NEWSPAPER ARTICLES THAT I FIND INTERESTING

FRANCE GOES HEAD TO HEAD WITH MUSLIMS WEARING FULL-FACE VEILS
France has officially banned women from wearing full-face veils in public places, with a controvesial new law coming into effect today.
Other European countries have drawn up bans on the burqa and niqab but France - home to Europe's biggest Muslim population - is the first to risk stirring social tensions by putting a law into practice. France officials estimated only about 2000 women, from a total Muslim population estimated at between four and six million, wear full-face veils.
At the weekend, French police arrested 59 people, including 19 veiled women, at a protest against the law in Paris, while two more women were detained as they attempted to travel to the rally from the UK and Belgium. Critics worry the law may be hard to enforce. It was drawn up without reference to religion, bans any kind if face covering in public and police will not be allowed to remove head coverings. Anyone refusing to lift his or her veil to submit to an identity check can be taken to a police station. There, officers must try to persuade the wearer to remove the garment, and can threaten fines. A woman who repeatedly insists on appearing veiled in public can be fined 150 pounds ($205) and ordered to attend re-education classes. There are more severe penalties for anyone found guilty of forcing someone else to hide their face 'through threats', violence, consultant, abuse of authority or power for reason of their gender. Aimed at fathers, husbands or religious leaders who force women to wear veils, the law imposes a fine of 30,000 pounds ($42,000) and a year in jail.
Daily Telegraph (Sydney Australia) 12/4/2011. Dave Clark in Paris.

SIDESHOW FOLK SPICE UP THE FAIR  (HISTORY PAGE)
Thursday Telegraph 14th April 2011: By Donnelly.
Over the next two weeks, about 50,000 children will ride painted ponnies around a steam-operated merry-go-round, joining a tradition dating to official approval of sideshow entertainment at the Royal Easter Show in 1920.
 After an suspension in 1919 as Sydney battled a Spanish influenza outbreak, the Royal Agricultural Society decided 1920 should offer show crowds a variety of amusements.
The RAS approved a sideshow alley offering such attractions as the World's Tallest Man, and extra rides to join an exiting wooden helter-skelter spiral side and the razzle-dazzle, where men pushed up to 80 people around a central pole as their seats spun and oscillated like an ocean wave. Until 1898 the Royal Easter Show - simply "The Show" from its inception in 1823 until 1891 when Queen Victoria gave permission to add agricultural fair to display and encourage advances in crop and livestock breeding. A wood-chop event added in 1899 provided entertainment along with a display of skills. Mechanical displays and simple fairground rides were added in the early 1900s. By 1909, show attractions included the petrol driven Horse-O-Plane, as well as tent shows with the handcuff king, marvellous gaintess, funniest man on earth, sword swallowers and lady boxers.
The RAS found the carnival atmosphere increased the show's popularity. Its formal acceptance of a sideshow alley in 1920 set the ground for entertainment to rival the supremacy of agricultural exhibits. By 1922 the show boasted a "big wheel," a portable model of US inventor George Ferris's 1893 creation, and undalating bridges and gangways in the "cake walk."
But in 1926 the most exciting event reported was when the horse Silver Ray fell in a harness race, breaking a sulky wheel to pitch its driver on to the track where another horse, Ella Whips, fell over him to pitch out another driver.
Show veteran Max Laurie, whose father Frank first took their 1890s steam-operated merry-go-round to the Royal Easter in 1920, says electric didgem-cars arrived in 1928.
For the next 40 years, show entertainment remained as much human as mechanical: 1937 attractions included another giantess, the 2.5m Princess Pontust, and Bonny Peter Fat Boy, who at 15 was 1.9m tall and weighed 254kg. The show was suspended from 1941 "a khaki affair, with patriotic pageants, bands and trumpets, proud displays of engines-of-war and battlegrounds of marching men," while the army took over Moore Park showground. When it resumed in 1947, sideshows included an electrical 20sq m working model of a century-old mining town. More than 500 figures, less than 15cm high, showed every phrase of town life.
This show also had Australia's first wax-works display for 25 years, with the likenesses of Ned Kelly, Mussolini, Hitler and Eva Braun, Animal shows had trained monkeys and cockatoos. Udangi, the world's smallest woman, also attended.
But the following year, - when the show had no beer because of a brewery strike - the RAS issued a clean-up edict to sideshow alley. "The committee is strongly opposed to public exhibition of trained animals carried from town to town in often cruel captivity, whether they be as small as fleas, cockatoos or monkeys, or as big as lions," an RAS official said. Last Easter three people were bitten by snakes in alleged snake-charming performances. That will not happen again, as snakes will be banned.
Also frowned upon were public amusements that "hold the human body up to ridicule. That means no more bearded ladies." The RAS deemed its patrons worthy of a better class of entertainment, secured by encouraging more mechanical contrivances, such as miniature speedways, roundabouts, dodge em cars, mirror maze and the ghost train. Despite the arrival of the Cha Cha and Zipper in the 1960s, in 1988 Russian Siamese twins and a headless lady, who reportedly wore a wrist watch, were among show attractions.

