasserted its "indisputable sovereignty" over the South China Sea a day after televising an unprecedented projection of its military power there - a sign Beijing is more ready to match its statements with steel.
- Up to 60,000 tonnes of oil spilled in sea after blast, Gr... As much as 60,000 tonnes of heavy crude oil could have been spilled into northeastern coastal waters as a result of the explosion that rocked Dalian on July 16, Greenpeace said yesterday.
- Spotlight too bright for rags-to-riches tycoon Chen Fashu is the richest man in the southeastern province of Fujian. He ranks third on Hurun's 2010 Philanthropy List. His is an inspiring story of a poor country boy becoming a billionaire. But this month, he became a troubled board chairman, convicted in the court of public opinion.
- Around the Nation A Chifeng museum that houses cereals dating back 8,000 years, produced by the world's earliest known dry farming system, plans to apply to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation this autumn for the system's inclusion on its list of globally important agricultural heritage systems, xinhuanet.com reports.
- Fears rise as drums disappear below water Dozens of empty barrels can be seen on the ground outside a chemical factory on the outskirts of the northeastern city of Jilin, which two days ago was swept by mass panic sparked by a massive chemical spill from the plant.
- Beidaihe still in the spotlight to chart the future It might no longer be the official summertime workplace resort for the mainland's political and military elite, but the Beidaihe resort is once again in the spotlight as the place for informal meetings where historic decisions are made.
- Shockwaves as top judge detained over dismembered body Police have made an arrest six months after a dismembered corpse was discovered in Zhejiang province, and the alleged killer's identity has sent shockwaves across the country, with some describing it as one of the darkest days in modern legal history.
- Digital wave sweeps Guangzhou bookshop into discard bin A digital revolution is overthrowing China's traditional reading habits, and one of the early casualties is a well-known Guangzhou bookshop.
- It's money upfront or you will suffer in agony A burly Canadian friend recently suffered a freak mishap that raised questions about the quality of health protection in supposedly cosmopolitan Shanghai.
Washington Post Front Page
- Democrat Rangel charged with 13 ethics violations The House ethics committee charged Rep. Charles B. Rangel with 13 separate violations of House rules Thursday, saying his various financial dealings broke the "public trust." The long-awaited release of the charges against Rangel at an afternoon hearing was the first formal step toward a possible...
- U.S. takes a tougher tone with China The Obama administration has adopted a tougher tone with China in recent weeks as part of a diplomatic balancing act in which the United States welcomes China's rise in some areas but also confronts Beijing when it butts up against American interests.
- Few in U.S. move for new jobs, fueling fear the economy ... PALM COAST, FLA. -- The recession is claiming yet another victim: Americans' near-constitutional right to pick up and move to a better job.
- Gen. Pace's somber Pentagon portrait evokes the struggle... Hundreds of portraits of generals and admirals hang like wallpaper along the Pentagon's endless corridors.
- SEC charges billionaire Texas brothers who donate to GOP... Sam and Charles Wyly, billionaire Texas brothers who gained prominence spending millions of dollars on conservative political causes, committed fraud by using secret overseas accounts to generate more than $550 million in profit through illegal stock trades, the Securities and Exchange Commission...
- The allegations Among the House ethics committee's charges against Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) are allegations that he:
- Static kill of BP well could begin over weekend NEW ORLEANS -- A procedure intended to ease the job of permanently plugging the blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico could start as early as the weekend, the government's point man for the spill response said Thursday.
- The Take: Democrats' ad spending reflects election anxie... So Robert Gibbs was right. Remember the uproar the White House press secretary created when he said on national television that there were certainly enough seats in play for Republicans to take control of the House in November? House Democratic leaders upbraided him and expressed their anger to t...
- Corrections -- A Going Out Guide listing in today's Weekend section, which was printed in advance, contains incorrect schedule information for the Street Soccer USA Cup. The event takes place Friday from 5 to 10 p.m., Saturday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Arizona appeals judge's ruling on immigration law Hundreds of opponents of Arizona's new immigration law swarmed the streets of downtown Phoenix Thursday, confronting police in riot gear as the state's governor filed an urgent appeal of a judge's ruling that prevented key portions of the law from taking effect.
