News & Politics - Australian News # 2 - - Page 5

Jakls · 08-05-2011, 07:08 PM

They aren't releasing many details but I saw on the TV last night that it was quite a elaborate fake device and they have found a eyewitness who saw someone running from the house.

Barstool Prophet · 08-05-2011, 09:13 PM

At least it wasn't a real one.

**sunnykerr** · 08-06-2011, 07:49 AM

Yeah, but neither Miss Pulver nor her parents nor Constable Lowden knew that.

Quote:

New Zealand bans synthetic cannabis products

A 12-month ban of synthetic cannabis products has come into effect in New Zealand.

The government says the 43 artificial cannabis products can harm health, including causing heart problems

But consumers of the products say the ban will force them to buy recreational drugs on the black market.

Among the prohibited substances is a popular brand known as Kronic, which has been a legal alternative to marijuana for several years.

It is smoked like marijuana and has been available in shops and tobacconists.

Some retailers believe that other legal highs will continue to flood a very popular, and lucrative, market.

Chris Fowlie, manager of the Hemp store in New Zealand's largest city Auckland, says there will be ways for suppliers to circumvent the new regulations.

"I think this will encourage companies to just put out one product at a time, you know, maximise their sales for it and then when that gets banned simply replace it with the next one," he said.

"We already know that there are hundreds if not thousands of synthetic cannabinoids out there."

But Peter Dunne, New Zealand's associate minister for health, says that if new products become available they too could be banned.

"The temporary class drug notice will be able to be made available to any psycho-active substance where there is a risk, or a perceived risk or an apparent risk to, if you like, human safety," he said.

The new law comes into place on Friday and stockists have until the middle of the month to remove the products from their shelves.

The ban will initially run for 12 months.

Next year New Zealand's conservative government plans to bring in comprehensive changes based on a review of the country's drug legislation by the Law Commission.

Source

Yeah, I'm really not a huge fan of drugs, but this seems a bit ludicrous to me. Banning legal or illegal substances because they cause health risks is infantilizing the population in some respects. More to the point, I do believe it will lead to a black-market boom and nothing else.

Barstool Prophet · 08-06-2011, 08:50 AM

Well I am a fan and yeah I don't see the point. At least with things legal they can be regulated and slightly controlled.

**sunnykerr** · 08-06-2011, 08:33 PM

Completely agree.

Making it illegal empowers criminal organizations.

Jakls · 08-08-2011, 02:02 AM

Sad news but she was such a amazing brave woman.

Quote:

AFTER witnessing Hitler's early atrocities, Nancy Wake vowed to fight him any way she could.
She fought so well, she ended up on top of the Gestapo's wanted list, saved thousands of Allied lives, played a crucial role in D-Day and received France's highest military honour.
"Nobody can beat you Nancy, nobody," Sonya d'Artois told her old Resistance comrade when Wake was awarded Australia's highest civilian honour in 2004, six decades after the French recognised her.
She was resourceful, cunning, feisty, brave and tough, once killing a German sentry with her bare hands.
"She is the most feminine woman I know until the fighting starts. Then, she is like five men," one French colleague said of her. But, at the age of 98, Wake was finally beaten.

