Bleak for The Australian
Gay-rights laws take hold in Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City residents now have legal protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in housing and employment.
Mayor Ralph Becker -- joined at City Hall by gay-rights advocates and two mayors ready to follow suit -- celebrated Friday's implementation of the landmark ordinances.
"This is truly a good Friday," said John W. Bennett, relative of Utah's Republican Bennett family, which has produced two city mayors and two U.S. senators.
Bennett, who is gay and a nephew of Sen. Bob Bennett, recalled being fired from a state government job in 1986 for his sexual orientation. He praised the capital for taking the lead in offering key protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents. "Today, I'm ecstatic."
Now, the push to enact similar anti-discrimination measures goes statewide. Equality Utah has launched a "Ten in 2010" campaign to urge 10 more cities or counties to pass anti-discrimination policies before the 2011 legislative session. Armed with that momentum, Executive Director Brandie Balken hopes to get the protections extended statewide.
Three-fifths of Utahns have responded to census
Nearly three of every five Utah households have completed and sent back their 2010 Census forms. But the Census Bureau is asking for more people to do so before it begins sending enumerators to doors of non-respondents beginning May 1.
"For those who have not yet had a chance to send it back, I'd like to reiterate that it's not too late to participate and doing so will save a lot of taxpayer money," said Census Bureau Director Robert Groves.
Sending Census Bureau workers to households that fail to mail back forms is a massive operation that the government says costs an average of $57 per household, compared with the 42 cents that it costs to mail a response.
"I'd like nothing more than to return money to the taxpayers following this census because they mailed back the census forms at a record rate," Groves said.
The Smithettes filled out THEIR census form. Did you?
Gay rights video with Paquin causes site to crash (view video)
A gay rights campaign that features a declaration of bisexuality by New Zealand actress Anna Paquin has received so much traffic that its website crashed.
The campaign was launched last night by Cyndi Lauper's True Colors Fund. The Web-based initiative hopes to educate for "the advancement of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality."
Related story: Anna's surprise – 'I'm Anna Paquin. I'm bisexual'
Kevin Rudd appoints Tony Burke as nation's first population minister
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has appointed Tony Burke as the nation's first population minister, amid growing concerns the number of Australians will rise to unsustainable levels.
Mr Burke will be responsible for drawing up a national population strategy and will retain his other portfolio of agriculture, fisheries and forestry.
Mr Rudd has been under pressure to better examine the nation's population, which is on a trajectory to reach 35.9 million by 2050.
He told reporters in Canberra the announcement came after a month of consideration.
"Many Australians have legitimate concerns about the sustainability of the population levels in different parts of the country,'' Mr Rudd said.
It is my opinion that thoughtful consideration of population growth is a Good thing.
Disability activists set for election-year fight
''A fundamental, transformational reform'' is how one of the campaign organisers, Sue O'Reilly, describes the goal. She believes the planets are aligning to make disability a politically potent issue. An estimated 1.5 million people have a severe disability, and this is projected to grow to 2.3 million by 2030 as the population ages. About 2 million people, including carers and professionals, are thought likely to vote on this issue alone.
Ms O'Reilly says the campaign has secured pledges ''around the 3000-mark, and they're coming in at about two a minute''. She believes disability activists could be as powerful as the environmentalists who propelled Bob Hawke to power in the 1980s, the ''grey power'' lobby in the 1990s and the Women's Electoral Lobby, which put issues such as childcare on the agenda.
The Productivity Commission is investigating the feasibility of an insurance scheme, with its final report due in July 2011. Advocates say the scheme would eventually pay for itself through reduced health and welfare costs. ''Governments in total are spending about $20 billion a year on this [disability services] and they're getting appalling outcomes,'' says Bruce Bonyhady, chairman of community service provider Yooralla. ''You've got cases of people waiting years for equipment, like wheelchairs, and when they arrive they don't fit.
GOOD for the these activists!!
A tipple a day keeps obesity at bay
Women who drink a couple of glasses of red wine
, beer or spirits a day are better at keeping the pounds off than tea-total women, according to a study.
Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston asked more than 19,000, normal-weight US women aged 39 or older how many alcoholic beverages they typically drank in a day, and then tracked the women for around 13 years.
For women, this is 1 or maybe 2 drinks (and measure the quantities - portion control counts here, too).
Obama says U.S. unemployment on turning corner
U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that the country's high unemployment was beginning to turn the corner on as the newly released labor report showed " encouraging" data.
"I have often had to report bad news during the course of this year," Obama said in remarks on the economy at a factory in North Carolina.
"Today is an encouraging day. We learned that the economy actually produced a substantial number of jobs instead of losing a substantial number of jobs.
"We are beginning to turn the corner ... the worst of the storm is over."
According to the Labor Department's unemployment report released earlier Friday, the U.S. unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.7 percent in March as nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000, the most in three years.
