Sydney, May 24, 2010

Australia expels Israeli diplomat over passport fakery

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith. File photo: AP.

Related News

U.K. to expel Israeli diplomat over Dubai assassination Dubai police refute charges Evidence links assassins to Mossad: Dubai Police Israel claims two West Bank sites on its heritage list Israeli PM authorised Mossad to kill Hamas leader: report

The Australian government said on Monday that it was expelling an Israeli diplomat after accusing Israel of using fake Australian passports in the assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai.

“This is not what we expect from a nation with whom we have had such a close, friendly and supportive relationship,” Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said, when giving the Israeli embassy in Canberra one week to send an unnamed diplomat home.

Mr. Smith said forged Australian passports were used in the assassination of Mahmoud al—Mabhouh in February.

“The high quality of these counterfeited passports points to involvement of a state intelligence service,” he said. “These investigations and advice have left the Australian government in no doubt that Israel was responsible for the abuse and counterfeiting of these passports.” The opposition Liberal Party described the expulsion as “an over—reaction.” Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia—Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, described the decision “unhelpful” and out of step with other countries affected by the counterfeiting.

“We would note in this regard that, while Australia followed a British precedent in its over—reaction, no similar step has been taken by Ireland, France or Germany, all of whom also allegedly had forged passports implicated in the killing,” he said.

Antony Loewenstein, an author and frequent critic of Israeli policies, condemned the Jewish community in Australia for not condemning what he called Israel’s flouting of international law.

“The way Israel behaves in Dubai, and indeed in many other parts of the world, is often to ignore local and international law, and expect the western world to support it and back it,” Mr. Loewenstein said. “Australia has long been treated like fools by Israel, and has often been more than happy to be seen as a fool, in many ways.”

Source: http://beta.thehindu.com/

Migrants with IT skills better off under changes to visa entry system

Applicant IT skills requirements shrink from 14 specific skills to 5 generic areas including developers, programmers, software engineers, business and systems analysts

• Julia Talevski (ARN)
• 20 May, 2010 17:18

Industry bodies have praised changes to the visa system which will allow more migrants with IT skills to move to Australia.

Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, said the changes, which are part of the new skilled occupations list, would allow industries to get the skilled workers they need.

Instead of basing an applicant’s skills on 14 specific computer occupations, the new list has job titles which are more generic. They include developers, programmers, software engineers, business and systems analysts. The changes are expected to be introduced in July.

“We intend to fundamentally change the way we target skilled migrants to restore integrity to the skilled migration program,” Senator Evans said.

Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) chairman, Ian Birks, said the Immigration Department had looked to greatly simplify the job codes on the old occupations in demand list which the skilled occupation list replaces.

“The key difference is previously they were being very specific, where they tended to say things like SAP specialist, whereas now they’re more generic,” he said. “It provides increased flexibility because it allows people looking to migrate and our members who are looking to hire people, to see them as more general skills-based rather than specific categories.”

“It’s not a major change in terms of the numbers of people that will come through the industry, but it means that we have an ability to characterise what we need in general terms.”

Birks said the IT industry was a major user of migration programs and it will help to depress the skills shortage.

Australian Computer Society (ACS) CEO, Bruce Lakin said it would be helpful to encourage some migration from international workers under the skilled categories to help expand the workforce.

“It’s a more efficient approach, they’re not looking at the immediate shortages today but what we require over the next three years,” Lakin said. “Strategically, that’s a good thing.”

Lakin was concerned about the 457 visa, which he said only satisfied the needs of particular sponsors. It was questionable over what it had done to advance the overall IT industry.

“One weakness of that [457 visa] is the judgement on what value those workers bring to the Australian economy,” he said. “Whereas the Skills List Occupation approach is an independent assessment of the skills based on industry-wide rather than sponsor specific requirements, arguably there’s a greater certainty of those skills being what the economy requires.”

