Tuesday, 17 May 2011
Monday, 16 May 2011
SophosLabs SophosLabs
Facebook Dislike button spreads fast, but is a fake – watch out! http://bit.ly/iqKEkl
Strauss-Kahn Does Not Have Diplomatic Immunity
AlanFisher Alan Fisher
To clarify - #DSK has diplomatic immunity when on IMF business. He was in New York in a 'personal capacity
Facebook ‘planking’ craze kills Australian man
Acton Beale, 20, originally from Tannum Sands near Gladstone in the state's central region, fell from a high-rise building on Sunday morning when he tried to plank on a balcony railing.
Planking involves a person lying face down in a rigid position at random locations and posting photos of the act on the internet.
Opposition police spokesman John-Paul Langbroek says the craze is dangerous.
"[It] really just shows that these fads that people are coming up with really can have tragic consequences if they are not careful," he said.
"People must understand that it is not the job of police or emergency services to save them from situations that could put them in harm.
"Any activities that people carry on, they are not always guaranteed to cause them injury.
"But if you go to do some of these activities in dangerous places, it can lead to dangerous consequences and that is the thing that Queenslanders must understand."
Deputy Police Commissioner Ross Barnett says participants can be charged if they plank in dangerous locations, or if they trespass.
"Once you start taking it up seven storeys or on top of a set of traffic lights, or on a set of railway lines, or there are a whole range of things, or on a bridge - anywhere that accentuates the risk and the daring - that obviously puts it into an area not only where it can be breaking the law, it more importantly is putting the person at significant danger," he said.
He says it is what police have been fearing.
"In some circumstances it can be fairly harmless, but as people become more and more competitive and try more and more obscure and difficult episodes of planking, which inevitably lead to greater levels of risk, then we were - and remain concerned - that this is the sort of thing that will eventuate and no-one wants to see that," he said.
Gladstone Acting Police Inspector Mike Dixon says Mr Beale's death is a tragedy.
Acting Inspector Dixon says a man was charged in Gladstone last week for planking on a police car, while police stopped a man from climbing on a city building on Friday.
"It wasn't a high building but there was an electrical cable connected to this sign that they were trying to climb and the person was intoxicated," he said.
"Obviously alcohol impairs judgement and it was poor judgement on his part [but] we prevented this offence from occurring.
"He could have been charged with another minor offence, however we spoke to him and advised him of the danger he had placed himslef in and he was sent home.
"Gladstone police have been in the media since the person planking on the police car came to notice and then we found all these other photos of persons in clearly very dangerous positions above traffic lights.
"Like I think the bit of harmless fun that it started as has got out of control, we don't want to see any other tragedies.
"Now we've seen one that's resulted in the death of a young man and it's a tragedy for the whole family and his friends."
@'ABC'
Violence erupts on Israel's borders
Palestinians call it the Nakba, or catastrophe - the anniversary of the day Israel became a state and hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or were forced out.
In Israel and the occupied territories, thousands of people joined protests which turned into clashes with police.
Scores were wounded and two people were killed in Gaza.
But the worst violence was on the borders with Lebanon and Syria, where Palestinian refugees marched to the border and tried to breach the fence into Israel.
Thousands entered the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed from Syria in 1967, but most were arrested or turned back.
The Lebanese army on the Lebanese frontier said 10 Palestinians died when Israeli forces shot at rock-throwing protesters to prevent them from entering the Jewish state.
Lebanese security sources said more than 100 people had been wounded in the shooting in the Lebanese border village of Maroun al-Ras.
The Israel army said the Lebanese army had also used live ammunition in an attempt to hold back the crowds rushing the border fence.
Israeli military spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovich has accused Syria of orchestrating the incursion in the Golan Heights.
"The Syrian regime is intentionally attempting to divert the world's attention away from their brutal crackdown on their own civilians to the incitement on Israel's northern border.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped the confrontations would not escalate.
"I've instructed the army to behave with maximum restraint," he said.
"We hope the calm and quiet will quickly return. But let nobody be misled, we are determined to defend our borders and sovereignty."
One man, Ahmad Abu Arab, says protesters have taken courage from the recent uprisings across the Middle East.
"For 63 years we've been under occupation," he said. "Everywhere else in the world people are finding their freedom, but not the Palestinians."
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said in a televised address to mark the anniversary that those killed were martyrs to the Palestinian cause.
"Their precious blood will not be wasted. It was spilt for the sake of our nation's freedom," he said.
Syrian media reports said Israeli gunfire killed two people after dozens of Palestinian refugees infiltrated the Golan Heights from Syria along a frontline that has been largely tranquil for decades.
The Syrian foreign ministry condemned what it called Israel's "criminal activities".
Tense border
On Israel's tense southern border with the Gaza Strip, Israeli gunfire wounded 82 demonstrators approaching the fence with the Hamas Islamist-run enclave, medical workers said.
In a separate incident, Israeli forces said they shot a man who was trying to plant a bomb near the border. A body was later found.
In Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial hub, a truck driven by an Arab Israeli slammed into vehicles and pedestrians, killing one man and injuring 17 people.
Police were trying to determine whether the incident was an accident or an attack. Witnesses said the driver, who was arrested, deliberately ran amok with his truck in traffic.
Jordanian police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists who gathered at a village on the border with Israel.
"The police pushed us out of the protest area and after using teargas started to chase us with batons," one said from Karama village.
A spokesman for Islamist Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip, Sami Abu Zuhri, called it "a turning point in the Israeli-Arab conflict" that proved the Palestinian people and Arabs were committed to ending Israeli occupation.
Hezbollah condemned the "Israeli aggression on unarmed civilians in Maroun al-Ras and in the Golan, which constitutes a dangerous violation of human rights", said Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah at a pro-Palestinian protest in Maroun al-Ras.
"The resistance movement in Lebanon will continue to be an advocate of Palestinian national rights and calls on everyone to stand united in confronting Israeli occupation.
"What happened today in Maroun al-Ras and in the Golan is an embodiment of the will of the Palestinian people, who are committed to the right of return."
@'ABC'
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