Washingtonpost.com
- A 'reprimand' for N.Y.'s Rangel? Investigative panel recommends a mid-level sanction for congressman facing 13 ethics charges. Ethics - Philosophy - Applied - Democratic - Charles B. Rangel
- Rangel hit with 13 ethics charges Efforts to reach settlement fall short, setting up a potentially historic trial for N.Y. congressman. New York - United States House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct - United States - Ethics - Philosophy
- Would Obama push Iran button? OUTLOOK | Imagine two alternatives: Live with a nuclear-armed Iran or embark on military action. Iran - Middle East - United States - Tehran - Science and Environment
- The summer of Steve Carell MOVIES | As a lovable, middle-aged sad sack in "Dinner for Schmucks," the Apatovian star rises above the material.» Ann Hornaday Steve Carell - Dinner for Schmucks - Paul Rudd - Zach Galifianakis - Arts
- Debris stalls 'static kill' attempt Crews find sediment in well; incoming BP CEO says it's time to "scaleback" cleanup efforts. BP - Dudley - West Midlands - England - Business
- McNabb feels like a rookie again Despite talk of deficiencies, the Redskins' new quarterback says he's ready to get back to chasing a Super Bowl.» Rick Maese Super Bowl - Donovan McNabb - Quarterback - sport - Washington Redskins
New Matilda
- Home Town Blues On Wednesday, shortly after arriving in Townsville, North Queensland, for some downtime, I had lunch and a beer with a couple of guys who work in and around "retail politics" up here. Things are always interesting in North Queensland politics, and the area includes swing federal electorates that tip governments out — or allow them to stay. With the exception of the Katter fiefdom of Kennedy, the seats around here are all in flux at the moment. Comeback kid Warren Entsch will probably win back Leichhardt for the Coalition. Dawson should be Labor’s again after they slotted Mackay Mayor Mike Brunker to replace the rather odd James Bidgood — but that’s no certainty. Herbert, based on Townsville, is held by retiring Liberal Peter Lindsay, and will be notionally Labor after redistribution. They should win it to make up for Leichhardt. But there’s a strong feeling that they might not. Over lunch on Wednesday, we were inhabiting a different political world. I asked my friends how Rudd was going, whether his government might pull it off in the seats they need to win or hold in the tropics. They weren’t confident. He’d lost people, they told me, not because of the ETS, and not necessarily because of the RSPT idea — though they conceded that the mining industry’s shameless campaign on the tax might be biting. Rudd was bleeding, in their assessment, for reasons that have been brewing and percolating for a long time, longer than he’s been around, perhaps, and which he couldn’t necessarily hope to fix. People were pissed off about things that they expect government to deal with, but which government isn’t necessarily in the business of intervening in any more. The idea of government itself seems to be in bad odour, in a way that a new PM may not be able to change. The biggest issue is the cost of living. The fact that it has kept spiralling upwards is an indirect result of Rudd’s greatest achievement — saving the country from the GFC. Most people still have their jobs, but they feel like the money they earn is worthless. The mining booms — which almost ran together — have meant that workers in those industries are able to bid up the price of housing they buy for their "fly out" weeks, or as investments. There’s also a lot of movement to the "sunbelt" on the part of people who are sitting on the proceeds of southern house sales. It’s all to the good in that the economy is growing, but those in low wage jobs, or those on fixed incomes or social security payments are finding it more and more difficult. Their money buys fewer groceries — and more of it is devoted to the mortgage. This area used to be one of the cheapest in the country to buy a house and to feed yourself, or a family but it is catching up slowly but surely with the capitals. Something’s been lost up here, and in other parts of Queensland: the lifestyle for which people moved here. Hikes in cigarette prices, it seems, are the last straw for many people — and let’s not forget there are still millions of smokers in the country. Two dollars a packet doesn’t sound like too much to a non-smoker, but for a family with two smokers in it who are on a pack a day, it all adds up. That goes double if they’re poor, as smokers disproportionately are. Smokers are also disproportionately Labor voters — take another look at that declining primary vote over the last couple of months. There are specific issues too which involve the government’s capacity to sell itself. The scare campaign around insulation found its mark — people were frightened of their own ceilings, sometimes even where they hadn’t had insulation installed under the scheme. Constituents, in focus groups, told lurid and ludicrous tales about how BER money had been spent — on luxury teacher staff rooms, on skating rinks. The question of how you "sell" something in media outlets that are actively campaigning against you is a tricky one — in any case, the federal ALP hasn’t managed to answer it very well. This must be the only time in history where parish pump spending has lost votes. Another factor working against Labor is unyielding, unremitting change in the order of government, business and citizens. People feel like they’re not able to get a fix on things. On that score, problems in Queensland have possibly been overshadowed by the spectacular screw-ups in New South Wales, but here the State government isn’t doing too much to help the Labor "brand". The privatisation of the railways only directly affects rail workers — although there are enough of them in regional centres. What it adds to, though, is a gnawing sense of uncertainty. Back in the day, one of the key appeals made by Pauline Hanson was to a sense that national assets — which were seen as being collectively owned — were being flogged for next to nothing against the wishes of the population as a whole. Rudd’s been criticised as a poor communicator and salesman, especially compared with earlier Labor heroes like Keating. This is a rosy view. Hansonism arose as a result of bottled up resentments around the mostly necessary reforms that Keating had manifestly not managed to "sell" to a significant minority. The Bligh Government’s moves to privatise Queensland Rail have alienated people across the political spectrum, and people do associate Rudd and Bligh with one another up here. Also in the background here in North Queensland is that people feel no quotidian connection to their representatives, let alone to the political organisations that sponsor them. As is the case practically everywhere else in Australia, the parties have lost their social base. Fewer people are members of any major party and that’s worse news for Labor because of its historical claims to represent a broader range of the population. People up here haven’t been helped in the recent past by lacklustre candidates and they simply can’t identify with distant events involving a professional cast of political operatives. They feel impotent in relation to policy decisions with which they don’t agree. Union membership is also declining. And within unions, many from the leadership down feel sold out by all levels of government — but especially by the feds for whom they feel they won an election. Rudd, it was grumbled over lunch, came to believe his own press. Rudd’s problem — apart from the many he made for himself — was that people expected him to fix problems that were essentially the result of systemic malaise. He was a prick, my friends agreed from personal experience, and people were always bound to move on him if things got rough. There was the usual gossip about who was rat-f*cking whom in bringing about the factional cooperation that brought him down. But none of that was going to matter without bad polling. And Rudd started testing badly because just as he had some hope invested in him that wasn’t warranted, he took the blame for anything, for everything, and then people stopped listening. People stopped listening because he became identified with a broader failure of government itself. This was something which he didn’t cause — but nor did he address it. In precisely the places that a barefoot boy from Nambour should have had an intuitive rapport with voters and a sure sense of the electoral mood, Rudd was a liability — to the extent that the consensus was that Herbert was lost, and Leichhardt, and who knows, maybe Dawson. And that would have been a third of his cushion. He couldn’t carry what should have been his heartland. In the end he couldn’t carry anyone. And now, as I write this, we have a new PM. Can she turn it around in North Queensland? She’ll have to restore people’s faith that the governments they appoint can get things done on their behalf. She’ll have to fight powerful interests who think they can hire and fire PMs. And time is short. Plenty of people up here feel that the horse has bolted.