MUSLIMS TARGETING CEREMONY
  Sunday Telegraph  17th April 2011: Sydney Australia. By: Lucy Carne.
Fanatical Muslim groups are threatening violent protests and terrorism attacks at this month's royal wedding.
Amid rising fears the April 29 wedding is a serious target for extremists, Scotland Yard and anti-terror chiefs planned to roll out the most rigorous security operation in recent British history.
Concerns were heightened when the British based group Muslims Against Crusades promised to cause violent disruptions outside Westminster Abbey. The group's website features a clock counting down to the wedding and imagines of shattered glass and dead bodies. It also shows pictures of blood splattered across the Queen, a section accusing Prince Harry of being a Nazi and photographs of Prince William in military uniform surrounded by images of dead children. Muslim Against Crusades promised a forceful demonstration against Britain's quest to occupy Muslim land and wage war against the religion of God.

NOISE TO DRIVE A BAT BATTY
Sunday Telegraph 17th April 2011: Sydney Australia. By: Jesse Phillips. 
Ear-splitting industrial noise will be blasted every hour to rid the Royal Botanic Gardens of 15,000 flying foxes that are destroying its heritage trees. Beginning in early winter, staff from the gardens will disturb the flying foxes' daytime roosting for 10 minutes every hour with a variety of noises including chainsaws and other industrial sounds. The goal is to get the colony to relocate and sleep somewhere else because their daytime roosting is killing the gardens heritage trees. The staff will go around in a buggy playing noises will be things that will make them move somewhere else, s spokeswoman for the Botanic Gardens said.It's to disturb the flying foxes while they sleep. We are not worried about them returning to feed here, it's the roosting that is the problem. It is expected the flying foxes will relocate to another established roosting area, possibly at Gordon, or set up a new home in the Royal National Park. Botanic Gardens acting executive Brett Summerell said flying foxes were nomadic creatures that typically flew as far as 35km each night to find food.
Whether they sleep during the day at the Royal Botanic Gardens or at another camp around Sydney our relocation won't change their feeding habits, he said.
Last year, the Federal Government decided to relocate the flying foxes. This was opposed by the animal welfare group Bat Advocacy, which unsuccessfully argued that the Botanic Gardens was a critical habitat for the threatened native species.

SYDNEY'S NEW GOLDEN MILE NETS $5M IN TRAFFIC FINES
Tuesday Telegraph Sydney Australia 19th April 2011: By: Vikki Campion.
Sydney has a new golden mile - and it'd bad news for the city's motorists.

Sydney City Council makes millions of dollars from traffic and parking fines on CBD streets, including $2.7 million from Pitt Street, $1.4 million from Castlereagh Street, and $1.2 million from Kent Street.
Latest figures released under the Government Information Public Access Act, reveal Sydney's CBD streets are paved with gold - for the council at least - with Pitt, Castlereagh, Kent, Sussex and Clarence, Elizabeth, York, Phillip and Liverpool streets all top earners.
Faced with nowhere to pull over, thousands of motorists are being slapped with fines for stopping in mail zones, on paths, across driveways, in clearways, taxi zones, works and truck zones.
Taxi drivers are also a target; they say they have no choice but to pull over illegally as there are so few taxi stands in the CBD.
In 12 months, more than 3800 motorists were slugged $141 for stopping in a loading zone on Pitt St, netting the council more than $540,000.
Most of the 408,796 parking fines were for stopping in a special zone, highlighting the CBD's critical mess.
But fining unsuspecting motorists has become a cash cow for the council, generating more than $20 million in the 12 months to June 2010. It is legal to stop in no parking zones to pick up or drop off passengers.
NRMA spokesman Peter Khoury and motorists were angered that rangers were photographing them stopping to pick up or drop off passengers with no warning.
Common sense needs to take hold here, he said. We need adequate safe places to pick up and drop off loved ones. There is a growing sense of frustration that rangers can sit in their car with a camera and take photographs. They have become ruthlessly efficient at fining motorists.
Mr Khoury said motorists needed more places to pull over safely.
A City of Sydney spokeswoman said fines were issued to vehicles stopping on roads in a manner which impedes traffic flow or was unsafe.
The city recognises people need to be dropped off and picked up in the CBD. Almost half of the parking spaces in the central city are available for this purpose.

