The mystery of flight 574

New Year’s Day 2007. Adam Air flight 574 (KI-574) took off on what should have been a routine internal flight from Indonesian’s second largest city, Surabaya. The plane was destined for Manado, some two hours away on the northern tip of Sulawesi island. It never made it. About an hour into the flight, the plane disappeared from radar near the western Sulawesi city of Polewali. 102 people were on board, all presumed dead. The aircraft is still missing, despite extraordinary early reports the wreckage had been found and some aboard had survived. A seven day search has so far found no debris. Now KI-574 is turning into one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.

The aircraft was a Boeing 737-400. The 737 is the world’s most popular jet aircraft. It is so widely used that at any given time, there are over 1,250 airborne worldwide. Somewhere in the world one takes off or lands every five seconds. The 737-400 has been in service since the mid 1980s. The Adam Air plane was built in 1990. It was last serviced in December 2005 and had 45,000 flying hours. Flight KI-574 had a crew of six and 96 passengers including 11 children. All were Indonesian nationals except a family of three Americans. The flight departed Surabaya in the East of Java at 12:55pm local time.

The weather was stormy. The Indonesian air traffic authority, PT Angkasa Pura I, gave a weather warnings to the pilot, Refri Widodo. Though KI-574 flew at over 9,000 metres it was still immersed in clouds. When approaching the island of Sulawesi, Widodo radioed in a worrying warning: "The plane has been hit by crosswinds from the starboard side." Winds of up to 140 kph buffeted the plane. The plane changed direction eastward to avoid the winds. Ten minutes later Widodo contacted air traffic control again to confirm his position on the radar. The controller confirmed it and the pilot responded “ok”.

It was the last word heard from the flight. Moments later the controller's screen went blank. Things weren't ok. The plane had disappeared off the radar with no distress call. KI-574 had carried enough fuel for four hours flight. After five hours of nothing, everyone feared the worst. An air traffic controller told Indonesian TV the plane hit "very bad" weather and may have run out of fuel because, if still airborne, it would be "over its limit”.

That night, the Indonesian air force announced they found the wreckage. They released a detailed statement that said the plane had crashed into a mountainous region of Sulawesi. An air force plane assigned to the search spotted the debris. First Air Marshal Eddy Suyanto told a local radio “The plane is in ruins. We are sending teams to the location. The plane was found around 20 kilometres from Polewali (town) in the mountains. The weather is clear”. Witnesses were quoted as saying there were bodies everywhere. More remarkable still were further reports that 12 people had survived the impact.

Hopes rose among affected families that their loved ones might be among the 12 survivors. But their hopes were cruelly dashed. It took almost 24 hours for rescuers to get to the remote location, as they were hampered by bad weather and rough jungle terrain. When they got there, they saw nothing. Suyanto was forced to issuing an embarrassing retraction, "The location has not been found. We apologise that the news that we conveyed was not true”. Relatives of the missing were stunned. Toni Toliu, whose sister and her two children were aboard, expressed their dismay, “We are confused whom we should trust."

With no wreckage, the story of the dozen supposed survivors crashed too. The Government was forced to admit that that was an error too. A regional army commander said "News from the village head reporting 12 survivors was also not true, the village head said that he never made that report.” The new claims did little to quell passenger family anger at the astonishing turnabout. The search mission then switched to the seas of the coast of Sulawesi.

Indonesia has now deployed nearly 4,000 troops, four military planes and four helicopters in the hunt for the missing airliner. And yet after a week, they have uncovered no sign of any wreckage. The US oceanographic survey ship USNS Mary Sears has now joined the search operation. It is kitted out with sonar capability and the ability to detect metal under the sea. Meanwhile, relatives have confronted the Indonesian vice president to vent their anger. They are not getting many answers. Officials remain mystified as to what might have happened. Setyo Rahardjo, head of the transport safety commission, told Reuters “If it had exploded, where is the debris? These are the questions that need answers."

Questions too are turning to the safety record of the airline. One of about a dozen budget airlines in the world's fourth most populous nation, Adam Air is a privately owned low cost carrier which operates 19 Boeing 737s. Established in 2002, it serves dozens of domestic routes and also flies to Singapore. Its founder, businessman Agung Laksono, is also vice-chair of Indonesia’s biggest political party Golkar. He is also speaker of Indonesia's house of representatives. He has used his political muscle to stop investigations into the operation of the airline.

Last year an Adam Air Boeing 737-300 was forced to make an emergency landing at a small airport on the island of Sumbawa after it wandered 1,200km off course. Short on fuel and with its pilot not sure of his location for nearly four hours, it was forced to make an emergency landing on a 1,600 metre long runway, well short of the 2,200 metre specification set by the aircraft's manufacturer. The pilot claimed the plane's communications and navigation systems had completely failed but the airline deliberately repaired and moved the plane before it could be examined by the National Transport Safety Committee and there was no further investigation.

The parliamentary transportation commission has criticised Laksono for retaining his position as chairman of Adam Air's board of commissioners, but so far this conflict of interest has not been an issue. The strange story of KI-574 may yet change all that.

Parachuting for news

Woolly Days has finished reading the book Journalism: Investigation and Research (edited by Stephen Tanner). It is a compulsory text for a course in News and Information Gathering and a worthwhile read for its own sake. The book is a collection of examples of Australian investigative journalism from many of its best practitioners. It provides a practical and theoretical framework for investigative journalism. Tom O’Byrne was the ABC China correspondent in 2001 and he contributed a piece called “parachuting for news” for the anthology. It is a fascinating insider’s guide to the frenzied art of foreign correspondence.

The Poynter Institute for journalism defines parachute journalism as the practice of producing distorted news reports by journalists inexperienced in the culture they are writing about. Often this is not the fault of the journalist. Deadline pressures and intense media competition have often made for stereotypical or distorted accounts of places and the people who live there. Poynter argues that although media have made great efforts to eliminate racial, ethnic, and gender bias from their coverage, a less apparent bias persists: Geographic bias.

At the start of his essay Tom O’Byrne hints at the problems foreign journalists face in their occupation. He laments the fact that there is no handbook for journalists called “Covering a conflict: what to take and what to leave at home”. ABC foreign reporters have a lot of ground to cover. They appear in ABC TV news bulletins and other TV programs such as Lateline, Foreign Correspondent and The 7.30 Report. They are also a regular part of internet news bulletins around the clock at ABC News Online and on ABC national and local radio networks, on the continuous news station NewsRadio and the ABC's international broadcaster Radio Australia.

O’Byrne was in Beijing in 2001 when the 9/11 attack occurred. Immediately, he was on the phone reporting on the Chinese reaction to the attack throughout the night that followed. After 12 hours he was finally getting some sleep when the head of ABC international news, Bronwyn Kiely, rang. He and his crew were to get visas and leave for Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, on the first available flight. Their brief was to report on Pakistan’s emerging role in the story. Across the world, the calls were repeated. The Moscow correspondent flew to Jerusalem. The Bangkok contact flew to Tajikistan. The Washington correspondent had to immediately cut short his Venezuela trip and head home. Other organisations were also on the march. It wasn’t easy with US airspace closed. The BBC chartered a commercial passenger jet filled with people and equipment and flew it to Montreal where trucks were waiting to cart the lot across the border and down to New York.

O’Byrne wasted no time in setting up a bureau at his Islamabad hotel. He got set up with a 24 hour driver, a translator, access to fax machines, and four local mobile phones with $2,000 credit. On field trips the ABC shared costs and translation services with two non-competition media, the Baltimore Sun and US National Public Radio. The ABC made big use of contacts in Islamabad, Peshawar, Quetta and Kabul they used in previous stories. A local telephone book was a saleable commodity and books on Afghanistan history and the Taliban were also hot property among the media contingent.

