This slightly odd ABC news report starts with:
Indonesia has sent a small detachment of troops to a remote island to secure it against an invasion of Australian surfers and to monitor their activities.
But once you read on it makes a bit more sense..
The ABC is reporting that there have been new bird flu cases in Europe, with a new case in Britain where a parrot died in quarrantine. It’s known to be a case of H5, but no word whether it is H5N1 yet.
Croatia has also reported H5 in 6 dead swans which have been sent for testing for H5N1 and Romania has a new suspected case.
The BBC is reporting bird flu in Greece and possibly Croatia, test are being carried out to determine if it is H5N1 or not.
The BBC is reporting that the bird flu strain in Romania is confirmed as H5N1 by tests done in the UK.
The BBC now has their report on H5N1 in Turkey.
Also, here is the Google News H5N1 news search.
Just had an email from BBC News saying:
The bird flu virus found in Turkey is the H5N1 strain responsible for more than 60 deaths in Asia, the European Commission says.
It’s not made the BBC website yet, aside from being mentioned as “More Soon” in their ticker.
This is good news from first pictures of live giant squid in its natural habitat. The article says:
Working with a cheap camera and a fishing boat, the two Japanese researchers have succeeded where millions of dollars and international film crews have failed.
You’ve heard about the film “The Terminal” where Tom Hanks character gets stranded in an airport terminal because he suddenly finds himself stateless. Well there is a real life version of this that has been going on for almost 7 years now in Australia and, unfortunately for the person, he’s not trapped in an airport lounge but in various Government detention centres with razor wire and guards.
Peter Qasim is caught in a situation where he arrived as an asylum seeker from Kashmir, was denied asylum by Australia, but India refuses to believe he is their citizen and will not accept him. He is trapped inside the system, unable to return to Kashmir and not permitted to leave the detention centers.
He has been locked up for almost 7 years now, and faces no escape and (in his dark times) believes he will die there, never being allowed to live the life of a free man. The ABC has a background report on his plight and there is more here, here and here.
In other news, Australian officials deported a man travelling on a false French passport despite being told he was a convicted criminal by the French authorities.
The French Embassy believed without his French passport the man with the fake identity could not leave the country, but they had not reckoned on what the Australian authorities might do.
Sources close to the French Embassy say they are most concerned that their warnings about the man posing as Kingue were seemingly ignored and a convicted criminal using a stolen identity and therefore a fake passport was able to travel out of this country with the help of the Australian Government.
The New York Times is reporting that many US government made “news” segments are getting rebroadcast without proper attribution across US news networks. They say:
To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The “reporter” covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department’s office of communications.
Of course Public Information Films have been around for a long time and nothing particularly wrong with them being made in the first place. The problem is when they are used as a substitute for real news reporting and there is nothing to say where it really came from.
As the NYT says, this is a situation where everyone (except the viewing public) benefits:
Local affiliates are spared the expense of digging up original material. Public relations firms secure government contracts worth millions of dollars. The major networks, which help distribute the releases, collect fees from the government agencies that produce segments and the affiliates that show them. The administration, meanwhile, gets out an unfiltered message, delivered in the guise of traditional reporting.
Interestingly the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has handed down a number of decisions describing these as covert propaganda. For example, this is part of what they said regarding some US Office of National Drug Control Policy films:
For the purposes of this opinion, we examined eight VNRs seven that you provided as part of your request, and one more that ONDCP provided to us. Seven of the eight VNRs include prepackaged news stories. As explained below, we conclude that the prepackaged news stories in these VNRs constitute covert propaganda and violated the publicity or propaganda prohibition because ONDCP did not identify itself to the viewing audience as the producer and distributor of these prepackaged news stories.
So, even though it would be better if the news programs identified the segments they showed properly, it doesn’t let the agencies off the hook because they don’t identify themselves in the segment.
If you’re interested in what else the GAO has to say about this then here’s a ready made search.
Here’s a story about my old school that my brother sent me.
Some things never change. 🙁