Katter Party could preference Palmer party

Katter's Australian Party could preference Clive Palmer's party at the federal election. Source: AAP

KATTER'S Australian Party (KAP) could preference Clive Palmer's United Australia Party (UAP) at the federal election.

The mining magnate announced on Friday he has re-formed the UAP, which was dissolved in 1945, and applied for its registration in Queensland.

KAP national director Aidan McLindon welcomed the move, saying it will help break the political duopoly of the Labor and Liberal parties.

"It's a competition of ideas. The more players on the field the better," he told AAP.

Mr McLindon said the UAP wasn't seen as a threat to the KAP because both parties shared common objectives.

He said it would work together, including swapping preferences at the federal election.

"It would only make sense. You can probably count the differences between Bob (KAP leader Bob Katter) and Clive on one hand," Mr McLindon said.

"Where the KAP can't access some of those LNP (Liberal National Party) votes, I think Clive can.

"In a compulsory preferential system, depending on the negotiations, I think the two parties can be a formidable threat to Liberal and Labor."

20.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

Syrian officials deny chemical weapon use

TWO Syrian officials have denied the government has used chemical weapons against rebel forces, saying the regime has no need for them.

The denials follow assertions by the White House and other top Obama administration officials that US intelligence had concluded with "varying degrees of confidence" that the Syrian government has twice used chemical weapons in its civil war.

A Syrian government official said the government did not and will not use chemical weapons even if it had them.

He spoke to The Associated Press on Friday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to give official statements.

Syrian official Sharif Shehadeh called the US claims "lies" and likened them to false accusations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction ahead of the US invasion of that country.

20.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

Iraq toll rises after mosque bombs

The Iraqi prime minister warned of a return to civil war as 179 people were killed over three days. Source: AAP

BOMBS have exploded at four Sunni mosques in the Baghdad area after prayers, killing four people and raising the death toll from a four-day wave of violence in Iraq to 195.

Iraqi security forces also began moving back into the northern town of Sulaiman Bek after gunmen who seized it withdrew on Friday.

The bombings at three Sunni mosques in Baghdad and a fourth north of the capital, which killed at least four people and wounded 50, came after more than a dozen people were killed in attacks on Sunni mosques on Tuesday.

Gunmen, meanwhile, pulled out of Sulaiman Bek under a deal worked out by tribal leaders and government officials, local official Shalal Abdul Baban and municipal council deputy chief Ahmed Aziz said.

The gunmen had swarmed into the predominantly Sunni Turkmen town on Wednesday after deadly clashes with the security forces, who pulled back as residents fled.

Baban also said that helicopter fire wounded six people on the roof of a house in the town early on Friday.

Army Staff General Ali Ghaidan Majeed told AFP on Thursday that the gunmen in Sulaiman Bek, who he said number about 175, had been given 48 hours to withdraw or face attack.

The gunmen's seizure of the town came amid a surge of violence which began on Tuesday when security forces moved in against anti-government protesters near the Sunni Arab northern town of Hawijah.

The operation sparked clashes that left 53 people dead.

Dozens more were killed in subsequent unrest, much but not all of it linked to Tuesday's clashes, bringing the death toll to 195 by Friday.

The violence is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that broke out in Sunni areas of the Shi'ite-majority country more than four months ago.

The protesters have called for the resignation of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, and railed against authorities for allegedly targeting their community.

Seven gunmen died carrying out three separate attacks on security forces south of the northern city of Kirkuk on Friday, a high-ranking army officer and a medical source said.

Gunmen also killed a soldier and wounded two police in an attack on a checkpoint in Al-Sharqat, north of the capital, late on Thursday, a police colonel and a doctor said.

And three hours of fighting in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, killed three federal police and wounded six late on Thursday, police Lieutenant Colonel Yassir Hamid al-Jumaili and a doctor said.

The clashes saw gunmen take control of three checkpoints on the outskirts of the overwhelmingly Sunni Arab city after they were abandoned by federal police, Jumaili said.

He said they then turned the checkpoints over to local police, who returned them to federal police on Friday.

20.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

NSW driver runs down man, punches police

A DRIVER deliberately drove into a group of men outside a hotel in Bathurst, running down and injuring one before resisting arrest, police say.