The language barrier often played havoc. O’Byrne remembers one tense media conference at the Taliban embassy in Islamabad. Reporters stared in disbelief when the Taliban spokesman declared the attacks on America was ‘the fault of Iran’. Journalists whispered to each other whether they’d heard it correctly. Finally one asked “can you clarify why you might be blaming Iran?” His question caused consternation on the Taliban side and much whispers on that side of the table. Finally it emerged that the translation had got it wrong. 9/11 wasn’t the sensational ‘fault of Iran’ but the more predictable ‘fault of their own’.

O’Byrne would be a very busy man in the last few months of 2001. There was no room for adjusting to local time zones and his deadlines for the Australian morning news and current affairs radio shows were 1am and 3am. There were more deadlines at 7am and midday. He filed up to ten stories a day and caught sleep where he could in patches for 36 days straight. Getting the story out could be problematic. They had to deal with potential Pakistani censorship of satellite feeds and find one of the few satellite feed points. The only one in Islamabad was the rooftop of the Marriott Hotel which charged each of its dozen ‘live shot’ clients US$1,500 for the privilege. But money was no object; networks across the world were spending big after 9/11. The BBC bill for the first three months topped $30 million.

When O’Byrne did his field trips into Afghanistan, he took two satellite phone units, a camera and a video transmission unit. They could send vision back to Australia in twenty minutes. For radio broadcasts, O’Byrne used computer laptop-editing software to connect to the Internet to transfer compressed story packages back to Sydney. They also carried ISDN codec equipment that allowed them to use ISDN telephone lines to produce studio-quality sound from the field. They had specially adapted ‘lip mikes' designed to be used in a breeze and still produce sound with minimum distortion because it is held close to the upper lip.

Reporting is sometimes a dangerous business. O’Byrne attended a political rally at Quetta cricket ground where he interviewed five angry Muslim men who were decrying US foreign policy on Islamic causes. Suddenly they were surrounded by 200 men. No-one dared touch the reporters but it was an awkward situation which wasn’t resolved until local police waded in with sticks to clear a path out. Several journalists were killed in the early days of the war. When in the field, O’Byrne and his crew wore flak jackets and travelled in large convoys often with armed escorts.

O’Byrne does a fine job of exposing that the life of a foreign correspondent is often far from glamorous and exciting. But its clear that despite all the hassles, he was totally absorbed in the experience of being at the epicentre of the biggest story of the world.

Rwandan genocide trial starts today

An important step on the long road to justice in Rwanda takes place this week with the trial of former Kigali prefect Colonel Tharcisse Renzaho in Tanzania. The 63 year old Renzaho is charged with ordering the April 1994 slaughter of ethnic Tutsis by extremist Hutus at a church, a pastoral centre and an education centre in the capital Kigali. He has denied the charge. Renzaho is represented by two lawyers, François Cantier from France and Barnabé Nekui from Cameroon.

In 1994, Colonel Renzaho was in control of the capital's police force and local officials. The UN war crimes tribunal has alleged that when the killings broke out in April that year, he incited Hutus to kill members of the Tutsi minority. The prosecution also says Renzaho used state radio to instruct the police, army and civilians to man roadblocks so they could identify and intercept Tutsis. His instructions also applied to Hutus who had Tutsi wives. He faces life imprisonment if convicted.

The German-trained Renzaho is a lieutenant-colonel and former professor at the Rwanda Military Academy. Though a minor figure in the Rwandan armed forces, in 1990 he was nominated the Prefect of Kigali following an attack by the rebel Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF). The RPF would eventually do him out of a job when they eventually took control of the country in the wake of the 1994 massacres. After Hutu Power government was destroyed, Renzaho fled to neighbouring Congo, where he worked for President Laurent Kabila, the father of the current president Joseph Kabila. There he collaborated with the exiled Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda who also fled the country in 1994. Renzaho was ranked third on the tribunal’s list of most wanted criminals. He was arrested in 2002 and it has taken over four years for him to come to trial.

The international criminal tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Arusha in neighbouring Tanzania, has often been criticised for operating too slowly. The UN Security Council resolution 955 created the ICTR in November 1994. Its avowed purpose was “to contribute to the process of national reconciliation in Rwanda and to the maintenance of peace in the region”. Its term of engagement was the prosecution of those responsible for crimes in Rwanda for the calendar year 1994.

The Tanzanian site of the tribunal is deliberate. It also where the failed Arusha Accords of 1993 took place. The US and France sponsored the accords in an effort to end the civil war between the Hutu-led Rwandan Government and the Tutsi-led rebel RPF. The accords stripped considerable power from long-term President Habyarimana and created the framework for a transitional coalition government that would include RPF representatives. Habyarimana signed the accords in October 1993 and in the same month the UN sent in a peace force (UNAMIR) to facilitate the implementation of the accords.

But the accords inflamed extremist Hutus who felt that Habyarimana had sold out his people. On the 6 April 1994, a plane carrying Habyarimana and his Burundi counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamina crashed as it was about to land in Kigali airport. It was no accident. The plane was shot down by a surface to air missile. No-one knew who shot down the plane, though many had motives. Hutu extremists laid the blame on the rebels. Paul Kagame’s RPF blamed Hutu extremists supported by the French who armed Rwanda to the tune of $25 million between 1990 and 1993.

Who ever did it, and to this day it remains an unsolved crime, the Arusha Accords were in tatters. Within hours a new hardline Hutu administration was in place. They wasted no time in seeking what they saw as revenge for a Tutsi atrocity. Colonel Renzaho quickly marshalled his subordinates to organise patrols and barriers to capture and kill Tutsi. He also maintained links with the Interahamwe militia who obeyed his instructions when he went around the city.

In the first week 20,000 Rwandans were killed, the vast majority of those Tutsi. As the month of April progressed, the killings spread. Renzaho was at the centre of the Kigali killings. He directed the Interahamwe militias to break into houses of prominent Tutsis where the occupants were killed, reportedly in his presence. He dismissed two city councillors opposed to the slaughters. For the next two months he authorised killing and distributed weapons to militias. He fled into exile in June after the RPF victory.

Tharcisse Renzaho lived in exile in several African countries and went into hiding after the tribunal identified him as a suspect. In 1997 he evaded a police trap laid by Kenyan police. But in 2002 he was eventually given up by Congolese President Kabila under pressure from the US. Congo turned him over to the ICTR. He pleaded not guilty in his immediate initial court appearance. In 2005, the prosecutors discovered new material which modified the charges against him. The long slow march to justice culminates with the start of his trial today.

Violence in Assam

Over 50 people have been killed in overnight violence in India’s remote north eastern province Assam. Hundreds of Indian Army soldiers now patrol the streets of the strife-torn province enforcing a curfew with orders of shoot to kill. The separatist rebels known as the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) instigated the violence killing 48 people, mostly immigrant labourers and traders from the eastern state of Bihar, in a series of coordinated overnight attacks. The rebels then blew up a government vehicle killing seven people, four of them policemen.

According to local police, the violence was an attempt to intimidate after an independent opinion poll showed 90% of people rejected ULFA’s separatist demands. The deaths all took place in the eastern provinces of Tinsukia, Dibrugarh, and Dhemaji, where there is a large migrant work force. The Hindi-speaking minorities in these areas are forming peace committees involving leaders of all communities. A police official told the Times of India the committees “are working as vigilantes, helping the affected people come to terms with reality and trying to heal the wounds”. The Bihari immigrants had moved to the tea-rich province of Assam decades ago and mostly lived as labourers, fishermen and farmers.

