SUPPORTERS of deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi have protested outside several ministries in further defiance of a government ultimatum to dismantle their sprawling Cairo protest camps.
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DAME Kiri Te Kanawa says she is so happy to land the role of famed opera singer Dame Nellie Melba in Downton Abbey she has named her new pet dog after the hit show.
The star said she "couldn't say yes fast enough" when she was offered the guest spot in the new series.
She plays the real-life Australian singer who was one of the biggest singing stars of the early 20th century.
Dame Kiri said she studied a diary of Dame Nellie's performances over 30 years to get into the role and chose suitable songs for the part which sees her perform at a party at the fictional country house.
The New Zealand singer said she was "not sure" she really acted in her scenes with the cast, which includes some spoken lines as well.
"I was trying to stay true to the character because as (show writer) Julian Fellowes said 'she's the only true character' that actually lived," she said.
Producer Gareth Neame said her performance had gone down a storm, adding: "It was the sight of all these tough electricians and grips and all the people you see on a film set with tears in their eyes and wiping a tear away as they heard you. It was quite a special day."
Dame Kiri admitted she was nervous before she arrived on set.
"It was a long day but I made it longer by staying up most of the night," she said.
"The most incredible thing is I took my two dogs along and Lady Carnarvon didn't want those anywhere near the place but the thing is during the time I was expecting doggy number three and she's called Abbey as in Downton.
"She's my little Downton prize".
The new series, which starts on UK television later this year, is set in 1922 and sees the characters dealing with the aftermath of the death of Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens).
A WOMAN has been charged with terror offences over video clips about the London murder of soldier Lee Rigby.
Rebekah Dawson, 21, from Hackney, east London, is accused of dissemination of terrorist publications and encouragement of terrorism, and will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Wednesday.
She is jointly charged along with Royal Barnes, 22, also from Hackney, who appeared at the same court on Monday to face terror charges linked to the footage.
Dawson is accused of making two video recordings on May 22, the day of Fusilier Rigby's murder, and distributing them with the intention of encouraging others in the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism.
She is also accused of encouraging terrorism by publishing a statement with Barnes entitled "Muslim laughs at British Soldier killing".
Barnes is due to appear at the Old Bailey on Friday.
Jon Ralph, Greg Davis PAUL Roos has confirmed he had spoken to Brisbane about their coaching position a month ago, as Michael Voss was left reeling from his sudden sacking.
THE US Justice Department has filed suit to block the $12 billion merger between American Airlines and US Airways, saying it would hurt competition.
Jon Ralph, Greg Davis PAUL Roos has confirmed he had spoken to Brisbane about their coaching position a month ago, as Michael Voss was left reeling from his sudden sacking.
THE US Justice Department has filed suit to block the $12 billion merger between American Airlines and US Airways, saying it would hurt competition.
CANADA'S transportation agency says a US-based rail company whose runaway oil train caused a fire and explosion that killed 47 people in a Quebec town has lost its operating licence.
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SCIENTISTS say they have used stem cells to grow human heart tissue that contracted spontaneously in a petri dish - marking progress in the quest to manufacture transplant organs.
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THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) has slashed its 2014 growth forecast for China, Australia's number one trading partner.
Updating its April World Economic Outlook on Tuesday, the IMF downgraded its world growth forecast for this year and next, driven to a large extent by "appreciably weaker" domestic demand and slower growth in several key emerging market economies.
The euro area is also expected to suffer a more protracted recession than earlier predicted.
The IMF urged policymakers everywhere to increase efforts to ensure robust growth.
"Weaker growth prospects and new risks raise new challenges to global growth and employment, and global rebalancing," the IMF warned.
It cut its world growth forecast for 2013 to 3.1 per cent and to 3.8 per cent for 2014, both 0.2 percentage points lower than it predicted in April.
For China, it now sees 2013 growth at 7.8 per cent, down 0.3 percentage points from previous, and 2014 growth at 7.7 per cent, an even larger 0.6 percentage point downgrade.
Forecasts for advanced economies that includes the G7 countries - US, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, UK and Canada - were also trimmed.
While the Washington-based institution did not provide a separate new forecast for Australia, "other advanced economies" were cut by 0.1 percentage point for both 2013 and 2014 to 2.3 per cent and 3.3 per cent respectively.
"Downside risks to global growth prospects still dominate," the IMF warned.
"While old risks remain, new risks have emerged, including the possibility of a longer growth slowdown in emerging market economies, especially given risks of lower potential growth, slowing credit, and possibly tighter financial conditions."
The latter could result from an anticipated unwinding of monetary policy stimulus in the US.
Federal Treasurer Chris Bowen said the Australian economy was still expected to grow faster than advanced economies as a whole, both this year and next.
In the May budget, the government forecast growth of 2.75 per cent in the 2013/14 financial and three per cent in 2014/15.
Mr Bowen said while the IMF has revised down world growth forecasts, China and India are still forecast to grow at a solid rate in 2013.
India, another key Australian trading partner, was downgraded 0.2 percentage points to 5.6 per cent for 2013 and by 0.1 percentage point to 6.3 per cent for 2014.
"Australia is not immune from global economic and financial uncertainty," Mr Bowen said in a statement.
"This underlines the need for responsible settings and policies to help manage the transition underway in our economy, and to support productivity, jobs and growth in the face of ongoing global economic weakness."
A GERMAN artist has projected the message "United Stasi of America" onto the US embassy in Berlin, likening reported sweeping Internet surveillance by Washington to spying by the former East German secret police.
A US embassy spokesperson told AFP: "Very funny. But anyone making such a comparison knows neither the Stasi nor the United States."
The reference to the former communist Staatssicherheit or Stasi police was beamed at night onto the US mission by German artist Oliver Bienkowski, in collaboration with Internet tycoon and online activist Kim Dotcom.
"I defaced the U.S. embassy in Berlin with a truth-projection last night. 0wned!" tweeted New Zealand-based Dotcom.
Dotcom, a German national, is the founder of file-sharing website Megaupload that was shut down by US authorities who seek to extradite him on charges of racketeering, fraud, money laundering and copyright theft.
Dotcom, born Kim Schmitz, denies any wrongdoing and is free on bail in New Zealand ahead of his extradition hearing.
US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, in limbo at a Moscow airport, is also seeking to evade US justice after leaking explosive details about a vast US electronic surveillance programme and bugging of European missions.
Germany has reacted with particular alarm to the revelations about the US and British spy programmes, given its history of state surveillance under the Nazis and the communist East German regime.
A video that shows the protest message and a picture of Kim Dotcom beamed onto the US embassy on the night of Sunday to Monday has been posted online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v A2Yb3gWmm2I&feature youtu.be.
It has already garnered more than 42,000 hits on YouTube.
US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, who has been holed up in a Moscow airport for more than two weeks, has agreed to an offer of political asylum from Venezuela, a top pro-Kremlin MP says.
"As was expected, Snowden agreed to (Venezuelan President Nicolas) Maduro's offer of political asylum," Alexei Pushkov, head of the Russian lower house of parliament's international affairs committee, said on Twitter.
"Apparently this option looked like the most reliable one to Snowden."
Minutes after the announcement the statement was removed from his Twitter feed.
Pushkov's announcement came after the leftist governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua had over the past few days offered the 30-year-old former National Security Agency contractor asylum.
A day earlier, Maduro called on Snowden to decide if he wanted to fly to Caracas.
"We have received the asylum request letter," Maduro told reporters from the presidential palace in Caracas.
"He will have to decide when he flies, if he finally wants to fly here." He called the offers from the three Latin American nations "collective humanitarian political asylum."
But it remains unclear how the world's most famous refugee would be able to leave the transit zone of Sheremetyevo, where he has been marooned without valid documents since he arrived from Hong Kong on June 23.
There are no direct flights between Moscow and Caracas. The quickest way to get to Venezuela would be to fly via Havana.
A spokeswoman for Russian national carrier Aeroflot, Irina Danenberg, said she was not aware if Snowden had been on the flight to Havana that left Moscow earlier on Tuesday. "I have no clue," she said.
There are no direct flights to Havana from Moscow on Wednesday.
US stocks have opened higher on optimism about corporate earnings, even as the International Monetary Fund slashed its global economic growth forecast.
Five minutes into trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 69.40 (0.46 per cent) to 15,294.09.
The broad-based S&P 500 added 8.91 (0.54 per cent) to 1,649.37, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index put on 11.16 (0.32 per cent) to 3,495.99.
Markets were cheered by an earnings report from aluminum producer Alcoa that said profits came in 1 cent per share above expectations at 7 cents per share. Alcoa also reaffirmed its projection that global aluminum demand would grow by 7 per cent in 2013.
The gains came despite the latest economic forecast from the IMF, which trimmed world economic growth expectations for 2013 to 3.1 per cent from the April forecast of 3.3 per cent.
