The National Party is again embroiled in bitter infighting after Andrew Constance abandoned his bid for Liberal pre-selection for the seat.

Voters in Eden Monaro are still waiting to find out who the Liberal candidate will be for the by-election in the marginal seat.

Gary Nairn was the Federal Liberal MP for Eden Monaro from 1996 to 2007.

One of two US citizens captured off the Caribbean Coast this week has appeared on camera during an interrogation, backing the Venezuelan government's theory over the failed invasion.

A white former police officer and his son are arrested and charged with the murder of an unarmed black man whose death had been captured on video.

It is a piece of Australian history never heard how a waitress, a TV repair man and a young Croatian migrant in a remote WA town helped the US win the space race by sending man to the Moon half a century ago.

A South Australian farming community has been given a much needed psychological sweetener after a heavy downpour fell in a matter of hours the first good rain in three years.

Narooma is a haven for holidaymakers and sea-changers, but many young people are finding it impossible to rent in their own home town.

While there is a push to close the gap on education, a NSW hostel for Indigenous boys has a waitlist that could take years to get through.

DAILY BRIEFING: A worker has been "narrowly missed" by a bolt falling from a crane at a Hobart worksite, and Madeleine Ogilvie meets with Labor to discuss her future.

The forgotten language of the Barngarla people on Eyre Peninsula is being revived thanks to a dictionary written by a German Lutheran pastor in 1844.

They've chosen a Kiwi comedian to direct the latest MCU film, so guess what sort of movie he made?

David and Suzanne Bassingthwaighte have struck a deal to buy the NT's Epenarra Station, owned by a Filipino businessman.

An Alice Springs family is feeling lucky to be alive after a speeding car missed a turn and crashed into the front of their house, with one passenger sent to hospital with head injuries.

One person is dead and another injured after a crash between a truck and a car, which will see the Monaro Highway closed for the rest of the day.

Tour operators at a Queensland national park fear it will not be long until someone is killed or seriously injured in the quest for the perfect social media photo.

A man who attempted to abduct a woman on the NSW Central Coast on Sunday is believed to be the same person who sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl last month.

One retirement village on the NSW Central Coast is home to half a dozen women who have all celebrated their 100th birthday.

The Quaker religion was founded on political protest. Today its followers are keeping that tradition alive from nannas knitting against gas to American farmers saving refugees.

Labanotation Archives at The Ohio State University Wednesday, May 6, 2020 11 a.m. – noon EST Register here Join us for a virtual experience of dance notation in the archives at Ohio State. Labanotation, a symbol system for movement preservation and transmission, is a strong presence in University Library Special Collections, interwoven into the history of OSUDance, […]

Submitted by Nicole Hernandez: University Libraries participated in the RUSA Data in the Libraries webinar series this semester. The webinar recordings are now available online. The following webinar records are now available: Understanding and Working with APIs Data Processing and Visualization Open Data Data Basics and The Reference Interview Information on the webinar series, and […]

Submitted by Ashleigh Minor: Sign your team up today to participate in the University Libraries Zoom Pictionary May Madness Tournament!  Are you bummed you missed out on March Madness this year? Need a little break in the day to connect with colleagues and have some fun? We’re looking for teams of 4-6 players to challenge […]

Telling Stories about the Byrd Second Antarctic Expedition: Findings from the Byrd Archives  Wednesday, May 13, 2020 3 – 4 p.m. EST Register here Join the Byrd Center in a virtual webinar with Dr. Anneke Schwob from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This is a special seminar and collaboration between the Byrd Center and Polar […]

