- Latest Popular Stories, Instablogs Community by Andrew-macarthur

Australia is rocked by hate mail to war widows by a Muslim cleric

Andrew — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:55:49 +0000

A self-styled Muslim cleric sent hate mail to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, reports said Thursday, prompting sharp condemnation from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Rudd said the front-page revelations, including claims one letter was delivered to a grieving widow at her husband’s funeral, were sickening.

“You know, when you pick up the front page of the (Daily Telegraph) today, I think people’s stomachs turn,” Rudd said.

Police said they had charged a 45-year-old man from the west of Sydney with sending “harassing and offensive letters to family members of soldiers killed whilst serving in Afghanistan.”

Australian Fritzl charged with raping daughter

Andrew — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:16:39 +0000

An Australian man has been charged with incest after he allegedly raped his daughter almost daily and fathered her four children over a 30-year period.

The man, who has been called “Australia’s Fritzl” after the notorious Austrian incest case, allegedly began raping his daughter in the 1970s when she was just 11 years old, and had threatened her with violence if she ever revealed the abuse.

According to a report in Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper, the man was arrested in February after the victim approached police and said that she had been kept a virtual prisoner in the family home in a country town in the southern state of Victoria.

The newspaper said that all of the woman’s four children were born with birth defects in Melbourne hospitals. One of them died.

Schoolboy Jai Morcom beaten to death during recess

Andrew — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 06:21:58 +0000

A SCHOOLBOY squabble during morning recess escalated into a brawl that has left a 15-year-old NSW schoolboy dead. Detectives and forensic specialists descended on Mullumbimby High School in northern NSW and declared the playground a crime scene...

Will Oceans Be Our Best Source of Clean Power?

Andrew — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 22:48:17 +0000

The resource is clean, renewable and vast. In fact, it covers 70 percent of the planet. That would be the ocean, with endless waves and ceaseless tides that can be harnessed to create electricity with zero carbon or particulate emissions. If...