The Bihari chief Minister Nitish Kumar urged the national Government to protect Biharis in Assam. Kumar said the families of the murdered Biharis will get Rs 1 lakh (a lakh is the Hindi word for 10,000) each from his government and wanted the Central and Assam governments to compensate them too. The Central minister for state for Home is now on his way to Assam to assess the situation. Meanwhile the rebel group ULFA blamed the Indian Government for the trouble. The group’s vice president Pradip Gogoi said the Government have stalled the peace process forcing his group to carry out sporadic violence. At least 10,000 people have been killed in separatist violence in Assam over the past 25 years.

Assam is a t-shaped state. It is one of the “seven sisters”, the seven states in the north east that are separated from the rest of India by the 20km wide Siliguri Corridor, more colourfully known as the Chicken’s Neck. The Chicken's Neck was created in 1947 to allow access to Assam after the state of Bengal was partitioned between India and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Siliguri in West Bengal is connected to Guwahati in Assam by a railway and National Highway 31. It is a very dangerous road due to rebel activity and the closeness of the Bangladeshi border. ULFA is not the only active insurgency group and rebels have often bombed the railway line to isolate the state from the rest of India.

The areas remoteness also means there is little international or humanitarian access so precise information about atrocities and victims is hard to come by. However it is likely that 50,000 people have died due to violence in the Seven Sisters since independence in 1948. The conflicts are rooted in the extraordinary diversity of the area at the crossroads of east and west. The area was a melting pot of cultures during the British administration. Bangladesh’s independence in 1971 caused economic disaster for the north-eastern states. The move severed the water, road and railway communications with the rest of India and they lost access to a port.

Assam, the largest of the seven sisters, is typical of the area’s multi-ethnicity with 45 different languages spoken. It is rich in vegetation, forests and wildlife. As well as being t-shaped, Assam is very much shaped by tea. Assam tea is grown at near sea level, giving it a malty sweetness and an earthy flavour as opposed to the more floral aroma of highland teas. It is the second largest tea production area after China. Assam also produces crude oil and natural gas. Assam’s resources mean that India is not likely to look fondly on efforts for secession. Its large immigrant population complicates the picture further as they have allegiance firstly to India not Assam.

Barack the Blessed

Everyone expects Barack Obama, the new golden boy of US politics, to comfortably overcome his own revelation he used cocaine and marijuana in high school and college. Obama made the confession in his memoir “Dreams of my Father.” The Illinois Democrat senator finally admitted recently he was considering a bid for presidential nomination. The book revelation offers him the chance to wash his dirty linen in public now so that it will not become an election issue in 2008. Given similar indiscretions in the past by Bill Clinton and George W Bush, the admission may even be an electoral plus.

Obama is the US’s hottest political phenomenon. He is now being seriously talked up as America’s first black president. His fresh-faced appeal, allied to his intelligence, charisma, and common touch are turning heads across the country. Though Obama has only been a senator for two years, a November 2006 poll for CNN placed him second only to Hillary Clinton on a list of potential Democrat candidates in 2008. The polls show he has 17% support of registered Democrats compared to Clinton’s 28%. He heads other potential nominees such as Al Gore and John Kerry and the one man who has formally put his hat in the ring, John Edwards. Obama’s increased support comes at the expense of Clinton and Gore. Clinton’s vote has dropped ten percentage points since the previous poll in September. The same poll shows John McCain and Rudy Giuliani running neck and neck on the Republican side.

The ambitious Obama is starting to work the marginal states. Virginia came into the picture after Democrat James Webb upset incumbent Republican George Allen in a race for senatorship in the 2006 midterm elections. Many believe that Obama’s turn at a Richmond fundraiser in February could be a keynote speech if he formally announces his presidential candidacy as expected this month. The Virginia primary is one of the earliest in the race (February 2008) and Kerry won it easily last time to effectively knock John Edwards and Wesley Clark out of the running.

Obama is 45 years old and the only African-American currently in the Senate. His father, also named Barack Obama (the word barack means “blessed” in the Central African language of Luo), was a goat-herder from Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham was born in Kansas and moved to Honolulu. They met while studying at the University of Hawaii. Barack himself was born in Honolulu in 1961. His parents divorced when he was two and his father returned to Kenya. Ann remarried to another international student of the university. Barack's new stepfather was an Indonesian, Lolo Soetero. The family moved to Jakarta when Barack was six. Aged 10 he returned to Hawaii to live with his mother’s parents. He studied at New York’s Columbia University where he emerged with a degree in political science. After working for a communities project in Chicago, Barack went to Harvard law school and gained his doctorate in law in 1991. He returned to Chicago where he worked for a civil rights law firm and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago.

In Clinton’s second election year of 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate. He ran for the federal House of Representatives in 2000 but lost comfortably to incumbent Bobby Rush who was a member of the Black Panthers in the 1960s. Obama was re-elected to the Illinois senate in 2002 and the Democrats won control of the chamber. He was rewarded with the chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. Obama quickly won a reputation as a consensus politician which won him support when he ran for the federal Senate. He secured his status as a rising star with a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004.

Aided by this publicity and support from two of Chicago’s most influential newspapers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times, Obama emerged from a crowded field to comfortable win the Democrat nomination. His republican opponent Jack Ryan withdrew due to sexual allegations and Obama easily beat Ryan’s late replacement by a margin of 43%. Obama spent his first year as senator building up his credentials. His first act was to sponsor a higher education bill for needy students. He has also been heavily involved in immigration, weapons non-proliferation, and funding accountability bills. He has been on international missions to Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Enthusiastic crowds turned out to greet him in Kenya, his late father’s homeland. He was treated as a rock star by adoring crowds who followed his every move. Obama took a voluntary HIV test in a Kenyan clinic to encourage locals to do the same. He laid a wreath at the site of the US embassy bombing and he mad a major speech at Nairobi University where he accused Kenyan leaders of corruption and implored the country to rise beyond its ethnic tensions.

Back in the US thoughts have turned to 2008. After repeatedly denying interest in running for the top job throughout 2006, Obama left the door open in October. In an interview with Meet the Press he said “I don’t want to be coy about this, given the responses that I’ve been getting over the last several months, I have thought about the possibility”. Despite the favourable polls his thinking may well be to delay to 2012 when he will have 8 years as a senator under his belt. Even by 2016 he will only be 54, easily young enough to contest the presidency.

Obama often jokes that people are always getting his name wrong, calling him "Alabama" or "Yo Mama". However no mix-up has been quite as bad as CNN’s “The Situation Room” which last week confused Obama with Osama Bin Laden. A package promoting a story on the search for the al-Qaeda leader aired with the headline "Where's Obama?" CNN said the blunder was a "bad typographical error" by its graphics department. Senator Obama's press secretary, said: "Though I'd note that the 's' and 'b' keys aren't all that close to each other, I assume it was just an unfortunate mistake, and don't think there was any truly malicious intent." CNN won’t be making that mistake again. Osama may have disappeared off the radar, but Obama is here to stay.

Githabul land claim

After a decade of legal negotiation, an Aboriginal group and the state of New South Wales are about to sign off on a massive native title deal. The Githabul people have negotiated an Indigenous Land Use Agreement which will cover a 6,000 square kilometre area in the northeast of the state near Mount Lindsay. The Githabul will gain joint managerial control of World Heritage Listed national parks and control over future development on the land. It is the biggest native title deal in NSW and will create jobs for the 250 Githabul, as well as giving them the right to traditional activities in the forests, including hunting protected native animals.

The land claim is not yet fully complete. The Githabul lands straddle the state border between NSW and Queensland and negotiations are continuing with the Queensland Government. The claim will be extremely significant for native title as it is the first one to cross state borders. But Queensland is holding out saying they are still examining the claim. The Australian newspaper did a front page feature on the Githabul land claim on Wednesday. In their story they focussed on the disappointment of the Aboriginal people’s failure to secure the 15% of their land in Queensland and thus the peak of Mount Lindsay itself. They quoted Queensland Acting Premier Anna Bligh who said the Government was waiting for more information from the claimants. The Githabul claim that the Queensland government are dragging their heels.

