UN warns of plight of children in Syria

Rolling coverage: Saturday NRL

JOHN Sutton limped off the field as the North Queensland Cowboys romped to a shock 30-12 win against Souths in Townsville.

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20.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

Mugabe claims victory in 'sham' poll

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe looks to extend his 33-year rule after a shock landslide vote. Source: AAP

ZIMBABWE is set to release the official results of disputed elections, in which President Robert Mugabe's party romped to victory, as the opposition holds emergency talks over the "sham" polls.

Full results were expected later on Saturday but Mugabe's ZANU-PF party said it had already won the 140 seats in parliament required to press ahead with controversial amendments to the constitution.

"We have already gone beyond two-thirds. It's a super majority," a top party official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

With 186 of 210 constituencies officially counted after Wednesday's disputed poll, Mugabe's party already had a commanding lead, winning 137 seats in parliament.

Party spokesman Rugare Gumbo said: "Our opponents don't know what hit them", adding that 89-year-old Mugabe could win "70 to 75 per cent" in the presidential vote.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who described the vote as a "sham", went into emergency talks on Saturday to decide their next action.

The MDC has vowed not to accept the election results, sparking fears of a repeat of bloody violence that marked the aftermath of the 2008 election.

"Emotions are high, tensions are high across the country," MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.

While on the country's streets things have remained calm, UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged both political rivals to send "clear messages of calm" to their supporters.

Ban hopes that the broadly "calm and peaceful atmosphere" of election day "will prevail during the vote counting and throughout the completion of the electoral process," said his spokesman Martin Nesirky.

A senior MDC official, speaking on condition of anonymity, painted a picture of the dilemma the party faces amid its claims the election was stolen by ZANU-PF.

"We can't tell people to be calm, we can't tell people to demonstrate unless you know the outcome," said the source.

Another senior party official dismissed speculation that the MDC is being offered a few posts in government.

The influential 15-member southern African bloc SADC also implored "all Zimbabweans to exercise restraint, patience and calm".

All eyes are now on the MDC which was expected to hold a press conference on Saturday afternoon following its meeting.

Observers appeared divided over the conduct of the poll.

The African Union's top poll observer, Olusegun Obasanjo, said shortly after polling stations closed that the election had been "peaceful, orderly, free and fair".

The SADC stopped short of declaring it "fair" but said it was "free and peaceful".

"We have said this election is free, indeed very free," said top SADC election observer Bernard Membe. "We did not say it was fair ... we didn't want to jump to a conclusion at this point in time."

Membe on Friday met Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for three decades, to "wish him good luck as he is preparing himself for the inauguration," he told later told journalists.

He said he would try to convince Tsvangirai to concede defeat.

SADC negotiated the creation of a power-sharing government in the wake of 2008's bloody poll.

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Six children die in Afghan attack

THREE suicide attackers killed at least nine civilians, most of them children, in a botched attack on the Indian consulate in an eastern Afghan city near the border with Pakistan, security officials say.

Authorities also reported that 22 police officers and over 70 Taliban fighters died in two days of fighting earlier in the week in the same province touched off by a feud between militants and villagers. Officials regularly announce high militant death tolls that are impossible to independently confirm.

Militants, mostly smaller groups based in Pakistan, have targeted Indian diplomatic interests multiple times in recent years.

In the latest attack, police fired on the militants as they approached a checkpoint outside the consulate in Jalalabad, prompting one of them to set off their explosives-laden car, said Masum Khan Hashimi, the deputy police chief of Nangarhar province.

The blast killed nine bystanders, and wounded another 24 people including a policeman. Six of the dead and three of the wounded were children, said Jalalabad hospital director Dr Humayun Zahir. He did not give their specific ages.

All three attackers also died, although it was not clear how many were killed by police fire and how many by the explosion.

In New Delhi, India's External Affairs Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said that all Indian officials in the consulate were safe.

Afghanistan's main insurgent group, the Taliban, denied in a text message that it had carried out the attack.

Militant groups known for attacking Indian interests include Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), blamed for the 2008 attack on the Indian city of Mumbai that killed 166 people. LeT has been active in Afghanistan in recent years, often teaming up with insurgent groups operating in the eastern part of the country near the frontier with Pakistan. Last year the US-led military coalition arrested a senior LeT leader in eastern Afghanistan.

India has been frustrated by Pakistan's failure to crack down on Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has strong historical links with Pakistani intelligence. Pakistan has always viewed India as a potential rival in Afghanistan, which it considers its strategic backyard.

"Such coward attacks will not deter India from providing reconstruction and developmental assistance to our true friend, Afghanistan," the Indian Embassy Tweeted in reaction to the consulate bombing.

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Morsi 'well', says EU policy chief

The EU foreign policy chief held a two-hour meeting with ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi. Source: AAP

EGYPT'S ousted president Mohamed Morsi is "well" and has access to news, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton says after meeting him at an undisclosed location.

"Morsi is well," she told reporters on Tuesday, adding that he had access to newspapers and television, and describing their talks as "friendly, open and very frank".

