MINING billionaire Andrew Forrest has gifted a staggering $65 million - believed to be the nation's largest single philanthropic donation - to attract the world's best minds to Western Australia's universities.
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OVERFISHING is putting sea cucumbers in a pickle on the Great Barrier Reef, marine biologists say.
Sydney University's Professor Maria Byrne and Dr Hampus Eriksson, a post-doctoral researcher at Stockholm University, say more than 24 sea cucumber fisheries have closed in recent years.
Over 70 per cent of tropical sea cucumber fisheries are now considered depleted, fully exploited or over-exploited.
After analysing catches in the Great Barrier Reef over the last 20 years, the researchers say sea cucumber fishing is now showing worrying signs of being unsustainable.
"Sea cucumbers play a vital role in reef health and our previous research indicates that they may help reduce the harmful impact of ocean acidification on coral growth," Prof Byrne said in a statement.
"The crown-of-thorns starfish is often singled out as responsible for the decline in the barrier reef.
"This work suggests that overfishing of ecologically important species such as sea cucumbers, may have also contributed to this decline."
Dr Eriksson said that with declining catches of high value sea cucumber species, Australian fishers had turned to other, lower value species, which were also being overfished.
"Pursuing profits by targeting abundant species which sell for less while continuing to fish scarce high-value species is a pathway to their extinction," Dr Eriksson said.
Prof Byrne said further studies were needed to understand the impact of declining sea cucumber numbers on the reef.
"We recommend introducing precautionary reductions in sea cucumber fishing," she said.
THE Newman Government has bet on up to three new mega casinos to reclaim Queensland's status as an international tourism mecca.
COMPO fraudsters could face up to five years' jail, but those injured on their way to or from work will continue to be covered as part of an overhaul of the state's worker's compensation scheme.
WELCOME to your new clubhouse boys... there's no TV, no gym and prisoners are kept in their cells for 23 hours a day.
DURING the first week of the election campaign, a smiling Peter Beattie and Kevin Rudd worked hard to convince Queenslanders they were the best of mates.
A HSC-STYLE exam in senior mathematics and science subjects has been recommended for Queensland school students by a state inquiry.
A MAN has been arrested after trying to get into Buckingham Palace with a knife, Scotland Yard says.
The 44-year-old was held around 11.30am on Monday (2130 AEDT Monday) when he attempted to get through the north centre gate and was stopped by police.
Officers searched him and he was found to have a knife.
He was arrested on suspicion of trespassing on a protected site and possession of an offensive weapon and is in custody.
Buckingham Palace said the Queen was not in the building when the man tried to get in, but would make no further comment.
THE Newman Government has bet on up to three new mega casinos to reclaim Queensland's status as an international tourism mecca.
COMPO fraudsters could face up to five years' jail, but those injured on their way to or from work will continue to be covered as part of an overhaul of the state's worker's compensation scheme.
WELCOME to your new clubhouse boys... there's no TV, no gym and prisoners are kept in their cells for 23 hours a day.
DURING the first week of the election campaign, a smiling Peter Beattie and Kevin Rudd worked hard to convince Queenslanders they were the best of mates.
A HSC-STYLE exam in senior mathematics and science subjects has been recommended for Queensland school students by a state inquiry.
THE Newman Government has bet on up to three new mega casinos to reclaim Queensland's status as an international tourism mecca.
COMPO fraudsters could face up to five years' jail, but those injured on their way to or from work will continue to be covered as part of an overhaul of the state's worker's compensation scheme.
WELCOME to your new clubhouse boys... there's no TV, no gym and prisoners are kept in their cells for 23 hours a day.
DURING the first week of the election campaign, a smiling Peter Beattie and Kevin Rudd worked hard to convince Queenslanders they were the best of mates.
A HSC-STYLE exam in senior mathematics and science subjects has been recommended for Queensland school students by a state inquiry.
THE Newman Government has bet on up to three new mega casinos to reclaim Queensland's status as an international tourism mecca.
COMPO fraudsters could face up to five years' jail, but those injured on their way to or from work will continue to be covered as part of an overhaul of the state's worker's compensation scheme.
WELCOME to your new clubhouse boys... there's no TV, no gym and prisoners are kept in their cells for 23 hours a day.
DURING the first week of the election campaign, a smiling Peter Beattie and Kevin Rudd worked hard to convince Queenslanders they were the best of mates.
A HSC-STYLE exam in senior mathematics and science subjects has been recommended for Queensland school students by a state inquiry.
THE European Commission has set out what it says will be a revolution in food safety from farm to fork, drawn up in response to the scandal of horsemeat sold as beef.
But the EU executive was careful to underline that the new rules would not in and of themselves prevent willful future mis-selling.
The agri-food industry is the European Union's second biggest, in the world's largest tariff-free market of half a billion consumers.
It is worth, the Commission says, some 750 billion euros per year and employs nearly 50 million people across Europe.
If passed by EU member governments and the European Parliament, the proposed revamp, boiling down existing legislation and sharpening testing regimes, will introduce:
-- financial penalties directly related to profits from "fraud";
-- and mandatory spot-check testing, as opposed to the power only to recommend inspections, as now.
In a departure, national authorities will be encouraged to publish league tables where consumers can check food data from everything from big-brand producers to individual restaurants, the Commission's proposals said.
But the changes will not affect, in the main, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or "micro-businesses," a large part of the post-industrial food chain.
Neither will stipulations governing the important seed sector be applied to "private gardeners," who will still be able to buy seeds "in small quantities" on open markets.
"The recent horsemeat scandal has shown that there is room for improvement," said EU Health and Consumer Commissioner Tonio Borg, in announcing the rulebook rewrite.
He said the changes "take on board" some of the lessons of a scandal that stunned consumers in large part due to links to organised crime.
Borg's office spelled out that the labelling of food, as seen in the horsemeat scandal, is a problem of fraud, not origin -- already covered in legislation due to take effect from December 2014.
"This fraud could have occurred, even if there was mandatory origin labelling in place," it said of the equine scandal.
The Commission is to report to the European Parliament by December on whether or not it is desirable or feasible to extend origin labelling to meat provenance, it added.
BELEAGUERED French President Francois Hollande marked the first anniversary of his election win with a promise to launch a major investment programme that will transform the country.
Under fire from right and left, Hollande outlined what amounts to a comeback strategy constructed around a ten-year programme of investment in digital and other new technologies, alternative energy, health and infrastructure.
"We have achieved a lot in a year, but there remains a considerable amount to do," Hollande told his ministers, asserting that "the coming year will be a year of results."
"The reforms undertaken will change the face of France - profoundly."
Hollande marked the anniversary of his May 6, 2012 win over right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy as the most unpopular president in modern French history.
The Socialist leader has paid a heavy political price for his failure to revive a flagging economy and prevent unemployment rising to a 16-year high.
Newspapers marked Monday's anniversary with harsh criticism, with even the left-wing daily Liberation's front-page headline depicting the president as "A Man Alone".
"A year after the election of Francois Hollande, France is in crisis -- political, economic, social and moral," Liberation wrote, saying Hollande "has not been able, for the moment, to win the confidence of his countrymen."
Right-wing daily Le Figaro said: "The Socialist Party is in hiding for the first anniversary".
With criticism of the government mounting, some are predicting a cabinet reshuffle before the summer. Polls suggest voters would support the widening of the government to include some prominent centrist figures.
But that is unlikely to go down well with the left, both inside and outside of the Socialist Party.
Tens of thousands of left-wing protesters took to the streets of Paris on Sunday to accuse Hollande of turning his back on Socialist principles, while thousands more demonstrated across the country against a government bill legalising gay marriage.
Hollande's opponents rounded on him again on Monday, with the head of the right-wing UMP's parliamentary faction, Christian Jacob, telling France Info radio: "Simply put, right now the boat is sinking and we have a president who is incapable of taking action."
Since his election, Hollande's approval rating has fallen faster and further than any other president's since the founding of France's Fifth Republic in 1958.
His popularity has been especially dented by two recent crises -- a tax-fraud scandal involving his ex-budget minister Jerome Cahuzac and the deeply divisive debate on gay marriage.
A new TNS Sofres poll for i-Tele released Monday showed more than 76 of respondents saying they were disappointed with Hollande's performance and 56 percent of those who voted for him considering his record negative.
BANGLADESHI police are considering murder charges against the owner of a shoddily built factory that collapsed nearly two weeks ago, after the wife of a garment worker crushed in the accident filed a complaint.
The development comes as officials said on Monday that the death toll from the country's worst industrial disaster had reached 675.