China and other emerging economic powers now face new risks, the IMF warned, "including the possibility of a longer growth slowdown."
BOAT arrivals with a genuine fear of persecution shouldn't be burning their passports and reciting identical stories, Foreign Minister Bob Carr says.
Senator Carr said asylum seeker numbers had spiked and 20 per cent of Australia's immigrants now arrive courtesy of people smugglers.
He said officials were saying recent boat arrivals, particularly those from Iran, were seeking economic advantage and were unable to make a claim for persecution.
Senator Carr said those who burned their passports and repeated a well-rehearsed story ought to be put on the defensive.
"If you have got an argument about persecution, there is no case for burning your passport," he told ABC television.
"And there is no case for being rehearsed in a story of persecution so that everyone on a vessel tells the same story word for word, leaving the impression that the people smuggler in charge of the process has put them through this."
Senator Carr has pushed for toughening of the assessment process, pointing to the recent wave of Iranian arrivals as economic refugees who were not fleeing political persecution.
He said the assessment system allowed 97 per cent of those reaching Australian waters to stay, through a process that seemed weighted in favour of the claimant.
Senator Carr said people smugglers were bribing officials in other countries and charging $10,000 per head for wretched people on unseaworthy vessels.
"All our officials are telling us that the recent spike has come from Iran and in their impression.....it is overwhelmingly to gain economic advantage," he said.
"That is what you have a regular migration program for. This is a corruption by people smugglers."
BRITISH opposition leader Ed Miliband has proposed to overhaul his Labour party's historic relationship with the trade unions, risking millions of pounds in political donations.
The unions helped found Labour in 1900 but Miliband vowed to end the process by which union members are automatically affiliated to the centre-left party unless they opt out.
The changes follow a row over efforts by Britain's biggest union, Unite, to get its favoured candidate chosen to contest an upcoming parliamentary by-election in Falkirk in Scotland.
"In the 21st century it just doesn't make sense for anyone to be affiliated to a political party unless they have chosen to do so," Miliband said in a speech to party activists in London.
Labour currently nets a reported STG8 million ($A13 million) a year from almost three million union workers - the majority of the party's funds.
Miliband is particularly sensitive to criticism about union influence after their support helped him beat his older brother, ex-foreign minister David Miliband, to the Labour leadership in 2010.
He admitted the proposed change had "massive financial implications" for a party which has struggled to attract private donations since losing the last election that same year.
But Miliband said he wanted to create "a modern relationship with individual working people" and said he hoped it would encourage a more involved, grassroots activism.
Miliband acknowledged the reform could face opposition from the unions but said he hoped to push it through by the next election in 2015.
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, who has been embroiled in a war of words with the Labour leadership in recent weeks, initially appeared to criticise the plans but later took a more conciliatory tone.
"As far as Unite is concerned, we are more than happy to engage in the discussion with him," he told the BBC.
FRANCE'S medical order has sanctioned nutritionist Pierre Dukan, whose high-protein diet has seen him sell millions of books and win over a slew of famous followers, for having prescribed a slimming drug linked to hundreds of deaths.
Dukan, whose diet was reportedly used by the Middleton family ahead of Kate's 2011 wedding to Britain's Prince William, was sanctioned for having prescribed the anti-diabetes drug Mediator to a female patient in 1971, his lawyer Edouard de Lamaze said.
The Paris region branch of the French Order of Doctors suspended Dukan's medical license for eight days for the "breach of ethical duties" and ordered him to pay 6,000 euros ($A8,383) to the patient, who subsequently developed heart problems.
Dukan was also sanctioned for having made "grossly misleading assertions" that he had only prescribed the drug once, when medical records showed he had actually done so five times.
Lamaze said the eight-day license suspension was purely symbolic because 72-year Dukan was no longer a practising doctor.
The lawyer said he was appealing the decision and accused the medical order of carrying out a vendetta against his client.
Dukan is facing further disciplinary action after medical orders accused him last year of breaking professional rules by proposing that high school students be awarded extra marks if they manage to maintain an acceptable body weight.
Mediator, which reduces hunger pangs, was widely used as a slimming aid in France until it was pulled from the market in 2009 after evidence emerged of hundreds of deaths caused by damage to heart valves.
A study last year said the drug had probably caused at least 1,300 deaths before being withdrawn.
REGGAE star Smiley Culture died from a self-inflicted stab wound to the chest during a police raid at his home, an inquest jury has found.
Surrey Coroner Richard Travers said he would make a report to the Metropolitan Police on changes or improvements to the supervision of a prisoner at their home during a search.
The 48-year-old singer, real name David Emmanuel, died from a single stab wound to the heart while police executed a search warrant at his Surrey home on March 15 2011.
The jury of five men and six women took 12 hours and 52 minutes to reach their majority verdict.
The jury foreman said: "David Victor Emmanuel took his own life. Although the tragic events of 15 March 2011 were unforeseeable, giving one officer the responsibility of supervising Mr Emmanuel and at the same time the premises search book was a contributory factor in his death."
The inquest heard that he stabbed himself after being arrested at the property in Warlingham.
The police inquiries concerned allegations of conspiring to import class A drugs into the UK, the court heard.
Smiley Culture found fame with a string of 1980s hits including CockneyTranslation, and appeared on Top of the Pops.
The inquest, which began on June 12, took place at Woking Borough Council's Civic Offices.
A SOUTH African court has ordered the return of the remains of three of Nelson Mandela's children to his ancestral village, following a bitter family feud linked to the eventual burial site of the ailing anti-apartheid hero.
A judge in the southern city of Mthatha instructed Mandela's eldest grandson Mandla to transfer the remains to Qunu by 3:00 pm (1300 GMT) on Wednesday.
Mandla allegedly had the graves moved to Mvezo, about 30 kilometres away, without the rest of the family's consent in 2011.
Mandela, who remains critically ill in what is now his fourth week in hospital, had expressed his wish to be buried in Qunu, and his daughters want to have the children's remains transferred so they can be together.
Mandela's parents are also interred at the family gravesite in Qunu.
Previously the grandson has argued that Mandela should be buried at his birthplace Mvezo, where Mandla holds court as clan chief.
The court order was issued in response to a request by 16 relatives of the revered leader, including two daughters and several grandchildren.
"I now rule that the respondent complies with the order to return the remains by 3:00 pm on Wednesday," said Judge Lusindiso Pakade.
The remains belonged to Mandela's eldest son Thembekile who died in 1969, his nine-month-old infant Makaziwe who passed away in 1948, and Mandla's own father Magkatho who died in 2005.
Mandela has three surviving children, and a host of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
A FORMER member of the Catholic church has been charged over child sex offences from the 1970s and 1980s.
The 70-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday afternoon in connection with child sex offences allegedly committed on the NSW south coast and in Sydney's west, police say.
He was later charged with with five counts of indecent assault on a male.
Conditional bail was granted and he's due before Penrith Local Court in late July.
A police spokeswoman would not provide details about the man's position within the church.
US auto sales accelerated in June with General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and Toyota posting strong gains as analysts forecast more growth in the months to come.
Toyota led the pack with a 14 per cent gain to 195,235 vehicles in June. Sales for the first half of the year were up six per cent at 1.1 million vehicles.
"The auto industry led the economic recovery through the first half of 2013, kicking off a strong summer selling season, which we expect will carry into the second half of the year," said Bill Fay, general manager of the Japanese automaker's Toyota division.
"Sales in June were solid, and demand didn't skip a beat."
The gains came as Toyota celebrated selling its 10 millionth Camry, which has held the crown for the top-selling car in the Unites States for the past 11 years.
Ford's sales climbed 13 per cent to 235,643 vehicles in its best June performance since 2006. Sales for the first half of the year were also up 13 per cent at 1.3 million vehicles.
"In June, we continued to see strong demand across the entire lineup," said Ken Czubay, Ford's sales chief.
"We're particularly encouraged by strong retail share gains, especially in coastal markets, where the combination of great design and fuel economy is resonating with customers -- including many buying a Ford for the first time."
Chrysler's sales rose eight per cent to 156,686 vehicles in the company's best June in six years. Sales for the first half of the year were up nine per cent at 908,332.
"The fundamentals for continued industry gains in new vehicle sales remain intact," Reid Bigland, Chrysler's sales chief, said in a statement.
GM's sales increased six per cent to 264,843 in June and were up eight per cent for the first half of the year at 1.4 million vehicles.
"We have good momentum heading into the second half of 2013: the economic outlook is solid and our launch vehicles are performing well in the marketplace," GM sales Kurt McNeil said in a statement.
Automotive website Edmunds.com forecast that total industry sales will rise 6.3 per cent in June and come in at an adjusted, annualized rate of 15.5 million vehicles once all automakers have reported.
SEVERAL countries have rushed to reject asylum requests from fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden after he sought safe haven in 21 nations in a bid to win protection from American authorities.