GETTING TO THE CITY SOURCE
Tuesday Telegraph Sydney Australia 19th April 2011: By: Henry Budd. Harbor Reporter.
It's dark, damp and cramped - but tickets to tour Sydney's historic Tank Stream remain one of the hottest properties in town.
Twice a year the small creek that flows under our city is opened for guided tours and more than 3000 people subscribe to each ballot.
Just 160 people have their wish granted, with 10 groups of 16 filing through the tiny tunnel each open day.
The Historic Houses Trust has been running the guided tours since 2002 and their popularity shows no signs of waning.
Manly Vale couple Malcolm and Sandra Innes were two of the lucky ones who grabbed spots on one of the last weekend's tours of the creek that supported the colonial outpost in its infancy.
We've been applying for the tours for three years, MS Innes said.
The couple said they were rapt to learn that they had finally made a tour.
We were very excited, Mr Innes said. It's such a historic piece of Sydney. The Tank Stream was fundamental to Sydney even being here in the first place.
The entrance to the creek is through a nondescript door at Australia Square.
Visitors are given a hard hat, hairnet, harness and gumboots before descending into a section of the creek paved by early convicts.
The descent to the creek also shows just how much the city's landscape has changed. Where the convicts once walked is now about 3m below street level.
Sydney Water historian Jon Breen said the covered sewer pre-dated London's underground system and was quite sophisticated in its design, widening in certain places to allow water to flow more smoothly.
The design is remarkable and shows even then they knew a lot about how water would flow through a tunnel, Mr Breen said.
The creek was named after three tanks dig along its route to ensure the early settlers had fresh water year-round.
For decades governors battled to stop the vital water source that flows from a swap under Hyde Park from being polluted. But in 1828 it was declared a sewer.
Due to sanitation problems, the creek was later covered by a stone culvert.
Over the years it has been redirected around buildings and even runs in concrete tubes through the underground car-park beneath Australia Square before entering the Harbor under First Fleet Park at Circular Quay.
Today the historic stream is part of the city's storm water system.

BELL TOLLS AS SYDNEY CANE TOAD INVASION RATTED OUT AND KILLED
Wednesday daily Telegraph 20th April 2011 Sydney Australia: By: Malcolm Holland.
(ENVIRONMENT REPORTER)
Rats, green and golden bell frogs, trained sniffer dogs and radio tracking transmitters have all helped crush Sydney's first breeding population of Cane Toads.
The dreaded amphibians had set up home in an industrial estate at Taren Point.
Yesterday the State Government said it was winning the battle. More than 500 toads have been removed in the past year and, importantly, a toad fitted with a radio tracking device led us to toad tadpoles within the industrial estate, new Environmental Minister Robyn Parker said.
University of Sydney researcher Dr Matt Greenless said a toad fitted with a radio tracker had led him to a pond within the estate about two and a half weeks ago. There were about 20 tadpoles there, about 2-3 weeks old, and to find a breeding site is very important as that's an easier time to eliminate them, Dr Greenless said. Sydney University cane toad expert Processor Rick Shine said the war against the toads had had unexpected allies in European rats. Rats love drains and so do toads and both come from the northern hemisphere so rats have developed a tolerance for the toad's poison, he said. Matt was following a radio transmitter fitted toad and found it in a drain...a rat had killed it. Environment department senior threatened species officer Ann Goeth said threatened native green and golden bell frogs could also be helping by eating the toads' tadpoles. And a labrador called Max was being used by Sutherland Council to sniff out toads while a second dog, a kelpie, was also being trained.

SYDNEY CRAMS THEM ALL IN
Wednesday Telegraph 20th April 2011: By: Vikki Campion. (URBAN AFFAIRS REPORTER)
Feeling crowded? Latest figures reveal Sydney has a higher population density than Paris, London, Mexico City, or Los Angeles. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has found Sydney is booming, with two-thirds of NSW's population now living in the city. It has the highest density in Australia with 8800 people per square km in Sydney's east and 7900 in the Western Suburbs. By comparison, Mexico City has 8400/sq km, London 5100/sq km, Paris 3550/sq km and Los Angeles 2750/sq km. However, we've still got some room to move - Mumbai, India, is the most density populated city with 29,650/sq km. Even in the Sydney's suburbs, the population density was higher than that for all Australian capital cities combined with 380/sq km.
The ABS Population Change report found the estimated resident population of NSW reached 7.23 million people in June, with Sydney reaching 4.8 million and growing, 1.7 per cent each year. Sydney's west was growing the fastest, with Blacktown taking in an extra 8300 people each year, followed by Parramatta with  5100 and Sydney City with 4500. All 43 council areas increased in population, with the five-fastest growing led by Canada Bay (3.7 percent). The only area in NSW to have a population fall was the far west, which lost 130 people. The inland districts of Murray, North Western, and Murrumbidgee all recorded growth rates below 1 per cent.