Two a penny

.The European Union has chosen Belgian Prime Minister Herman van Rompuy to be its first president.
The leaders of all 27 EU countries agreed to the choice at a meeting in Brussels.
The new job was made possible because of the recent ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.
Speaking in French and English at a news conference after his appointment, Mr Van Rompuy cited employment and the environment as urgent concerns for Europe.
Mr van Rompuy is known as a consensus builder but has a very low profile outside Belgium.
“Every country has its own history, its own culture, its own way of doing things.
He says he is confident EU member countries will be able to work together successfully. . Without respect for our diversity, we will never build on our unity.
“Denying this would be counter-productive.”
For weeks there had been intense lobbying and speculation about who may end up representing the EU to the world. I will always bear this principle in mind.
The post of the EU’s foreign affairs chief, however, has gone to a Briton, Baroness Catherine Ashton.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair was a frontrunner for the job, but he was eliminated early in proceedings after it was clear neither the French nor German leaders would support his appointment.
Emerging from the meeting, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Baroness Ashton’s appointment proved Britain was still at the heart of the future of Europe despite Mr Blair failing to garner enough support.
Emerging from the meeting, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Baroness Ashton’s appointment proved Britain was still at the heart of the future of Europe despite Mr Blair failing to garner enough support.

.Australia will meet England in the Four Nations final after the Kangaroos demolished France 42-4 and England defeated New Zealand 20-12 overnight.
Penrith Panthers centre Michael Jennings grabbed a hat-trick on debut while twin brothers Brett and Josh Morris each picked up doubles in their first Test together.
Johnathan Thurston (three) and Kurt Gidley (two) shared the goal-kicking duties.
Jennings’s Penrith colleague Luke Lewis was the other contributor in the nine-try rout, with Australia conceding the lone four-pointer to Olivier Elima in the second half.
A double from Peter Fox and an early try to Kyle Eastmond denied New Zealand a place in the decider, and a World Cup final rematch with Australia.
Meanwhile, England’s 18-6 half-time lead was enough to hold off the Kiwis in their clash. Ben Matulino scored New Zealand’s other try.
Kevin Sinfield nailed three conversions and a penalty, while Bryson Goodwin scored a try and two goals for the Kiwis. .
– Jennings stakes claim –
Jennings has staked his claim for a spot in the Four Nations final on the back of his scintillating hat-trick, and the Panther insists he can handle the pressure.
After missing out on a place at the 2008 World Cup, Jennings admits he is desperate to play a part in next week’s showpiece.
Jennings, Panthers Rookie of the Year and Player of the Year in 2007, completed his hat-trick as Australia hammered home its advantage in the second half.
“I was pleased, obviously the team performance wasn’t as good as we would have wanted it to be but a debut hat-trick is pretty special.
“I’ve did my bit with my tries and I was really happy with the way I played but now it’s up to the coach,” said Jennings.
“A few guys were given a chance and I think it wasn’t just me who made the most of it.
“I was confident of doing well and I’m confident I can do well again if I get the nod.
“We weren’t flying by any measures but we were clinical and that is ultimately what you’re after.
“As a team we weren’t great in the first-half but I don’t think anybody let themselves down in the second-half.
Lewis went over to score shortly after the break with Brett Morris grabbing two tries in five minutes to hammer home the Australian advantage.”
– Rout –
The French held out for 22 minutes before Jennings crossed twice in the space of five minutes to set the Kangaroos on course for a comfortable win.
But after the disappointment of the World Cup final, head coach Tim Sheens called on his side to step up another gear in next week’s final.
Although Elima grabbed a consolation score for France, Jennings registered his third try of the game before Josh Morris crossed twice to match his twin brother’s haul.
“In the first half we were too sloppy and there were too many times where we knocked-on or we dropped the ball or we missed the pass.
“We were OK, we got the win and we scored some tries but I don’t think we really got going,” said Sheens.
“To be fair to the players they improved but I still don’t think we really found our true level and that is something we’ll have to rectify next week.
“To be fair to the players they improved but I still don’t think we really found our true level and that is something we’ll have to rectify next week.
“I don’t think whoever we play we’ll be able to play like that and win.
“No disrespect to France but just because we did enough to beat them it doesn’t mean we did enough to satisfy me.
“I think Michael Jennings played well and when it comes to picking my team that will be in my thoughts.
“I said before the game that I hadn’t finalised my team for next week and that remains the case.”
-

