Active Denial System

January 25, 2007

The military calls its new weapon an "active denial system," but that's an understatement. It's a ray gun that shoots a beam that makes people feel as if they are about to catch fire.

Apart from causing that terrifying sensation, the technology is supposed to be harmless - a non-lethal way to get enemies to drop their weapons.

Military officials say it could save the lives of innocent civilians and service members in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The weapon is not expected to go into production until at least 2010, but all branches of the military have expressed interest in it, officials said.

During the first media demonstration of the weapon yesterday, airmen fired beams from a large dish antenna mounted atop a Humvee at people pretending to be rioters and acting out other scenarios that US troops might encounter in war zones.

The device's two-man crew located their targets through powerful lenses and fired beams from 500 metres away. That is nearly 17 times the range of existing non-lethal weapons, such as rubber bullets.

Anyone hit by the beam immediately jumped out of its path because of the sudden blast of heat throughout the body.

While the heat was not painful, it was intense enough to make the participants think their clothes were about to ignite.

"This is one of the key technologies for the future," said Marine Colonel Kirk Hymes, director of the non-lethal weapons program, which helped develop the new weapon.

"Non-lethal weapons are important for the escalation of force, especially in the environments our forces are operating in."

The system uses electromagnetic millimetre waves, which penetrate the surface of the skin enough to cause discomfort.

The waves cannot go through walls, but they can penetrate most clothing, officials said. They refused to comment on whether the waves can go through glass.

The weapon could be mounted aboard ships, airplanes and helicopters, and routinely used for security or anti-terrorism operations.

"There should be no collateral damage to this," said Senior Airman Adam Navin, 22, of Green Bay, Wis., who has served several tours in Iraq.

Navin and two other airmen were role players in Wednesday's demonstration.

They and 10 reporters who volunteered were shot with the beams. The beams easily penetrated various layers of winter clothing.

The system was developed by the military, but the two devices currently being evaluated were built by defense contractor Raytheon.

Airman Blaine Pernell, 22, of New Orleans, said he could have used the system during his four tours in Iraq, where he manned watchtowers around a base near Kirkuk. He said Iraqis constantly pulled up and faked car problems so they could scout out US forces.

"All we could do is watch them," he said. But if they had the ray gun, troops "could have dispersed them."

AP

Australian of the Year

Environmentalist awarded top honour
January 25, 2007
SMH

Environmentalist Tim Flannery got an early birthday present today when he was named the 2007 Australian of the Year, giving him a platform to convince Australians about the dangers of over-consumption.

As a scientist who has been warning about sustainability and the risk of climate change for decades, public opinion is finally catching up with Dr Flannery.

But the next year will give him an even greater opportunity to convince sceptics that the globe needs to better live within its means.

Prime Minister John Howard, a late climate change convert, bestowed the honour on Dr Flannery at a ceremony at Parliament House tonight.

"He has encouraged Australians into new ways of thinking about our environmental history and future ecological challenges," Mr Howard said.

A renowned explorer and palaeontologist, Dr Flannery, who will turn 51 on Sunday, was the bookies' favourite to take out the award.

His expertise on climate change has come into its own of late as the nation grows increasingly concerned about what global warming could do to our already dry continent.

He has written best-selling books on the issue, been an environmental adviser to the South Australian and federal governments, catalogued the mammals of Melanesia, discovered dinosaur fossils and kangaroo species in his own country, and taught at Harvard.

Dr Flannery accepted his award with pride, vowing to continue his quest to help Australians live sustainably.

"This award means I have an obligation to the people of Australia to continue the quest to create a sustainable future for our country and for our children," he said.

"We can only call ourselves Australian if we have a long-term future in this country and that means to live sustainably."

Serial Killer overkill ???

Pickton trial coverage should be respectful: poll

Wency Leung
CanWest News Service
Monday, January 22, 2007

VANCOUVER - A slim majority of B.C. residents say they're interested in the media's coverage of Robert Pickton's murder trial, but most believe news organizations should refrain from reporting salacious details, while one in five say the media have reported "too much" about the case already, according to a poll to be released by the University of B.C. today.

The results of the poll, conducted by Mustel Group for the UBC School of Journalism's Feminist Media Project, found that 52 per cent of the 806 adults surveyed by telephone earlier this month said they are interested in media coverage of the case, compared with 46 per cent who said they are not.

Only one per cent said they are not aware of the trial.

Despite the split in public interest about the case, 53 per cent said the amount of coverage so far is "just right," though 21 per cent said there has already been "too much," according to the poll. Fifteen per cent said there has been too little coverage about the case to date, while the rest did not know.

Pickton's long-awaited trial begins at the New Westminster Courts today, and some 358 members of the local and international media have been accredited to cover the proceedings.
The Port Coquitlam, B.C., pig farmer will be tried on six counts of first-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty to the murders of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Marnie Frey and Georgina Papin.

