International sports, cricket
Tiny Ashes urn
Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia (Geneva Lunch) - England turned on the pressure throughout the Fourth Test to take a 2-1 lead in the five Test series and so retain what for many English and Australians is the most important trophy in world sport, The Ashes. The tiny urn was presented by a group of Melbourne women to represent the death of English cricket after the first loss to Australia on English soil in 1882. The teams compete for the trophy every second year. England last retained the trophy in Australia in 1986-87.
The man of the match was Jonathan Trott, who scored 168 not out in England’s innings to set up the win. The final score was a victory for England by an innings and 157 runs, 29 December 2010.
Links to other sites: Yahoo cricket, BBC, Guardian,
Up to 50 people may have drowned when their flimsy fishing boat smashed up on rocks in heavy seas on the coast of Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. Acting Prime Minister Wayne Swan confirmed 15 December that “a number of people” had died. The boat is thought to have carried some 70 asylum seekers, who often leave Indonesia in fishing boats hoping to reach Australia. The weather in the area has been very bad with 3-metre swells and little visibility, according to local news reports.
Australian news reports say that people on the island watched helplessly as the vessel broke up on the rocks and tossed its passengers into the sea. Australia’s navy and customs boats patrol the seas to try to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. Christmas Island is a major “detention” centre for the boat people whose claims to migrate are evaluated there, rather than on the mainland. Illegal immigration has been a contentious political issue in Australia, and many opponents of current immigration policy have said that the Australian presence in the seas could have averted the disaster, according to ABC News.
Links to other sites: ABC News, The Australian, LA Times
Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has said that the ultimate blame for the leak of hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables lies with the USA, not WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “Mr Assange is not himself responsible for the unauthorized release of 250,000 documents from the US diplomatic communications network. The Americans are responsible for that,” Rudd said in an interview with Reuters 8 December.
Rudd, the former prime minister, came in for criticism in the cables by US diplomats in Australia, excerpts of which are being published by the Sydney Morning Herald. The then prime minister was seen as being “a mistake-prone control-freak.” Rudd says he expects worse things will be written of him in the future and he does not “give a damn”. Prominent Australians have written to Prime Minister Julia Gillard asking the government to stand up for Assange.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Climate Action Network (Can) Europe shows Switzerland in 13th place in the 2011 Climate Change Performance Index, with a two-place drop for its change in CO2 emissions. CAN presented the new index at the climate conference in Cancun Mexico Monday 6 December. It measures “climate protection performance” of 57 countries that are responsible for more than 90 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. The index gives a weight of 80 percent to “objective indicators of emissions trend and emissions level. Twenty percent results from national and international climate policy assessments by 190 experts from the respective countries.”
WWF, a partner of Can, says Switzerland’s showing would be worse except that the new rankings do not take into account 2009, a year when emissions in many countries fell significantly due to the economic crisis. The drop in Switzerland was only 2 percent.
Switzerland’s relatively good showing is accounted for more by the low CO2 emissions of hydroelectricity production than by its climate policies, argues WWF. The country is a heavy consumer of imported goods, and the countries that produce them are penalized, rather than Switzerland, for emission rates.
Brazil tops the list, Norway up, Australia bottoms out
The British government is considering a radical move to discourage young people from taking up smoking: obliging tobacco companies to drop their logos and other branding from cigarette packages. The proposal, which expected to be part of a white paper on health to be made public within days, is being welcomed by medical groups, reports the Guardian. The idea is to take the glamour out of smoking by giving cigarettes plain wrappers. The proposal was put forth early in 2010, but the new coalition government now appears to be ready to move on it. Tobacco companies are firmly opposed to any such change.
Australia is scheduled to change to plain wrappers in 2012, but the government is facing legal battles, while Canada, like the UK, is considering making the change. The US will begin to show graphic descriptions of diseases related to smoking, on packages, starting in 2012, the government announced last week.
