ICAC finds Labor corrupt.
That those guys were crooks had been public knowledge for yonks; hardly surprising then that ICAC arrived at the same conclusion.Eddie Obeid, Ian Macdonald acted corruptly, ICAC finds
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/eddie-obe...-icac-finds-20130731-2qy67.html#ixzz2aaOvXshz
Saudi Arabia has secretly offered Russia a sweeping deal to control the global oil market and safeguard Russia’s gas contracts, if the Kremlin backs away from the Assad regime in Syria.
The revelations come amid high tension in the Middle East, with US, British, and French warship poised for missile strikes in Syria. Iran has threatened to retaliate.
The strategic jitters pushed Brent crude prices to a five-month high of $112 a barrel. “We are only one incident away from a serious oil spike. The market is a lot tighter than people think,” said Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review.
Leaked transcripts of a closed-door meeting between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan shed an extraordinary light on the hard-nosed Realpolitik of the two sides.
Prince Bandar, head of Saudi intelligence, allegedly confronted the Kremlin with a mix of inducements and threats in a bid to break the deadlock over Syria. “Let us examine how to put together a unified Russian-Saudi strategy on the subject of oil. The aim is to agree on the price of oil and production quantities that keep the price stable in global oil markets,” he said at the four-hour meeting with Mr Putin. They met at Mr Putin’s dacha outside Moscow three weeks ago.
“We understand Russia’s great interest in the oil and gas in the Mediterranean from Israel to Cyprus. And we understand the importance of the Russian gas pipeline to Europe. We are not interested in competing with that. We can cooperate in this area,” he said, purporting to speak with the full backing of the US.
TOKYO -- Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has suffered yet another leak, spilling out 430 liters of contaminated water thousands of times more radioactive than legal limits, its operator said Thursday.
Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, said the water which spilled from the storage tanks had radiation readings as high as 200,000 becquerels per liter -- almost 6,700 times higher than the legal limit of 30 becquerels.
Although sandbags have been placed to prevent further spread of the leak, some of that water may have already reached the plant's harbor on the Pacific Ocean through a drainage trench, TEPCO said.
The leak comes one day after Japanese fast food company Yoshinoya Holdings announced plans to grow vegetables on a farm just 60 miles from the nuclear plant.
A TEPCO spokesman told a press conference in Tokyo on Thursday that the leak happened because workers miscalculated the amount of water the tank was capable of holding due to it sitting on a slope.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said following the announcement that measures to stop the leaks were insufficient and pledged to work with TEPCO to prevent similar incidents.
ACT passes historic same-sex marriage laws
A new law requiring Muslim women to remove a burqa or niqab to prove their identity to West Australian police has been passed by the state's parliament.
The legislation was drafted in response to public outcry about the case of mother of seven Carnita Matthews who wore a burqa, and had a conviction of knowingly making a false statement quashed.
Matthews was originally given a six-month jail sentence after being found guilty of falsely accusing a senior constable of forcibly trying to remove her burqa when she was pulled over while driving in Woodbine in Sydney's south west in June 2010.The acting WA police minister, John Day, said the legislation, which was passed on Thursday, had been amended after consultation with the Muslim and Sikh communities.
"Initially, the legislation stated police would be able to require someone to remove their headwear for the purposes of identification," Day said.
"However, following consultation with the Muslim and Sikh communities, the government agreed to change the word headwear to face covering."
Scientists find at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive element in late Palestinian leader's remains
PARIS ”” Swiss scientists who conducted tests on samples taken from Yasser Arafat’s body have found at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive polonium in his remains. The scientists said they were confident up to an 83 percent level that the late Palestinian leader was poisoned with it, a conclusion that they said “moderately supports” polonium as the cause of his death.
A 108-page report (PDF) by the University Centre of Legal Medicine in Lausanne, which was obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera, found unnaturally high levels of polonium in Arafat’s ribs and pelvis, and in soil stained with his decaying organs.
The Swiss scientists, along with French and Russian teams, obtained the samples last November after Arafat's body was exhumed from a mausoleum in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
Dave Barclay, a U.K. forensic scientist and retired detective, told Al Jazeera that with these results he was wholly convinced that Arafat was murdered.
“Yasser Arafat died of polonium poisoning,” he said. “We found the smoking gun that caused his death. What we don’t know is who’s holding the gun at the time.
“The level of polonium in Yasser Arafat’s rib … is about 900 millibecquerels,” Barclay said. “That is either 18 or 36 times the average, depending on the literature.”
ABC Web site.Breaking newsAustralian woman found in distressed state in Dublin is free to leave protective custody.
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