Howard invited to attend Thatcher funeral

JOHN Howard has been invited to attend Margaret Thatcher's funeral as one of 24 members of the Order of Merit (OM).

The former Liberal prime minister received the rare insignia at Buckingham Palace in May last year.

The honour is bestowed by the monarch upon individuals who achieve exceptional distinction in the arts, learning, sciences and other areas such as public service.

Downing Street says the guest list to Baroness Thatcher's funeral next Wednesday has been drawn up by her family and representatives with assistance from the government.

In a statement on Thursday the British prime minister's office said "those invited include ... Members of the Order of Merit".

Mr Howard, who was opposition leader at the same time Lady Thatcher was in government, said this week that the former British PM, who died on Monday aged 87, transformed her country.

"What was so outstanding about her, she was resolute and she was determined," he told Melbourne radio on Tuesday.

"She is the greatest British prime minister since Churchill."

23.09 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sting catches alleged Red Bull blackmailer

AN Austrian who allegedly blackmailed Red Bull by threatening to put excrement in its energy drinks is behind bars after a sting operation straight out of the movies.

The 47-year-old man, who has not been named, thought he was meeting someone from Red Bull with a bag full of money late on Wednesday. Instead he was arrested by an armed police unit.

"This was no amateur," local police chief Herrmann Rechberger told a news conference. "The money in the package was real and it was in a black bag, just as he had demanded. He gave instructions by phone and SMS."

He said the suspect kept changing the location for the handover: "It was very difficult for us to stay in contact with him. The operation began at 1pm and the arrest wasn't till 9.45pm."

"The operation was like something out a film," said Salzburg police chief Franz Ruf.

Red Bull, built up from nothing to a global beverages behemoth by a former Austrian toothpaste executive, revealed in March that someone was trying to blackmail it.

"We notified the police when it became clear that this was not another case of insane letters," company executive Roland Concin said.

23.09 | 0 komentar | Read More

Girl hospitalised after being hit by car

AN eight-year-old girl is in a critical condition in hospital after being hit by a car in Sydney's southwest.

Police found the girl unconscious in the back of another car on Wilga Street, Fairfield, in Sydney's southwest about 6pm (AEST) on Thursday.

They're investigating reports the girl ran onto the road before she was hit by a car.

She was taken to hospital in a critical condition.

The driver of the car stopped after the collision and was assisting police with inquiries.

23.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

Even non-amputees experience phantom limbs

AMPUTEES often experience "phantom limbs", or the sensation that their missing limb is still present, but a Swedish study shows that even non-amputees can experience the bizarre sensation.

"Our results show that the sight of a physical hand is remarkably unimportant to the brain for creating the experience of one's physical self," said the lead author of the study, Arvid Guterstam of Sweden's prestigious Karolinska Institute.

Phantom limbs can be distressing and painful for amputees, and drugs cannot help as the sensation is essentially a trick of the brain, which imagines the existence of a limb that is not there.

Guterstam said his team hoped the results of their study would help lead to future research on amputees' phantom pain.

The researchers conducted 11 different experiments creating a perceptual illusion so that volunteers with two arms and hands experienced having an invisible hand.

In the experiments, participants sat at a table with their right arm hidden from their view behind a screen.

A scientist then touched the participant's right hand with a paintbrush while imitating the exact movements with another paintbrush in mid-air within the participant's full view.

"We discovered that most participants, within less than a minute, transfer the sensation of touch to the region of empty space where they see the paintbrush move, and experience an invisible hand in that position," Guterstam said.

"Previous research has shown that non-bodily objects, such as a block of wood, cannot be experienced as one's own hand, so we were extremely surprised to find that the brain can accept an invisible hand as part of the body," he added.

In another experiment, researchers made a stabbing motion with a knife toward the empty space "occupied" by the invisible hand and measured the participant's sweat response in their palms to the perceived threat.

They found that the participants' stress responses were higher when they experienced the illusion, but absent when the illusion was broken.

And in a third experiment, the volunteers were asked to close their eyes and point with their left hand to their right hand. After having experienced the illusion for a while, they pointed to the location of their invisible hand instead of the real hand.

Researchers also measured brain activity, and found that the invisible hand illusion led to increased activity in the parts of the brain that are normally active when individuals see their real hand being touched.

Seventy-four per cent of the 234 volunteers experienced a phantom limb during the experiments, Guterstam said.

The results were published Thursday in the US Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

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Thatcher street debate rages in Paris

A PROPOSAL to rename a Paris street after late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher has divided politicians in the French capital, Le Figaro newspaper reports.

The proposal to honour the "Iron Lady", who regularly jousted with French leaders whether they were from the Left or the Right, came from a member of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).

