Goodall's decision is reigniting a debate about euthanasia in Australia where assisted suicide is illegal

Australia's oldest scientist, who caused a stir when his university tried to vacate his office aged 102, will fly to Switzerland in early May to end his life, reigniting a national euthanasia debate.

David Goodall, who is now 104, does not have a terminal illness but his quality of life has deteriorated and he has secured a fast-track appointment with an assisted dying agency in Basel, euthanasia advocates said.

"I greatly regret having reached that age," the ecologist told broadcaster ABC on his birthday earlier this month. "I'm not happy. I want to die. It's not sad particularly. What is sad is if one is prevented.

On April 23^rd, the great independent investigative journalist, Craig Murray - a former British diplomat - headlined at his blog, "Condemned By Their Own Words", and he posted there the translated-to-English transcript (excerpted below) to this Israeli radio Hebrew broadcast on April 21^st, in which an Israeli Brigadier-General, named Fogel, explained why Israel's troops are doing the right thing to shoot and even to kill Gazans who come (an unspecified) too close to the wall which separates Israel from Gaza:

Any person who gets close to the fence, anyone who could be a future threat to the border of the State of Israel and its residents, should bear a price for that violation. If this child or anyone else gets close to the fence in order [the soldier thinks possibly] to hide an explosive device or [to] check if there are any dead zones there or to cut the fence so someone could infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel to kill us ...

Nesiel [the interviewer]: Then, then his punishment [for being suspected] is death?

Fogel: His punishment is death. As far as I'm concerned then yes, if you can only shoot him to stop him, in the leg or arm - great. But if it's more than that then, yes, you want to check with me whose blood is thicker, ours or theirs. It is clear to you that if one such person will manage to cross the fence or hide an explosive device there ...

Nesiel: But we were taught that live fire is only used when the soldiers face immediate danger. ... It does not do all that well for us, those pictures that are distributed around the world. Fogel: Look, Ron, we're even terrible at it [at suppressing those pictures]. There's nothing to be done, David always looks better against Goliath. And in this case, we are the Goliath. Not the David. That is entirely clear to me. ... It will drag us into a war. I do not want to be on the side that gets dragged. I want to be on the side that initiates things. I do not want to wait for the moment where it finds a weak spot and attacks me there. If tomorrow morning it gets into a military base or a kibbutz and kills people there and takes prisoners of war or hostages, call it as you like, we're in a whole new script. I want the leaders of Hamas to wake up tomorrow morning and for the last time in their life see the smiling faces of the IDF [Israel's army]. That's what I want to have happen. But we are dragged along. So we're putting snipers up because we want to preserve the values we were educated by [that Israel's soldiers are jury, judge, and even executioner, when suspecting a Gazan - Gaza is Israel's free-fire zone].

Labour MP John Woodcock, suspended from the party over sexual harassment allegations, has cast doubt on the "integrity" of the process as he queried how details of his case were leaked to the press.

Woodcock, a fierce critic of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, was suspended amid claims he sent inappropriate messages and emails to a former female staff member during the two years she worked at the party. The Daily Mirror reported on Sunday that the woman had left her job in 2016 because the correspondence made her feel uncomfortable.

The MP for Barrow and Furness, who is the partner of the Spectator's assistant editor Isabel Hardman, has said he does not accept the claims. He went on to say that, following the complaint made last November, Labour's harassment panel referred the case to the party's national constitutional committee.

In May of last year, two West Milwaukee police officers broke down the door to Adam Trammell's home, confronted him as he stood naked in his shower, and tasered him 18 times until he died. This month, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm has decided that the two cops responsible for this horrifying incident will not be charged.

On that fateful day, officers Michael Rohleder and Anthony Munoz "responded to a medical emergency under complex circumstances that required them to attempt restraint," Chisholm wrote to West Milwaukee Police Chief Dennis L. Nasci.

However, according to investigative reports, Trammell, 22, who suffered from schizophrenia, did not exhibit any signs of needing medical attention as police arrived and began to forcibly remove him from the shower.

What's more, if authorities claim he was in need of medical attention, why would they respond by attacking him in the shower with tasers and brute force? This was not help.

It is now the day after the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner and, as usually is the case, there are a lot of people complaining about the event. What is different is who is doing the complaining. Most years it's just conservatives who take issue with what happens at the event known as "Nerd Prom," and rightfully so, as it's mostly a night for the D.C. press corps to openly display its hostility for non-coastal Americans under the guise of it being a "roast."

The 2018 affair went too far for many in the media, however, and they immediately took to Twitter to express their displeasure.

The story still has some legs it seems, as this showed up in one of my Tweetdeck columns a few hours ago:

The Iranian judiciary has issued a "total ban" on Telegram following a request from the security services, which argued that the encrypted messaging app has become a "safe haven" for terrorist cells, according to local media.