Ashton held two hours of talks with Morsi in the early hours of Tuesday, with sources telling AFP she left Cairo on a military helicopter.

She declined to say where Morsi was being held or to characterise his comments to her.

"I'm not going to put words in his mouth," she said.

"We had a friendly, open and very frank discussion," she added. "We talked in-depth."

Ashton arrived in Cairo on Sunday night for an intensive schedule of meetings with Egyptian government officials and opposition representatives.

Her visit came in the wake of the deaths of 82 people at a pro-Morsi rally in Cairo on Saturday morning.

She has urged an end to the bloodshed and a political transition that would include the Muslim Brotherhood organisation from which Morsi hails.

But she said on Tuesday that she was not in Egypt to push either side to take particular actions or to present an initiative.

"I'm not here to ask people to do things," she said, adding that she would be looking to find "common ground" between the sides.

"I don't come here to say somebody should do this, somebody should do that, this is your country," she said.

"The solutions are for the Egyptian people."

In Paris, France's foreign minister demanded on Tuesday that Morsi be freed, and condemned the deadly unrest in Cairo.

"We condemn the violence ... We call for dialogue and for the release of President Morsi," Laurent Fabius told reporters.

Morsi is being held on suspicion of crimes relating to his escape from prison during the 2011 uprising that overthrew president Hosni Mubarak.

His supporters have rallied daily for his reinstatement and on Monday marched from a key Cairo sit-in to several security headquarters.

The marches raised fears of fresh clashes, but protesters kept their distance from security forces and headed back to their protest tent city after the demonstrations.

In the eastern city of Ismailia, however, a security source said clashes between Morsi supporters and opponents broke out, injuring 18.

The Anti-Coup Alliance called for a million-man march later on Tuesday under the banner of "Martyrs of the Coup" to commemorate its dead at a rally in Cairo on Saturday.

It urged Egyptians "to go out into the streets and squares, to regain their freedom and dignity - that are being usurped by the bloody coup - and for the rights of the martyrs assassinated by its bullets".

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Italy court to decide Berlusconi's fate

ITALY'S top court is to begin crucial hearings for former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi that could end the billionaire tycoon's parliamentary career and risk upsetting the country's fragile coalition.

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British female MP threatened on Twitter

British police are investigating violent and sexually explicit Twitter postings directed at an MP. Source: AAP

BRITISH police say they are investigating violent and sexually explicit Twitter postings directed at an MP in a growing row over threats to women on the social network.

Stella Creasy, an MP with the opposition Labour Party, faced a stream of abuse after supporting a feminist activist who was targeted for campaigning for an image of novelist Jane Austen to appear on banknotes.

Another MP said she too was receiving a barrage of offensive messages, while a man has been arrested and bailed over rape threats to feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez.

"This isn't about Twitter, this is about hatred of women and hatred of women who speak up," Creasy told BBC radio on Monday.

"Twitter needs to be explicit that sexual violence and sexual aggression will not be tolerated as part of their user terms and conditions."

High-profile women in Britain have long complained of online harassment, but the issue reached front pages after Criado-Perez said she received "about 50 abusive tweets an hour for about 12 hours" last week.

Scotland Yard said on Tuesday that police had received an allegation from an MP about "malicious communications" over comments on Twitter.

Creasy retweeted a series of tweets that included threats from accounts named "killcreasynow" and "eatcreasynow", which have now been suspended.

She said she was reporting the abuse to both Twitter and police.

MP Claire Perry, from Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party, likewise retweeted a string of message including threats of sexual violence and one that read, "please disappear into obscurity and/or alcoholism. or die, whatever."

"I am tempted to shut down my Twitter account given the trolling going on incl. to me -- but that would be giving in," Perry tweeted.

Perry has been advising Cameron on his plans to introduce an "opt-in" system for blocking internet pornography.

The abuse to Criado-Perez sparked a huge outcry among Twitter users and prompted more than 60,000 people to sign an online petition demanding the network introduce a "report abuse" button and review its rules on abusive behaviour.

Twitter has introduced a report button on tweets in its iPhone app and plans to bring it to other platforms.

But some users say the form to which it links is too complex and time-consuming for those receiving a barrage of abusive tweets.

In a blogpost titled "We Hear You", Twitter said on Monday: "We are not blind to the reality that there will always be people using Twitter in ways that are abusive and may harm others".

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Bloggers cast doubt on Putin's fishy tale

PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin's opponents have gleefully sought to prove the Russian strongman had massively exaggerated the weight of a pike he caught on a recent fishing expedition to Siberia.

The Kremlin on Friday had announced that Putin managed to catch a 21kg pike while on a trip to the region of Tuva, providing television footage and pictures of the president stripped to the waist as he cast his line.

The images were clearly aimed at proving that Putin at the age of 60 has the physical energy to catch a huge fish and lead his nation in changing times.

But the catch immediately sent the opposition - whose scrutiny on the internet of Putin's stunts becomes ever more thorough each year - scurrying to their fishing manuals to prove the Kremlin wrong.

