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A Melbourne teacher who had sex with a 15-year-old student who sent him flirtatious text messages has been jailed for 18 months.
David Barry Quinn, 33, had sex with the student four times, including on one occasion when he picked up the student from her home in the middle of the night and took her to the Dandenong Ranges.
He pleaded guilty in the Victorian County Court to four counts of sexual penetration of a child under 16.
In sentencing Quinn, Judge Frances Millane noted he twice denied the relationship when confronted by the school principal.
She said he had committed a "gross breach of trust", although it was clear the victim was a willing participant.
Quinn was sentenced to a total of two years and 10 months in prison, with one year and four months suspended.
Reuters
Britain's opposition Conservative Party has gained a mid-term parliamentary seat from the ruling Labour Party, a new setback to Prime Minister Gordon Brown's fading political fortunes.
The Conservatives' win in the northern town of Crewe was the party's first gain from Labour in a mid-term election since 1978, the year before Margaret Thatcher seized victory and condemned the party to 18 years in the political wilderness.
The election, triggered by the death of the constituency's Labour member of parliament, is being closely watched as an indicator of Brown's diminishing appeal 11 months after he took over as prime minister from Tony Blair.
Brown's popularity ratings have collapsed since October after he backed away from calling an early election.
Some Labour members are asking whether he is the best man to lead them into a parliamentary election due by 2010.
The Conservatives believe victory in this Labour heartland would signal that the political wind has turned in their favour, putting them on track to unseat Brown.
More recently, Labour suffered a drubbing in May 1 local council elections and is struggling to restore public confidence after a botched tax reform left many of the poorest worse off.
Rising living costs and anxiety over a potential housing market slump have added to the government's woes.
Lifelong Labour voters on the streets of Crewe and the neighbouring market town of Nantwich on Thursday blamed Labour for the rising cost of living and said they had had enough.
While the election was for a single parliamentary seat, voters were aware of its significance for the national picture.
"I think Labour had lost it before this," said taxi driver Terry Clorley, 63, referring to the next general poll. Clorley said he voted Conservative for the first time on Thursday.
"They must know the writing is on the wall," said 60-year-old Patrick Sutton, also a lifelong Labour supporter who switched to Conservative candidate Edward Simpson.
Brown could now face a renewed backlash from members of his Labour Party who already doubt his ability to win.
The single-seat election was triggered by the death of Labour incumbent Gwyneth Dunwoody, who held it for 34 years. Her daughter Tamsin, a 49-year-old single mother, ran for Labour.
Voters said the rising cost of food and fuel, the government's mishandling of tax reform and a negative campaign run by Labour had prompted the move to the Conservatives.
Analysts will now probe the numbers to see how big the swing was from Labour to the Conservatives and what that means for a future national election.
Reuters
"Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe has begun a legal challenge to win freedom, on the grounds that the government failed to set the exact length of his sentence.
Sutcliffe, 61, was jailed for life in 1981 for the murders of 13 women over five years in one of Britain's most notorious criminal cases.
His London law firm Bindmans said the state has a legal obligation to set a tariff, the minimum term that life sentence prisoners must serve before becoming eligible for parole.
"Any prisoner is entitled to have a tariff set within a reasonable time of conviction which will set out the minimum term of imprisonment to be served," it said in a statement.
Media reports said Sutcliffe wants to be moved back into the prison system from the Broadmoor secure hospital in Berkshire, where he has been treated for mental illness.
If he is returned to prison, his condition would be reassessed and the length of his sentence formally laid down, the BBC said.
His solicitor Saimo Chahal and barrister Paul Bowen would make no comment beyond their prepared statement.
It said an unnamed court was due to consider the case of "Peter Coonan", the name Sutcliffe now uses, under the terms of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
The court will set a tariff in due course, the statement added, without giving further details.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "We do not comment on individuals. Sentencing is a matter for the courts."
A Home Office spokeswoman declined to comment.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith told the BBC News website: "Top of my list of priorities, I have to say, is not Peter Sutcliffe's rights, it's the rights of those people who were his victims, and how we keep this country safe." Sutcliffe preyed on lone women, some of them prostitutes, in Bradford and Leeds in a five-year reign of terror.
