Discord Among Allies

Many people were taken aback when France emerged as one of the most pugnacious advocates of military action in Libya, especially Americans who were accustomed to French criticism over Iraq and French foot-dragging over Afghanistan. Without President Nicolas Sarkozy’s early and constant pressure for a United Nations-endorsed no-flight zone, military intervention might have come too late to save Benghazi’s people from the murderous threats of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

You don't expect Australian charities to be winning international design awards. Then again, you mightn't expect the world epicentre of supersize houses to tolerate homelessness for one in 200 of its citizens, either. The obvious design solution to an affordability crisis in one of the world's richest cities is to make houses smaller. Much smaller, in this case, but perfectly formed.

 

This collection of hundreds of coloured, jagged shards could be a work of abstract art. But the objects in the photograph to the right are the contents of the stomach of a sea turtle that lost its battle with plastic pollution.

Environmentalists examined the stomach of the juvenile turtle found off the coast of Argentina. The bellyful of debris that they found is symptomatic of the increasing threat to the sea turtles from a human addiction to plastic.

Julia Gillard told her caucus on Tuesday that Tony Abbott has made three errors on climate change.

His day one position of declaring the carbon price plan the end of the world ''makes it difficult to say something else on day two''.

The decision to repeal the tax if elected meant he would have to also repeal the compensation that went with it.

And his broad pitch to the sceptics made him hostage to the climate-change deniers, a support base, the views of which, he could not publicly advocate for fear of offending a broader audience.

However, the ''arms and legs'' of his ''people's revolt'' are climate-change deniers and occasionally he has to throw them a bone.

 

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says Julia Gillard could expect a 'royal wedding bounce' in the polls when she returns from London in April.

Ms Gillard and partner Tim Mathieson have accepted an invitation to Prince William and Catherine Middleton's April 29 wedding.

In a scathing critique of the prime minister, Mr Abbott told the Liberal and Nationals party room meeting on Tuesday the Labor leader, whose support rose in the latest Newspoll, could expect a further boost.

'She may not believe in God, the monarchy or marriage but there will be a royal wedding bounce,' Mr Abbott told his MPs.

 

Capitalism may be to blame for the lack of life on Mars, Venezuela's socialist president Hugo Chavez says.

"I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilisation on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet," Mr Chavez said in a speech to mark World Water Day.

Mr Chavez, who also holds capitalism responsible for many of the world's problems, warned water supplies on Earth were drying up.

I assume that to some, I dare say, to the majority of Western citizens, it must be a relief to see that 'our' force for good has not lost its momentum - that humanitarian benevolence which characterizes the self-portrait we paint of our societies as we ponder on our own exceptionalism, our magnanimity.

There has been hundreds of aftershocks in this region...

 

Scientists are trying to establish if the Magnitude 9.0 Tohoku earthquake has altered the chances of a major tremor under Tokyo - or increased the risk of another tremor powerful enough to generate a tsunami.

The massive Sumatra quake in 2004 was followed by many others above Magnitude 7.0, including two above Magnitude 8.0 in 2005 and 2007.

 

Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey says the Coalition will repeal any tax cuts brought in as compensation for the carbon tax if it is elected to government.

Last week, the Government's chief climate change advisor, Ross Garnaut, suggested wide-ranging tax reform as a way to ensure households are not left out of pocket when a price is put on carbon.

Pensioners and others who pay no tax would be given increased benefits.

Speaking on commercial radio today, Prime Minister Julia Gillard agreed some prices would rise under a carbon tax, but said compensation "could be provided through tax cuts".

Another scandal has engulfed the state government with a senior public servant referred to the corruption watchdog over a $12 million land deal involving a developer with links to senior ministers, including the Transport Minister, John Robertson.

An immediate investigation into the chief executive of the Land and Property Management Authority, Warwick Watkins, has been ordered by the Premier's Department over his role in the last-minute purchase by the government of the historic Currawong site at Pittwater from the developer Eco-Villages Pty Ltd.

 

 

And this fellow is shadow minister for educashum... The audience, I believe, boooooooed him when he said this crap about the bible. It would be funny if he was a joke but he's for real...A REAL JOKE...

 

All education should be public and godless... Science should be the major push... not the arty-farty "sciences" of "XXXpolitics" and ZZZ"economy"... nor YYYreligion...

 

Police rushed a pair of officers in a marked car to a park after two young sisters were spotted picking daffodils.

Sienna Marengo, four, was seen picking flowers with six-year-old stepsister Olivia in Poole, Dorset.

A member of the public reported them to police and two constables attended and advised the girls' mother, Jane Errington, that she and her partner, Marc Marengo, could be arrested for criminal damage.

The couple expressed anger at the "heavy-handed" response and accused police of wasting time.

We pander to the snobbish middle-class at the expense of other school-leavers.

We like to fancy ourselves as being a great nation of egalitarians. Yet when you look closely, we do not always pass the test. Nobody sensible believes that equality of opportunity should mean equality of outcome. But we do like to think that we treat people equally. That we are ''fair''.