Sheuli Akter, the wife of Jahangir Alam, filed the complaint with Dhaka magistrate Wasim Sheikh, saying her husband and other workers were "pushed toward death" by building owner Mohammed Sohel Rana and two others.
Alam was employed in New Wave Styles Ltd, one of the five garment factories housed in the eight-story Rana Plaza that collapsed on April 24 as workers started their morning shift even though cracks had developed in the building.
New Wave Styles owner Bazlul Adnan and local government engineer Imtemam Hossain were the two others accused in the case.
Magistrate Sheikh has ordered police to investigate the complaints, and local police chief Mohammed Asaduzzman said on Monday that they would now investigate possible murder charges.
A conviction for murder can result in a death sentence in Bangladesh.
Nine people, including Rana and Adanan, have already been arrested on other charges. Rana faces charges such as negligence and illegal construction, which are punishable by a maximum of seven years in jail.
By Monday evening, the death toll had reached 675, according to the police control room at the scene. It is not known how many people are still missing, as workers use heavy equipment to search through the rubble. There is a stench around the collapse site from decomposing bodies.
An architect whose firm designed the initial floors of the building said on Sunday it had not been designed for heavy industrial work. Masood Reza, an architect with Vastukalpa Consultants, said they designed the building in 2004 as a shopping mall and not for industrial purposes.
Officials say Rana illegally added three floors and allowed the garment factories to install generators. Vibrations from garment machines and from the generators are thought to have contributed to the collapse.
The disaster is the worst ever in the garment sector, surpassing the 1911 garment disaster in New York's Triangle Shirtwaist factory, which killed 146 workers, and more recent tragedies such as a 2012 fire that killed about 260 people in Pakistan and one in Bangladesh that killed 112, also in 2012.
GERMAN authorities have arrested a 93-year-old alleged former guard at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz on charges of complicity in the mass murder of prisoners.
Prosecutors in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said the man was believed to have worked at the camp between autumn 1941 and its closure in 1945.
Authorities declined to release the suspect's name but media reports indicated it was Hans Lipschis, who figures among the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most-wanted Nazis and is said to have served in the SS "Death's Head" battalion.
The man, who was detained at his home, "appeared before a judge and was taken into custody", the prosecutor's office in the state capital Stuttgart said in a statement.
"The indictment against him is currently being prepared."
Stuttgart prosecutors confirmed to AFP last month that they were working on a probe launched late last year against a suspect who had worked at Auschwitz.
Lipschis has been living in the Baden-Wuerttemberg town of Aalen and reportedly told the authorities that he worked as a cook, not a guard, in the camp in occupied Poland.
However prosecutors said the evidence pointed to the fact that the suspect in question had broader responsibilities.
"He took on supervisory duties although he did not only work as a guard," a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office told AFP.
"We will try to determined concretely when and what he did at Auschwitz."
She said the suspect was not believed to have killed prisoners himself but rather "that he abetted the actions of the perpetrators".
Despite his advanced age, the suspect underwent a medical examination and was determined fit to be taken into custody.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, in its 2013 report, lists Lipschis as its fourth most-wanted Nazi, saying he served in the SS-Totenkopf Sturmbann (Death's Head Battalion) from 1941 until 1945 at Auschwitz and "participated in the mass murder and persecution of innocent civilians, primarily Jews".
Lithuanian-born Lipschis was granted "ethnic German" status by the Nazis. He moved to the United States in 1956 but was deported to Germany in 1983, Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported last month.
More than one million people, mostly European Jews, perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1940 until it was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1945.
Germany has broadened the scope of its pursuit of Nazi war criminals since the 2011 conviction of Ukraine-born John Demjanjuk, a former guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.
In that case, the court ruled that any role at a death camp amounted to accessory to murder, widening culpability from those found to have personally ordered or committed murders and atrocities.
Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years' prison for complicity in some 28,000 murders. He died at a nursing home last year while free awaiting an appeal.
Lipschis is among 50 surviving Auschwitz staff who are being investigated in Germany under the broadened culpability rules.
Renowned French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld said he had mixed feelings about the news from Germany.
"I am torn between my idea of justice and the necessity to chase down war criminals until they take their last breath," he told AFP.
"You need evidence and documents to incriminate them and I think there won't be any more eyewitnesses to implicate them."
EUROPE'S leading stock markets closed with small losses on Monday, with London shut for a bank holiday.
In Frankfurt the DAX 30 index of leading German shares eased back from a new record on Friday, giving up 0.13 percent to 8,112.08 points, while in Paris the CAC 40 was 0.15 percent lower at 3,907.04 points.
THE Reserve Bank of Australia is expected to keep the cash rate unchanged at three per cent on Tuesday.
None of the 13 economists surveyed by AAP last week expect the RBA to cut its interest rate at its board meeting, though most say rate cuts are on the cards this year.
Expectations of further rate cuts have grown in the past month following a rise in the unemployment rate and disappointing home building approvals figures, as well as news inflation remains under control.
National Australia Bank senior economist David de Garis believes the RBA will do more to stimulate the economy this year and is expecting two rate cuts by December.
But he thinks the central bank is likely to wait until June to cut again.
That would allow them to see another round of employment and retail sales figures as well as key capital expenditure figures for the March quarter - a key indicator on when investment in the mining industry will peak.
"There's quite a lot of water to flow under the bridge before June, it doesn't sound like they are in a super hurry right now so they might be inclined to hold off for another month," he said.
VICTORIANS can expect a budget custom-made for growing the economy, growing employment and growing surpluses, state treasurer Michael O'Brien says.
Mr O'Brien is expected to deliver a $225 million surplus for 2013/14 when he hands down his first budget in state parliament on Tuesday.
He says the figure is based on a revised Australian accounting standard for the reporting of superannuation obligations but once the accounting change is stripped out the prediction is $817 million, slightly down on the $835 million forecast in the December budget update.
"This budget is one which builds for growth in Victoria," he says.
"It's a budget which delivers a growing economy, growing employment, growing surpluses and major new infrastructure.
"We have seen governments around the country plunge into debt and deficit and Victoria has avoided that path."
The state's budget surpluses over the next four years are forecast to grow to $2.5 billion by 2016/17.
Among pre-budget announcements in recent weeks the government will give $238 million to train more doctors and nurses, $224 million for disability support, $170 million in extra road maintenance funding over three years and a $100 million boost for the southeastern Frankston train line.
Shadow treasurer Tim Pallas says the coalition owes it to Victorians not to increase basic daily expenses.
"The most important thing they can do is not increase the cost of living for Victorians," he says.
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ITALY'S new Prime Minister Enrico Letta says his coalition government will act fast to reverse an austerity policy he argues is killing Italy and has called on Europe to become a motor for growth.
"Italy is dying from austerity alone. Growth policies cannot wait," Letta said during his inaugural speech to parliament on Monday, under the watchful gaze of European partners.
The recession-hit country, effectively rudderless since an inconclusive election in February, is under pressure to act fast to tackle social, economic and institutional ills.
The leftist moderate, who was sworn in with his cabinet on Sunday, promised to have results in 18 months or "take the consequences".
He said the economic situation in Italy - one of the first countries to fall prey to the eurozone debt crisis - "is still serious" and its two trillion euro ($A2.5 trillion) debt "weighs heavily" on ordinary Italians.
But he also looked to Europe, saying it was suffering from "a crisis of legitimacy and ... must become once more a motor of sustainable growth" - a reference to his aim to persuade Europe to reverse its disputed austerity policy.
The 46-year-old moderate from the centre-left Democratic Party said he wants to deal quickly with the social fallout of the longest economic slump in 20 years.
Investors appeared buoyed by the new leadership, with Italy performing well at its first market test, paying significantly lower rates to raise 6.0 billion euros at a five- and ten-year bond auction
Letta said the political class had to react to the growing anti-establishment voice in Italy, which was driven by anger over politicians' perks at a time of widespread financial difficulties.
The government's first act would be to cut the salaries of ministers who are also members of parliament, and are therefore currently eligible for two salaries, he said.
GOOGLE has announced it will offer its personal assistant app Google Now to users of Apple devices, stepping up its challenge to its rival's Siri program.
"Google Now is about giving you just the right information at just the right time," Google's Andrea Huey said in a blog announcement.
"It can show you the day's weather as you get dressed in the morning, or alert you that there's heavy traffic between you and your butterfly-inducing date - so you'd better leave now!
"It can also share news updates on a story you've been following, remind you to leave for the airport so you can make your flight and much more."
Google Now, which like Siri is a voice-activated software program - will be available to users of Apple iPhones and iPads, which use the iOS operating system.
"Today, with the launch of Google Now on iPhone and iPad, your smartphone will become even smarter," Huey said.