- You Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone What a time to be getting out of the game! I don’t think we could’ve picked a worse time to shut down the website if we’d tried: a day after a leadership spill that toppled a sitting prime minister, installed Australia’s first female PM and saw a Labor Left candidate — endorsed and installed by the Right — signal a major policy shift to appease big business. Suddenly, this election campaign looks like it will be full of controversy, infighting and intrigue. And newmatilda.com won’t be around to sort the spin from the substance. Although today is the last day of publishing for newmatilda.com in its current form, we do have plans to rise again. I, on behalf of the current staff, have negotiated to take control of the site and we will be working to raise enough money to re-launch. The site — its audience, archive and stable of writers — is too valuable to shelve for good. No doubt some of you will want to know why we’ve decided to press pause on publishing rather than struggling on no matter what. Since we announced our closure a month ago we have been bombarded with support and advice on how to stay afloat. We’ve also been contacted by several business interests with proposals that ranged from content-sharing to stripping the newmatilda.com brand and refitting it for new purposes. However, none of these suggestions fitted our vision for the site, and importantly, there wasn’t any room in these offers for us to develop the ideas about future directions for the site that have been buzzing around the office of late. And, let’s face it, we are not in a strong position to negotiate with potential investors. Although our traffic continues to rise, newmatilda.com has been operating on an outdated business model and at a significant loss. We have a great reputation in the industry, a portfolio of sharp writers, and a loyal readership who, like us, believe in the site’s promise — but we weren’t satisfied that the offers made valued these assets sufficiently. Nor were we convinced that we’d be able to retain our editorial independence — and without that, we know we’d lose plenty of you. So instead of taking up those offers, and provided we can rally the right kind of support, we intend to go it alone. Regular writers will stay on board. If all goes to plan, you can look forward to commentary of the trenchant and satirical variety delivered by Ben Eltham and Ben Pobjie and all your other favourites. But our funding sources will need to diversify, and our outlook will be expansive rather than exclusive. This will involve some subtle but important changes to the way the site functions. Looking to the experience of media start-ups in the US and the UK, we have realised that the days of the single-revenue media outlet are over. Nowadays, small outlets are finding new ways to fund their work through what Texas Tribune founder John Thornton calls "revenue promiscuity": "you have to get it everywhere and often". They are trading on the quality of their journalism and their trusted brands to build relationships with other media outlets to which they provide niche content. And they rely on a broad and growing base of philanthropists, funding bodies, foundations and individuals who see that as the media industry cuts costs, the survival of public interest journalism requires them to put their money where their mouth is. These outlets are doing important work to fill the gaps left by a shrinking media industry, often with little money and few staff. They are run by veteran journalists — very often former investigative journalists whose time-intensive jobs were the first to go when newsrooms tightened their belts — and they survive on contributions from the many generous individuals and organisations who support their work. These start-ups — and there are dozens of them across the United States alone — provide inspiration for a new collaborative model that will see the newmatilda.com site transform into a provider of quality analysis and public interest journalism that has life beyond our little corner of the internet. When we re-launch, our primary aim will not be to drive hits back to our own site — the model that advertisers dictate is king — but to inject new, quality journalism and analysis into the Australian media environment. In this way we hope to inspire enough of you out there to deem us worthy of your financial support. But in the meantime, dear readers, we must say goodbye for now. Financial reality dictates that we will have to build this new model slowly, and on the side of other jobs. And so, to the bit I’ve been studiously avoiding all morning: the sign-off! Today we publish farewells from our two favourite sons — who were both born in the late 70s and so by the law of probability are both named Ben. Ben Eltham, who I convinced to become our national affairs correspondent in my first weeks as editor after realising the man was prolific, could digest large amounts of data at an inhuman rate, and write to a tight deadline — and our resident satirist Ben Pobjie, whose early apology to the traditional owners of the Herald Sun opinion pages made me suspect he might be one of the funniest, most intelligent and articulate writers in this country. He hasn’t proved me wrong. Of course, there are many more writers besides who have made newmatilda.com what it is today — I won’t name them all for fear of leaving someone out, but you know who you are. They have written for little or no money and responded to rigorous editorial feedback from us. They have delivered at short notice and taken it on the chin when we have knocked them back. Without their efforts the level of debate in this country would be poorer, and we thank them. Personally, I would also like to thank my associate editors Brendan Phelan and Catriona Menzies-Pike. It will sound like the champagne talking but I swear I’ve said it before: these two are among the best editors in the industry. They can construct a through-line in a jiffy and spot a dangling participle a mile off. Newmatilda.com unedited would be an unrecognisable beast, and it’s largely due to the smarts of these two that the site has become known for its quality. I’d also like to thank our managing editor Rod McGuinness, who has been NM’s rock through all of its ups and downs. Without him the website would have gone under long ago. His commitment and loyalty has been unmatched. And the last person I’d like to thank is NM’s current owner Duncan Turpie, who has been described variously as a