A cyclone in Western Australia in February disrupted iron ore shipments while another cyclone and flooding in eastern Australia last November disrupted production at a majority of coal mines Unprecedented flooding and storms that hit key exports such as coal and iron ore caused Australia’s economy to shrink by 1.2% in the first quarter of this year compared with the last quarter of 2010, government data showed Wednesday. It was the largest quarterly contraction in GDP since 1991, when Australia experienced its last recession. It is also the first time that GDP has fallen since the last quarter of 2008, at the height of the global financial crisis. Treasurer Wayne Swan said he was not surprised by data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that showed flooding and cyclones had slowed annual growth to 1 % through March 2011. That was down from 2.7% in calendar year 2010. Lost production totaled A12bn (£7.7bn), with A$6.7bn of that in the March quarter alone. Swan predicted a “strong rebound” in the quarter ending in June, due to the underlying strength of the economy. A cyclone in Western Australia state in February disrupted iron ore shipments while another cyclone and flooding in eastern Australia last November disrupted production at a majority of coal mines while damaging railway lines and ports. While Australia was the only wealthy country to avoid recession during the global economic crisis, the data point to a weak spot in an economy heavily reliant on Chinese hunger for raw materials. China and other emerging Asian economies are major importers of coal, Australia’s biggest export. Opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey said while the result was expected, it also demonstrated that the economy was not robust enough to withstand government plans to impose new anti-pollution taxes on mining company profits or on high income earners to pay for flood reconstruction. “What is clear is this – if the mining boom has a cough, the Australian economy can suffer pneumonia,” Hockey said. Global economy Australia Economics guardian.co.uk
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Scotland Yard launches ‘cyber flying squad’ as British public warned to be more alert to online criminality The British public needs to snap out of its complacency about cybercrime or risk becoming victim to increasingly sophisticated criminal networks that are operating online, the head of the country’s e-crime unit has warned. Janet Williams, who takes the lead on cybercrime at the Association of Chief Police Officers, said people seemed to think that being technophobic was quaint and slightly comical. She was drumming into her detectives that this was no longer acceptable and that the public needed to change its way of thinking too, she said. “What worries me is that people still think of cybercrime and cyber-attacks as being a little bit like maths. If you go to a dinner party, someone might say that they don’t really get maths and everyone laughs and titters. “Not being able to understand it is the equivalent of not being able to read. “It is unacceptable now and on that basis I have been saying to detectives that if they don’t understand what is happening with cybercrime then they shouldn’t be a detective. I really mean that.” Williams added: “Most of my working life has been in CID and counter-terrorism. I don’t think that in the future detectives will be equipped to be able to deal with these things if they don’t understand the nature of cybercrime and I think that multinational organisations, public and private organisations, need to ensure that they understand the threats to their organisation.” Asked whether she thought the public also needed to make more effort to understand the dangers, she replied: “Absolutely.” Williams, one of the most senior officers at Scotland Yard, said business leaders should be ensuring that their firms were properly protected against the theft of valuable intellectual property. “Chief executive officers need to be personally reassured the controls and protections are in place. Intellectual property rights are very important to the UK.” She said she was particularly concerned that industry and universities had not completely understood the new landscape. “[They] need to think it through. I don’t think there is sufficient appreciation of the risks,” she said. Williams has set up a “cyber flying squad” based at Scotland Yard, and said her team of 35 detectives and specialists were having significant success. But she conceded that she needed the help of some of the biggest multinational corporations. Most had sophisticated cyber defences and the ability to track criminals around the world. In many cases, she said, “their intelligence systems are better than ours”. Williams has asked the Home Office to consider pressing for changes to the system of commission rogatoires – the letters of request for legal or judicial assistance sent by one country to another. With online criminals able to move across borders in the blink of an eye, police have found that the traditional ways of seeking assistance from other countries are outdated. “We have made recommendations to the Home Office,” Williams said. “We have outlined the nature of the problem. But it is up to them to find a solution.” During