Australians are among the biggest offenders of using the world’s resources faster than it can regenerate them. Conservation group the World Wide Fund for Nature says in its regular Living Planet Report [PDF] that humans currently consume 20% more natural resources than the earth can produce
The wags at Fairfax have sent out a job ad for Prime Minister: Having previously advertised elsewhere, and after receiving only two mediocre applications, our client is now undergoing an urgent nationwide search for the position of Leader of Our Great Country.
Somehow, I can’t see Murdoch’s press monkeys doing the same thing
The House of Representatives passed a bill aimed at making spyware illegal, and the bill could be made law as soon as this week
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has cast doubt on whether there was ever a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. The alleged link was used as a reason by President Bush for invading Iraq
The Russian government’s decision to approve the Kyoto climate change treaty has been hailed by the European Union and environmental groups. The cabinet has sent it to parliament to be ratified, where President Putin’s supporters hold a two-thirds majority
Liberal party stooges and professional religious loons, Family First, want an annual levy of $7 to $10 on all internet users to fund a $45 million mandatory national internet filtering scheme aimed at blocking pornographic and offensive content at server level. And I’m sure that their idea of censorship would include a whole raft of things that wouldn’t be offensive to that vast bulk of society
Giorgio Angelozzi, 80, has lived alone outside Rome with seven cats since his wife died in 1992, but he took the unprecedented step of putting himself up for adoption last month via the Corriere della Sera newspaper. Not satisfied with just running the advertisement, Italy’s main daily ran a front-page story about Angelozzi’s plight. Inundated with offers from families across Italy and as far away as New Zealand, Brazil and the United States, the retired schoolteacher has decided to go to live with Elio and Marlena Riva and their two teenage children in Bergamo, northern Italy
Singer Cat Stevens and his daughter were escorted off a diverted transatlantic flight by FBI agents. The pop star, who converted to Islam, was denied access to the US because his name was on a security watch list
, government security sources said. The Transportation Security Administration said the singer was denied access to the US on national security grounds
and would be returned to Britain
A recent Symantec internet security threat report shows that Australia is a world leader in phishing scams and the fourth most common launching pad for internet attacks
A new plan would make Oregon the first Western state to independently accept the return of wolves. The plan, created by a panel of experts which included Amaroq Weiss, western director of species conservation for Defenders, could provide protections for several breeding pairs of wolves in the state. Many biologists feel that it is only a matter of time until wolves migrate from Idaho and elsewhere to reclaim their historical range in Oregon
United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan says the United States decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 was illegal [BugMeNot]. Mr Annan’s comments are likely to reignite debate over whether the retarded monkey boy, John Howard and British Prime Minister Tony Blair acted within the bounds of international law by failing to get a final UN Security Council resolution on Iraq
Estate agents the world over are often alleged to be guilty of sharp practice but a Siberian real estate firm has been accused of much worse; namely of poisoning its clients before burning them alive and then stealing their homes. Russian prosecutors allege that the firm, ironically named Comfort, murdered nine of its clients during 2002 and 2003 and managed to get its unfortunate victims to sign over their property beforehand
A US federal judge has thrown out a state law requiring internet service providers to block web sites containing child pornography, saying the method used also caused massive suppression
of free speech
Anthropologists stepped into a hornets’ nest after revealing research that suggests the original inhabitants of America may in fact have come from what is now known as Australia. The claim will be extremely unwelcome to today’s native Americans who came overland from Siberia and say they were there first
A Wal-Mart-owned discount store rising less than a kilometre from the ancient temples of Teotihuacan has touched off a fight by a small coalition that doesn’t want to see the big, boxy outlet from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun
Mark Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, an ex-race car driver whose business career has been dogged by accusations of questionable arms deals and shady ventures, was charged with helping finance a foiled coup plot in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea
The Tories provoked a barrage of criticism yesterday after they signalled that the Human Rights Act would be scrapped or overhauled by a government led by Michael Howard
The makers of two leading file-sharing programs are not legally liable for the songs, movies and other copyright works swapped online by their users. Among other reasons, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said Grokster and StreamCast Networks, unlike the original Napster, were not responsible because they don’t have central servers pointing users to copyright material
A giant colony of ants stretching 100km has been discovered in Melbourne, threatening local insect species. The ants, which were imported from Argentina, are ranked among the world’s 100 worst animal invaders. Although they exist in their usual smaller group size in their homeland, the colonies have merged in Australia to create one massive super colony
The Free Wheelchair Mission is a religious NGO that produces wheelchairs out of $41.17 worth of parts, and makes its plans for same available for free online. The project was inspired by the sight of a legless Moroccan woman dragging herself across a dirt road. Now the project works to provide low-cost wheels to all comers around the world — via boingboing
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