Free Republic

Australia Is Getting The Baddest Diesel Electric Submarines On The Planet And the US should buy them too. Here's why. was one of the biggest international defense contracts in recent memory. Australia’s Collins class submarine replacement program, also known as SEA1000, looked to procure 12 highly advanced diesel-electric multi-role submarines, each equipped with the latest in air independent propulsion (AIP) and quiet running technologies. These new foreign-designed submarines, which would be outfitted with American combat systems, would be fielded in the next decade and would serve into the latter half of the century. The program’s total cost is estimated just...

One person has been killed and another injured during a shooting near the Australian Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq on Wednesday night. The government confirmed the man who died was a 34-year-old Australian who was working as a private security contractor for Unity Resources Group at the embassy. 'The Government extends its condolences to the family of the Australian man over this tragic incident,' the Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop said in a statement on Friday. ..... The man killed was a former Australian special forces soldier, according to Fairfax Media reported

Using the oldest fossil micrometeorites -- space dust -- ever found, Monash University-led research has made a surprising discovery about the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere 2.7 billion years ago. The findings of a new study published today in the journal Nature -- led by Dr Andrew Tomkins and a team from the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash, along with scientists from the Australian Synchrotron and Imperial College, London -- challenge the accepted view that Earth's ancient atmosphere was oxygen-poor. The findings indicate instead that the ancient Earth's upper atmosphere contained about the same amount of oxygen as...

DUNCAN Storrar, the Geelong man the ABC presented as a “new national hero”, has an extensive criminal record over two decades, including threats to kill and unlawful assault. The Herald Sun can reveal Storrar has gone to prison at least three times over the past 25 years for a string of offences. The revelations will likely place pressure on the organisers of a Go Fund Me web page to reconsider whether to give Storrar the more than $60,000 raised in his name. Storrar, 45, captured the nation’s attention when he appeared on the ABC’s Q&A Budget election special, saying he...

Archaeologists from The Australian National University (ANU) have unearthed fragments from the edge of the world's oldest-known axe, found in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Lead archeologist Professor Sue O'Connor said the axe dates back between 46,000 and 49,000 years, around the time people first arrived on the continent. "This is the earliest evidence of hafted axes in the world. Nowhere else in the world do you get axes at this date," said Professor O'Connor from the ANU School of Culture, History and Language. "In Japan such axes appear about 35,000 years ago. But in most countries in the...

An Austrian middle school teacher is being investigated by prosecutors after telling her class the prophet Mohammad was a child molester. Mohammad’s third wife Aisha was nine years-old when the marriage was consummated. Apparently, telling the true story of Islam is forbidden in Austria today. Vol.at reported, via Vlad Tepes: A middle school teacher allegedly referred to Mohammed as child molester in front of her pupils. The prosecution was informed; the provincial education department now awaits the investigation. A Bregenzer teacher is said to have described the founder of Islam as a child molester in front of her students. “Yes,...

Australian Prime Minister has just officially announced Australia will go to the polls on 2nd July 2016 in a double dissolution election. This has been known for a while, but now it's official - he's visited Governor General and asked for Parliament to be dissolved and the writs will be issued. A Double Dissolution election is an unusual one.

Australian police raided the Sydney home and office on Wednesday of a man named by Wired magazine as the probable creator of bitcoin and holder of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the cryptocurrency, Reuters witnesses said. More than a dozen federal police officers entered a house registered on the electoral roll to Craig Steven Wright, whom Wired outed as the likely real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous figure that first released bitcoin's code in 2009. Locksmiths broke open the door of the property, in a suburb on Sydney's north shore. When asked what they were doing, one...

One of our favorite japes is about the group of scientists who figure out the secret to life — a way to make a human being from nothing but dirt. When they’ve worked it all out, they are so excited they go directly to God to announce their discovery that He is no longer necessary. He appears a bit surprised, but they offer to demonstrate. He nods. One of the scientists bends down and scoops up a fistful of dirt. “Oh, no,” God exclaims. “You’ve got to make your own dirt.” This is how we feel about bitcoins. The idea...

(Reuters) - A Japanese American man thought to be the reclusive multi-millionaire father of Bitcoin emerged from a modest Southern California home and denied involvement with the digital currency before leading reporters on a freeway car chase to the local headquarters of the Associated Press. Satoshi Nakamoto, a name known to legions of bitcoin traders, practitioners and boosters around the world, appeared to lose his anonymity on Thursday after Newsweek published a story that said he lived in Temple City, California, just east of Los Angeles.

Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto might have been discovered, despite his best efforts to maintain anonymity over the last several years. Newsweek reported Thursday that it spent considerable time tracking down the father of Bitcoin, only to discover that he might be living in Temple City, Calif. It took a winding road to reach a 64-year-old man named Satoshi Nakamoto who not only had no desire to speak with Newsweek, but called the police on its reporter. When the police arrived, Nakamoto -- who Newsweek had been contacting and trying to track down for weeks -- finally had something to say....