mysterious businessman and a shady Gold Coast investor, but who I know to be a genuine, big-hearted person who has just poured a whole lot of money into a project that he believed in merely because he wanted Australia’s media environment to be more diverse. You all should be thanking him too. So that’s it folks. On behalf of the newmatilda.com staff, I’d like to thank YOU for your loyalty and support over the years. We have loved working with you and for you — and although at times we’ve thought some of you off the wall, out of line, or simply out of your minds, you have inspired us to think critically about the work that we do and provided an invaluable sounding board. If you want to stay informed about our plans, stay on the email list. If you are not a registered user, become one now. We won’t be spamming you between now and then, but we do want you to be the first to know about our re-launch. Until then, the existing site will remain live and the archive searchable. It’s damn hard to bow out just as we head into an election campaign that just got a whole lot more interesting. As I write, I can’t help but think about the articles I would like to commission for the coming weeks and months. Instead, we are cutting you loose for now — and hoping that the other media can step in to provide the kind of smart, considered and fearless analysis that you have come to expect here. Marni Cordell Editor
- Let There Be Love It feels like a funeral. It feels like I should be donning sackcloth and dragging myself through the streets ringing a bell and wailing "It is over!" It feels like the day I found out Santa Claus didn’t exist and that my mother and father and wife and children had been lying to me all this time. Two and a half years ago, an online publication gave an opportunity to an unknown young writer with no qualifications, no credentials, and nothing to recommend him but a short attention span and a talent for identifying which woodland animal each member of cabinet most resembled. They took a punt. And now, two and a half years later, that online publication is closing. So maybe it wasn’t such a great idea. But still I am grateful. Where would I be without newmatilda.com? Unknown, unloved, sadly beavering away writing jokes on my blog for the entertainment of my sisters and Viagra spammers, wasting my brilliant insights about Belinda Neal’s fight club and Brendan Nelson’s hair on the vast emptiness of the internet, my only public recognition the sympathetic back-pats at stand-up open mic nights. But thanks to newmatilda.com, that’s not my fate. Thanks to newmatilda.com, people know who I am. A few people. Unless it’s one person with multiple usernames. But I think there are a few. Thanks to newmatilda.com, people say things to me, nice things, like "I love your work"; "you’re so funny"; "stop tweeting about Masterchef you knob". They warm my heart. All of you — the lovers, the haters, the I-laughed-so-harders and the you-racist-misogynist-unfunny-piggers — are my brothers and sisters, and I love you all. I might note that my first newmatilda.com article appeared on the 8th November 2007. Sixteen days later Kevin Rudd won the federal election. This article is appearing the day after Kevin Rudd was ousted as prime minister. Thus, my newmatilda.com career has almost perfectly coincided with the Rudd prime ministership — and there are numerous parallels between myself and the man who I will always remember, no matter what anyone else says about him, as one of our most recent prime ministers. Like Rudd, I have never been aligned with any faction. As he rejected Labor Unity and the NSW Right, I have rejected throwing my lot in with satirical cabals like Working Dog or The Chaser or John Clarke’s Brotherhood of Blood. I am a lone wolf, just like Kevin. Like Kevin, I have always taken pride in my wide vocabulary and ability to render myself utterly incomprehensible to the common man. Like Kevin Rudd, I have been abused by Andrew Bolt. Like Kevin Rudd, I have a smoking hot wife, and so forth. I am, in fact, the Kevin Rudd of the Australian comedy/media landscape, and if you’d care to refer to me this way from now on, I’d be quite grateful. And of course, like Kevin Rudd, I am immensely proud of all I have achieved here, and like Kevin Rudd, I’m sorry I ever got involved with Julia Gillard. But then there are always regrets. I regret, for example, that having drawn derogatory public references from Bolt, Devine, Henderson and Blair, I failed to catch Piers Akerman’s eye, which would have given me the full set. I regret not making more jokes about Mia Freedman. I regret still not having met Sarah Hanson-Young and declaring my true feelings. But none of this regret compares to the regret I feel at the thought that next week I shall not be filing a piece to the newmatilda.com office, the finest, loveliest, most attractive office there is. And if ever there was a time for using cheap jokes to mask one’s deep, tearful feelings, this is it, because I love those guys at newmatilda.com so much, and I feel so privileged to have worked with them, for one week, let alone two and a half years. And I feel so sad to stop. And yet, hope springs eternal. Perhaps there may yet be more to the newmatilda.com story. I certainly hope so, for numerous reasons: a) the loss of newmatilda.com is a loss for independent, free-thinking media in this country; b) it means even fewer outlets for up-and-coming writers to show their wares to the public; and c) I was planning to buy an iPhone. So I haven’t given up hope. Maybe if there is a groundswell big enough, maybe if the Great Australian Public is devoted enough to the newmatilda.com dream, maybe if there are enough people who love newmatilda.com as I do, who want it to live again as much as I do, maybe if there are enough people who are desperate even to continue reading, or alternatively graciously overlook, my own work … perhaps. I hope so. It would be such a shame to lose Kevin and newmatilda.com in the same week. It would be such a shame for us all to fall victim to the Julia Gillard of mass media mediocrity. It would be such a shame if I couldn’t keep annoying you. But no matter what happens, I want to say here and now how proud I am to be a newmatilda.com writer. How proud I am that this corner of cyberspace was where my silly gags found a home. How proud I am that wherever I go and whatever I do, I can say I started here. And how proud I am to say, now and forever, in mind and heart, I am really and truly New Matilda For Life. Bye for now.
