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Chile
“The morale of 33 miners trapped in Chile soared after music and hot meals were supplied, while NASA advisers praised their courage as a rescue drill inched closer. A new video shot by the miners and broadcast on state television showed the men shaven, wearing clean clothes and listening to music. The figures in the images were a far cry from the haggard, mud-caked, bare-chested miners shown in a first video last week, days after they were located by a probe drill. The miners have now spent 27 days in the San Jose mine in northern Chile, which collapsed on August 5 – a feat of subterranean survival unprecedented in modern memory. The only other miners to have spent almost as long trapped underground were three Chinese men rescued in July last year after spending 25 days in a flooded shaft, chewing on coal and surrounded by their 13 dead colleagues. A team of NASA experts, who arrived at the mine to convey the US space agency’s experience in keeping men sane and healthy during prolonged isolation, hailed the Chilean miners’ resilience. ‘We are very impressed with the courage and the organisation the miners provided for themselves in these very difficult circumstances’, NASA’s deputy chief medical officer James Michael Duncan said. A giant Australian-designed drill has been boring slowly down to the miners in an operation estimated to take three to four months to complete. The miners are stuck 700 metres below the surface waiting for the initial shaft to being drilled and then doubled in diameter to permit each one to be pulled up”The ambitious task, codenamed Operation San Lorenzo after a martyred Christian saint, is going on in parallel with a program of careful medical and psychological care for the miners.
Water, food and other supplies were being dropped through three fist-sized shafts drilled to the men.
President Sebastian Pinera said his government “will continue to do everything humanly possible” to rescue the miners.
Pakistan
Demonstrators march in Vienna's streets as part of the 18th International AIDS Conference
Life Style, Arts, Food, Travel, Entertainment
Performance Arts
Adelaide Festival Centre’s CEO and Artistic Director, Douglas Gautier announcedthat the Artistic Director for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival for 2012 and 2013 will be nohe other than Kate Ceberano. Award-winning singer and songwriter, Kate Ceberano has been a leading star of Australia’s music industry writing and singing soul, jazz and pop for more than 25 years. She has won multiple ARIA and Mo awards, a Logie Award and achieved five Platinum and five Gold albums. She has sold more than one million albums in Australia alone. Kate was the winner of season six of Channel 7’s Dancing with the Stars, helping the show to be the highest rated television program in 2007. She played the role of Mary in Jesus Christ Superstar which toured nationally with the album the biggest hit of the year (4 times Platinum). She also won a Logie Award for Most Popular Music Video for Everything’s Alright taken from the show. Kate also hosted her own late-night cabaret-style show on ABC TV during 1993-1994, Kate Ceberano and Friends. A strong believer in using her gifts for the good of others, Kate is the Victorian Ambassador for the National Breast Cancer Foundation, helping the organisation to raise awareness and funds for the disease. I am very excited about Kate’s appointment as David Campbell’s successor for the 2012 and 2013 Adelaide Cabaret Festivals, said Douglas Gautier, Chief Executive Officer and Artistic Director of Adelaide Festival Centre.
