Life for brothers in Russia airport attack

THREE men have been sentenced to life in prison and a fourth to 10 years for their roles in the 2011 suicide bombing of a Moscow airport, which killed 37 people.

Bashir Khamkhoyev and brothers Islam and Ilez Yandiyev were given life sentences on Monday by a court in Krasnogorsk, a city on the north-western outskirts of Moscow. Akhmed Yevloyev, a brother of the purported bomber, was given 10 years, the court said.

The court earlier on Monday had convicted the four men on terrorism charges.

The bombing in January 2011 was carried out by a man who walked into the arrivals hall of Domodedovo International Airport, Russia's largest airport, and blew himself up. The explosion injured 172 people.

Investigators identified the bomber as Magomed Yevloyev, a native of the North Caucasus region of Ingushetia. The also have charged local Islamist insurgency leader Doku Umarov with recruiting and training Magomed Yevloyev for the attack.

The Yandiyev brothers were accused of driving Magomed Yevloyev to Domodedovo while the other defendants were found guilty of helping him in Ingushetia, the Russian Investigative Committee said.

Islam Yandiyev had asked for a pardon while the three remaining defendants denied guilt, Russian news reports said.

20.48 | 0 komentar | Read More

Sea Shepherd seeks no-arrest guarantee

NEWLY landed Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson wants assurances he won't be handed over to Japanese authorities before considering a visit to Australia.

Mr Watson, who is in the US after 15 months on the run at sea, has been granted an Australian business visa.

But Sea Shepherd Australia chairman Bob Brown says Mr Watson isn't yet intending to use the visa.

"I don't think he's going to come here until he gets an assurance that he won't be captured by a Japanese arrest warrant," Dr Brown told reporters in Hobart.

Mr Watson is wanted by the Japanese over the militant anti-whaling campaign he led in Antarctic waters over the past decade.

He made landfall to give evidence in a civil action by Japanese whaling interests against Sea Shepherd's US arm in a Seattle court.

The action prevents him from direct involvement in the conservation group's actions in the Southern Ocean but a visit to Australia would provide a massive publicity boost as the group seeks to raise $4 million for what it is dubbing Operation Relentless.

Dr Brown said Mr Watson, who holds joint Canadian-US citizenship, felt safe in America.

"The US is very protective of its citizens and I couldn't see a US administration handing Paul Watson over to Japan," the former Greens leader said.

"There'd be a big furore in the United States if that were to happen."

Attorney-General George Brandis's office has been contacted for comment.

Dr Brown has also given evidence in Seattle, where whalers are seeking penalties for alleged breaches by Sea Shepherd US of a restraining order.

He said the case would not affect the three-ship protest planned for this summer because Sea Shepherd Australia has separated from the US arm.

"They're trying a back door way of trying to stop Sea Shepherd and they'll fail," Dr Brown said.

Japan insists its annual whaling program is legal under allowances for a scientific catch.

In a separate action, Australia is challenging the legality of the whale hunt at the International Court of Justice, with the court deliberating and a ruling expected between now and March.

20.48 | 0 komentar | Read More

Vic woman, 91, dies in car crash

A 91-YEAR-OLD woman has died in hospital following a two-car collision in regional Victoria.

The woman was a passenger in a car which collided with a utility in Mortlake on Monday morning.

The woman, from Mortlake, was flown to The Alfred hospital where she died in the evening.

The 89-year old driver of the car, also from Mortlake, was taken to the Warrnambool hospital for treatment.

The occupants of the other vehicle, a 61-year-old Warrnambool woman and a 41-year-old Port Fairy woman were both taken to the Warrnambool hospital with minor injuries.

The woman's death takes the state's road toll to 197, compared to 241 for the same time last year.

20.48 | 0 komentar | Read More

Iran, IAEA sign 'roadmap for co-operation'

Diplomats say a deal to curb Iran's nuclear program is close, despite clinching one in Geneva. Source: AAP

IRAN and the UN nuclear watchdog have agreed on a "roadmap for co-operation" over Tehran's controversial atomic drive, as the US accused Iran of scuttling latest efforts to end the deadlock.

The announcement of the breakthrough came on Monday during a visit to Tehran by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Yukiya Amano. No details of the accord were immediately released.

"The joint statement that was signed today details a roadmap for cooperation that determines mutual steps to resolve remaining issues," Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said at a joint news conference with Amano, which was closed to Western media in Tehran.

Amano hailed the deal as "an important step" but added "much more must be done", in remarks were carried by the ISNA news agency.

The IAEA chief's visit is aimed at resolving technical issues linked to the IAEA's role of monitoring Iran's nuclear activities.

