The people who have done the most effort are the families of the Balibo Five and I personally feel that their work contributed to East Timor's journey to independence," he said.
Note: I wish to extend my thanks to Carlos Sardiña Galache for alerting me to the latest developments in this important story, which was not mentioned in the English-speaking press, and for translating crucial passages.
The world will suffer another financial crisis, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan has told the BBC.
"The crisis will happen again but it will be different," he told BBC Two's The Love of Money series.
He added that he had predicted the crash would come as a reaction to a long period of prosperity.
Mr Karzai said on Monday in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro that "the Americans" were attacking him because they wanted him to be more docile.
He told the newspaper "nobody has an interest in the Afghan president becoming an American puppet".
Eleven-year-old Abdul has been severely injured by an improvised explosive device (IED) - a homemade bomb laid by the Taliban.
Doctors scan Abdul's head looking for shrapnel and bleeding. The explosion was so powerful it killed his brother instantly, but doctors are hoping that Abdul's jaw and not his brain has taken the force of the blast.
"Half of his jaw was taken off, I didn't see his ear. It didn't seem to touch his brain, but you never know with IED blasts; they get frags everywhere," says trauma doctor Philippe Parent.
"If his brain is not affected, his prospects are quite good. We have facial surgery over here, so they're very good at reconstruction. The rest of his body seemed to be alright."
Although Abdul's face is still covered in the dirt from the explosion, his outlook is promising. It's some much-needed good news on a grim night.
The next day, Abdul is doing well and breathing on his own. The doctors say he is stable.What? But surely there's some positive news here for readers??
But less than an hour after we filmed he suffered a massive brain haemorrhage. Abdul died the following morning.
Hospital staff found his father just in time so he could hold his son's hand.Yes! Hurrah for the hospital staff!
"We cannot feel the pain that these people have. We can try to imagine it, but we can't feel it," said Major Dauphin.Of course we can't. Otherwise we would have to leave.
As far as I can tell, the only thing the so-called 9/11 Truth movement has accomplished is this: it's caused the Obama administration to lose its most prominent expert on green jobs. So well done, Truthers. Thanks to you, the federal government will now be spending about $80 billion on green economy initiatives without the guiding hand of one of the most knowledgeable experts in this field.
The switch from right to left side driving was being ushered in with a two-day national holiday to cut traffic volumes and a three-day ban on alcohol sales to avoid road crashes.
National Council of Churches chairman, Rev. Oka Fauoloto, held an early morning prayer service before Police Minister Toleafoa Faafisi used a national radio broadcast to instruct drivers everywhere to stop their vehicles.
Minutes later Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi broadcast the formal instructions for drivers to switch sides on the highways at 6 a.m. local time (1700 GMT Monday).
Then drivers were ordered to resume their journeys. While there was some hesitation, traffic was soon flowing with guidance from police and local authorities as hundreds of onlookers lined streets to witness the historical day.
"It is difficult to know whether or when there will be a W," as such a course of events is often described, Stiglitz told AFP.
"There are a number of substantial risks to the economy going forward. The risk to the financial sector, for instance, from commercial real estate ...
"And there are risks to the real sector caused by states having a shortfall of revenue and the withdrawal of (government) stimulus packages in 2011 will be a negative shock to the economy."
Stiglitz, former World Bank chief economist and an adviser to US former president Bill Clinton, said household balance sheets had been "destroyed", which has meant that "savings have gone up from zero to 7-9 per cent".
A rising savings rate cuts into consumer spending, which is responsible for roughly two-thirds of US economic growth.
An "inventory adjustment" is under way, as companies build up their stocks, Stiglitz said.
But "because of the uncertainties, people are not hiring, unemployment is very high and foreclosures are likely to remain high," he said.
"The result of this is that if these negatives I have described play out, which is very likely, when the inventory readjustment is over, the economy will go into a double dip."