The White Mouse died in a London hospital yesterday following a chest infection.
After decades of confrontations with the RSL and Australian government, Wake moved back to England in 2001, aged 88 and determined to see out her days in the country which trained her as a spy and in the company of old comrades.
She was the Allies' most decorated WWII servicewoman and is revered in France as a national heroine for her Resistance work and bravery.
Wake was awarded France's highest honour, the Legion d'Honneur, as well as three Croix de Guerre and a French Resistance Medal, Britain's George Medal and the US Medal of Freedom.
When she was made a Companion of the Order of Australia at a ceremony in London in March, 2004, d'Artois flew in from Canada especially for the event and was joined by other former Special Operations Executive (SOE) spies and servicemen, including Air Chief Marshall Sir Lewis Hodges who was saved by Wake after being shot down over occupied France.
Hodges' was one of thousands of lives saved by Wake, who the Gestapo labelled the White Mouse because of her ability to repeatedly evade capture, despite a five million franc bounty on her head.
Born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1912, but moved to Sydney when she was one, Wake was independent and resourceful from a young age, moving out of home at 16 to train as a nurse and leaving Australia to see the world in her 20s.
She worked as a journalist in Europe in the 1930s, witnessing Hitler's Nazis persecute the Jews in Vienna and Paris and vowed to fight the German dictator.
She also loved a good time and the self confessed playgirl lived a heady and very sociable life in Paris, meeting her match in wealthy French industrialist and playboy Henri Fiocca. They married in 1940 and both became active in the French Resistance when the Germans occupied the country that year.
For three years, she set up escape routes for thousands of Allied soldiers and airmen and led a band of the Resistance, but had to flee over the Pyrenees to Spain and eventually England after being arrested in 1943.
In England, she was trained by the SOE as a spy and saboteur and was parachuted back into France on the night of February 29, 1944 to lead 7000 Resistance fighters on life-threatening missions distributing weapons and sabotaging Nazi installations before D-day.
One operation included an attack on the local Gestapo headquarters in Montlucon, central France, where she requested her ashes be scattered.
She was machine gunned by a German aircraft and cycled 500 kilometres for three days through German checkpoints carrying vital radio codes for the Allies, taking out a factory and dispatching that SS guard along the way.
At the end of the war she learned the Gestapo had tortured and killed Fiocca in 1943 when he refused to give her up.
She returned to Australia after the war, unsuccessfully standing as a Liberal candidate in the 1949 and 1951 federal elections, but recording significant swings against Labor incumbent Herbert Evatt in the seat of Barton.
She returned to Europe after the 1951 election, married her second husband, former RAF fighter pilot John Forward, and came back to Australia with him in the 1960s.
The would-be politician again achieved a sizable swing for the Liberals but failed to take the Sydney seat of Kingsford Smith at the 1966 federal election.
In the mid 1980s, Wake and Forward left Sydney to retire to Port Macquarie, where he died in 1997.
Despite receiving the highest decorations from the French, British and Americans, Wake never received a military honour from Australia and left the country in 2001 after telling the government it "could stick their medals where the monkey stuck his nuts".
The RSL had said the government was "technically correct", but "a bit mean", not to award her a medal because she was born in New Zealand and never fought as an Australian servicewoman.
Three years later, the government, and Wake, mellowed and she accepted her Companion of the Order of Australia with humility.
"I feel very honoured. I never thought that would happen to me. It's really a wonderful feeling, I can't really express it in so many words, except that I feel honoured by it," she said after the ceremony at Australia House in London.
"I hope I'm worth it. I hope I will be able to live up to the oath that I have made to my country. And the people in it and those that will come after us."
As part of its rapprochement, the federal government helped pay the costs of her care in her latter years.
She lived the first two years of her life back in London at the Stafford Hotel in Piccadilly, enjoying six gin and tonics every afternoon at her reserved seat in its downstairs bar until a heart attack in 2003 slowed her down.
She then moved to the Royal Star and Garter, a nursing home for retired veterans, overlooking a bucolic River Thames in Richmond in west London.
A band of loyal friends of all ages looked out for her in London and many generous benefactors from around the world also helped pay the costs of her care and accommodation.
Even as she lived a quiet and contented life at the Star and Garter, she remained feisty and was still a sharp judge of character, resisting hundreds of requests for public appearances and meetings with politicians.
But even into her late 90s, she still loved a good party, as long as it involved some gin and her old war colleagues, or handsome young men in uniform, or best still, a combination of all three.
One of her last public appearances was as a guest of the trainee officers at Sandhurst Military Academy in Surrey, where she charmed the young men as much as they charmed her.
She had no children, but had a message for Australian youngsters.
"To honour your mother and father, your family, to be truthful ... don't steal or get mixed up with drugs and things like that," she said when collecting her AC.
"There's no point in doing anything like that. All this behaviour, doesn't mean you can't have fun.
"In fact, you can have more fun because the world is safer."
And she had great fun doing her bit to keep it safe.

