Rowan Callick, 4/2/10 Fighting has claimed 16 lives over the past week at villages near both ends of a planned 600km pipeline down which will flow Papua New Guinea’s great new economic hope, its $16.5 billion gas project. As a result, project leader Exxon/Mobil has suspended road building work by Queensland-based Curtain Brothers for the liquefaction [...]

Suleiman Al-Diyabi; 4/2/10 It is not uncommon to see children searching garbage bins for plastic and metal cans, which they collect for organized gangs looking for materials to sell. A citizen, who chose to remain anonymous, said one day he was coming home just before Asr prayer when he saw two kids aged around eight or [...]

4/2/10 The Dead Sea in Jordan is shrinking at an alarming rate – a development that has led to the creation of some 3,000 sinkholes along the sea’s coasts.  The sea has shrunk by a third since the 1960s when its major water source – the River Jordan – was diverted for upstream projects in Israel, [...]

4/2/10 A Dutch court has agreed to hear a case against a far-right politician accused of inciting racial hatred and discrimination against Muslims. The court overruled objections by Geert Wilders that it did not have jurisdiction to hear his case, in which he cited parliamentary privilege. “Parliamentary immunity does not extend to what a public representative [...]

4/2/10 Having lived for several years in a veiled society, I feel the most important questions have not been asked (Letters, February 3).Why do women wear the veil? Where in the Koran does it say women must cover themselves from head to toe? If it doesn’t stipulate that, why do they continue to do so? My [...]

Paolo Totaro; 4/2/10 The British government has caved in to pressure from the Pope and churches by abandoning controversial reforms that would have forced religious groups to abide by anti-discrimination laws. The amendments drawn up by Labour would have effectively removed the right of churches and religious schools not to employ homosexuals. They drew unprecedented public [...]

Jason Koutsoukis; 4/2/10; (3 Items) A senior Israeli military official during last year’s war in Gaza has said that an independent commission of inquiry should investigate allegations that Israeli troops committed war crimes. Colonel Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, who was in charge of the Israel Defence Forces’ international law division and is now a law lecturer at Tel [...]

Rowan Callick, 4/2/10 Fighting has claimed 16 lives over the past week at villages near both ends of a planned 600km pipeline down which will flow Papua New Guinea’s great new economic hope, its $16.5 billion gas project. As a result, project leader Exxon/Mobil has suspended road building work by Queensland-based Curtain Brothers for the liquefaction [...]

Paige Taylor & Paul Maley; 4/2/10; (2 Items) Congestion eased slightly on Christmas Island yesterday when visas were granted to 89 asylum-seekers and they were flown to the mainland on a charter flight. But the exodus still leaves 1697 asylum-seekers on the Indian Ocean outpost, including 147 children. About 200 remain in tents at the detention [...]

Speaking as a Christian, Steph Weakley (Letters, February 2) argues that it is wrong to interfere with women’s rights to cover their faces because one of the most basic freedoms in a wonderful country like ours is to dress as your beliefs and customs dictate. I have a friend, a committed naturist, who sincerely wants [...]

Paola Totaro; 3/2/10 Tony Blair not only misled the public about his decision to take Britain to war in Iraq but deliberately ordered that Cabinet critics be cut out of intelligence and military briefings in the lead-up, the Chilcot inquiry has been told. Clare Short, a former International Development minister and vehement critic of the Iraq [...]

Paola Totro; 3/2/10 Pope Benedict has attacked Britain’s reform of human rights and equality legislation, saying religious employers should be allowed to discriminate against homosexuals. In an unprecedented move, the Pope commented directly on the laws of a Protestant state, claiming the proposed new human rights legislation threatens religious freedoms and violates ”natural law”. In a [...]

Paige Taylor, 3/2/10 A big drop in assaults, police call-outs and emergency hospital admissions in Halls Creek has made Western Australia’s government more determined to support alcohol restrictions in the remote town once described as the Gaza Strip of the Kimberley. And the Barnett government is preparing for the possibility of restrictions being rolled out in [...]

Lex Hall 3/2/10; (2 Items) NAVY personnel involved in the interception of asylum-seekers in northern Australian waters are being ordered to avoid mention of Indonesia for fear it could spark a disaster like the explosion aboard the SIEV 36 last April . Leading Seaman Matthew Pierce told an inquest into the deaths of five Afghans aboard [...]

2/2/10 While I hesitate to argue against the admirable Sally Neighbour (”Hidden danger in tampering with the veil”, World Commentary, 1/1), her interpretation of the symbolic and actual unveiling of Iranian women by Shah Reza Pahlavi is not correct. Reza Pahlavi never lost his Islamic faith nor sought to destroy Islam. His struggle was against the [...]

Abraham Rabiinovich; 2/2/10; See: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/israeli-officers-reprimanded-over-gaza-shelling-incident/story-e6frg6so-1225825655802 Israel has reprimanded a brigadier-general and a colonel for authorising the use of phosphorous shells against standing orders in an incident during the incursion into the Gaza Strip a year ago.  The disciplinary action was included in a 46-page report to the UN responding to allegations of war crimes made by [...]

Will Aavia, 2/2/10 Ten members of a US Baptist Church were to appear in a Haitian court overnight after being accused of running an illegal adoption scheme. The group from Idaho said they were carrying out a rescue mission and had accompanied more than 30 children as part of a plan to take at least 100 [...]

2/2/10 The US Justice Department is investigating whether officials of security firm Blackwater Worldwide tried to bribe Iraqi government officials in hopes of retaining the firm’s work in Iraq. Citing unnamed current and former government officials, the New York Times said that the department’s fraud section opened the inquiry late last year to determine whether Blackwater [...]

Paige Taylor; 2/2/10 (2 Items) The Department of Immigration and Citizenship was taken by surprise yesterday when Christmas Island residents spotted a large boat carrying almost 200 asylum-seekers motoring into Flying Fish Cove.  Residents of the suburb known as The Kampong saw the boat from the windows of their waterfront flats as it approached the jetty [...]

Police in Papua New Guinea burnt down homes and threatened people with guns while illegally evicting them from land next to one of the country's biggest gold mines.