AUSTRALIAN NEWS

[The Australian , October 6, 2009] Molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn has become the first Australian woman to win a Nobel prize. Professor Blackburn, aged 60 -- whose pioneering work on telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes, has opened up new lines of inquiry into growth, ageing and disease -- is the 2009 Nobel laureate for physiology or medicine. She is only the ninth woman to be awarded the physiology or medicine prize since its inception in 1909, and only the 36th female laureate in any category since 1901, when the first Nobel prizes were awarded in chemistry, physics, medicine and peace.

The Tasmanian-born professor's multi-disciplinary work on telomeres, stress-related disease and meditation has given tantalising evidence of the connection between mind and body. She will share the 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.6 million) Nobel award with Carol Greider and Jack W. Szostak, the Nobel assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm announced last night.

Australians have won 10 Nobels, all but one for science and medicine, the exception being Patrick White's literature gong. "I think it's fantastic to have another Australian laureate," said Robin Warren who shared the 2005 Nobel Prize with Barry Marshall for their discovery of the Heliocobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes gastritis and peptic ulcers.

Acting Science Minister Craig Emerson said Professor Blackburn's achievement would be an inspiration to women. "The Rudd government is thrilled to hear Professor Blackburn has been named Australia's first female Nobel laureate and our 11th Nobel prize winner," said Dr Emerson, acting for Science Minister Kim Carr, who is overseas. "Her achievement is an inspiration for all Australian scientists and those considering a career in science, especially for young women."

Professor Blackburn, who has dual Australian-US nationality, grew up in Tasmania, where she would sing to creatures that fascinated her, and took science degrees at the University of Melbourne. Since 1978, she has been based in the US. She is Morris Herztein professor of biology and physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Professor Greider, her former postgraduate student, is at Johns Hopkins University.

Professor Szostak is with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The trio was honoured for the discovery of how gene-bearing chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase. Professor Blackburn pioneered the work in 1984 when she and Professor Greider discovered telomerase, the enzyme that regulates the activity of telomeres.

"As the ends of the chromosomes wear down, the telomerase comes in and builds them back up," Professor Blackburn explained in a recent New York Times interview. "In humans, the thing is that as we mature, our telomeres slowly wear down. So the question has always been: did that matter? Well, more and more, it seems like it matters. In my lab, we're finding that psychological stress actually ages cells, which can be seen when you measure the wearing down of the tips of the chromosomes, those telomeres."

The work has direct implication for the understanding of growth and ageing, as well as the effects of diseases like cancers, which are linked to uncontrolled cell replication.

Professor Blackburn last year received the L'Oreal-UNESCO award for women in science. She told The Australian that the prospects for women in the life sciences were much improved since her time -- "but only up until the end of the PhD, graduate training and postdoctoral research period." Then the number of women in science careers drops off, indicating that the career options for women are not as well-matched for women as they are for men."

She said one practical remedy would be to provide "childcare and part-time career options for those years in which a woman's family involvements are particularly demanding, so women did not have to feel that the choice is between having a career in science or a family." Her lab at UCSF is seen as female-friendly, partly because of her role as a mentor but also because of its inter-disciplinary approach, which embraces fields well beyond basic biology.

Professor Blackburn was famously appointed, then removed, from then US president George W. Bush's bioethics advisory council because she objected to the practice of having religion rather than science guide its work, especially in the field of embryonic stem cell research, which was tightly restricted by the Bush administration.

Professor Blackburn joins an elite group of 789 individuals and 20 organisations to receive a Nobel Prize. King Carl XVI of Sweden will present Professor Blackburn with her award at a gala ceremony for all laureates in Stockholm on December 10.

[The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, September 14, 2009]

One of six members of an alleged gang accused of stealing $1.1 million in coins from Brisbane parking meters has pleaded guilty to acting as a lookout during the thefts. Sarajevo-born university student Tea Strekozov, 21, today pleaded guilty in the Brisbane Magistrate's Court to 13 charges of stealing and one of receiving stolen property between September 1, 2008, and March 31, 2009.

Prosecutor Chris Minnery said Strekozov, a University of Queensland student, acted as a look out for her then “dominating'' boyfriend, who allegedly used a specially engineered key to steal coinage from parking meters around Brisbane's inner city suburbs. He said the “highly sophisticated'' operation yielded at least $1.1million for the gang over their more than 12-months of raids on the meters.