He gained the name the Yorkshire Ripper because of the way he mutilated his victims after murdering them, as did the original Jack the Ripper in east London 120 years ago.
Reuters
Republican John McCain has taken aim at presidential rival Barack Obama's lack of military service, drawing a rebuke from the Democratic front-runner for his "endless diatribes and schoolyard taunts".
McCain's opposition to Senate legislation that would expand educational benefits for military veterans ignited a heated crossfire between the two White House contenders as they gear up for November's presidential election campaign.
McCain, a former Navy pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam, reacted sharply after Obama criticised him for opposing the legislation. The Arizona senator did not return to the Senate to vote on the measure, which passed easily.
"I take a backseat to no one in my affection, respect and devotion to veterans," McCain said. "And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did."
Obama, an Illinois senator who did not serve in the military, said he was proud to "give our veterans the support and opportunity they deserve" by voting for the bill. He said in a statement he was disappointed by McCain's attack.
"These endless diatribes and schoolyard taunts from the McCain campaign do nothing to advance the debate about what matters to the American people," Obama said.
The blistering exchange came as both candidates turn their attention to a likely match-up in November's presidential election. McCain has clinched the Republican nomination, and Obama has moved within reach of the Democratic nomination.
Obama's remaining rival, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, has promised to stay in the race despite his nearly unassailable lead in delegates who will select the Democratic nominee at the August convention.
The legislation that sparked the exchange was sponsored by Virginia Democratic Senator James Webb and Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, both military veterans.
McCain and the Bush administration said it was so generous it could encourage veterans to leave the military after one term to take advantage of the increased college benefits.
In his Senate speech, Obama said he respected McCain's military service "but I can't understand why he would line up behind the president in opposition."
McCain, who has stepped up his criticism of Obama but had not previously mentioned his lack of military service, said Obama had no right to criticise him on the issue.
"It is typical, but no less offensive, that Senator Obama uses the Senate floor to take cheap shots at an opponent and easy advantage of an issue he has less than zero understanding of," McCain said.
The exchange came as McCain campaigned in California, where he rejected the endorsement of a Texas preacher after the pastor was discovered to have made derogatory comments about Jews.
"Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them," McCain said of the remarks by John Hagee. "I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well."
McCain's statement came after The Huffington Post website reported on a late 1990s sermon Hagee gave in which he quoted from the Bible to make the argument that God's will had its influence on Nazism.
"'And they the hunters should hunt them,' that will be the Jews. `From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.' If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust, you can't see that," Hagee had said.
McCain previously had distanced himself from Hagee, founder of Cornerstone Church of San Antonio, Texas, but still accepted his endorsement because of Hagee's influence with evangelical Christians.
McCain, 71, plans to show a small group of reporters his medical records on Friday before he enjoys the Memorial Day holiday weekend at his Arizona vacation house with three potential vice-presidential candidates – Florida Governor Charlie Crist, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
Obama also has begun thinking about his potential vice-presidential choice, asking Jim Johnson, the former chief executive of government mortgage giant Fannie Mae, to begin the search, TheAtlantic.com reported.
Johnson performed a similar role for Democratic candidates John Kerry in 2004 and Walter Mondale in 1984.
McCain campaigned on Thursday in California's Silicon Valley, attending an economic discussion with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and local business leaders.
Reuters
The master of the Pasha Bulker was largely to blame for the bulk carrier running aground on a Newcastle beach, an Australian investigation has found.
The 225-metre coal carrier became an instant tourist attraction when it became wedged on a sandbar off Nobbys Beach during wild storms on June 8 last year.
It remained stranded just metres from the shoreline for 25 days while a massive salvage operation was planned and executed.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau today released its final report into the incident, which found the ship's master did not appropriately ballast the ship and did not weigh anchor until it was dragged in severe weather.
"The unwise decision not to ballast the ship for heavy weather and remain at anchor were the result of his inadequate knowledge of issues related to ballast, anchor-holding power and local weather," the report said.
The Pasha Bulker's safety management system did not give the master guidance about safely putting to sea in poor weather.
The report, which makes 11 recommendations, also found the queue of 57 ships off Newcastle at the time of the incident increased the risks of collision and grounding.
