#BREAKING: Two people have died after their light plane crashed south of #Brisbane

 

#BREAKING: Two people have died after their light plane crashed south of #Brisbane

Roman Polanski victim’s bid to end [RAPE] case rejected

A plea by Roman Polanski’s victim to end the criminal case against the fugitive director has been rejected by a judge in Los Angeles.

A Los Angeles judge has rejected a request by the woman who was raped by director Roman Polanski 40 years ago to have the criminal case against him dismissed.

Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon ruled that Polanski remained a fugitive from justice and that the court could not dismiss a case “merely because it would be in the victim’s best interest.”

The ruling follows the first appearance in June in the case by Samantha Geimer, who was 13 years old when Polanski sexually assaulted her in Los Angeles in 1977.

The director, who admitted raping Geimer, spent 42 days in pre-trial custody. He then fled the United States, fearing a plea bargain with prosecutors would be overruled and that he would get a lengthy prison term.

The Chinatown director, who turned 84 on Friday, has never returned and numerous attempts by his lawyers to strike a deal without him spending more time in prison have failed.

“The defendant in this matter stands as a fugitive and refuses to comply with court orders,” Gordon wrote.

Geimer went to Los Angeles Superior Court in June pleading for his case to be resolved, saying she had forgiven Polanski years ago and wanted the case put to rest “as an act of mercy to myself and my family.”

Geimer, who has three sons and now lives in Hawaii, said in June that Polanski had apologised to her years ago, but that she continued to remain a victim because of media attention each time there was a new development in the case.

Gordon on Friday also rejected a request by Polanski’s attorney, Harland Braun, to unseal testimony about the 1977 plea deal. Braun had hoped to use the testimony to persuade European authorities to rescind the international arrest warrant against Polanski.

Two recent bids by the United States to extradite Polanski, from Switzerland and Poland, have failed.

Source: Roman Polanski victim’s bid to end case rejected | SBS News

How can Kelly tell Trump the truth when his entire presidency is built on lies?

The newest White House chief of staff has a tough task ahead.

Former White House chief of staff, CIA director and defense secretary Leon Panetta gives some solid advice to new chief of staff John F. Kelly, including this:

Panetta’s advice is sound, but it got me thinking about what kind of truths Kelly would need to tell President Trump:

• There was no massive voting fraud in 2016. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 3 million votes.
• None of the health-care plans put forth by Republicans that you endorsed cover “everybody”; they all resulted in millions fewer insured people. The House bill for which you threw a celebratory Rose Garden gathering cut Medicaid substantially. You promised you wouldn’t do that in the campaign.
• The Russia investigation is not fake news or a hoax. Contrary to your representations, the campaign had multiple contacts with the Russians. Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions and Jared Kushner all made representations that were not true concerning contacts with Russian officials.
• You involved yourself in creating a fake cover story for the June 2016 meeting with Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort. Combined with the firing of James B. Comey, the special prosecutor may have a case for obstruction of justice.
• If you fire Robert S. Mueller III, it is quite possible Congress will move to impeach you.
• Russia did interfere with our election and is engaged in widespread cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns against the West. These are facts. Denying them makes you seem like a Russian pawn, or crazy. Congress is not responsible for the state of relations with Russia; Russia is.
• Your approval is really, really low and you are losing some of your core base, including whites with no college degree. As a result of that and failure of health-care reform, Republicans in Congress now ignore you. They will be more likely to send legislation you don’t like and to insist on vigorous investigation of the Russia scandal.
• The vast majority of Americans really want you to stop tweeting. You sound uninformed and unhinged in many of these missives. You’ve diminished the office of the presidency.
• Your son-in-law and daughter are unqualified to be senior advisers. Jared has made some really bad recommendations (like hiring Anthony Scaramucci and firing Comey). They should go back to New York. Honestly, you’d be doing them a favor.
• Stephen Miller is awful on TV. He came across as a bully and someone who does not like immigrants (which may be candid but is nevertheless unacceptable to most Americans). He should not go on TV again.
• You ran as a populist but your agenda on taxes is tilted toward the very rich. You will allow Democrats to take back their white working-class voters if you keep governing like a pro-billionaire right-winger. You should not have so many Goldman Sachs billionaires in the Cabinet. Rich people are not necessarily smart or good at governing.
• The State Department is a hot mess. You need a new secretary of state.
• Trade protectionism is bad for America; NAFTA did not cause us to lose millions of jobs.
• We need immigrants for economic growth. The Cotton-Perdue bill, according to more than a thousand economists, would be a disaster.
• A wall on the southern border is an expensive, unnecessary boondoggle.

You see, without the lies there would be virtually nothing for Trump to say and nothing left of his presidency. If Kelly ever decided to level with Trump, he’d need to tell the president that his behavior is unbecoming and that his “ideas” are daft. And that’s the problem. There’s no way to tell this president the truth and remain in the administration.

Source: How can Kelly tell Trump the truth when his entire presidency is built on lies? – The Washington Post

WATCH: Terror Attack Foiled in Brussels Train Station as Apparent Bomber Shot

WATCH: Terror Attack Foiled in Brussels Train Station as Apparent Bomber Shot.@KeirSimmons reports.
https://t.co/Lx6aRcqyhp

— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) June 21, 2017

Adam Sandler’s film The Meyerowitz Stories gets surprisingly great response

Shark 10 metres off Cottesloe Beach, Perth just days after teenage girl was killed

Gold Coast chaos: Man ‘yells “Allahu Akbar” during arrest’

A man who allegedly tried to ram police cars during a drug-fuelled rampage on a busy motorway reportedly yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he was arrested.