Source: http://www.arnnet.com.au/

Space Satellite Camera Views

Niagra Fall The image shows the Niagara River that connects Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, snaking around Goat Island, in the lower left of the full image. Most of the river's water plummets over the Canadian/Horseshoe Falls, but some diverted water spills over American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls downstream. Every second, more than two million liters of water plunges over the Horsehoe Falls segment of Niagara Falls creating one of the world's largest waterfalls as well as eating away as much as two meters of rock per year. The image was acquired August 2, 2004


Tsunami strikes the coast of Sri Lanka
This is a natural color, 60-centimeter (2-foot) high-resolution QuickBird satellite image featuring the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka. Imagery was collected on December 26, 2004 at 10:20 a.m. local time, slightly less than four hours after the 6:28 a.m. (local Sri Lanka time) earthquake and shortly after the moment of tsunami impact.


Ground Zero, New York City
This one-meter resolution satellite image of Manhattan, New York was collected at 11:43 a.m. EDT on Sept. 12, 2001 by Space Imaging's IKONOS satellite. The image shows an area of white and gray-colored dust and smoke at the location where the 1,350-foot towers of the World Trade Center once stood. Since all airplanes were grounded over the U.S. after the attack, IKONOS ! was the only commercial high-resolution camera that could take an overhead image at the time.


Grand Canyon
Northern Arizona and the Grand Canyon are captured in this pair of Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) images from December 31, 2000. The above image is a true color view from the nadir (vertical) camera. In addition to the Grand Canyon itself, which is visible in the western (lower) half of the images, other landmarks include Lake Powell, on the left, and Humphreys Peak and Sunset Crater National Monument on the right. Meteor Crater appears as a small dark depression with a brighter rim, and is just visible along the upper right-hand edge.

Malosmadulu Atolls, Maldives
North and South Malosmadulu Atolls are in the Maldives, an island republic in the northern Indian Ocean, southwest of India. The Maldives are made up of a chain! of 1,192 small coral islands, which are grouped into clusters of atolls.. It has a total area of 298 square kilometers and a population of about 330,000. The capital and largest city is Male, with a population of about 80,000. Arguably the lowest-lying country in the world, the average elevation is just 1 meter above sea level. The natural-color ASTER image of the Malosmadulu Atolls was acquired on December 22, 2002, and is centered near 5.3 degrees North latitude, 73.9 degrees West longitude.


Ayers Rock (Uluru), Australia
This IKONOS satellite image of Ayers Rock was collected Jan. 17, 2004. Ayers Rock is located in Kata Tjuta National Park, 280 miles (450km) southwest of Alice Springs, Australia. It is the world's largest monolith, an Aboriginal sacred site and Australia's most famous natural landmark.

Noah's Ark Site?
Is it or isn't it? Satellite images of Mt. Ararat, Turkey have pointed to a possible sighting of Noah's Ark. Decide for yourself! Compare this image taken by Digital Globe on September 10, 2003 with Shamrock -- The Trinity Corporation's image (enlarge). Also, note their image is flipped.

The Nile River
This image of the northern portion of the Nile River was captured by the Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer's (MISR's) nadir camera on January 30, 2001. Against the barren desert of northeastern Africa, the fertile valley of the Nile River runs northward through Egypt. The city of Cairo can be seen as a gray smudge right where the river widens into its broad fan-shaped delta. Other cities are dotted across the green landscape, giving it a speckled appearance. Where the Nile empties into the Mediterranean Sea (top) the waters are swirling with color, likely a mixture of sediment, organic matter, and possibly marine plant life. Farther west! , the bright blue color of the water is likely less-organically rich sediment, perhaps sand.


Earth's City Lights
This image of Earth's city lights, captured on October 19, 2000, was created with data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS). The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populated. Cities tend to grow along coastlines and transportation networks. The United States interstate highway system appears as a lattice connecting the brighter dots of city centers. In Russia, the Trans-Siberian railroad is a thin line stretching from Moscow through the center of Asia to Vladivostok. The Nile River, from the Aswan Dam to the Mediterranean Sea, is another bright thread through an otherwise dark region.

Mount St. Helens, Washington
On a Space Station expedition, astronauts observed and captured this detailed image of the volcano's summit caldera. In the center of the crater sits a lava dome that is 876 feet above the crater floor and is about 3,500 feet in diameter. The dome began to form after the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens. After the eruption, there was not any dome building eruptions for more than a decade. Afternoon lighting accents the flow features in the volcanic and debris flows and the steep valleys eroded into the loosely consolidated material near the summit. This picture was taken on October 25, 2002

The Great Pyramid, Giza, Egypt