last week’s visit by the US president, Barack Obama, the UK ratified the Budapest convention on cybercrime, which should speed up investigations in some European countries and the US. Reliable figures about the scale of crime online are difficult to assess, but GCHQ, the government communications headquarters at Cheltenham, estimates that “a figure well into billions” is credible. One study earlier this year estimated that cybercrime costs the UK more than £27bn a year. Police know of hundreds of hacking forums, on which thousands of stolen UK credit card details are available for sale for as little as £1.50. Whitehall officials said that there was a “noticeable spike” in the use of such forums on Friday and Saturday nights, possibly because people returning home from an evening out might have their guard down and were surfing sites they would otherwise ignore. Internet scams • Nick Webber, 19, was jailed for five years this year for masterminding a multimillion-pound “cyber supermarket” where criminals could order stolen credit card details or learn how to make illegal drugs – and even bombs. Webber, of Hampshire, ran GhostMarket.net, which at its peak had more than 8,000 users. He was caught out by a ”compromised” credit card. • In 2005, an audacious hi-tech scam to plunder £220m from a London-based Japanese bank was foiled at the 11th hour. The Israeli gang was reported to have hidden spy software on the bank’s computers to steal passwords of accounts. • The bank accounts of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Oprah Winfrey were targeted by an internet scam artist based in New York in 2002. Abraham Abdallah, a restaurant dishwasher, was caught trying to transfer $10m into his account. Jason Rodrigues Hacking Data and computer security Internet Identity fraud Police Crime Consumer affairs Scams Nick Hopkins guardian.co.uk
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International Atomic Energy Agency report says weak emergency protocols intensified crisis after Japan earthquake International nuclear inspectors have criticised the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant for failing to prepare for a tsunami of the size that slammed into the facility on 11 March, sparking the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. In a preliminary report issued on Wednesday, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] said Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco] had underestimated the risk of a giant tsunami, and urged authorities to closely monitor the health of plant workers and members of the public. The team, led by Britain’s chief nuclear safety official, Mike Weightman, said lack of preparedness had contributed to the crisis at Fukushima, where workers are still trying to restore cooling systems to reactors, three of which suffered meltdowns soon after they were struck by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 14-metre tsunami. Weightman dismissed speculation that the earthquake had caused substantial damage before the tsunami arrived. “In terms of the cause it is clear – the direct cause was a tsunami, associated with an earthquake, of tremendous size,” he told reporters. The three-page report said Tepco had failed to heed warnings by government experts and its own scientists of the possibility of waves big enough to breach the plant’s 5.7-metre protective wall. “We had a playbook, but it didn’t work,” said Tatsujiro Suzuki, the vice chairman of Japan’s Atomic Energy Commission. The IAEA report said: “The tsunami hazard for several sites was underestimated. Nuclear plant designers and operators should appropriately evaluate and provide protection against the risks of all natural hazards.” The inspectors said the global nuclear industry should regularly review the risks posed by natural disasters and “harden” its ability to respond to emergencies. They said “simple, effective [and] robust equipment should be available [at all nuclear plants] to restore essential safety functions in a timely way for severe accident conditions”. Despite the criticism, Tepco will have been encouraged by the IAEA’s appraisal of its post-disaster response. “The response on the site by dedicated, determined and expert staff, under extremely arduous conditions has been exemplary and resulted in the best approach to securing safety given the exceptional circumstances,” it said. The team delivered its report to the prime minister, Naoto Kan, who was expected to face a no-confidence motion in parliament later on Wednesday, over what some regard as his poor handling of the nuclear crisis. Voting on the motion will take place on Thursday. Kan is expected to survive, unless the main opposition party can persuade enough rebels in his own party to vote for the motion. The IAEA inspectors will present their findings at a meeting of member-state ministers in Vienna later this month. The need to improve their ability to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis could lead to more nuclear plant closures in Japan while they undergo maintenance work. In the worst-case scenario, all of Japan’s 54 reactors could be closed by the middle of next year, according to some reports, removing almost a third of the country’s power generation and raising the possibility of long-term power rationing. The IAEA inspectors urged Japan to step up efforts to monitor the health of Fukushima workers and people living nearby. The accident has forced more than 80,000 people living near the plant to evacuate their homes, while concern is rising over the effects of accumulated radiation on the health of those living in the wider Fukushima region. While it described the evacuation and attempts to protect the public as “impressive and extremely well-organised,” the team said “a suitable and timely follow-up programme on public and worker exposures, and health monitoring would be beneficial”. Japan disaster Japan Nuclear power Natural disasters and extreme weather Justin McCurry guardian.co.uk
