Politics is a dirty word

  The views of Grantville residents and regional sand extraction operators were detailed to Bass Coast councillors and senior shire officers at a meeting today, just two days after a Directions Hearing on Bass Coast councillors’ refusal to allow clearing to facilitate the sealing of Stanley Road . All sand extraction in the region must comply with the Regional Sand Extraction Strategy Lang Lang to Grantville, gazetted by the Victorian Government in 1995. The strategy requires community and Council participation in an Environmental Review Committee, The committee was supposed to be funded by the State government but since 2019 the Grantville Quarries Reference Group has been self-managed, with an Independent Chair and administrative assistant, fully funded by the participating quarry operators. Anne Westwood lives in Stanley Road, Grantville and is a community representative on the reference group. She was the convenor and principal researcher for Grantville Action Group w...

  The latest strikes by Iran on Israel have highlighted the extent of military problems for Israel and the United States. Reports by international warfare experts confirm that up to now, Iran has relied on less advanced missile types to deplete Israel’s ballistic missile interceptor arsenal, but the ability of hypersonic glide vehicles to bypass them entirely has posed an entirely different kind of threat. Vice President of the leading Israeli missile defence system developer Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, Yuval Baseski,   highlighted   that this had forced the firm and the Israel Defence Forces to develop an entirely new approach to missile defence. “Hypersonic missiles open a new era in air defence,” he stated, observing: “Every air defence system today is based on flying faster than the target. But this principle does not apply to hypersonic missiles. To intercept an object moving at Mach 10, one would need a defence moving at Mach 30, which is impossible ...