The FBI coordinated very closely with the Obama White House on the investigation of Michael Flynn, while the Obama Justice Department was asleep at the switch. That is among the most revealing takeaways from Thursday’s decision by Attorney General Bill Barr to pull the plug on the prosecution of Flynn, who fleetingly served as President Trump’s first National Security Advisor. Flynn had been seeking to withdraw his guilty plea to a false-statements charge brought in late 2017 by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.While working on the Trump transition team in December 2016, Flynn spoke with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, in conversations that were intercepted by our government (because Russian-government operatives, such as Kislyak, are routinely monitored by the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies). Among the topics Flynn and Kislyak discussed was the imposition of sanctions against Russia, which President Obama had just announced.That these conversations took place has been known for over three years -- ever since a still-unidentified government official leaked that classified information to the Washington Post. For almost as long, it has been known that the FBI became aware of the Flynn–Kislyak discussions very shortly after they happened. What was not known until this week was that then–acting attorney general Yates was out of the loop. She found out about the discussions nearly a week afterwards -- from President Obama, of all people.This was at a White House pow-wow on January 5, 2017. That was the day when the chiefs of key intelligence agencies briefed top Obama White House officials on their assessment of Russia’s meddling in the campaign. After the main briefing, the president asked Yates and FBI director James Comey to stick around to meet with him, along with Vice President Biden and National Security Advisor Susan Rice. Yates was taken aback when Obama explained that he had “learned of the information about Flynn” and his conversation with Kislyak. She was startled because, she later told investigators, she “had no idea what the president was talking about.”Yates had to figure things out by listening to the exchanges between President Obama and FBI director Comey. The latter was not only fully up to speed, he was even prepared to suggest a potential crime -- a violation of the moribund Logan Act -- that might fit the facts.According to an FBI report, which was appended (as Exhibit 4) to the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the Flynn case, Yates later said she was “so surprised by the information she was hearing that she was having a hard time processing it and listening to the conversation at the same time.”I’ll bet.That Yates was in the dark was not the FBI’s fault. Two days earlier, the bureau’s then–deputy director, Andrew McCabe, had briefed Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord, the head of DOJ’s National Security Division, about the Flynn–Kislyak discussions. Evidently not appreciating what the FBI regarded as the urgency of the matter, McCord did not pass the information along to the acting AG before her White House meeting.Ms. Yates’s astonishment at how well-informed the bureau was keeping the president calls for revisiting something to which I’ve called attention before. It now seems even more significant.When General Flynn was forced to resign as national-security adviser after just three weeks on the job, the New York Times did its customary deep dive, in which seven of its best reporters pressed their well-placed sources for details. It was a remarkable report, which recounted -- as if it were totally matter-of-fact -- that Flynn’s communications with Kislyak had been investigated by the FBI in real-time consultation with President Obama’s aides. For example (my italics):> Obama advisers heard separately from the F.B.I. about Mr. Flynn’s conversation with Mr. Kislyak, whose calls were routinely monitored by American intelligence agencies that track Russian diplomats. The Obama advisers grew suspicious that perhaps there had been a secret deal between the incoming [Trump] team and Moscow, which could violate the rarely enforced, two-century-old Logan Act barring private citizens from negotiating with foreign powers in disputes with the United States.Interesting. The FBI tells Obama “advisers” about Flynn’s discussions with Kislyak. Between this and their surprise that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin did not retaliate when Obama imposed sanctions, the Obama “advisers” dream up a non-existent pact between Trump and the Kremlin -- collusion! And they’re already thinking about nailing Flynn on the Logan Act . . . an obsolete, unconstitutional vestige of the President John Adams administration that has never, ever been prosecuted in the history of the Justice Department (the last case appears to have been in 1852; DOJ was established 18 years later).Who came up with that? Well, Ms. McCord (whose interview is Exhibit 3 in DOJ’s Flynn dismissal motion) later told investigators that the Logan Act flyer originated in the office of Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper -- specifically proposed by ODNI’s general counsel, Bob Litt. Obviously, by January 5, Comey was already discussing it with Obama.Let’s look at some more of that Times report on Flynn’s downfall. For the legal analysis of Flynn’s exchanges with Kislyak, the president’s aides consulted the FBI, not DOJ:> The Obama officials asked the F.B.I. if a quid pro quo had been discussed on the call, and the answer came back no, according to one of the officials, who like others asked not to be named discussing delicate communications. The topic of sanctions came up, they were told, but there was no deal.So no misconduct. To the contrary, the incoming national-security adviser asked a Russian counterpart to discourage his government from escalating tensions, which is what we would want any American diplomat to do. “There was no deal.” Sanctions were merely mentioned, as one would expect since they’d just been imposed, but Flynn made no agreement to accommodate the Kremlin in any way.But see, those are the actual facts. Who cares what actually happened? What matters, it turns out, is what “Obama advisers” and their FBI co-creators could imagine it into: There must be Trump collusion with Russia because we’ve concluded Putin would otherwise have retaliated.This was nothing new for the FBI. Remember, at that point, they’re already in the FISA court (and at that time, were about to go back for a renewal warrant) telling the judges they suspect members of Donald Trump’s campaign are in a “conspiracy of cooperation” with the Putin regime. Their proof of that? The Steele dossier -- uncorroborated Democratic-party- and Clinton-campaign-sponsored propaganda that they already have immense reason to know is claptrap.Meanwhile, with Yates at the helm, the Justice Department had major reservations about the FISA warrants’ reliance on the Steele dossier, but swallowed hard and went along with it. The Justice Department had major reservations about the Logan Act as a predicate for investigating Flynn, but Yates was too startled to speak up at the White House meeting. The Justice Department wanted Comey to alert the Trump White House about the Flynn–Kislyak discussions, but the FBI refused . . . and Yates did nothing. By the time, after days of temporizing, she finally decided to put her foot down, Comey told her he had already dispatched agents to do an unauthorized ambush interview of Flynn. Yates was “dumbfounded,” McCord recalled.The Justice Department appears to have spent much of its time “flabbergasted,” to quote McCabe again. But in the end, it would always go with the collusion flow. Meanwhile, empowered and emboldened, the FBI ran rings around its nominal superiors.So what did President Obama make of all this theorizing from the FBI and his “advisers”? Well, intriguingly, as she was leaving her office for the last time, Obama’s top adviser, Susan Rice, decided that her last official act, moments after Trump was inaugurated, would be to craft -- 15 days after the fact -- an email memorializing Obama’s directive at the January 5 meeting:> President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming [Trump] team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.Hmm, you mean a reason like “Trump and his minions just might be colluding with the Kremlin”?You’d almost think the Obama White House and its intelligence apparatus was weaving a political narrative out of . . . nothing.

(California Court of Appeal) - Held that a domestic violence restraining order could not constitutionally prohibit a husband from posting anything about his divorce case on Facebook. Directed that the provision be stricken from the restraining order as an invalid restraint on speech.