Links to other sites: BBC, Packaging News, UK, Wall St Journal
The Australian government has said it wants to hold a referendum on a constitutional change that would specifically recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Monday, 8 November that there was a “once in a 50-year opportunity” to make the change. She said “recognition will demonstrate that we are a country that is united in acknowledging the unique and special place of our first peoples.” The vote might take place sometime in 2013.
Australia’s Aborigines suffer disproportionately from unemployment, disease, and alcoholism. The announcement comes almost three years after former PM Kevin Rudd’s historic apology to Aborigines. In 1967, Australians voted overwhelmingly to allow Aborigines to be counted in a census.
Links to other sites: AFP, BBC, Sydney Morning Herald
Elyse Frankcom has a highly unusual conversation piece, a shark tooth doctors removed during the six hours of surgery it took to sew her up. The 19-year-old Frankcom was attacked by a three-metre shark near Garden Island, 50km south of Perth, Australia, as she led a group that was swimming with dolphins. The shark brushed past a man, according to local media reports, before biting the young woman on both thighs. The man, who was in the swimming group, grabbed the shark by the tail and it let go of her. As she began to sink the man pulled her up to safety.
Shark attacks generate strong media interest, but they are relatively rare and a Department of Fisheries spokesman told Australian journalists that this one may have been protecting its feeding ground or may have been spooked. Authorities in the area have not closed beaches, and with temperatures around 35C, swimmers are likely to flock to the water. Frankcom’s mother told Australia’s ABC news agency that her daughter knew she was in shark territory and she would not want the creature killed if it were found, but her daughter is reportedly happy to have the tooth the shark sank into her skin.
Links to other sites: ABC News, Australia, The Australian
Dame Joan Sutherland, 1926-2010
(Video) Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Dame Joan Sutherland, one of Australia’s music greats and a long-time star in the international word of opera, died Monday 11 October at her home in Les Avants, near Geneva. She was 83.
The opera singer, who became known particularly for her bel canto repertoire “made Donizetti, Handel and Verdi sound as new, through her fearless technique and formidable range,” writes The Age in its obituary.
Her career was launched in 1959 when she sang Lucia di Lammermoor at the Royal Opera House in London and tributes to her extraordinary voice poured in. For the next 30 years she sang at the world’s major opera houses, performed with the opera world’s best and made scores of recordings.
Bloomberg’s Manuela Hoelterhoff summarized her career thus:
The Murray-Darling Basin Authority is proposing to withdraw licences to between 3-4,000 gigalitres of water to communitites and farmers in order to restore river flows in the Murray-Darling Basin in southeast Autralia, the country’s most important. The proposed cuts in allocations of water range from 22-37 percent of current use. The authority estimates that 800 jobs may be lost and production could fall by AUD800 million. The plan, released 8 October, would cost the government AUD3bn.
Under the proposal, the mouth of the Murray river would be open 90-92 percent of the year. It is currently open 64 percent of the year. The authority was tasked by the government to save the river basin, which covers 1.06m sq km, almost the size of France and Spain, and produces 93 percent of Australia’s food and 40 percent of the country’s agricultural production.
The minority Labour government depends on support from 3 rural members of Parliament and one Green party member, to give it a one-seat majority.
Links to other sites: The Australian, Bloomberg, Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald
Swiss play friendly against Australia, CFF announces additional trains for the Switzerland-England match
La Nati - The Swiss national football team
St Gallen, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Swiss coach Ottmar Hitzfeld says his team is ready to play the Australia Socceroos in a friendly tonight at 20:15, at the AFG Arena in St Gallen.
This is the first time that the Qantas Socceroos face Switzerland at senior international level, thus, the new Aussie coach Holger Osieck is ready to show his squad is ready to win.
Hitzfeld announced he will only keep Lichtsteiner, Grichting, Inler, Derdiyok and Frei for the friendly while trying seven new players. The game, says Hitzfeld, is only a rehearsal for Switzerland’s first qualifying match for the 2012 UEFA Euro Cup which the Nati will play next week against England.