Most European countries either flatly rejected the request or reacted cooly. But the leftist leaders of Venezuela and Bolivia rose to the 30-year-old's defence and said they would consider the application under the right conditions.
Snowden found particular support in Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela -- a long-term thorn in the side of the United States.
"What he did was reveal a big truth so that we could avoid a war," Maduro said during a two-day visit to Moscow for an energy summit.
"What is happening now should not be -- he never killed anyone or planted any bombs."
But Maduro refused to entertain speculation he might take Snowden on a plane with him from Moscow -- a possibility raised both by Russian media and political observers of the explosive case.
Bolivian President Evo Morales also said his country was willing to consider giving Snowden asylum.
"If there were a request, of course we would be willing to debate and consider the idea," Morales told Russia's state-run RT television in comments translated from Spanish.
Poland immediately rejected Snowden's petitions while an Indian foreign ministry spokesman said there was "no reason to accede to the request."
The Netherlands also said no while Brazil said it was "not going to respond."
And a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said Snowden himself had decided to scrap his petition with Moscow -- where he has been stranded in an airport transit zone since June 23 -- after the Kremlin chief said he wanted him to stop releasing damaging allegations about the United States.
"He abandoned his intention and his request to receive the chance of staying in Russia," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website -- its associate Sarah Harrison travelling with the former National Security Agency contractor -- said he had sent out applications to 13 European countries as well as six Latin American nations along with China and India.
Andrew Hamilton POLL: HAVE YOUR SAY BRISBANE will beef up its football spending, paving the way for Michael Voss to be offered a new two-year deal.
MICROBUBBLES are one of the latest and more unusual medical breakthroughs being used to improve cancer outcomes and clear harmful blood clots.
IT'S the size of 20 Sydney Opera Houses and holds shops, hotels, a water park, and even a 'fake sun'. Welcome to the world's biggest building.
A BATTER-LADEN fish dish which packs two weeks' worth of harmful trans fat in a single serving has been named the worst meal in America.
AUSTRALIAN households are in for a dose of good news when they open their end-of-year superannuation statements.
SIX children have been killed and 14 others trapped after a mosque in Indonesia collapsed on Tuesday during a Koran reading session when a powerful earthquake struck, an official says.
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THE arrests of six ETA suspects in France has broken up the Basque armed separatist group's "logistical core" and made its total dissolution inevitable, Spain's interior minister says.
"The logistical core of ETA has been detained today," with the arrest of those suspected of providing safe houses, stolen vehicles and false documents for members, Jorge Fernandez Diaz told a news conference.
He called it "a very important step towards the dismantling of ETA", which is classed as a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States.
The group is blamed for 829 deaths in a four-decade campaign of bombings and shootings for independence for the Basque Country of northern Spain and southwestern France.
It declared in October 2011 a "definitive end" to its armed activity but has not formally disarmed or disbanded as the Spanish government demands.
French authorities said the six were arrested in Blois, a city in central France, and Brive-la-Gaillarde and Montpellier, in the southwest of the country.
"Investigations determined that those detained operated in three groups that formed the core of ETA's logistical system," the minister said.
"The operation dismantled three services basic and vital to the survival of ETA and its members: the running of safe houses, the providing of stolen vehicles and the production of counterfeit material."
He said the two most important members detained on Tuesday were those who ran the safe houses: Antonio Goicoechea Gabirondo, 42 -- an explosives expert -- and Raul Aduna Vallinas, 32. They were detained in Brive-la-Gaillarde.
Ekhine Eizaguirre Zubiarre and Kepa Arkauz Zubillaga, both aged 29 and arrested in Blois, took care of forging documents, he said.
The other two, Igor Uriarte Lopez de Acua, 39, and Julen Mendizabal Elezcano, 33, were in charge of stealing vehicles.
ETA has been weakened over recent years by a string of arrests of its members, many of them in France. One of its top commanders got a life sentence in April for the 2007 murder of two Spanish police officers in France.
Spain refuses to hold talks with ETA's leaders.
"The operation, added to the extreme operational weakness of the terrorist group, places ETA face to face with the inevitability of its break-up," Fernandez said.
PEOPLE on low incomes in NSW and the ACT are struggling to regularly provide food for their families, a new study shows.
Anglicare and the Samaritans Foundation on Wednesday released the research, based on surveys of those who use emergency relief services provided by the groups.
They found 98 per cent of respondents were "not sure where their next meal was coming from" and 82 per cent were "unable to provide food for their family on a regular basis".
Children's meal sizes were cut by 30 per cent of those surveyed to make food go further and 31 per cent of parents can't afford to regularly feed their kids, the research said.
The survey also revealed seven per cent of children often went without food for a whole day.
Almost 90 per cent of respondents said they were worried about running out of food and 68 per cent said they regularly skipped meals.
Anglicare Sydney chief Grant Millard said this was happening mainly to "low income earners, people with a disability, single parents, people experiencing rental stress and people from an indigenous background."
"People were often making the difficult choice of going without food in order to pay for other more pressing expenses," he said in a statement.
"Some 95 per cent of the people surveyed in NSW and ACT indicated that they had run out of food in the last three months due to unexpected expenses like medical bills, car repairs, large power bills and sudden increases in rent."
Parents were going hungry to feed their children, Mr Millard added, but he said it was "deeply concerning" children were missing out on meals.
Anglicare's winter appeal is being launched with the research on Wednesday.
Organisers are hoping to raise $1.9 million to fund emergency relief programs, which provide food to those in need.
Donations can be made at www.anglicare.org.au.
POLICE are looking for a man who indecently assaulted a woman on a train on the NSW Central Coast.
About 6pm (AEST) on Tuesday a 20-year-old woman was indecently assaulted on a train near Gosford, police say.
She was then followed by the man after leaving the train at Point Clare station, but he soon disappeared.
Police searched the area and were unable to find the man, described as being in his late 20s with a Caucasian appearance, about 173 centimetres tall with brown hair, unshaven and of thin build.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Crime Stoppers on 1300 333 000.
LIBYA'S defence minister resigned but then changed his mind and the army chief of staff was sacked, as a political crisis deepened over gunmen besieging government ministries.
"I find myself compelled, despite opposition from my colleagues in recent days, to present (my resignation) voluntarily and without hesitation," Mohammed al-Barghathi said, quoted by the official Lana news agency.
"I cannot accept the policy of force used by armed groups in our new state," he added.
But just hours later, the government issued a statement saying Barghathi had changed his mind after Prime Minister Ali Zeidan asked him to stay on.
"The chief of the government asked the defence minister to rescind (his decision) and the minister said he understands, given the circumstances the country is going through, that he should continue in office," a statement said.
Separately, members of the National General Congress (NGC), said it had sacked army chief of staff General Yusef al-Mangoush, who has long been accused of delaying the formation of a proper army.Other deputies said Mangoush would stay on for another month until a replacement is named.
Militiamen, mostly former rebels who fought to oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, have surrounded the justice and foreign ministries since last week to demand the removal from public posts of former officials of the slain dictator's regime.
Initially, the gunmen intended to pressure the NGC, the highest authority in the country, to adopt the law on political exclusion.
But they remained camped outside the ministries despite the adoption of the legislation, with some of them now calling for the resignation of Zeidan's government.
On Tuesday, a dozen vehicles armed with anti-aircraft guns and rocket-launchers were still parked in front of the foreign ministry, an AFP correspondent reported from the site.
"We are thuwars (revolutionaries) and we want to correct the process of the revolution," said one of the gunmen who identified himself as Mohamed Ben Neema.
"The employees and officials of the former regime who massacred the Libyan people continue to occupy important positions, especially the foreign ministry. The revolution has not come to this building."
THOUSANDS of Irish soldiers who deserted their neutral nation's military to fight with the Allies in World War II will be officially pardoned under a new law.
About 5,000 deserters were court martialled or dismissed from the Irish defence forces in 1945, a move that left them without military pensions and barred from any state job for seven years.
Defence Minister Alan Shatter formally apologised last year for the discharge order, known as the "starvation order" because of the devastating effect it had on ex-servicemen and their families.
On Tuesday, MPs were set to approve legislation enshrining this apology and an amnesty in law, in a move Shatter said "goes some way to right the wrongs of our past".
"The bill is being enacted in recognition of the courage and bravery of those individuals court martialled or dismissed from the defence forces who fought on the Allied side to protect decency and democracy during World War II," the minister said.
"It gives important statutory expression to the apology given by me on behalf of the state last year for the shameful manner in which they were treated."
He acknowledged that only a handful of those affected were still alive, but said the amnesty would restore their reputations and help their families find peace.
Peter Mulvany, co-ordinator of the Irish Soldiers Pardons Campaign, said it was a "good day for the country".
He said the ex-servicemen "were treated horrendously".