And prominent opposition bloggers claimed on Monday that Putin had fallen into the classic amateur fisherman's trap of exaggerating the size of his catch.

Blogger and author Alfred Kokh calculated the length, diameter and volume of the fish and said it could only have weighed "10-11 kilograms" and not the 21 kilograms as claimed by the Kremlin.

Pro-opposition journalist Oleg Kashin added that a fish weighing 21 kilograms and the size of the one caught by Putin would be so dense that it would simply have sunk to the bottom of the lake.

"A pike that heavy just could not swim," Kashin wrote on Twitter. "She would sink to the bottom! In fact this pike was made from granite."

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov rubbished the claims, which he blamed on "it being summer, there's nothing to do, people need to talk".

"I personally saw the scales and was present at the weighing. The pike really weighed more than 20 kilograms," he told the Russian News Service.

The opposition Novaya Gazeta newspaper meanwhile asked why it had taken the Kremlin until Friday to release the images from a trip that appeared to have taken place over the July 20-21 weekend.

"Maybe they had to agree the weight of the pike themselves? Maybe they also had to weigh up the possible propagandistic effect, a plus or a minus?" the paper wrote.

The standoff between pro-Kremlin media and bloggers recalls a similar controversy last year when Putin took to a hang-glider to fly with endangered cranes on their migration.

It later emerged that the cranes had failed to migrate and had ended up being transported by plane to fenced enclosures in nature reserves.

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Lawsuit over Mandela companies postponed

A SOUTH African judge has postponed a court battle over control of Nelson Mandela's companies after a lawyer for his daughters withdrew from the case.

Daughters Makaziwe and Zenani Mandela are attempting to remove three of Mandela's long-time friends as directors of two investment firms.

Lawyers for the three men, who were appointed by Mandela - human rights lawyer George Bizos, Tokyo Sexwale, a former cabinet minister, and his ex-lawyer Bally Chuene - said the case had been delayed.

"Once they've appointed new legal representation ... they must inform the judge and he will put it on the roll again," a spokeswoman for Norton Rose Fulbright said on Monday.

It was not immediately clear why lawyer Ismail Ayob - who has a chequered past with the anti-apartheid icon - withdrew.

Ayob was himself removed from Mandela's trust after selling fake artwork and pocketing millions of dollars. He paid back nearly $100,000 in a court settlement in 2007.

Mandela's daughters have argued the three remaining trustees were not properly appointed to Harmonieux Investment Holdings and Magnifique Investment Holdings, companies set up to channel proceeds from the sale of Mandela's iconic handprints, for his family's benefit.

The sale reportedly fetched over $US1.7 million when celebrities snapped up the prized prints, which were produced between 2003 and 2005.

Chuene, one of the trustees, has said in court documents Mandela had not wanted his family to run the trust.

Amid a public family spat, Mandela's grandson Mandla has accused his aunts of trying to gain control over the Mandela millions.

"I consider the action by my relatives as a blatant abuse of the elderly," Mandla in a statement on Monday, as his critically-ill grandfather remained in hospital for an eighth week.

"I consider this court action as nothing more than an attempt to loot (Mandela's) monies."

In a separate case, several of Mandela's daughters, grandchildren and his wife won a court order against Mandla to force the reburial of Mandela's three deceased children.

He had moved the remains without their consent.

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Co-founder of 'Russian Google' dies at 48

Qld cricket loses a champion

10:58AM QUEENSLAND has lost one of its finest sporting administrators with the death of Queensland Cricket chief executive Graham Dixon.

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Govt spends $560,000 to support live music

LIVE music around Australia will get a boost from the federal government with the creation of a new office dedicated to its promotion.

Labor has promised to spend $560,000 over the next three years on the National Live Music Office, which will run within the Australasian Performing Rights Association.

Recently appointed national live music coordinator Ianto Ware will manage it.

Federal Arts Minister Tony Burke said the office would look at key policy, regulatory and process reforms that would support a robust live music scene.

Live music ambassadors including Katie Noonan, Suffa from the Hilltop Hoods, Stavros Yiannoukas from Bluejuice, Kav Temperley, Kevin Mitchell from Jebediah, Dave Faulkner from the Hoodoo Gurus, Leah Flanagan and Dewayne Everettsmith will support the new national office.

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Jewels worth $A58 million stolen in Cannes

AN armed man held up a jewellery exhibition in the French Riviera resort of Cannes on Sunday, making away with jewels estimated to be worth about 40 million euros ($A57.9 million), according to investigators.

Authorities said the hold-up took place in broad daylight at the Carlton Hotel on the promenade in Cannes, famous for its annual film festival that attracts a glittering array of celebrities.

Hotel management contacted by AFP declined to comment.

During the film festival in May, thieves stole jewellery worth $US1.4 million that was due to be loaned to movie stars from a local hotel in a pre-dawn heist.

That robbery took place in the hotel room of an American woman employee of Swiss jeweller Chopard while she was out for the evening, police said.

A strongbox containing jewels was ripped out of the wardrobe and carried off, they said.

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Royal baby George celebrated on stamps

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