I find this rather disturbing that these laws get introduced for the Popes visit, yet these laws do not apply to any other leader, religious or secular. I also think this is a violation of free speach. Can they not stand up to a bit of critisism?

Full article below.

Security has been heightened in Sydney for the arrival of the pope at World Youth Day later this month

New regulations give police and emergency services workers the power to order anyone to stop behavior that “causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event,” according to a New South Wales state government gazette. Anyone who does not comply faces a $5,300 fine.

The laws will apply in dozens of areas of downtown Sydney — including the city’s landmark opera house, train stations and city parks — that are designated venues for World Youth Day, a Catholic evangelical festival at which Pope Benedict XVI will conduct mass and lead prayer meetings when he visits.

Violators can face a fine of over $5,000 under the regulations, which critics are calling a heavy-handed blow to free speech.

Nearly 200,000 pilgrims have registered to take part in the July 15-20 World Youth Day festival, and organizers say more are expected before the event starts.

Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said the new regulations were similar to those that police already have at sporting arenas, but were being extended to World Youth Day sites to boost security among the large crowds expected.

“These are powers to stop people taking things in… like a paint bomb,” Scipione said.

Anna Katzman, the president of the New South Wales Bar Association, which represents almost 3,000 lawyers in the state, said making someone’s inconvenience the basis of a criminal offense was “unnecessary and repugnant.”

“If I was to wear a T-shirt proclaiming that ‘World Youth Day is a waste of public money’ and refuse to remove it when an officer… asks me to, I would commit a criminal offense,” Katzman said. “How ridiculous is that?”

Lee Rhiannon, a state lawmaker with the left-leaning Greens party, said the definition of what was annoying was open to interpretation and the penalties in the new regulations were too severe.

Scipione’s deputy, Dave Owens, said officers would act reasonably when deciding what is offensive, including clothing.

“Police officers do it every day of the week,” Owens told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. “We’re not the fashion police, we’re not killjoys.”

State Premier Morris Iemma, whose government is paying part of the costs of World Youth Day, defended the regulations, saying they would not be used to put down dissent.

“People have the right to protest; they can do so … peacefully and lawfully,” Iemma said.

The pope will arrive July 12 and spend more than a week in Sydney, first taking a break and then leading a series of prayer gatherings and meetings with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and other officials at a cathedral and other venues downtown. He will also take a boat trip on Sydney Harbor.

The event will be capped by a papal mass at a racetrack in the city on July 20.

Parts of Sydney will be shut down for World Youth Day events, including a re-enactment of the 12 stations of the cross in various parts of the city, a walking pilgrimage by tens of thousands of participants across the Sydney Harbor Bridge and a papal motorcade through the city.

World Youth Day spokesman Father Mark Podesta said the church had not sought the increased powers for police during the event.

A World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) report this week recommended meats such as salami, ham, bacon and sausages be avoided in a bid to cut the risk of developing the disease.

The study said the risk of colorectal cancer increased by 21 per cent for every 50 grams of processed meat eaten per day.

Fresh red meat also came under fire, with report authors recommending consumption be limited to 500g per week.

The study found fresh red meat and preserved meats were “onvincing or probable causes of some cancers” especially colorectal cancer.

But the findings angered some.

Next to a picture of a bacon sandwich - known in Britain as a buttie - British tabloid The Sun ran the front-page headline: “ave our bacon: Storm as butties branded killers”.

The paper said celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson had dismissed the research as “just another scare”.

“If they have their way we’ll all turn into vegetarians,” he was quoted as saying.

The Daily Mail asked on its front page: “So what IS safe to eat?”

“As the public wondered what exactly is safe to eat, there was a growing medical and food industry backlash against the study,” the paper said.

British cancer specialist Karol Sikora said consuming alcohol, red meat and bacon in moderation would do “no harm”.

Chris Lamb, from Britain’s Meat and Livestock Commission (MLC), was critical of the study’s use of the word “avoid” when it came to processed meats.

“The way in which WCRF have gone about it as far a processed meat is concerned is so extreme that people are just going: ‘come on!’” Mr Lamb said.

“If they’d been more moderate, and said, ‘reduce, cut down’ whatever, people would have said: ‘maybe I’ll give this some thought’.

“(Now) they’re probably going to engage more of a typical British, stoic reaction and say: ‘we’re going to get on with it’.”

Mr Lamb said the MLC stood by its advice of many years to eat and enjoy lean red meat as part of a balanced diet.