- It's Ben Eltham's Turn To Sign Off It’s been an extraordinary week in federal politics, and a fitting week in which to sign off as newmatilda.com’s National Affairs Correspondent. In a strange quirk of fate, my tenure writing about federal politics for this website has almost exactly coincided with Kevin Rudd’s reign as Prime Minister. I think I speak for both of us when I say we would both have liked a few more months in the job, as well as a shot at the next election. In his remarkable valedictory speech yesterday, Rudd ticked off a long list of his government’s accomplishments. I hope I’m not going to be quite so indulgent, but I do think we at newmatilda.com can be proud of what we’ve achieved. When, more than five years ago, this website first struggled pink and blinking into existence, Australian media was still quintessentially Old. The Canberra press gallery was still largely composed of broadcast and newspaper journalists. Political coverage and analysis was dominated by a small coterie of insiders. Crikey was not even allowed into the Budget lock-up. In just half a decade, that situation has changed radically. While television has dumbed down, and the business model of newspapers has broken down, new media has created opportunities for new voices and new perspectives on Australian political life. This phenomenon is most noticeable in the emergence of thousands of political blogs with insightful and perceptive things to say. But the rapid development of online journals and news media has played an equally important role. In publications like newmatilda.com we can see a glimpse of what I think will be a bright future for online news media in this country: a future where low budgets don’t mean low quality; where you don’t need an office in Parliament House to cover federal politics; where online doesn’t mean unsubbed or unmoderated and where a small number of dedicated editors can leverage their skills to enable large numbers of writers like me to reach audiences. One of the most valuable aspects of new media is that it should, in principle, allow a broader and more diverse talent base to engage in political journalism and coverage. As a writer and thinker, my background has reflected this. I trained in science and philosophy before dedicating much of my 20s to my love for Australian culture and the arts. It was an arts editor, Rosemary Sorensen at the Courier-Mail, who gave me my first opportunity to write regularly about Australian culture and life, and I’d like to thank her for that opportunity, just as I’d like to thank Marni Cordell and Miriam Lyons for first giving me the opportunity to write here. I am by inclination a generalist, rather than a specialist, and in my approach to covering Australian politics here I have sought to reflect that. Hence, I’ve tried to report, explain and engage with the full range of policies that affect us as citizens, from economics and the political economy, to the environment and climate change, defence and national security, health, education and social policy, governance and public administration, innovation and R&D, and last, but not least, culture and the arts. In doing so, I’ve always tried to reflect on the substance of political controversies and the primary sources and real-world evidence that underpins the sound and fury of political debate. Although I am a tremendous admirer of many in the Canberra press gallery, I believe far too much political coverage in Australia is narrow, ill-informed and at times almost ignorant. All too often, the media treats politics as a horse race, a Greek tragedy or a Machiavellian intrigue, rather than what it actually is: the contest of ideas, policies and power relationships that determine our government and affect our way of life. It is indicative of the way that the media covers politics that you can watch Sky News for hours without ever hearing a discussion of the substance and detail of public policy — and lots about media tactics and opinion polls. For too many commentators, policies like emissions trading or stimulus spending are simply poker chips to be traded back and forth between various lobby groups. In this world view, policy is about managing expectations and effecting trade-offs between powerful vested interests. This attitude is shared by many in politics, which is why you can watch a Peter van Onselen or a Kieran Gilbert explaining confidently why Julia Gillard needs to compromise on the Resource Super Profits Tax, as though this were a self-evident truth of political reality. In fact, the media also shapes political reality, as can be seen when you visit offices in Parliament House, where wall-mounted televisions tuned permanently to Sky News are a ubiquitous feature. The relationship is perhaps best encapsulated by the official title of Tony Blair’s chief spin doctor, Alistair Campbell, who was the former British Prime Minister’s Director of Media and Strategy. At newmatilda.com, I’ve tried to ignore this echo chamber and, where possible, cut through to the deeper substance of our political debates. Although online media is often derided as being merely about commentary — not true journalism or news gathering — I’ve tried my best here to explain to you the policy background underlying the media debate. That’s why most of my articles contain links to primary source documents like government enquiries or academic journal articles, as well as to the views of other journalists and commentators on any particular issue. It’s also why I like to link to my previous articles, the better to explain the provenance of my thinking and to establish a throughline of my argument. Over the past two and a half years, I’ve been accused of many things by newmatilda.com readers in the comments pages. You’ve called me boring, predictable, pompous and dull. You’ve claimed I’ve been too easy or too harsh on Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Peter Garrett and Bob Brown. You’ve claimed I am a member of the Australian Labor Party, the Greens, and the Liberal Party (but never Family First). Many of you have confused my firm support for action to combat climate change and create a sustainable economic system with a bias against free enterprise and commerce. Some of you have accused me of giving conservatives too much credit, some of being too nice to Kevin Rudd. And some of you have praised me. I’ve tried to take it all on board in the spirit of open and rational dialogue. One of the great strengths of online media is the ability it offers for writers to engage with their readers. Thank you for your engagement, one and all. One of the most amazing events yesterday — in what was an amazing day — was seeing Therese Rein standing beside Kevin Rudd and coaching him on how to end his speech. It gave me a new appreciation for the strength and dignity of this admirable Australian as she tried to comfort her husband in the hour of his extreme need. I’m also lucky enough to enjoy the support and love of a strong woman, my partner Sarah-Jane Woulahan. We’re about to start a family together. It’s a source of great hope and joy for me, espite the many challenges faced by our nation and world. But I should end by thanking the people who have been most responsible for my development as a writer, principally my editors and colleagues here at newmatilda.com over the past four years: my editors Catriona Menzies-Pike, Brendan Phelan, Rod McGuinness, Rachel Hills, Miriam Lyons and especially Marni Cordell, as well as my fellow writers at newmatilda.com, of whom there are too many to name. Finally, of course, I’d like to thank you for reading. The future for newmatilda.com is uncertain now but I hope we’ll encounter each other again when the website returns. In the meantime, you can email me at ben.eltham [at] gmail.com. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