The Swiss railroad system, CFF, announced that on 7 September, 13 additional trains will carry football fans directly to St Jakob Park in Basel before the game.
After the match ends, buses will transport fans back to the station where additional trains to Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Lucerne, Neuchatel, St Gallen and Zurich will be dispatched.
All football ticket holders can ride free of charge in Basel’s municipal transport system four hours before and after the game.
The qualifying stage for the 2012 Cup begins today 3 September throughout Europe.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) - Lewis Hamilton has been fined Aus$500 (about CHF510) for reckless driving in March, when he was caught doing a fishtail stunt on a busy Melbourne street. He was in the city for the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix race and after police spotted his smoking tires they pulled him over and questioned him. He was left to make his way back to the hotel on foot after they impounded the car, on loan to him by a dealer.
Swiss-based Hamilton was banned from driving in France in 2007 after being caught driving 123 miles per hour, well over French speed limits.
Australian scientists at The University of Queensland, have found that sea sponges at the Great Barrier Reef share almost 70% of human genes.
Many of the genes found in the ancient marine animals are also shared by humans, including those associated with disease and cancer, the study says.
“Comparative analysis enabled by the sequencing of the sponge genome reveals genomic events linked to the origin and early evolution of animals, including the appearance, expansion and diversification of pan-metazoan transcription factor, signalling pathway and structural genes.”
“Sponges have what’s (considered) the ‘Holy Grail’ of stem cells” said lead scientist Bernard Degnan to the AFP.
The study was published on the 5 August edition of Nature.
Link to Nature
Julia Gillard is the new prime minister of Australia, after Kevin Rudd stepped down in a last-minute shuffle of the Labor Party, ending Rudd’s two-and-a-half years at the helm.
She is the first woman to serve in the role. Gillard, a lawyer, says she will call for a general election in coming months, but did not give a date.
The Prime Minister elected praised Rudd but says she opposed him in the end because the party was losing its way.
Links to other sites: CNN, Sydney Morning Herald
International sports, Twenty20 cricket
Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados (GenevaLunch) - England scored a rare victory in the short version of the game when they won the Twenty20 World Cup in Barbados, 16 May. They won by seven wickets with three overs to spare thanks to a tight performance in the field and a thrilling batting display by Kevin Pietersen and Craig Kieswetter, England’s pair of South African born cricketers.
Australia batted first and were soon in trouble being 8 for 3 after a couple of overs. They fought back to 147 for 6 thanks to 59 runs from David Hussey. England survived the early loss of Lumb and Kieswetter with 63 and Pietersen, 47 made the game safe for England.
Zimbabwean Coach Andy Flower has welded the England team into a formidable Twenty20 machine, with dynamic batting from the start, tight bowling and energetic fielding. Flower has managed to get the best out of players like Eoin Morgan, a recruit from Ireland, and has managed the bowlers with skill.
The big losers of the Twenty20 World Cup were the Indian superstars, who seemed tired out by their efforts in the IPL.
Links to other sites: cricket.yahoo.com, cricket20
International sports, cricket
Kensington Oval, Barbados (GenevaLunch) - Chris Gayle smashed away India’s hopes of Twenty20 World Cup glory with a magnificent 98 in 66 balls, including seven sixes, 9 May. The West Indies ended with 169 for six. India never really got going and lost by 14 runs.
Australia thrashed Sri Lanka by 81 runs.
Links to other sites: Times of India, BBC, Guardian
International sports, cricket
Bridgetown, Barbados (GenevaLunch) - Australia humiliated the Indian stars in a one-sided game at Bridgetown, 7 May. The Australian opening batsmen rushed to a century in the first 10 overs of their Twenty20 match. Ajay Jadeja was hit for six successive sixes, the first three by Shane Watson and the others a few overs later by David Warner. The Australian assault slowed down after Watson was caught for 72 but the total still reached 186. India’s batsmen failed spectacularly against the opening fast bowlers, reaching 23 for four before Rohit Sharma, with 79 not out, added a bit of respectability to the final score of 135 which left them 49 runs short.