Source

**sunnykerr** · 08-08-2011, 04:41 PM

She sounds like a real character. It's always the end of an era when one of those bright lights is snuffed out, but you can't argue that she made the most of the time she was given. So good on her for that.

Barstool Prophet · 08-09-2011, 01:16 AM

Making the best of the time you got.

**sunnykerr** · 08-09-2011, 04:35 PM

By jumping behind Nazi lines, yeah.

Barstool Prophet · 08-10-2011, 12:57 PM

**sunnykerr** · 08-12-2011, 04:34 PM

Quote:

New Zealand quake: Christchurch 'to be garden city'

New Zealand has announced plans to rebuild the centre of the quake-damaged city of Christchurch as a safe, sustainable "city in a garden".

City officials said the revamp would cost NZ$2bn ($1.6bn; £1bn) and would dramatically reduce the size of the city's business district.

They propose limiting the height of buildings in the centre and giving over much more space to parkland.

The 22 February quake killed 181 people and largely wrecked the centre.

Large parts of the city have been written off as uninhabitable, and the government has said it will compensate 5,000 homeowners whose houses cannot be rebuilt.

But experts have concluded that the centre could be built on again.

Mayor Bob Parker said the council had already got half of the money it needed for the project, which would take place over the next 10 years.

The plan includes a proposal for an NZ$8m memorial to the people who died in the quake.

The council invited the public to submit ideas for the regeneration of the city, and officials said 100,000 ideas were received.

The mayor said all of the ideas had been read and many had been incorporated into the draft plan.

"It's about a safe, sustainable, high-tech, low-rise city in a garden," said Mr Parker.

The proposals are now open for public consultation until 16 September.

Source

I think that would be a sensible and lovely idea, really.

I know it's human nature to want to defy the natural world, but it wouldn't suck to give back just a little.

Barstool Prophet · 08-12-2011, 09:02 PM

I love that idea. We need more greenspace.

Jakls · 08-13-2011, 03:02 AM

Christchurch is known as the garden city of NZ so its a great idea. I hope they do as a tribute to the city's spirit as well.

This is one of Australia's most high profile missing child cases, good news but really bittersweet. I hope the family can have some sort of closure and hopefully put their son to rest.
The family have also done alot for raising awareness about child safety and have really campaigned for answers in this case.

Quote:

A 41-year-old man has been charged with the murder of missing Sunshine Coast schoolboy, Daniel Morcombe.
The suspect known as "P7", who gave evidence during the inquiry into Daniel's death, has also been charged with deprivation of liberty, child stealing, indecent treatment of child under 16 and interference with a corpse.

Queensland Police Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett confirmed the arrest during a press conference, describing the development as a "significant milestone" in the complex case.

Barnett said police would now search an area of bushland in the hope of locating the teenager's body.

The man was charged earlier today and will appear in Brisbane Magistrate's Court on Monday.

Atkinson confirmed police had met with Daniel's parents, Denise and Bruce.

Queensland Police Commisioner Bob Atkinson described the Morcombe case as the largest missing person investigation in the history of the Queensland police service.

13-year-old Morcombe went missing on December 7, 2003 while waiting for a bus beneath a Woombye underpass.

Despite the offer of a $1 million dollar reward police have had little progress in the case, until now.

The development comes just days after police issued a renewed push to find the teenager, saying it remained an "ongoing priority" to solve the case eight years after he vanished.

The Courier-Mail reported at least 12 full-time detectives were working on the case, including six detectives on the Sunshine Coast.

Source

**sunnykerr** · 08-13-2011, 10:00 AM

I didn't know that about Christchurch's reputation, but it does seem to be even more logical when you take that into account.

And, at this point, that is bittersweet news for the parents of Daniel Morcombe. Whatever they find, they'll obviously have very little to bury, really. But after all these years, I would imagine a little is better than nothing, better than not knowing.

Barstool Prophet · 08-13-2011, 12:50 PM

I think that these kinds of kills are the most disgusting of all murders. I will never understand why people can go after children. But sure knowing is always better than not knowing.


Fan Forum > Archived General Discussion > News & Politics > Australian News # 2 -