 Queen Elizabeth meets Queensland Residents Change approved to royal succession Saturday, October 29, 2011 » 01:32am
A future daughter to Prince William and Princess Catherine could take the throne under a change to centuries-old laws.
A meeting in Perth of the 'realm' countries which have the Queen as their monarch, including Australia, has agreed to change the royal succession rules.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has championed the change to the 1701 Act of Settlement, which would scrap rules that put a male child ahead of his older sister in the line to the throne, and bar anyone who marries a Catholic from the royal line of succession.
'This way of thinking is at odds with the modern countries that we've all become,' he told reporters in Perth on Friday.
'I'm very pleased to say we reached a unanimous agreement on two changes.'
He said the British government would publish legislation first, before other realm countries.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard said there was in-principle agreement from the Australian federal and state governments for the arrangements.
'These things seem straightforward but just because they seem straightforward to our modern minds doesn't mean we should underestimate their historic significance,' she said.
Every state and the federal government will need to pass legislation to enact the changes.
The royal succession rule change won't affect Prince Charles or his son Prince William, both of whom are first-born children.
The realms - nations whose head of state is Queen Elizabeth - include Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Papua New Guinea, St Christopher and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Tuvalu, Barbados, Grenada, the Solomon Islands, St Lucia and The Bahamas.
The British law barring Catholics was originally designed to prevent the return of the Catholic Stuarts to the throne.
http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TopStories/2011/10/28/Change_approved_to_royal_succession_679047.html
 Oct. 23, 2011:
People rescue a woman trapped under debris after a powerful 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Turkey, collapsing about 45 buildings in Van province, killing an estimated 1000 people and causing widespread panic as dozens of buildings collapse.
Monday, October 24, 2011 » 07:03am Australian time An earthquake of 7.3 magnitude has rocked eastern Turkey, with a seismological institute saying up to 1000 people could lie dead under the rubble of dozens of collapsed buildings. Turkey's strongest earthquake in years struck Van, a large eastern city populated mainly by Kurds. 'Five hundred to 1000 people are estimated to have been killed in the quake,' Mustafa Erdik, director of the Kandilli seismological institute in Istanbul, told reporters. Earlier reports had not mentioned casualties, but many were feared trapped in collapsed buildings and officials warned they were struggling to assess the extent of the damage. 'There is serious human and material loss,' said a brief statement from the national disaster body, which is based in the prime minister's office. Officials said about 50 buildings had collapsed, including a dormitory. At least 50 people were taken to hospital in Van and nearly a thousand people in Ercis, a district of about 100,000 people in the same region, where the most serious damage occurred, according to media reports. 'Many buildings alongside a major street in Ercis were collapsed,' said an AFP photographer at the quake scene. 'There is electricity cut throughout district. People are using lanterns,' he said. Television footage showed panicked residents using shovels and other digging tools trying to rescue people trapped under a collapsed eight-storey building in the city centre. Search and rescue teams were using electrical generator lights to help the search for trapped victims as the night fell. 'An eight-storey apartment collapsed,' a local from Ercis told AFP. 'There are efforts to rescue people but the loss is big. I myself saw three to four dead,' he added. Most people are expected to spend the night outdoors, with the temperature expected to dip to 3C. 'People are panicked. The telecommunication services have collapsed. We cannot reach anybody,' Van Mayor Bekir Kaya told NTV television. The government was due to send satellite phones to the region, according to media reports. Six helicopters, including four ambulance helicopters, as well as C-130 military cargo planes were sent to the area carrying tents, food and medicine. The US Geological Survey measured the quake at 7.3 magnitude and said an aftershock of 5.6 magnitude had also been registered. It placed the epicentre of the aftershock, which happened at 1056 GMT (2156 AEDT) on Sunday 19 kilometres northeast of Van. The depth of the initial quake was 7.2 kilometres, according to the US seismologists. The depth of the aftershock was 20 kilometres, they added. The epicentre of the quake, which struck around 1041 GMT (2141 AEDT), was at Tabanli in Van province, the Kandilli institute said. The Turkish institute said there were two aftershocks which affected the villages of Ilikaynak and Gedikbulak in particular. The quake was also felt across the border in northwestern Iran, causing some panic in major cities, Iranian media reported, but without any mention of casualties or damage. Earthquake-prone Turkey lies atop several fault lines. In 1999, two strong quakes in the heavily populated and industrialised regions of northwest Turkey left some 20,000 dead. And a powerful earthquake in the town of Caldiran in Van province killed 3840 people in 1976. http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TopStories/2011/10/24/Up_to_1000_feared_dead_in_Turkey_quake_677028.html
FOOTAGE of Australian sheep tethered by a leg and flailing before their throats were cut and others left alive staggering with knife wounds in Turkish abattoirs has been aired by activists.
Animals Australia filmed cows, in an abattoir where Australian cattle are slaughtered, strung up by a leg, writhing, with their throats only partially slit.
Lyn White recorded the images in one of Turkey's largest cities in late July and earlier this month and released footage at parliament house this morning.
One sheep's neck was simply stabbed at by an abattoir worker at a facility which did pass Australian export standards because it animals are not tethered by the leg and strung up alive.
Sheep were left crouching on metal runners, slowly bleeding to death.
Another sheep, unable to stand on its front legs, was grabbed by a worker and tied by its back leg to be put on a conveyer belt to slaughter workers.