- Back In Control Of The Game Yesterday’s elevation of a left-winger from Melbourne to the prime ministership signals that Labor’s factions are back in the game. Colourful media talk about faceless powerbrokers manipulating and directing hapless Labor members of parliament is a mixture of truth and hyperbole. The names we’ve heard most frequently since the bloodless coup — NSW Senator Mark Arbib, Victorian Senator David Feeney, Victorian MHR Bill Shorten and National Secretary Karl Bitar — are hardly faceless. They have asserted the powerful will of the organisational and factional arms of the Labor Party against a Prime Minister they could only tolerate while he was on top. Other names, such as Australian Workers’ Union Secretary Paul Howes, perhaps the most prominent public face of the anti-Rudd coup, represent the contemporary face of trade unionism, fighting as it is for survival and the traditional causes of their members on the shop floor. The byzantine workings of the Labor factions are a mystery to most, not least to members of the Labor Party — or those that remain. The factions haven’t had a good ideological fight in years. The factions and their affiliate union sponsors are often little more than organising tools for a political party with very practical electoral aims. The focus of the factions is now patronage, especially placing loyal bums on assorted parliamentary seats, and electoral success. Political interplay is only occasionally leavened by policy debate. Kevin Rudd’s accession to the federal leadership of the party threw a spanner in the factional and union works. To attain office, Rudd took on so-called union "thuggery" — either reprimanding offenders or insisting on the expulsion of union figures who might tarnish the Kevin07 brand. Rudd sidelined the factions in his insistence that he choose his own Cabinet, discarding the century-old custom that the caucus chooses the personnel and the leader allocates the portfolios. In practice, the Rudd Cabinet displayed a stunning mathematical symmetry with the Right and Left factions balanced exactly, even down to the sub-factions within the larger entities. But this grated with union and factional warlords whose reason for being rests on their perceived power to anoint candidates, leadership contenders and ministerial aspirants. We now know that Rudd also alienated ministers, the caucus and the wider party by centralising decision-making in his office. The well-placed newspaper stories about adolescent advisers over the past couple of weeks contributed to the impression of Rudd’s remoteness and arrogance. The so-called Gang of Four, the Strategic Priorities and Budget Committee of Cabinet, consisting of Rudd, Gillard, Swan and Tanner, seemed to exist to humiliate and sideline other ministers. Rudd could get away with it while he was riding high. As has been said many times this week, as soon as his personal factional power base, the Newspoll, fell away, he was left exposed and stricken. It would, however, be a mistake to think that the new Prime Minister is wholly the creature of the arcane union-factional domination of Labor Party decision-making. The modern Labor Party is far too pragmatic for that — and so is Julia Gillard. Gillard told the House of Representatives yesterday that when Abbott congratulated her she told him it was "game on — and I meant it". Her confident and assertive message would have cheered Labor supporters who have been wishing for more aggression and fighting spirit. In Kevin Rudd, all they got was the next announcement, the next issue, the next mouthful of irritating verbal sludge. Worse, they got pronouncements they were uncomfortable with — from sidelining the Emissions Trading Scheme and backsliding on refugee issues, to the nuttiness of an Internet filter. For a long time now, Labor supporters have cringed at Kevin Rudd. Most didn’t doubt his reform credentials, his energy or determination to win, but they saw a creature who was not of the Labor Party. He didn’t seem to be a Keating, bursting with policy and stirring invective. He wasn’t a Hawke either, with attractive, flawed character and unforced ockerisms. And he certainly wasn’t a Gough, of glorious, imperious vision. And among themselves, Labor members and supporters noted that those three great men of Labor didn’t have a bible-bashing bone between them. Labor now has a leader who took the affirmation when she was sworn in as Prime Minister. She’s a single, childless female, a welcome change from the grinding and monotonous worship of suburban banality. She’s modern Labor — not some pale imitation of Howard’s white-picket fence era. Gillard can explain things, Labor supporters believe. She’s tough. She has the common touch. She can talk football. She scares the Libs. Listen to her speaking in the House of Representatives yesterday and you hear a person who can transmit a potent political message. The miners, those rapacious managing directors of Labor’s political opponents, were told her door was open to them but they’d better open their minds before they entered. Gillard embodies the qualities that people want to see in their politicians. She is distant but warm, fiercely intelligent but down to earth, conviction driven but willing to concede to practical realities. That’s why she became the nation’s 27th prime minister yesterday. Certainly her victory was overlaid with "first female PM" sentimentality but at heart, the day that made her Prime Minister was all about Labor retaining power. The ruthlessness of the coup shows the modern post-Whitlam Labor Party at work. The removal of Bill Hayden in 1983, the tearing down of Bob Hawke in 1991 — these are the precursors of the Gillard coup. But Gillard faces high danger too. Just as the NSW Right moved against Rudd, stitching up a deal with the Queenslanders and the Victorians, who really believes they wouldn’t move against her if it was deemed electorally necessary? A dangerous precedent has been set. If the leader who brought his party out of Opposition after nearly 12 years of the detestable John Howard can be removed after a mere 30 months then no leader is secure. That is why some members and supporters of the ALP have a nasty aftertaste in their mouth today. Kevin Rudd’s gut-wrenching soliloquy revealed a man motivated by much more than the simplistic notion of rage advanced in recent weeks. His recitation of the government’s initiatives was actually quite impressive. What have they done, some must be asking today. Yes, the factional powerplay was conducted in the usual secretive manner. Imagine those Labor caucus members, including ministers, who knew nothing of the challenge until they saw it on television, got a text message or dipped into Twitter. Manipulated they surely were, but they were also complicit in tearing down a man they found bearable only as he kept them in office. Gillard’s job is to find the nexus between consensus politics, good policy and Labor’s idealism. It is not yet clear whether she can do this. Some Labor people and ordinary voters might have been disheartened by her comments yesterday about emissions trading. Gillard may be a climate change believer and she may believe in putting a price on carbon — but what action is she prepared to take? More importantly, what action is Gillard going to take on this side of the election? On a range of issues, Gillard has only a couple of months to establish a clear direction, most notably on climate change policy. She also has to manage expectations and fears on refugees and defuse the electorally disastrous view that the government is too incompetent to deliver its programs. If she can succeed, Gillard will cement her hold on the Labor leadership. To borrow her words, if she disappoints more than she delights, the union and factional apparatchiks won’t be needed to remove her. And if she succeeds, she will have more power in the Labor Party than Kevin Rudd could ever have hoped for.
