On Monday, the President of China, Jiang Xemin, will be in Australia for an official visit on his way to the APEC Summit in New Zealand. There will be no joint news conference after talks between Prime Minister, John Howard, and President Jiang, a salutary comment perhaps that sensitive issues will not be talked about in public. In just over a week leaders from Asia and the Pacific will converge on Auckland for the latest APEC summit. With Bill Clinton also in town, security is very tight, but it seems even the best-laid plans of the CIA and military intelligence can go astray. Top secret code names and communications details have been faxed to a bemused owner of an Auckland chicken processing factory.
Solar panels are expensive and in the short-term, it's still cheaper to get electricity from grid.
However, as Hamish Robertson reports, significant advances are now being made in photo-voltaic technology right here in Australia, and affordable solar power could arrive sooner than many people think. Well, a 10-year ban on the irradiation of food in Australia has been lifted by the Federal Government. Irradiation kills bacteria, meaning that food which would otherwise be past its use by date can still be consumed. The difference this time seems to be the prospect that the electorate may give Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee a majority in his own right, ending years of destabilising shaky coalition government. What's believed to be the world's first prison website has been launched in the Northern Territory.