The court was told forensic accountants had based that figure on the general BCC parking meter earnings against the short-fall in profits during the gang’s operation. Mr Minnery said it was still a mystery to the prosecution and police how the so-called gang ring-leaders were able to obtain or engineer a key that was able to access the parking meters -- which are now being replaced at an enormous expense to the BCC.

”These are very difficult keys to manufacture,'' he said. “It is a highly sophisticated operation.''

Magistrate Michael Halliday was told four of the gang, including her former boyfriend, his brother, and two others have yet to have their cases heard by the courts. Mr Minnery said a woman, 21, received a nine-month, $300 good behaviour bond when she pleaded guilty to three counts of stealing on May 28. He said Strekozov, by acting as a look-out during the 13 thefts, was given one third on the estimated cash haul and helped launder the money by helping her boyfriend carry bags of coins to banks to convert to note currency.

The court was told Strekozov co-operated fully with police after her arrest in late March and was also identified from close circuit television camera footage showing her take part in the thefts. Mr Minnery said the appropriate sentence for Strekozov was two year's jail, with parole after eight months.

Barrister Gavin Rubetzke, for Strekozov, argued a lengthy term of parole and community service was more appropriate, with no conviction to be recorded so his client could pursue a career in medicine. He said Strekozov had been dominated by men for much of her life, particularly by her father and her boy-friend who was 10-years her senior. She was simply '' roped into accompany'' her boyfriend as he went about his criminal activity.”

[SMH, May 31, 2008]

The hair is assisted blonde rather than red, but the rawness of Kate McCulloch's words curiously echoes Pauline Hanson's redneck worries about dispossession and the need to curb Muslim immigration, especially in the white-bread community of Camden. Mrs McCulloch, a Catholic mother of four, became the poster girl for Camden's Muslim-shy residents this week when local councillors voted unanimously "on planning grounds alone" to reject a Quranic Society proposal for a $19 million Islamic school on Sydney's rural outskirts.

Having railed against Muslims who "take our welfare," Mrs McCulloch, 45, now says she is considering following Mrs Hanson into politics. She met the Queenslander when she pulled into Camden last November to help oppose the Islamic school as part her failed crack at a Senate seat. "Look, scores of people are coming up to me and saying, 'Good on you, Kate … you're saying what we're too scared to 'cos of racial vilification laws, but we all think it.' I would like to keep our place like it is and I guess [joining the] Liberals would be natural," she told the Herald.

Is Mrs McCulloch scratching the surface of an Australian heart of darkness, as Mrs Hanson was accused of doing? Mrs Hanson's trademark image of herself draped in the Australian flag inspired Mrs McCulloch. For Tuesday night's council meeting, she complemented her patriotic green and gold dress with an Akubra hat adorned with Australian flags. She said the victory vote was in keeping with the spirit of Camden's status as the birthplace of the nation's wool industry. "The Macarthurs will be proud of us," she said.

Mrs McCulloch, who owns a hospitality business in Camden, accuses Australia's Muslim leadership of saying nothing while mothers and children are used as suicide bombers. "The ones that come here oppress our society, they take our welfare and they don't want to accept our way of life," she said after the council vote. She told the Herald later in the week: "I want Muslims in Australia to attend our schools so their children can grow up with our values, and more importantly, so that their mothers can meet Australian mums and see how they don't have to put up with the sort of treatment they sometimes endure."

However, not all of Camden is behind her. A 72-year-old farmer in Argyle Street, Camden's main thoroughfare, said giving Mrs McCulloch publicity was the best way to silence her: "Eventually she'll choke on her own words." A local shopkeeper said many bad ideas received widespread support. "Most probably favour capital punishment but the hanging of that man in Melbourne, who they pardoned this week, shows it's a bad thing," she said. "The Muslims will get here eventually."

Mrs McCulloch voted for the Liberal MP for Macarthur Pat Farmer. He opposed the school, too, but just survived a 10.4 per cent swing against him. He is now on the nose because he has run off to live at Mosman, and is not expected to seek preselection The Herald called Mrs Hanson about her would-be successor. She hung up without offering a word.

[The Australian, February 14, 2008]

John Howard was the only living ex-prime minister to skip yesterday's historic apology to indigenous Australia. But among his former Liberal colleagues, he was far from alone. At least six Liberal MPs and senators abstained from the apology, including West Australian MPs Wilson Tuckey, Don Randall and Dennis Jensen, NSW MP Alby Schultz and senator Concietta Fierravanti-Wells, and Victorian Sophie Mirabella, who questioned the existence of the Stolen Generations.