- End of an Era Cartoon by Fiona Katauskas
- What Really Happens In The Office We promised to answer all the questions put to us by 20 Questions respondees. We stick to our promises here at newmatilda.com and have truthfully answered the questions — by committee. We’ll leave it to you to match answers to editors. 1. Managing Editor Rod McGuinness Who else could smash a coffee right now? Me. 2. Former Intern Scott Mitchell I know it’s cruel to ask which one of us you love the most, but you’ve strung us all along for years and we have to know: If newmatilda.com had to choose the one writer she’d settle down and have a monogamous relationship with, who would it be? I totally don’t mind if it’s not me, alls I’m saying is that as a 6-year-old, our 15 year age gap is probably the easiest to swallow. Don’t get us wrong, Scott — you’re great — but our real favourite author is … us. 3. Resident Satirist Ben Pobjie Will you still love me tomorrow? Yes Ben, we will. Stay gold Pobjie-boy … 4. Middle East and South Asia Correspondent Mustafa Qadri Who edited my last article!? (Joke!) Catri. (Did a great job too.) 5. Regular Contributor Jason Wilson Is this really it? If this is it, we’re all in trouble. 6. Former Associate Editor Rachel Hills What’s next? We’re glad you asked. 7. Regular Contributor Antony Loewenstein Will you miss being abused in Parliament by the Federal Member for Israel, Michael Danby? No. And we hope he will eventually quit those sorts of attacks when he realises that his lobby can’t stop Australians discussing our relationship to the Middle East forever. 8. National Affairs Correspondent Ben Eltham Why didn’t you ever let me write about sport? Because we know you’re smarter than that. And because, ah, some of us aren’t qualified to edit articles about sport … 9. Regular Contributor James Arvanitakis Why did you not publish me more? When did we ever say no to you? And the rest … 10. What campaigning tactic do you most want to see in this year’s federal election? Less talk about candidates’ wardrobes. And a Masterchef cook-off. 11. If you were given $5 million to save newmatilda.com and lift the level of public debate in Australia, how would you go about it? Cash for comment seemed pretty effective. 12. What are the oldest things in the newmatilda.com fridge? A six pack of light beer left over from a Christmas party. And hope. 13. Complete this sentence: I’d like to hear Julia Gillard say … "Now that the Right has installed me as Prime Minister, I’m going to cut them loose. Sorry lads." And then, "Stephen Conroy has left the building." 14. Do you have any secret political crushes that you’d like to share with the newmatilda.com readers? Quite a few but the most debilitating is definitely Kate Ellis. 15. When was the last time you changed your mind on something important? Last Sunday. It involved ice cream. 16. Would you have preferred to watch a Rudd/Turnbull election over an Abbott/Gillard election? No way! 17. What was the newmatilda.com headline you always wanted to read but it never happened? Whatever Happened To Mia Freedman? 18. If you could pick the panel to deliver live commentary on Election Night, who would it be? John Doyle, Lenore Taylor, Wilson Tuckey and Deb Cameron. 19. What’s the one thing you’ve always wanted to know about Australian politics but were afraid to ask? Does the Usher of the Black Rod have any hobbies? 20. Are you part of the latte belt? Newmatilda.com is the buckle of the latte belt.