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Female-centred comedies such as Bridesmaids are great, but male-run Hollywood and male-dominated audiences just don’t get the joke When Harry Met Sally , possibly the last great American comedy to depict men and women not just as adults but as vaguely compatible, famously claimed that men and women can’t be friends. While my respect for this film or, indeed, any film in which the main characters do karaoke to The Surrey With a Fringe on Top will always be sky high, on this point I have long disagreed with the film’s writer, Nora Ephron . I have plenty of male friends with whom “the sex thing”, as Harry memorably refers to it, has never got in the way, but maybe that’s just because none of them know the lyrics to Oklahoma! But Ephron and I were both wrong: not only can men and women not be friends, they can barely stand to be in the same movie with one another. This summer, ye olde battle of the sexes is being played out in cinemas with The Hangover Part II in one corner, and, for the ladies, Bridesmaids in the other. The Hangover Part II is hilarious only in its disregard for its audience: it is exactly the same as The Hangover, with the only nods to novelty being that Bangkok has been swapped for Vegas, a monkey for a baby and a missing brother-in-law for a missing groom. Bridesmaids opened in the US two weeks ago with heavy responsibility on its taffeta shoulders. “Bridesmaids: Women Can Be Funny Too?” snarked the snarky website Gawker . Happily, Bridesmaids, which is smart and joyful, has proved that having a vagina is no bar to having comic timing. Something, though, is missing from both movies: the other gender. One is almost entirely female and the other – as is usually the way with American comedies – is almost entirely male. This is odd in itself (audiences in the 1930s and 40s could cope with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant snapping out one-liners on the same screen) but it’s the way these movies effect gender segregation that underlines the real problem female comic actors face today. In Bridesmaids, the men are sidelined but have personalities and pose no threat to the bond between the women. In The Hangover Part II, the women have no roles other than the shrewish wife and the hot if silent babe, and only when the men get away from their wives and girlfriends can they be themselves – which in this film involves (SPOILER ALERT) having sex with a male prostitute. In a gymnastic leap of logic, the movie uses this jaunt as proof that the character is worthy of his bride. Now, to look too closely at the gender politics of The Hangover Part II is to risk getting butterfly fragments in one’s eye as it splits on the wheel. But they do highlight a common trope in American comedies: the adult relationships are not so much husband and wife as Mean Mommy and Infantilised Man Child. Another comedy opened last week in the US that’s weirdly similar to The Hangover Part II in that respect: Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris . Gil, played by Owen Wilson, is only able to write his novel when he gets away from his horrible fiancee, played by Rachel McAdams. Wilson and McAdams also starred in Wedding Crashers . Midnight in Paris could almost be that film’s sequel as they are playing the same parts: she is the daughter of wealthy parents; he is Owen Wilson. But McAdams has morphed from the sweet thing in Wedding Crashers to the dream-crushing bitch that, according to American comedies, women become once they ensnare their man. Two more films out this summer, Crazy Stupid Love and The Change-Up , are also predicated on the idea that life as a single man is the dream and life as a married man is equivalent to castration. It’s hard to know who should be more insulted by the cliche: women for being portrayed as humourless bitches or men for getting the overgrown baby role. For too long, American comedies have struggled to conceive of a role for women other than soul-sucking wife or smoking hot chick. This is partly because only 17% of directors, producers and writers in Hollywood are women, according to a recent survey, and films that feature women in full possession of a brain are pretty much always written or directed by women. It would be easy to blame Judd Apatow , creator of the bromance genre, for this trope, and some have seen Bridesmaids, which he produced, as his atonement. But Apatow’s biggest success, Knocked Up , emphasised that the misbehaving men are wrong and the complaining wife is totally right. Yet he, like all male comedy