A 23-year-old man has been charged with a number of offences after allegedly crossing to the wrong side of the road and ploughing into the group about 1.30am (AEST) on Thursday.

One of the men suffered injuries to his head, leg, arm and ribs when he was struck by the car, said police in the NSW central west city.

They said an off-duty officer tried to stop the car but it had accelerated towards him and hit his foot.

Another motorist stopped the car in a nearby street.

Police say when the off-duty officer tried to arrest the driver, he was punched repeatedly before managing to restrain him.

The 23-year-old man was taken to Bathurst police station where he returned a breath-analysis reading of 0.108, they said.

He was charged with a number of offences including dangerous driving and is to appear in Bathurst Local Court on Monday.

20.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

Protests as Bangladesh toll hits 200

HUNDREDS of thousands of garment workers have walked of the job in Bangladesh after the deaths of 200 people in a building collapse.

Grief turned to anger on Thursday as the workers, some carrying sticks, blockaded key highways in at least three industrial areas just outside the capital Dhaka, forcing factory owners to declare a day's holiday.

"There were hundreds of thousands of them," said Abdul Baten, police chief of Gazipur district, where hundreds of large garment factories are based.

"They occupied roads for a while and then dispersed."

Police inspector Kamrul Islam said the workers had attacked several factories whose bosses had refused to give employees the day off.

"They were protesting the deaths of the workers in Savar," he said, referring to the town outside Dhaka where Wednesday's collapse of an eight-storey building housing five garment factories took place, injuring more than 1000 people.

"Many wanted to donate blood to their fellow workers," he added.

About 1500 workers marched to the Dhaka headquarters of the main manufacturers association, demanding the owners of the collapsed factories be punished.

"The owners must be hanged," one protester cried, as others tried to lay siege to the headquarters.

Some workers smashed windows and vehicles before they were chased away by police, said Wahidul Islam, a deputy commissioner of Dhaka police.

Rescuers in Savar pulled dozens of bodies from the collapsed building on Thursday as the death toll in the country's worst industrial disaster reached 200, police said.

Managers had allegedly ignored workers' warnings that the building had become unstable.

20.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

Iraq bloodshed stokes fears of civil war

THE deaths of more than 100 people in violence between Iraqi security forces and Sunni Arab protesters and their supporters have raised fears of a return to all-out sectarian conflict.

The trouble began on Tuesday when security forces moved into an area near the northern town of Hawijah where Sunnis had been holding protests since January, sparking clashes in which 53 people died.

That fighting set off a wave of revenge attacks that hit five different Sunni-majority provinces, killing dozens more people, and which saw gunmen take control of the town of Sulaiman Bek.

The violence is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that erupted in Sunni areas of the Shi'ite-majority country more than four months ago.

The Sunni protesters have called for the resignation of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and railed against the alleged targeting of their community by the authorities.

"This is the deepest and most dangerous crisis... since 1921," former national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said, referring to the year in which the state of Iraq was established.

He warned that the situation "could lead to a sectarian conflict, and then division".

Sectarian violence, including bombings and death squad murders that peaked in 2006 and 2007, claimed tens of thousands of lives.

The security situation has since improved markedly but sectarian tensions remain.

Hamed al-Juburi, a spokesman for the Hawijah protesters, vowed revenge on Thursday for the "massacre" near the town.

Protesters have pledged their loyalty to a Sunni militant group called the Naqshbandiya Army "so we can be an armed wing related to it, working on cleaning Iraq from Safavid militias," he said, using a pejorative term for Shi'ites.

On Wednesday, Abdulghafur al-Samarraie and Saleh al-Haidari, top clerics who respectively head the Sunni and Shi'ite religious endowments, held a joint news conference in which they warned against sectarian strife.

Samarraie said there were "malicious plans... with the goal of taking the country towards sectarian conflict", and that he and Haidari agreed "to move quickly to extinguish the strife and stop the conspiracy."

US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters that Washington condemns the violence in Iraq and that "there's no place for sectarian conflict in a democratic state."

An earlier statement from the US embassy said that "US officials have been in contact with senior Iraqi leaders to help defuse political and sectarian tensions".