About 60,000 Irish people are thought to have fought in the British army, navy or air force during World War II, but tensions between London and Dublin over British-controlled Northern Ireland meant their efforts were for decades virtually forgotten.
Since the landmark 1998 Good Friday peace deal in Belfast, however, recognition of their role has become a powerful symbol of reconciliation between the neighbouring countries.
THE discovery of a new thick-skulled dinosaur the size of a large dog may challenge our image of a pre-historic Earth dominated by supersized lizards, a study says.
The planet may, in fact, have been inhabited by many more types of small dinosaur than widely thought, a group of researchers wrote in the journal Nature Communications.
"It would have been a world filled with a diversity of dinosaur life, both large and small," study co-author David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum's natural history department said of the results.
Today, Earth is dominated by small-bodied animals, including mammals and reptiles.
But dinosaur fossil finds have painted a picture of a very different world during the Mesozoic era, from about 250 to 65 million years ago, in which monster-sized creatures prevailed.
Scientists disagree on whether this meant the bigger animals were simply more numerous, or that their remains have been better preserved.
Now, evidence for the latter theory has been found in fossilised skull fragments discovered in the Milk River Formation of southern Alberta, Canada.
The remains are from a small, plant-eating dinosaur that strode the Earth hunched on two muscled hind legs some 85 million years ago.
About 1.8 metres from nose to tail and weighing in at 40 kilograms, the animal had a ridge of solid bone more than 10 centimetres thick on the top of the skull -- possibly used in head-butting contests.
The feature gave rise to its name Acrotholus audeti, after the Greek for "high dome".
Acrotholus is the oldest species from a group of thick-skulled dinosaurs known as pachycephalosaurs in North America, and possibly the world, the researchers wrote.
AN armed group has abducted four UN peacekeepers from the Philippines in the Golan Heights, which has been hit by mounting spillover from the Syrian civil war, the United Nations says.
The four were patrolling near the Al Jamlah locality in the ceasefire zone between Israel and Syria where 21 Filipino peacekeepers were seized by Syrian rebels in March, said a UN peacekeeping spokeswoman, Josephine Guerrero.
"An unknown armed group" took the men, Guerrero told AFP. "Efforts are underway to secure their release."
In a posting on their Facebook page, the "Yarmuk Martyrs Brigade" rebel group said they had taken the four peacekeepers for their own safety because of fierce fighting in the area.
"The leadership of the Yarmuk Martyrs Brigade announces... an operation to secure and protect United Nations forces in Wadi Yarmuk in the area between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights," the group said.
The posting showed a photograph of four men in blue flak jackets, with three of them marked "UN" and "Philippines."
The statement said shelling by regime troops and fighting in the area "seriously threatened the safety" of the peacekeepers and had prompted the fighters to "intervene and work to get them out."
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog confirmed there was heavy fighting underway in the area.
The UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which has been in the Golan Heights since 1974, has about 1,000 troops and civilian staff.
The 917 troops from Austria, India, the Philippines, Morocco and Moldova carry only very light arms.
THE world's first web page will be dragged out of cyberspace and restored for Internet browsers as part of a project to celebrate 20 years of the Web.
The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said it had begun recreating the website that launched that World Wide Web, as well as the hardware that made the groundbreaking technology possible.
The world's first website was about the technology itself, according to CERN, allowing early browsers to learn about the new system and create their own web pages.
The project will allow future generations to understand the origin and importance of the Web and its impact on modern life, CERN web manager Dan Noyes told AFP.
The project was launched to mark the 20th anniversary of CERN making the World Wide Web available to the world for free.
British physicist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, also called W3 or just the Web, at CERN in 1989 to help physicists to share information, but at the time it was just one of several such information retrieval systems using the Internet.
While CERN was not promoting any specific ideology, "we want to preserve that idea of openness and freedom to collect and collaborate," said Noyes.
The first browser, Noyes said, was "actually very sophisticated, with images and features that don't really exist anymore, like being able to edit web pages as well as read them."
"We would like to somehow enable people to try this," he said.
The world's very first web page was meanwhile cruder and dedicated to the World Wide Web project itself. It was hosted on Berners-Lee's NeXT computer.
The CERN team has restored the files using a 1992 copy of the first website, which can be viewed at http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html, but hopes to find earlier copies.
CZECH police say they will open an investigation into a powerful gas blast that injured 43 people when it ripped through a four-storey building in Prague's historic centre.
"Investigators have not yet been able to make it to the scene of the blast, as the rubble is still being cleared and the work could continue until tomorrow," Prague police spokesman Jan Danek told AFP.
Danek added that Monday's blast would likely require a lengthy enquiry but denied there were signs pointing to anything but an accident.
Czech media reported two people were still hospitalised on Tuesday following the explosion, said to be the most serious of its kind in the Czech Republic in recent years.
The blast, which occurred on the ground floor of an office block in a popular tourist area, heavily damaged the building, blew out windows in nearby streets and shook apartment blocks across the Vltava river.
Police evacuated 230 people from the area, fearing further gas leaks, and 43 people were injured, mostly with cuts from shattered glass.
Two Kazakhs, two Portuguese, one German and one Slovak were among those hurt.
The Generali insurer on Tuesday revised up its estimate of damage done to the 19th-century building to 30 million koruna ($A1.48 million).
Gas was still turned off on Tuesday in around 20 buildings in the area, home to the ornate National Theatre whose modern section was also damaged by the blast.
Another gas blast in February completely destroyed an apartment block in the eastern town of Frenstat pod Radhostem, killing six people including three children.
A male resident who was facing eviction for not paying rent is suspected of intentionally causing that blast, in which he died.
VICTORIAN paramedics say emergency response times are blowing out and putting lives at risk.
The paramedics, who are in the middle of negotiating a new enterprise bargaining agreement with Ambulance Victoria, say Premier Denis Napthine's refusal to budge from the 2.5 per cent wage increase is fuelling a crisis in the ranks.
Ambulance Employees Australia state secretary Steve McGhie says the current offer amounts to a one dollar a week wage increase for paramedics and is insulting, considering how many lives they save.
"Emergency call takers and despatchers are in the eye of the storm of our worsening ambulance crisis. The crisis is right there on their computer screens every moment of every day," Mr McGhie said.
In March, the Productivity Commission revealed that average ambulance response times to Code 1 emergencies in Victoria had blown out to almost 19 minutes.
Some rural ambulance stations are seeing average response times as long as 30 minutes, and many patients across Melbourne and Victoria are being forced to wait hours for an ambulance.
"These communications staff point to a slew of incidents in which staff shortages have left patients waiting hours for an ambulance," Mr McGhie said.
US consumer confidence picked up in April after falling the prior month, the Conference Board has reported.
The Conference Board's consumer confidence index rose to 68.1 points from a revised 61.9 in March.
Consumers' expectations about the short-term economic outlook and their income prospects improved, but the research firm cautioned that the effects of the January 1 payroll tax hike and the sharp government spending cuts that began March 1 were weighing on sentiment.
Confidence rose slightly in the present situation, but consumers were considerably more upbeat about the outlook over the next six months.
The expectations index jumped to 73.3 in April from 63.7 in March.
"While expectations appear to have bounced back, it is too soon to tell if confidence is actually on the mend," said Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board's economic indicators.
RUSSIA'S two greatest art museums are engaged in an unsightly public feud over an idea to revive a Moscow museum of Western art that was shut down by Stalin in the late 1940s.
The State Museum of New Western Art gathered the impressionist and early modern art collected by renowned Russian art collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov in the late Tsarist era.
But it was closed on Stalin's orders in 1948 as the Soviet authorities rejected anything reeking of "cosmopolitanism" in a drive to play up the importance of Soviet art.
Its collection was divided between the Pushkin Art Museum in Moscow and the famed Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, where the pictures can be seen to this day.
The redoubtable director of the Pushkin Museum, Irina Antonova, 91, last week personally asked President Vladimir Putin during his annual phone-in with Russians to consider reopening the museum in Moscow with its original collection.
However the idea did not in the least impress the Hermitage museum, which under the plan could see some of its most prized Matisse, Degas and Picasso pictures transferred back to Moscow.
"This new attempt to break up the Hermitage is a crime against the stability of the whole museum landscape in Russia, whose unity and riches have been preserved with such difficulty," fumed Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky, quoted by the government Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily.
Antonova however launched a stout defence of her position saying the recreation of the museum was a question of "historical fairness".
"The state destroyed this museum. The state has the chance to revive it. This is my opinion," she said.
In response to Antonova's request, Putin on Tuesday asked the government to draw up by June 15 a report on the viability of recreating the Western art museum in Moscow.
Morozov and Shchukin amassed two of the greatest collections anywhere of European art.
But like other private collections, their holdings were nationalised after the Russian revolution and used to form the basis of the Museum of New Western Art (GMNZI) which was founded in 1928.