writers, reserves the funny lines for the men. “I’m a dude . . . so I lean men, just the way Spike Lee leans African American,” he told the New Yorker . Yet there is another factor and it’s not, contrary to Christopher Hitchens ‘s claim, that women aren’t funny, but that funny women seem to repel male audiences. Thus, female actors often get shunted into humourless roles. In the same New Yorker article, producer Michael Shamberg said: “If you make a guys’ comedy you can get the girls, but if you make a girls’ comedy the guys will go, ‘That’s just chick stuff.’” This is depressingly true. Despite excellent reviews for Bridesmaids, and terrible ones for The Hangover Part II, the former made less than a third of what the latter did in its opening weekend. And this is why Bridesmaids will be the exception and The Hangover Part II the rule. What do you know, Harry was right: the sex thing just got in the way. Judd Apatow United States Comedy Hadley Freeman guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A 14-month-old girl fell out the fifth-story window of her family’s Bronx apartment yesterday, and her father didn’t realize it until at least seven minutes later—but miraculously, doctors are hopeful the tot will survive. There are no window guards in the apartment where Xania Samuels lives, and at the…
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Environment group calls for fracking procedure to be banned after safety concerns over minor earthquakes in Lancashire A company using “fracking” to drill for gas in Lancashire has had to suspend operations following a 1.5 magnitude earthquake near Blackpool on Friday. It is the second earthquake to strike Lancashire since April, and experts say it may be a result of the controversial practice, a process of drilling for natural shale gas which involves injecting water and rock-dissolving fluids underground at extremely high pressure to break apart hard shale rocks and release gas. Cuadrilla Resources, the company carrying out the fracking at Preese Hall, Weeton, close to the Fylde coast, said it had suspended operations to examine data collected by the British Geological Survey before deciding whether it was safe to resume. Neither quake was large enough to cause any structural damage. Mark Miller, the company’s chief executive, said: “We take our responsibilities very seriously and that is why we have stopped fracking operations to share information and consult with the relevant authorities and other experts. “We expect that this analysis and subsequent consultation will take a number of weeks to conclude and we will decide on appropriate actions after that.” Drilling is likely to be suspended for a long time as Cuadrilla investigates the cause of the quakes with the help of outside experts. The BGS said it could not say conclusively if the first earthquake, on 1 April, was linked to the fracking but the organisation’s website stated: “Any process that injects pressurised water into rocks at depth will cause the rock to fracture and possibly produce earthquakes. “It is well known that injection of water or other fluids during the oil extraction and geothermal engineering, such as shale gas, processes can result in earthquake activity.” The BGS said that last week’s 1.5 magnitude earthquake was very similar to a larger 2.3 quake that centred on nearby Poulton-le-Fylde at the beginning of April. “It seems quite likely that they are related,” said Brian Baptie, the survey’s head of seismology. “The recorded waveforms are very similar to those from the magnitude 2.3 event last month, which suggests that the two events share a similar location and mechanism.” WWF Scotland has repeated its call for fracking to be banned, following news that a company was seeking permission for Scotland’s first shale gas exploration at Aith, near Falkirk. Its director, Dr Richard Dixon, said: “Whether the shale gas drilling and the earthquake are linked certainly needs investigated. However, we already know enough about the environmental problems associated with fracking to know that it should be banned in Scotland.” “Shale gas would be a disaster for the climate and its production could contaminate groundwater. Scotland should follow France’s example and ban it before it even gets going. Scotland should become the home of clean energy not another dirty fossil-fuel. Shale gas projects in Scotland would quickly tarnish our global claim to green credentials.” Pollution fears Fracking has been heavily criticised by environmentalists in the US, who say the process can end up polluting drinking water in the surrounding area. In a case l. Last year in Pennsylvania, a natural gas company was banned from drilling for at least a year because methane from a faulty well polluted drinking water. This April, the New York Times reported that Congressional Democrats had found that “oil and gas companies injected hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals into wells in more than 13 states from 2005 to 2009″. Despite this, a report last month by the Commons energy and climate change committee found there was no evidence that fracking was unsafe, saying a ban on shale gas drilling was not necessary in the UK as there was no evidence that it posed a risk to water supplies from underground aquifers. “There appears to be nothing inherently dangerous about the process of fracking itself and as long as the integrity of the well is maintained shale gas extraction should be safe,” said Tim Yeo, the committee chairman. Gas Energy Fossil fuels Jonathan Paige guardian.co.uk
