The Top Ten
The Age
Saturday July 18, 2009
1 CHINA has told Australia to stay out of its affairs as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told "our Chinese friends" that the world was watching how the Stern Hu case unfolded. Rudd's view cut no ice with Beijing. A Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman said he noticed that "some people have been making noise about this case". Hu and other Rio Tinto staff have been accused of espionage and causing economic losses to China by bribing steel industry executives. China's sensitivities were also on show when it was revealed Beijing had tried to bully the Melbourne International Film Festival into not showing a documentary next month about Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled minority leader whom they label a terrorist and blame for instigating this month's ethnic riots in Xinjiang. The riots left more than 180 people dead.2 ENVIRONMENT Minister Peter Garrett, who once stood for the Nuclear Disarmament Party, this week gave the go-ahead for a new uranium mine in South Australia. The Four Mile mine, 550 kilometres north of Adelaide, will be the 10th biggest in the world and is expected to begin operations next year, producing 1400 tonnes of uranium annually. The uranium will be exported only to countries that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The US owner of the mine, Quasar Resources, is a subsidiary of weapons corporation General Atomics.3 VICTORIA'S school principals fear the price of receiving federal funding for computers is their silence. They complained that the State Government was forcing them to sign contracts in which they must promise not to speak out against the Federal Government's computers-in-schools program. The state Education Department, in a memo to principals, said computer funding would only be provided if the contract were signed. Mr Brumby conceded the contracts might have to be rewritten, saying the Government had a proud record of granting free speech to principals and public servants.4 THE boy wizard has returned. Harry Potter's fate may be known to his readers with the completion of the book series by J. K. Rowling, but in cinemas his destiny is still being played out. This week Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, all 150 minutes of it, opened. It made $4.37 million on its first day of release. The first five Potter films grossed $US4.5 billion ($A5.6 billion) worldwide. The final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, has been split into two films scheduled for release next year.5 CLIMATE change crusader Al Gore came to town, dipping his toe into the political waters by suggesting that the passing of the Government's emissions trading bill could help in formulating a treaty at the Copenhagen talks in December. Gore was in Melbourne to launch Safe Climate Australia, a non-government think tank similar to his Repower America, which aims for 100 per cent clean energy in the US within a decade. Gore also met Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to discuss the Copenhagen conference. Rudd said the road to the summit would be "very rough and bumpy".6 THE role of former US vice-president Dick Cheney in the Bush administration came under increasing scrutiny with disclosures he ordered that a CIA assassination program be hidden from Congress. The operations, which targeted al-Qaeda operatives in countries friendly to the US, were carried out not by the CIA but the US military without the countries' knowledge.7 LAST summer's bushfire season may be over, but for the firefighters the stress still burns. Bushfire reconstruction chief Christine Nixon said this week that the hearings of the royal commission into the Black Saturday fires had put firefighters and their families under extra pressure. Nixon's comments follow those of Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland, who said emergency services had been dealt with "very unfairly" by the commission. The Country Fire Authority has been conducting information nights for its members to explain the commission's workings.8 CHEAPER books or a diminished local industry? These are the alternative titles that arise from a report released this week by the Productivity Commission into parallel importation of books into Australia. The commission has recommended to the Government that it scrap territorial copyright protection for writers and publishers. At present, publishers have 30 days to publish editions of books published overseas or face competing editions. Opponents, including Tim Winton (below), Richard Flanagan, Peter Temple and Kate Grenville, argue that removing the restrictions will significantly damage the industry.9 The Stawell Gift is the oldest and richest foot race in Australia. The winner collects $40,000, and the Victorian country town collects more money during the weekend in Easter that it is held than in any other month. But the race, first run in 1878, faces an uncertain future. It lost $40,000 last year, and race organisers met this week to consider moving it to Ballarat, courtesy of a $1.25 million carrot dangled before it to stage the event there. Premier John Brumby said the race would stay in Stawell. Gift organisers, however, were keeping their options open.10 "I CAN'T say I'd kill him because that would just spoil the point of him being back." So said British man Richard Cass on the rescue of his son Jamie Neale, 19, who had been missing in the Blue Mountains for 12 days. Cass had been about to board a plane back to England when he received a message that his son was alive. Neale had survived by eating seeds and weeds and sheltering under logs or his jacket on freezing nights.
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