John Drake, an Iraq specialist with risk consulting firm AKE Group, said the government's ready use of force in recent days highlighted shortcomings in the its response to protests.

"I think the government response indicates that it has a long way to go in terms of its policies for dealing with protest movements in the country," Drake said.

"The use of force so readily, including firearms, at protest camps and the bombing of settlements where militants are believed to be sheltering, is going to bring a very high risk of collateral damage," he said.

"An 'all-out' sectarian conflict is still unlikely," Drake said.

"But the fact that this is a predominantly Shi'ite government and it's predominantly Shi'ite security forces opening fire on predominantly Sunni individuals (civilians or militants) is going to have an impact on sectarian relations and could prompt a rise in sectarian violence as a result."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned on Thursday of attempts to return the country to "sectarian civil war".

Maliki called on clerics and everyone worried about Iraq's future "to take the initiative, and not be silent about those who want to take the country back to sectarian civil war", in remarks broadcast on state television.

20.07 | 0 komentar | Read More

UK police 'have amnesia' over hacking

BRITISH police knew of claims that journalists at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World hacked into a murdered schoolgirl's mobile phone but they failed to investigate, the police watchdog said.

Britain's Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said on Wednesday that Surrey Police in southeast England had done nothing about the allegations during their probe into the murder of 13-year-old Milly Dowler in 2002.

But the IPCC said it was unable to find out why nothing was done, because former senior officers at the force appeared to be suffering from "collective amnesia".

Revelations that the News of the World hacked into Dowler's voicemail messages, along with those of dozens of celebrities and public figures, sparked a huge public outcry that forced Murdoch to shut down the tabloid in 2011.

"Phone hacking was a crime and this should have been acted upon - if not in 2002, then later, once the News of the World's widespread use of phone hacking became a matter of public knowledge and concern," said IPCC deputy chair Deborah Glass.

"We have not been able to uncover any evidence, in documentation or witness statements, of why and by whom that decision was made," she added.

"Former senior officers, in particular, appear to have been afflicted by a form of collective amnesia in relation to the events of 2002."

The phone-hacking scandal sparked three police investigations and a judicial inquiry into press ethics.

Testimony at the inquiry, led by judge Brian Leveson, revealed a close relationship between police and staff at Murdoch's British newspaper wing, News International.

Dozens of people have been arrested under Scotland Yard's probes into phone-hacking, computer hacking and the selling of stories by public officials.

On Wednesday a former Surrey Police officer became the 62nd person to be arrested under the probe into corrupt payments, Operation Elveden.

Prime Minister David Cameron's ex-media chief Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor, is among those who have been charged in connection with the scandal, as is former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks.

Former nightclub bouncer Levi Bellfield was convicted of murdering Milly Dowler in 2011, nine years after she disappeared on her way home from school.

British prosecutors say that a senior editor at Rupert Murdoch's tabloid The Sun is being charged with conspiring to pay STG23,000 ($A34,375) in bribes in return for tips about the royal family.

Britain's Crown Prosecution Service said on Wednesday that The Sun's Chief Royal Correspondent Duncan Larcombe conspired with employees of Sandhurst - Britain's prestigious military academy - to secure royal gossip.

The statement does not go into detail but Princes William and Harry both trained at Sandhurst several years ago.

20.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

Afghan quake kills seven, injures dozens

SEVEN people were killed and dozens injured when a 6.2 quake struck eastern Afghanistan, officials say.

Six people, including some children, died in Nangarhar province on Wednesday, and 75 people were injured, said provincial spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai.

One person was killed and one injured in neighbouring Kunar province and many homes were destroyed, said local government spokesman Wasefullah Wasef.

Strong tremors were felt in the capital Kabul and Islamabad in neighbouring Pakistan, the Pakistan meteorological office said.

The quake hit at 0925 GMT (1925 AEST) and was centred in southeastern Afghanistan at a depth of 70km.

20.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

Pope appeals for release of Syrian bishops

POPE Francis has called for the release of two Syrian bishops kidnapped by gunmen near Aleppo, after a Christian group appeared to retract its claim that the clerics had been freed.

Aleppo's Greek Orthodox Bishop Boulos Yaziji and Syriac Orthodox Bishop Yohanna Ibrahim were kidnapped on Monday by armed men en route from the Turkish border.

