World News joined 5

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for this.

[OMEN]

Canberra - Representatives for Australian Aborigines confirmed plans Friday to launch the first compensation lawsuits since a landmark government apology earlier this week for past abuses.

The cases, details of which were not released because they had not yet been filed, would be the first since Parliament made a formal apology on Wednesday to tens of thousands of Aborigines who were taken from their families as children under now discredited assimilation policies.

An activist and a lawyer representing some members of the so-called "Stolen Generations" of Aborigines said on Friday as many as 40 claims for compensation were being prepared in Victoria state.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has ruled out setting up a compensation fund for victims of the policies, which lasted from 1910 until the 1970s, and legal experts say the apology does not strengthen chances of compensation being won through the courts.

Several cases have been filed in the past but most have failed. Lawyers say proving the harm inflicted by the policies in a legal sense is extremely difficult.

Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard, standing in for Rudd who is overseas, reiterated on Friday the government would not offer compensation to head off court action.

Dozens of lawsuits pending

Lawyer Jack Rush said he was representing Aborigine Neville Austin, but declined to discuss specifics of the case. Austin also declined to comment.

A newspaper reported on Friday that Austin intends to sue the state of Victoria for unspecified damages, alleging he was taken by authorities in 1964 from a hospital where he had been admitted as a five-month-old baby with a chest infection.

He then lived in foster homes and orphanages until he turned 18, the Herald Sun newspaper reported.

His cousin, Lyn Austin, head of the state advocacy group Stolen Generations Victoria, said dozens of lawsuits were pending.

"I cannot make comment on that case at all," she told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio, referring to her cousin's case.

"I do know that there are another 30 or 40 that are going to be doing a civil action claim."

Rudd won wide acclaim on Wednesday by leading the Parliament in apologising for the racist assimilation policies.

He received a letter of congratulations from the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, dated the day of the apology, Rudd's office said on Friday,

But Rudd has been widely criticised for refusing to pay compensation for their suffering.

Compensation fund

About 100 000 children were forcibly taken from their parents in an effort to make them grow up like white Australians.

Aborigine Bruce Trevorrow was awarded A$775 000 in damages and interest this month from the South Australia state government. He was taken from a hospital without his parents' knowledge 50 years ago.

Australia's smallest state, Tasmania, is the only government to establish a compensation fund for Aborigines.

AP

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the read.

[OMEN]

New Brunswick - A nine-year-old boy accused in the beating death of a toddler at a daycare centre last summer has been found guilty of the juvenile equivalent of manslaughter.

The boy, identified only as "JL," was "adjudicated delinquent" and sentenced to 18 months probation. He must continue the counselling and therapy he was already undergoing, the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office said on Thursday night.

Prosecutors had sought to have the youth serve a three-year sentence at a juvenile facility, the maximum allowed under law.

The boy was originally charged with aggravated manslaughter in the August 23 death of 11-month-old Tahir Francis, who died from head injuries after being kicked at the Beverly Bryant Family Day Care facility in Woodbridge Township.

It was still not clear what provoked the attack.

Beverly Bryant, 64, who operated the licensed facility out of her home, was not in the room when the infant was kicked. Authorities had said Bryant was distracted by a phone call and other home chores.

The centre was ordered closed and Bryant was charged with child endangerment. She had pleaded not guilty.

AP

[JohnCenaFan28]

These sort of thing just keeps happening these days...

[OMEN]

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday registered as a candidate in the March 29 elections, facing a challenge from a former ally who has vowed to make the crumbling economy the focus of the campaign.

Mugabe is seeking another five-year term to extend his 28-year rule of the once-prosperous southern African country.

Rivals say his re-election would be a disaster for Zimbabweans who are suffering amid an economic meltdown, highlighted on Thursday when Zimbabwe said annualised inflation topped 66,000 per cent in December - a new record.

Millions of Zimbabweans are expected to vote in the presidential, parliamentary and municipal polls. Mugabe and his opponents have described the event as a landmark election in the country's post-independence period.

"We're very confident of victory, 99.9 per cent confident," Emerson Mnangagwa, a cabinet minister and official with the ruling ZANU-PF party, told reporters after presenting Mugabe's election registration papers to a court in Harare.

The opposition is concerned the elections will not be free. Mugabe has been widely accused of rigging the last three major elections and of using security forces to quell dissent.