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”Paul Hogan has vowed to take his five-year fight with the Australian Taxation Office to the bitter end, saying he would rather go bankrupt than pay money he does not owe. The actor told The Australian in a long interview yesterday that he reckoned he was an ‘ideal scalp’ for the tax office’s $300 million Wickenby investigation into the use of offshore tax havens, but insisted he was not guilty. Hogan, who also appeared on A Current Affair last night to argue his case, said he was tired of being ‘smeared’ as a tax dodger, and that he could not pay even a tenth of what the tax office was demanding, and that the case against him appeared to be based on a statement by a ‘disgruntled’ employee who was sacked years ago. Hogan’s wife, US-based actress Linda Kozlowski, is too scared to join him in Australia while, after being hit with a Departure Prohibition Order, Hogan feels he is being kept a virtual prisoner in the country he loves. ‘It is just so un-Australian’, Hogan said. ‘Whatever happened to this country? Whatever happened to a fair go’? Hogan has been the target of the Wickenby investigation for five years, with its focus on the use of offshore structures to deal with the flow of royalties from his Crocodile Dundee movies. The actor has denied any wrongdoing and has never been charged with any offence. When asked what he thought would happen next, he said: ‘I can’t pay 10 per cent of it, and if they keep me here, seize whatever assets I have . . . they can declare me bankrupt’ “Performance Arts
Scottish-born Shona Reppe has been described as the fairy godmother of puppet theatre. She will bring her internationally acclaimed, award winning tabletop production of Cinderella to Adelaide for Windmill’s 2010 season finale. Direct from sell-out seasons on Broadway and in Sydney, Shona’s petite production of Cinderella has toured Canada, Belgium, France, Japan and the Netherlands. The show is suitable for ages 5-10 and their families. The public performances commence on 25 September playing to 2 October in the Forge Theatre, Marryatville High School, 170 Kensington Road Marryatville. Every day is bad hair day for Shona’s ‘Cinders’ as she vies for the hand of the handsome prince and battles her sinister stepsisters across an intricate tabletop stage laced with secret hatches and hidden drawers. Shona Reppe Puppets’ Cinderella is unlike any other you and your kids may have seen. It is a magical and mischievous delight; combining simple storytelling with lush and inventive images. nytheatre.com… It’s a bonny affair from the start. Reppe, who’s visible throughout behind the tabletop stage, has a lilting brogue that makes her words sound like song. Much of the show’s magic lies in her nimble fingers and her interactions with her inanimate cast. Time Out New York
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Literary
“A German central banker with outspoken views on Turks, Jews and the decline of his country has defended himself amid calls for his dismissal by Chancellor Angela Merkel. Thilo Sarrazin told the Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag that ’all Jews share the same gene’ and that Muslim immigrants across Europe were not willing or capable of integrating into Western societies. Yesterday at the launch of his book, Germany is Abolishing Itself, which warns against the effects of Muslim immigration, Mr Sarrazin denied he was a racist
and insisted on his right to freedom of speech. The Bundesbank said that its executive board would talk to Mr Sarrazin and then decide on further steps. Mr Sarrazin, 65, caused an earlier uproar by suggesting that people on welfare should spend only $A7 a day on food, mocking them for being overweight and sloppy dressers”
Finance
Medical and Health
Health
Scientists have found that vitamin D influences more than 200 genes, including ones related to cancer and autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis — a discovery that shows how serious vitamin D deficiency can be.
Worldwide, an estimated one billion people are deficient in vitamin D, and a team of scientists from Britain and Canada said health authorities should consider recommending supplements for those at most risk.
Science, Technology and Space
Space
Clark Chapman, a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said an impact from RQ36 would cause a catastrophic explosion.
“It would be an enormous impact, like hundreds of the biggest nuclear bombs ever built exploding at once, creating a crater maybe 10 kilometers across,” he told National Geographic magazine.
An expert panel appointed by Barack Obama, the US president, to assess Nasa’s future space programme last year recommended bypassing the Moon in favour of a mission to land on an unidentified asteroid.
The plan mirrors the plot of the 1998 Hollywood film Deep Impact, in which the White House sends a spaceship to land on an asteroid which is hurtling towards the Earth.
Other Categories
General Interest
As Australia stares down the barrel of a hung Parliament, here’s a look at what it all means.
What is a hung Parliament?
A hung Parliament results when no party has more than half the MPs in the House of Representatives, which means no party can pass laws without gaining support from other parties or independent members of the House.
That support could come in the form of a formal coalition, or the governing party may have to negotiate with the other parties to get laws passed.
How did it happen?
There are 150 members of the House of Representatives, so to have an outright majority one of the parties needs to hold 76 seats. Neither Labor nor the Coalition looks likely to reach that point.
Instead, they’ll have to negotiate with the three sitting independents who have been re-elected – Tony Windsor, Bob Katter and Rob Oakeshott – as well as the Greens’ Adam Bandt, who has won the seat of Melbourne.
A fourth independent, Andrew Wilkie, may come into the mix, as he is locked in a tight battle with Labor for the seat of Denison in Tasmania.
