blab

Paltrow implies one should be careful about blabbing too much when things are going well - since those comments can come back to haunt you when a relationship sour.

[ Gwyn's advice for Brad ]

hurricane

Hurricane Katrina hit the Louisiana coast last night Australian time with 224 km/h winds as the powerful storm came ashore from the Gulf of Mexico and took aim at low-lying New Orleans.

The coast, much of it lightly populated swamps, was being pounded by high winds and heavy rain while New Orleans, 90 kilometres to the north-east, braced itself for the worst.


[ New Orleans cowers as Katrina slams into coast ]

Arctic Circle

Arctic Circle 北極圈
Antarctica 北極洲

This is the first commercial use of the NASA technology. Since acquiring it, Astrovision has developed and patented a system to use seven cameras on the satellite to scan the "Pacific" hemisphere of the earth, ranging from west of India to east of Hawaii and from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica

[ Satellite system based on Mars technology ]

Oil breaks through $70 barrier

August 29, 2005 - 10:57AM

Crude oil surged to a new record high in New York late today, with the benchmark contract briefly rising above $US70 per barrel in after-hours trading.
The West Texas Intermediate crude for October delivery rose to $US70.80 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange amid concerns about supply shortages.

- Kyodo

startling

However, the results announced yesterday of the survey by the Housing Industry Association and Commonwealth Bank show Sydney repayments have eased from a startling 48 per cent of average incomes 18 months ago, thanks to falling house prices.

[ Can you afford your home loan? ]

general practitioners, obstetrician

THE resignation of two general practitioners and an obstetrician from the Seymour Hospital has plunged the health service into crisis and raised fears that patients will have to go to other towns for emergency care.

The departures mean the hospital may not be able to provide after-hours care, forcing patients to travel about an hour to Shepparton or Epping.

[ Hospital in crisis as doctors walk ]

squad

n. small military unit; small group of people trained to work together as a tea

Dog squad : (prison) undercover police (Aussie Slang)


A month after being hit by an out-of-control car, seriously injured Australian road cyclists Alexis Rhodes and Louise Yaxley have been given the all-clear by doctors to fly home from Germany.

The pair will return to Australia soon, the last of the national squad to leave Germany after the training ride accident which claimed the life of teammate Amy Gillett and put five cyclists in hospital.

[ Injured cyclists to return home ]

battered

adj. beaten, hit repeatedly

David Gruen, chief adviser for the Treasury's macro-economic group, told Parliament yesterday that Australia's flat property market was triggering a "substantial" shift in household spending habits as consumers try to rebuild their battered finances.

[ Cooling home market puts brakes on spending ]

tally

v. correspond, be in agreement

An ATO audit found that 70 per cent of low-doc loan applications do not tally with the borrower's tax return.

[ High-risk, low-doc mortgage market smaller ]

being enticed

With about 20,200 more women than men in each year of the 30-something bracket, Sydney and Melbourne are in the grip of a "man drought", demographer Bernard Salt has revealed.

In his Population Growth Report 2005, Mr Salt attributed the gender imbalance to the number of young men being enticed overseas to work, leaving women to nest on their own.

[ The home truths on what women want ]

scrap

v. throw away, not continue

Property industry participants have applauded the scrapping of the tax, which the NSW government introduced in June last year.

[ Analysis - Abolition Of NSW Vendor Tax To Push House Prices Down ]

Melburnians put big bucks on study, good looks

Sydney households are the richest, earn the most and spend the most. But Melbourne has the big spenders on clothes, school fees and university fees, a study of Australians' spending patterns reveals.

The Bureau of Statistics found the average Australian household spent $883 a week in 2003-04 to buy goods and services, and paid $240 a week in income tax.

The Bureau's five-yearly household expenditure survey found big jumps since 1998-99 in spending on mobile phones, pay TV and the internet. By 2003-04 the average household spent $16 a week on them, and $23 on takeaways and fast food.

Based on surveys of income and spending by almost 7000 households, the bureau found Sydney, Canberra and Darwin have the nation's highest incomes and biggest household spending. Melbourne was above average; the rest of Victoria was well below.

Sydney had by far the highest rents, and the highest mortgage repayments outside Darwin. Its people paid the most income tax ($288 a week, compared to $238 in Melbourne) and were Australia's richest, with an average net worth of $624,626.