Furthermore the Australian claims the Queensland Government has failed to act because of a rival claim from the Yugambeh people who live near the Gold Coast. Then they quote a Yugambeh spokesman Wesley Aird who says there is no overlap between the claims. Aird said "All our information was that the NSW claim was going really well, but the Queensland side was dragging the chain, and that's typical of their dealings with indigenous people." ALP president Warren Mundine is also chief executive of the NSW Native Title Services group, which funded the claim. He said that if the Queensland Government could approve the claim it would set a precedent for other cross-border situations, such as those around the Mildura area of northwest Victoria. He hopes a deal can be hammered out before the end of 2007.

The NSW decision is the latest in along round of land rights negotiations that stretch back to the Mabo decision of 1992. In that case, the Australian High Court rejected the doctrine of terra nullius, the idea that the continent belonged to no one when the British arrived in 1788. Native title now describes the rights and interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in land and waters, according to their traditional laws and customs that are recognised under Australian law. The law was further refined by the Wik decision which recognised that native title could co-exist with pastoral leases though pastoral rights would prevail.

The Noongar people of Perth in Western Australia won another landmark case in September 2006. The Federal Court judge found the Noongar people had proved their claim to more than 6,000 sq km of land in WA including the state capital, Perth. It was the first time a metropolitan area was ruled to belong to indigenous people. Alarmists in the white community expressed concern that public access to urban open spaces and national parks could be at risk. However the Noongar did not claim any freehold or leasehold land and instead are entitled to whatever lands are left over in Perth, which is very little indeed.

The National Native Title Tribunal was set up to examine these claims on an Australia-wide basis. They adjudicate on three types of applications. A claimant application asks for a determination that native title exists in a particular area. A non-claimant application is made by someone who does not claim to have native title but who seeks a determination that native title exists in that area. The third type is compensation application which is made by those seeking compensation for loss or damage to their native title.

The Githabul made a claimant application for their lands on both sides of the state border. They call the rainforest their supermarket. Once the deal is signed, the Githabul will no longer risk being prosecuted and fined for hunting turtles and echidnas in the rainforest. Trevor Close, who led the Githabul claim, said it was lodged because "our boys were sick of being pulled up for doing what they had always done". He continued, "We are all people of the rainforest. It is a supermarket of food."

James Brown’s Body

James Brown was finally laid to rest on Saturday after a three day funeral. Brown, “the Godfather of Soul” died on Christmas Day after contracting pneumonia. He was 73 years old. After lying in state at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre for two days, his body was brought back to Atlanta for a farewell ceremony at the James Brown Arena. Michael Jackson and the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson led a crowd of 8,500 mourners. Michael Jackson told the crowd James Brown was his greatest inspiration and Jesse Jackson said the 25 December death “had upstaged Santa”. Brown was buried privately after the ceremony.

Brown was one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. He was renowned for his screeched vocals, high-energy dancing and unique rhythmic style. His hits, such as "I Got You (I Feel Good)" and "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," inspired generations of soul, funk, disco, rock and rap artists. He was a giant in the Afro-American community for his 1968 song “Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud”, and in the 1970s jazz great Miles Davis cited Brown as a major influence on his style.

James Joseph Brown was born in Barnwell, South Carolina, as an only child in 1933. When he was four, his parents separated and he grew up in the brothel of an aunt in Augusta, Georgia. Brown left school after the seventh grade and did a variety of odd-jobs such as picking cotton, shining shoes, washing cars and dishes and sweeping out stores. At 16, he took part in an armed robbery and was caught breaking into a car. He was sentenced to eight to sixteen years' hard labour. He was transferred to a juvenile work far, after serving a short period in the county jail. He then spent three years in a community home.

While in prison he met Bobby Byrd, who would later be his co-vocalist. Byrd’s family took responsibility for Brown and negotiated his early release. Brown tried his luck at boxing and baseball before turning to music. Byrd was a pianist and gospel singer and he and Brown worked together in the bars and clubs of Toccoa, Georgia. They switched their sound from gospel to rhythm & blues and set up a band called the “Famous Flames.” They became a talented black music revue in which all members had at least to play two instruments as well as sing and dance.

The Famous Flames caught the attention of King Records and, in April 1956, they released the single Please, Please, Please which made the R&B top ten. Brown was now the leader of the band and made himself the centre of attention. The band’s big breakthrough came two years later. Try Me was released in September 1958 and it got to number 58 in the US charts and was a number one in the R&B charts. James Brown was now a star. On 24 October 1962 he made his first appearance at what was to become his signature venue, the Apollo Theatre in Haarlem. Founded in 1913, the Apollo was a burlesque theatre until the 1930s. Under the patronage of Stanley Cohen it opened its doors to New York’s black community showcasing “a coloured review” entitled Jazz a la Carte. It soon became a venue for exclusively black entertainment. This was initially done as a cost-cutting exercise but over the coming years, the Apollo launched the careers of a wealth of black talent such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Sammy Davis, Jr. Brown recorded “Live at the Apollo” here and the album entered the pop charts in 1963.

In 1964 he had three hit singles. His "Live at the Apollo became the first LP in pop history to sell more than a million copies. 1965 saw Brown at the peak of his recording success. "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" and "I Got You (I Feel Good)” were both top ten hits. In the same year, Brown made a successful transition to Hollywood singing I Got You (I Feel Good) in the teen beach genre film “Ski Party” and the concert film “The T.A.M.I Show”. Brown won the Grammy for Best Rhythm & Blues Recording in 1966 for “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”.

James Brown was now seriously rich. He quickly adapted to celebrity lifestyle and bought himself a private jet, a villa, four radio stations, a restaurant chain, a moated castle and a music publishing house. But he kept working on stage too. He legendary ability to perform 300 times a year earned him the title of "the hardest working man in showbiz". His musical influence was truly profound. His gospel-infused vocals and complex polyrhythmic beats transformed R&B into soul. Then with the 1967 recording of “Cold Sweat” he transformed soul into funk. Meanwhile Brown became a political activists and began fighting for the causes of Martin Luther King. In 1969, Look magazine called Brown "the most important black man in America."

The 1970s saw a long, slow decline in Brown’s life and music. The rot started when his accomplished accomplices saxophonists Maceo Parker and Pee Wee Ellis, trombonist Fred Wesley and bassist Bootsy Collins all left to form their own bands. The IRS demanded $4.5 million in back taxes. He was involved in a radio station bribery scandal, his marriage broke up and his son Teddy died in a car accident. Brown was forced to sell many of his assets and resume touring to pay his debts. The age of disco also affected his record sales. Brown had a mini-revival in 1980 with a role in The Blues Brothers but his sales mostly declined throughout the decade that followed despite the success of “Living in America” in 1985.

In 1988, Brown was arrested following a high-speed car chase on an Atlanta interstate highway. Police found the illegal drug phencyclidine (PCP) in his possession and Brown was also charged with threatening pedestrians with a firearm. He was sentenced to six years in prison but was released in 1991 after having only served three. For the remainder of his life, Brown was repeatedly arrested for drug possession and domestic abuse. Nonetheless he continued to record music and performed regularly. In 2004 he contracted prostate cancer but recovered. A year later, he appeared in the Live 8 concert in Edinburgh singing "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" in a duet with British pop star Will Young. In 2006 Brown launched his exhausting "Seven Decades Of Funk” world tour.