The same bug that has plagued several of the biggest players in the Bitcoin economy may have just bitten the Silk Road. On Thursday, one of the recently-reincarnated drug-selling black market site’s administrators posted a long announcement to the Silk Road 2.0 forums admitting that the site had been hacked by one of its sellers, and its reserve of Bitcoins belonging to both the users and the site itself stolen. The admin, who goes by the name “Defcon,” blamed the same “transaction malleability” bug in the Bitcoin protocol that led to several of the cryptocurrency’s exchanges halting withdrawals in the...

New reports by Wired and Gizmodo may have identified the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, as Australian entrepreneur Craig S Wright. WIRED cites "an anonymous source close to Wright" who provided a cache of emails, transcripts and other documents that point to Wright's role in the creation of bitcoin. Gizmodo cited a cache of documents sourced from someone claiming to have hacked Wright’s business email account, as well as efforts to interview individuals close to him. The news outlets further claimed that Dave Kleiman, a computer forensics expert who died in April 2013, played a significant role in the...

Days after he published a lengthy blog post in which he claimed to be "Satoshi Nakamoto," the alias used to create the bitcoin cryptocurrency, Australian Craig Wright has erased the post and replaced it with one that says he doesn't "have the courage" to prove his claim. Here's what seems to be the central paragraph in the new post: "When the rumors began, my qualifications and character were attacked. When those allegations were proven false, new allegations have already begun. I know now that I am not strong enough for this." The mysterious short posting, which replaces one in which...

WHEN RUMORS SURFACED early last month that Australian cryptographer Craig Wright would attempt to prove that he created Bitcoin, Gavin Andresen remained skeptical. As the chief scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation, his opinion counts: Andresen is among the earliest programmers for the cryptocurrency, and likely the one who has corresponded more than anyone with Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s pseudonymous, long-lost inventor. Today, Andresen fully believes that Wright is Nakamoto. Now he’ll have to convince the rest of the world, because he’s among the only people to have seen what he claims is the best evidence in Wright’s favor. In an interview...

AS Australia marks 20 years since the Port Arthur massacre, guns still pose a massive threat to our nation. There are more firearms in the country than ever before, more are imported, and owners are amassing larger arsenals in their homes. Gun policy expert Philip Alpers, Adjunct Associate Professor at Sydney School of Public Health, warned this morning that boasts Australia has “solved the gun problem” are premature. When John Howard introduced the National Firearms Act in 1996 after Martin Bryant’s devastating mass shooting, he swore we wouldn’t “go the American way”, and many believe he has been vindicated. “People...

By the end of last year the French were convinced they had made a breakthrough in the race to win Australia’s $50 billion submarine contract. Over a series of meetings in Paris, L’Orient, Cherbourg and Adelaide, engineers from the French naval shipbuilder DCNS shared with Australian naval officers secret data on their submarine’s acoustic signature. The French Barracuda submarine, with its pump jet propulsion system, matches other conventional submarines’ noise emissions at very low cruising speeds under 5 knots. But the data showed that when the Barracuda accelerated, as any submarine must do when pursuing an enemy or evading an...

Australia could become the first foreign nation to buy the radar-guided Raytheon AIM-120D air-to-air missile under a $1.1 billion foreign military sales package approved by the US government this week. AIM-120D is the latest variant of Raytheon’s popular AMRAAM series, developed for the US Air Force and Navy. The networked, beyond-visual-range missile introduces satellite-aided navigation, a two-way datalink and new guidance software that “improves kinematic performance and weapon effectiveness”. It has greater range than the legacy variants and is optimised for high-angle off-boresight shots. Canberra has requested 450 missiles – as well as instrumented test vehicles and spare guidance sections...

Australia has awarded the A$50 billion ($40 billion) contract to build the country's new fleet of submarines to French naval contractor DCNS, sources said on Tuesday, dealing a major blow to Japan's nascent defence export industry. Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will officially announce on Tuesday the winner of the contract to build the country's 12 new submarines, but two sources familiar with the process told Reuters that France has secured the contract ahead of Japanese and German bidders. Another source at the French naval contractor said he was "quietly confident" of success ahead of the announcement by Turnbull. Australia...

A 16-year-old boy will appear in a Sydney court later today charged with planning a terrorist attack at a Sydney Anzac Day event. Counter terrorism police arrested the teenager in his home in Auburn, in Sydney’s west, yesterday afternoon. NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said the age of the suspect was concerning. “Now, the age of the individual is of significant concern. Sixteen years of age. A boy,” NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione told reporters this morning. Mr Scipione said the boy had been charged with one count of acts in preparation or planning a terrorist act. The offence carries...