When I read yesterday that Mark Latham was promising to raise Townsville's profile as a defence base, I thought he was planning a special assignment for the North Queensland Cowboys. As it happens, it's a promise to establish an infantry battalion and a parachute battalion in the city, which is situated - fancy - in the marginal Liberal seat of Herbert.

JFK was on Letterman Monday night. According to Associated Press, he read the Top Ten George W Bush Tax Proposals, which are:

Tipperary beat Cork 2-11 (17) to 0-9 (9) in the All-Ireland Camogie final at Croke Park on Sunday. The RTE website has a brief match report, and there is vision during the archive of Sunday night's Nine O'Clock News, about 14:45 into the bulletin.

So Cuban national baseball teams don't win every tournament they compete in. Venezuela's best ten year-old beisbolistas defeated the Cuban kiddies 4-1 in the final of the V Mundialito Preinfantil at the Jose Antonio Casanova stadium in Caracas on Saturday.

Nominations closed for candidates for the federal elections on Thursday, and the Australian Electoral Commission announced them on Friday afternoon. Only five candidates in my electorate of Grayndler - that's a surprise. Not so surprising is the 78 candidates for the 12 senate vacancies in New South Wales, making up thirty different groups. That's right - the NSW senate ballot paper on October 9 will be thirty columns wide.

What a week for ice hockey! Canada wins the World Cup, then the NHL lockout begins. And aren't the gloom merchants having a field day!

I'm not personally going to go into much depth on this - I couldn't care less about ice hockey really - except to track a few perspectives on events, mainly from a Canadian angle.

It's on, or should that be off. There will be no professional baseball in Japan this weekend. Talks between the Japan Baseball Players Association and the owners broke down on Friday night.

At issue is the planned merger between the Orix BlueWave and Kintetsu Buffaloes. The association, concerned about player redundancies, opposed the merger then offered a compromise of deferring the merger till 2006 so that another club could take its place. The owners refused.

May 4, 1886: About a dozen deaths at a labour rally in Chicago when dynamite was thrown into a police line. They retaliated by shooting at the crowd. A memorial was unveiled this week (reports from New York Times report | Chicago Tribune).

Frustrated with the refusal of John Howard to cut and run into retirement? Try doing the following to relieve some of the election frustration:

1. Create a "new folder" on your computer.
2. Name it "John Howard".
3. Send it to the trash.
4. Empty the trash.
5. Your computer will ask "Do you really want to get rid of 'John Howard'?"
6. Answer calmly "Yes" and press the mouse button.
7. Repeat as required.

(Source: Crikey's subscriber newsletter.)

Three home runs by Aramis Ramirez as the Cubs beat the Reds 5-4 on Thursday night. Blog reportage from Al Yellon.