Showing posts with label 2017 at 07:45AM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2017 at 07:45AM. Show all posts
Monday, September 25, 2017
Brownlow medal: Richmond’s Dustin Martin begins AFL Grand Final week with best and fairest honours
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Irma: Eight people killed in Florida nursing home bringing toll to 81
Saturday, September 9, 2017
Sloane Stephens beats Madison Keys in US Open final. Ranked 957th just last month
MORE Sloane Stephens beats Madison Keys in US Open final
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
US Open 2017: Eugenie Bouchard loses to Evgeniya Rodina in first round
The 23-year-old Canadian slumped to a 7-6 (7-2) 6-1 loss to Russia’s Evgeniya Rodina in the first round, 12 months after also falling at the first hurdle.
“It’s one of those matches you kind of want to forget about,” said Bouchard. “I know obviously the unforced error count was a bit too high, especially at the end of that first set. Yeah, I just didn’t really know what to do out there.”
One thing she is definitely doing is pursuing legal action against the tournament hosts, the United States Tennis Association, after she suffered a concussion slipping and falling in the locker room during the 2015 tournament.
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Source: US Open 2017: Eugenie Bouchard loses to Evgeniya Rodina in first round
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Hurricane Harvey: Texas crews rescue hundreds from homes, cars as tropical storm hits Houston
Emergency crews are racing to pull people from cars and homes inundated by rising floodwaters across south-east Texas, rescuing more than 1,000 people in the Houston area as Tropical Storm Harvey pounded the region.
Key points:
- Rain will lead to “potentially catastrophic flooding” well into next week, weather service says
- Two people killed in storm with fears Harvey death toll could rise
- Texas Governor activating 2,800 military members to help with recovery and clean-up
At least two people have died and more than a dozen have been injured due to the storm that has battered the region, including the cities of Corpus Christi and Houston, the fourth-largest city in the United States.
Throughout the region many people feared that the death toll was only the beginning, as the weather conditions prevented emergency crews from getting into the hardest-hit places and assessing the damage.
Emergency services told people to climb onto the roofs of their houses rather than into their attics to escape rapidly rising waters.
Houston authorities warned the city’s more than 2 million residents not to leave flooded homes because many of the city’s roads were under water.
The US authorities said its emergency service call centres were unable to respond quickly to all of the requests for help.
Sunday, August 20, 2017
Pine Gap plays crucial role in America’s wars, leaked documents reveal
Intelligence from Australia’s Pine Gap base is being used on US battlefields, leaked documents from the US National Security Agency have revealed for the first time.
The documents reveal that the base outside Alice Springs, officially titled Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap, provides detailed geolocation intelligence to the US military that can be used to locate targets, including for special forces and drone strikes.
The use of lethal unmanned drones by the US military has been blamed for hundreds of civilian deaths across countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan Syria, Yemen and Somalia.
The documents, which Background Briefing is publishing for the first time, come from the massive archive of classified documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
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One document, titled “NSA Intelligence Relationship with Australia” is marked “top secret”, and demonstrates that the role of Pine Gap, referred to by its NSA codeword RAINFALL, has become more military-focused over time.
It says: “Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap (RAINFALL) [is] a site which plays a significant role in supporting both intelligence activities and military operations.”
Another document reads: “One of RAINFALL’s primary mission areas is the detection and geolocation of Communications Intelligence, Electronic Intelligence and Foreign Instrumentation signals.”
Finding targets for America’s military strikes
Locating the source of signals is crucial for targeting military action, including the lethal unmanned drone strikes…
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
Charlottesville: Baltimore’s Confederate monuments removed overnight after violence
Work crews took down the monuments in the middle of the night, after the city council approved the removal of four statues, The Baltimore Sun reported.
Monuments to Robert E Lee, commander of the pro-slavery Confederate army in the American Civil War, and Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson were dismantled from the Maryland city’s Wyman Park Dell…
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Whitehaven Coal documents showing environmental breaches raise concerns
The breaches relate to a range of problems, from contaminating nearby streams to air pollution at Whitehaven Coal’s four mines.
