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[OMEN]

Spanish truckers have begun an indefinite strike over rocketing fuel prices, smashing windscreens of vehicles that crossed picket lines and Spaniards stockpiled petrol over fears of shortages.

Long lines of trucks formed on the Spanish-French border today, Spanish television showing pictures of vehicles with broken windscreens, lights ripped out and tyres punctured after they tried to defy the strike.

Long queues formed outside Spanish petrol stations and at some hypermarkets, and truckers say supermarkets will run out of goods within days once the strike bites.

The truckers have put up blockades throughout Spain in their call for assistance to cope with a more than a 35 percent increase in fuel costs this year.

Truckers' leaders dismissed a government offer of credit lines and other measures for drivers on Sunday as insufficient.

FUEL PRICE PROTESTS DISRUPT TWO INDIAN STATES

Indian police used water canon and batons in Kashmir on Monday to disperse hundreds of government employees protesting over fuel price rises, while a general strike also shut down the northeastern state of Assam.

Elsewhere in the country, though, life continued as normal as protests over last week's rise in fuel prices appeared to taper off.

India increased petrol and diesel prices by around 10 percent last Wednesday, after the cost of subsidising fuel in the face of record-breaking crude prices had brought state oil companies close to bankruptcy.

With less than a year to go to elections, the government's communist allies and the opposition called for protests against the move, but many people complained that strikes in several states last week had only made a difficult situation worse.

The fuel price blow was also cushioned after several state governments announced duty cuts of between two and five percentage points, although Kashmir has not yet announced any duty cuts and Assam made only a tiny cut in sales tax.

In Kashmir, dozens of people were also detained after government employees gathered outside the office of the state's chief minister in the heart of Srinagar to protest against the fuel price rise.

"Roll back price of petrol, diesel and cooking gas," the protesters shouted before being dispersed by police.

A four-day strike called by private transport operators demanding an increase in passenger fares and freight charges also forced thousands of people to walk to work.

Reuters

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[OMEN]

Australia is to lead the way on kick-starting the faltering nuclear disarmament process, with former foreign minister Gareth Evans to co-chair an international commission.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced his plan to establish an international commission on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament after an emotional visit to the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Japan, the only country to have come under nuclear attack, will be asked to take part, as will other nations, Mr Rudd told students at Kyoto University.

"It's impossible to visit Hiroshima and not be moved by what you see," Mr Rudd told reporters after his speech.

"It is a graphic human story of the horrendous impact of nuclear weapons."

The bomb that flattened Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing 140,000 people, was a single 15 kilotonne bomb.

"Across the world today we have some 10,000 nuclear warheads currently in operation and some 20,000 in storage - many, and probably most, of greater capacity than that bomb which took out Hiroshima all those years ago," Mr Rudd said.

The commission will examine the work of two similar earlier panels, the Australian-led Canberra Commission and Japan's Tokyo Forum, to develop a plan of action for the next nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference in 2010.

Its first task will be to report to a major international conference of experts in Australia late next year.

Mr Rudd will discuss the question of who should co-chair the commission alongside Mr Evans with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda in Tokyo on Thursday.

Mr Rudd said the NPT was under great pressure with some countries developing nuclear weapons outside its framework and others like North Korea defying the international community and leaving the treaty altogether.

"There are two courses of action available to the community of nations - to allow the NPT to continue to fragment, or to exert every global effort to restore and defend the treaty," he said.

The focus on the danger of nuclear weapons had dropped off since the end of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States and stockpiles dwindled from their peaks in the late 1980s, he said.

Russia and the US had negotiated treaties to cut the number of weapons while South Africa and Ukraine had shown it was possible for nuclear states to disarm.

"We no longer live with the daily fear of nuclear war between the superpowers. But nuclear weapons remain," he told the students.

"New states continue to seek to acquire them. Some states, including states in our own region, are expanding their existing capacity.

"Hiroshima reminds us of the terrible power of these weapons ... Hiroshima should remind us that we must be vigilant afresh to stop their continued proliferation."


AAP

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[OMEN]

Britain's Labour Party deputy leader Harriet Harman was forced to leave home as two protesters camped out on her roof to demand that divorced fathers be given better access to their children.

The two are from the Fathers 4 Justice protest group, which has staged several high profile stunts in the past including pelting then Prime Minister Tony Blair with condoms full of purple flour in the House of Commons debating chamber in 2006.

Police surrounded Harman's house in south London and waited for the two costumed men, who said they had enough food for a week, to come down.

"I don't think it is fair to the police resources to be tied up outside my house because of this demonstration when they could be doing other important policing work," she told reporters outside her home.

"I also think it is unfair on the neighbours, so we are moving out," she said, adding that although the protesters said they wanted to meet her they had made no attempt to do so.