Earlier this week Mugabe, who turns 84 next week, told state media that he was "raring to go" into the election.

But Mugabe, who was described as a "discredited dictator" on Thursday by United States President George W Bush, must contend with Simba Makoni, a renegade former finance minister who is running for president as an independent.

The ZANU-PF expelled Makoni, 58, earlier this week after he announced what many observers consider the most serious challenge to the veteran Zimbabwean leader, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980.

Makoni, accompanied by his wife, filed his registration papers at the court in Harare on Friday.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the main faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, the country's largest opposition party, also filed on Friday to contest the presidential election, although he did not do so in person.

The leader of a smaller faction of the MDC has pulled out of the race and is expected to back Makoni.

Makoni's entry could split the opposition vote and spur Mugabe's re-election in spite of the nation's economic misery.

Critics say government mismanagement has plunged the country into a crisis that is marked by soaring poverty, widespread malnutrition and chronic food and fuel shortages.

Mugabe says the problems are the result of sabotage by Western powers who are opposed to his policy of seizing white-owned farms and redistributing the land to blacks.

Despite accusations of widespread human rights violations, Mugabe is regarded in much of Africa as an anti-colonial champion and hero of the liberation era of the 1960s and 1970s.

Reuters

There is no way that any election Robert Mugabe takes part in is going to be a fair contest....He can't afford it to be....

[JohnCenaFan28]

Hmm, interesting...:think:

[JohnCenaFan28]

A controversial website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US.

Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a California court ruling, the site says.

The case was brought by a Swiss bank after "several hundred" documents were posted about its offshore activities.

Other versions of the pages, hosted in countries such as Belgium and India, can still be accessed.

However, the main site was taken offline after the court ordered that Dynadot, which controls the site's domain name, should remove all traces of wikileaks from its servers.

The court also ordered that Dynadot should "prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court."

Other orders included that the domain name be locked "to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar" to prevent changes being made to the site.

Wikileaks claimed that the order was "unconstitutional" and said that the site had been "forcibly censored".

Web names

The case was brought by lawyers working for the Swiss banking group Julius Baer. It concerned several documents posted on the site which allegedly reveal that the bank was involved with money laundering and tax evasion.

Wikileaks logo
The site was founded in 2006

The documents were allegedly posted by Rudolf Elmer, former vice president of the bank's Cayman Island's operation.

A spokesperson for Julius Baer said he could not comment on the case because of "pending legal proceedings".

The BBC understands that Julius Baer asked for the documents to be removed because they could have an impact on a separate legal case ongoing in Switzerland.

The court hearing took place last week and Dynadot blocked access from Friday evening.

Wikileaks says it was not represented at the hearing because it was "given only hours notice" via e-mail.

A document signed by Judge Jeffery White, who presided over the case, ordered Dynadot to follow six court orders.

As well as removing all records of the site form its servers, the hosting and domain name firm was ordered to produce "all prior or previous administrative and account records and data for the wikileaks.org domain name and account".

The order also demanded that details of the site's registrant, contacts, payment records and "IP addresses and associated data used by any person...who accessed the account for the domain name" to be handed over.

Wikileaks allows users to post documents anonymously.

Information bank

The site was founded in 2006 by dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and technologists from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.

It so far claims to have published more than 1.2 million documents.

It provoked controversy when it first appeared on the net with many commentators questioning the motives of the people behind the site.

It recently made available a confidential briefing document relating to the collapse of the UK's Northern Rock bank.

Lawyers working on behalf of the bank attempted to have the documents removed from the site. They can still be accessed.

Dynadot was contacted for this article but have so far not responded to requests for comment.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

The Vatican has issued new rules making the route to sainthood more difficult.



Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins called for more rigour and sobriety in the Catholic Church's saint making process.

Cardinal Martins, the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, issued new guidelines to clarify and modernise the procedure.

He stressed the need for a "true reputation for holiness" among sainthood candidates to be established before the process begins.

The Portuguese prelate suggested not enough rigour had been applied in the past when bishops forwarded cases to the Vatican.

'Saint factory'

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints makes exhaustive enquiries into the lives of men and women proposed for official sainthood.