The move comes with the two California tech giants in a fierce battle for domination of mobile operating platforms. Google's Android has taken the lead in smartphones and is gaining rapidly in the tablet market.
Google meanwhile has argued that Apple's Siri is a potential threat to its core search engine by allowing smartphone users to bypass Google for many searches, which can generate ad revenue.
UN leader Ban Ki-moon has made a new plea to Syria to stop blocking an international inquiry into the alleged use of chemical weapons in the country's conflict.
Ban met the head of the investigation team, Ake Sellstrom, as international suspicions about the use of the weapons grow and on the day designated to remember the victims of chemical weapons attacks.
Ban told reporters he "takes seriously" US reports about the weapons and said "I again urge the Syrian authorities to allow the investigation to proceed without delay and without any conditions".
Sellstrom and an advanced team now in Cyprus can deploy to Syria "within 24 to 48 hours", the UN secretary-general said on Monday.
President Bashar al-Assad's government asked for a UN inquiry but has refused to let investigators into the country, demanding they be limited to its claims that opposition rebels used chemical weapons near Aleppo on March 19.
Britain and France have asked that the inquiry also look at opposition claims that chemical arms also had been used in Homs and near Damascus.
Ban wrote a new letter to Assad on Thursday seeking access as the United States revealed its suspicions that chemical arms have been used. Diplomats said the Syrian government is barely communicating with UN and other international bodies.
"I take seriously the recent intelligence report of the United States about the use of chemical weapons in Syria," Ban said. "On-site activities are essential if the United Nations is to be able to establish the facts and clear up all the doubts surrounding this issue.
"A credible and comprehensive inquiry requires full access to the sites where chemical weapons are alleged to have been used," he added.
"I encourage all involved to uphold their responsibilities in enabling us to properly police these heinous weapons of massive destruction."
THE Spanish banking giant Santander has announced the resignation of chief executive Alfredo Saenz, who was convicted in 2011 for irregularities in a debt-recovery case.
He will be replaced by Javier Marin, Santander's current head of insurance, asset management and private banking, said the bank, which is the eurozone's biggest by capitalisation.
It gave no reason in its statement for the "voluntary resignation" of Saenz, 70, who had been chief executive since 2002 and had looked likely to succeed Emilio Botin as executive chairman.
Saenz was convicted in 2011 of lodging false charges against certain creditors in order to reclaim debts from them, but no final sentence has been pronounced against him.
In November 2011 the outgoing Socialist government commuted his initial sentence, a suspended jail term and a banking ban, to a fine.
But Spain's Supreme Court partially quashed that decision this month.The offences date to 1994 when Saenz was chairman of Banesto, a bank that was bought that year by Santander.
Saenz is eligible for a pension of 88.2 million euros ($A112.8 million) and was paid 8.2 million euros by the bank last year, according to its annual report.
The bank said it had nearly quadrupled in size during his tenure, with assets growing from 358 billion euros to 1.25 trillion euros.
"The board of directors expressed its recognition of and gratitude for Alfredo Saenz's extraordinary achievements since joining the group," it said in a statement.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government this month passed a decree allowing bankers with penal convictions to continue working in the sector if the Spanish central bank gave its authorisation.
That was seen as a positive step for Saenz on his way towards replacing Botin at the top of Santander.
BOTSWANA'S President Ian Khama has received two stitches in his face after being clawed by a cheetah, a government spokesman says.
The incident occurred last week at a Botswana Defence Force facility where soldiers enlisted in the battle against poaching learn about the animals they help to protect.
"He was scratched by a cheetah last week but not really attacked per se," spokesman Jeff Ramsay told AFP.
The cheetah was being fed in an enclosure near to where Khama was standing, became excited and somehow managed to swipe a claw across the president's face.
Khama, 60, was not admitted to hospital, but did receive treatment.
He was seen last week with a plaster on his face.
Ramsay said there were no security implications and added that because of the minor nature of the injury the government had initially decided not to issue a public statement.
Cheetahs, the fastest land mammals, are one of the few large cats not to have fully retractable claws. Far from being razor sharp, the claws are more like a dog's than a lion's.
Khama, a former lieutenant general who was trained at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England, and has been in power for five years, is known as something of outdoorsman.
THE first images of Nelson Mandela in almost nine months show the South African icon looking thin but sitting upright after his latest hospitalisation.
The 94-year-old appeared slightly gaunt and showing little expression in brief images captured at his Johannesburg home by South Africa's state broadcaster SABC.
Wearing flamboyant black and white patterned shirt, Mandela sat in a beige armchair with his legs up and covered with a white blanket.
He was flanked by President Jacob Zuma, who visited along with a delegation from the ruling ANC on Monday.
They were the first public images of Mandela since then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited in August.
The footage was broadcast after the visit by Zuma and a delegation of ANC leaders who said the elder statesman was in "good shape".
"They found president Mandela in good shape and in good spirits," the party said in a statement.
Zuma and the top brass of the African National Congress dropped in on the ailing Nobel Peace Prize winner at his home, where he has been recuperating under high-care since his hospital release earlier this month.
Mandela returned home on April 6 after spending 10 days in hospital being treated for a recurrent lung infection.
The ANC visitors were briefed by Mandela's medical team and "are satisfied that president Mandela is in good health and is receiving the very best medical care".
The ANC said Mandela was "keenly aware of the goodwill that has been outpouring from the peoples of the globe as befitting his status as our icon".
POPE emeritus Benedict XVI will "probably" return to the Vatican on Thursday, a spokesman for the Holy See says, two months after the German pontiff's resignation stunned the world.
For the first time in history, a retired pope and a serving pope will both be resident in Vatican City, the world's smallest state.
Benedict will move into the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, a two-storey brick building on a hilltop inside Vatican walls overlooking St Peter's that has been renovated especially for him.
Spokesman Federico Lombardi declined to be drawn on the practicalities of the move or whether he would be greeted by Pope Francis, saying only: "There is no fixed program at this stage."
Since Benedict dramatically stepped down as pontiff on February 28, he has been living in the Castel Gandolfo, a luxurious 55-hectare property, which is larger than the Vatican City itself, located 25 kilometres southeast of Rome.
As he had promised, Joseph Ratzinger has led an extremely discreet life since he stepped down and has not made any comment on Vatican affairs.
THE wife of one of the Boston Marathon bomb suspects is a doctor's daughter who apparently led the life of a typical American high school student before she converted to Islam.
Katherine Russell Tsarnaev is said to have enjoyed a comfortable middle-class American childhood and was pictured in a school yearbook posing in a slim-fitting tank top, her long dark hair cascading over bare shoulders.
But she abandoned this lifestyle after meeting Tamerlan Tsarnaev and swiftly adopted the hijab as she devoted herself to his beliefs.
However, she was kept in the dark over his alleged deadly intentions and only discovered he was a suspect when she saw a news report on the terror atrocity on television, her lawyer Amato DeLuca said.
The eldest of three daughters, her background was said to have been characterised by conventional American family values.
Known to her friends as Katie, she was raised as a Christian by her father - an emergency physician - and mother, who worked as a nurse.She was brought up in a detached house in North Kingstown, an attractive and affluent town in Rhode Island, south of Boston, before she reportedly moved on to Suffolk University, in Boston.
It was while studying there that friends introduced her to her future husband who was then an apparently promising boxer and athlete.
The pair began to date following their first meeting at a nightclub and, at some point after this, she converted to Islam.
By then, their relationship was described as being intense.
The pair married in 2009 or 2010, DeLuca said. She left university around this time, apparently without graduating.
When asked why she opted to change her life so dramatically, her lawyer said: "She believes in the tenets of Islam and of the Koran. She believes in God."
According to reports, Russell Tsarnaev stood by her husband when he was arrested for violently assaulting her in 2009 at their Massachusetts home.
The widow was pictured collecting belongings from the house she shared with her husband at the weekend, dressed in black and wearing a headscarf and sunglasses.
Tamerlan, 26, and his brother, Dzhokhar, 19, were accused of planting the bombs near the marathon finish line last Monday. The Chechen siblings, from southern Russia, are alleged to have killed three people and injured more than 180 others.
DeLuca said Russell Tsarnaev never suspected her husband but had not seen much of him in recent days because she was working between 70 and 80 hours, over seven days a week, as a home health care aide while he looked after their toddler daughter.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was said to have been at home when his wife left for work on Friday - the day he was killed in a getaway attempt and the last day she saw him alive.
When asked whether Russell Tsarnaev felt anything was amiss following the bombings, DeLuca said: "Not as far as I know."
