The [International Labor] Organisation's Committee of Experts in its report cites an ACTU complaint that the watchdog has overwhelmingly sought to investigate and take action against unions and their officials or employees rather than employers.

Chapter 3 of the Labour Inspection Convention, which Australia has ratified, says the function of labour inspectors is to "secure the enforcement of the legal provisions relating to conditions of work and the protection of workers while engaged in their work."

The ABCC's inspectors should focus on this task, rather than seeking to pursue workers for breaches of the BCII Act, it says.

"The Committee considers that the prosecution of workers does not constitute part of the primary duties of inspectors and may not only seriously interfere with the effective discharge of their primary duties – which should be centred on the protection of workers under Article 3 of the Convention – but also prejudice the authority and impartiality necessary in the relations between inspectors and employers and workers," it says.

The problem is accentuated, the Committee says, by the fact that it has repeatedly found the BCII Act provisions under which workers are being prosecuted to be contrary to international labour standards.

It calls on the Federal Government (at page 489) to report on the measures it has taken, or plans to take, so its proposed Building Industry Inspectorate concentrates on enforcing employees' legal protections.

The ABCC should be abolished immediately: http://www.rightsonsite.org.au/

It must be of concern when segments of the national media frequently distort and misrepresent scientific articles and scientists' statements in complete departure from accepted standards of journalistic honesty and decency.

The entire article is well worth a read, mainly for bravely highlighting the media's obsession with a distorted sense of "balance" in the climate change "debate". Balance in this case would be 9 minutes (or blog articles) of pro-anthropogenic climate change reporting for every 1 minute of anti-anthropogenic climate change reporting (and making sure that the anti-argument was made by respected climate scientists, rather than kooks).

According to Xie Zhenhua, a deputy director at China's powerful National Development and Reform Commission, climate change is a fact based on long-term observation in many countries.

At the annual session of China's National People's Congress, he said that those who advocate that climate change is not man-made are holding an extreme and marginal view.

Tired of the limited legroom, bad food, and worse movies you have to put up with during a flight? Well, it's time to bust out your company credit card and get yourself a Martin Jetpack, which has just become the first commercially available jetpack.

Apparently this two-stroke, petrol powered jet-pack will set you back a mere $86,000.

Sceptical Questions and the Scientific Answers

Scientists have developed a vast body of knowledge about the processes, causes and consequences of global warming and the more general issue of climate change through time. In addition, social scientists and economists have modelled its possible impact on the economy and our everyday lives.

Yet a strong current of doubt persists in our society about whether recent global warming is real, if it is all really as bad as people make out, whether we can or should do something about it. As our window of opportunity to choose to respond effectively to climate change narrows, the inaction caused by such doubt is increasingly perilous to future generations.

In this series of six free lectures designed for the general public, Professor Barry Brook, the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change and Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide, will provide a balanced assessment of the scientific answers to a host of commonly-raised sceptical questions that are slowing the world's response to this critically important issue.

The great thing about this resource is the audio recordings and slide presentations.

Among Obama, though, the high is 66% among the 18-29 group, with a low of 51% among the 65+ group.

Obama needs to keep this demographic (and even expand it). The Democrat's challenge is to turn these young voters out to vote in the mid-term elections.

Transonic Combustion, a startup based in Camarillo, TX, has developed a fuel-injection system it says can improve the efficiency of gasoline engines by more than 50 percent. A test vehicle equipped with the technology gets 64 miles per gallon in highway driving, which is far better than more costly gas-electric hybrids, such as the Prius, which gets 48 miles per gallon on the highway.

Unfortunately not going to be released until at least 2014 at the earliest.

The trailer gives us more detail into Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Whiplash (Mikey Rourke), but still focuses on the story of Stark (Robert Downy Jr.) accepting his fate as Iron Man. The trailer also gives us a look into his business arch-rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) and even a shot of Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) expanding the Marvel Universe that was made back in 2008 at the end of Iron Man. 

Other pretty cool parts to the trailer include the portable Iron Man suit and some great one-liners.

Over on The Big Think, 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried has posted an interesting short video about how the modern workplace is designed to provide constant interruptions (phone calls, meetings, colleagues dropping by your desk), and how that’s a real productivity killer:

Fried says that project management tools, IM, collaboration apps and email can be used to reduce those constant interruptions, because if you’re busy you can put them to one side until you have time to deal with them.

A fairly long video, but Jason Fried makes several good points about how we need to remove distractions (like the Internet) for significant parts of our day to be more productive.

We at the Center for American Progress believe policymakers need one more arrow in their quiver—a targeted program to convert already foreclosed homes owned directly by the federal government into thoroughly energy efficient, affordable rental homes that can be resold as portfolios of rental properties to private investors.

This article is definitely worth a read, and spells out quite clearly a great policy initiative to boost the (US) economy, transition rental homes to become energy efficient, and get more people into homes.