.New evidence has emerged that shows faulty equipment may have caused the Air France crash off the Brazilian coast this year.
The plane took off from Rio de Janeiro bound for Paris, but flew into a thunderstorm three hours later and then plunged into the Atlantic – 228 passengers and crew died.
Three months after Air France flight 447 went down in the Atlantic, relatives of the 228 victims are still searching for answers.
The plane’s manufacturer Airbus has now told the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program that the onboard weather radar could not detect ice at high altitudes.
“The French families are waiting for explanations about why this tragedy happened, technical explanations and acknowledgements of responsibility from all the companies involved in this crash,” he said.
Christopher Guillot-Noel lost his brother.
Safety expert Captain John Mahon has been independently investigating the crash for a British law firm representing the families.
He is among a group of French families who hope to sue the airline and the plane’s manufacturer Airbus.
“Some of the messages that were transmitted by the aircraft would seem to suggest that faulty pitot tubes or speed sensors were instrumental in this accident,” he said.
He says the disaster could have been prevented.
It is believed they iced-over at high altitudes, sending the wrong information about the flight speed to the pilots.
Before the plane crashed, a routine maintenance message from the plane sent back to France reported the pitots or sensors were not working.
After the crash, Air France pilots threatened to go on strike if the faulty pitots or air speed sensors were not replaced.
Both Air France and Airbus manuals offered advice on how to deal with the faulty sensors, but the pilots union says the advice was contradictory. Now the planes manufacturer Airbus says the onboard weather radar was also not working.
– Equipment fault –
Air France replaced the sensors after the crash.
The vice-president of the flight test division at Airbus, Fernando Alonso, said the Airbus onboard radar could not see ice particles.
This contributed to the series of confusing or false data sent to the pilot..
“You have weather radar which is a very. it’s an equipment which is fitted on every single aeroplane,” he said..”
Rhe black boxes and voice recorders still have not been recovered, making it hard to get an accurate picture of what went wrong.
“I believe the ice could not be detected.
“It’s highly desirable that data is streamed live from the aircraft to the maintenance base,” he said.
“It’s highly desirable that data is streamed live from the aircraft to the maintenance base,” he said.
“It is absurd that air safety depends on black boxes which sometimes cannot be recovered, or if they are recovered then the data cannot be properly transcribed because the boxes are damaged.”
The official investigation into the crash of Air France flight 447 continues.

Watch Foreign Correspondent tonight at 8:00pm (AEDT) on ABC 1.

.Ewen McKenzie, recently sacked by French Top 14 club Stade Francais, has slammed his former employers and accused them of prioritising the recruitment of good-examining players for the club calendar.
“Stade Francais is the best team in the world in terms of marketing,” the Australian told sport daily L’Equipe.
“It’s an international brand. Paris are verging on amateurism. But on the level of their sporting approach some things are shocking.
The popular Stade Francais calendar ‘Dieux du Stade’ (Gods of the Stadium), features nude and semi-nude photographs of team members.”
The new Reds coach went on to accuse club president Max Guazzini of “only seeing two things – his calendar and the (team’s home ground) Stade de France”.
“He has a marketing outlook which is not always in the best interests of sport,” said McKenzie.
“I had players in my squad who I never chose. .
“I had certain players forced on me who, for me, shouldn’t have been in a team targetting the Top 14 title. Others were requested to leave the club because they didn’t want to pose for the calendar any more.
“He has found a job in Australia, and it is imperative for him to justify the reasons why Stade Francais, which is a well known club in Australia, sacked him and all he comes up with are derogatory remarks,” he told French radio station RMC.”
Guazzini reacted later with disdain to McKenzie’s remarks.
“From A to Z, everything he said was rubbish.
“From A to Z, everything he said was rubbish.”
Former New South Wales Warratahs coach McKenzie was recruited in mid-2008 after the departure of Fabien Galthie.
“In terms of recruitment, we did exactly what he asked of us.
McKenzie has since been recruited by Queensland for three Super 14 seasons. He was sacked on September 8 after the club endured a disastrous start to the season.
-

.

The partial defence of provocation should be abolished, a parliamentary committee recommended today.

The justice select committee said the opportunity for a defendant to get a murder charge reduced to manslaughter because they were provoked should be removed from statute and common law.