Following the announcement of Thatcher's death on Monday, UMP councillor Jerome Dubus said he would submit a proposal for a street or square to be named after her, as a "a small gesture for a great lady".

His proposal drew contempt from leftist politicians.

The leader of the Communist group in the city council, Ian Brossat, who declared that Thatcher's "ultra-liberalism" had an "appalling impact on the state and the working class".

Brossat said his group would submit a counterproposal - to name a street after Bobby Sands, "who died for defending the right of people to self-determination".

Sands was the first of 10 IRA prisoners, who died on hunger strike in Belfast in 1981 over Thatcher's refusal to grant political status to republican inmates.

During the course of his hunger strike, Sands was elected to the House of Commons.

A Socialist Party councillor had yet another idea.

"Dumbfounded" by the proposal for a Thatcher street, Christophe Gerard tweeted: "I will present a wish for a Shakespeare street."

The proposals are expected to be debated at the next session of the Paris council on April 22.

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Mali PM urges French troops to stay

MALI'S prime minister has urged France to maintain a military presence in its former colony, as troops began an early withdrawal three months after ousting armed Islamists from the country's north.

Diango Cissoko made the plea on a tour of Gao, the first visit to the battle-scarred northern city by a head of government since it was overrun by Al Qaeda-linked militants more than a year ago.

The premier, who was welcomed by locals and military personnel, paid tribute to the French troops who intervened to liberate northern Mali from the armed militias in January.

"The Malian nation will be eternally grateful," he said.

But he urged the French army to "continue on this path" and stay in Mali, despite Paris pulling out 100 soldiers ahead of schedule this week as part of a phased withdrawal of the majority of its 4,000 troops.

France has said it will leave 2,000 soldiers on the ground throughout the summer, reducing its presence by the end of the year to a "support force" of 1,000 fighting alongside a UN-mandated army of some 11,000 troops.

The cities of Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal fell in March last year to Tuareg rebels who declared independence of the entire desert north before losing control to armed Islamists.

French warplanes bombed parts of Gao in January to drive out fighters from the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), and the city was recaptured for the Bamako government by French and Malian forces on January 26.

Just days later, jihadists managed to infiltrate the city, where they staged the first suicide bombing in Mali's history.

French troops fighting alongside the Malian army and other African soldiers have largely succeeded in driving Islamist insurgents from the north but pockets of resistance remain, particularly in the Gao region.

A thousand French soldiers have been conducting an operation to destroy MUJAO's logistics infrastructure in a valley north of Gao since Sunday.

Parallel to the ongoing military operations, the international community is pushing for a formal process of reconciliation between the deeply divided nation's diverse ethnic communities ahead of presidential elections scheduled for July.

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Pistorius out and about while on bail

THE family of athlete Oscar Pistorius says the South African runner has been spending time with people who were close to the girlfriend he shot and killed in February.

A statement from the family of the double-amputee Olympian also said Thursday that Pistorius has spent that time in "surroundings where shared memories were created."

The statement indicates Pistorius is interacting more with people outside his uncle Arnold's home in Pretoria, where he has been staying since he was released on bail in February.

Pistorius has been charged with murder in the Valentine's Day killing of Reeva Steenkamp. He called the killing an accident, saying he thought he was firing at an intruder through a bathroom door.

His next scheduled court appearance is June 4.

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OECD report recommends My School changes

AUSTRALIAN schools are performing well by international standards despite a recent "significant" decline in reading performance, a global agency says.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in a report published on Thursday, said Australia was among five OECD countries that recorded a significant fall in student performance in reading between 2000 and 2009.

The variation between low and high performing students in Australia was also higher than the OECD average in reading and science.

Despite this, Australian student learning outcomes were "very good" by international standards.

The OECD report praised the federal government's controversial My School website, which compares schools' literacy and numeracy scores with the results of statistically similar institutions and to the national average.

But it warned that it could lead to some "undesired effects" in placing too great a reliance on NAPLAN test results.

For instance, it could lead to a "narrowing effect" on the curriculum to more closely align with NAPLAN tests.

"There is also a danger that schools which perform satisfactorily may become complacent as the spotlight falls on those schools which perform least well comparatively," the OECD report said.

It recommended that direct links be provided on the My School website to school reports, which could shed more light on "the factors which have influenced performance".

Federal School Education Minister Peter Garrett said the report recognised the many steps taken by the Gillard government to improve the quality of school education.

"In particular, the report highlights the establishment of teaching standards, and teacher appraisal, as a major development to help ensure every school has suitably qualified teachers," he said in a statement.

But Mr Garrett acknowledged more work was required to ensure every Australian child had access to a better education.

The minister said the federal government was discussing the final details of its review for a new funding system with state and territory counterparts and the non-government school sector.

Mr Garrett said the plan would be presented at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting on April 19.

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