Howard was having some routine dental treatment on Friday at Castlecrag Private Hospital when he suffered an anaphylactic reaction to the anaesthetic.
Mr Howard was rushed to Royal North Shore by ambulance where he was immediately treated.
Asked if trade and oil were part of the discussions, Straw said: "Yes, a very big part of that. I'm unapologetic about that... Libya was a rogue state. We wanted to bring it back into the fold.
"And yes, that included trade because trade is an essential part of it and subsequently there was the BP deal."
"We're not going to set an artificial deadline that we've not properly rushed through and that we understand," he said.
Amazon said it would provide owners of its Kindle electronic book reader with new copies of the George Orwell novels 1984 and Animal Farm for no charge.
Amazon said customers could also choose to receive a $US30 gift certificate or cheque instead.
The email also contained a copy of the apology that Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos made in July, in which he called the company's deletion of the books "stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles."
He called his actions "really messed up and wrong" but looked to the prosecution and said "you still don't know what happened. You weren't there."
"All I ever did was what they told me to do," Green said, adding that the group's ranking soldier - former Specialist Paul Cortez - "ordered all of this."
Green said the soldiers who went to Iraq were "strung out to dry" and that he hoped anybody thinking of volunteering for service would see what happened to them and stay home.
"Y'all can act like I'm a psychopath or a sexual predator or whatever," Green said. "But if I had never gone to Iraq I would never have got caught up in anything like this."
During closing arguments at his initial sentencing hearing, Green was described alternately as "criminal and perverse" and deserving of the death penalty, and as a "broken warrior" whose life should be spared.
Cortez and another soldier described how they changed into black silk underwear and masks so they would look like insurgents and headed for the house of a girl they had seen walking through the village.
They testified that Green took Janabi's parents and sister into another room and shot them while two of the other soldiers raped her. Then Green took his turn with the sobbing girl before putting a pillow on her face and shooting her dead.
The soldiers set the house on fire by tossing a lighter onto a Kerosene-soaked blanket covering her naked body. Then they went back to their checkpoint about 200 meters away and grilled chicken wings.
“The thing that concerned me most about it was it seemed like a direct channel from the president of the United States into the classroom, to my child,” said Brett Curtiss, an engineer from Pearland, Tex., who said he would keep his three children home.
“I don’t want our schools turned over to some socialist movement.”
Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader.
Citing the current economic recession -- and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks eight years ago -- President Obama says he will use emergency powers to cut the programmed across-the-board January increase in federal employees' pay from 2.4 percent to 2.0 percent, according to a letter he sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Monday.
"I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq... I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And I believe that information, according go [sic] the FBI and others, could have been gained through other members."
Justice Secretary Jack Straw dropped his attempt to exclude Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi from a prisoner transfer agreement after discussions between Libya and BP over a massive oil exploration deal became bogged down, it said.
The oil deal was resolved soon afterwards, according to the newspaper, which cited leaked letters sent by Mr Straw to his Scottish counterpart.
The Australian Defence Force has launched a comprehensive inquiry into the killing of an Afghani police officer by Australian troops.
The soldiers shot the man and seriously injured another, when they failed to stop at a check point in Afghanistan earlier this month.
The AFP, Victoria Police and the corporate regulator ASIC set up a task force in 2006 to consider possible prosecution for offences identified by the AWB Royal Commission.
But the AFP says a review has found there is limited chance of a successful criminal prosecution.
Of course, the big bugaboo that the Pentagon now uses to justify its existence (along with the enormous tax burden necessary to sustain its enormous military) is terrorism (as compared to communism, which was the bugaboo prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of the Soviet Empire).
But the threat of terrorism is a direct result of what the Pentagon did both prior to and after 9/11 as part of its aggressive, interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East. That threat has remained constant, of course, given the continuous killing of people in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last 8 years.
But the Pentagon knows that by withdrawing from Afghanistan and the Middle East, that constant threat of terrorist retaliation plummets. At that point, the only risk of terrorist retaliation would be from some disgruntled person whose family members or friends were killed by the U.S. military sometime in the past. There’s no need for an enormous military to deal with that possibility, and the Pentagon knows it.