It’s not clear just yet exactly how many seats Labor and the Coalition will hold (because it’s not certain who has won a few very close races) but they both look set to fall three or four seats short of a majority.
How long will it take before the seats are finalised?
ABC election analyst Antony Green says it could take up until Tuesday August 31 before the closest seats, in particular Hasluck, are decided. This is due to the timeframes required for counting postal and absentee votes.
What happens now?
Essentially, a whole lot of horse-trading.
Both Labor and the Coalition will attempt to convince the independents and Mr Bandt to provide them with the support needed to get the required 76 votes on the floor of Parliament.
This could involve winning the support of individuals separately, or as a bloc. Mr Windsor, Mr Katter and Mr Oakeshott plan to meet before deciding what to do next.
Who is running the country while this happens?
Julia Gillard remains the caretaker prime minister and her Government remains in the caretaker role it has played since the election was called.
This will remain the case until one side of politics can convince Governor-General Quentin Bryce it has the numbers to form a government.
Environment
“As part of our… corporate responsibility program, Burger King Corp. is committed to sourcing our products from sustainable suppliers.”
It said it was looking for a new palm oil supplier for the 176 Burger King restaurants supplied by Sinar Mas.
“In addition, we are notifying our suppliers of our intent to discontinue the use of palm oil supplied by Sinar Mas in the manufacturing of our products.”
Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology (SMART) has been struggling to repair its image after a Greenpeace name-and-shame campaign led several foreign buyers to cancel major contracts.
Greenpeace says the company is clearing high-value peat forest against Indonesian law and failing to wait for environmental studies before starting plantation operations in sensitive areas of Borneo island.
“The death of a Tasmanian devil whose fight for life raised hopes of resisting the cancer that is scything through the species has underscored the struggle ahead to save it. Cedric, a captive-born male, became famous when he showed signs of genetic resistance to the facial tumour disease in 2007. He was immunised with dead tumour cells and later ”challenged’ with live cells in 2007, University of Tasmania researchers said. A year later, after live cells were again introduced, he developed the disease. He survived until last week when lung tumours led to him being put down, at the age of six. “This was a very sad day’, said researcher Alex Kreiss. ‘ ‘Devils are actually great to work with because they can be really friendly animals’. In Cedric’s lifetime, the species became officially endangered. Sighting surveys have recorded an average decline of 80 per cent in the number of animals, the state government’s Save the Tasmanian Devil Program said. The transmissible cancer has been found in devils across most of their range, and is feared to be closing in on the clean populations of the north-west. ‘Cedric has played an important part in helping us to understand more about the disease’,’ Dr Kreiss said. ‘ ‘He provided hope that an immune response can be generated against DFTD and his recent battle has strengthened our resolve to help the devils defeat this disease’ ”Environment
Heartbreak at the beach... rescuers at Karikari Beach where 58 pilot whales beached themselves Photo: AFP
International Crime
“A horrifying video of a crowd watching a mob beat two teenage brothers to death has sparked mass demonstrations in Pakistan. The video, broadcast on Pakistani news channels, shows a lynch mob taking turns to savagely beat the two boys with sticks, drawing blood from them before dragging and hanging their dead bodies from a nearby pole. But perhaps just as shocking is that none of the dozens of people and police watching tried to stop the vicious attack. It is now thought the boys, who were on their way to play cricket in Sialkot, an eastern Punjab province, may have been mistaken for robbers by the group who decided to deliver brutal justice for their supposed crime last Sunday. The scenes have outraged Pakistanis, some who are questioning how their society could passively watch the shocking killings without intervening. The News, an English-language daily newspaper, wrote: ’Is this what we are? Savages? So utterly bereft of a speck of humanity that a crowd of ordinary men are passive spectators to public murder? The government has responded to the attack after civic groups condemned the killings and youths held demonstrations. As details have emerged authorities appear increasingly confident the two boys – Moiz Butt, 17, and his brother Muneeb, 15 – were innocent. The two went to play cricket after praying and eating breakfast, carrying a bag with them containing game equipment, said Mujahid Sherdil, a top government official in the district”
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