"It sickens me that two-year-old Aboriginal children are still being diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases," Ms Mirabella said last night. "It has been reported that an Aboriginal-led taskforce on the 'Stolen Generation' in Victoria could not identify one truly 'stolen' child."

Former Labor prime ministers Paul Keating, Bob Hawke and Gough Whitlam, with the Liberals' Malcolm Fraser, were in Canberra for the historic event. And former governor-general William Deane was present.

But for Mr Howard – whose government received the Bringing Them Home report in 1997 but never apologised to the Stolen Generations – it was a day like any other, including his morning walk. Accompanied by security personnel in front and behind, and with a security car following, Mr Howard did not break his stride when asked if he wished he were in Canberra for the apology, merely saying "Good morning" as he ploughed on near his home.

Liberal Senate leader Nick Minchin told parliament Mr Howard should not be blamed for his government's failure to say sorry. "John Howard was not the barrier to an apology," Senator Minchin said. "We were unashamedly focused on practical outcomes, but we can now acknowledge that was at the expense of important symbolic acts."

Mr Tuckey, who loudly recited the Lord's Prayer before the apology commenced, said he was not interested in the apology. "I am not in this house for tokenism. I went down there and prayed for those people. I put in my mind a prayer for those who seriously need help, but I heard nothing today that is going to do that."

In the Senate, Concietta Fierravanti-Wells of NSW abstained on the apology, which was carried on the voices and did not involve a formal division where votes are recorded. South Australian senator Cory Bernardi supported the apology, but gave a speech saying he felt "no guilt for what happened in Australia's brief history" and complaining he had been set on by a "gang of Aboriginal youths" as a teenager in the Adelaide beachside suburb of Glenelg. Victorian Liberal Chris Pearce attended but drew criticism for his decision to remain seated during the standing ovation at the end of the apology, and for reading a copy of a policy magazine during the proceedings.

Mr Jensen confirmed that he boycotted the apology. "Saying sorry is not going to solve anything – it's wallpaper," he said. Liberal leader Brendan Nelson refused to condemn the behaviour of the boycotting MPs, saying they had a right to their opinion. Liberal senator Ian Macdonald was in the Senate for the apology, but told parliament he could not apologise for things that happened 60 years ago, because he was not personally responsible.

"Saying Sorry Will Mean So Much To So Many People" -- Cathy Freeman

She established the Catherine Freeman Foundation last year to leave "a legacy of support focusing on education and sport for those generations of indigenous girls to follow.” "I speak to the children when I visit (Palm Island), and to the council, the police, the teachers -- and try to get across the message that if they have a dream they, too, can achieve their goals. My story can be their story. I encourage them to live the best lives they can -- a message built on the need for education, health through sport."

[Reuters, October 31, 2007]

The Australian special forces task group that lost one of its own last week has returned to the battlefield and inflicted heavy casualties on Taliban forces in a fierce battle. The six-hour assault on Sunday, three days after the death of Special Air Service soldier Sgt Matthew Locke, centred on Baluchi village. At least 50 Taliban militants were killed and a dozen captured.

Baluchi, near where Sgt Locke was shot in the chest, was identified as a Taliban stronghold along what NATO forces believe is a major enemy supply route in the Chora Valley. The engagement was part of Operation Spin Ghar - meaning White Mountain, a reference to the rugged mountain range in the area. "Several dozen militants were killed," NATO International Security Assistance Force spokesman Charles Anthony said. "This was a well-led and well co-ordinated engagement, with the Afghani National Army and ISAF working in conjunction."

'Bodies still on battlefield'

Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Zaher Murad said Sunday's fighting had been intense. "This is part of the Spin Ghar operation, which began on Thursday," Mr Murad said. "We don't know exactly how many insurgents were killed, their bodies are still on the battlefield." He said Afghan and ISAF forces fought the insurgents on the ground and called in air strikes to defeat the rebels. Mr Murad said at least 50 Taliban fighters were killed and 13 captured.

Dutch and Australian troops form the bulk of ISAF forces in Oruzgan Province where the operation was being carried out. Australian troops have been sent repeatedly to Baluchi, including in February during reconstruction efforts. The Australian Defence Force declined to release details of Sunday's fighting, saying it could put lives at risk, but said the operation was aimed at clearing militants and stabilising the area.