[ Melburnians put big bucks on study, good looks ]

fuel surcharge

n. 燃油附加費

Low cost airline Virgin Blue is closely monitoring its fuel surcharge as oil prices push through $US64 per barrel.

The news comes as both Qantas and Jetstar also examine the fuel surcharge situation.

[ Virgin Blue monitoring fuel surcharge ]

nail-biting

nail-biting : exciting

After more than 200 orbits around the world, covering more than 9 million kilometres, the space shuttle Discovery landed safely on the west coast of the United States in a nail-biting finish to its anxiety-plagued 14-day mission.

The landing brought a successful end to NASA's troubled return to human space flight, 2½ years after the destruction of sister ship Columbia.

Discovery made its fiery re-entry into the atmosphere and swooped across the Pacific Ocean before gliding to a smooth touchdown at 8.11:22am (10.11:22pm Melbourne time last night) at Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert, returning to Earth with more than 3.1 tonnes of equipment and trash from the International Space Station.

[ Cheers and relief at Discovery's safe return ]

outskirt

Another major development is in the supply of industrial property, particularly on the outskirts of major cities where new roads are being built.

Industrial land values in south-east Melbourne have grown 40 per cent due to the Mitcham-Frankston highway, while values in Arndell Park near Sydney's M7 have grown 23 per cent.

[ Property prices set to recover: bank ]

orbit

orbit : rotate around a heavenly body on a set course (Astronomy)
orbital e.g. An orbital road is one which takes traffic around a city rather than through it.

After orbiting the Earth for nearly two weeks, astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery were told to circle the planet for another day as bad weather in Florida forced NASA to delay yesterday's landing.

[ Shuttle forced around again ]

confront

confront : stand face to face, put before

Ms Mahon said this was another serious issue confronting community health. The Australian Tax Office is reviewing whether community health centres should be considered public benevolent institutions. If their status changes, they could be hit with extra taxes.

[ Bulk-billing for poor may be illegal ]

riddled with

riddled with : full of, spread all through with

The system for administering drought aid has been so complex and riddled with anomalies that it has distressed farmers and confused the public servants meant to help them.

[ $600 million in drought aid unspent ]

debut

On average, the soap attracts more than 200,000 viewers nationally, while the upstart cooking show gets 20,000 to 30,000 fewer. Since its debut, it's averaged around 182,000 daily.

[ Kitchen magicians ]

controversy

...
This is not the first time the Red Cross has been involved in a funding controversy.
...
[ Red Cross tsunami cocktails turn sour ]

glitch

n. defect, malfunction

Westpac's online banking service has been hit by technical glitches in recent days in the rush to lodge business activity statements by the July 28 deadline, a bank spokesman says.

[ BAS lodgements hit by Westpac slowdown ]

It's official: We're top of the world Down Under

...
Australian people were described as "honest" in the survey, a compliment shared only with people from Britain.

Most countries' populations were described as "hardworking", with some exceptions. Mexicans were thought to be "lazy", the French "intelligent", Americans "ambitious", New Zealanders, Swedes and Swiss "trustworthy" and Italians, Brazilians and Spaniards "fun".

Australia was about midway down the list when respondents were asked to rate their satisfaction with each country's products and their likelihood of buying them, both of which counted towards a relatively low overall export result.

But Tim Harcourt, the chief economist with Austrade, attributed this to Australia's commodities being largely "hidden".

"Germany has BMW, Finland has Nokia and Japan has Toyota … whereas most of our exports are things like coal and what you don't see on the supermarket shelves."

[ It's official: We're top of the world Down Under ]

Wreck, ruin and glory

...
Ms Annear says Whelan, a four-generation family business that folded in 1992 after 100 years, "enabled people's imaginings" of their city, be they good or bad.

When it was erected in 1896, the Equitable Life Assurance Society building, on the corner of Collins and Elizabeth streets, reflected the Victorian yen for prosperity and permanence. It had seven storeys and marble walls and floors. Its roof blocks weighed up to 15 tonnes.

The building's four-metre-tall sculpture Charity Being Kind to the Poor towered four storeys above Collins Street. It shows a giant woman sheltering a bedraggled mother and her two children.

But by 1959, grand gestures were out. Post-Olympics, big companies preferred the maximum floor space design of box skyscrapers, and the Equitable, now the Colonial Mutual Life building, had to come down.
...

[ Wreck, ruin and glory ]