EU foreign ministers have agreed to lift the last of the bloc's trade, economic and individual sanctions against Myanmar (Burma), hailing "a new chapter" with the once pariah state.
"In response to the changes that have taken place and in the expectation that they will continue, the Council (of ministers) has decided to lift all sanctions with the exception of the embargo on arms," said a statement approved without a vote on Monday.
"The EU is willing to open a new chapter in its relations with Myanmar/Burma, building a lasting partnership," it added.
The European Union began easing sanctions against Myanmar a year ago as the military, in power for decades, progressively ceded power to civilians and implemented wholesale reforms of the economy.
Ministers noted, however, that there were "still significant challenges to be addressed", in particular an end to hostilities in Kachin state and improving the plight of the Rohingya people.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Monday that Myanmar has waged "a campaign of ethnic cleansing" against Rohingya Muslims, citing evidence of mass graves and forced displacement affecting tens of thousands.
HRW Asia head Phil Robertson said lifting the sanctions was "premature and regrettable", warning the move lessens leverage over Myanmar.
In April last year, foreign ministers agreed to a one-year suspension of measures targeting almost 500 individuals and more than 800 firms to bolster a reform process which the same month saw opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's election to parliament.
Among the sanctions, hundreds of people were targeted by a travel ban and asset freeze, while on the economic front the EU had barred investments and banned imports of the country's lucrative timber, metals and gems.
During a visit to Brussels last month, the first by a Myanmar head of state, President Thein Sein urged the EU to lift sanctions, saying "we are one of the poorest countries in the world".
THE BBC has been urged to remove a figure of a naked boy, sculpted by a British man who sexually abused two of his daughters, from the front of its headquarters Broadcasting House.
The carvings of a man and a naked child were the creation of Eric Gill, one of the most respected artists of the 20th century when he died in 1940.
But his diaries, published in 1989, revealed he had sex with two of his daughters and the family dog.
His 1932 statue Prospero And Ariel, from Shakespeare's play The Tempest, stands on the BBC's Broadcasting House in London as a metaphor for broadcasting.
Gill converted to Catholicism in 1913 and the Catholic Church has previously faced calls to dismantle the sculptor and engraver's world-renowned Stations Of The Cross from Westminster Cathedral.
Now Fay Maxted, chief executive of The Survivors' Trust, a body which represents organisations supporting survivors of rape, sexual violence and childhood sexual abuse, told the London Journalism Centre: "It's an insult to allow a work like this to remain in such a public place. It is almost mocking survivors, it is intolerable."
Peter Saunders, chief executive of the National Association For People Abused In Childhood, added: "There's a strong argument that this (the statue) should be removed. These symbols are in people's faces."
The statue was especially inappropriate in light of the recent Jimmy Savile scandal, he added.
"People who aren't affected by these issues can get uppity and say 'you can't do that'. But if you've been abused as a child then this is very insensitive and inappropriate."
A BBC spokesperson said: "The statue of Ariel and Prospero on the front of Broadcasting House stands as a metaphor for broadcasting, executed by one of the last century's major British artists whose work has been widely displayed in leading UK museums and galleries.
"There are no plans to remove or replace the sculptures at the front of Broadcasting House."
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SPAIN'S economy will shrink by between 1.0 per cent and 1.5 per cent this year, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos has revealed in an interview in the Wall Street Journal.
The prediction revises the government's official forecast of a 0.5 per cent recession in 2013 and comes the same day as Brussels confirmed Spain posted the biggest deficit in the eurozone last year.
De Guindos told the newspaper he saw "slight" growth in Spain's economy for 2014.
Spain, the eurozone's fourth-largest economy, shrank by 1.37 per cent in 2012 as it continued to feel the effects of the collapse of a decade-long property boom in 2008.
The Bank of Spain, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund predict the Spanish economy will shrink by between 1.4 and 1.6 per cent in 2013.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative government will unveil a new package of reforms aimed at reviving the economy, as well as new deficit forecasts for the next few years, on Friday.
Spain posted a budget deficit equal to 10.6 per cent of GDP in 2012, the highest in the eurozone, including the cost to the state of recapitalising the country's banks.
It's seeking leeway from the EU to ease its deficit target for 2013 to 6.0 per cent, and to push back as far as 2016 the obligation to get back within the terms of the EU's Maastricht Treaty, under which member states are supposed to have public deficits of no more than three per cent of GDP, and debt of no more than 60 per cent.
This would allow Spain to soften austerity measures implemented by Rajoy's government that are blamed for triggering the recession.
De Guindos said the new reforms to be unveiled on Friday will not include any "significant" austerity measures.
"What we will do now is to establish a better balance between deficit reduction and economic growth. Investors' main concern right now is economic growth," he told the newspaper.
GASTON Flosse, the 81-year-old veteran of French Polynesian politics, topped the polls in the first round of a vote that will determine who next governs the Pacific paradise.
The French territory, which enjoys a high degree of autonomy, has seen 13 different governments rule in quick succession since 2004 when pro-independence candidate Oscar Temaru first came to power.
Flosse's party Tahoeraa Huiraatira won 40.2 per cent of the votes in an election that took place on Sunday and aims to select 57 representatives in the Assembly of French Polynesia, who will in turn pick the president.
UPLD, the party of incumbent Temaru, won 24 per cent of the votes, and Teva Rohfritsch, another candidate, got just under 20 per cent. All three will go forward to the second round planned for May 5.
Temaru has been president five times since 2004, and Flosse twice.
The victory of Flosse, an old friend of former French president Jacques Chirac, is a significant defeat for Temaru, who is seen as paying for the territory's dramatic economic crisis.
Unemployment in the territory, which has a population of 270,000, is estimated to be around 20 to 30 per cent, and a fifth of the population lives under the poverty line.
Many voters are also angry with Temaru for trying to register Polynesia on the United Nations' list of Non-Self-Governing Territories - a list of countries that the international body considers as colonised.
Flosse - who ruled French Polynesia for 13 years until 2004 - is not without his own set of problems, having been charged recently in corruption cases.
AUSTRALIA will help fund new memorial facilities and walking trails in Somme to highlight one of the nation's greatest military achievements in World War I.
Veterans Affairs Minister Warren Snowdon announced in Paris on Monday an initial 200,000 euros ($A254,000) in funding for the latest stage of the Australian Remembrance Trail project on the Western Front.
An equal funding partnership with French authorities will provide two walking trails and a new "interpretive room" at the Museum of the Great War in Peronne, France to complement an existing memorial at Mont St Quentin.
Mr Snowdon said the room would help tell the story of the 2nd Australian Division's capture of Mont St Quentin on September 1, 1918, considered Australia's most important victory of the war.
The Australian Remembrance Trail will link sites of the most significant Australian battles of the war including Ypres and Zonnebeke in Belgium, and Fromelles, Bullecourt, Pozieres, Le Hamel and Villers-Bretonneux in France.
"This is about us building this historical trail so that Australians can come and visit here, go to the battle sites and understand what happened," Mr Snowdon told AAP.
"They can also get an appreciation of the communities which now host these memorial sites and understand how we've developed very deep and long-lasting relationships with those communities as a result of the service of Australian personnel and their sacrifice."
AAP lf/ap
SOME US airports are experiencing significant flight delays in the wake of US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) furloughs due to budget cuts that are forcing staffing cutbacks.
In addition to some wind-related delays, New York's La Guardia airport was experiencing "general departure delays" of 60-75 minutes, while Newark, New Jersey's airport was experiencing delays of 46-60 minutes, according to the FAA's website on Monday.
The delays began over the weekend after the FAA began instituting furloughs for workers, including air traffic control staff, on Sunday related to the budget cuts.
Hold-ups averaged more than three hours on Sunday night at Los Angeles International Airport.
"The FAA will be working with the airlines and using a comprehensive set of air traffic management tools to minimise the delay impacts of lower staffing as we move into the busy summer travel season," the agency said in a statement.
An American Airlines spokeswoman said Newark was one of five airports "most likely" to be affected by the sequestration cuts, while La Guardia was one of four airports that "could potentially be affected" by the cuts.
On Friday three airline groups said they would petition the federal appeals court in Washington to block sequester cuts by the FAA and the Department of Transportation "to protect the rights of the travelling public."
"The Regional Airline Association, Airlines for America and the Air Line Pilots Association warned of "significant chaos" that could take place due to the furloughs of airport and other personnel.
"Our entire aviation system will struggle to maintain normality due to furloughs of these essential workers. The economic viability of our country depends on this mode of transportation; everyone will be affected," said ALPA president Lee Moak.
A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD girl has died in hospital after being hit by a car in Sydney's west last week.