Ms White said Turkey was a new export market for Australian livestock which have been sent to the Middle East country for the past 18 months.
"They're breaking international standards regularly,'' Ms White said.
Ms White said practices in Turkey were "more automated'' but just as appalling as treatment of cattle in Indonesia abattoirs with footage of cows suffering there leading to the temporary shutdown of the export trade.
Cattle farmers in the Northern Territory were left devastated.
The latest footage of animals being mistreated in Turkey has been supplied to Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig.
Mr Ludwig temporarily banned live exports to Indonesia but allowed the trade to resume earlier this month with exporters now having to prove animals would be slaughtered humanely.
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie and Greens MP Adam Bandt brought legislation to ban live exports.
They were the only two MPs to vote for the legislation with Coalition and Labor MPs voting together.
 Steve Jobs High School Graduation Photo Thursday, October 06, 2011 » 01:52pm
http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TopStories Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and former CEO who invented and masterfully marketed ever-sleeker gadgets that transformed everyday technology, from the personal computer to the iPod and iPhone, has died aged 56.
Apple announced his death without giving a specific cause. He died peacefully, according to a statement from family members who said they were present.
'Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives,' Apple's board said in a statement. 'The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.'
Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health
problems. He took another leave of absence in January - his third since his health problems began - and officially resigned in August. He took another leave of absence in January - his third since his health problems began - before resigning as CEO six weeks ago. Jobs became Apple's chairman and handed the CEO job over to his hand-picked successor, Tim Cook.
'Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor.' Cook wrote in an email to Apple's employees. 'Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will
forever be the foundation of Apple.'
Jobs started Apple with a high school friend in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was forced out a decade later and returned in 1997 to rescue the company. During his second stint, it grew into the most valuable technology company in the world with a market value of $351 billion. Almost all that wealth has been created since Jobs' return.
Cultivating Apple's countercultural sensibility and a minimalist design ethic, Jobs rolled out one sensational product after another, even in the face of the late-2000s recession and his own failing health.
He helped change computers from a geeky hobbyist's obsession to a necessity of modern life at work and home, and in the process he upended not just personal technology but the cellphone and music industries.
Perhaps most influentially, Jobs in 2001 launched the iPod, which offered '1,000 songs in your pocket.' Over the next 10 years, its white earphones and thumb-dial control seemed to become more ubiquitous than the wristwatch.
In 2007 came the touch-screen iPhone, joined a year later by Apple's App Store, where developers could sell iPhone 'apps' which made the phone a device not just for making calls but also for managing money, editing photos, playing games and social networking. And in 2010, Jobs introduced the iPad, a tablet-sized, all-touch computer that took off even though market analysts said no one really needed one.
By 2011, Apple had become the second-largest company of any kind in the United States by market value. In August, it briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company.
Under Jobs, the company cloaked itself in secrecy to build frenzied anticipation for each of its new products. Jobs himself had a wizardly sense of what his customers wanted, and where demand didn't exist, he leveraged a cult-like following to create it.
When he spoke at Apple presentations, almost always in faded blue jeans, sneakers and a black mock turtleneck, legions of Apple acolytes listened to every word. He often boasted about Apple successes, then coyly added a coda - 'One more thing' - before introducing its latest ambitious idea. In later years, Apple investors also watched these appearances for clues about his health.
Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagnosed with a very rare form of pancreatic cancer - an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. He underwent surgery and said he had been cured. In 2009, following weight loss he initially attributed to a hormonal imbalance, he abruptly took a six-month leave. During that time, he received a liver transplant that became public two months after it was performed. He went on another medical leave in January 2011, this time for an unspecified duration. He never went back and resigned as CEO in August, though he stayed on as chairman.
Consistent with his penchant for secrecy, he didn't reference his illness in his resignation letter.
Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, California, a working-class couple who nurtured his early interest in
electronics. He saw his first computer terminal at NASA's Ames Research Center when he was around 11 and landed a summer job at Hewlett-Packard before he had finished high school. Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1972 but dropped out after six months.
'All of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it,' he said at a Stanford University commencement address in 2005. 'I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out.'
When he returned to California in 1974, Jobs worked for video game maker Atari and attended meetings of the Homebrew
Computer Club - a group of computer hobbyists - with Steve Wozniak, a high school friend who was a few years older.
Wozniak's homemade computer drew attention from other enthusiasts, but Jobs saw its potential far beyond the geeky hobbyists of the time. The pair started Apple Computer Inc. in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976. According to Wozniak, Jobs suggested the name after visiting an 'apple orchard' that Wozniak said was actually a commune.
Their first creation was the Apple I - essentially, the guts of a computer without a case, keyboard or monitor. The Apple II, which hit the market in 1977, was their first machine for the masses. It became so popular that Jobs was worth $100 million by age 25.
Is he asking for Change, or is he asking for CHANGE? Follow a man as he affects multiple peoples' lives with just one dollar, proving that it doesn't take much to be the change in someone's life. Written and directed by Sharon Wright. www.imdb.me/sharonwright, www.shesalwayswright.comWinner - Audience Choice Award - Gateway Film Festival. Winner - Audience Choice Award - Moonlight Film Festival Nominated - Best Female Filmmaker Award - Action On Film Intl Film Festival Nominated - Sirrocco Award - Action On Film Intl Film Festival. Nominated - Best Silent Film - BareBones Intl Film Festival Contact - shesalwayswright@yahoo.com
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