The committee’s report said that the law change would still allow judges to consider provocation as a mitigating factor in sentencing.

The MPs recommended the Crimes (Provocation Repeal) Amendment Bill should be passed into law.

The MPs said they did not agree with arguments that provocation should remain as a defence for a battered defendant.

This would mean in extreme cases someone found guilty of murder could get less than life imprisonment if the judge believed that sentence was “manifestly unjust”.

They also rejected submissions calling for a defence of diminished responsibility saying limited intellectual capacity was best dealt with by judges when considering sentencing.

“It would be more appropriate for them to rely on self-defence, which could result in an acquittal rather than a manslaughter conviction,” the report said.

Weatherston pleaded guilty to manslaughter but the jury found him guilty of murder.

The partial defence of provocation came under intense debate after Otago University tutor Clayton Weatherston argued he was provoked into stabbing girlfriend Sophie Elliott 216 times.

Mr Brown was beaten with a banjo before the instrument’s neck was rammed down his throat.

In July, Ferdinand Ambach was found guilty of manslaughter rather murder after killing 69-year-old gay man Ronald Brown.

Some supporters of law change said the defence of provocation had generally been used to justify attacks on gay people. It was alleged he made sexual advances to Mr Brown.

.

.The violent eruption of a Patagonian volcano last year has shown the high speed with which magma can burst through the earth’s crust, according to a European study.
The finding has prompted warnings for closer monitoring of potentially active volcanoes around the world.
The unexpected explosive eruption of the Chaiteìn volcano in Chile on 1 May 2008, occurred less than 24 hours after residents in the nearby town of Chaiteìn first began feeling earth tremors.
An examination of the forces behind the eruption published in the journal Nature , shows that the magma travelled at up to one-metre per second.
The force of the eruption resulted in ash being deposited across Chile and large parts of southern Argentina. This compares with the months to years of seismic unrest that precedes most eruptions.
It shot from a depth of more than five kilometres to the surface in about four hours. .
Depending on the nature of the eruption it can form pumice or obsidian on the surface.
Rhyolite is a volcanic material high in silica, which tends to make it very viscous or sticky and prone to explosive eruptions caused by trapped gasses.
Australian geologist, Dr Wally Johnson from Australian National University in Canberra is currently studying a rhyolitic eruption that occurred thousands of years ago at the Rabaul volcano in Papua New Guinea.
– Rare events –
The violent and unexpected nature of the blasts, together with their rarity, means the Chaiteìn eruption is the first rhyolite event to have been scientifically assessed in this way.
Dr Johnson says the last explosive rhyolitic eruption occurred in 1912 when the Novarupta volcano spewed 30 cubic kilometres of magma in 60 hours.
He says the analysis of the Chaiteìn eruption is strong.
“But when they do take place, they’re highly explosive and for anyone living nearby they’re certainly dangerous.
“But when they do take place, they’re highly explosive and for anyone living nearby they’re certainly dangerous.
“They put up a very, very good case for rhyolitic magma ascending very quickly through the crust,” Dr Johnsonsaid.
By documenting the speed with which the magma reached the surface, the researchers have now provided a measure for comparing the activity of other rhyolite volcanoes.”
Dr Johnson says that while rhyolite volcanoes are rare, there should be increased monitoring of potentially active volcanoes, in particular in developing countries, regardless of the magma involved.
“Basically once it starts, it’s on its way and there’s not much chance of getting a reasonably early warning.

.
AFP – Somali pirates attempted to storm the flagship commanding French military forces in a night attack in the Indian Ocean after mistaking it for a cargo vessel, the military said here Wednesday.

French sailors saw off the attack and captured five pirates in the incident while no-one was injured, military spokesperson Admiral Christophe Prazuck said.

The pirates had tried to storm the 160-metre (525-foot) 18,000-tonne La Somme, a fuel supply ship used as the command centre for all French forces — ground, sea and air — in the Indian Ocean region.

The pirates, who because of the darkness took the French ship for a commercial vessel, were on board two vessels and opened fire with Kalashnikovs, he said.

On it they found five men but no weapons, the spokesperson said, adding that the pirates had apparently thrown all of the boat’s contents overboard.

The pirates tried to escape when they realised their mistake but were pursued by La Somme, which after an hour-long chase managed to catch one of the skiffs, Prazuck said. .

