7 news bites for Wednesday

Ahoy there!  Welcome to the middle of the working week.  While you’ve been sleeping events have been unfolding in Australia and around the world. Here’s your news-to-go for Wednesday morning brought to you by Bec.

1. ‘Devastating’ new evidence emerges that Brit phone hacking scandal was covered up.

The select parliamentary committee investigating the wide-ranging phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom has received ‘devastating’ new evidence that implicates the paper and News International. Former Royal Editor Clive Goodman, the first to be jailed for phone hacking offences in 2007 and thought to be a lone wolf, wrote a letter to human resources saying that phone hacking was discussed at editorial meetings. He also claimed that former editor Andy Coulson offered him extra money and his job when he was released from prison if he didn’t implicate the entire paper during court proceedings. There were two versions of the letter, one heavily redacted by News International.

2. Collar-bomb suspect tracked down via email

Theories have swirled around the country for weeks but last night the truth began to emerge. Fifty-year-old father of three Paul Doug Peters has been arrested over the collar-bomb attack on Sydney schoolgirl Madeleine Pulver. The tip-off?  A Gmail account accessed from the Kincumber Library on the NSW Central Coast. The email address was listed in the note left by the extortionist for the Pulver family.  Created at Chicago Airport in May, the email account was only ever accessed three times, once from Kincumber library and twice from a video store in Avoca Beach which has public access computers. At both locations police found CCTV footage of man aged between 50-60.

An FBI SWAT team worked with the NSW police and arrested Mr Peters in Louisville Kentucky yesterday morning.

The accused Australian businessmen has – at this stage – no direct links to the Pulver family. He was educated at the Scots College in Bellevue Hill and completed a Commerce Law degree at the University of Sydney. It is believed he may have worked for a company with which the Pulver family has links.

3. Name of Daniel Morcombe’s accused killer released by police

For seven and a half years, the country has wondered. And now we know.  Last night a suppression order prohibiting the disclosure of Daniel Morcombe’s accused killer’s name was lifted.  National media outlets can now name forty-one-year-old Brett Peter Cowan as P7 – the alleged killer of the thirteen year old Queensland boy.

The move has the full support of Denise and Bruce Morcombe who hope the revelation will bring more witnesses forward.

“Because of the very fact that he lived in the area, and he was reasonably well known on the Sunshine Coast, my clients are hopeful that it might lead to other witnesses coming forward once his identity is disclosed,” said lawyer Peter Boyce, who is representing the Morcombes.

4 Australian Chrisitan Lobby rally:  Same-sex marriage will lead to unions between children and paedophiles

A conservative American newspaper columnist invited to speak at a pro-marriage rally at Parliament House yesetrday has claimed that same-sex unions will lead to polygamy and unions between children and paedophiles. Rebecca Hagelin,  who writes a weekly column, ‘How to save your family’ for the Washington Times, was invited to speak at yeseterday’s ‘Don’t Meddle With Marriage’ rally organised by the Australian Christian Lobby and the Australian Family Foundation. During her address Hagelin claimed that same-sex marriage was a ‘threat to the nation’.

The rally included addresses by several politicians, including Liberal frontbencher Kevin Andrews and maverick independent MP, Bob Katter who said gay marriage deserved to be ridiculed.

The rally was attended by several hundred people.

5. Rioters ordered to pick up a broom and a brush

It’s the punishment favoured by parents around the world; you made that mess, now you can clean it up.  Deputy British PM Nick Clegg last night announced that convicted rioters would be forced to clean up their own mess while dressed in highly visible orange outfits.

“In every single one of the communities affected there will be community payback schemes, riot payback schemes,” he said.

Clegg went on to claim he was also considering forcing those convicted to face victims so they can see the human cost of their actions.

“I want them to face people like the woman I met on Monday last week in Tottenham, who said to me that she was still wearing the clothes … she was wearing when she ran out of her flat before her own flat was burned down,” he said.

6. J.K. Rowling launches Harry Potter portal

You need to pass a short test to gain entry and once you’re there you can  read a 5000 word thesis on the wood from which Harry Potter’s wands are made. Welcome to Pottermore, the Harry Potter portal for all things HP online. The site, created by Rowling, is where readers can download Harry Potter e-books as well as read some of the secrets behind the writing of the world’s best-loved boy wizard.  Access to the site is currently limited to one million test users who applied for passwords. The site, which is free to join and use, will open to the general public in October.

7. Unions prepared to fight Qantas over job cuts

Qantas says it will lead to cheaper airfares to Asia. The unions say safety is being flushed down the toilet.  Whoever is right, the announcement of 1000 job cuts as part of Qantas’s  international plans to launch a new Asian airline and a new Japanese service  has unions vowing to fight the Flying Kangaroo. Qantas is already battling unions over the outsourcing of pilots and conditions.