Reuters
A new chapter in Mars exploration opens on Sunday when a small robotic probe jets down to the planet's arctic circle to learn if ice beneath its surface ever had the right chemistry to support life.
NASA approved the mission, known as Phoenix, after the Mars orbiter Odyssey found ice surrounding the polar caps in 2002. Five probes landed near Mars' equatorial zones, including the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which discovered signs of past surface water. Odyssey found no sign of buried ice around Mars' equator.
"We're going way to the north," said Peter Smith, a planetary geologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson who heads the Phoenix science team.
On Earth, the arctic regions hold the history of the planet's climate changes, which are locked layer by layer into the ice core.
"This is where the history of life is preserved in its purest form – organic molecules and cellular bacterial microbes and so forth," Smith said.
"We're wondering if this is true on Mars," he said.
Phoenix is not going to search for life directly, but it should be able to determine if the Martian ice was ever liquid. Liquid water is believed to be an essential ingredient for life to exist.
Among Phoenix's science instruments are small ovens to vaporise and chemically analyse the Martian ice, revealing, some of the processes the molecules underwent before reaching their present condition. Other sensors will study minerals in the soil and ice and image the shape and structure of individual grains in the soil.
"We're really trying to understand if the ice has ever melted, because it's liquid water that is required for a habitable zone," Smith said.
"We'll leave future missions the task of figuring out who's living there," he added.
The US space agency faces a formidable obstacle before its new round of Mars studies can begin.
Phoenix has to land in a process that requires it to slow itself from 19,000kph to zero in seven minutes.
"This will be a very nail-biting time for us," said Fuk Li, the Mars Exploration programme manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which oversees Phoenix.
From 274 millionkm away, flight controllers will only be able to watch and wait to learn Phoenix's fate. Radio signals from Mars travelling at the speed of light take 15 minutes to reach Earth, so by the time flight controllers learn that the probe has begun its descent it already should have landed.
Finally, Phoenix has to unfurl its solar power panels to begin collecting energy from the Sun. Otherwise its batteries will last just 31 hours.
"All of these events have to occur exactly as planned," said project manager Barry Goldstein. "The team is very confident in that we've done everything we can."
Reuters
Violence that followed Zimbabwe's disputed March elections has started to decline throughout the country, acting Attorney General Bharat Patel was quoted as saying by state media.
"From the feedback received by the Attorney General's office, it would appear that the scale and occurrence of public violence has begun to abate throughout the country," Patel said in a report published by the Herald newspaper.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change says 43 of its supporters have been killed by militias loyal to President Robert Mugabe since the March 29 elections.
It says the violence is intended to help rig a June 27 run-off presidential vote pitting Mugabe against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The government has blamed the opposition for the violence.
Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the MDC are expected to hold talks on Friday in a multi-party committee facilitated by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission as part of preparations for the presidential run-off.
The first talks under the liaison committee will discuss problems encountered by the parties so far in their campaigns for the run-off, officials say.
Tsvangirai is due to return home on Saturday for the first time since April 8. His return was postponed last weekend after the MDC said it had learnt he was the target of a military intelligence assassination plot.
According to official results, which did not emerge for five weeks after the March 29 election, Tsvangirai beat Mugabe but fell short of the absolute majority needed for outright victory.
Zimbabweans hope the run-off will start recovery from an economic collapse that has brought 165,000 per cent inflation, 80 per cent unemployment, chronic food and fuel shortages and has sent millions fleeing to nearby countries.
The MDC has vowed to "bury" Mugabe in the run-off, ending his uninterrupted rule since independence from Britain in 1980.
Reuters
Anti-immigrant violence has spread to South Africa's second largest city, Cape Town, where mobs attacked Somalis and Zimbabweans and looted their homes and shops, police have said.
Hundreds of African migrants were evacuated overnight from a squatter camp near Cape Town, the hub of South Africa's prized tourism industry. Somali-owned shops also were looted in Knysna, a resort town on the southwestern coast.
"We don't know the exact number of shops looted and burnt, but it's a lot," said Billy Jones, senior superintendent with the Western Cape provincial police.
He added that one Somali died overnight but it was unclear whether the death was linked to the attacks.
At least 42 people have been killed and more than 25,000 driven from their homes in 12 days of attacks by mobs that accuse African migrants of taking jobs and fuelling crime. More than 500 people have been arrested.