Police said the girl was run down by the car in Wilga Street, Fairfield about 6pm last Thursday.
She was taken to Liverpool Hospital and had been on life support, but died on Monday morning.
Police have spoken to a 44-year-old woman who was driving the car that struck the child.
Officers say they believe the child ran out onto the road.
AN elderly man has been rescued after spending three days stuck under a crashed car in NSW's central west.
Police said neighbours found the man, 76, trapped under the Honda CRV about 6.30pm on Monday (AEST).
The vehicle had crashed into a tree on the man's Rylstone property, police said.
It's thought the man got out of his car after the crash and then the car rolled on top of him.
Police believe the man was trapped under the chassis for at least three days.
He was still conscious when found, but was suffering severe injuries including a fractured skull.
He has been flown to John Hunter Hospital at Newcastle.
ABORIGINAL leader Noel Pearson says welfare entitlement has been "a tragic disability" for his people.
Mr Pearson has backed comments by indigenous academic Marcia Langton that a sense of entitlement had poisoned Aboriginal society.
"It's been a tragic disability," he told ABC TV on Monday.
"The flipside of the opening up of the doors of citizenship to our people, was the provision of welfare. What should have been provided was opportunities to engage in ... the mainstream economy."
Australia was now "reaping that tragedy".
He also echoed Professor Langton's statements about mining being a quiet revolution for indigenous people.
"The revolution she is talking about is one that is absolutely tectonically happening," he said, adding that it was a strange irony.
Mr Pearson reflected on his "bitter" negotiations with Rio Tinto in his early years of work in the Cape York and how the changed paradigm was now creating a new Aboriginal middle class.
"We've got to embrace Aboriginal success," he said.
"Money and materialism shouldn't be an anathema to Aboriginal people."
He said indigenous people needed to be striving for a better life.
"We still haven't gotten out of the mindset of Aboriginal people being the poor, benighted victims in Australian society," Mr Pearson said.
Mr Pearson is frustrated his far north Queensland Cape York welfare reform trials had not been able to achieve home ownership for any indigenous people in the trial communities.
"There are complexities of home ownership on Aboriginal land involving tenure," he said.
"Many of the Aboriginal people in these communities earn full-time wages, work for adjacent mining companies, but they can't own a home on their own land."
The federal government was yet to heed his message that the focus on social housing should move to home ownership, Mr Pearson said.
The trials, under way in Coen, Aurukun, Mossman Gorge and Hope Vale, aim to restore local indigenous authority and improve living conditions and the local economy.
Mr Pearson is in remission from lymphoma and says 2012 was his "descent into hell".
"But I had the great joy to spend 12 months with my youngest child," he said.
AUSTRALIANS have cut down on smoking and drinking, but they have gained weight and become more anxious, a major research project shows.
A survey of 50,000 Australians has found 1.1 million fewer glasses of alcoholic beverages are being consumed a week and 134,000 fewer people smoke compared with 2007.
The bad news is 736,000 more adults are obese and the number of people with anxiety has increased by 1.3 million, says Michele Levine, CEO of Roy Morgan Research, which collaborated with Alere healthcare company to establish the Alere Wellness Index.
Although tempting, it is not possible to link reduced smoking and drinking to increased anxiety and obesity.
"It's more likely that local and global economic issues are to blame for the psycho-emotional trend and fast-food consumption could account for the increase in obesity," said John Lang of Alere.
The results are based on 1,800 questions put to 50,000 people a year for the past five years.
According to the research, western Brisbane is the most healthy of the 57 areas surveyed. Least healthy is the Murray and Murrumbidgee area in NSW.
The questions cover medical conditions, food purchasing and consumption and psychological wellbeing. Alcohol, smoking, body weight and activity levels are also included.
"Compared to 2007, the overall health of Australians is down just slightly," said Ms Levine.
Alere managing director Mark Volling says the research allows well-informed monitoring of chronic disease risk factors.
"The index allows us to determine where action is needed," he said.
"It will provide an excellent public health resource to assist state and federal governments in their allocation of health services and funding.
"It will also provide an invaluable tool with which to track outcomes of public health initiatives."
COUNCILS could be forced to approve development applications for new homes in just 10 days under proposed reforms to NSW planning laws.
A government white paper out Tuesday recommends forcing councils to give rulings on DAs within 10 days or risk losing decision making powers, News Ltd reports.
The report says councils will have to green-light the fast-tracked approvals if the new homes are under two storeys and don't impact neighbours.
The approval process for some apartments, townhouse developments and new shops and land subdivisions will also be sped up under the plan.
Councils reportedly take an average 71 days to adjudicate on DAs at the moment.
The O'Farrell government hopes the recommended changes will save the state up to $1.7 billion over the next decade.
AN Egyptian court has ordered the release of ousted president Hosni Mubarak over the deaths of protesters but he'll remain in custody over fraud charges, state media report.
The Cairo court ordered "the release of former president Hosni Mubarak, so long as he is not detained on other charges", the official MENA news agency reported.
The former president, who attended Monday's court session, will remain in custody pending investigation into separate corruption charges.
Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for three decades, was ousted in a popular uprising in 2011.
He has been under arrest since April 2011 charged with complicity in the murder and attempted murder of hundreds of peaceful protesters on January 25-31, 2011. He is also facing several charges of corruption.
Defence lawyer Farid al-Dib made the case for his release on the grounds that Mubarak has spent two years in custody.
In January, Egypt's Court of Cassation ordered a retrial for Mubarak after accepting an appeal against his life sentence, citing procedural failings.
However, the new trial was cut short on Saturday when the judge recused himself and asked the case to be passed to another court after a short but chaotic first sitting.
In October, the same judge had acquitted defendants in the infamous "Battle of the Camels" trial, who were accused of sending men on camels and horses to break up a protest during the 2011 uprising.
Mubarak appeared relaxed and comfortable at the retrial on Saturday, waving to supporters and chatting to his sons Alaa and Gamal, who are also on trial charged with corruption.
DESPITE Labor introducing Australia's modern superannuation system, most people do not trust party on the issue and are opposed to any tax increases after the federal government's pre-budget announcement of cuts to retirement concessions for the wealthiest, a Newspoll shows.
The poll, in The Australian newspaper on Tuesday, revealed 55 per cent of voters did not "currently" trust Labor on superannuation, compared to 31 per cent who did.
Just one in four believes the ALP, the party that introduced modern superannuation and compulsory employer payments to workers, can best handle the issue.
The Newspoll survey was taken on the weekend after Treasurer Wayne Swan announced changes aimed at saving $1 billion over four years.
Eighty-one per cent of coalition voters were strongly against Labor, as well as 24 per cent of ALP voters, who also said they did not trust it.
There was almost equal support from both sides of politics for lifting the maximum limit allowed for extra personal payments into superannuation from the current $25,000, with 69 per cent of coalition voters and 67 per cent of Labor voters in agreement.
The poll showed opposition to an increased tax on superannuation at 78 per cent, with 89 per cent of coalition voters and 66 per cent of Labor voters against the move.
AS well as overhauling Britain's economy, Margaret Thatcher triggered a cultural revolution by igniting a creative burst of anger at her policies, including slashing arts funding.
Thatcher "had a phenomenal impact on the cultural landscape of Britain by creating an ideological backlash", said David Khabaz of the London School of Economics, author of a book on the former prime minister's cultural legacy.
"It was kind of a paradoxical movement: if (Thatcher) hadn't provided that sort of attack on art, the critical edge of intellectual art would never have come about," he said.
Thatcher swept to power in 1979, and among her many controversial reforms was a decision to progressively cut funding for the Arts Council, a public body set up after World War II to help bring culture to the masses.
In line with her fierce free market economic principles, she argued that artists - many seen as broadly leftwing and anti-government - should sink or swim on their own merits, like the rest of the population.
But more than withdrawing funds it was her wider policies - including cutting jobs in mines and elsewhere, while cosying up to the US against the Soviet threat and waging war in the Falklands - which fuelled anger.
"Thatcher polarised society far more than ever before ... What you read, what you watched and listened to indicated whether you were pro or anti-Thatcher," said David Christopher of the European Business School.
"Thatcher affected people's attitudes in their everyday life, her hegemony seems to permeate all aspects of life," including fashion, cinema and music, added Christopher, author of British Culture, an Introduction.
The music world saw the most visible, and sometimes violent, reaction to Thatcher's policies.
Red Wedge, an anti-Thatcher movement formed in the run-up to the 1987 election, brought together a grouping of musicians including The Clash, Paul Weller, The Communards, Madness, Billy Bragg, The Smiths and Elvis Costello.