- No Further Questions, Thank You 1. Who is your favourite newmatilda.com writer? Editorial staff can’t play favourites. 2. What’s your favourite newmatilda.com article? See above. 3. When did you first start reading newmatilda.com? Way back in the day. I was a subscriber when it first started. 4. What were you doing when you heard the sad news? Were you sitting down? Sitting at my desk at newmatilda.com HQ. 5. Were you surprised? Most certainly. 6. Will newmatilda.com’s demise make any difference to anything? (In 40 words or less. Yes, we know this is the limitless internet, but time’s tickin’…) Beyond making me unemployed? Yes. There might be more and more content being made available online, but it’s getting harder and harder to find credible commentary on Australian current affairs. Furthermore, our close attention to apostrophes is unmatched by any other outlet — and we all know that a culture can shrivel without punctuation gatekeepers. 7. Where will you go for commentary when newmatilda.com stops publishing? The pub. 8. Do you subscribe to any online content? What? Why, or why not? Yep, heaps. It costs money to commission, edit and produce good content — especially long form articles — and if readers aren’t going to pay for it, I’m not sure who will. I subscribe to a number of print periodicals like Harpers and the New York Review Of Books and get access to their archives via their websites. I’ve also made plenty of donations to websites which operate on a supporter model and don’t paywall their content. And I guess I’ll renew my Crikey subscription now that I’m not reading it in the office. 9. What campaigning tactic do you want to see in this year’s federal election? I’d be really happy to see the mining lobby relinquish its role as agenda-setter for debates around climate policy and resource management. 10. If you could pick one public figure to deliver live commentary on Election Night, who would it be? Max Gillies. I’d do almost anything to get that man on television. 11. Do you have any secret political crushes you’d like to share with our readers? If Bill "Babyface" Shorten plays his cards right, he’ll have me stalking him in no time. 12. Does anyone have a climate policy you agree with? Who? No brainer: the Greens. I don’t think the Libs actually have a climate policy anymore, do they? 13. Who deserves a bigger tax break: banks or mining companies? As in, who deserves to be broken by the bigger tax? After these last few weeks, I think it’s clear that the mining companies are up for it. 14. What do you see as the most important issue in the upcoming federal election campaign? Putting climate policy back at the centre of federal policy-making. 15. What subject should be compulsory in primary schools? Ethics. And learning a second language should be compulsory in both primary and secondary schools. 16. What’s the one thing you’ve always wanted to know about Australian politics but were afraid to ask? Is there any chance that Canberra will ever get rolled as Australia’s capital city? 17. What politician and journalist combination would you like to see stuck in a lift recording a long interview? Kerry O’Brien and Tony Abbott. I know they’ve been there before, but I think they’ve got more to say to each other. I worry that it might not be safe for KO’B though. I thought Abbott was going to clock him during this interview. 18. Are you part of the latte belt? I am — and if you are reading this, you are too. 19. Is the Australian media getting better, worse, or staying the same? Given newmatilda.com stops publishing today, I’d say it’s taking a pretty steep turn southward. 20. What question would you like to ask us? Can you buy me a beer?
- We Never Got To Run His Best Headline 1. How many people do you reckon work at newmatilda.com office on an average day? (The winner gets a jar of jellybeans.) I’ll say seven. (Actually I know it’s only four, but right now we can’t afford the jellybeans I’d win for getting it right.) 2. Does anyone have a climate change policy you agree with? Who? In Australia the Greens are the only party to have actually approached the problem in a sincere way, and I think that’s a start. 3. Who’s your favourite retired Australian politician? She’s no longer with us, but I have to say Janine Haines. I thought she was awesome. 4. Name a political writer who deserves a promotion. Kevin Rudd. 5. Fill in the blank in this sentence: "I’m sad that newmatilda.com has hit the skids because their articles occasionally stuck it to the ___ … and those people give me the creeps." Motivational speakers. (Although I admit I’m conflicted here, because if you watch some of them long enough they get kind of endearing.) 6. Who deserves a bigger tax break: banks or mining companies? Actually, better than a tax break, we should just put them jointly in charge of all tax revenue and let them take as much as they feel they need. This would cut out a few messy steps that seem to be slowing the current system down. 7. What subject should be compulsory in primary schools? Advanced Op-Ed Writing. 8. What annoys you about journalists? Behaving like they (we) know everything, when it’s perfectly clear to ourselves and to the public that we don’t. 9. When was the first time you changed your mind on something important? Well you see, I’m a journalist, so that just doesn’t happen. 10. Is the Australian media getting better, worse, or staying the same? A bit from columns A, B and C. But it’s definitely also getting more interesting. So don’t give up on it yet. 11. Are you part of the latte belt? I am the latte belt. Some mornings I’m even the matching latte shoes and dangerously swinging latte handbag. Don’t mess with me or I will stain you. 12. What was the newmatilda.com headline you always wanted to see on the site? The headline I have in mind wasn’t publishable when the event occurred, and unfortunately it’s still not publishable now, since it’s too defamatory, vulgar, and didn’t really work with the article. Funny though. 13. Who was the newmatilda.com commenter who annoyed you most? How did you deal with that emotion? That’s a tough one to pick, because as with any site that allows comments, we’ve had plenty of wing-nuts. But dealing with them was made a lot easier sometimes when my mum would ring and say, "Who is (Commenter X)? He’s quite a fool isn’t he … 14. When did you first start reading newmatilda.com? Shortly before starting work at newmatilda.com. 15. Now that he’s gone, will you miss the Kevin Rudd-style self-directed rhetorical question, and the effect it has had on the way so many of us speak? Yes, absolutely. 16. Do you make any apology for that? No, I do not. 17. If you could pick one public figure to deliver live commentary on Election Night, who would it be? Peter Russell-Clarke. 18. Is that 20 questions yet? No, still a couple to go. 19. Do you have any secret political crushes you’d like to tell us about? Not really — I’m more into newsreaders. I know some people find power attractive, but it’s always struck me as a little bit gross. I had a friend who reckoned she’d happily sleep with Graham Richardson because of the scent of power that he gave off. I thought she had a problem. 20. Any last words? I’d like to thank all our contributors who worked damn hard for us, improving the level of public debate through their writing, often to tight deadlines and for little or no cash. They make a difference, and I think we’re lucky they do it.
- Spill Cartoon by Fiona Katauskas
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TIME.com: Top Stories
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