In the other game the home team was also undone by an awesome display of power batting, this time by Sri Lanka’s Mahela Jayawardene.
Chinese ship Shen Neng 1 was lifted off the Great Barrier Reef Monday night 12 April as workers scrambled to refloat it ahead of expected storms, but the Australian government says the damage it caused during the week it was trapped is “extensive.” The ship was in a no-go zone, part of the Unesco World Heritage Site, and the company will face legal charges, Australia says. The ship was not merely stranded, but heavy seas during the week caused it to bump continually against the reef, grinding down the coral. The owner of the vessel, Shenzhen Energy Transport, apologized Friday for the accident, saying the ship had failed to follow its course as it returned from Gladstone, Australia, to China.
Links to other sites: BBC, Yahoo News
A plan by the Australian government to introduce a mandatory Internet filter has come in for sharp criticism by Google and Yahoo search engine companies, among others. Google this week has refused to continue self-censorship in China, part of which has involved mandatory filters. The government had 176 replies to its invitation to respond to the proposal, including one from the Australian Computer Society, concerned about accountability and transparency on the blacklist.
Links to other sites: Irish Times, Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Lyons, France / Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Dubai police have added 16 more international arrest warrants to the 11 already issued, linked to the 20 January death of Hamas military leader Mahmoud Al Mabhouh. Interpol has added the new warrants to its existing Red Notices for the case. Interpol, based in Lyons, insists on the likely use of identity theft by the murderers. “Since Intepol has reason to believe that the suspects linked to this murder have stolen the identities of real people, the Red Notices specify that the names used were aliases used to commit murder,” its web site notes. “Interpol has officially made public the photos and the names fraudulently used on the passports in order to limit the ability of accused murderers from traveling freely using the same false passports.”
The international criminal police organization says it contacted the Geneva-based World Economic Forum in January to alert it to the increased risk of terrorists traveling on documents using stolen identities, which makes it easier for them to avoid detection.
Calf taking his first steps at Taronga Zoo, Sydney, Australia (photo: Bobby-Jo Vial)
Australia is having a good day: first the news about police killing Dalmatin, the mastermind behind the Bali bombings which killed 100 Australians, and now the cheering news about a little elephant calf at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, born shortly after 03:00 Wednesday 10 March. The calf was declared dead in his mother’s womb three days earlier, but surprised everyone when he was born alive, and first signs are encouraging: with help from the intensive care staff at the zoo he has taken his first steps within just hours of his birth, attempted to suckle his mother, Porntip, and touched the trunks of the other elephants at the zoo, writes the Sydney Morning Herald.
“Advice from world elephant reproduction expert, Dr Thomas Hildebrandt of the Berlin Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Health is that such an outcome after a protracted labour has never been seen before,” according to the zoo’s pages on the new calf. ” He said the birth will completely re-write the elephant birth text books.” The zoo now believes the calf was in a coma during his mother’s lengthy labour, which explains why they were unable to pick up his vital signs.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono confirmed Wednesday 10 March that Dulmatin, long sought as one of the main suspected planners behind a 2002 Bali bombing, died in a raid on militants Tuesday. The Bali blasts killed 202 people, about half of them Australian. The raid was one of a series in Aceh province, which have netted several arrests.
Links to other sites: The Age, Australia, BBC, Sydney Morning Herald
The number of suspects in the murder of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in December has now grown to 26, say Dubai police, with Australian passports reportedly used. Australia called in the Israeli ambassador and issued a sharp warning that it will not tolerate any government condoning or being behind the theft of its citizens’ passports, with suspicion growing that Israel was behind the murder. Australia has reportedly warned Israel in the past not to use Australian passports for its espionage activities. The Israeli government has said there is no proof that Mossad, its secret service, is involved. Some of the Australians identified, who are living in Israel, were shocked to learn of what appears to be several cases of identity theft.