"Considering various complaints against the Telegram social networking app by Iranian citizens and based on the demand of security organizations to confront the illegal activities of Telegram, the judiciary has banned its usage in Iran," the decision said, as cited by Iranian media. "All Internet providers in Iran must take steps to block Telegram's website and app as of April 30."

The judicial order envisages a "total ban" on the messaging app that would require the providers to ensure there is no way circumvent the restrictions, Mehr state news agency said.

At the center of the controversy over an alleged chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of Duma on April 7 are the White Helmets, a self-described rescue operation about whom an Oscar-winning documentary was made.

Reporter and author Max Blumenthal has tracked the role of the White Helmets in the Syrian conflict. He reported that the White Helmets were created in Turkey by James Le Mesurier, a former British MI5 agent. The group has received at least $55 million from the British Foreign Office and $23 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development as well as millions from the Kingdom of Qatar, which has backed a variety of extremist groups in Syria including Al Qaeda.

Blumenthal writes, "When Defense Secretary James Mattis cited 'social media' in place of scientific evidence of a chemical attack in Duma, he was referring to video shot by members of the White Helmets. Similarly, when State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert sought to explain why the US bombed Syria before inspectors from the OPCW could produce a report from the ground, she claimed, 'We have our own intelligence.' With little else to offer, she was likely referring to social media material published by members of the White Helmets."

The reference to social media as evidence in the most serious decision a leader can make-to engage in an act of war-is part of a disturbing trend. Then Secretary of State John Kerry pointed to "social media" as evidence of the Syrian government's guilt in a 2013 chemical attack in the same Damascus suburb. But as Robert Parry, the late founder and editor of this site, pointed out in numerous reports, Syrian government guilt was far from a sure thing.

CNN reporter Jim Acosta is trying to walk back comments he made earlier this week that appear to insult the intelligence of President Donald Trump's supporters.

Acosta came under fire recently after explaining what it's like to cover the Trump administration and the president's habit of calling certain networks "fake news" in an interview with Variety.

"The problem is that people around the country don't know it's an act. They're not in on the act and they take what [Trump] says very seriously," he said. "They take attacks from Sean Spicer and Sarah Sanders, and what they do to us on a daily basis, very seriously."

"They don't have all their faculties and in some cases their elevator might not hit all floors," he added.

Immigration officers in the United States operate under a cardinal rule: Keep your hands off Americans.

But Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents repeatedly target U.S. citizens for deportation by mistake, making wrongful arrests based on incomplete government records, bad data and lax investigations, according to a Times review of federal lawsuits, internal ICE documents and interviews.

Since 2012, ICE has released from its custody more than 1,480 people after investigating their citizenship claims, according to agency figures. And a Times review of Department of Justice records and interviews with immigration attorneys uncovered hundreds of additional cases in the country's immigration courts in which people were forced to prove they are Americans and sometimes spent months or even years in detention.

Victims include a landscaper snatched in a Home Depot parking lot in Rialto and held for days despite his son's attempts to show agents the man's U.S. passport; a New York resident locked up for more than three years fighting deportation efforts after a federal agent mistook his father for someone who wasn't a U.S. citizen; and a Rhode Island housekeeper mistakenly targeted twice, resulting in her spending a night in prison the second time even though her husband had brought her U.S. passport to a court hearing.

They and others described the panic and feeling of powerlessness that set in as agents took them into custody without explanation and ignored their claims of citizenship.

In 2016, I'll be returning to my country of the UK, and there's a man I'd certainly like to meet for an interview. While I was working on the scene from the war in Donbass, Eliot Higgins, of Bellingcat, was the man sitting on a sofa taking, and manipulating, YouTube videos (including my own) of Donbass, MH17, Syria, using them to disseminate misinformation, lies, to the world.

However, he's unlikely ever to agree to an interview with me, because, you see, Higgins, from the UK, born 1979, avoids sources who may raise uncomfortable questions much like critics have accused his work of avoiding basis in science, or fact (see below for more on that).

So, who exactly is Eliot Higgins? The man western media fawn over to the extent you may think it's Eliot's own mum writing the press, with headlines like 'Putin's MH17 Nemesis' and 'One-Man Intelligence Unit' (and that, enthusiastically promoted by the UK government in Ukraine, and not only them - US, Estonian government sources and more, open fans of his work).

Well, this is how a standard Eliot Higgins piece, and they are manifold, begins, in the western press - 'As rockets fell in Syria Eliot Higgins was asleep at his house 2,300 miles away, in Leicester. He woke a few hours later, roused his toddler daughter, Ela, and padded downstairs to make her porridge.'