The dispute has highlighted the rivalry between the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage, with the much older Saint Petersburg institution keen to affirm its supremacy over the Moscow museum which was opened only in 1912.
THE European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Ukraine's detention of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko is unlawful, in a decision the opposition leader's camp saw as a key step towards her release.
Tymoshenko herself said she hoped the decision by the Strasbourg-based court would put paid to the "dirt and black lies" against her.
"The court considered that the detention had been arbitrary and unlawful during the entire period," the judges said.
The European Union is mulling a trade and association accord with the ex-Soviet republic and has clearly said it wanted Kiev to release the charismatic Tymoshenko.
Her daughter described the court's decision as a "first victory" and her lawyer argued that her nemesis President Viktor Yanukovych now had no option but to release her.
Tymoshenko herself, who has dismissed all charges against her as politically motivated, welcomed the ruling in a statement from jail.
"I am happy all the dirt and black lies the authorities have been drowning me in over the past years have been removed," she said, adding that the decision meant the court had "de-facto" acknowledged her as a political prisoner.
"I do not know what Viktor Yanukovych will do after this decision," she said. "Most likely, nothing. But after the decision of the European court I am already morally free."
"Free despite all their bars, cells, walls, fences and tinted windows," she said.
The judges also found that the legality of her detention had not been properly reviewed by the Ukrainian judiciary and that she had no possibility to seek compensation.
However they threw out a complaint over alleged ill-treatment during her transfer to hospital last year.
Tymoshenko, who lost a disputed presidential election to Yanukovych in 2010, was jailed for seven years on what she says are trumped-up charges of overstepping her authority while premier to sign a gas deal with Russia.
Western governments have condemned her jailing as the result of selective persecution by the authorities and it has led to a sharp deterioration in ties with the European Union, which Kiev wants to join.
PERUVIAN rescuers have found the body of the pilot of a hot air balloon that plunged into the Pacific, but another person remains missing, police say.
Five women were rescued from the sea as they clung to pieces of the balloon after it went down Sunday. They and the missing man were on board as tourists taking a ride over the sea.
Police official Luis Praelli said the pilot had been identified through the national identity card found on his person.
The search for the missing man goes on, he said.
The balloon went down a few miles off the coast of Canete province in southern Peru.
The tourists did not have life vests on, and the balloon did not have a GPS system to track it down, authorities say.
NEW figures show housing prices are on the rise.
Australian Property Monitors said on Wednesday in its quarterly housing report that the median price of a house rose by 3.2 per cent over the year to March.
Over the same time, the price of a home unit was up by only 0.7 per cent. (The median is the value in the middle when prices are ranked from high to low.)
The slow rises can be seen in other measures, like the Australian Bureau of Statistics' established house price index, which grew by 2.1 per cent through 2012.
Over the same year, the bureau's consumer price index rose by 2.2 per cent.
So it's not a boom.
Far from it.
And the Reserve Bank of Australia wants to make sure it stays that way.
In a speech in Sydney on Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of Australia's head of financial stability, Luci Ellis, twice warned that the central bank did not want a return to the boom times seen a decade ago.
Her wish is being granted, at least so far.
But the decline starting in late 2010 and extending into early 2012 has ended.
The only questions are how steep, and how durable, the pickup will be.
Dr Ellis thinks the big shift to a low-inflation economy generated a one-off surge in housing prices, as lower interest rates enabled banks to make bigger loans.
"But the transition does end after a while, and it is our assessment that it has now ended," she said.
And that would mean slower growth in prices from here and, as a result, a greater likelihood that fluctuations around that trend would bring falls - rather than just slower growth - in prices, she said.
The recent behaviour of the ABS house price series bears that out.
The index, which in various incarnations goes back as far as 1986, had recorded only two annual falls in prices before the global crisis in 2008.
One was in 1992, but prices fell only 0.2 per cent despite the major recession and double-digit home loan interest rates.
The other was in 1996, but that drop was still only 0.9 per cent even though the RBA had nudged the standard home loan rate up from 8.75 per cent to 10.5 per cent.
More recently, annual falls have been recorded in 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012.
Of course, for every rise or fall in housing prices there are winners and losers.
Homebuyers like the falls while home owners, including investors, like to see rises.
But this new environment could be seen as the worst of both worlds.
Homebuyers can look forward to persistently high housing prices, but investors will have to do without the prospect of the kind of recurrent booms seen over the past 30 years.
FOUR British soldiers have been laid to rest with full military honours in northern France, nearly a century after they were killed in action in World War I.
The soldiers were interred in the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) Cemetery at Ecoust-Saint-Mein near the northern town of Arras in a ceremony attended by relatives of two of the four men who it was possible to identify.
Lieutenant John Harold Pritchard and Private Christopher Douglas Elphick were both killed during an attack by German forces near Bullecourt on the Hindenburg Line on the morning of May 15, 1917.
Their bodies were discovered with two other sets of remains in 2009 when a local farmer was clearing one of his fields.
Pritchard, 31 at the time of his death, was identified by a silver identity bracelet, and Elphick, 28, by a signet ring bearing his initials.
A former chorister and head boy at St Paul's cathedral school, Pritchard had joined the HAC as a reservist in 1909 and was part of the first wave of British soldiers to be sent into action when war broke out in 1914.
Injured in 1915, he could have opted for a desk job in London but chose to return to France, surviving the horrors of the Somme in 1916 before being slain as he led his men into a battle in which they were almost all killed.
Elphick, an insurance clerk, had joined up in 1915 and arrived in France in November 1916, three months after the birth of his son, Ronald Douglas, who was to survive service with the HAC during World War II but died before the discovery of his father's remains.
It is understood DNA samples have been taken to enable positive identification of the unknown soldiers should any relatives come forward in the future.
Hundreds of thousands of British and Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Great War were buried in unmarked graves across the swathe of northern France and Belgium that witnessed the bloodiest fighting.
THE British government has suffered a fresh setback in its long-running legal battle to deport radical preacher Abu Qatada, but insists it will not give up trying to send him to Jordan.
The Court of Appeal refused ministers permission to challenge its ruling last month that the terror suspect, also known as Omar Othman, cannot be deported to Jordan because of human rights concerns.
"The Court of Appeal has refused permission" to the government to take the case to the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, a spokesman for the Judicial Office told AFP.
However, the refusal is not fatal to the case because ministers are entitled to ask the Supreme Court directly to hear their appeal -- and officials indicated they would do exactly that.
"We are disappointed with the Court of Appeal's decision but will now request permission to appeal directly from the Supreme Court," a spokesman for the interior ministry said.
"The government remains committed to deporting this dangerous man and we continue to work with the Jordanians to address the outstanding legal issues preventing deportation."
There is huge frustration in London over the failure to deport a man considered "an exceptionally high-risk terrorist", who has successfully blocked his removal for eight years.
A Spanish judge once branded him the right-hand man in Europe of Osama bin Laden, although Abu Qatada denies ever meeting the late al-Qaeda leader.
The preacher was convicted in Jordan of terrorism charges in his absence, and is likely to face a retrial if he is returned.
But the European Court of Human Rights last year blocked his deportation over fears that evidence obtained through torture would be used against him in the new trial.
STUDENTS will protest at Sydney University on Wednesday over what they claim is the uni's withdrawal of support for a talk by the Dalai Lama.
The university says it did not receive any official request for an appearance by the Tibetan spiritual leader.
However, emails from the uni's vice-chancellor Michael Spence referred to a decision to "withdraw support for hosting His Holiness the Dalai Lama's planned speech", the ABC reported last week.
The report led to allegations that the university, which has close ties to the Chinese government, dropped the invitation for political reasons.
The Dalai Lama no longer makes political statements but is blamed by the Chinese government for the continued self-immolation of Tibetan monks.
The protest, organised by Students for a Free Tibet, will be held at 10am (AEST).
CHINA says the H7N9 bird flu has spread to a new area as it confirmed the first case in the eastern province of Shandong in an outbreak which has so far killed 22 people.
Since China announced on March 31 that the virus had been discovered in humans for the first time, most cases have been confined to the commercial hub Shanghai and three nearby provinces, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui.
Beijing and the central province of Henan have also reported cases.
The health ministry said a 36-year-old man living in Shandong's Zaozhuang city was confirmed to have the virus, according to a statement on its website.
That case and three other new ones bring the total number of confirmed infections to 108, according to official figures.
Experts fear the prospect of such a virus mutating into a form easily transmissible between humans, which could then have the potential to trigger a pandemic.
But the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday there was still no evidence H7N9 was spreading in a "sustained" way between people in China, though it was possible some family members may have infected one another.
"Right now we do not see evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission", said Keiji Fukuda, a top WHO influenza expert in a team visiting China to study H7N9.
Health experts differentiate between "sustained" human-to-human transmission and limited transmission, in which family members or medical personnel caring for the ill become infected.
