UKRAINIAN protesters have expanded their protest camp in Kiev closer to the administration of President Viktor Yanukovych after crisis talks to end Ukraine's worst crisis since its 1991 independence ended in deadlock.
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A Catholic church official has revised his evidence to the Royal Commission on Child Sex Abuse. Source: AAP
A SENIOR church official has revised his evidence to the Royal Commission on Child Sex Abuse following a flurry of late night emails with a law firm representing the Catholic Church.
Michael Salmon, director of the Catholic Church's NSW/ACT Professional Standards Office, said on Friday he wanted to submit a supplementary statement to assist the commission.
He was contacted on Thursday evening by law firm Gilbert + Tobin and asked to clarify statements he made about a mediation session with an abuse victim who had concerns the Marist Brothers knew of and did nothing about abuse at a Cairns college.
A string of emails between the law firm and Mr Salmon, which culminated in him agreeing to a revised statement at about 9pm (AEDT) on Thursday night, were examined by the commission on Friday.
During a public hearing into Towards Healing, the internal church process for dealing with abuse complaints, it became an issue whether a Marist brother lied at a mediation session for a man referred to as DK about what he knew about a brother who has since been jailed.
Mr Salmon facilitated the 2010 session with DK, who was sexually molested when he was a student at the St Augustine's Marist College in Cairns in 1976.
Evidence from Mr Salmon on Wednesday and Thursday suggested that the conversation DK had with former college principal Brother Gerald Burns and another clergy member covered what they knew of inappropriate behaviour by Ross Murrin in relation to DK and other boys.
Murrin was jailed in 2008 for offences against children at Sydney schools. He had been moved to Rome by the order in 2002 but voluntarily came back in 2007 to face charges.
In his evidence on Thursday, Br Burns told the commission DK never asked him about offences against other boys but only about his own situation.
Br Burns also said a file note from Mr Salmon written after the mediation session which suggested otherwise was inaccurate.
Commission chairman Justice Peter McClellan asked Mr Salmon if lawyers told him during the Thursday night exchanges whether there was an issue as to whether Br Burns had told DK the truth.
Mr Salmon said he had not been told that.
He said that he wracked his brains for further recollections of whether the discussion had been about just DK, or other students and could only remember the discussion was all about DK.
Justice McClellan reminded Mr Salmon that he had asked him twice during his original evidence about the context of the conversation between DK and the brothers.
"I put it to you it was beyond DK and you said 'Yes, Yes'," he said.
He said DK was also concerned that the brothers had not helped Murrin, who he saw as a sensitive person, and this was the context of his "beyond DK" responses.
Mr Salmon said he was aware DK had broader concerns about whether the brothers had knowledge of the abuse at the school but left it to him to raise it at the mediation meeting because DK had come to the session with detailed notes and was "not a shrinking violet".
DK had left the mediation happy and on good terms with the brothers, he said.
Mr Salmon told senior counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness he had taken the advice of the lawyers when they rejected his suggestions for amendments as not relevant to the statement because it did not alter what he was trying to say.
Nazi symbols continue to be seen on Austrian tombstones despite laws against displaying them. Source: AAP
THE marble tombstone looks like others dotting the main cemetery of Graz, Austria's second city - but only at first glance. Carved into it are a swastika and the inscription: "He died in the struggle for a Great Germany."
Footsteps away, another gravestone is marked with the SS lightning bolts proudly worn by the elite Nazi troops who executed most of the crimes of the Holocaust.
Austrian law bans such symbols, and those displaying them face criminal charges and potential prison terms.
Yet the emblems reflecting this country's darkest chapter in history endure here, and officials appear either unable or unwilling to do away with them - despite complaints from locals.
The controversy reflects Austria's complex relationship with the Hitler era.
Annexation by Germany in 1938 enabled Austrians to claim after the war that they were Hitler's first victims.
Austria has moved since to acknowledge that it was instead a perpetrator. It has paid out millions of dollars in reparations, restored property to Jewish heirs and misses no public opportunity to ask for forgiveness for its wartime role.
Some comments by Graz city and church representatives responsible for managing the dispute suggest they see nothing wrong with graveyard Nazi displays.