The world’s naval powers have deployed dozens of warships to the lawless waters off Somalia over the past year to curb attacks by pirates threatening one of the world’s busiest maritime trade routes

.Roman Polanski has refused to be extradited from Switzerland to the United States over a 1977 underage sex case, the filmmaker’s lawyer said on Monday.
“He has refused the request from the United States for his extradition,” said a statement issued by the 76-year-old director’s French lawyer Herve Temime, two days after he was detained in Switzerland on a US warrant.
Polanski pleaded guilty before a US court in 1978 of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor as part of a plea bargain. .
But he fled the country before sentencing and has been a fugitive from US justice ever since.
Polanski was detained on Saturday at a film festival in the Swiss city of Zurich, sparking protests from the French and Polish governments and outrage in the film world.
“After that his defence team will demonstrate the illegal nature of the extradition request he is facing,” it said.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he and his Polish counterpart have written to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the arrest.
“Frankly it’s all a bit sinister this story.
Speaking on French radio, Mr Kouchner described the arrest as grim. All this isn’t nice,” he said. A man of such talent, known throughout the world, known in the country that’s arrested him. The judge has since died.
The director’s legal team argues the 1970s US legal case against him should be annulled because the judge who heard the case had improperly colluded with prosecutors.
The woman named as the victim in the 1977 case has joined defence lawyers in calling for a dismissal.
The woman named as the victim in the 1977 case has joined defence lawyers in calling for a dismissal

.

Nearly 60 people have been killed, Manila was blacked out and airline flights were suspended as a powerful typhoon battered the main Philippines island of Luzon.

Television showed houses swept away by swollen rivers, people on rooftops waving for help and throngs stranded along Manila’s submerged main thoroughfares as the storm packing winds of 100 kph (60 mph) dumped 341 mm (13.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo appealed for donations of clothes, blankets, food and water as hundreds of families, perched on rooftops or were trapped in submerged areas, waiting for rescue.5 inches) of rain in six hours. At least 47 people were killed, mostly by drowning, in Rizal province, east of Manila, radio reports quoted the local governor as saying. . Authorities shut down operations at international and domestic airports, stranding thousands of passengers. Eleven more people were killed by collapsing walls and rising floodwaters in the capital area, disaster officials said. Disaster officials declared a “state of calamity” for the capital region and 25 other areas on the main island of Luzon, in order to speed up rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts. An advisory said operations would not resume until Sunday. The typhoon was moving west-northwest and was expected to head towards the South China Sea by Sunday evening or Monday morning, chief weather forecaster Nathaniel Cruz told a local radio station. Businesses and commercial shops closed early and local hotels were packed by weary commuters. An average of about 20 typhoons strike the Southeast Asian nation every year. He said the typhoon brought the heaviest rainfall in the country since 1967 after its weather station collected 341 mm of rainfall in six hours on Saturday.

.
French parliament members have adopted an amended version of a controversial anti-piracy bill by 285 votes to 225, following an acrimonious debate between supporters of intellectual property rights and advocates of free access to information.

The groundbreaking bill, known as Hadopi — after the French abbreviation for the High Authority for the Distribution of Works and the Protection of Rights on the Internet — allows French authorities to track illegal Internet downloading and suspend services forrepeated offenders.

An earlier version of Hadopi was approved by the French Senate in May after the lower house of parliament approved the bill with 296 votes. A third infringement could result in Hadopi ordering Internet Service Providers (ISP) to suspend Internet access for up to a year, without a trial.

&lsquoThree strikes&rsquo and Internet service is out

Dubbed the three strikes law, the original version handed a specially created administrative body &ndash or Hadopi &ndash the power to issue two warnings to Internet users who illegally download music, videos or software. .

The law was strongly criticised by online civil rights activists and French opposition politicians as well as some members of the ruling UMP party.

Introducing an updated version

But questions over its implementation sparked an heated debate over whether the law constituted a sensible restitution of intellectual property to its rightful owners or an intrusive invasion of privacy rights and denial of access to information.

The new version, known as Hadopi 2, allows for double offenders to be tried in a French court before their Internet service is suspended.

In June, the country’s highest legal authority, the Constitutional Council, ruled that the law was unconstitutional since it allowed the suspension of Internet access without trial and ran contrary to the presumption of innocence provided under French law.

France – Internet – law – music – music industry – piracy – software – video
.
Hadopi 2 will now move to the upper house, or Senate, for its approval before its gets signed into law