The company has already been fined for the most serious breaches.
Whitehaven Coal opposed access to the documents — known as annual returns — which are reports to NSW authorities that detail breaches or “non-compliance with [environmental] licence”.
Green group Environmental Justice Australia (EJA) sought access to the documents through the Government Information (Public Access) Act, a freedom-of-information-type request.
“I was gobsmacked at just how difficult it was to access these reports,” EJA’s James Whelan said.
“All we wanted were the pollution reports that company lodges with the [Environmental Protection Authority] each year … these are things that should be in the public realm.
“The fact is it took us nine months of persistence — appeals and counter appeals — as Whitehaven stymied us at every turn.”
The breaches were for a range of failures relating to dust and noise levels and polluting waterways…
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Vladimir Putin Is Richer Than Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates Combined
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made waves this week when he briefly unseated Bill Gates as the wealthiest person in the world, according to Bloomberg’s tracker. The two U.S. tech titans are jockeying for the lead at around $90 billion each. But according to Hermitage Capital Management CEO Bill Browder, they’re nothing compared to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose personal fortune Browder “believes” to be $200 billion.
Browder, who made the claim before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, is one of the best authorities on Putin’s business dealings. Browder was a major investor in Russia during the chaotic 1990s, when, according to Newsweek, he took stakes in former state-run enterprises such as Gazprom. During the same period, Browder cooperated with Putin in anticorruption efforts, but eventually found himself targeted by Putin. That conflict eventually led to the jailing and death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, and in turn to the Magnitsky Act sanctions against certain Russian oligarchs by the U.S…
Source: Vladimir Putin Is Richer Than Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates Combined | Fortune.com
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
Stan Lee imprints his hands and feet in concrete at TCL Chinese Theatre
Stan Lee was honored with an imprint ceremony at Hollywood’s famous TCL Chinese Theatre on Tuesday.
The 94-year-old comic book publishing legend put his hands and feet in a block of concrete, which will be displayed in front of the theater.
Producer Kevin Feige and actors Kevin Smith, Clark Gregg, Chadwick Boseman and Jason Mewes all spoke fondly of Lee, gushing about his legacy and how he touched their lives.
Mewes also paid homage to Lee’s wife of 69 years, Joan Lee, who died earlier this month, saying she “had just as much impact on Stan as Stan had on the rest of us.”
“I’ve been the luckiest man in the world because I’ve had friends and to have the right friends is everything. People you can depend on, people who tell you the truth if you ask something. I’ve been lucky,” Lee said. “I’ve been lucky to have a wonderful wife. And I’m lucky to be standing here in front of you now, wishing desperately that I had written a speech.”
Source: Stan Lee imprints his hands and feet in concrete at TCL Chinese Theatre – ABC News
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Monday, June 5, 2017
Islamic State claims responsibility for Melbourne siege, shoot-out
Police say they are treating yesterday’s shooting and hostage situation in Melbourne, which left two people dead, including a gunman linked to plans to attack the Holsworthy Army base, as terrorism.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said the gunman, 29-year-old Yacqub Khayre from Roxburgh Park in Melbourne’s north, had a long criminal history and was recently released from prison on parole.
Khayre was charged and acquitted by a jury over a plot to attack the Holsworthy Army barracks in Sydney in 2009.
Three of his co-accused were found guilty of planning the terrorist attack as payback for Australia’s military action in the Middle East.
Earlier, the Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for yesterday’s siege, in which a man was killed, several police were injured and a woman was held against her will before Khayre was shot dead.
Commissioner Ashton said the siege was being treated as a “terrorism incident”, but warned that IS’s claim was “the sort of thing they jump up and say a lot” and there was no evidence to indicate Khayre was acting on a message from overseas.
“[Khayre] has a long criminal history with us, but also from what we’re piecing together comments he made related to ISIS and Al Qaeda certainly for us put this in the terrorism category,” he said…
Monday, May 15, 2017
Edouard Philippe named new French PM
Conservative Philippe appointed new French PM
The two met in Berlin on Mr Macron’s first full day in office, which started with his naming 46-year-old politician Edouard Philippe as his new prime minister.