The 35-year-old man ran cars off Gold Coast’s Pacific Motorway on Monday before assaulting four police officers and trying to steal their car, police allege.

The shirtless man was pictured walking along the busy motorway after his white Holden Commodore ran out of petrol. Police sources told Seven News the man was shouting the Arabic phrase ‘Allahu Akbar’, which translates to ‘God is the greatest,’ as he was arrested.

Source: Gold Coast chaos: Man ‘yells “Allahu Akbar” during arrest’ | Daily Mail Online

Saturday Night Live goes behind-the-scenes on Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad

Saturday Night Live wasn’t going to avoid breaching the topic of what may be one of the stupidest ads of all time, last week’s Pepsi ad.

The spot was fairly quickly pulled by the advertiser after eliciting a combination of rage, bemusement, and laughter; especially under the criticism that the ad attempted to co-opt the Black Lives Matter movement while completely undermining the struggles of minorities in the face of police brutality.

SNL rather wisely decided not to recreate the ad itself, since it runs on its own like a pitch-perfect parody of middle-aged executives attempting to understand ‘millennial culture’, but went behind-the-scenes on the whole thing instead…

VIDEO: Saturday Night Live goes behind-the-scenes on Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad | The Independent

Five big risks after Trump’s Syria strike – Russia can’t be seen to lose face…

Russia can’t be seen to lose face, so may also respond

Arguably the main point of Russia’s intervention in Syria was to embolden Moscow on the world stage after the crippling effects of sanctions on their economy.

Now they must find an appropriate response to having an airbase — where they have stationed assets — flattened in a US strike.

It may not be military action, and may not be in Syria, but Putin is a master of turning a completely different screw on his opponent. Think about Libya, or Ukraine.

Read more: Putin slams ‘trumped-up’ US strike on Syria

Assad will have to react

How will Syrians react to US strike?

He always does. It may not be as blatant as direct attacks on the US military in the region. But it may involve proxies hitting US soft targets nearby, especially if you remember their long history of involvement in neighboring Lebanon.

Donald Trump will likely face fallout, and in a way that is unexpected or unmanageable.

Remember: Assad has been under an effective siege for five years, so the same poor decision making that allegedly led — according to the US and others — to the chemical weapons strike in Idlib, may lead to other bad…

Source: Five big risks after Trump’s Syria strike – CNN.com

‘Homeland’s’ timely ‘fake news’ storyline hits real nerves

Five episodes into writing Season 6, the writers of “Homeland” faced a Donald Trump twist they didn’t see coming. Now, fact is closer than ever to fiction.

“Homeland” were in the middle of writing episode 5 of Season 6 when Donald Trump was elected president. It was a shock, to say the least.

“Obviously the election surprised everybody and we had to adjust in the story room,” Gansa, the show’s executive producer, told CNN Monday night at an Emmy campaign event. “We did a lot of work trying to figure in this idea that Donald Trump was now the president, and it became quickly apparent then that a lot of stuff that was happening in the real world was [more uncertain] than what we were dramatizing.”

At that point, the team had already decided to set the season in the period between a presidential election and the inauguration. They had also made some choices.

For one, their on-screen president was a woman. But, they insisted, President-elect Elizbaeth Keane (Elizabeth Marvel) was not a Hillary Clinton clone.

“Homeland’s” president, was a hybrid, “a collage,” as Marvel put it to CNN. She was a bit like Shirley Chisholm, with a little George W. Bush, a little Franklin D. Roosevelt, and “a lot of Joe Biden” mixed together, she said.

They’d also decided that the new president would have a contentious relationship with her intelligence community and that “fake news” would play a factor in the season.

Source: ‘Homeland’ producer talks ‘fake news’ storyline – CNN.com

The Replacement was satisfyingly sane. Did you guess which one was mad?

The Replacement

Rating:

In a masterpiece of ambiguity, The Replacement (BBC 1) kept us guessing whether it was maternity-cover architect Paula (Vicky McClure) or new mother Ellen (Morven Christie) who was the more deranged.

Just as we thought we’d worked it out, the pendulum would swing the other way.

During last night’s climactic episode, Paula of the unblinking eyes, her movements as rigid and cold as a block of stone, was conducting job interviews.

‘Some people find this office a bit claustrophobic,’ she said blandly. What she meant was: You don’t have to be mad to work here, but don’t expect any promotion if you’re sane.

MORE: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: The Replacement was satisfyingly sane | Daily Mail Online

Sydney weather: month’s worth of ‘monsoonal’ rain in week

Sydneysiders are bracing for a wet start to autumn, with forecasters expecting a month’s worth of rain to be dumped on the city in just one week. Scroll down for video LINK

The ‘monsoonal’ conditions are expected to settle in on Tuesday afternoon and last for at least seven days, including on Saturday when tens of thousands of people will gather in the city centre for the 37th Mardi Gras parade.

Over the next week, Sydney’s could see more than 200 millimetres of rainfall, which is more than four times the amount that fell in the entire month of January.

VIDEO; Sydney weather: month’s worth of ‘monsoonal’ rain in week | Daily Mail Online

US to deploy 1,000 troops to Poland as Russian foreign minister accuses Nato of being a ‘Cold War institution’

The US is preparing to deploy 1,000 troops and vehicles to northeastern Poland by the end of March to reassure Nato’s Eastern European allies in the face of rising tension with Russia. The unit, which will be part of 4,000 US troops deployed in rotation along Nato’s eastern flank, will be located at Orzysz, Deutsche Welle reports.

Source: US to deploy 1,000 troops to Poland as Russian foreign minister accuses Nato of being a ‘Cold War institution’ | The Independent