Broader questions of how to ensure the Islamic republic's nuclear program is not being used to mask a drive for atomic weapons are being discussed in rounds of negotiations between Iran and P5+1 powers - Britain, France, the United States, Russia and China plus Germany.

In the latest talks, a marathon session in Geneva which ended inconclusively on Sunday, hopes for a deal had soared after top diplomats rushed to join the talks.

But they faded as cracks began to appear among world powers when France raised concerns over a heavy water reactor being built at Arak.

Addressing the issue on Monday in Abu Dhabi, US Secretary of State John Kerry accused Iran of being responsible for the failure of the talks.

"The P5+1 was unified on Saturday when we presented our proposal to the Iranians... But Iran couldn't take it, at that particular moment they weren't able to accept," said Kerry, who is on a regional tour to address thorny issues such as the Middle East peace process, Iran's nuclear program and the Syrian conflict.

In the remarks he made to reporters during a visit to the United Arab Emirates capital, Kerry reassured Israel that the deal will better protect it.

"What we are doing will protect Israel more effectively," he said, as the United States and Israel were locked in an escalating war of words over the negotiations.

The P5+1 group and Iran will reconvene again in Geneva on November 20 to try to iron out differences.

The broad outline of the agreement is said to include a freeze of part or all of Tehran's nuclear program in return for the easing of sanctions.

France said Monday that world powers and Iran were close to an agreement despite the failure of the Geneva talks.

"We are not far from an agreement with the Iranians but we are not there yet," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Europe 1 radio.

Responding to criticism that Paris was behind the failure in Geneva because of its reservations about parts of the deal on the table, he retorted: "France is neither isolated nor a country that follows the herd. It is independent and works for peace."

Iran's nuclear chief Salehi said on Monday that as a gesture of goodwill, IAEA inspectors would be allowed to visit the heavy water production plant in Arak as well as the Gachin uranium mine in the south.

At least a year from being completed, the Arak reactor is a major source of concern for Western powers who fear the plutonium it will produce as a by-product could provide Iran with a second route for making fissile material for an atom bomb.

Iran has long been adamant it solely wants to produce isotopes for medical and agricultural purposes at the Arak plant.

Iran denies seeking or ever having sought nuclear weapons, and says such claims are based on faulty intelligence from agencies such as the CIA and Israel's Mossad.

The IAEA in particular wants to visit the Parchin military base, southeast of Tehran, where intelligence evidence suggests Iran may have carried out weaponisation research.

Salehi and Amano did not mention Parchin as being part of the deal they struck, although details of the agreement are yet to be publicised.

20.48 | 0 komentar | Read More

Japan runs wind turbine near Fukushima

A FLOATING wind turbine off Japan's east coast, near the devastated Fukushima nuclear plant, has started generating power.

The turbine, equipped with 80-metre-long blades, is placed about 20 kilometres from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. It will produce up to 2 megawatts of electricity, said a consortium of 10 Japanese companies and the University of Tokyo on Monday.

The consortium hopes the publicly-funded pilot project will help Fukushima become the centre of a renewable energy industry, and create jobs in the region hit by the country's worst nuclear accident in 2011.

The consortium plans to install two more 7-megawatt turbines by March 2015.

Before the Fukushima disaster, nuclear-generated electricity made up about 30 per cent of Japan's power output, but all of Japan's 50 nuclear reactors are currently offline.

The Fukushima plant suffered meltdowns at three of its six reactors after a tsunami swept through the complex in March 2011.

20.48 | 0 komentar | Read More

Aussie cleared by Dubai court on fraud

AN Australian businessman's five-year legal nightmare in the Middle East appears over, with a Dubai court upholding his acquittal.

Marcus Lee, 44, was cleared on fraud-related charges in Dubai in May but the Dubai Public Prosecutor appealed his acquittal, dashing his and his wife Julie's hopes of returning home soon after.

But on Sunday, after more than 50 court hearings over almost five years, the Dubai Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal.

After the verdict, Mr Lee and Mrs Lee said the outcome was all they could ever have hoped for.

"This is the correct result and we thank the Dubai Appeal Court judges for their verdict," they said in a statement.

"We simply hope that we will now be allowed to return to our families in Australia and resume our lives after almost five years of constant anxiety, stress and hardship.

Gittany murder trials reveals his jealousy

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES: With her dark eyes and stunning features, it's easy to see why Simon Gittany knew his fiancee Lisa Harnum to be a head-turning beauty.

'One punch' laws could mean 10 years

EXCLUSIVE: Brawlers who kill with a king-hit punch will face up to 10 years in jail under tough new "one punch" legislation to be introduced by the state government.

"Julie and I desperately want to be able to see our families again."