The appointment of Mr Philippe to the top job in France’s Government ticked several boxes for Mr Macron — France’s youngest president at 39 years old — who took power on Sunday.
Mr Philippe’s age reinforced the generational shift in France’s corridors of power and the image of youthful vigour that Mr Macron is cultivating.
Mr Philippe, a lawyer and the mayor of Normandy port of Le Havre, is also relatively unknown to voters, fulfilling Mr Macron’s campaign promise to repopulate French politics with new faces.
“I told myself that the situation we [France] were in was so unique that we should try something that had never been tried before,” Mr Philippe said on why he accepted the role.
His appointment marks a milestone in the rebuilding of France’s political landscape, which has been dynamited by the election of Mr Macron — the first president of modern France not from the country’s mainstream left or right parties.
Mr Philippe is a member of the mainstream-right Republicans party and could possibly attract other Republicans to Mr Macron’s cause, as the centrist president works to piece together a majority in parliament to pass his promised economic reforms.
In Berlin, Mr Macron declined to answer a question about his new prime minister, only saying the choice of Mr Philippe was part of the new political landscape he was promoting.
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
UPDATE: 60 injured in Car bomb attack outside Pattani supermarket in Thailand
A car bomb has exploded outside a busy supermarket in southern Thailand, injuring 60 people and ripping the building apart.
The bomb was hidden inside a pick-up truck, parked outside the Big C shopping centre in Pattani — a major grocery and retail chain in Thailand.
The attackers had earlier set off a small bomb outside the centre, causing people to gather before the second explosion.
About 60 people were injured and 20 serious cases hospitalised.
Footage of the scene aired on Thai television stations showed a huge black plume of smoke rising skyward from the blackened building as rescue workers doused the flames and soldiers stood by.
While attacks happen most weeks in southern Thailand, this one was significant for its size and audacity.
The likely culprits are Muslim insurgents, fighting to separate the deep south from the rest of Buddhist Thailand.
They rarely claim responsibility for attacks and the main fighting factions have rejected peace talks with Thailand’s military government.
More than 6,500 people have been killed since 2004.
Friday, April 28, 2017
Pilot Zac Cox explains how he kept calm during emergency landing at Archerfield Airport
A pilot who made an emergency landing at Brisbane’s Archerfield Airport when the plane’s landing gear failed says he can’t wait to get back in the air.
Zac Cox, 21, was flying from Coffs Harbour when his Beechcraft’s nose wheel became jammed.
The commercial pilot remained cool, calm and collected while bringing the stricken plane down safely on the nose while nervous witnesses looked on.
His two passengers fled through open doors, but instead of escaping with them Mr Cox stayed with the aircraft.
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Video: The aircraft’s landing was filmed by a Channel 7 helicopter. (ABC News)
“I shut down the plane and turned off all the fuel, electronics and I got out and went as far away as I could,” he said.
“I just wanted to secure the plane first.”
The young pilot has 285 hours under his belt and is halfway through an instructor’s course.
He was on a proficiency flight with two other pilots when the drama unfolded, and said panicking was not going to help the situation.
“We went through procedures, checked lists, and had air traffic control helping us,” he said.
“We just did what we had to do.”
Saturday, April 15, 2017
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Teen parents who fled western Sydney hospital with newborn girl found, police say
Two teenage parents who fled a hospital in western Sydney with their three-day-old baby have been found, police say.
Jayden Lavender, 14, and Jenifer Morrison, 15, left Nepean hospital with their baby girl Aria just after midnight, without being discharged.
CCTV footage showed the young parents leaving with an unidentified man.
Police said they found the family at Willmot this afternoon and are assessing the infant.
Earlier, police appealed for Jenifer and Jayden to come forward, and had concerns about the baby, who still required hospital care.
It is not yet known why the pair left the hospital without telling staff.
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