In December, Brown was in Atlanta for a routine dental appointment when a new health problem was detected. On 24 December, he was admitted to Atlanta’s Emory Crawford Long Hospital and was treated for "severe pneumonia". On his deathbed he was still planning on playing his usual New Year's Eve show. But he died at 1:45am the following morning. His agent said, the official cause of death was heart failure. His final words were “I’m going away tonight”.

James Brown’s influence vastly outstripped his own success. He had less then ten hit singles and none of them reached number one. But he cast a huge shadow over genres as diverse as R&B, jazz, disco, gospel, soul, rap and African music. The evolution of black music in particular owes him a massive debt. "He was not only the Godfather of Soul, but the Godfather of Funk and Rap," rapper Ice Cube said in a statement. "Music will never be the same."

You eye

Question: what do Lindbergh, Ghandi, Hitler, Stalin, Queen Elizabeth II, Nixon, Ayatollah Khomeini, George W Bush and you all have in common?

Answer: They, and you, have all been named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

Time has been giving the title for the last 50 years to the person who they believe had the greatest impact on the year's events. It aims to pick "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill". You, though you may not have realised, are the current incumbent having been awarded the title in 2006. Time magazine deemed your impact greater than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Chinese leader Hu Jintao and North Korea's Kim Jong-il who were all deemed 2006 runners-up.

You, in Time’s context, are the second person plural that includes everyone on the Internet. More precisely the title recognises the impact of Web 2.0 and the growing online democracy. In Time’s own words, 2006 has been “a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before.” In particular they cited bloggers, podcasters, social networkers and video makers who they described as “millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy”. It also extolled the contribution of such tools as Wikipedia, YouTube and MySpace.

The title dates back to a slow news week at end of 1927. The editors came up with a concept of “Man of the Year” and the initial award was given to Charles Lindbergh in honour of the first solo trans-Atlantic flight earlier that year. Lindbergh was the first real 20th century hero America so desperately needed in the twenties. It was also the chance to remedy the embarrassment of Time’s failure to put him on the magazine cover at the time of the historic flight.

Although the name remained Man of the Year until 1998, several women have received Time’s gong. The Queen was anointed in 1952, the year she acceded to the throne. Before her, a more controversial British royal Wallis Simpson was the first woman to take the award in the abdication year of 1936. Other "non-men" to take the title were the Hungarian Freedom Fighters for the uprising of 1956, US scientists in 1960, “twenty five and under” (what we now call Baby Boomers) in 1966, the “middle Americans” in 1959, “American Women” in 1975 and “the American Soldier” in 2003 (the year of the Iraqi invasion). In 1982 the Man of the Year wasn’t even a person at all, it was “the Computer”.

The title has attracted much controversy over the years. The fact that the impact can be “for better or worse” has seen Hitler, Stalin and the Ayatollah take out the “honour”. Khomeini was named Man of the Year in 1979, the year of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the start of the American embassy hostage crisis. Time received immense criticism in the US for naming Khomeini as Man of the Year. As a result of the backlash, Time has shied away from naming unpopular figures ever since. Although the criteria for the choice is “the individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest effect on the year's news", the magazine editors ignored this in 2001. In the wake of 9/11, they named Rudolph Giuliani as Man of the Year over the more obvious choice of Osama Bin Laden.

2006’s choice has critics divided again. “You” is not universal. According to Internet World Stats internet penetration is far from ubiquitous. Whereas 70% of North Americans are connected, barely 3% have Internet access in Africa. And although there are over one billion people online world-wide, 87% of the world’s population still does not have access.

Optimists hail the social transformation of web 2.0 and the active engagement medium of the Internet. These people hail user-driven content and see it as a portent for the arrival of the “participatory Panopticon”. The panopticon was Jeremy Bentham’s 18th century ideal jail where all prisoners could be constantly observed. But in the world of the participatory panopticon, this constant surveillance is done by the citizens themselves out of choice. The main tool will be high resolution camera phones creating internet moblogs in a form of “sousveillance” (or watching from below).

However others remind us that the panopticon metaphor is a prison model and that those in power will seek to maintain their great advantages in the 21st century. The harshest critics of “You” were the mainstream media who see participatory journalism as amateur interference on their profitable patch.

Romania and Bulgaria join EU

Two new countries joined the EU on New Year’s Day. Bulgaria and Romania brought the total number of EU countries to 27. The countries add a population 30 million to the EU’s existing 460 million, but they will add just 1 per cent to its economic output. Irish PM Bertie Ahern said yesterday’s accession was a "cause for celebration". He continued, "I have every confidence that accession to the Union will be as significant and as positive for Bulgaria and Romania as it has been for Ireland."

Not everyone shares Ahern’s optimism about the EU newest members. Bulgaria and Romania were deemed too politically and economically backward for membership during the EU's first ten-member eastward expansion in 2004. Now almost half of the EU are former eastern bloc countries that were in the shadow of the Soviet Union until 1989. However this likely to be the limit of EU expansion for the foreseeable future. Europe is suffering from “enlargement fatigue". Countries in the queue such as Turkey, Croatia and the southern Balkan countries will have to wait until at least 2010.

No such problems for Romania and Bulgaria. Crowds in Bucharest and Sofia brought in the New Year with street parties and spectacular fireworks to mark their countries new status. Bulgarian President Georgi Purvanov said in a speech in Sofia that 1 January 2007, was the most important date in his country's history. In capital, Bucharest, President Traian Basescu told a cheering crowd packing University Square that Romania has finally arrived in Europe. 80% of Romanians support the accession to the EU.

It will take years for the countries to join the more exclusive club of countries using the euro currency. Of the 2004 expansion countries only Slovenia has achieved the economic stability required to join the euro club. They became the 13th EU country to remove their local currency (the tolar) and implement the euro on 1 January. Malta is likely to be the 14th in 2008.

Several EU states have put restrictions on the number of Romanian and Bulgarian workers, fearing a huge influx. Predictions on how many will come to Britain vary from 56,000 to 180,000 in the first year. Unlike the open door policy of 2004, the British Home Office plans to limit the right to work for Bulgarians and Romanians. Unskilled workers will initially be limited to quota-based schemes in the agricultural and food processing sectors. Skilled workers can get a permit, if they are students, or self-employed. The Conservative opposition said allowing any EU citizen to work in the UK if they were self-employed was a "big loophole".

Romania is the bigger of the new entrants with 21 million inhabitants. Wallachia and Moldavia were provinces of the Ottoman Empire for many centuries before securing independence under the new name of Romania in 1856. It fought on the side of Hitler in World War II. The post-war Soviet occupation led to the formation of a communist "people's republic" in 1947. Nicolae Ceaucescu’s rule was brought to a bloody end in 1989. Surprisingly, the Communists dominated elections ever since. Romania was admitted to NATO in 2004. The current government is a coalition of four parties led by the National Liberal Party.

Bulgaria re-elected its pro-European Socialist President Georgi Parvanov in October 2006. He won with a 75% landslide. Bulgaria has 8 million people and was an Ottoman province like its neighbour. Bulgaria won independence in 1878. It suffered a major defeat in the 1913 Balkans War and its losses were compounded when it entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers. It was also an ally of Hitler and was occupied by the Red Army at the end of World War II. Bulgaria had a peaceful transition to democracy in 1989 but has found the transition to democracy and a market economy difficult after the collapse of communism.

Throughout the first half of the decade that followed, Bulgaria suffered severe political instability and strikes. Matter improved under former king Simeon II, who as prime minister between 2001 and 2005, forced through market reforms to meet EU economic targets. Corruption and organised crime remain issues of concern. Bulgaria will also be looking to the EU to help free five of its nationals imprisoned in Libya. Five Bulgarian nurses, along with a Palestinian doctor, were sentenced to death on December 19 for deliberately infecting 426 children with HIV in 1999. Tripoli claims 50 dead children were injected with HIV in a botched attempt to find a cure for AIDS.