The Lees feared that the lodging of the appeal meant they were likely to be trapped in the UAE for another year.

Mr Lee said he hopes Australian officials will now lobby on his behalf to ensure no further appeals are lodged.

Mr Lee and fellow Australian businessman Matthew Joyce were arrested in January 2009 over fraud allegations brought by Gold Coast property developer Sunland, after a land deal collapsed during the global financial crisis.

They spent nine months in prison, followed by more than three-and-a-half years under effective house arrest.

The court in May this year sentenced Mr Joyce to ten years in prison and a $25 million fine. It also convicted Melbourne businessman Angus Reed in absentia.

They were found guilty of duping Sunland into giving them $12 million, but both maintain their innocence.

But the court cleared Mr Lee of wrongdoing, and even Sunland itself believed Mr Lee did nothing wrong.

Mr Lee's Brisbane-based lawyer, John Sneddon, said any further appeals would be devastating and urged Dubai authorities to allow the Lees to come home.

"They are sick, they are tired and they have lost everything they ever owned," he said.

20.48 | 0 komentar | Read More

New trial sought for executed US 14yo

GEORGE Stinney has been dead since 1944, when as a 14-year-old black boy he became the youngest person executed in the United States in the past century, for killing two white girls. Now his supporters are taking the unheard-of step of asking for a new trial.

Stinney's case brings together two of the longest-running disputes in the American legal system - the death penalty and race.

Stinney was convicted on a shaky confession in a segregated society that wanted revenge for the beating deaths of two girls, aged 11 and 7, according to a lawsuit filed last month on Stinney's behalf in South Carolina.

He was electrocuted just 84 days after the girls were killed. Newspaper stories reported that witnesses said the straps to keep him in the electric chair didn't fit around his small frame.

The request for a new trial is largely symbolic, but Stinney's supporters say they would prefer exoneration to a pardon - which they've asked for as well.

Gittany murder trials reveals his jealousy

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES: With her dark eyes and stunning features, it's easy to see why Simon Gittany knew his fiancee Lisa Harnum to be a head-turning beauty.

'One punch' laws could mean 10 years

EXCLUSIVE: Brawlers who kill with a king-hit punch will face up to 10 years in jail under tough new "one punch" legislation to be introduced by the state government.

The judge may refuse to hear the request for a new trial, since the punishment has already been carried out.

The two girls were last seen looking for wildflowers in the racially divided mill town of Alcolu. Stinney's sister, who was 7 at the time, says in her new affidavit for the lawsuit that she and her brother were letting their cow graze when the girls asked them where they could find flowers called maypops. The sister, Amie Ruffner, said her brother told them he didn't know, and the girls left.

"It was strange to see them in our area, because white people stayed on their side of Alcolu and we knew our place," Ruffner wrote.

The girls never came home. They were found the next morning in a water-filled ditch, their heads beaten with a hard object, likely a railroad spike.

The request for a new trial includes sworn statements from two of Stinney's siblings who say he was with them the entire day the girls were killed.

Notes from Stinney's confession and most other information used to convict him in a one-day trial have disappeared, along with any transcript of the proceedings. Only a few pages of cryptic, hand-written notes remain, according to the motion.

"Why was George Stinney electrocuted? The state can't produce any paperwork to justify why he was," said George Frierson, a local school board member who grew up in Stinney's hometown hearing stories about the case and decided six years ago to start studying it and pushing for exoneration.

The request for a new trial points out that at just 43 kilograms it's unlikely Stinney could have killed the girls and dragged them to the ditch.

The motion also hints at community rumours of a deathbed confession from a white man several years ago and the possibility Stinney confessed because his family was threatened.

20.48 | 0 komentar | Read More

Kelly parents: 'legal system doesn't care'

THE parents of slain teenager Thomas Kelly have lashed out at the NSW justice system, saying they feel "destroyed" by the process that ended in their son's killer being sentenced to four years jail.

The 18-year-old was killed when he suffered massive head injuries from a king hit by a drunken stranger, Kieran Loveridge, during a night out with friends in Sydney's Kings Cross last year.

Loveridge was handed a four-year sentence for the manslaughter, plus 14 months for attacks on four others who, like Mr Kelly, happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Grieving parents Ralph and Kathy Kelly told reporters immediately after the sentencing on Friday they were "horrified".

On Sunday they spoke out about their fight to have the Director of Public Prosecutions pursue a murder charge.

Loveridge, 19, pleaded guilty to the alternative charge of manslaughter, thus securing a 25 per cent discount on his sentence.

Gittany murder trials reveals his jealousy

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES: With her dark eyes and stunning features, it's easy to see why Simon Gittany knew his fiancee Lisa Harnum to be a head-turning beauty.