Taliban back in force

The coalition offensive in the Baluchi region is seen as crucial in controlling the Chora Valley, which connects Tarin Kowt, near where the Australians are based, and Chora. During a major battle for Chora in June, coalition forces sought to rout the Taliban and block their supply lines between Mirabad and the Baluchi valley. Although the Taliban have since re-entered the valley in force, ISAF hopes Operation Spin Ghar will sweep militants from the corridor.

[news.com.au, October 24, 2007]

Prime Minister John Howard has announced the federal election will be held on November 24, kicking off the official campaign with a promise to achieve full employment as he enters the twilight of his own career. Mr Howard has said the country's "best years lie ahead" but only if the "right leadership" team is at the helm. Kevin Rudd has said the country is facing some of its toughest challenges and the greatest risk would be to retain a "tired, stale" Government. But he said voters should be prepared for the "mother of all negative, fear campaigns" from the Government.

Mr Howard visited the Governor-General for about 20 minutes this morning (video) to ask that Parliament be dissolved, allowing him to kick off what is likely to shape up to be a spiteful six-week campaign that will be the toughest of his career as Prime Minister. Mr Howard, who has lagged behind Mr Rudd in opinion polls all year, said the country needed someone prepared to take a stand on the issues that matter. "Love me or loathe me," he said, "the Australian people know where I stand."

Mr Howard emphasised the Government's experience and argued that he still had a vision for the future. He said the country was enjoying a "remarkable level of economic prosperity" and claiming that the "best years lie ahead." He said Australia's record low unemployment rate "could go either way" but said it would go lower under the Coalition, an echo of his claim at the start of the last campaign that interest rates would rise under Labor. "One very important commitment I make is that to full employment," he said. "If Labor is elected ... unemployment will rise."

The Prime Minister, 68, enters this election in the unusual position of having promised to retire mid-way through the three-year term to make way for his Treasurer, Peter Costello. Labor needs to gain a further 16 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives to win office. In a swipe at Mr Rudd's unofficial campaign slogan, Mr Howard said: "This country does not need 'new leadership,' it does not need 'old leadership,' it needs the right leadership'." He claimed that Mr Rudd was a blame-shifter and that the Labor team would be a risk to the country's economic prosperity. He said the Coalition was the only team with the "experience to expand economic prosperity and ensure everybody gets a fair share" -- acknowledging that some people were missing out on the good times.

In Brisbane, Mr Rudd opened his campaign by saying that "great challenges lie ahead". He said the Government had lost touch and gone stale -- "when it comes to our future we need better than that." He repeated his key theme of "new leadership," saying that "we as a country need to widen our vision." He agreed that he too would push for full employment but said he would also act for those families struggling to keep up with the boom.

"(There are) those who are finding it impossible to make ends meet, with childcare costs going up 12 per cent a year, with mortgage interest rates having gone up five times since the last election, when rents have gone out of control," he said. "When (Mr Howard) says to them, 'working families have never been better off', they know when they try to balance their family budget that that is simply not true." He said a Labor government would ratify the Kyoto protocol, prohibit the construction of nuclear reactors, abolish Work Choices and invest in education and broadband infrastructure.

Mr Howard favours a six-week campaign to allow extra time for scrutiny to be applied to Mr Rudd in the hope that the ex-diplomat will crack under the pressure, as did then Labor Leader Mark Latham in 2004. The Opposition Leader has warned that the campaign will "go down to the wire." The election ends months of speculation about the poll date and allows politicians to abandon plans to travel to Canberra for a parliamentary sitting. It comes as a new poll predicted voters under 29 were set to dump Mr Howard. The Taverner / Sun Herald newspaper poll predicted Labor could pick up 59 per cent of the vote, compared to the Government's 41 per cent.

In Sydney this morning, Health Minister Tony Abbott said the Government was the underdog, but that the official start of the campaign signalled a "new beginning" for both parties. In a television appearance before the PM visited Government House, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said voters would be betting their financial future at the election. "We've literally got to put our house on this," Dr Nelson said on ABC TV. "Do we really want to place our future, that's our mortgages, our car loans, our economic security ... in the hands of a government that would be led by a former diplomat and public servant who has no experience?"

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on the Nine Network that most Australians were "happy with the way the economy's going, they're happy with Australia's place in the world, they feel very confident about our country. "And what we'll be reminding them is that to change the government is to change the country."

AUSTRALIA'S RICHEST WOMAN MAY BECOME AUSTRALIA'S RICHEST PERSON

"Those (funds) that can generate the best returns are very handsomely rewarded."