They played benefit gigs to raise money for striking miners and urging people to vote Labour, while underground events sprung up with concerts and exhibitions in warehouses, or home-made CDs to bypass music corporations.
In 1988 Morrissey penned Margaret on the Guillotine, saying that was his "wonderful dream". Dozens of other songs call for her removal, notably over her friendship with Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet.
The same year students from Goldsmiths College in London organised the famous Freeze "happening" in a dingy Docklands warehouse. They were led by Damien Hirst, who later became one of the world's wealthiest artists.
Other galleries, like that of Charles Saatchi, also served as a breeding ground for the counter-culture new British art.
Meanwhile, one thorn in Thatcher's side came from the heart of the British establishment: the internationally respected and fiercely independent BBC.
The Tory leader was not slow to try to clamp down on the BBC, which broadcast damaging news investigation programs like Panorama.
Thatcher "hated the BBC. She became increasingly worried about the BBC until she managed to appoint chairmen who were sympathetic to the government," said Christopher.
Channel Four, a public TV station created in 1982, nurtured a new generation of directors whose edgy social films started on the small screen, but then became cinema hits.
My Beautiful Launderette, a powerful satire on race and class directed by Stephen Frears with the writer Hanif Kureishi, was among the most successful products of that collaboration.
Other openly anti-Thatcher filmmakers included Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, while playwright and later Nobel Literature prize laureate Harold Pinter also joined the cultural onslaught on her government.
The creative burst continued well beyond her departure in 1990, which presaged the demise of Tory government in 1997.
In December 2011, Meryl Streep portrayed her in the film The Iron Lady, although it was criticised in some parts for focusing on her dementia.
"She has become a British icon ... Thatcher is not Thatcherism: Thatcher started the project, but Thatcherism became much, much bigger than her," said Khabaz.
"Half of the country still despise her. It has not gone away."
FORMER friends and foes alike from across the world have paid tribute to the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, remembering an "extraordinary leader" who stamped her authority everywhere.
The "Iron Lady" was a polarising figure in Britain and beyond during her time in office, but foreign leaders were unanimous in acknowledging her place in 20th century history, with Barack Obama mourning a "true friend of America".
German Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed Thatcher as "an extraordinary leader in the global politics of her time".
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who held frequent meetings with Thatcher in the 1980s as the Cold War drew to a close, said Thatcher would go down in history.
"Margaret Thatcher was a great politician and a bright individual. She will do down in our memory and in history," the Nobel Peace Prize winner said in a statement released by his foundation.
"Thatcher was a politician whose words carried great weight," he added, calling her death "sad news".
Thatcher, who once famously said of Gorbachev that "this is a man I can do business with", died of stroke on Monday at the age of 87.
Gorbachev admitted their first meetings were tense because the Soviet Union was still a few years from falling apart, and his own commitment to the Communist Party made their relations sometimes rocky.
But he said the two leaders always treated each other with the utmost respect, listening to what the other had to say closely.
"Our first meeting in 1984 gave the start to relations that were at times difficult, not always smooth, but which were serious and responsible for us both," he noted.
Fellow Cold War hero Lech Walesa, the Polish dockyard worker whose pro-democracy Solidarity movement helped create the first cracks in the Soviet system in the 1980s, said Thatcher helped Communism fall in his own country.
"She was a great personality who has done many things for the world that contributed to the fall of Communism in Poland and Eastern Europe," Walesa told AFP.
But even those with reason to remember a sometimes divisive figure less fondly were quick to pay tribute to her huge personality.
In South Africa, a spokesman for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) recalled the differences between Thatcher and those fighting against Apartheid in the 1980s.
"She failed to acknowledge the ANC as the rightful party of governance, but was out of touch with the British people on that issue. It's water under the bridge," said spokesman Keith Khoza.
But he added: "Margaret Thatcher was a leader of note, despite disagreements in policy between her and the ANC."
In Brussels, European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso paid tribute to Thatcher's "contributions" to the growth of the European Union, despite her reservations about continental European integration.
Expressing his "deepest regrets" to the UK government, Barroso said she had been "a circumspect yet engaged player in the European Union" who "will be remembered for both her contributions to and her reserves about our common project".
Outside Europe, Israel's conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the first world leaders to speak publicly of Thatcher's passing, saying that "she was truly a great leader".
In Spain, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Thatcher's "firm determination to make reforms" was an inspiration to European leaders who were currently "facing very complex challenges that require great efforts and political courage".
MARGARET Thatcher's death caused paroxysms of confusion on Twitter where some users were apparently left with the impression that the singer Cher had died.
Members began posting comments on the microblogging site with the hashtag #nowthatchersdead soon after the news was announced.
But it was apparently misinterpreted and led to a flurry of Tweets suggesting it had upset the pop star's fans.
Comedian Ricky Gervais attempted to set the record straight, writing: "Some people are in a frenzy over the hashtag #nowthatchersdead.
"It's 'Now Thatcher's dead'.
"Not, 'Now that Cher's dead'".
Other Twitter users sought to reassure followers. One wrote: "It's OK people, @cher is still very much alive".
LABOR has regained some ground since the Gillard leadership spill, but remains in an election-losing position, the latest Newspoll shows.
Labor's primary vote is at 32 per cent - two points above its result two weeks ago - while the coalition dropped 50 to 48 per cent.
The Greens' primary vote is at 11 per cent, in line with its 2010 election level, The Australian reports.
The opinion poll, taken over the weekend, suggests that if an election was held now Labor would face a five per cent swing.
Based on 2010 preference flows, this could cost it 20 seats and deliver victory to the coalition.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has risen slightly in the preferred leader rankings, up two points to 37, compared to Tony Abbott, who fell three points to 40 per cent.
That leaves 23 per cent of poll respondents uncommitted to either leader.
On a two-party preferred basis, the coalition leads Labor 55 to 45 per cent.
All the party vote movements were within the margin of error, The Australian noted.
AUSTRALIAN human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson says it is wrong to eulogise Margaret Thatcher as a conviction politician because her beliefs have since proven to be "half-baked".
Instead, the London-based barrister, who lived through the Thatcher era, says her real legacy is that she was Britain's first female prime minister.
"In retrospect the greatest thing about her was that she was a woman," Mr Robertson told AAP.
"The lady is not for turning will be remembered for the fact she was a lady and not the fact she was a conviction politician."
Lady Thatcher died on Monday aged 87.
Mr Robertson said her political beliefs had proven to be "half-baked and hand-rammed".
She believed letting the market rip could produce happiness for all, he said.
"And it hasn't. Her idea of light-touch regulation led to the banking crisis and so many other crises."
The Australian lawyer said the 1980s were a period of "unalloyed greed" and Lady Thatcher had been incapable of empathising with the poor and disadvantaged.
Mr Robertson on Monday also criticised Lady Thatcher for drinking whiskey with former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when he visited the UK in the 1990s.
But she did do some good on the international stage, he admitted.
She rightly took Mikhail Gorbachev seriously while the Falklands war led to the overthrow of the "barbaric" military government in Argentina.
Mr Robertson also acknowledged she was right to take on the union power and arrogance that had destroyed the previous Labour government.
Australian Liberals Abroad UK president Jason Groves on Monday described Lady Thatcher as "one of the great transformative leaders of our time".
Mr Groves said the former British PM influenced the conservative side of politics in Australia and around the world.
Former Liberal prime minister John Howard was similar to Lady Thatcher in that both were conviction politicians, he told AAP.
"They both changed profoundly the countries they governed," he said.
"The UK changed out of sight under Margaret Thatcher and likewise John Howard took what was an economy with good fundamentals and put it in the position where it was able to ride out the greatest global financial crisis since the great depression."
Durham Miners' Association general secretary David Hopper, 70, on Monday said the death of Lady Thatcher was a "great day" for coal miners.
"There's no sympathy from me for what she did to our community," he said.
"She destroyed our community, our villages and our people."
But Mr Groves said while some miners suffered under Lady Thatcher's 11-year rule, many of the communities had been transformed because of the way she'd revitalised the British economy.
Australian Peter Tatchell, a leading gay rights activist in the UK, said Lady Thatcher was an extraordinary woman "but mostly for the wrong reasons".
"Thatcher legislated UK's first new anti-gay law in 100 years: section 28," the activist Tweeted on Monday.
"She mocked the right to be gay."
Section 28, since repealed, banned local authorities from promoting homosexuality in any way.
Mr Tatchell said while Lady Thatcher shattered the sexist glass ceiling in politics she did little for the rights of women.
"A macho right-winger," he said in another Tweet.