The unrest began in Johannesburg area townships but has spread to other provinces. Authorities warned more attacks were expected over the weekend and said they would seek additional assistance from the military if necessary.
Troops have joined police in operations in Johannesburg's seething shantytowns. President Thabo Mbeki approved army intervention to quell unrest that has threatened to destabilise Africa's largest economy.
The South African currency fell sharply earlier this week on the back of the violence. The rand was slightly firmer on Friday at 7.63 to the US dollar.
The violence comes amid power shortages and growing disaffection over Mbeki's pro-business policies. Soaring food and fuel prices helped push tensions between poor South Africans and immigrants to a breaking point. The attacks have also sent a chill through the business community.
Officials in the tourism industry, a cornerstone of the economy, are worried overseas visitors will avoid the country. A number of Western governments have issued travel warnings for South Africa, and tour companies report rising cancellations.
Nearly one million South Africans earn their living from tourism, which accounts for 8 per cent of the country's gross domestic product. The country is hoping to draw an additional half a million tourists for the 2010 soccer World Cup.
South Africa had attracted millions of African immigrants with the prospect of work in its booming economy and an immigration and asylum policy that was considered one of the most liberal in the world. That reputation is now in tatters.
Thousands of African migrants have chosen to return home.
Mozambique said more than 10,000 migrants and their families had left South Africa since the violence broke out, and officials in the Portuguese-speaking southern African nation expected the number to swell in the coming days.
Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Thursday that officials in his Movement for Democratic Change would help arrange transportation for refugees who wanted to go home to Zimbabwe, which is mired in a deep economic crisis.
Tsvangirai is trying to unseat President Robert Mugabe in a June 27 presidential run-off vote.
There are an estimated three million Zimbabweans in South Africa, making them the biggest immigrant group.
Some Zimbabweans are willing to go home despite Zimbabwe's hyperinflation, shortages of food, and an upsurge in political violence since disputed elections almost two months ago.
Others, however, are waiting it out in overcrowded shelters.
Bishop Paul Verryn of the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg, where many Zimbabweans have fled, said tensions were high among refugees, who still feared further attacks.
"One senses a profound anxiety and fear," Verryn told the South African Broadcasting Corp.
Reuters
Democrat Barack Obama has accused rival Hillary Clinton of "stirring up" a controversy over the disqualified Florida primary election because it was her last hope of winning their party's presidential nomination.
Obama, an Illinois senator, is leading Clinton, a New York senator, in delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination to face Republican John McCain in the November election. The delegates are awarded in state nominating contests that kicked off in January.
Florida's and Michigan's delegates were stripped of their rights to be seated at the party's August convention – when the nominee is formally chosen – because their contests were held too early in the year, in breach of party rules.
Clinton, who won both contests, has long argued the delegates should be seated and awarded based on the popular vote. She made a trip to Florida this week to press her case.
"The Clinton campaign has been stirring this up for fairly transparent reasons," Obama told reporters on the plane from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Chicago, adding she had not done so earlier in the race when she did not need the delegates to win.
"Let's not. . . pretend that we don't know what's going on. I mean this is, from their perspective, their last slender hope to make arguments about how they can win, and I understand that," Obama said.
Neither Clinton nor Obama campaigned in either state before the primary elections, and the Illinois senator removed his name from the Michigan ballot. Obama spent three days campaigning in Florida this week.
A party committee will meet next Saturday to seek a resolution to the conflict. Obama said he wanted the delegates seated and brushed off arguments that voter anger at his less aggressive role in resolving the issue would cause lasting resentment among Democratic voters in Florida, a battleground state in November's general election.
"I think that anger will go away once it's resolved," he said, questioning whether those who were upset were only Clinton supporters or other voters as well.
"I want to make the Florida delegates seated. And once they're seated, then I think this is going to be a story that nobody's thinking about come August."
Obama has not called for Clinton to drop out of the race and has been careful to avoid alienating her supporters.
He said on Saturday he would need to "pivot quickly" in June, if he obtains the number of delegates to secure the nomination, to engage in a search for a vice-presidential running mate.
"I think we'll have ample time, should I be the nominee, to engage in that process."
Reuters