Mass devastation Cyclone Yasi hits Australia - Weather

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CAIRNS, Australia — The destructive core of one of the most powerful cyclones in Australia's history battered its northeastern coast early Thursday, wrenching roofs off buildings and cutting power to tens of thousands of homes.

The eye of Cyclone Yasi was passing over the town of Tully after coming ashore at Mission Beach in northern Queensland.
Local official Ross Sorbello told The Sydney Morning Herald that the storm tore the roof off his mother's home in Tully, where he rode out the storm.
"We are talking about a pretty strong brick house that was built in the 70s, so God help us in the morning when we look at some of the older places," he told the newspaper.
"It is just a scene of mass devastation," he added.

Other witnesses reported seeing roofs ripped off buildings and trees flattened in the area, and officials said power had been cut to at least 90,000 homes.

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Food, supplies flown to flood-stranded Aussie city - Yahoo! News

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110103/ap_on_re_as/as_australia_flooding
For those not sure about the size of this flood. It's the size of Texas and California combined.
BRISBANE, Australia – A military flight rushed Monday to restock an Australian city before it was cut off by floodwaters that have turned a huge swath of the Outback into a lake, while police confirmed two more deaths in the crisis.
Drenching rain that started before Christmas has flooded an area the size of France and Germany combined in northeastern Queensland state. Rivers are overflowing and at least 22 towns and cities in the farming region are inundated.
In the coastal city of Rockhampton, waters from the still-swelling Fitzroy River closed the airport and cut the main highway to the state capital of Brisbane. Scores of families abandoned their homes for relief centers on high ground.
By Monday night, floodwaters had inundated the last route into the city, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said.
"Rockhampton is now completely stranded — a town of 75,000 people — no airport, rail or road," Bligh told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
Residents emptied supermarket shelves of food and bottled water in recent days as they stocked up to reduce the need to get around in waist-deep waters.
Acting Defense Minister Warren Snowdon said a C-130 military cargo plane would fly to a town north of Rockhampton on Monday carrying food, medical supplies and other items that would then be trucked to the stricken city.

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BBC News - Australia's Queensland faces 'biblical' flood

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12102126

Aerial footage shows the extent of the damage

Continue reading the main story

 

A senior official has described the flooding in Queensland, Australia, as a disaster of "biblical proportions".

State Treasurer Andrew Fraser said the economic impact would be severe, with huge costs compounded by lost income from mining, farming and tourism.
Rockhampton, where 77,000 people live, is the latest city bracing for impact, amid warnings of 30ft (9m) floodwaters.
More than 20 other towns have already been left cut off or flooded across an area larger than France and Germany.
The crisis has been triggered by Australia's wettest spring on record. At least six river systems across Queensland have broken their banks. The floods have affected about 200,000 people, and many have been evacuated.
"We're still directly battling floodwaters, we haven't seen the peak of the flood yet at centres like Rockhampton," said Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who toured the stricken areas.
'Huge cost'
There are concerns that damage could cost billions of Australian dollars to repair.

Continue reading the main story

Mr Fraser has had to delay a fiscal and economic review in order to account for the costs of the floods.

"In many ways, it is a disaster of biblical proportions," he told journalists in the flood-hit town of Bundaberg.

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Australian Government To Force Internet Users To Install State-Approved Software

