Category Archives: headline

Anthony Albanese hits out at 'childish' LNP website redirect

Labor leader Anthony Albanese says the purchase of a website bearing his surname by someone associated with the Liberal National Party is "childish".

The website albanese.com.au – which is not his official MP website – redirects to the official Liberal Party page at liberal.org.au.

A domain search shows albanese.com.au is registered to a "Sam Jackson" and the "Liberal National Party".

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"This is a test of integrity for Scott Morrison and for the Liberal Party," Mr Albanese said at a media appearance in Perth today.

"This is an example of something that, frankly, isn't on."

Mr Albanese said the act was unlikely to fool any voters.

"I think people should behave in a reasonably adult way," he said.

"As if someone who is searching for my website, is going to go, 'Oh, it is the same as the Liberal Party website.'"

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Mr Albanese said the act showed a "lack of integrity" on the Liberal Party's behalf.

"It will also show that this government will continue engaging in scam campaigns, tricks, and misinformation, we will see more of it going forward," he said.

"I want an election campaign that is based upon ideas for the future."

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Moment Perth woman ploughs through fence of home into pool

CCTV has captured the moment a young woman ploughed her car through the fence of a Perth home and landed in the swimming pool.

The car can be seen careening through the fence of a Thornlie property before plunging into a family's swimming pool.

Residents from neighbouring properties rush to help the young woman who is trapped in the sinking vehicle.

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CCTV has captured the moment a young woman ploughed her car through the fence of a Perth home and landed in the swimming pool. CCTV has captured the moment a young woman ploughed her car through the fence of a Perth home and landed in the swimming pool.

Her rescuers can be heard saying, "Get out of the car, come on, go, you alright?"

Two men who have jumped into the pool are forced to smash the window of the car with a brick to pull the young woman to safety.

Chinese surgeons 'executing death-row prisoners by removing hearts'

Macabre stories of forced organ harvesting from political prisoners and detainees in Chinese prison camps have swirled for decades.

In 2019, an international tribunal declared prisoners in China were being killed and their organs used in a lucrative transplant trade worth upwards of $1 billion.

The Chinese government came out in 2015 and said it had stopped the practice, but some human rights activists remain doubtful.

Beijing has repeatedly denied allegations of forced organ harvesting.

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Now, a just-released Australian National University (ANU) study claims to have unearthed evidence which suggests Chinese surgeons are executing death-row prisoners by removing their hearts before they are clinically dead.

Taking out the heart from a death-row prisoner who is still clinically alive improves the prospect of a successful organ transplant, the study said.

"We were shocked that we found (the evidence), not that it was happening," Matthew Robertson, the study's co-author, told 9news.com.au.

"We were surprised that the admissions were so blatant and clear, and that we actually found what we were looking for."

The evidence they uncovered, Mr Robertson said, showed the surgeon had become an executioner.

For the study, Mr Robertson developed an artificial intelligence algorithm which scanned and analysed 120,000 reports in medical journals which had documented transplants carried out in Chinese public and military hospitals.

The study argued these Chinese-language medical texts showed in 71 instances donors had not been properly pronounced brain dead prior to the surgeries taking place.

The main criterion doctors use to determine brain death is whether a patient can breathe without a ventilator.

'At the tip of the funnel'

"We had a suspicion that these admissions were in the database but to actually find them, again and again, was the surprising part," Mr Robertson said.

Mr Robertson said 71 "explicit" examples of a heart being removed while the patient was still alive was the "tip of the funnel" in the government-sanctioned system.

"There were many other cases (we found) where it wasn't as explicit," he said.

"And in those cases, we just ditched them, because we … wanted very clear evidence on the primary claim.

"The evidence is that it is happening and it is systematic and widespread."

For every case they found, he said, there were "probably many, many transplants" where a surgeon had acted as executioner.

"We are right at the tip of the funnel," Mr Robertson said.

9news.com.au has contacted the Chinese Embassy in Canberra for comment.

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The organs of death-row prisoners are being illegally harvested, sometimes when they are still alive, an ANU study has claimed.

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Allegations of forced organ harvesting in China first emerged in 2001, according to the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China.