Happy New Year

Woolly Days and offspring brought in the New Year in South Bank parklands along with a crowd of 100,000. We witnessed the explosion of two tonnes of fireworks at in two sessions at 9pm and midnight. It was a pleasantly warm evening, not too humid and crowded with good-humoured revellers. Brisbane police arrested 99 people on 120 charges but said crowds were generally well behaved and the arrest numbers were comparable to a typical Friday night in the city.

On the Gold Coast, more than 50,000 people packed Cavill Mall in Surfer’s Paradise to celebrate the new year. Arrests were low. Local police senior-sergeant Fawcett said “We do not expect any specific drugs problems other than the biggest drug, alcohol,” Meanwhile, the local newspaper the Bulletin felt 2006 was a tough year exemplified by “the loss of celebrities Steve Irwin, Peter Brock and Belinda Emmett”.

Sydney kicked off the new year with the world’s largest fireworks show. One million people crammed the harbour foreshore despite the predicted wind and rain to see a massive fireworks show on the Harbour Bridge. This year’s celebrations marked the 50th anniversary of the magnificent bridge and it was lit up with an illuminated diamond to mark the occasion. Though not everyone was impressed. English backpacker John Johnson said: "It's been raining, there's no sunshine and the surf's rubbish - so it's a bit like England.

Internationally, New Year’s eve was celebrated in similar style. Though there were a few notable exceptions. In Baghdad, 31 December was just another day of violence. At 8:30 am a mortar fell behind a hospital in northern Baghdad at a house killing 2 children and injuring the parents. At 11am a roadside car bomb exploded in Haifa street which killed one and injured 4 others. Another person was killed in a carbomb at midday nd there were two other mortars that caused injuries. Another seven bodies were found in various parts of Baghdad during the day.

In Thailand, the celebrations were cancelled in Bangkok and the northern city of Chiang Mai after six bombs exploded in the capital killing two people and injuring 15 others. The six bombs were set off in a 15 minute span, five in the city and one in nearby Nonthaburi. The bombs were set off in easy targets such as bus stops, rubbish bins and parking lots. Two Thai men died in the blasts. It was unclear who were behind the attacks, but police dismissed any connection with the southern insurgency.

Scotland, the home of Hogmanay, also saw the cancellation of most new year celebrations. But here the cause was nature. Severe weather caused the cancellation of parties in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Stirling. Edinburgh has predicted a crowd of 100,000 for a concert headed by the Pet Shop Boys and Scottish singer /songwriter Paolo Nutini. The decision to cancel was made at 8:30pm local time as the weather forecast deteriorated significantly during the evening. Glasgow's organisers said wind gusts were reaching over 100kph and they could not ensure public safety.

In Berlin, high winds were also a problem but not enough to cause cancellation of the new year’s event. Gale force winds kept the city's emergency services busy on Sunday. Yet one million people thronged the main boulevard heading from the landmark Brandenburg Gate for a night of partying and a spectacular midnight fireworks display. The concert at the Gate was headed by the Scissor Sisters and the Black Eyed Peas.

Many Germans, however, prefer to stay at home on New Year's Eve and take part in one of the day’s more peculiar rituals. On 31 December, every TV station in Germany shows an old and otherwise obscure British 11 minute black-and-white comedy sketch called “Dinner for One” about an aristocrat and her butler. “Dinner for One (the video is available here on youtube) is also known as "The 90th Birthday" or by its corresponding German title “Der 90. Geburtstag”. Though mostly unknown in the English speaking world, it is New Year’s Eve cult viewing in Germany as well as Scandinavia and Switzerland. On New Year's Eve 2003 alone, the sketch was broadcast 19 times on various channels.

The sketch itself has nothing to do with New Year. Instead it tells the story of the 90th birthday of aristocrat Miss Sophie played by May Warden. As in the years before, she hosts a birthday party for her dead friends. Her butler James, played by Freddie Finton, fills in the roles of each of the friends. He gets increasingly drunk as he answers the birthday toasts proposed by Miss Sophie. The catchphrase of the sketch is

James: The same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?
Miss Sophie: The same procedure as every year, James!

Be warned. Repetition of this exchange with someone of German extraction is likely to cause paroxysms of mirth.

There is no accounting for taste. Frohes Neue Jahr!

Saddam buried in Tikrit

In accordance with Muslim tradition, Saddam Hussein was buried within 24 hours of his death in the family plot near Tikrit. A local tribesman told journalists that the burial had taken place at 4am Sunday in a family plot in Awja, the village of Saddam's birth. He was buried next to his sons Uday and Qusay. The family overrode the wishes of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. His spokesman had earlier said the government wanted Saddam to be buried in a secret location to prevent the site becoming a place of pilgrimage.

The new Shia Prime Minister has strengthened his hand in his own community after pushing through the execution of Saddam over the protest of Saddam’s own Sunni constituency and the Kurds who wanted to see him tried for genocide against their peoples. Iraqi TV showed al-Maliki signing the death warrant in red ink on Friday night. Afterwards he said "Saddam's execution puts an end to all the pathetic gambles on a return to dictatorship.”

World opinion is sharply divided over the execution. President Bush said the former Iraqi dictator had received the kind of justice he denied his victims. Iran and Kuwait also welcomed the execution. Britain said Saddam had been "held to account" but reiterated its opposition to the death penalty. But Saudi Arabia, expressed “surprise and dismay” that the hanging was carried out on the day of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha. Russia and the Vatican also expressed anger at the decision.

Some analysts in the West have also expressed suspicion that Saddam’s death was orchestrated by the Americans so that he would be unable to give testimony that might be embarrassing to the US in the ongoing Kurdish trial. Iraqi journalist Cirwan Mostafa warned that his death prior to that trial’s completion would be a “conspiracy woven by powerful parties and maybe the Americans so that Saddam is not sentenced for crimes he committed against the Kurds with the knowledge of the whole the world and the Americans who kept silent at that time."

The sudden execution on the eve of the Eid-al-Adha religious holiday did nothing to help stem the sectarian violence. On the day of his death car bombs killed almost 70 people in Baghdad and Najaf. The bombs exploded in Shia suburbs. In north-west Baghdad, two parked cars exploded in quick succession, killing 37 civilians and wounding 76. Another 31 people died and 58 were hurt when a bomb planted on a minibus exploded in a fish market in Kufa near Najaf. A mob cornered and killed the man who planted that bomb as he walked away from the explosion.

Meanwhile the US military announced the deaths of three Marines and three soldiers, making December the year’s deadliest month for US troops in Iraq with the toll reaching 109. Three marines died on Thursday from wounds suffered in combat in the western Anbar province. Yesterday, one soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in north-west Baghdad and another was killed in Anbar. A sixth was killed by a roadside bomb in south-west Baghdad.

The overall total of US dead since the start of the 2003 invasion is now 2,998. The total number of Iraqi dead in this time is a matter of intense debate. Iraqi Body Count put the figure as between 52,000 and 58,000 however the British medical journal Lancet published an article in October which suggested over 650,000 have died.

Saddam the Martyr?

After denying the possibility for the last three days, Iraq executed its former leader Saddam Hussein early this morning. The Iraqi deputy foreign minister confirmed the news to the BBC. Iraqi TV said the execution took place at 6am local time. The execution took place at the Iraqi-controlled compound known by the Americans as “Camp Justice” in the northern Baghdad suburb of Khadimeya. He died unhooded and carrying a copy of the Koran.