BEATIFICATION PROCESS
Beatification requires that a miracle has occurred
Group approaches local bishop
After Rome's approval an investigation is launched
Findings are sent to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints
Case is presented to the Pope
Blessed may be accorded a feast day
Relics of the candidate may be venerated in local diocese
Canonisation (actual sainthood) requires proof of a second miracle

Reasons for the fast track

Critics have suggested the department has become what they call a "saint factory", overwhelmed by the high number of applicants for sainthood which are originally suggested at local level.

There are more than 2,200 dossiers pending, some of which have been on file for decades, even centuries, says the BBC's David Willey in Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, beatified more people than all his predecessors put together.

In his 27-year pontificate he beatified more than 1,338 people and canonised 482.

Fast-tracked

Pope Benedict has tried to restrict the numbers of men and women who are proposed as role models for saintly life in the 21st Century, our correspondent says.

Pope John Paul II
The current Pope has fast-tracked the sainthood cause of John Paul II

But even he has fast-tracked some candidates for sainthood, notably John Paul II himself.

The case of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the Salvadorian church leader who was gunned down while celebrating Mass in 1980, and is already venerated as a Saint and miracle worker in Latin America, has been put on hold while further investigations are made.

To put Archbishop Romero on the path to sainthood, Cardinal Martins said the Church must first determine that he was killed for religious reasons rather than political ones.

Cardinal Martins also denied reports that the case of Pope Pius XII had been halted, and defended the wartime Pope against accusations that he was silent about the Holocaust.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

A bomb blast in southern Afghanistan has killed at least 35 civilians. Many people were injured, including three Nato soldiers, officials say.

The blast, apparently targeting Canadian troops in a Nato convoy, took place in Spin Boldak town in Kandahar province, near the Pakistani border.

A bomber in Kandahar city on Sunday killed more than 100 people - the country's bloodiest attack since 2001.

Nato troops in Afghanistan have been battling a resurgent Taleban militia.

Fifteen international troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year, most of them from the US.

Some 40,000 soldiers from Nato countries are deployed in the country, where their tasks include aiding reconstruction, tackling opium cultivation and battling the Taleban.

Taleban blamed

Monday's attack in Spin Boldak targeted a convoy of Canadian troops serving under Nato.

Funeral for bomb victim in Kandahar
Funerals for those killed in Sunday's attack were held on Monday

According to Asadullah Khalid, the governor of Kandahar province, three Canadian troops were hurt in the attack.

"The suicide attacker detonated near a Canadian military convoy," the governor of Kandahar province, Asadullah Khalid, said.

He said 35 civilians were killed and 27 civilians were hurt.

The bomb also badly damaged a military vehicle and set fire to several shops in the area, a local police official said.

The nearby border had been closed, as part of a series of security measures for Pakistani elections on Monday.

According to the Associated Press news agency, the crossing was briefly opened to take some of those hurt in the blast to a hospital in the Pakistani town of Chaman nearby.

Earlier on Monday, funerals were held in Kandahar for the victims of Sunday's suicide attack.


MAJOR TALEBAN ATTACKS
29 Dec 2007: 16 policemen killed in Kandahar
6 Nov 2007: At least 70 die in attack on sugar factory in Baghlan province
29 Sep 2007: At least 30 soldiers killed in bus attack in Kabul
16 Jan 2006: At least 24 people killed in two attacks in Kandahar

Deadliest Afghan attacks
In pictures: Kandahar blast

Weeping relatives buried the dead, many of them in graves dug next to each other.

Sunday's bombing - believed to be the bloodiest since the overthrow of the Taleban in 2001 - hit a crowd watching a dogfight near the city.

The dead included a local police chief who also led a tribal militia opposed to the Taleban.

Officials blamed the Islamist Taleban guerrillas but they have denied responsibility.

Spreading influence

The Taleban claim to have influence across most of the country and have extended their area of control from their traditional heartland in the south.

They have a significant presence around Kandahar from where they carry out suicide attacks and roadside bomb blasts.

The militants are also known to operate freely in Wardak province, neighbouring the capital Kabul.

Last year, violence in Afghanistan reached its highest levels since the Taleban were forced from power in 2001, analysts say.

Last November, a suicide bombing in the northern Baghlan province killed 79 people - mostly school pupils - in what was until then the bloodiest bombing since the Taleban were ousted in 2001.

BBC News