The Legend of Ron Burgundy came to life this week when Australia TODAY host Karl Stefanovic channeled his inner-Veronica Corningstone with a last-minute change to the teleprompter lines of guest-host Roz Kelly. We don’t know about you guys, but we’d probably do this to our coworkers every single day if we worked on a televised news broadcast of any kind. Then again, that might be why we don’t work on a televised news broadcast of any kind. (ht to Gawker) source
‘Ring of Fire’ eclipse wows Australia
AP: Skygazers across the Australian Outback were among the lucky few to witness a solar eclipse on Friday as the moon glided between Earth and the sun, blocking everything but a dazzling ring of light.
The celestial spectacle, known as a “ring of fire” eclipse, was the second solar eclipse visible from northern Australia in six months. In November, a total solar eclipse plunged the country’s northeast into darkness, delighting astronomers and tourists who flocked to the region from across the globe to witness it.
Photo: Friday’s annular solar eclipse blazes like a ring of fire after sunrise, 45 miles (70 kilometers) south of Newman, Australia. The “second sun” is a lens effect. (Nicole Hollenbeck via SpaceWeather.com)
Just, wow. Okay. Consider us suitably awed, sun and moon. Put something together like this and there’s always room for you on our humble internet weblogs.
You Saw This Coming of the Day: Julian Assange Will Run for Office as a Member of Wikileaks Party
Wikileaks’ larger-than-life founder Julian Assange has officially filed paperwork to run for a seat in the Australian Senate and may actually have a chance at winning. Assange will be running as a member of the country’s new Wikileaks Party while living at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been hiding for several months to avoid extradition to Sweden. So how’s Assange running for an office from overseas? The Age explains:
“Australian citizens living overseas can enrol to vote as an overseas elector, and consequently run as a Senate candidate if they left Australia within the past three years and intend to return within six years of their date of departure.”
We’re curious how election to the Australian Senate would impact Assange’s current status, holed up as he is in London’s Ecuadorian embassy at present. Would being a Senator from a foreign country somehow grant him enough legal protection to leave the embassy for Australia, without being halted by British authorities, or extradited to Sweden as he fears? We’re continuing to keep an eye on this.
Wildfires rage across Australia amid searing heat:
COOMA, Australia (AP) — Firefighters battled scores of wildfires Tuesday in southeastern Australia as authorities evacuated national parks and warned that hot, dry and windy conditions were combining to raise the threat to its highest alert level.Temperatures soared to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas.
No deaths have been reported, although officials in Tasmania were still trying to find about 100 people who have been missing since last week when a fire tore through the small town of Dunalley, east of the state capital of Hobart, destroying around 90 homes. On Tuesday, police found no bodies during preliminary checks of the ruined houses.
“You don’t get conditions worse than this,” New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said. “We are at the catastrophic level and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option.”
(John Grosvenor/Reuters; Rod McGuirk/AP;Chris Kidd/AP)
As many in the dryest parts of the U.S. can relate to, wildfires are incredibly treacherous and pervasively troublesome — be it direct fire risk to property, human life, or even just the heavy, smoky air that spreads over the landscape. Our thoughts are with everyone afflicted by these blazes.
A 10-month-old Tasmanian Devil joey pays its first visit to the vet for health checks at Healesville Sanctuary, Melbourne, Australia.
From picture desk: live, our photo coverage of the day’s events in the UK and around the world
Photograph: Robert Leeson/Newspix/Rex Features
Terrified.
A rich but lonely old lady has left her entire estate, worth $12.5 million to her neighbour, who bought her bread and milk and helped her manage her daily chores.
Betty Harris, who died aged 95 in 2009, chose to leave her estate to her neighbour in the millionaires enclave of Point Piper in Sydney after she felt her niece was trying to force her into a nursing home.
Just a friendly reminder that it sometimes quite literally pays to be nice to your neighbors. It’s nice to see good things happen to good people like Beatrice Gray every once in a while.
Fire tornado. Australia, land of killer death things.
Combining two of our greatest nature-related fears into one super-fear.
A team of Ukrainian students, collectivelyknown as QuadSquad, used 15 touch sensors, gyroscopes, flex sensors, accelerometers, and a text-to-speech engine to develop EnableTalk. The gloves utilize solar cells to extend battery life, can connect to a mobile phone via Bluetooth, and charge via USB. But quite possibly the most remarkable information about the new gloves are the cost of development. Devices similar to — but lacking in sensors/features when compared to the Ukrainian team’s — the Imagine Cup entry typically cost $1200 or more, but QuadSquad’s invention only cost about $75 in parts. That’s a 93.75 percent reduction in the cost of production. (Video via EnableTalk) source
A 32-year legal mystery over the death of a baby in Australia’s outback came to an end on Tuesday when a coroner found a dingo was responsible for the death of infant Azaria Chamberlain, a case that split national opinion and attracted global headlines.
The coroner’s finding ends a three-decade fight for justice by Azaria’s parents, Michael Chamberlain and Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, who was jailed for three years over her daughter’s death before she was later cleared.
This saga began in August of 1980, or before most of the people reading this were probably born. While not a surprise, the decision ends a decades-long legal saga that was one of Australia’s most well-known and controversial.
Even with 40 percent more seating, the two tons shed by removing in-flight entertainment systems helped the airline cut the total weight of each plane by about seven percent. Fuel costs account for nearly 40 percent of all expenses, and with prices up 36 percent in the last two years, Scoot hopes the savings will allow the airline to continue to offer ultra-low rates. Parent company Singapore Airlines Ltd hopes that the cuts will allow Scoot to take back a portion of the 26% market share lost to fellow budget airlines Jetstar and AirAsia Bhd.
(Photo via John Karakatsanis, hat tip to The Verge)
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
Here’s a hidden feature that shipped in...
Watch: PCB gets a visual shout out on GMA’s Yahoo/Tumblr...
Happy May Day: Here’s a selection of photos from the May 1st general strike, pushed by the Occupy movement, along with labor activists worldwide. As many as six have been arrested in New York City alone in the protests, intended to show the “1 percent” what life without the “99 percent” would be like. (From top left, via Photo Gallery, Swanksalot, Lennon Ying-Dah Wong, Takver, Petteri Sulonen, Hossam el-Hamalawy, Barbro Uppsala, Amine Ghrabi, and Trowbridge Estate.)
News Corp is facing a new round of allegations, claiming the company promoted piracy, in the country where CEO Rupert Murdoch was born. According to the Australian Financial Times, a publication owned by News Corp-rival Fairfax, a four year investigation unearthed promotion of high-tech pirating of Austar and Optus broadcasts. When reached for comment, a spokeswoman for Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said, “these are serious allegations, and any allegations of criminal activity should be referred to the Australian Federal Police for investigation.” (Photo by World Economic Forum) source
Julian Assange is running for the Australian Senate according to the Twitter account of his whistle-blowing company Wikileaks. “We have discovered that it is possible for Julian Assange to run for the Australian Senate while detained. Julian has decided to run,” appeared on the company’s Twitter feed around 8pm EST on Friday evening. When contacted by the Guardian, John Wanna, a policical scientist at Australian National University, confirmed Assange’s eligibility saying, “if he gets on the roll, then he can stand as long as he’s solvent and not in jail and not insane. “(Photo by AcidPolly) source
Today on the ”dingo ate my baby” beat, which is still an open case 32 years later: Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton is trying to get the status of her daughter Azaria’s disappearance from “unknown” to reflect the fact that a dingo likely killed the child. Chamberlain famously went to jail on murder charges before chance evidence later proved that she and her then-husband Michael were telling the truth about the freak incident.
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