Saddam was sentenced to death in November for the killing of 148 people in the northern Iraqi city of Dujail in 1982. On Tuesday, an Iraqi appeals court upheld the sentence. The court said the former president should be hanged within 30 days. Rumours have since been rife that he would be executed by the weekend. The rumours intensified after a US military office said that Saddam would be hanged before the beginning of the Eid religious holiday which starts on Sunday.

On Thursday Saddam’s lawyers published a letter he wrote after he received the death sentence. In it he stated that his execution is a sacrifice to Iraq, and that his death will lead to martyrdom. "I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if He wants, He will send it to heaven with the martyrs”. He signed the letter as “President and Commander in Chief of the Iraqi Mujahed Armed Forces”.

On Thursday, Saddam's defence lawyers in Jordan issued an unsuccessful last ditch call to Arab governments and the United Nations to intervene to stop the execution. Chief lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said Saddam was a prisoner of war and should not be handed to his enemies according to international law. On the same day, the Vatican condemned the sentence, saying it was wrong to answer crime with another crime.

Speculation increased yesterday after US officials handed Saddam over to Iraqi authorities. US officials stated then he could be hanged as early as Saturday. However the official Iraqi line was that would not happen. A swag of officials issued heated denials. These came from at least two cabinet ministers, the Justice Ministry responsible for executions, a court prosecutor as well as an aide to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. But an Iraqi television channel was closer to the truth when they quoted a judge saying he would die on Friday or Saturday.

Saddam was executed at dawn. An Iraqi official told Associated Press his execution was attended by a Muslim cleric, lawmakers, senior officials and relatives of victims. He was 69 years old and ruled Iraq for 24 years until the US-led invasion in 2003. He was captured in December that year.

As the news filtered through the streets of Baghdad, many people took to the streets in the pre-dawn hours to fire guns in the air in celebration. Many expressed disbelief it had happened and wanted to see proof. However not everyone is happy about his execution, including some of Saddam’s old enemies. Kurdish leaders denounced the timing of the execution as a miscarriage of justice. Saddam was still on trial for atrocities and genocide against the Kurds in northern Iraq between 1987 and 1988. That trial was adjourned until 8 January though the trial of his co-defendants will continue.

Saddam means “stubborn one” in Arabic and he lived up to his name by showing no remorse during his sometimes farcical trial last year. In November a five-judge Iraqi panel announced a unanimous sentence of death for Hussein and two of his seven co-defendants, including Hussein's half brother.

His Baath Party was officially disbanded after the 2003 invasion but some members escaped to Yemen where they issued a warning of retaliation on Wednesday. The Baath Party website issued statement, signed by "the Defence Committee for President Saddam Hussein.” It said "our party warns again of the consequences of executing Mr. President and his comrades," and continued, "the Baath and the resistance are determined to retaliate, with all means and everywhere, to harm America and its interests if it commits this crime.”

Saddam is survived by his wife Sajda in Qatar, and his daughter Raghad who supervised the defence team in Amman.

The Hunt for New Earth

The search for life in the universe began a new phase on Wednesday in Kazakhstan with the launch of Corot, the French space telescope. Corot's role will be to seek and find small rocky planets which have a similar size and composition to that of our own Earth. The European Space Agency (ESA) says that's about as difficult as detecting a candle burning next to a lighthouse from a distance of 1000 kilometres.

Corot is an acronym of “COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits” but the name is also a passing nod to the great French 19th century landscape painter Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot. The spacecraft’s mission will be to look for rocky worlds about twice the size of Earth that lie in what space scientists call habitable zones. These are the regions of space in each solar system where heat from the nearest star is neither too hot nor too cold to sustain liquid water which scientists consider the holy grail for sustaining life. Any planets found by Corot will be studied intensely by future missions scheduled for the next decade. Scientists are hoping to gain a better understanding how planets form and how common other earth-like planets may be.

The study of planets outside our solar system began in 1995 when Swiss astronomer Michel Mayor discovered 51 Pegasi b, a gassy giant that orbits the star 51 Pegasi in the Pegasus constellation. Pegasi’s discovery opened the floodgates. In the last 12 years astronomers have found over 200 “exo-planets” which are all gas giants similar to Jupiter. However the problem with all of these planets is that they have no surface and are therefore incapable of supporting life. Small planets are too difficult to detect from Earth due to our atmosphere which blurs the picture. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched to gain clearer pictures of outer space. But Hubble’s mission is to search for stars in deep space not to look for tiny planets in our immediate neighbourhood. Hence Corot.

The Corot space telescope project is led by CNES (Centre National d'Études Spatiales - the French Space Agency) in conjunction with several European partners and Brazil. The spacecraft is equipped with a 27 cm diameter afocal telescope and a camera sensitive to tiny variations of the light intensity from stars. A Russian rocket lifted the satellite into a circular polar orbit with an altitude of 827 km where it will stay for the next two and half years. It will observe perpendicular to its orbital plane, meaning there will be no Earth eclipse (properly called an “occultation”), allowing 150 days of continuous observation. Beyond 150 days, the Sun's rays can interfere with the results.

Corot will focus on two parts of the universe which are relatively close to Earth. The first is the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way; the other is the constellation Orion. Like Hubble, it will measure how much light comes from a star. Corot will be hoping to spot a small eclipse that would indicate a planet crossing in front of the star. So Corot will only be able to indirectly detect the presence of a planet. But it is an important stepping stone in the effort to find habitable, Earth-like planets around other stars.

To verify light variation from a star found by Corot, we will have to wait until Project Darwin, the ESA most ambitious long-term adventure. Darwin is scheduled to launch in 2015 and will comprise of at least four separate components. There will be three, or possibly more, space telescopes, each at least 3 metres in diameter, and another spacecraft will serve as a communications hub. The multiple crafts will be placed in an orbit about 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth. Darwin will require telescope of roughly 30 metres in size and this is way beyond the current limits of technology. By comparison Hubble is barely 2.3 metres. Scientists are using a technique known as interferometry first developed in the 1950s. Inferometry uses a number of smaller telescopes and combines their individual signals to mimic a much larger telescope. The technique will be applied to the infrared telescope to be used by Darwin. It will have a second benefit in that it will cut out the blinding light from the nearby star.

NASA is also planning a mission similar to Darwin. Called the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) it plans to study all aspects of planets outside the solar system. There is no planned launch date at this time and NASA may well decide to combine this project with Darwin. As the 2001 review which recommended the TPF said “"The discovery of life on another planet is potentially one of the most important scientific advances of this century, let alone this decade, and it would have enormous philosophical implications.”

Corot is the first small step to this discovery.

Ford stops farting and chewing gum

The oldest ever US president is dead. Gerald Ford died aged 93 on 26 December and his longevity was one of many records Ford held. He is the only Michigan president, the only Eagle Scout and the only one never to be elected. He was truly an accident of history as he wasn’t even elected vice president.

Ford was born Leslie Lynch King Jr in 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska. His parents split up due to his father’s drinking problem when young Leslie was just two weeks old. His mother Dorothy Ayer Gardner returned to her home town of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Three years later, she married paint salesman Gerald Rudolff Ford. Afterwards, she began calling her son Gerald Rudolff Ford, Jr. When he was 12 or 13, Ford's parents told him he was adopted. He was not aware of the identity of his biological father until aged 15 and only met him twice thereafter. Ford attended Grand Rapids South High School and was a star athlete and captain of the gridiron team. Both the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers offered him a professional contract which he rejected in favour of law. He also earned money as a model and appeared in "Look" magazine and on the cover of "Cosmopolitan".

Ford graduated from Yale in 1941 with a law degree and was admitted to the Michigan bar. He enlisted in the Navy after Pearl Harbour and rose to lieutenant commander. He saw action in the recapture of the Gilbert Islands, New Guinea and Leyte before getting a assignment to coach army football in California. After the war he returned to Grand Rapids and practised law. He married department store fashion consultant Elizabeth Bloomer Warren in 1948 and became active in Republican Party politics. He took on and defeated the incumbent congressman that same year. He would hold the Grand Rapids congressional district seat from 1949 to 1973.