Obesity, smoking and alcohol were at the top of the report’s list of cancer risk factors.

Ever wondered what it would be like to be locked in a lift for 41 hours? A video posted up on YouTube shows the time lapsed footage of a man trapped in a New York lift for 41 hours in October, 1999. The man, Mr White ended up suing the building manager and lift maintenance company and won an undisclosed amount of money.

“This number is supposed to be the mark of the Devil. It looks as though God or the Devil have been moving in mysterious ways,” said Liberal Democrat lawmaker Bob Russell, who is among those proposing the motion for debate.

“What is even stranger is that this motion was tabled last night when MPs were debating blasphemy,” he said.

The motion calls for an end to the formal link between Church and State in England - embodied in the monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, who is both head of state and head of the Church of England.

The number 666 is referred to in the Book of Revelations in the Bible: “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred, three score and six.”

“It is is incredible that a motion like this should have, by chance, acquired this significant number,” Mr Russell said.

The motion by backbenchers - lawmakers who have no particular frontline role in government or opposition - has little chance of actually being debated in the mother of parliaments.

An Andergrove property owner heard a noise and found the two-year-old and the dogs on the embankment of her dam about 11am (AEST), police said.

The boy was covered in mud, had marks on his upper arms, and there were drag marks from his body in the mud, consistent with the dogs pulling him from the water.

Police said the boy had wandered from his home and his dogs, a rottweiler-cross and a Staffordshire terrier, had followed.

The child was taken to Mackay Base Hospital for a precautionary examination.

These foods are rich in compounds called isothiocyanates, which are known to lower cancer risk.
The effects were most striking in non-smokers, the researchers told a meeting this week of the American Association of Cancer Research in Philadelphia.
Compared to smokers who ate fewer than three servings of raw cruciferous vegetables, non-smokers who ate at least three servings a month were almost 73 per cent less likely to be in the bladder cancer group, they found.
Among both smokers and non-smokers, those who ate this minimal amount of raw veggies had a 40 per cent lower risk. But the team did not find the same effect for cooked vegetables.
“Cooking can reduce 60 to 90 per cent of ITCs, (isothiocyanates),” Dr Li Tang, who led the study, said.
A second team of researchers from Roswell Park tested broccoli sprouts in rats.
They used rats engineered to develop bladder cancer and fed some of them a freeze-dried extract of broccoli sprouts. The more they ate, the less likely they were to develop bladder cancer, said Dr Yuesheng Zhang, who led the research.
They found the compounds were processed and excreted within 12 hours of feeding. That suggests the idea that compounds are protecting the bladder from the inside, Dr Zhang said.
“The bladder is like a storage bag, and cancers in the bladder occur almost entirely along the inner surface, the epithelium, that faces the urine, presumably because this tissue is assaulted all the time by noxious materials in the urine,” Dr Zhang said.
In a third study, a team at The Ohio State University fed black raspberries to patients with Barrett’s esophagus, a condition that can lead to esophageal cancer.
Black raspberries, sometimes called blackberries or blackcaps, are also rich in cancer-fighting compounds.
Ohio State’s Laura Kresty and colleagues fed 32 grams of freeze-dried black raspberries to women with Barrett’s esophagus and 45 grams to men every day for six months.
They measured urine levels of levels of two compounds - 8-isoprostane and GSTpi - that indicate whether cancer-causing processes are going on in the body.
Kresty said 58 per cent of patients had marked declines of 8-isoprostane levels, suggesting less damage, and 37 per cent had higher levels of GSTpi, which can help interfere with cancer causing damage and which is usually low in patients with Barrett’s.

2. Micro-managing people
Good interpersonal skills are necessary to bring out the best in people. But certain attitudes can get in the way.
Micro-managing rather than leading people is a major fault.
Entrepreneurs can fall into the trap of getting their hands too dirty, trying to fix everything and overseeing almost all areas of responsibility, rather that delegating responsibilities.
As a consequence, leader effectiveness and delivering on a strategy is compromised.
3. Limited communication skills
Leadership involves communicating a vision and strategy to staff. Ineffective communication and poor listening skills hinder this process.
Managers often devote little time for small talk, along with those behaviours necessary for building and sometime sustaining interrelationships with employees.
4. Not paying enough attention to detail

Related to the problems associated with micro-managing and over-extending oneself is the tendency to push too hard in one area to the detriment of another.
As a result, bosses fail to follow-up on important decisions and fail to develop coherent organisational strategies that take key elements into account. 
5. Poor time management