3 minutes ago from todaysworld

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  Tuesday, June 22, 2010
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  The Australian government is set to intensify its war against Internet freedom by forcing web users to install state-approved anti-virus software. If they fail to do so, they will be denied an Internet connection, or if their computer is later infected, the user's connection will be terminated.
  "AUSTRALIANS would be forced to install anti-virus and firewall software on their computers before being allowed to connect to the internet under a new plan to fight cyber crime. And if their computer did get infected, internet service providers like Telstra and Optus could cut off their connection until the problem was resolved," reports News.com.au.
  A 260-page report released by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications outlines a plan to mandate Internet users to install government-approved software before their Internet connection can be activated.
  Of course, the vast majority of Internet users already use anti-virus software, but by creating the precedent of having to conform to government mandates simply to get online, this opens the door to later requiring government permission to use the Internet at all, as well as a Chinese-style ID verification system which will prevent "undesirables" from using the web.
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  Efforts to place restrictions on the internet are unfolding apace in Australia where the government is implementing a mandatory and wide-ranging Internet filter modeled on that of the Communist Chinese government.
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  The official justification for the filter is to block child pornography, however, as the watchdog group Electronic Frontiers Australia has pointed out, the law will also allow the government to block any website it desires while the pornographers can relatively easily skirt around the filters.
  Earlier this year, the Wikileaks website published a leaked secret list of sites slated to be blocked by Australia's state-sponsored parental filter.
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  The filter will even block web-based games deemed unsuitable for anyone over the age of fifteen, according to the Australian government.
  Senator Joe Lieberman on Sunday called for the United States to move towards a a Chinese-style system of Internet control. Under Lieberman's 197-page Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (PDF), President Obama would be given a 'kill switch' to shut down parts of the Internet.
  Constant fearmongering about cyber attacks is the cover for a global assault on Internet freedom by authorities. The web is being overtaken by independent media outlets which are now beginning to eclipse establishment news organs. This has enabled activists and the politically oppressed to expose government atrocities and cover-ups at lightning pace, something the system is keen to curtail.
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Scientists retrieve capsule, seeking asteroid dust

clipped from news.yahoo.com ADELAIDE, Australia – A team of scientists flew to the Australian Outback on Monday and recovered a Japanese space capsule that they hope contains asteroid samples providing clues into the evolution of the solar system. The Hayabusa explorer returned to Earth overnight after a seven-year, 4-billion mile (6-billion kilometer) journey, burning apart on re-entry in a spectacular fireball just after jettisoning the capsule. It was the first time a spacecraft successfully landed on an asteroid and returned to Earth. The craft was designed to shoot a bullet into the surface of the asteroid that would crush and propel material through a long tube into a sample collection container. There is no certainty the bullet actually fired, scientists say, but they believe the impact of the tube's landing would have forced some material upward and into the collection chamber. "We have perhaps a 50 percent chance" of retrieving samples, Sakamoto said.

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DIY microchippers make implants a hobby

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"We've shown that we can actually transmit a computer virus to the chip and use that to infect the security access database in our laboratory."

It could also work the other way around, with a virus in a data system being transmitted to the wearer of an implant.

Gasson says this raises serious issues, especially with regard to implantable medical devices on which peoples' lives may depend.

clipped from tvnz.co.nz Graafstra implanted himself with two radio-frequency identification tags (RFIDs), similar to the sort of chips used in cats and dogs, five years ago. His family doctor used a pet injector to insert the second one in his right hand later that year. The chips help him do things like open the door to his home, log onto his computer and start his motorbike. "I have the skill to be able to utilise this technology in my daily life," he says. "All I've done is move the RFID tag from my wallet, or my pants pocket, to a skin pocket." Several Australians are among those to have embraced the technology, he says. Gasson, also in Australia for the conference, had an RFID-based implant put in his hand about a year ago, originally for access to his UK-based lab and mobile phone. Later, as an experiment, he deliberately infected the chip with a virus and found he was able to pass the infection on to the laboratory's security system.

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Australia reveals possibility of federal employee biometric program

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As The World tends to fall asleep more and more each day on this very subject. I see the most of the world just loves to let other control their lives and take away every inch of freedom they have left.
I find biometric Id. Or in other words RFID becoming more and more dangerous than anything else.
This not only takes all your information and places it into a central computer system.
But, it is opening the doors for more hackers to get all your information.
Anyone that knows just a little bit about computers. Will see the consequence's here.

Being that everything here will be so easily hacked into. It will open up yet more doors for the central Verichip implants. This way your card cannot be stolen.
Though some may enjoy what benefits this new systems may brings. The warning flags should be raised in everyone's minds here.
Being the news don't talk much on this. People run around in their daily lives thinking nothing about it.