Speaking to an audience of about 100,000 at the Vatican, Francis said on Wednesday there were "contradictory reports" about the fate of the bishops and asked that "they be returned quickly to their communities".

On Tuesday, the "Oeuvre d'Orient" Christian association announced that the bishops had been released, but on Wednesday it backed away from the claim.

"Yesterday evening we received information from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate questioning the release of the two bishops," said Catherine Baumont, spokeswoman for the group, which works to help Middle Eastern Christians.

"Unfortunately no tangible proof of the release has been obtained. The situation remains unclear, and we still don't know who took them," said Baumont.

And a source in Aleppo's Greek Orthodox archdiocese said it had no news on the fate of the bishops.

"We have no new information," said Ghassan Ward, a priest at the archdiocese.

"We can say that (as far as we know) they haven't been freed."

Ward said there had been "no contact with them," adding that "efforts are continuing" to secure their release.

"We are very worried."

The two men were travelling from the Turkish border when armed men intercepted the car they were in, forcing them out of the vehicle, Syrian state media and church sources reported.

The kidnappers were believed to be Chechen fighters, who stopped the car in an area outside of Aleppo, the church sources said.

"The news which we have received is that an armed group... (of) Chechens stopped the car and kidnapped the two bishops while the driver was killed," an official from the Syriac Orthodox diocese said in a statement posted online.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said on Wednesday that the bishops had been kidnapped "in the region west of Aleppo, where a brigade of fighters from Dagestan is active".

20.08 | 0 komentar | Read More

Clashes in north Iraq leave 40 dead

DEADLY fighting has hit Kirkuk province in north Iraq, with 27 people killed in clashes between protesters and security forces and 13 gunmen dying in subsequent revenge attacks on the army.

The clashes mark the deadliest eruption of violence linked to protests in Sunni areas that began more than four months ago.

The protesters have been demanding the resignation of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and railing against the alleged targeting of their community by the authorities.

Tuesday's violence broke out around 5am when security forces entered an open area near Hawijah, west of Kirkuk province's capital, where demonstrations have been held since January, said senior army officers.

Twenty-seven people have been killed and around 70 wounded, they said.

But accounts differed as to the spark for the bloodletting.

A brigadier general from the Iraqi army division responsible for the area said the operation was aimed at Sunni militants from a group known as the Naqshbandiya Army, and that security forces only opened fire after they were fired upon.

A second officer said that 34 Kalashnikov assault rifles and four PKM machine guns were recovered at the scene.

Two soldiers were killed and seven wounded in the operation, while the remainder of the casualties were a combination of protesters and militants, the officers said.

However, protesters insisted the army had provoked the clashes.

Security forces "invaded our sit-in today, burned the tents and opened fire indiscriminately and killed and wounded dozens of protesters," Abdulmalik al-Juburi, a leader of the Hawijah sit-in, told AFP.

"We only have four rifles to protect the sit-in, and there are no wanted people among us," Juburi said.

The dawn violence sparked revenge attacks.

Thirteen gunmen were killed in attacks on checkpoints in the Al-Rashad and Al-Riyadh areas of Kirkuk province, the army officers said.

"There have been fierce clashes which led to the killing of 13 revolutionaries against the policy of the government," Juburi said.

"When they heard the news about the killed and wounded in the sit-in, villagers in Kirkuk cut the roads and attacked checkpoints and military headquarters and took control of some of the checkpoints for a short time," he said.

Hassan Toran, leader of the provincial council of Kirkuk, where Hawijah is located, said the council condemned "the government forces breaking in to the sit-in and using extreme force, which led to killing and wounding dozens."

"We, as a provincial council, already warned and called for calm," Toran added.

"What happened today makes us ask the United Nations to intervene," he said.

A curfew has been imposed on Hawijah and neighbouring areas.

The violence came just hours after United Nations envoy Martin Kobler called for restraint on both sides in Hawijah, where tensions have been increasing.

"I encourage the Iraqi security forces to exercise the utmost self-restraint in maintaining law and order and the demonstrators to continue to preserve the peaceful character of the demonstrations," Kobler said in a statement.

20.07 | 0 komentar | Read More