from Crikey .....

News Ltd strengthens the case for media inquiry

Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

At least 83 people died as human guinea pigs in macabre US research on sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala in the 1940s, a commission ordered by President Barack Obama concluded Monday.

Nearly 5,500 people were subjected to diagnostic testing and more than 1,300 were exposed to venereal diseases by human contact or inoculations in research meant to test the drug penicillin, the presidential commission found.

Within that group, "we believe that there were 83 deaths," said Stephen Hauser a member of the commission, which has pored over 125,000 documents linked to the shocking episode since being set up by Obama last November.

Well, I may be biased... But the ABC 7:30 program seems to have turned into the Australian Liberal (conservative) glorious show. Last night, John Howard Rattus was invited to say all what he wanted without an ounce of proper questioning. It was as if he was in a lounge room, having a conversation with friend while drinking a cup of tea... This interview and the next stories were mostly designed to bash Labor and promote another Liberal (conservative) Andrew Robb who had been suffering from the "black dog" (depression)... No person on earth knows more about the "black dog" than I do. I could let it take over my life if I let it to...

Sameer Shilu, 12, was asleep when the soldiers smashed in the front door of his house one night. He and his older brother emerged bleary-eyed from their bedroom to find six masked soldiers in their living room.

Checking the boy's name on his father's identity card, the officer looked "shocked" when he saw he had to arrest a boy, says Sameer's father, Saher. "I said, 'He's too young; why do you want him?' 'I don't know,' he said". Blindfolded, and his hands tied painfully behind his back with plastic cords, Sameer was bundled into a Jeep, his father calling out to him not to be afraid. "We cried, all of us," his father says. "I know my sons; they don't throw stones."

Lack of trust in politicians was a significant factor behind the riots that erupted in England this month, according to an academic report expected to be studied by the Government.

Although poverty and lax moral values played a part in people's decision to join the disturbances, a stronger influence was their attitude towards politicians, researchers at Essex University and Royal Holloway University of London found.

Australian apologises to PM for Milne's false claims

Tony Abbott has little trust for his front bench and is paranoid about being double-crossed, according to a number of senior members of his team who have expressed a growing unease over the Opposition Leader's style.

Some shadow ministers as well as numerous backbenchers have told The Canberra Times that Mr Abbott is nervous about many of those around him and that he is making too many unilateral decisions.

But the Opposition Leader denies the allegations, his office saying yesterday that the claims were ''self-evidently false''.

The way Tony Windsor recalls it, Tony Abbott begged crossbench MPs to make him prime minister, joking ''the only thing I wouldn't do is sell my arse - but I'd have to give serious thought to it''.

In interviews to mark the anniversary of their decision to back Julia Gillard to run the country, independent MPs have revealed startling new details of their reservations about the Opposition Leader, including that joking plea.

And Bob Katter - one of the crossbenchers who backed Mr Abbott - is now deeply disenchanted, accusing the Liberal leader of welching on a deal to put up laws mandating ethanol in petrol.

That Tony Abbott prevented Malcolm Turnbull and Simon Crean to pair off to the funeral of one of Australia's greatest Artists shows a callousness beyond sociopathy. Let's face it, Abbotticchio is a lying idiot with influence... Had I been Malcolm I would have made a deal with Simon and stuff the little shitty woody long-nosed puppet of the mining industry's instructions.

He should resign forthwith for lacking any decency nor any understanding of history... He's a little shit and should be told so.

Noah's Ark could never have contained them: there are probably about 8.7 million species of living things, the vast majority of them undiscovered, according to what is believed to be the most authoritative estimate ever carried out of the scale of life on earth.

So far, about 1.2 million species, ranging from microscopic insects to the blue whale, the largest living creature, have been described, but it has always been recognised that the true total is very much higher. Previous estimates have ranged from three million, right up to 100 million, but the new figure, based on an innovative analytical technique, dramatically narrows the range of possibilities.

No sooner had not-so-long-ago stockmarket darling, Bluescope Steel, announced its dismal profit result for 2011, along with news that more than a 1,000 jobs were to go, than Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, leapt out with her announcement that the federal government would provide Bluescope with a $100 million cash injection to "prevent further job losses".