Ford’s war experiences made him an internationalist. He quickly became a prominent member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. He was appointed Minority Leader of the House in 1963 and one of seven appointees to the Warren Commission to investigate Kennedy’s death later that year. Despite helping doctor the eventual report to support the Single Gun Theory, Ford never got on with President Johnson. Ford criticised his big government spending and his handling of the Vietnam War. Johnson didn't think much of Ford either and famously said of him “he can't fart and chew gum at the same time.”

Ford’s career took a new trajectory in 1973. When Vice-President Spiro Agnew was charged with tax evasion and forced to resign. Nixon used the 25th amendment to nominate Ford as his replacement. He was confirmed by a majority vote of both Houses. As VP, Ford kept out of the limelight while Watergate grew. In August 1974, the Supreme Court ordered a tape to be released that revealed Nixon’s involvement in the burglary and the game was up. Nixon resigned on 9 August and Ford was sworn in as president. Immediately after taking the oath of office, Ford addressed the nation saying “I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers”.

His first major act was an unconditional pardon for Nixon. Ford said it was "an American tragedy in which we all have played a part.” While the decision ended the spectacle of an ex-president going to trial, it effectively ended Ford’s re-election chances. Ford announced the pardon on a Sunday morning in a vain attempt to minimise the initial political fallout. Critics said it was part of a deal that brought Ford to the White House. The midterm elections that followed gave the Democrats handsome wins in the House and Senate.

Domestically Ford presided over an economic recession. To fight inflation, the new president proposed fiscal restraints and spending curbs and a 5 percent tax surcharge that was soundly rejected by congress. Meanwhile New York city almost went bankrupt and Ford refused to it bail. The Daily News printed the headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” Under pressure, Ford eventually signed a $2.3 billion emergency loan guarantee.

Despite his internationalism, his foreign policy was ordinary. On 25 April 1975, Ford watched the news to see helicopters evacuating the last personnel from the rooftop of the Saigon embassy. He gave the green light to Indonesian president Suharto to take over the old Portuguese colony of Timor. He was also culpable for the Mayagüez incident when the newly installed Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia seized a US merchant ship and 41 US marines were killed in a botched rescue mission. Ford’s one success was the creation of the Helsinki Accords with the Soviet Union which eventually led to the creation of the NGO that became Human Rights Watch.

President Ford survived two female assassination attempts in three weeks. In September 1975 Charles Manson acoylte Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, stepped out from a crowd and pointed a loaded gun at Ford’s back from almost point blank distance as the president walked towards the capitol. Fromme was foiled by a secret service agent who grabbed the gun before she could fire and she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Just 17 days later another revolutionary, Sarah Jane Moore shot at Ford in San Francisco. The bullet missed its target but struck a bystander. She too was sentenced to life.

By the 1976 election Ford was a lame duck president. He narrowly survived a Republican challenge from Ronald Reagan who criticised him for his Vietnam failures and his signature of the Helsinki Accords. Ford’s propensity for accidents made him the subject of media caricature. After Georgia governor Jimmy Carter won the Democrat nomination, Ford almost overturned a 34 percent deficit in the opinion polls, but narrowly lost the electoral college by 297 votes to 240.

Ford quickly disappeared into history. In 1977, he established the Gerald R. Ford Institute for Public Policy and Service at Albion College in Michigan. Reagan almost made him his vice-president candidate in 1980 but baulked at Ford’s condition of a “co-presidency”. Wife Betty eclipsed him in fame with her battles with alcoholism. Gerald Ford eventually died this week of heart failure at his home in California. Betty and their sons were at his bedside. She issued a brief statement on his death “My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age. His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."

Bundy days

Woolly Days is just back from spending Christmas in Bundaberg about 370km north of Brisbane. Bundaberg is most well known to the rest of Australia for its eponymous dark rum. Both the town and rum are affectionately known as “Bundy”. The 50,000 population city marks the southern boundary of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and of the Central Queensland region. The name Bundaberg is possibly the only placename in Australia which is a combination of Aboriginal and European words. “Bunda” is the name of a local Aboriginal tribe and Burg is the old Saxon word for town.

Bundaberg lays good claims to have the best climate in Australia. Its Winters are mild due to its subtropical latitude and the Summer heat is tempered by cool sea breezes. Bundaberg lies on the wide reach of the Burnett River. The river is the lifeblood of the city and fuels the sugar cane industry which is Bundaberg’s economic pulse. The first settlers to the area were timber-growers. The brothers John and Gavin Steuart camped on a site later occupied by North Bundaberg Railway Station in 1867. A year later Samuel Johnston erected a sawmill on the river downstream from the Steuart holding. Surveyor J C Thompson surveyed, laid out and named Bundaberg in 1870. Timber supply quickly ran short and a nascent corn industry was ravaged by disease. Finally experimental sugarcane growing followed and a sugar industry slowly emerged. The sugar plantations owners relied on Kanaka labour. And Bundy grew on its blackbirding profits. Bundaberg was gazetted a town during 1902 and a city in 1913.


Bundaberg’s most famous son is aviator Bert Hinkler. He was born in Bundaberg in 1892. He found his vocation by watching ibis flying in a local lagoon. He designed his first glider by watching the birds’ wings and tail. He practised flying his gliders at nearby Mon Repos Beach. When he was 18 he worked for a New Zealand aviator named 'Wizard' Stone for three years. Then he moved to England where he got a job as a mechanic. Within 12 months World War I broke out and he got a job as a pilot in the RAF. After the war he became a test pilot and started making his record breaking solo flights. He is most remembered the first solo flight from England to Australia in 1928. The journey took him a record 16 days in a single-engined Avro Avian. He broke the previous record by 12 days. He arrived in Darwin to a hero's welcome. 1,500 people were on to cheer him when he returned to his home town. Hinkler died 5 years later when he crashed crossing the Italian Alps.

Mon Repos beach is not just the home of Hinkler’s test gliders. The beach has the largest concentration of nesting marine turtles on the eastern Australian mainland. From November to March, the turtles nest and hatch on the beach each night. About eight weeks later young turtles emerge from the eggs and begin their journey to the sea. Appropriately, Mon Repos means “my rest” in French. The French government used the area between 1890 and 1925 as the launching pad for the telegraph cable from Australia to the French colony of New Caledonia.

But for Australians it is Bundy Rum that the town is most famous. It is Australia's only well known, locally produced spirit. In 1888 a group of sugar millers started to produce the rum using the molasses that was a by-product of sugar refinement. They joined forces to form the Bundaberg Distilling Company. Its fame was guaranteed barely 12 year later by the Boer War when the army requested the entire production of Bundaberg rum be sent as rations for Australian troops. Production was halted for 7 years following a devastating fire in 1907 but was resumed in time to supply the troops again in World War I. Fire destroyed the business again in 1936 but Bundy Rum rose again from the ashes in time for another war: this time World War II. When American soldiers came to Australia, they started mixing the rum with Cola. The distillery saw an opportunity and came up with the first ‘ready to drink’ – Bundy and Cola. With the Aussie habit of shortening, it became Bundy and Coke.

Bundy rum brought in the Polar Bear mascot in 1961. Despite the oddness of a cold symbol for a sub-tropical drink, the warmth implied by the Bundy Bear helped sales soar in Australia's cooler but more lucrative southern states. Its popularity attracted international attention. Bundaberg Rum announced the 21st century by being bought out by multi-national Diageo who also market major brands such as Guinness, Johnnie Walker and Smirnoff.