'One punch' laws could mean 10 years

EXCLUSIVE: Brawlers who kill with a king-hit punch will face up to 10 years in jail under tough new "one punch" legislation to be introduced by the state government.

"We pleaded with them not to downgrade it," Ralph Kelly told the Nine Network.

"We've spent the whole year fighting for Thomas in a legal system that just doesn't care ... We feel destroyed."

Kathy Kelly said she did not believe Loveridge was remorseful: "The talk in the papers about him breaking down in the witness stand? I didn't see any tears."

She criticised Justice Stephen Campbell's emphasis on Loveridge's rehabilitation prospects, and said the prosecution had kept the family in the dark.

"They are nice people and I guess they're just doing their job within the realms of the law, but we have been fighting (the downgraded charge) constantly, you know, even to the point that sometimes people would refuse to email us or we'd get notification after six o'clock on a Friday night ... it was just like nobody wanted to talk to us," Mrs Kelly said.

She said there had not been a single night since her son died that she had not cried herself to sleep.

"I wake up and the first thing I think about is Thomas, and I cry, and I cry for what he's lost," she said.

20.48 | 0 komentar | Read More

Queen leads Remembrance events

THE Queen has honoured members of Britain's Armed Forces killed in conflict as Remembrance Sunday services took place around the UK.

The monarch laid the first wreath at the Cenotaph on Whitehall to commemorate all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the decades since the First World War, bowing her head after paying her respects.

Senior royals, including Second World War veteran the Duke of Edinburgh, Afghanistan soldier Prince Harry and the Duke of Cambridge - with wife Kate watching from a nearby balcony - joined the monarch and politicians, military leaders, veterans and serving personnel in laying wreaths of poppies at the monument.

Prince Harry was laying the wreath on behalf of his father Prince Charles, who is currently abroad on an official tour of India with the Duchess of Cornwall, and was marking the occasion there.

Gittany murder trials reveals his jealousy

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES: With her dark eyes and stunning features, it's easy to see why Simon Gittany knew his fiancee Lisa Harnum to be a head-turning beauty.

'One punch' laws could mean 10 years

EXCLUSIVE: Brawlers who kill with a king-hit punch will face up to 10 years in jail under tough new "one punch" legislation to be introduced by the state government.

Troops in Afghanistan were joined by Prince Andrew, who laid a wreath during a service held at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province to mark Remembrance Sunday. Defence Secretary Philip Hammond also flew to Afghanistan last night to join servicemen and women.

Millions across the UK fell silent in tribute to those lost in war, joining the crowds gathered in central London who stood in a moment of quiet contemplation as Big Ben struck 11am.

During the two-minute silence, only the distant sounds of traffic and the rustling of leaves could be heard, despite the fact that police said Whitehall was at capacity.

The beginning and end of the silence was marked with the firing of a round by the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery, using a 13-pounder First World War gun.

In cold but bright weather, the royals and dignitaries then laid their wreaths at the Cenotaph.

Prime Minister David Cameron was first after the royals to do so, followed by Labour leader Ed Miliband and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

Former prime ministers Sir John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and London Mayor Boris Johnson also took part in the ceremony.

The Duchess of Cambridge was accompanied on the Foreign Office balcony by the Countess of Wessex and Vice Admiral Tim Laurence.

20.48 | 0 komentar | Read More

Consumers warned of fake hotel reviews

CONSUMERS should be on the lookout for fake hotel reviews this holiday season, consumer group Choice says.

"The boom in hotel review sites has given rise to the practice of 'astroturfing' or the writing of fake reviews by companies to promote their own accommodation," Choice spokesman Tom Godfrey said .

"Second to friends, people place their trust in reviews before editorial content, ads, marketing, and government sponsored tourism websites.

"Yet US-based Trip Advisor, the world's biggest online travel review service, has no plans to improve its verification processes."

The warning comes after reports earlier this year that the general manager of communications for Accor hotels in the Asia-Pacific region was caught posting more than 100 positive reviews on TripAdvisor, Choice said.

Gittany murder trials reveals his jealousy

EXCLUSIVE PICTURES: With her dark eyes and stunning features, it's easy to see why Simon Gittany knew his fiancee Lisa Harnum to be a head-turning beauty.

'One punch' laws could mean 10 years

EXCLUSIVE: Brawlers who kill with a king-hit punch will face up to 10 years in jail under tough new "one punch" legislation to be introduced by the state government.

In the US, the New York Attorney-General recently heavily fined 19 companies that wrote fake online reviews and created fake online profiles for businesses, Choice says.

Mr Godfrey said both the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and NSW Fair Trading were looking at similar practices here.

20.48 | 0 komentar | Read More