If the Pentagon withdrew from the Middle East, military officials know that people might well ask, Why stop there? Why not withdraw from Europe? After all, the Cold War ended long ago. Why not withdraw from Japan. It surrendered soon after the atomic bombs were dropped. Why not withdraw from Korea? The war there ended decades ago. Why not withdraw from Africa? What business do the troops have there?
Lord Ashdown added that undermining the election could have disastrous consequences.
He said: "The effect of it could be to de-legitimise the whole process."
Liberal sources say the seat, the safest federal Liberal metropolitan electorate in the country, is Arthur Sinodinos' if he wants it.
Bradfield includes well-heeled, leafy suburbs such as St Ives, Killara and Chatswood.
But Mr Sinodinos, 52, who is in Melbourne on business as a managing director at the National Australia Bank, has been unavailable for comment.
Defense spending dipped in the early 1990s, but real outlays merely dropped from the Reagan build-up back to the Cold War average. Since then military expenditures (the baseline budget excluding costs of Afghanistan and Iraq) have climbed to a peacetime record. America accounts for nearly half of the world's military outlays.
That is, Washington is spending more today on its military now than it did when the U.S. was confronting the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, Maoist China, and assorted Third World autocracies.
Whatever could justify such outlays?
It certainly isn't the power of America's enemies.
Hours after the announcement, the Swiss government said it was selling its nine percent stake in the ailing bank.
The BBC's Hugh Sykes, in Kabul, says the attacks demonstrate that determined militants can penetrate Kabul's election security.
He says the bombings are likely to make people nervous about going to vote on Thursday.
A deal has been signed in Beijing tonight for the biggest single investment ever made in Australia.
PetroChina has signed a deal to buy $50 billion worth of Australian liquefied natural gas over 20 years.
Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands’ sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.
A young Afghan woman looks on as she listens during a women’s gathering held to discuss the country’s forthcoming presidential elections in Kabul. AFPThe new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.
“It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’ to a girl who was injured when he raped her,” the US charity Human Rights Watch said.
He promised to smite them.
No president can do that alone, let alone in six months.
Baghdad military spokesman Qassem Atta said alcohol was being investigated as a factor in this morning's shooting.
"The (alleged) perpetrator arrived yesterday from abroad. They drank a lot and afterwards there was a dispute, then he took his weapon and killed the two men," Atta said.
"After that he went outside of the trailer and he shot an Iraqi and injured him in the leg. Security forces surrounded him and he gave himself up," he said, adding the man was under arrest with Iraqi police.
As tough economic times push more people onto the streets, the number of violent, sometimes deadly attacks against the homeless are becoming a trend in the United States, a report has found.US Army recruiters are not going to be short of cannon fodder, obviously.
The National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) put the number of attacks in 2008 at 106, including 27 deaths, with Florida leading states in the nation at 30 attacks, three among them resulting in deaths. More incidents are thought to have occurred but gone unreported.
The total number of attacks was less than the 160 recorded last year but still far above the 60 listed in 1999.
Although the motive for the violence was often unclear, some attackers said they acted out of "boredom" or for a "thrill" or "fun," according to the report released Friday.
Most of the attacks -- 73 percent -- were committed by individuals who were 25 years old or younger, with the bulk of that group teenagers.
Currently, the online effort has been coordinated at www.43alumni.com, which by its appearance seems to be primarily dedicated to the cause of vindicating the former president’s record in office.
"We were there,” the site reads. “And as members of the team, we know the difference between rumor, reality, fact, and fiction. This is our chance to stand up, speak up and set the record straight."