A 60-year-old Australian woman, Paddy Trumbull, who was snorkeling next to her boat near Whitsunday Islands, Queensland, managed to fight off a 1.5 metre shark by repeatedly punching it. She lost 40 percent of her blood in the process and she suffered deep bite wounds, according to ABC Radio in Australia, but the shark didn’t dent her sense of humour and she says she’s just glad to be alive. She’s expected to stay in the hospital until the end of the week, but will need at least more surgeries.
Newlands, Capetown, South Africa (GenevaLunch) - The English bowlers made a dramatic start to the second day of the third Test against South Africa when the last four South African wickets fell in16 balls. Graham Onions took the most important wicket when he dismissed Jacques Kallis for 108 with his first ball. James Anderson took the next three to end with five for 63. South Africa ended on 291.
The South African bowlers quickly struck back, dismissing Andrew Strauss, Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen in the opening session.
Pakistan ended the second day of the Melbourne Test well on top. After dismissing Australia for 127 they ended on 331 for nine.
Links to other sites: Yahoo cricket, BBC, Times
(Video) Ben Southall, the Briton who beat out 34,000 other applicants for what Australia’s Queensland Tourism described as the “best job in the world”, is ending the six-month stint with a nasty jellyfish sting. Southall is not complaining, though, since the sting could well have been deadly: two tourists died from them in 2002. He’s now stepping off the island for a bit to promote Queensland around the world.
Links to other sites: Ben Southall’s blog and Twitter page, Best Job in the World
Video, ABC TV in Australia
Durban, South Africa (GenevaLunch) - The England captain showed a previously unseen side to his game when he scored 50 runs in only 49 balls in reply to South Africa’s score of 343 all out in the second test at Durban. The home team made that many largely thanks to the late assault on Graeme Swann’s bowling by Dale Steyn. England ended the second day on 103 for one.
The main interest of the day was focused on the system of referring umpiring decisions to television replay: this led to Mark Boucher being given out lbw to Swann after the umpire’s “not out” was reversed.
An iceberg the size of Manhattan Island in New York is drifting towards Australia, say scientists. Given the warmer waters near Australia, it is not expected to arrive in its current shape, but rather to break up into a small flotilla of smaller icebergs. The event is uncommon but not extremely rare: a large block of ice drifted towards New Zealand in November. And a group of icebergs that drifted near the coast of New Zealand three years ago prompted a short boom in tourism.
Twickenham, London, England (GenevaLunch) - England played better than in recent matches, holding the All Blacks to 6-6 at half time but could not match the New Zealanders in the second half and lost 6-19. At least the England women beat the New Zealand Ferns.
Scotland pulled off a surprise 9-8 victory over Australia where their heart was just enough to hold out against the technically better Wallabies. It was their first win against the Aussies for 27 years. Wales beat Argentina 33-16 with two tries by Shane Williams.
Links to other sites: The Guardian, The Times
First reports are optimistic for two conjoined girls who were separated by a medical team in Melbourne, Australia during 27 hours of surgery. Krishna and Trishna, orphans from Bangladesh who were joined at the head, are doing well, although lead doctor Leo Donnan says they have a long road ahead of them, with risks related to recovering from the surgery but also a 50 percent chance of brain damage and 25 percent chance one of them will die. The girls are 2 years 11 months old. They were living at an orphanage in Bangladesh, where the risk of surgery was considered too great by the organization Children First Foundation, which is helping the girls.
Links to other sites: The Age, Melbourne (video), Times, UK, Royal Children’s Hospital page on the twins’ “incredible journey”
An estimated 1,000 people known as Forgotten Australians were part of a large crowd that attended a ceremony in Canberra, Australia Sunday 15 November where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to the estimated 70,000 people who were abused in state care from about 1930-1970, many of them part of a group of British children forced to migrate to Australia and work as forced labour on farms, some of them sexually abused as children. The British prime minister will also formally apologize in 2010 for the British forced migration policy, his office has announced.
Links to other sites: ABC, Australia, BBC, Sydney Morning Herald
