The news came this morning that Geoffrey Luck, contributor and dear friend of Quadrant, had passed away in the night. Republished from 2014 is his account as a novice aviator of a Gypsy Moth's encounter with powerlines, an incident that very nearly the robbed the world of a lauded ABC journalist and, later, a frequent critic of his former employer. Geoff, you are missed already

Complain about a nakedly biased report -- in this instance the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse -- and the ABC's complaints unit will invest considerable effort in explaining why black is white, up is down and why a foreign correspondent's editorialising is actually straight-bat reporting

Little known these days and out of print, 'Chain of Darkness' is nevertheless a book worth tracking down. An acidic roman-à-clef inspired by a gifted journalist's stint with the ABC in the early days of TV news, it will lead readers to an unavoidable conclusion: then as now, the national broadcaster was a poorly managed dysfunctional mess, just in a different way

The takeover battle for Vital Harvest Trust, a primary producer sought by Macquarie and subsequent bidders, kicked off with a per-share offer of $1, which an independent appraiser reckoned was about right. Since then the bids have soared -- a reminder that the declaration of an offer being in shareholders' best interests may be nothing of the kind

The urbane, charming and well-heeled Vincenzo Muccioli was generally reckoned something of a saint for his work with Italy's drug addicts. Then the battered corpse of a recovering junkie turned up in a village tip. It soon emerged that things at his sprawling San Patrignano rehab centre were nothing like what they seemed

A team of cyber-security analysts, all with backgrounds in defence and national security, has conducted a court-authorised forensic examination of voting machines in Michigan's Antrim County. The conclusion: the Dominion voting machines don't merely allow fraud, they are specifically designed to facilitate it

The chief threat to life is in nursing homes, which everyone knew from the start as zones of greatest risk. So what did the architects of lockdown mania do? They heeded absurd models and splurged on unused respirators while, to cite but one example, the Ruby Princess debacle unfolded unimpeded

Australia will be begin to face the real crisis when the Wuhan virus has run its course, leaving us with an unnecessarily weakened economy and parlous financial position in a crippled world. That damage will have been inflicted in the name of compassion, a noble sentiment, but no substitute for common sense

'Grotesque, absurd and dangerous' is how epidemiologist Sucharit Bhakdi describes Germany's response to the Wuhan virus, a response mild by comparison with Australia's blizzard of edicts banning everything from recreational fishing to ammunition sales. Although little reported, Dr Bhakdi is far from alone