Fathers 4 Justice says the justice system is prejudiced against divorced fathers, denying them basic visitation rights to see their children.

The two protesters, clad as comic superheroes, hung a banner reading "A father is for life not just conception" down the side of the house and gave media interviews on mobile phones as they sat on the roof in balmy summer weather.

Fathers 4 Justice founder Matt O'Connor, who was not in the rooftop protest, told Reuters the pair had simply walked into Harman's garden while she was at home and used a ladder to climb onto the house.

He said he had asked to meet Harman through his member of parliament but had been rebuffed.

"Harriett Harman and the government have refused all dialogue with F4J for the past two years," O'Connor said.

"We are now resuming a full-scale campaign of direct action against the government, its ministers and the judiciary. F4J is now the last line in the defence of fatherhood."


Reuters

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[Black Widow]

Doctors have revealed how the teenage daughter of Austrian rapist Josef Fritzl said "hello" to them as she was woken from a coma - and later said she wants to go to a Robbie Williams gig.

Kerstin was unconscious and critically ill when admitted to hospital on April 19 and placed on a life support machine.

She was put in a medically-induced coma and has now been successfully revived.

At a news conference in Amstetten, Austria, doctors said her recovery had been surprising and "a great relief". There should be no major lasting damage.

Kerstin, 19, was the eldest of seven children fathered by Fritzl, 73, and his daughter Elisabeth, who was imprisoned in a dungeon underneath the family home in Amstetten for 24 years.

"She opened her eyes and showed emotions for the first time, we laughed and she laughed," said Amstetten hospital chief Albert Reiter, adding that Elisabeth Fritzl was able to quickly visit her daughter.

"It was important that the mother came to her daughter's bedside," said Mr Reiter, noting the hospital had managed to keep these visits hidden from the media.

Doctors revealed how they had created a flat for the family where they could live a normal life. Three teachers are providing the children with lessons.

Kerstin is having therapy to rebuild her emotional and physical strength. She has been taking steps accompanied by her mother.

She can read and write and has expressed the desire to go on a boat and to see a Robbie Williams concert.

Mr Reiter said: "Even three days before her breathing apparatus was removed she was lying there almost dancing in her bed listening to Robbie Williams, so for me that was really the time when we (decided to) force through the mobilisation."

Kerstin had spent her entire life in the windowless cellar with her mum, now aged 42, and two brothers.

Three of her other siblings lived "normal" lives as Fritzl's "grandchildren" while another child died shortly after birth.

Doctors told reporters the family's reunion had been "a wonderful coming together - beautiful to see".

Kerstin's admission to hospital lifted the lid on the 'House of Horrors' abuse scandal.

Her mother and siblings are currently staying at a nearby psychiatric clinic.

Fritzl, who remains in custody pending charges, had confessed to the abuse, police have said.


Sky News

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[Black Widow]

The wife of the man who tried to bomb a London Tube station has been convicted of keeping secret his plans for "carnage and mass murder".

Yeshi Girma, 32, knew all along of Hussain Osman's plot to massacre travellers at Shepherd's Bush station on July 21, 2005.

But she did not warn police of the attack, the Old Bailey heard.

It was only because of the fact that the bomb had been put together so badly that there was not a repeat of the July 7 attacks that had rocked the capital two weeks earlier, killing 52 people.

Girma, of Stockwell, south London, was found guilty by the Old Bailey jury of having information about terrorism and "without reasonable excuse" failing to disclose it.

Just over half an hour after his failed attack on the station, Osman was on the phone to his wife to set in motion an escape plan, the court heard.

Girma, the mother of Osman's three children, helped him flee to Brighton.

He later took a Eurostar train to Paris then travelled on to Rome, where he was arrested.

The court heard that Girma knew her husband had fallen under the spell of radical Islamists.

She even allowed him to take their young son away to a training camp in Cumbria where he met four of the five other July 21 plotters.

Her own fingerprints were discovered on tapes featuring "extremist Islamic preaching" by firebrands such as Abu Hamza.

Max Hill QC, prosecuting, said: "Yeshi Girma had prior knowledge of the events of 21/7. She had some information about what the bombers intended to do on 21/7, but failed to bring this to the attention of the police."

Girma claimed in court she did not live with her husband and knew little of the plot.

Mulu Girma, 24, from Brighton, and Esayas Girma, 22, from Stockwell, Yeshi's sister and brother, were both found guilty of failing to disclose information.

Mulu's boyfriend Mohamed Kabashi, 25, from Brighton, pleaded guilty to both charges before the three-and-a-half-month trial, jurors have been told.

Kabashi's flatmates Shadi Abdelgadir, 25, and Omer Almagboul, 22, also from Brighton, were both cleared of the allegations.


Sky News

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