Chinese health officials have acknowledged so-called "family clusters", where members of a single family have become infected, but have so far declined to put it down to human-to-human transmission.
The nine close contacts of the Shandong man were under medical observation, but so far were normal, the health ministry said.
A EUROPEAN Union plan to buy oil from rebel-held areas of Syria is illegal and an "act of aggression," the Syrian foreign ministry has warned in letters to the United Nations.
"In an unprecedented decision that contradicts international law and the UN Charter ... the European Union has decided to allow member states to import petrol ... under the pretext of supporting the opposition," state news agency SANA reported, citing the letters.
"It is an illegal decision and an act of aggression."
Syrian rebels fighting President President Bashar al-Assad's troops won a fresh boost on Monday when the European Union eased its oil embargo to let them exploit the resources they control.
But the EU decision raised a furious response in Damascus.
The EU will be trading "with the so-called opposition coalition, which represents no one in Syria," the letters to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council said.
The decision is an act of "complicity in the theft of resources that belong to the Syrian people, represented by the current, legitimate government," they added.
"The European Union is following its political and economic campaign that targets the national economy and the daily bread of Syrian citizens," the ministry said, referring to EU sanctions on the Assad regime.
EU ministers' decision to ease the 2011 oil embargo will enable companies on a case-by-case basis not only to import Syrian crude but also to export oil production technology and investment cash to areas in the hands of the opposition.
Under the deal, European firms seeking to import Syrian crude or invest in the energy sector would ask for authorisation from their government, which in turn would confer with Syria's opposition National Coalition to secure its agreement.
At the start of the revolt that broke out in March 2011, Syria's oil production was slashed by almost two thirds, falling to 130,000 barrels a day in March, just 0.1 per cent of the world's total production, according to the International Energy Agency's latest estimates.
TWO Sunni members of the Iraqi cabinet have resigned after security forces moved in against Sunni protesters in the north of the country, sparking clashes that left dozens dead, officials say.
"The minister of education, Mohammed Ali Tamim, resigned from his post after the Iraqi army forces broke into the area of the sit-in in Kirkuk" province, an official from Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlak's office said.
"The resignation is final, and there will be no going back."
Parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi later said at a news conference that science and technology minister Abdulkarim al-Samarraie told him by phone that he too was quitting.
Clashes between security forces and protesters in the morning at a demonstration near Hawijah in north Iraq left 27 people dead, while 13 gunmen died carrying out subsequent revenge attacks on army positions.
Later in the day, protesters west of Baghdad killed six soldiers and kidnapped a seventh, security officers said.
The resignations bring the number of ministers to leave Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet since March to four.
Agriculture minister Ezzedine al-Dawleh quit on March 8 after a protester was killed in north Iraq, and finance minister Rafa al-Essawi, some of whose bodyguards were arrested on terrorism charges in December, announced his resignation at an anti-government demonstration on March 1.
Protesters have taken to the streets in Sunni-majority areas of Iraq for more than four months, calling for the resignation of Maliki and decrying the alleged targeting of their minority community by the Shi'ite-led authorities.
ONE of Sweden's most successful rock bands, The Hives, has to pay 18.5 million kronor ($A2.80 million) to Swedish pop group The Cardigans, a court has ruled.
The dispute is one of several lawsuits embroiling Tambourine Studios, a recording studio in the southern city of Malmoe used by some of the country's biggest artists, which also handled the two bands' finances.
Tambourine had said it was standard practice for the company to transfer money from bands with high liquidity to those with less cash.
But The Hives claimed it was never told that some of the money the band was receiving was a form of loan from The Cardigans, whose biggest hit Lovefool topped global charts in 1997.
"There are no loan agreements, no signed documents, no agreements on interest rates," The Hives said in a blog post before the ruling.
The district court in the Swedish city of Lund ruled that, while the transfers "shouldn't be viewed as a loan" as such, the money still had to be repaid "since there is no reason ... to keep the money that came from The Cardigans".
The Hives was also ordered to pay the plaintiffs' legal fees.
Other Swedish bands involved in the Tambourine accounting scandal include Europe, the band behind eighties rock anthem The Final Countdown, who have claimed that the company forged signatures on some of its documents.
LONDON police are bracing for protests at Margaret Thatcher's funeral, with opponents vowing to pelt her coffin with eggs, coal or milk if they can get close enough - or simply turn their backs on the passing procession.
More than 800 people have pledged to attend an event called "Maggie's good riddance party", promising a "right jolly knees-up" outside St Paul's Cathedral - where 2000 global political leaders, celebrities and friends will be paying their respects to the former British prime minister on Wednesday.
"Let the world know the hypocrisy of a state-funded funeral for the person who influenced 30 years of cuts to state funding of welfare," the protest's Facebook page reads.
"If taxpayers are funding her funeral ... we can at least get our money's worth."
The former Conservative Party leader's death has sparked furious debate in Britain over her legacy - and over the decision to grant her a state-funded ceremonial funeral, which by some estimates will cost the taxpayer up to STG10 million ($A14.93 million).
Her more radical critics, who accuse her of ruining millions of lives with her radical free-market reforms, greeted news of her death from a stroke last week with impromptu street parties.
Hundreds of people filled London's Trafalgar Square on Saturday, erected a giant effigy of her and shouted "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Dead, dead, dead!"
Scotland Yard has launched a massive security operation, fearing that protesters could attack the 1.9-kilometre route between parliament and St Paul's. Her coffin will be carried on a horse-drawn gun carriage through streets lined with military personnel.
Some protesters have vowed to pelt the coffin with eggs, while others have hinted at hurling coal - a reminder of the bitter 1984-1985 miners' strike which Thatcher crushed, leading to the closure of dozens of mines and tens of thousands of job losses.
In London, some protesters suggested they may try to throw milk at Thatcher's coffin, a reference to her days as education minister when her decision to stop free milk for older school pupils earned her the nickname "Thatcher the milk snatcher".
Westminster City Council has nine "flushing machines" and 40 staff on standby to clear the streets of milk if necessary, a spokeswoman said.
But many of Thatcher's foes said that simply turning their backs as her coffin passes would send a more powerful message.
"If many people turn their backs it will be a deeply symbolic act," said Becca Blum, an environmental activist who said she had police permission for a peaceful protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice.
"We will show the world that Britain is not all united in grief," she wrote on her blog.
A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said an "appropriate" policing operation was in place for Wednesday.
She declined to say how many officers would be on the ground, adding that the force had been in contact with some protesters.
MOUNT Isa residents are being told they can leave their houses after a warning was issued for locals to stay indoors due to a blast at an acid plant.
A chemical tank exploded at an Incitec Pivot facility near the Mount Isa mine at about 6.30pm (AEST) on Tuesday, police say.
The blast caused workers to be evacuated from the nearby mine, with residents of the northwest Queensland city urged to stay indoors.
Early on Wednesday morning, police said locals no longer needed to stay in their homes.
"A request for Mount Isa residents to remain inside has now been revoked," police said in a statement.
They said no one was injured in the blast and the incident wasn't considered suspicious.
Queensland Fire and Rescue Service tested air quality in the area on Tuesday night, police said.
Workers were evacuated from the nearby Mount Isa mine following the blast as a precaution.
In a statement, Incitec Pivot said an "adverse chemical reaction" occurred in a water treatment part of its plant about 5pm on Tuesday, creating a plume.
FRENCH researchers have dealt a blow to folklore that says mothers are better than fathers in recognising their baby's cry.
The "maternal instinct" notion gained scientific backing more than three decades ago through two experiments, one of which found that women were nearly twice as accurate as men in identifying the cry of their offspring.
But the new study says men and women are equally skilled at this - and accuracy depends simply on the amount of time that a parent spends with the child.
Scientists led by Nicolas Mathevon at the University of Saint-Etienne recorded the cries of 29 babies aged between 58 and 153 days as the infants were being bathed.
Fifteen of the babies were in France and 14 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The idea of sampling cries in Africa and Europe was to test whether local culture and family habits affected outcomes.
All the mothers, and half of the fathers, spent more than four hours a day with their baby. The other fathers spent less than four hours daily with the child.
The parents were asked to listen to a recording of three different cries from five babies of a similar age, one of which was their own. There were two sessions of experiments.
On average, the parents were 90 per cent accurate in identifying the cry of their own baby.
Mothers were 98 per cent accurate, and fathers who spent more than four hours with baby per day were 90 per cent accurate.
Fathers who spent less than four hours daily with the infant were only 75 per cent accurate.
Parents who were exposed to other babies each day - a characteristic of the extended family in Africa - were 82 per cent accurate.
The study, which appears in the journal Nature Communications, says the "maternal instinct" hypothesis is flawed, as the studies from the late 1970s and early 1980s failed to take into account the amount of time the fathers spent with their kids.