While acknowledging the mayor's office was uncomfortable with the swastika, the city's spokesman, Thomas Rajakovics, called it an old "symbol in the English world that stands for the sun."
Christian Leibnitz, provost of Graz' Roman Catholic church, said "a lot" of tombstones in the city still displayed the swastika and suggested it had a right to remain in cemeteries as a "political and societal symbol" of the era, even "if I totally oppose this era."
Asked if the church was ready to put up a sign next to the grave explaining how the swastika is associated with Nazi horrors, he demurred, saying symbols displayed on other tombstones might be just as offensive to some people.
Pressed for specifics, he spoke of "anti-religious" symbols on some graves, adding without elaboration that the church was "not necessarily happy" with some of the emblems displayed on the cemetery's Jewish graves.
Austria enacted a law in 1947 banning Nazi symbols that led to the purging of such emblems from Austrian graveyards. Vienna cemeteries spokesman Florian Keusch says he believes none of the 500,000 gravestones in the Austrian capital now has such symbols, "and if we found any they would be removed."
But Rajakovics, the Graz spokesman, and Leibnitz, the church provost, say their hands are tied.
Both claim they are not aware of the grave with the SS symbol. But in the case of the swastika, they cite Graz' top prosecutor, Hans-Joerg Bacher, who ruled that the law prohibiting Nazi displays did not apply to that headstone because it was put up before the law was passed in 1947.
Under that interpretation, Graz officials say it's up to the grave's owner - a German man they refuse to identify - to voluntarily remove the emblem. But that's something they say he refuses to do.
Rajakovics says the city council criticised the headstone years ago, and the church, as the graveyard's owner, "is the only institution that can do something." Leibnitz, in turn, says the Roman Catholic church has "tried going to the politicians and to the state prosecutors" for a solution that has yet to materialise.
Meanwhile, the swastika remains - to the aggravation of its critics, including Austria's Jewish community.
Raimund Fastenbauer, who speaks for Vienna's Jews, said the problem is not with Austria's anti-Nazi laws but a reluctance to enforce them.
"This is disappointing and frustrating," he said.
THE federal government is working with the competition watchdog to try and fix its dire financial position.
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) revealed late last year that it would run out of money in April.
Minister for Small Business Bill Billson said in a brief statement on Thursday that the federal government was actively working with ACCC chairman Rod Sims to remedy its financial predicament.
Mr Billson did not give details.
Mr Sims told a senate hearing late last year the commission's reserves had been run down over the past three years and it was being asked to do more as the economy grows.
He said the ACCC had undertaken voluntary redundancies and reduced travel and costs.
One of the federal government's plans is to give the ACCC extra powers and funding to ensure price cuts from the carbon tax repeal are passed to consumers.
TEEN heartthrob Justin Bieber has been arrested in Miami Beach on drink driving and drag racing charges.
The Miami Beach Police Department confirmed the 19-year-old's arrest in a tweet on its official Twitter page.
They say pop star was drag racing on Miami Beach early on Thursday.
Officials at the Miami-Dade Department of Corrections say Bieber hasn't yet been booked into jail.
A NORTH Queensland mother accused of punching her baby girl in the face has appeared in court.
Police say a passer-by allegedly saw the 29-year-old punch the crying baby, who was in a pram on a footpath, in the Townsville suburb of North Ward on Saturday afternoon.
The baby was taken to hospital with bruises and was in a stable condition on Monday.
The mother appeared briefly before the Townsville Magistrates Court on Monday charged with assault occasioning bodily harm.
She was granted bail and will reappear in court on February 7.
AN assault by suicide bombers and gunmen against a NATO base in southern Afghanistan has killed one service member, the coalition says.
The statement said the attack involved a suicide car bomb and gunmen wearing vests with explosives.
It added that all the attackers were killed and that the base received moderate damage to its perimeter.
The nationality of the service member was not released.
Jawed Faisal, a spokesman for the governor of eastern Kandahar, said nine insurgents took part in the attack against the base in Zhari district.
Zhari is located west of Kandahar city.
The Taliban have intensified a campaign against Afghan and international forces as foreign troops withdraw this year.
The southern province of Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban.