According to the UBC poll, 75 per cent of respondents said the media have so far behaved responsibly in covering the case. Only nine per cent think the media have been irresponsible in their coverage to date.

However, the poll showed that 56 per cent believe the media should restrict violent and sexually explicit details that arise at the trial, compared with 37 per cent who believe the public should know as much detail as possible. The remaining seven per cent did not know.

The survey results indicate that the public isn't as interested in sensational crime stories as the mainstream media might expect, said Mary Lynn Young, assistant professor at UBC School of Journalism.

"There's a disconnect I think," Young said Sunday.

She said the media have largely assumed that crime stories sell newspapers, when, in fact, she said, "there's no systematic data that crime stories sell media over a certain length of time."

On the contrary, she said, the public often prioritizes other issues, such as the environment or health, ahead of crime, and as the poll suggests, when it comes to the Pickton trial, "the clear message was that the public felt less was more."

Young said media should consider the potential impact that revealing violent details from the Pickton trial will have on the public, noting that widespread media coverage surrounding the Paul Bernardo trial in the mid-1990s exacerbated the trauma the Toronto-area community experienced.

"Is it worth putting these details out in the public realm?" Young asked.

"As media, we have not respected the intelligence of our audience enough," she said. "Education levels are rising and I think these (poll) results are signs that people want better quality of information, not just daily trial stenography."

She said that while the trial itself is important, she believes more emphasis should be placed on the larger social issues that led to the disappearance of dozens of Vancouver sex-trade workers, which prompted police to search Pickton's farm in 2002.

For instance, the community and local institutions must bear some responsibility for not addressing the issue of their disappearance, she said.

Young said the UBC poll also showed Vancouver residents are significantly less interested in the Pickton trial than those who live outside of B.C.'s Lower Mainland, in part, because Vancouver residents tend to be younger and are less likely to be consumers of the mainstream news media.

But, she said, another factor may be that Vancouver residents have already heard about the case for several years.

Before the trial even begins in earnest, people may already be experiencing "Pickton trial fatigue," she said.

The survey was conducted between Jan. 3 and Jan. 10, Mustel Group said. The margin of error for the poll is 3.4 percentage points at 95 per cent confidence level.

Vancouver Sun

Abnormal to be a married woman

Jacqueline Maley
January 20, 2007
SMH

THE number of unmarried women in Australia is expected to outstrip the number of married ones by the time census results are released later this year, according to projections by experts.

For the first time, single women and those living in de facto relationships will become the norm, marking the beginning of a social trend that will change the way we live, socialise and conduct relationships.

"My expectation is that the 2006 census results, due out in the middle of this year, will confirm that there are now more single women than women in married relationships," the demographer Bernard Salt told the Herald. "These figures are moving very rapidly."

The projections follow reports this week that 51 per cent of American women are unmarried, according to the latest US census results, a figure which has increased from 35 per cent in 1950 and 49 per cent in 2000.

The last Australian census in 2001 counted 3.5 million married females over the age of 15, compared with 3.4 million unmarried females. Mr Salt said the unmarried figure will rise over the next decade, bolstered by two streams of single women.

"The first is young people in their 20s and 30s who are choosing not to formalise their relationships. This is a social revolution, really, led by Generations X and Y," he said.

"The second source is older women. In about 15 years' time you'll see the number of baby boomer widows really start to ratchet up."

David de Vaus, professor of sociology at La Trobe University and author of a study on living alone in Australia, said the 1989 census showed 59 per cent of women were married. In 1991 it was 55 per cent and in 2001 it hovered around 50 per cent.

"My guess is we'll go down again with the next census results. We'll maybe have 45 per cent in a registered marriage, but to compensate for that we'll probably have higher de facto figures."

Monique Kinerson, 34, says finding a partner is on the top of her "to do" list but recently she has been too busy buying her own unit and working overseas.

"The number of unmarried women is surprising only in that it's not what our parents did," she said. "I have pressure from my family sometimes, saying, 'When will you get serious?' I tell them I am serious about life and what I'm doing."

But it's not all about the generation. Younger women are more likely to be partnered than their male counterparts, says Bob Birrell, director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University.

Their partnering chances also improve during good economic times. But this trend is dramatically reversed in women over 65.

Mr Salt says the burgeoning number of older singles will give rise to new social arrangements for older women.

"We may see the formation of companion relationships, something we saw in the 1920s following the near-decimation of the male population from World War I," he said.

There will also be an increase in venues for over-55s.

"If you look at the groovy inner city, it's all arranged around cafes and restaurants so that anyone aged 18 to 40 can find a partner, but there are no similar venues for older people. That will change."