KALASHNIKOV-TOTING gunmen have robbed a security van in Italy, blocking traffic with a blazing truck, firing into the air and setting off a smoke bomb before escaping with cash and gold.
The highly organised robbery happened on a busy stretch of motorway between Italy's northern commercial capital, Milan, and the city of Como, which was closed to traffic for several hours on Monday.
The amount stolen, apparently including gold ingots, was initially estimated at 10 million euros ($A12.5 million) by Italian media citing officials close to the investigation.
The security company, Battistolli, later said that amount was "absolutely exaggerated".
A company spokesman said the amount was still being calculated, but added: "For us a large theft can also be around two million euros".
"Kalashnikovs were used and shots were fired, but no one was injured," the spokesman, Marco Melatti, was quoted by the ANSA news agency as saying.
ANSA said about 50 shots were fired.
The police were first alerted by motorists at 7.05am (1505 AEST), but the assault only took a few minutes and was over by the time they arrived.
The robbers scattered four kilometres of road with three-pronged nails to slow down police.
The smoke bomb was set off under the van to make its occupants believe their vehicle had been set on fire, the police were cited as saying.
The robbers got away in three cars later found abandoned at an isolated farmhouse.
Swiss media reported the security van had been on its way to Switzerland, which has been receiving a lot of Italian cash and gold as authorities in Italy crack down on tax fraud.
BRITAIN'S coal miners were among the biggest of Margaret Thatcher's foes - and for one senior mining official marking his birthday on Monday, the former prime minister's death is the icing on the cake.
"I'm having a drink to it right now," said David Hopper, regional secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in northeast England.
"It's a marvellous day. I'm absolutely delighted. It's my 70th birthday today and it's one of the best I've had in my life."
Thatcher's government crushed a year-long coal miners' strike in 1985. The miners were forced to accept sweeping pit closures, in one of the bitterest episodes in British industrial history.
Speaking from his home in the northeastern English city of Durham, Hopper said he and colleagues would organise a party to coincide with Thatcher's funeral at St Paul's Cathedral in London.
"There's not going to be many tears for her up here," said Hopper, who joined the NUM when he was 15 and was among the tens of thousands of miners who joined the strike in 1984-5.
"I don't think there'll be many people watching the funeral on telly either. They'll probably be watching the football.
"Thatcher perpetrated more evil in the northeast than anyone before or since. It isn't just about the coal mines. She set out to destroy unions. She decimated the industry, she destroyed our communities."
Britain has just a handful of working coal pits left, and the National Union of Mineworkers - once a powerful force in national politics - is today primarily occupied with looking after retired miners.
VICTORIAN teenager Sherridyn Rutland has returned home safe and well after being reported missing for more than a week.
The Brookfield 16-year-old had not been seen since leaving her Burrawang Close home about 11am (AEDT) on Sunday, March 24.
The girl's mobile phone had been switched on and off and it was understood she had no money, but a police statement said Sherridyn returned home about 7pm on Monday.
Police have thanked the public and media for their assistance.
PAUL Williams, a pioneering rock music journalist whose Crawdaddy! magazine is considered the first US publication to write seriously about rock 'n roll, has died in California aged 64.
The Union-Tribune of San Diego says Williams died in an Encinitas care facility on Wednesday.
His wife, Cindy Lee Berryhill, tells the Los Angeles Times that Williams died of complications of dementia triggered by head injuries from a 1995 bicycle accident.
Williams was a teenager when he began publishing Crawdaddy! in 1966. It appeared 18 months before Rolling Stone.
Williams also wrote more than 30 books and helped introduce readers to the work of science fiction writer Philip K Dick. He was Dick's literary executor.
A MAN has died in hospital, four days after being critically injured in a collision in northern NSW.
The crash happened on the Pacific Highway at midday (AEDT) on Wednesday at Tabbimoble, about 60km south of Ballina, when a southbound VW Passat and a northbound truck collided.
The truck pushed the car almost 80m before stopping, a police statement said.
The car driver, a 62-year-old man from Frenchs Forest, suffered critical head injuries and was airlifted to Gold Coast Hospital where he died on Sunday morning.
The man's 61-year-old wife was taken to Lismore Base Hospital with spinal injuries.
The driver of the truck, a 41-year-old man from Punchbowl, breath-tested negative at the scene.
Investigations are continuing.
PROSECUTORS in the US state of Colorado say they will seek the death penalty against the man accused of killing 12 people in a crowded cinema in July last year.
"For James Holmes in this case, justice is death," district attorney George Brauchler told a court in Centennial, where the 25-year-old Holmes is expected to go on trial in August.
Holmes is accused over the July 20 massacre at a midnight screening of the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, which revived America's long-running debate about gun control.
Witnesses said Holmes threw smoke bomb-type devices before opening fire randomly with weapons, including an AR-15 military-style rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and a .40-calibre pistol.
Last week defence lawyers filed an unexpected motion offering that Holmes would plead guilty, in return for the prosecution not pressing for the death penalty, but agreeing to a sentence of life in prison without parole.
But prosecutors shot back within 24 hours, accusing the defence of trying to negotiate a plea deal in public, in violation of a gag order on the horrific case.
A WOMAN who has been disqualified from driving for almost 50 years faces a NSW court on driving and other charges.
Police say highway patrol officers approached a 37-year-old woman near a random breath test site on Campbelltown Road at Woodbine, southwest of Sydney, shortly after midday (AEDT) on Monday, after she allegedly stopped her car about 300 metres from the site.
Officers questioned the driver about her licence and identity and allege she provided false details.
A field fingerprinting identification device was used and further inquiries revealed she was disqualified from driving until 2062, a police statement said.
The woman was arrested and charged at Campbelltown Police Station with driving while disqualified and giving false particulars and she was refused bail to appear in Campbelltown Local Court on Tuesday.
TWO people have died and two others have been airlifted to hospital with life-threatening injuries following a single vehicle accident in central Victoria.
Police say a people mover was headed south on the Hume Freeway near Winton about 11pm (AEDT) on Monday when the driver lost control of the vehicle, which rolled several times.
Emergency services arrived at the scene and discovered the bodies of two men, believed to be aged in their 30s and believed to have been passengers in the vehicle.
Two other passengers have been airlifted to hospital with life-threatening injuries.
The driver of the vehicle and another passenger were taken to local hospitals for treatment and are assisting police with their investigation.
Police said the deaths bring this year's road toll to 66, 11 fewer than at the same time last year.
SOUTH Korea's new president has promised a strong military response to any North Korean provocation after Pyongyang announced the two countries are now in a state of war.
President Park Geun-Hye's warning came as North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament formalised the country's status as a nuclear weapons state and appointed a sacked economic reformer for a fresh term as prime minister.
It also coincided with a US announcement that it had deployed stealth fighters to South Korea as part of an ongoing joint military exercise.
At a meeting with senior military officials and Defence Minister Kim Kwan-Jin, Park said she took the nearly daily stream of bellicose threats emanating from the North over the past month "very seriously".
"I believe that we should make a strong and immediate retaliation without any other political considerations if (the North) stages any provocation against our people," she said.
Her defence minister made it clear that the South would carry out pre-emptive strikes against the North's nuclear and missile facilities in the event of hostilities breaking out.
"We will ... establish a so-called 'active deterrence' aimed at neutralising the North's nuclear and missile threats quickly," Kim said.
The US military said on Monday it had deployed F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to South Korea as part of the ongoing Foal Eagle military exercise.
"The F-22s are advanced fighter aircraft and they're an important display of our commitment to the South Korean alliance," Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters in Washington.
North Korea has already threatened to strike the US mainland and US bases in the Pacific in response to the participation of nuclear-capable US B-52 and B-2 stealth bombers in the exercise.
Monday's gathering of the North's Supreme People's Assembly, or parliament, was notable for the promotion of a former prime minister who was sacked in a reported backlash against his pursuit of economic reforms.
Pak Pong-Ju, 74, was unanimously returned to the post of prime minister, which he had previously held from 2003-2007, when he spearheaded modest economic reforms of state enterprises.
An apparent backlash from the party and the military saw him suspended from duty in June 2006 and sacked the following year.
FORMER French president Nicolas Sarkozy has denounced charges against him in connection with a probe into illegal party funding as "unfair and unfounded".
In his first personal reaction to the charge laid on Thursday, Sarkozy used his Facebook page to insist he had not taken advantage of France's richest woman, Liliane Bettencourt, when she was weakened by ill health.
"I want to insist that, at no moment in my public life, did I betray the duties of my office," Sarkozy wrote.
"I will put all my energy into proving my integrity and honesty. The truth will triumph in the end. I have no doubt about that."