I'm about to face (again) a choice between food and heart medication. I've eaten through almost all the food I had stored up; in the last week, I've been forced to eat the contents of a few cans of food that had been pushed to the backs of some kitchen shelves. They were very old; perhaps the recent intestinal unpleasantness was the result of something that shouldn't have been eaten. But those particular problems have periodically gone on for a long time now, so possibly tainted food can't be the entire explanation. Eating healthy foods, which would be a good idea given the heart problems, is pretty much beyond my means for good now. Last week, I spent most of a donation from a regular contributor on cat food.
The global economic downturn has had a huge impact on News Corporation's results, and it says charging for internet content is likely to become more widespread to support the costs of quality journalism.
Rupert Murdoch announced that his company suffered a 30 per cent decline on last year's performance.
"I'm not trying to say all bikers are saints, just like not all politicians or police are squeaky clean," a Finks biker named Ferret said.Terrorism suspect in court outburst:
"But I would say that there is more organised criminal activity every day in Australia's governments and police services than you would find at your local biker clubhouse."
As he was led from court, Fattal told Magistrate Reardon, "You send troops to Iraq to kill innocent people."
"You call me a terrorist. I never killed a person in my life.
"Your army kills innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Israel takes Palestinian land by force."
New South Wales assistant police Commissioner, Peter Dein, said the operation was expedited because the Australian had the story.
"Yes it was pulled forward because of that and these things happen and we had no control over that," he said.
"I'm not sure exactly how long [The Australian] had it... I think it was a few days, but I was aware because of my involvement with the inter agency relationships.
"There was no set date...but certainly we needed to execute it yesterday because of certain knowledge of the media."
From: Godwin Grech
Sent: Friday, 5 June 2009 10:41 PM
To: Malcolm Turnbull
Malcolm
Perhaps one way of getting me before a Committee to give evidence is to refer the OzCar Guarantee Bill, which is scheduled for Senate consideration in just over a week, to a Committee Inquiry.
Although we will be silly not to allow the Bill through, a short Committee Inquiry could be useful.
But it is important that any inquiry involve only me from Treasury.
Once this gets more momentum, they may try to stop me from appearing and send up one of my bosses instead.
I am the only person in Treasury to have worked on OzCar - quite remarkable really given that they normally allocate teams of about 10 people to such projects; but I have carried this on my own from the very start.
My point is that you will be on firm ground if you demand that only I appear.
I am happy for you to start using my name in Parliament or in media interviews when pressing for this.
In your interview with the ABC this morning, you referred to a Treasury official. I am OK for you to refer to me publicly to make it clear who you are after.
Also, with Swan daring you to haul up the relevant Treasury staff for investigation in Parliament on Thursday - you can simply dare him to follow through with his 'offer'.
I really do believe there is meat in this one.
Swan is probably more exposed than Rudd. Sure he disclosed the fact that he was making representations for Grant - but what is not appreciated is what I did - with the approval of the TO and Swan - in trying to get finance for Grant.
Ford Credit and the subsequent decision by ERC to allow Ford Credit to participate in OzCar - with Swan as ERC chair - is relevant to all of this.
Perhaps we should talk to sort out next steps.
Also, I am happy to meet with you and perhaps Abetz (no staffers) - to show you the various emails I have.
This may help you decide how strong you may want to push.
Let me know what you want to do.
Godwin
Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion.
The reason the journalism industry insisted for so long on the ludicrous fiction that corporate parents never violated the sanctity of journalistic independence is precisely because everyone understood why that would be so dangerous. Apparently, they no longer feel a need to maintain that fiction.
“The time has come for both Democrats and Republicans to take a deep breath and recognize the reality of what happened after Sept. 11, 2001. The question is not the sincerity or the patriotism of those who were dealing with the aftermath of Sept. 11. The country was frightened, and political leaders were trying to respond as best they could. Judgments were made. Some of them were wrong. But that should not taint those public servants who did their duty pursuant to the legal guidance provided. The last election made clear that the public wanted to move in a new direction.”
The Queensland Opposition says voters are losing faith in Premier Anna Bligh, in the wake of the business links controversy.