Suu Kyi's party goes for broke
If Myanmar's military regime goes ahead with its promised general election this year, some 27.2 million voters will be deprived of the chance to cast a ballot for the political party that has come to symbolize democratic hope in that oppressed nation.
This is the scenario taking shape after the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by pro-democracy icon and party leader Aung San Suu Kyi, decided on Monday to boycott the general election.
A damning indictment on the Southeast Asian nation's first parliamentary poll in two decades, the NLD decision was hardly a surprise. It endorsed the unequivocal message that was delivered days before by Suu Kyi, through her lawyer Nyan Win, to over 150 central committee members and party representatives who met in Yangon, the former capital.
Suu Kyi, who has been placed under house arrest for over 14 of the past 20 years, had said "she will never accept registration [of her party to contest the poll] under unjust [electoral] laws."
Ankara Welcomes Progress in Cyprus Talks
Turkey has welcomed progress made in unification negotiations in the lead-up to upcoming presidential elections in the northern part of the divided island of Cyprus.
"The joint statement is very positive. The Turkish side has always pursued a pro-active policy. Negotiations should continue after the elections," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu told reporters Thursday, referring to a statement made Tuesday by Turkish Cypriot President Mehmet Ali Talat and Greek Cyprus President Dimitris Christofias.
The two Cypriot leaders held their last meeting March 30 before breaking for northern Cyprus’ April 18 elections and agreed to make a statement to their respective communities. Talat gave an account of the progress in the peace talks to the Turkish Cypriot public on Thursday.
Uranium Mining in Niger: Tuareg Activist Takes on French Nuclear Company
For the past 40 years, the French state-owned company Areva has been mining uranium for Europe's nuclear power needs in Niger, one of the poorest countries on Earth. One local activist is taking on the company, claiming that water and dust have been contaminated and workers are dying as a result of its activities.
The man from Niger had come to speak with the CEO of Germany's biggest bank. Last May, Almoustapha Alhacen was sitting in Frankfurt's Festhalle convention center as he listened to Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann tell his audience that despite the financial crisis, his bank was doing better again. Ackermann spoke of responsibility, and he said that "the market and morality" were not contradictions, but would "harmonize with each other for the benefit of everyone."
But in the desert region where Alhacen comes from, there is no harmony between markets and morality. He wanted to tell Ackermann about it, after a group of critical shareholders had invited him to attend the Deutsche Bank shareholders' meeting. Alhacen, wearing a traditional Tuareg robe, a face veil and a turban, stood out among the other people attending the meeting. He was calm as he walked up to the lectern, his face projected onto a large screen on the wall.
Hooray for more activists!
Snakes in the grass: Florida declares open season on Everglades intruders
Jeff Fobb freezes as he tries to sort through the noises rising from the swamp of the Everglades: the beating wings of an ibis, the scurrying of a lizard, the much louder splash of an alligator lowering itself into the water or, the sound he really wants to hear, the rustle of a large python in tall grass. "It sounds sort of like the wind, but more steady," says Fobb. He combs through the grass with a long metal hook. No snakes.
But the pythons are out there, somewhere, and Florida is looking to men like Fobb, a ponytailed former marine who heads the Miami-Dade fire department's venom bureau, to hunt down and kill them.
Armed with a hunting knife, insect repellent, and mesh laundry bags into which he is hoping to bundle his prey, Fobb is on the frontline of a new push by Florida to try to contain a population explosion of alien intruders that is threatening the ecological balance of the Everglades and frightening the public in surrounding farm lands.
I'm okay with the removal of aggressive alien critters. and plants.
Policy makers mull strategies to stem malnutrition
Each year, over 3,5-million children under the age of five die of malnutrition, which affects one out of every three people on earth.
"We face a social crisis, a catastrophe. It's an indictment on us that the numbers of hungry are rising by the billion, that children are dying by the minute. This is an ethical issue and a human rights issue," said Jay Naidoo, former coordinator of the Reconstruction and Development Programme and now chairperson of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (Gain).
Naidoo was speaking at the Gain Africa Regional Forum, held in Johannesburg this week, where nutritionists and policy makers from across the continent gathered to discuss strategies to fight malnutrition. "There has been great discussion and enormous buzz but now we need to translate that into action," he said.
One of the simplest ways to improve nutrition is to fortify staple foods like wheat or maize with a "nutrient premix" that includes nutrients such as vitamin A, zinc or folic acid.
It's 2010 and it's good to pay attention to this - proper childhood nutrition will do amazing things for one's GDP.
Machu Picchu set to reopen to tourists
Ninety percent of Peru's tourist revenue comes from the Cuzco region, where Machu Picchu's two-month closure meant the loss of around 60,000 tourists.
The local chamber of commerce says more than half the population of the regional capital Cuzco works directly or indirectly in tourism.
The re-opening of Machu Picchu is hugely important, not just for Peru's economy, but also its image abroad.
I am a bit disappointed this is not a longer story. How were the repairs accomplished? How are the locals managing since the flooding? etc.