Thesun 2009-04-09 Page11 Australia Govt Faces Upper House Broadband Battle

theSun

11

| THURSDAY APRIL 9 2009

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Five dead in Alabama murder-suicide MIAMI: A gunman shot dead his wife, daughter and two other people before killing himself, reports said on Tuesday, the latest in a series of recent murder-suicides that have shocked America. The body of Kevin Garner, 45, was found on Tuesday near the home he formerly shared with his estranged wife in Morgan County, Alabama. Law enforcement agents said Garner had earlier gunned down his wife, his daughter a sister and her nephew in the town of Greenhill, reports said. The killings came ahead of a divorce hearing between Garner and his wife Tammy due to take place yesterday. Garner’s sister had been due to testify on behalf of his estranged wife at the hearing, the Times Daily newspaper reported on its website. In Los Angeles meanwhile a gunman opened fire at a camp ground near Temecula, California, killing one person and injuring at least two others at a Korean Christian retreat, local media reported yesterday. A Riverside County sheriff’s spokesman told The Los Angeles Times the victims were all Korean and that detectives in the southern California city were struggling with a language barrier. The incident rocked a religious retreat, the spokesman added. Separately, Fox

Recent mass shootings in the US » Geneva County and Coffee County (Alabama), March 12: In a shooting spree that tears through several towns, a 28-year-old out-of-work man kills 10 people, including his mother and a toddler. » North Carolina, March 29: A heavilyarmed gunman shoots dead eight people, many elderly and sick patients, in a North Carolina nursing home. » Santa Clara (California), March 30: Six people are shot dead in an apparent murder-suicide at a home in an upscale Silicon Valley neighbourhood. » Binghamton (New York), April 3: Up to 13 people are killed as a gunman goes on a rampage at a civic centre in the town of Binghamton

11 television said early reports indicated that four people had been shot, and two were in critical condition. “KCAL-TV said authorities were searching for a 70-year-old man who is believed to be the gunman,” the Times said. The United States has been rocked by several fatal mass shootings in the past three weeks. – AFP

Australia govt faces upper house broadband battle CANBERRA: Australia’s government faces a battle to win backing for an ambitious super-fast broadband network spanning the nation, with rivals rejecting the plan and newspapers calling it either “brilliance or a rash extravagance”. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (pix) on Tuesday said he would develop a US$31 billion (RM19 billion) private-public broadband network that would take eight years to build and be the country’s largest infrastructure project, if it survives political opposition. “Our initial position is that it’s a heck of a lot of money,” said independent upper house senator Steve Fielding, whose support the centre-left government needs to get the scheme past conservative and independent upper house opponents. Rudd’s plan had fundamental flaws, Fielding told a radio station yesterday, including where the money would come from as Australia teeters closer to recession, and whether the network would be obsolete by the time it was completed. Conservatives wielding the largest bloc of upper house votes also opposed the scheme, with Liberal Party Senate leader Nick Minchin calling the plan a joke.

But Australian Greens senators said they would give the plan serious consideration. While the government has not outlined a timetable for laws to reach parliament, the Greens expected to scrutinise the scheme later this year. Australia has slower and more expensive internet services than many developed countries, raising concerns about competitiveness, but the project will be made more difficult by the country’s vast distances and inhospitable terrain. Newspapers said if Rudd’s internet plan was carried out competently, it would equip Australia with the world’s foremost tool for innovation and growth. The government, riding high in opinion polls, faces re-election late in 2010. Senior political columnist Peter Hartcher said Rudd had “thrown out three decades of ideology” in the wake of the global financial meltdown, displaying a distrust of the market and placing government back at the centre of national planning. “With the government to own 51% of the equity, Rudd has in effect closed the Australian sub-branch of the Thatcher-Reagan revolution,” Hartcher wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. – Reuters

Google CEO offers advice to ailing newspaper industry WASHINGTON: Google chief executive Eric Schmidt told worried US newspaper owners on Tuesday they need to work with the web giant as they struggle to find a new business model for the ailing industry. Speaking to a meeting of the Newspaper Association of America in San Diego, California, Schmidt praised the role the press plays in a democratic society and stressed that newspapers should see Google as a partner not a rival. Schmidt said Google, which has been criticised by some US newspaper owners for linking to

their websites without sharing advertising revenue, focuses on the user experience and newspapers need to do the same. “If I were involved in the digital part of a newspaper I would first and foremost try to understand what my reader wants,” the Google CEO said. “These are ultimately consumer businesses and if you piss off enough of them you will not have any more,” he said. “If you make them happy you will grow them quickly. We try really hard to think that way.” Schmidt said newspapers need to improve their websites.

“I think the sites are slow. They literally are not fast,” he said. “They’re actually slower than reading the paper.” Schmidt addressed the newspaper executives a day after the US news agency the Associated Press announced plans to take legal action against websites that publish stories from the AP or its member newspapers without permission. The AP did not mention any particular websites in its copyright initiative but some newspaper executives have singled out Google News, Google’s popular news aggregation site, for criticism in the past. – AFP