Two Vietnam War era Iroquois helicopters have been disturbing my peace this weekend, flying low over Australia's national capital multiple times on multiple days as part of the interminable celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan.

Long Tan was so important a battle in Australia's Vietnam engagement that the anniversary has been adopted as Vietnam Veterans' Remembrance Day in Australia.  The question of recognition for Vietnam Veterans is as sensitive in Australia as it is in the US, and there has been lingering resentment about the downgrading of bravery awards to soldiers who fought at Long Tan.

This prompted Prime Minister Howard to offer a national apology on Thursday to the soldiers who were "poorly treated" on their return from Vietnam.

Some Australians are celebrating another anniversary this weekend.  

Violence appeared to be spiralling out of control on Saturday in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste (East Timor), despite the arrival of more than a thousand troops from Australia, Malaysia and New Zealand since Thursday afternoon.

The present problems have grown from a variety of internal tensions in the new country, which have become more and more openly expressed since the withdrawal of the UN peacekeeping force in the middle of last year.

In the last few days, army loyalists have been fighting rebel soldiers and elements of the police in and around the capital.  At least 20 people, including up to 12 police, were shot dead by loyalist soldiers as unarmed police tried to surrender in a UN-brokered deal on Thursday.  A mother and her four children burned to death when seven homes were torched in a Dili suburb the same day.  It appears that ethnic gangs are fighting each other in the streets.

I'm trying not to wake the family with my laughter, having just seen Australia's Prime Minister on TV saying that he has declined George Bush's offer of aid after Cyclone Larry struck the North Queensland coast early on Monday morning.

I guess Dubya thinks he knows something about hurricanes...

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Merry Christmas, every one!  It's 8.30am on Christmas Day here.

Our two girls have fallen asleep again after waking up at 2.57am and 4.30am respectively to see what Santa had left in their stockings.  Lots of excited unwrapping and exclamations of delight later ("Dad, can you believe that Santa gave me a Barbie `laptop'"), they have snuggled down to sleep on the lounge and in a beanbag.  This is very fortunate, as we have a long day ahead.

I've just made the mixture for the champagne crepes which will later form the basis for a smoked salmon & crepe `cake' (recipe provided on demand).  While it rests, I've checked the news and weather on the net.  It will be fine and 25 degrees Celsius: rather cool for this time of year.

Two-and-a-half hours after I post this diary, Australian Nguyen Tuong Van will be executed by hanging in Singapore's Changi Prison.

Van was arrested with 396.2 grams of heroin while transiting through Changi Airport en route from Cambodia to Melbourne on 12 December 2002.

Last year, the Singapore High Court sentenced him to death, a mandatory sentence under Singapore law for a drug offence of this kind.

I'm afraid there doesn't seem to be any way I can e-mail andy about a technical matter, so this diary will have to do.  (I didn't want to e-mail Booman right now on something relatively minor.)

Much of eastern Australia has just gone onto summer (or daylight) time (UTC +11).  So I reset my user preferences for Eastern Aust Daylight time.  Trouble is, this results in the display being an hour behind what it should be.  If I switch it back to Eastern Aust Standard it shows two hours behind.

As I recall, the time is calculated by or from the BT server settings.  I know daylight time has just ended on the US West Coast.  Andy, can you check the server clock and the time zone selected for the server in scoop?  I suspect the problem may be one of those.  This would be confirmed if other people are getting strange readings...

Just out of curiosity I clicked on the Eurotrib blogroll link to Flogging the Simian.  Following her 'farewell from blogging' posts in late September, soj took her site down and hasn't posted here since.

But guess what?  Three weeks later, FTS reappeared (with the monkey and woman changing positions!) and soj has posted some excellent pieces on the manufacturing of an Iran 'crisis', on blogging, and a variety of other subjects.

It's worth checking out.  Guess the writing urge was just too powerful.

Cross-posted at European Tribune.

Update [2005-10-24 7:2:6 by canberra boy]: Soj has returned to the frontpage at European Tribune with her EuroPDB. Seems I tumbled to her continued on-line existence just as she was about to reveal it!

With two days to go before the largest-ever gathering of international leaders at the UN Headquarters in New York, the likely outcomes are still unclear and the world's media has hardly covered the event.

And the looming question is whether the US and Ambassador John Bolton in particular will stymy hopes for reform of the UN.

After months of discussions, a 38-page draft outcomes document was presented to the General Assembly in August.  Three weeks ago, Ambassador Bolton asked for some 750 changes, objecting to references to the International Criminal Court, action on global warming and increases in development aid.   At the same time, he insisted on greater commitment to tackling terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

The changes proposed by the US, and Bolton's personally combative approach to negotiations, have put even major US allies like the UK and Australia offside.  As Fran highlighted at European Tribune on Saturday, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw made calls to foreign ministers around the world over the weekend.  This followed a personal plea to Condoleezza Rice for the US to withdraw opposition to plans for reform of the UN, during which he asked Ms Rice to rein in Bolton.  I understand that Australian diplomatic reporting from New York, normally not critical of the US given the sensibilities of our Government, has been openly disparaging of Bolton's approach.

According to The Guardian, "Ambassadors from more than dozen key countries also met yesterday to try to break the deadlock on plans for UN reform but appeared to make little progress".

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I had thought that Colin Powell was one of the more honest and reputable members of the Bush Cabinet until he gave the dreadful WMD presentation to the UN Security Council in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.  You might recall the satellite photos of 'mobile weapons labs' etc etc.  As I recall the presentation followed Tony Blair's release of the notorious 'sexed-up' intelligence dossier.

Now, Colin Powell has gone public with a 'Colin Powell regrets' interview with American ABC TV news to be broadcast on Friday US time.  He says he spent five days at the CIA headquarters ahead of the speech studying intelligence reports, many of which turned out to be false, and admits the speech is "a blot" on his record.

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The UNDP's 2005 UN Human Development Report shows that overall global living standards are improving, and points to successes such as Vietnam's reduction of child deaths and Bangladesh's gains in education and life expectancy.

But the report shows that 18 of the world's poorest countries - with a population of 460 million - are doing worse in most key indicators than they were in 1990.  Twelve of the 18 are in sub-Saharan Africa where the effects of HIV/Aids and conflict are to blame.  The remaining six are former Soviet states in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, suffering falling life expectancy and economic disruption.

And the most shocking of all, the report details a string of appalling statistics which show that inequality within countries, and particularly the US, is as stark as the gaps between countries.

The Australian Budget for 2005-06 (our fiscal year is from 1 July to 30 June)was 'brought down' (introduced) in the Australian Parliament last night (Tuesday 10 May) by Treasurer Peter Costello.  It is his and the Howard Government's tenth Budget.

Traditionally, the first Budget after an election in Westminster system countries is a tough budget, where election promises are broken, taxes increased, and benefits cut.  The wisdom has always been that this is the Government's opportunity, furthest from the next election, to take unpopular measures.

Something strange is going on in Australia.

Last night's Budget proposed income tax cuts of A$21.7 billion over four years.

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Every time I click on one of the regional threads, or a new diary, the new page loads and is displayed for only 3 to 5 seconds before it is replaced by a page which is blank apart from the 'blogads' strip down the left-hand side of the page.  My machine displays this page indefinitely, indicating that it has not completed the download.  I can click the browser's 'back' button and restore the page I want perfectly.

Strikes me something may not be working.  I've got a broadband connection and I'm browsing with Firefox on a Windows XP OS with plenty of computing power.  I haven't had this problem before today on this site, and i don't have the problem with other sites.

Anybody else have similar problems?