Followers of Falun Gong, a religious spiritual practice banned by Beijing, and Uighur Muslims were flagged by the tribunal as prisoners most at risk.

In 2014, in response to a US government inquiry, a Chinese Embassy spokesman said that every organ transplant required the consent of the donor in written form.

"The so-called organ harvesting from death-row prisoners is totally a lie fabricated by Falun Gong," the spokesperson said.

In 2015 a Canadian documentary, Human Harvest: China's Organ Trafficking, investigated claims that political prisoners in China were having their vital organs removed without anaesthetic and while still alive.

"When I cut through [the body] blood was still running … this person was not dead," one doctor said about his first experience with live organ harvesting when he was a medical student.

"I took the liver and two kidneys. It took me 30 minutes."

In the ANU study, Mr Robertson and co-author Jacob Lavee, an Israeli cardiac transplant surgeon, found 71 instances where heart removal appeared to be the cause of the prisoners' deaths, but they suspected the actual number of prisoners killed in unethical transplant surgeries is much higher.

Fifty-six hospitals and more than 300 health workers across China were involved, the study claimed.

The surgeries are highly profitable for doctors and hospitals, the study found.

'Super unethical'

Mr Robertson said the study could not confirm exactly how the prisoners ended up on the operating table, but he warned there were "multiple troubling scenarios" as to how it could have happened.

While extremely unethical, removing the heart from a living person was an optimal way to conduct a transplant, he said.

The Chinese transplant trade is estimated to be a $1bn

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"In theory, the execution should be carried out by the judiciary as a legal outcome of a capital sentence," Mr Robertson said.

"And then, in theory, in order to do it in the least unethical manner, the medical establishment would procure the organs from the prisoner who has been executed.

"That would still be super unethical," he said, "but it would involve the doctor not actually engaging in the killing."

Professor Arthur Caplan, head of medical ethics at New York University, who reviewed the ANU study, said the volume of transplants being performed in China was not consistent with voluntary donation rates.

The research, he said, provided "incontrovertible proof" doctors were taking and transplanting vital organs from people who were not clinically dead.

How hypersonic missiles work and why the weapons are so feared

In a significant military announcement by Canberra, Australia will now work alongside the US and UK to develop fearsome hypersonic missiles.

Hypersonic missiles are suddenly being talked about after Russia launched the weapons against Ukraine in March, the first known use of hypersonics in combat.

Undoubtedly motivated by Russia's attacks on Ukraine, today's announcement is also a response to Chinese ambitions in the Pacific and South China Sea.

The Pentagon has made developing hypersonic weapons one of its top priorities, particularly as China and Russia have rapidly developed advanced versions.

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Why are hypersonic missiles special?

Travelling at Mach 5 speed (6174 km/h) or faster, hypersonic weapons are difficult to detect and pose a real challenge to missile defence systems.

Hypersonic missiles can travel at a far lower trajectory than high-arcing ballistic missiles, which can be easily detectable.

Hypersonics can also maneuver and evade missile defence systems.

So what's the Australian deal all about?

The announcement means the US and UK will share hypersonic missile technology with Australia. The US is the easily the most dominant partner in this arrangement.

So the US and UK have hypersonic missiles?

The US does possess hypersonic missiles, the UK currently does not.

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A Zircon hypersonic cruise missile is launched by a Russian navy frigate from the White Sea, in the north of Russia

How advanced in the US technology?

Surprisingly, and worryingly some military analysts say, the US is lagging behind Russia and China on the hypersonic missile front.

The Pentagon has made developing hypersonic weapons one of its top priorities.

So Russia is the top dog here?

That is the widely held view.

In March Russia launched its hypersonic Kinzhal (Dagger) missiles against a military ammunitions warehouse in western Ukraine.

The launches were likely intended to test the weapons and send a message to the West about Russian capabilities, analysts said.

In 2018 President Vladimir Putin described one of Russia's hypersonic weapons as "practically invulnerable" to Western air defences.

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A MiG-31 fighter of the Russian air force carries a Kinzhal hypersonic cruise missile.

What other countries have hypersonics?

North Korea, France, Germany, Australia, India and Japan have been working on hypersonics.

Meanwhile, Iran, Israel and South Korea have conducted basic research on the technology.

With agencies