Ian Thorpe announced today that he
would be retiring from competitive swimming. The news was greeted
with immense disappointment in the Australian swimming world,
especially as Thorpe offered his position to Craig Stevens. Speaking
at a press conference, the former world champion acknowledged that he
was struggling for motivation and said he wanted to spend the Beijing
Olympics with a new couch, not with his coach. Thorpe denied that he
has lost his love of the pool, claiming that he still loved the water
but has just tired of swimming relentless laps.
News
Channel Nine CEO Eddie McGuire has
returned to the small screen, hosting a gameshow that features a
triumph against the odds - beating Seven in the ratings. The
much-hyped show, 1 vs 100,
spent months in pre-production, as producers struggled to find
100 Nine viewers to serve as competitors.
A relationship quiz
entitled Is He The One? that appeared in a recent issue of
Cleo has led Sydney woman Jane Kurkova to break off her
engagement with truck driver Miles Daly. Kurkova was "shocked and
heartbroken" when her fiancée scored a mere four out of twenty,
putting him firmly in the "Dump this frickin' loser already"
category.
In an effort to inform friends and family of his new-found political
awareness, Joss Freeman, 14, has changed his MSN Messenger display
picture from a photo of his cat to a stylised Sex Pistols logo. "I'm
an anarchist," he said in a brief break between rounds of his favourite first-person shooter,
Counterstrike.
Buoyed by strong early results in opinion polls, Kevin Rudd is offering
voters an unprecedented choice between two nerds in the 2007 election.
He's left little doubt that he's a safer bet that Mark Latham. “Voters
can rest assured that no matter who wins the election, they will be led
by an uncharismatic, socially conservative man with glasses and a bad
haircut.” 
ALP leader Steve Bracks has been re-elected
as caretaker Premier of Victoria, while the search for a successor to Jeff
Kennett continues. After achieving a third election victory on the weekend,
Bracks is now set to become Labor's longest-serving Premier-in-waiting.
After opening their wedding presents, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have scored 62 copies of Dianetics,
391 "e-meters" and 17,042 free informational DVDs about Scientology.
Some of the wedding guests have attributed the enormous overlap to the
difficulty of picking gifts for the couple that has everything. "I gave
them one of those Scientology e-meter devices because I knew they'd
have to pretend to like it," one friend said. "Just like Katie's family
had to pretend they liked their once-Catholic daughter being
brainwashed by a freaky religious cult."
Federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has rebuffed claims that his
leadership might be under challenge, following his embarrassing
confusion of Rove McManus and Karl Rove. “I can assure you that I will
be leading the ABC to the next election,” Beazley announced. “But in any case, Xavier Rudd and I are both utterly devoted to unseating John Howard’s
government and its extreme agenda.”
The government of Tonga
has called on Australia to restore order in the riot-stricken nation
by raising a standing army of Tongan security staff, recruited
exclusively from the outside of Australia's pubs and bars. The
government hopes the Tongan security force will not only quell the
riots, but also prepare the island for national Girls Drink Free
day next Friday.
America's war in
Iraq has claimed its most popular casualty yet, Donald Rumsfeld, who
has announced his resignation. Rumsfeld denied that he was "cutting
and running" from the challenges of office, saying his resignation
was a "phased withdrawal" from the Secretariat.
Inspired by the success of the Walk
Against Warming event, self-described fan of the environment Juan
Martinez is staging a one-man road trip to fight climate change. With
a "honk if you hate fossil fuels" bumper sticker firmly in place,
Martinez will drive his dilapidated Kombi van on a whistle-stop tour
to his local shopping centre, spreading his anti-global warming
message to fellow motorists on the way. "Think global, act local,"
he says.
The
former NSW Labor Minister Milton Orkopoulos has reminded the public that he should
be presumed innocent of each of the 30 separate child sex and drug offences he
was charged with in Newcastle
this week. "I do not want to be subjected to trial by media," Mr Orkopoulos
said in thirty press releases the day after he was charged. "In fact I'm quite
keen to avoid a trial of any sort."
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