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Alleged mastermind of 2001 attacks and four other suspects to be tried by military court and could face death penalty US military prosecutors have refiled terrorism and murder charges against the accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks and four other men under a revamped trial process at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The charges against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the others allege that they were responsible for planning the attacks that sent hijacked planes into the World Trade Centre in New York, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people in 2001. Prosecutors have recommended that the trial be a capital case, which could bring the death penalty. The five men were charged previously in connection with the attacks, but those charges were dropped in 2009 when the Obama administration hoped to close the US detention facility at Guantánamo and do away with Bush-era military commissions for trying terror suspects. The other four alleged co-conspirators are Waleed bin Attash, better known as Khallad, a Yemeni who allegedly ran an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and researched flight simulators and timetables; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni who allegedly helped find flight schools for the hijackers; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, accused of helping nine of the hijackers travel to the US and sending them $120,000 for expenses and flight training; and Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, a Saudi accused of helping the hijackers with money, western clothing, traveller’s cheques and credit cards. All five men were charged with conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, hijacking aircraft and terrorism. The men initially were charged with the same offences in February 2008, but that plan stalled in 2009 as President Barack Obama ordered a review of the military commission system. That November, the attorney general Eric Holder announced that the five would face trial in a civilian court in New York. That plan, however, was widely opposed by Republicans in Congress, as well as some New York Democrats, and Congress passed legislation prohibiting any move to bring Guantánamo detainees to the US. About two months ago, the Obama administration bowed to political pressure and backed off the plan, saying it would instead prosecute them before a military commission. And the chief prosecutor in the office of military commissions, Captain John Murphy, said he would recommend a joint trial at Guantánamo for all five. C Dixon Osburn of Human Rights First said it was regrettable that the administration had to shelve its plans to prosecute the cases in civilian courts. Federal courts, he said, “have successfully convicted more than 400 persons of terror-related crimes since 9/11, have more criminal laws to incapacitate possible terrorists and have more than 200 years of precedent to guide them”. Dominic J Puopolo Jr, a Miami computer consultant whose mother was killed in the 9/11 attacks, attended the trial in Germany of a Moroccan man accused of aiding the plotters and had hoped to attend the trial of Mohammed and the others held at Guantánamo. He had been frustrated by the lack of apparent progress and said he was “pleasantly surprised” to receive notification on Monday from the defence department that charges would be filed again. “Just to get this started back in Guantánamo Bay is a big deal,” said Puopolo, whose mother was on board the American Airlines flight that the hijackers crashed into one of the twin towers. “I have every intention of making a stand and going there if offered.” Under the military commission’s process, the charges will be forwarded to the convening authority, Bruce MacDonald, who will decide whether to refer any of the charges for trial by military commission. Guantánamo Bay Cuba United States September 11 2001 Global terrorism guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …House Republicans dealt defeat to their own proposal for a $2.4 trillion increase in the nation’s debt limit today, a political gambit designed to reinforce a demand for spending cuts to accompany any increase in government borrowing. The vote was lopsided, with just 97 in favor of the measure…
Continue reading …We’d call it a sign of the apocalypse if the deadline for that hadn’t already come and gone : Sarah Palin and Donald Trump will meet tonight in New York City. Sources tell ABC News Palin reached out to the Donald, and they will meet at his Fifth Avenue apartment in…
Continue reading …Ted Haggard: movie star? The possibly bisexual pastor, famous for his 2006 gay-massage-and-meth scandal, is appearing as himself in a so-called “sex comedy” for the Christian set. Picture a Judd Apatow movie with a few slight tweaks: Most notably, the theme is pro-abstinence. The Waiting Game , being developed in Colorado…
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