About

Glen - Breakfast presenter …

Some favourite stories of the week so far:

AFP reports dealing with the sublime , the ridiculous, and possible…
The manager of a bank branch in Germany who secretly transferred money from rich clients to heavily indebted customers was sentenced to a 22-month suspended jail term on Monday, a court spokesman said.

The 62-year-old woman, dubbed the “Robin Hood banker”, was found guilty of moving a total of 7.6 million euros (11.4 million dollars) between December 2003 and February 2005, in 117 separate transfers.

Her altruistic aim was to prevent clients from seeing their accounts closed for want of funds.

As a rule, she transferred the money back when the indebted clients were solvent again, but 1.1 million euros were lost when certain customers were unable to pay their debts.

The court, in the western city of Bonn, took a lenient view of the fraud as she owned up immediately and took none of the money for herself.

They also judged she had suffered enough after losing her job and paying compensation.

According to press reports, she now lives off a tiny pension.

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US Santas want swine flu vaccine, so that sneezing children don’t give them an unwelcome present this Christmas.

Ernest Berger, head of “Santa America,” told NPR that the organization’s 200 volunteer Father Christmases want to be given the same priority as school teachers and health care workers for getting the H1N1 vaccine.

The website of “Santa America,” which visits sick and traumatized children in the Christmas season, instructs the men in red to take no chances.

“As wonderful as it is, be cautious of children burying their faces in your beard for a hug. If this happens, use sanitizer in your beard,” the website advises.

“Avoid touching your face, nose, eyes, or mouth. Do not touch children’s faces. If you do, immediately sanitize your hands,” the site urges.

“Santa should be taking needed vitamins and other doctor approved boosters to keep his immune system at peak performance.”

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A Boeing 747, with one of its four engines powered by a 50-percent biokerosene mix, circled the Netherlands for an hour on Monday for what airline KLM called the world’s first passenger flight using biofuel.

“This is technically feasible. We have demonstrated that it is possible,” KLM chief executive officer Peter Hartman said after the flight, which took off and landed at Schiphol airport near Amsterdam.

“Government, industry and society at large must now join forces to ensure that we quickly gain access to a continuous supply of biofuel.”

KLM spokeswoman Monique Matze told AFP that of the Boeing’s four engines, one was powered by a mix of 50 percent sustainable kerosene and 50 percent normal fuel. The biofuel was manufactured from the camelina plant, sourced from a biotechnology company based in Seattle in the United States.

The test flight was also the first of any kind in Europe powered partly by sustainable biofuel, according to KLM.

KLM said its quest for biokerosene was conditional on forests, food and water sources not being jeopardised.

Matze said the company “dare not name any targets” for switching to biofuel for its commercial flights, saying “the difficulty now is the availability of biofuels.”

Monday’s flight, she said, was “the first step towards ensuring clean and sustainable air transport.”

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Mark - Breakfast EP

Wilson Tuckey listens to ABC NewsRadio.

Religiously.

That’s the big headline out of the last extraordinary 24 hours in Federal politics.

A notorious early riser (the 74-year old thinks nothing of ringing in from a racecourse in Perth, or his Albany office for a chat at 4am WA time), Mr. Tuckey was this morning in full flight with Marius Benson at the relatively late (for him) hour of 7:15am EDST.

“I hear on your program this morning some suggestion from his (Malcolm Turnbull’s) selected spokesman, Senator Brandis, that he might not turn up (to a party meeting where a leadership spill would be on the cards)”, chuckled Mr. T.

He was referring to the Lateline interview with Senator George Brandis we re-broadcast earlier at 5:45am.

Mr. Tuckey was is no doubt Senator Brandis was trying to send a “Go ahead, make my day” message from Malcolm Turnbull, to all those in his own party opposed to the ETS.

Mr. Tuckey went on to send a none-too-subtle message of his own:

“If he (Malcolm Turnbull) attempts to avoid it (a party meeting at which there would be a leadership spill), then of course it is patently clear that he knows that he can’t win.”

Like John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Senator Nick Xenophon, Wilson Tuckey is a voracious electronic media consumer and knows all about the power of a few carefully chosen words uttered over the airwaves…especially in internal Liberal party battles.

About 10 years ago, John Howard talked about how when he was Treasurer in the Fraser Government, he’d use ABC Radio’s “AM” program to “send a message” to his Liberal Party colleagues.

Presumably, even to Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, with whom he had fundamental disagreements about the direction of economic policy as Australia slipped into a deep recession.

So the moral of the story is: listen to ABC NewsRadio.

We have the big political stories covered from all angles.

All the coded and not-so-coded messages.

More political intrigue than you could poke a stick at.