May questions is. Is everyone on this planet ready to be tracked everywhere and everything that they do in life? Is so what are they going to do when they turn off your chip? No buying or Selling allowed.
Sound familiar?

clipped from www.digitalidnews.com A senior national security official for Australia’s Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) has revealed the possibility of expanding Centrelink’s internal smart card program to include all federal employees as well as adding biometrics to the program, according to an MIS Australia article. Some of the biometric modes being considered for inclusion in the potential program include facial recognition, fingerprints and iris recognition. One of the driving forces behind the change is the potential to save money on federal employees moving between agencies currently needing to be reissued the new identity documentation that is unique to each department. While that may not seem too common, PM&C Secretary Terry Moran recently announced at the Biometrics Institute’s 11th Australian conference a national push for more movement of employees between departments to better equip the government to respond to the needs of the citizens. Read the full story here.

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New, Deadly Cryptococcus Gattii Fungus Found in U.S.

clipped from news.nationalgeographic.com A new strain of hypervirulent, deadly Cryptococcus gattii fungus has been discovered in the United States, a new study says. The outbreak has already killed six people in Oregon, and it will likely creep into northern California and possibly farther, experts say. The new strain is of the species Cryptococcus gattii, an airborne fungus native to tropical and subtropical regions, including Papua New Guinea, Australia, and parts of South America. An older strain of the fungus was frst detected in North America in British Columbia, Canada, in 1999. No one knows how the species got to North America or how the fungus can thrive in a temperate region, experts say. "The alarming thing is that it's occurring in this region, it's affecting healthy people, and geographically it's been expanding," People can become infected with Cryptococcus gattii by inhaling the microscopic organisms—and there's not much you can do about it.

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Australia faces huge locust plague

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk Farmers across the Australian Outback have been warned of a potential explosion of locusts in the coming months, after a plague of millions of the grasshopper-like insects swept across four states earlier this month. Millions of the quick-breeding and fast-moving insects have damaged crops and caused havoc in country towns by infesting parts of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia – covering an area of approximately 500,000 square kilometres (190,000 square miles), roughly the size of Spain. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of crops of early sown wheat and barley as well as pastures and gardens have been eaten by the “widespread infestation” of the native Australian pests, which break out annually and are the bane of the Australian agriculture industry. However this year’s outbreak could potentially be worse than the devastating plague of 2004 “It’s been quite a few years since inland Australia has seen such good rainfall,”

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Freak storm causes flooding, landslides in Australia

clipped from news.blogs.cnn.com Severe thunderstorms that struck Western Australia caused flooding, landslides and wind damage that will amount to tens of millions of dollars, Premier Colin Barnett said Tuesday. More than 30 schools in the Perth area suffered damage including flooding, collapsed ceilings and shattered windows and there was significant damage done to several hospitals, the state Fire and Emergency Services Authority said in a statement. More than 50,000 people were without power Tuesday, the authority said, with power to 100,000 customers restored since the storms hit. “This incident is going to cost the State, tens of millions of dollars to repair buildings, restore power lines,” Barnett said in a statement. The government would provide disaster assistance, he said. The Fire and Emergency Services Authority reported more than 2,000 calls for help since the storm hit.

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Global treaty may make your ISP spy on you

clipped from www.newscientist.com Documents from talks on a secret global copyright deal have leaked online, various sources are reporting. The documents discussed are said to confirm that internet service providers could be compelled to constantly sift through their customers' data looking for copyright transgressions. The European Union's data protection chief has said that such requirements could curtail individuals' civil liberties. It's the latest twist in the tale of ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which has been swiftly and secretly negotiated by the 27 nations of the European Union, the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, Jordan, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. ISPs told New Scientist in December that such technology will not only slow downloads, but puts in place technology that could be used for snooping and censorship. In France, the government has already introduced a measure along these lines

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