In biological terms, men and women are "cooperative breeders", so the idea that one gender is better than the other at a basic mechanism to protect the baby is incongruous, it suggests.
"Both fathers and mothers can reliably and equally recognise their own baby from their cries," it says. "The only crucial factor affecting this ability is the amount of time spent by the parent with their own baby."
FORMER prime minister John Howard says Australians shouldn't be deterred from running in the London marathon following terror blasts in Boston.
Two bombs exploded at the Boston marathon on Monday, killing at least three people and wounding more than 150.
As a result police are re-examining security arrangements for Sunday's London Marathon which organisers have vowed will go ahead.
Mr Howard, in London for Margaret Thatcher's funeral, said the apparent act of terrorism in Boston was "an ugly reminder of the sort of world we live in".
"(But) when I was prime minister my view always was that life should go on as normal," he told reporters when asked what advice he'd give Australian runners.
"The thugs and the terrorists always win when people alter their behaviour out of intimidation."
Mr Howard said people should take extra precautions and seek official advice from the Australian government.
The former Liberal leader added there was evidence certain groups had wanted to attack sporting events in Australia in the past.
London Mayor Boris Johnson on Tuesday insisted there was always going to be robust security measures in place for the marathon.
"But given events in Boston it's only prudent for the police and the organisers to re-examine those security arrangements," he said in a statement.
Leading counter-terrorism expert Richard Barrett believes the fatal explosions in Boston have hints of a right-wing terrorist attack rather than al-Qaeda-inspired extremism.
US President Barack Obama has branded the Boston bombings a "cowardly" act of terror, but says it is still unclear if a foreign or domestic group or individual was behind the attacks.
"This was a heinous and cowardly act," Obama said at the White House. "Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians, it is an act of terror."
Obama said while the impact of the attacks near the finish line of the Boston marathon on Monday, which killed three people and wounded more than 170 others, were clear, the motives and the identify of those responsible was not.
"What we don't yet know, however, is who carried out this attack or why, whether it was planned and executed by a terrorist organisation, foreign or domestic, or was the act of a malevolent individual," he said.
But the president again vowed to bring whoever was behind the assault to justice, and warned that America would not be cowed by terrorism.
"We also know this - the American people refuse to be terrorised," he said.
In frank and direct language, Obama vowed to keep Americans up to speed with developments in the investigation and asked them to remain vigilant.
"What I have indicated to you is what we now know. We know it was bombs that were set off. We know that obviously they did some severe damage. We do not know who did them," he said.
"We don't have a sense of motive yet. So everything else at this point is speculation."
THE victims of the Boston Marathon bombings were peppered with nails and pellets, doctors say, adding that the most severely wounded required amputation.
The twin blasts near the finish line in the northeastern US city on Monday claimed three lives and left more than 170 injured.
"This bomb obviously was placed probably low on the ground, and therefore lower extremity injuries are to be expected," said George Velmahos, chief of trauma surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Velmahos said eight patients were in severe condition, with four having undergone major surgery, mostly amputations of lower limbs.
But he added they were in stable condition "and thank God they are all alive."
"Many of them have severe wounds, mostly in the lower part of their bodies, wounds related to the blast effect of the bomb, as well as small metallic fragments that entered their body - pellets, shrapnel, nails," Velmahos told reporters.
Due to the nature of the injuries, the victims suffered rapid loss of blood, which hospital personnel were able to rapidly control, but Velhamos said that created other physiological problems.
He said surgeons amputated four limbs, and two others were at risk, but "I hope we will save those legs".
"They are in intensive care. They are in critical condition. But at this point we have stabilised their vital signs and their hemodynamic situation is under control," he said.
He said those who underwent amputations were so severely damaged by the blast that their limb was "beyond salvation."
THE International Monetary Fund has warned central banks to keep an eye on inflation and resist political pressure to focus policy only on lowering unemployment.
With many governments desperate to find ways to generate jobs, the IMF said on Tuesday, it was ever more important for central banks to assert their independence to keep an eye on all potential problems in the economy - whether growth, prices, or jobs.
"In the wake of the Great Recession, there is political urgency to reduce unemployment," the IMF said in a section of its World Economic Outlook.
"Instead, what our analysis underscores is that, whatever the source, limits on central banks' independence and operational restrictions that limit their flexibility in responding to evolving challenges can cause problems and must be avoided."
While the IMF played down the immediate threat of a surge in inflation, many economists remain concerned that the exceptionally loose monetary policies pursued by major central banks will eventually spark runaway price increases.
In the four years since the global financial crisis, advanced economies have unloaded massive monetary firepower to try to jump-start growth and create jobs.
The US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have employed large bond-purchase programs, or quantitative easing (QE), while the European Central Bank has focused on lending.
Last week, the Bank of Japan announced an aggressive QE program and monetary policy to tackle deflation and end decades of tepid growth.
So far the wave of easy money has not yet unhinged widespread expectations that prices will remain tame amid weak growth.
The IMF noted broad evidence that, since the mid-1990s, inflation has become "better anchored around long-term expectations, which themselves have become more stable."
But the IMF said the nature of inflation in advanced economies had changed since the 1970s.
In the past, inflation rose as unemployment fell, an inverse relationship known as the Phillips curve.
That relationship has flattened out, according to IMF analysts, and they now warn that inflation can suddenly pick up without an improvement in joblessness if other aspects of the situation change - particularly market and consumer expectations about inflation.
"The greatest risk for inflation, just as in the 1970s, is the possibility that expectations will become disanchored," the IMF said.
That underscores the need for central bankers currently pumping up their economies with easy money to not take their eyes off the threat of inflation.
"Central banks are already making use of whatever flexibility they have in responding to the unprecedented circumstances following the Great Recession," the international lender said.
"However, changes in the behaviour of inflation and profound challenges in the aftermath of the Great Recession may mean there is need for even greater flexibility."
SOUTH African thieves are invading ostrich farms and poaching feathers from the giant birds, in a crime that has baffled local farmers, an industry chief says.
"This started during the last six weeks," said Piet Kleyn, the chief of the South African Ostrich Business Chamber.
He said thieves sneaked up on the birds at night and plucked their feathers without using proper tools.
"The frightened birds are badly treated and some die because of the terrible injuries," Kleyn said.
At least 50 birds in the ostrich growing region of Oudtshoorn, in the Western Cape, have been attacked in recent months.
According to Kleyn, even birds with feathers that had not yet fully grown were targeted.
The cause is not known, but it is believed that the trend is driven by good market prices for ostrich feathers.
The feathers are much sought after in the fashion industry. They are also used to accessorise carnival costumes and make feather dusters.
The South African ostrich industry is often hampered by a ban on meat export, due to avian influenza outbreaks.
South Africa is one of the leaders in ostrich production, with 75 per cent of global market share.
AMERICAN television viewers are increasingly finding that one screen won't do: almost all have a second-screen device and 87 per cent use it while watching shows, a survey shows.
The NPD survey said multi-tasking consumers were splitting their attention between televisions and their laptops, tablets, smartphones, and other devices.
But most of these viewers are not interacting directly with the TV programs through games, voting or other activities.
The most common second-screen interaction was learning about actors in a show (29.8 per cent) or seeking information about the program they were watching (23.1 per cent), NPD found in survey released on Tuesday.
"Viewers are interested in searching to find further information about TV shows they are watching, but they are not using games and other immersive applications created as a component of the programming," said NPD's Russ Crupnick.
"This situation creates a potential diversion from advertising, and it will take a combined effort from content owners, advertisers, broadcasters, and others to present an aligned second-screen experience that will appeal to viewers."
The survey found PCs were the devices most used simultaneously with TV (60 per cent), followed by smartphones (55 per cent), and tablets (49 per cent).
Just 19.4 per cent said they shopped for a product seen on television, and 11.8 per cent said they played a game related to a show.
Laptop users and consumers between the ages of 35 and 49 were most likely to shop for products via their second-screen devices.
"Converting viewers into impulse shoppers has big potential impact for advertisers, who can leverage second screens to further connect with consumers watching TV," Crupnick said.
A POWERFUL earthquake has struck near Iran's Gulf port city of Bushehr, killing at least 20 people and injuring 650 but leaving Iran's only nuclear power plant intact, officials say.
Shocks from the quake were felt across the Gulf in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, provoking panic and the brief evacuation of some office towers, residents and media said.
At least 20 bodies had been taken to the morgue in the city of Khormoj, an unnamed hospital official told Iranian state news agency IRNA.
Khormoj, east of provincial capital Bushehr, is about 35km from Kaki.
Bushehr provincial Governor Fereydoon Hasanvand said at least 650 people needed medical help.
There were no immediate details on where the casualties occurred, but the head of Iran's Red Crescent rescue corps, Mahmoud Mozafar, said it appeared at least one village near Khormoj had been razed.
Media reports said search and rescue teams had been sent to the area, where telephones and electricity had been cut.