Sarkozy's lawyers are attempting to overturn a decision by three examining magistrates to charge him in a case threatening to destroy his hopes of a political comeback.
The former president was charged on Thursday after being summoned for face-to-face encounters with former members of Bettencourt's staff, including her butler.
The confrontation was the latest chapter in an investigation into allegations Sarkozy accepted envelopes stuffed with cash from ailing L'Oreal heiress Bettencourt to fund his 2007 election campaign.
Investigators suspect up to four million euros ($A5 million) of Bettencourt's cash made its way into the coffers of Sarkozy's UMP party. Bettencourt is now 90 and has been incapacitated since 2006, according to doctors.
Sarkozy could face up to three years in jail, a fine of 375,000 euros, and a five-year ban from public office if convicted.
He recently dropped several hints that he is considering a return to the frontline of French politics, suggesting recently he could be forced to out of a sense of duty to his country.
Against that backdrop, his lawyers have branded the decision to charge him as politically motivated.
ANGELINA Jolie has joined British Foreign Secretary William Hague to visit Rwanda in a bid to encourage world powers to do more on tackling rape and sexual assault in war zones.
Britain's Foreign Office released a picture of the US film star and Hague getting off a British-flagged jet in the central African country.
They are also to visit the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo this week in a trip aimed at forcing the Group of Eight world powers to address the issue more seriously.
Hague said he would be making it his priority when he hosts the annual meeting of G8 foreign ministers next month in London.
"This visit is about hearing first hand from people who have endured rape and sexual violence during the conflict in the eastern DRC," Jolie said.
"We want to learn the lessons that their experience holds for how the world can protect thousands of women, men and children at risk of rape in many other conflict zones.
"And we want to persuade governments around the world to give this issue the attention it deserves.
"Unless the world acts, we will always be reacting to atrocities, treating survivors rather than preventing rape in the first place."
Jolie and Hague are calling on the G8 to agree that rape and sexual violence constitute breaches of the Geneva Conventions governing warfare.
They also want a new international protocol on the documentation and investigation of the issue.
Hague said: "More often than not the international community looks away, the perpetrators of these brutal crimes walk free and the cycle of injustice and conflict is repeated. We have to shatter this culture of impunity.
"It is time for real, meaningful action by the governments of the world to say that the use of rape as a weapon of war is unacceptable, to bring perpetrators to justice and to lift the stigma from survivors."
KENYA'S Supreme Court has ordered a recount of votes cast at 22 polling centres, after presidential elections in which a second-round run off was only avoided by the narrowest of margins.
"Retallying is to be done in 22 polling stations," said Supreme Court Judge Smokin Wanjala.
The counting of the March 4 ballots - a fraction of the total votes cast in some 32,000 centres nationwide - is scheduled to take place on Tuesday.
Official election results showed president-elect Uhuru Kenyatta won 50.07 per cent of the vote, only just breaking the first-round threshold by some 8000 ballots.
He was, however, around 800,000 votes ahead of his closest rival, outgoing Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
Odinga's party and civil society groups have filed separate legal challenges in Kenya's highest court alleging widespread irregularities in the polls.
The panel of six judges have until Saturday to decide whether Kenyatta should be confirmed as Kenya's new president or whether new elections should take place - a high-stakes test for a country still traumatised by deadly violence after the last polls five years ago.
The court also ordered the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to provide the voter registration list it used in the tally of the presidential vote after an electronic system failed.
The elections in 2007 were marred by similar complaints of fraud and descended into tribal bloodshed that killed more than 1100 people and caused hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.
Odinga claims the poll was marred by irregularities, including changes to the voter register, inflated numbers of registered voters and technical incompetence by the electoral commission.
He has urged supporters to stay calm while he challenges the outcome, and has promised to abide by the court's decision - which is expected this week.
SPAIN'S most feared bull, who killed three people and injured dozens of others at bullfighting fiestas, has died, with its owner wanting to have the half-tonne beast embalmed and put on display at a museum.
"It all happened within 24 hours. We found him a bit sickly and we gave him antibiotics but he died yesterday afternoon," Gregorio de Jesus, the owner of the bull named Raton, or Mouse in English, said by telephone from his breeding farm near the village of Sueca in the eastern region of Valencia.
The black bull, which had a distinctive triangular white marking between its horns, was given its name because he was so small when he was born 13 and a half years ago.
But he grew into a fearsome half-tonne beast whose record in the ring made him a legend and a big draw for spectators.
Raton killed three men at bullfighting fiestas in 2005, 2006 and 2011, according to de Jesus, who charged around 10,000 euros ($A12,500) for appearances in bull runs by Raton.
The most recent death took place at a bull run held as part of traditional annual fiesta in the town of Xativa in Valencia.
Video images show Raton lifting the victim, a man in his 30s, with his horns and tossing him to the floor before goring him with his horns.
"He had suffered from arthritis due to old age during the past few months but the animal was doing alright," de Jesus said of Raton, before adding the bull had last performed in the ring 10 days ago in Valencia.
De Jesus said he plans to have Raton embalmed and put on display at a museum he intends to set up on his breeding farm or in a nearby village.
THE Dutch state must compensate a former soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after his deployment to the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in 1995, a top judicial body has ruled.
The Centrale Raad van Beroep (CRvB), the Netherlands' highest administrative court, held the Dutch defence minister responsible, saying not enough was done to look after the soldier on and after his return to the Netherlands.
The soldier was identified in Dutch media as former corporal Dave Maat, and in court documents as the "Dutchbatter".
The name comes from the peacekeeping battalion of Dutch soldiers charged with protecting civilians at Srebrenica during Bosnia's brutal 1992-95 war.
As Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serb forces on July 11, "a mortar landed close to the Dutchbatter ... which led to psychological complaints", the CRvB said.
The soldier's lawyer Geert-Jan Knoops hailed a "landmark ruling for Dutch soldiers, but also for the rights of soldiers from other UN (peacekeeping) countries because the judicial boundaries of governments' health obligations for their soldiers are broadened."
Some 450 Dutch peacekeepers, charged with protecting Bosnian Muslim civilians in the "safe" enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995 were overrun by the Bosnian Serb army under command of General Ratko Mladic.
There followed the slaughter of almost 8000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys who were rounded up, murdered and dumped in mass graves in the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II.
The incident continues to reverberate in the Netherlands and led to the Dutch government's resignation in 2002, when a report was published laying much of the blame on Dutch politicians.
Mladic is currently on trial before the Yugoslav war crimes court in The Hague.
THE wreck of a German World War II submarine that was sunk with 48 people on board has been found off Norway's coast during work on an oil pipe, a maritime museum official says.
The U-486 was torpedoed and broken in two by a British submarine in April 1945, shortly after leaving the western Norwegian town of Bergen, according to Arild Maroey Hansen of the Bergen maritime museum.
There were no survivors.
Lying at a depth of some 250 metres, the wreck was found when Norwegian oil company Statoil was scouting the area as a possible location to lay down an oil pipe.
"The submarine had a special coating on the hull. It was a synthetic rubber coating designed to significantly reduce its radar signal," Maroey Hansen told Norwegian public radio NRK.
The U-486 lies some two kilometres from the German U-864 submarine, which was also sunk in 1945 with dozens of tonnes of mercury on board, a dangerous cargo which has caused politicians headaches for years.
They have been examining how to best limit the environmental risks posed by the mercury, hesitating between whether to lift the wreck - it is also broken in two parts - or to cover it in a hard sarcophagus.
THE European Union has suspended most of its sanctions against Zimbabwe following a "peaceful, successful and credible" referendum on a new constitution earlier this month.
However, 89-year-old President Robert Mugabe remained among 10 Zimbabweans still targeted by an EU travel ban and assets freeze, a European diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.
An EU statement welcoming the March 16 referendum said the 27-nation bloc had agreed to "immediately suspend" restrictive measures against 81 people - on a 91-name list - as well as eight of 10 firms or utilities also blacklisted.
"The EU congratulates the people of Zimbabwe on a peaceful, successful and credible vote to approve a new constitution," a statement said, adding that this "represents a significant step" towards general elections.
Elections to end a shaky unity government formed four years ago between Mugabe and his rival, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, are expected later this year, with Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa calling for polls before the end of June.
Details on those who remain on the list would be released in the next few days, said the source, who added that the controversial mining firm, the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation, also remained on the EU blacklist.
NGOs and diplomats claim the state-owned ZMDC, a major diamond and gold mining company which operates five diamond mines in the controversial Marange fields, was channelling money to Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.
The targeted sanctions were first imposed in 2002, with the EU citing political violence, human rights abuses and the failure to hold free and fair elections in the southern African nation.