Wild jungle girl

Lost girl recognised by father after 19 years living wild in the jungle

January 19, 2007

HANOI: They say she is "half-human, half-animal". A woman who vanished in the jungle of north-eastern Cambodia as a child has been found after living in the wild for 19 years and has been returned to her father.

Ro Cham H'pnhieng, who cannot speak any intelligible language, appears to have survived by living nocturnally.

Her father, Ksor Lu, says he was able to recognise his daughter by her facial features and the scar on her back, according to yesterday's account in the newspaper Vietnam Rural Today.

Ms Ro was eight years old when she disappeared while herding buffalo in a remote jungle area in 1988. She was discovered this month after a villager noticed his food had been disappearing from a lunch container he left near his farm.

The villager staked out the area, eventually spotting a naked human sneaking in to steal his rice. He gathered some friends, and the group managed to catch her this week.

Ms Ro's father had long thought his daughter was dead. That was until last week, when he was told loggers had found "a forestman" in Ratanakiri province.

Mr Lu arrived and "recognised his daughter from the first sighting" even though her body was blackened, her hair was down to her legs and she could not speak.

Mr Lu said it was difficult to bring her back to normal life because she resisted showering, wearing clothes or using chopsticks. Instead, she would fend him off, shouting and crying.

Four days later she started co-operating, he said. "It is not easy, but life is waiting ahead for her."

Authorities want DNA samples taken from the parents and the woman to see if they match.

Agence France-Presse, Reuters

George Bush has plan for global warming

“George Bush has a plan to fight Global warming. Sending 20,000 troops on a mission to the sun.”

David Letterman

For sale: world's smallest country

January 8, 2007
SMH

A former World War II fort in the North Sea, which was settled 40 years ago and declared a state with its own self-proclaimed royal family, is up for sale, The Times reports.

The tiny Principality of Sealand, which began life as Roughs Tower in 1941, is a 550 square metre steel platform perched on two concrete towers 11 kilometres off the coast of Harwich in eastern England.

It is accessible only by helicopter and boat but according to its owners, who want offers of eight digits or over, boasts uninterrupted sea views, guarantees complete privacy and is a tax haven.

''We have owned the island for 40 years now and my father is 85,'' Prince Michael of Sealand was quoted as saying. ''Perhaps it is time for some rejuvenation.

''Astronomical figures have been mentioned but we will just see what comes forward.''

Although its nation status is disputed, Sealand boasts a military past like any other country, defending its sovereignty from outside threats.

Former British army major Paddy Roy Bates began occupying the island with his family in 1967, declared it a state in international waters and gave himself the title ''prince''.

Britain's Royal Navy attempted to evict him the following year but was unsuccessful. As its forces entered territorial waters, Roy of Sealand fired warning shots from the former fort.

A judge then ruled in his favour that Sealand was outside British government control as it was beyond the three-mile limit of the country's waters.

In 1974, Roy of Sealand introduced a constitution. A flag, national anthem, currency - the gold and silver Sealand dollar which is the equivalent to the US dollar - and passports have followed.

Four years later, Dutch and German businessmen on Sealand to discuss a business deal kidnapped Roy's son, but were overpowered and held as prisoners of war before eventually being released.

AFP

5 NIL

Great Ashes Series !!

Good work !! Go Ponting and the boys.
Will miss Warne and McGrath's bowling and Langer and Martin's batting.
The end of an era in Australian cricket.
Shane Warne was just so good to watch.

Here is a link to Warne's stats:

http://content-aus.cricinfo.com/australia/content/current/player/8166.html

Here is a link to McGrath's stats:

http://content-aus.cricinfo.com/australia/content/player/6565.html

Ride on ...

Bicycle sales outpace cars as companies start treadly fleets

January 5, 2007
SMH

SALES of bicycles outpaced those of motor vehicles in 2006, as more people turned to pedal-power to cut petrol bills.

The industry-backed Cycling Promotion Fund said 1,273,781 new bikes were sold last year, significantly ahead of the 962,521 new cars and trucks bought.

A spokesman for the fund, Ian Christie, said Australians were increasingly using bikes as their preferred form of daily transport.

Mr Christie said sales rose 9 per cent last year as more people turned to bikes to cut petrol costs and boost their fitness.

"There is an emerging trend towards people using bikes as their official company-supplied vehicle in place of the traditional company car," he said.

"Some of Australia's biggest corporations now have bicycle fleets and when you add in government organisations, we now know of at least 50 organisations that operate fleets of bikes.

Although the company bicycle is a long way from taking over from the company car, it's an important trend when you consider that nearly half of all cars sold are to company fleets."

He said sales records were set in all segments of the market, from children's bikes to high-end models, beating vehicle sales for the seventh consecutive year.

Their lead on car sales was extended by 300,000 - a sales edge that exceeds the total sales of the market leader, Toyota.

AAP

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