Meanwhile, Hasanvand told state television "no damage at all has been caused" to the nuclear plant.
The facility's chief engineer, Mahmoud Jafari, told Arabic-language Al-Alam television "no operational or security protocols were breached".
The 6.1 magnitude quake hit at 4.22pm (2152 AEST) with a depth of 12 kilometres, in the area of Kaki, nearly 90km southeast of Bushehr, the Iran Seismological Centre said.
The agency has so far reported more than a dozen after shocks, the strongest at 5.3 magnitude.
The US Geological Survey ranked the quake at a more powerful 6.3 magnitude.
In Dubai, hundreds of kilometres down the Gulf from Bushehr and home to the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa, local media reported that several high-rise buildings were briefly evacuated.
"Chandeliers were shaking," tweeted one resident.
Iran sits astride several major fault lines and is prone to frequent earthquakes.
A double earthquake struck northwest Iran last August, killing more than 300 people.
In December 2010, a big quake struck the southern city of Bam, killing 31,000.
The long-delayed Bushehr nuclear power plant is yet to become fully operational.
Iran is at loggerheads with world powers over its development of a controversial nuclear program, which the Western and Israel suspect is aimed at military objectives despite Tehran's denials.
A ROMAN Catholic nun with a gambling addiction has pleaded guilty to stealing nearly $US130,000 ($A125,430) from two parishes in rural western New York state.
The Daily News of Batavia reports 68-year-old Sister Mary Anne Rapp pleaded guilty Monday in Orleans County Court to grand larceny
She admits she stole the money from St Mary's Church in Holley and St Mark's Church in Kendall from March 2006 to April 2011.
Rapp faces up to six months in jail when she's sentenced July 1.
She'll also be required to pay restitution that would be worked out at a later date.
Rapp was arrested in November after discrepancies were found during an audit.
Investigators said she stole the money to feed a gambling addiction and spent the money at western New York casinos.
KILLER mum Allyson McConnell is set to touch down in Sydney this morning, leaving behind shattered lives and a political firestorm in Canada.
McConnell, 34, who was sentenced to six years' jail for drowning her two young sons in a bathtub in her adopted home town of Millet, Alberta, was taken through a non-public security checkpoint at Edmonton airport on Monday night.
According to Canadian media reports, she flew from Edmonton to Vancouver, where she caught a Sydney-bound Air Canada flight.
Her mother, Helen Meager from Gosford on the NSW Central Coast, was reportedly accompanying McConnell on the 15.5 hour journey from Vancouver to Sydney.
McConnell's former husband, Curtis McConnell, along with prosecutors and the Alberta Justice Minister, fought to keep McConnell in Canada until the appeals for her six-year sentence and acquittal on second-degree murder charges were heard.
"We fear that if Allyson Meager McConnell is deported to Australia, we will never see her face justice for the horror and terror she inflicted on two innocent babies before killing them," Mr McConnell's family said in a statement released on Sunday.
"How can we be assured that this case will not get swept under the rug when we have not been kept in the loop up to this point?"
McConnell admitted she drowned her sons, two-year-old Connor and 10-month-old Jayden, in the bathtub in 2010 and at her trial last year she was found guilty of two counts of manslaughter, but not second-degree murder.
The judge found McConnell was suffering psychological issues and there was reasonable doubt she had the specific intent to kill Connor and Jayden.
While McConnell was sentenced to six years, with time already served credits, she spent just 10 months in the psychiatric ward of Alberta Hospital.
The trial heard how the McConnells' marriage had broken down in 2009, Mr McConnell moved out of the family home and filed for divorce and a judge ordered McConnell could not take her sons back to Australia.
Mr McConnell found his two sons floating in the bathtub, with his former wife's wedding ring sitting on the toilet seat next to the bath.
McConnell's release after 10 months has led to a war of words between Alberta politicians, and their federal counterparts, with each side blaming the other for McConnell's release ahead of the appeals and exit to Australia.
Alberta's Justice Minister Jonathan Denis has vowed to extradite McConnell from Australia if the appeals for a stiffer sentence are successful.
WHEN US president Ronald Reagan ordered the 1983 invasion of the small Caribbean island of Grenada after a coup, he got an earful from an angry world leader: his closest ally, Britain's Margaret Thatcher.
Friends with her fellow conservative confidante since the mid-1970s, the prime minister was furious she had not been consulted ahead of the US storming of a territory in the British Commonwealth.
Thatcher and Reagan were ideological soul mates, after all - two Western giants who were staring down the Soviet empire while sharing free-market and anti-communist convictions that led to startling shifts in the political and economic landscapes of their countries.
That did not stop Reagan from what he described in his diary at the time as his need for operational secrecy.
A livid Thatcher summoned assistant secretary of state Richard Burt, who "just let her yell at us for a couple of hours", he recalled to AFP after Thatcher died of a stroke on Monday aged 87.
The episode illustrates the complexities of the deep but volatile friendship between the leaders that endured a pinballing of crises and lasted well beyond Reagan's 1981-1989 presidency and Thatcher's 1979-1990 premiership.
Fierce defenders of their own interests, together they ushered in dramatic turnarounds from the economic malaise gripping their countries and rolled back the welfare state movement as they pushed to shrink government and grow the global free market.
US lawmakers bent over with praise of Thatcher and the relationship she cultivated with the man she called her "dear friend".
President Barack Obama was reminded of her "standing shoulder to shoulder with President Reagan," while Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner spoke of Thatcher's "loyalty to Ronald Reagan and their friendship that we all admired".
Looking back, Burt said the two leaders "had a very warm relationship. They saw the world in similar ways."
Nancy Reagan agreed, telling MSNBC on Monday: "I loved it that she and Ronnie were as close as they were."
But while images of "The Gipper" driving a beaming "Iron Lady" around Camp David in a golf cart filled newspapers, they masked crucial disagreements about Cold War flashpoints like the Falklands, the Soviet Union, nuclear threats and the Middle East.
"On all these things we now know they disagreed, and very often Margaret Thatcher would tear a strip off the president during their phone calls," said Bard College professor Richard Aldous, author of Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship.
"So I think that the very kind of 'flowers and champagne' image that they very often liked to present is very far from the much harder political reality."
But such shrewdness hardly undermined the most storied trans-Atlantic partnership of the last 70 years.
"It just shows how incredibly clever they were at ... marketing their relationship in a kind of political marriage," Aldous said.
They came from similarly humble backgrounds, and each grew up far from their nations' capitals, wary of big government.
Reagan wrote in his memoirs after hosting Thatcher for his first White House state dinner that he was "immediately" smitten.
"She was warm, feminine, gracious and intelligent - and it was evident from our first words that we were soul mates when it came to reducing government and expanding economic freedom," Reagan noted.
Thatcher later returned the compliment, praising Reagan for having "won the Cold War without firing a shot".
But in private they were often at odds.
When Thatcher ordered British troops deployed to the windswept Falkland Islands in April 1982 amid a sovereignty dispute with Argentina, Reagan spoke with his friend several times by phone in an effort to avoid war.
He dispatched his top diplomat Alexander Haig on a mission of shuttle diplomacy between London and Buenos Aires, but the talks fizzled.
After a May 13 call to Thatcher, Reagan wrote in his diary: "I talked to Margaret but don't think I persuaded her against further action."
In 1986 the tension rose again, after the Reykjavik Summit where Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pressed for a dramatic reduction in their nuclear arsenals.
Thatcher two years earlier had met with Gorbachev and famously said that "we can do business together", but after Reykjavik she went to Camp David and quietly berated the US president for exposing Western Europe's defensive flank with his nuclear stance.
"When Margaret Thatcher got upset, people noticed in Washington," Burt said.
"She had a credibility that nobody else in Europe had with people in the White House."
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says tensions have already soared too high on the Korean peninsula and has warned Pyongyang against making nuclear threats.
"I am deeply troubled.... The current crisis has already gone too far," Ban said at a press conference in Andorra.
"Nuclear threats are not a game... things must begin to calm down.
"There is no need for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to be on a collision course with the international community," he said after Pyongyang announced it would restart a nuclear reactor to feed its atomic weapons program.
The Korean peninsula has been caught in a cycle of escalating tensions since the North's February nuclear test, which followed a long-range rocket launch in December.
Ban said he feared an escalation in the crisis.
"I'm convinced that nobody intends to attack the DPRK because of a disagreement about its political system or foreign policy. However I'm afraid that others will respond firmly to any direct military provocation," Ban said.
"Dialogue and negotiations are the only way to resolve the current crisis."
Ban said he was "deeply concerned" about the wider effects of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
"Peace and stability in and around the Korean Peninsula has very important regional and even global implications," he said.
"I urge again the authorities of the DPRK to fully abide by the relevant Security Council resolutions and refrain from making further provocative measures," Ban said.