Getting caught up in day-to-day firefighting, rather than delegating, prevents prioritising and negates spending valuable time with staff in order to build relationships and pass on knowledge through mentoring and coaching.
6. Not recruiting the best
When it comes to the most desirable employees, CEOs emphasise qualities of culture fit, versatility, an ability to hit the ground running, a desire to learn and to think, enthusiasm, drive, and problem-solving skills.
These desired characteristics reflect those of the CEO and can get in the way of recruiting the best people with the necessary technical capabilities.
7. Having personal gremlins

Everyone has his or her own personal gremlins. Entrepreneurs single out psychological issues to do with self-esteem, anxiety and depression as the most common.
A number of personality characteristics, including stubbornness, and being impatient and egotistical - assets in some circumstances but liabilities in others - can further complicate the picture.
8. Emotional decision making

Allowing emotions to creep into decision-making processes can be problematic, often leading to the heart ruling rather than what is best.
Moreover, because entrepreneurs want to make practically all the decisions, consulting with others is regarded as a hassle.
9. Festering over-exuberance
Entrepreneurs can be over-the-top - extremely passionate about their business, staff, and customers.
They can be highly committed to almost everything they do, working too hard, being over confident, and taking on too much.
As a result leaders can fail to treat themselves kindly and compassionately.
10. Not firing fast enough
Entrepreneurs identify with being compassionate and can be too soft, particularly when it comes to dealing with under-performing staff. They have difficulties firing quickly.
Compounding this problem is a false belief that they can make everyone in the business a strong contributor even when the personal fit is poor or staff are not up to it.
Empowering people beyond their capabilities is another fault.
- Professor Kosmas X Smyrnios is director of research in the School of Management, RMIT University.

Footage of yesterday?s incident at the University of Florida has appeared on YouTube and has already attracted more than 66,000 views.

In the clips, a young man asks Senator Kerry why he didn?t dispute the results of the 2004 election, while four uniformed officers stand behind him.

After he asked Senator Kerry if was a member of the same secret society as US President George W. Bush, who won the election, the officers tried to remove him.

He was then dragged towards the back of the lecture hall before being held to the ground and hit with the Taser.

According to the Associated Press, 21-year-old Andrew Meyer was charged with resisting police and disturbing the peace.

18-year-old Matej Kus was out cold for 45 minutes after the crash, but when he woke up he conversed fluidly in English with paramedics, even speaking in an English accent.

The teenager had just begun to study the language and his skills were described by friends and team-mates as “basic at best”.

Peter Waite, the promoter for Kus’s team, the Berwick Bandits, told the Daily Mail: “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“It was in a really clear English accent, no dialect or anything. Whatever happened in the crash must have rearranged things in his head.

“Before his crash Matej’s use of the English language was broken, to put it mildly.

“He was only just making a start on improving it and struggled to be understood, but was keen to learn.

“Yet here we were at the ambulance door listening to Matej talking to the medical staff in perfect English.

“Matej didn’t have a clue who or where he was when he came round. He didn’t even know he was Czech.

“It was unbelievable to hear him talk in unbroken English.”

Unfortunately, the speedway driver’s new found skills didn’t last and he remembers nothing of the accident or the following two days. He is now keen pursue studies in English.

He told the Daily Mail, through an interpreter: “It’s unbelievable that I was speaking English like that, especially without an accent.

“Hopefully I can pick English up over the winter for the start of next season so I’ll be able to speak it without someone having to hit me over the head first.

“There must be plenty of the English language in my subconscious so hopefully I’ll be able to pick it up quickly next time.”

According to the study, performed by the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, just minutes of the radiation exposure caused from cell phones can spark the cell division problems that lead to cancerous tumors.
The study exposed human cells to radiation of 875 megahertz, slightly less than the level most handsets emit.  Within 10 minutes, say researchers, the chemical signal indicative of tumor development process was active.

Though numerous studies have found actual links to cell phone use and brain tumors, the same connection has yet to be made to tumors that actually evolve into cancer.  There is also no concrete evidence to suggest that the actual mobile signals in and of themselves cause long-term health risks.
The Weizmann Institute is one of the most distinguished of its kind in the Middle East.  The cell phone study was not corporately sponsored but the institute has previously received money from Celera, a medical research company with some focus on diagnosing and treating cancer, as well as creating technologies that can pro-actively prevent the causes of cancer.