Hornets fly Iraq missions, but no bombings

More Australian combat missions against Islamic State forces will be conducted this week in Iraq. Source: AAP

AUSTRALIAN Super Hornet fighter-bombers have completed a second day of missions over Iraq, again without bombing Islamic State targets.

FOUR aircraft - operating in pairs - departed the Australian Middle East support base on Monday and returned with their weapon loads intact.

Further air missions will be conducted this week.On the diplomatic front, Australia is finalising an agreement with the government of Iraq that will allow deployment of some 200 Australian special forces to advise and assist Iraqi security forces in the fight against Islamic State.Prime Minister Tony Abbott says Australia is finalising the legal documentation that gives authority for special forces soldiers to help support and train Iraqi forces."We've written to the Iraqis, the Iraqis have written back to us and we now need to consider their response to finalise our considerations," he told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday."I hope that can be done very quickly because it is an absolutely critical mission upon which our forces will be embarked."This status of forces agreement is standard for any operations in a foreign nation.It creates the legal protections for Australian forces inside Iraq, exempting them from any action under Iraqi law.Negotiations have been conducted by Australia's embassy in Baghdad and have been protracted. Iraq has just formed a new government which is also negotiating similar agreements with a range of other countries.Australia is finalising a similar agreement with the new government of Afghanistan for troops to stay on next year under the new Resolute Support mission.Deployment of the special forces soldiers, drawn from the Sydney-based 2nd Commando Regiment, will be a significant Australian addition to the conflict.They will operate in small teams advising and assisting Iraqi and Kurdish security forces to help stiffen their resolve to stand and fight.Each team will include personnel with a range of special skills, possibly including joint terminal attack controllers, soldiers trained to identify targets before calling in precision air strikes.The government has yet to give the go-ahead for them to operate in this role.

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Jail for Britain's 'Naked Rambler'

A BRITISH man known as "The Naked Rambler" has been jailed for two-and-a-half years after he walked out of prison only wearing his boots and socks.

FORMER Royal Marine Stephen Gough was found guilty by a jury at Winchester Crown Court of breaching an anti-social behaviour order which bans him from taking off his clothes in public.

The 55-year-old had refused to put on clothes as he left Winchester Prison when he was released from a prison term for a previous breach of the order.While sentencing Gough on Monday, Judge Jane Miller QC suggested moves should be made to find Gough a closed nudist community to live in to prevent the cycle of imprisonment which has seen him jailed for much of the past eight years.Gough earned his nickname when he completed a naked trek from Land's End to John O'Groats in 2003 and he featured in a BBC documentary covering his journey.He has now served about eight years in prison for being naked in public.

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Aussie didn't sell drugs, Java court told

AN employee of an Australian man on trial for drugs charges in Indonesia has testified he did not sell marijuana from his east Java cafe.

INDONESIAN police raided the home business of former Darwin man Andrew Roger in May, allegedly catching him in the act of rolling a marijuana joint.

Besides the marijuana, the 51-year-old was also in possession of crystal meth and pills, police allege.They're pressing charges carrying up to 20 years' jail and want him treated as a drug dealer.But Roger's lawyers argue he has relied on marijuana use for 30 years and deserves leniency.In court in Surabaya on Tuesday, an employee of the Australian, Eris Setiawan, said he had worked in the cafe since January, not long after it opened.He said he was summoned by the police to look at the evidence from the raid laid on the table in Roger's room."I didn't know what it was or where was it from," he said.Police allege Roger, also known as Roger Yeo, was with two women at the time of the arrest.Mr Eris told the court he didn't know of any "drugs party" going on at the time."During the arrest, I was in the kitchen," he said."The cafe sells ice tea, rice, coffee. There's no marijuana being sold at all."At the time of his arrest, Roger allegedly told police marijuana was legal where he came from.He told police he had worked as a contractor in East Timor.His trial resumes next week.

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IMF trims forecast for global growth

Farnsie and Olivia join tour forces

JOHN Farnham and Olivia Newton-John will tour together, and unlike his co-headline tour with Lionel Richie, this duo will actually sing together.

Sam gives Bachelor Blake a break

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Coffee drinking 'is in your genes'

PEOPLE'S coffee-drinking habits are linked to their genes, scientists say.

A LARGE-SCALE study, which analysed 20,000 regular coffee drinkers of European and African American ancestry, identified six new genetic variants associated with habitual coffee drinking.

The genome-wide meta-analysis, led by Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital researchers, helps to explain why a given amount of coffee or caffeine has different effects on different people and provides a genetic basis for future research exploring the links between coffee and health.The researchers, who are part of the Coffee and Caffeine Genetics Consortium, identified two variants that mapped two genes involved in caffeine metabolism, POR and ABCG2.Two variants were also identified near genes BDNF and SLC6A4 that potentially influence the rewarding effects of caffeine.Meanwhile two others, near GCKR and MLXIPL - genes involved in glucose and lipid metabolism - had not previously been linked to the metabolism or neurological effects of coffee.The findings suggest that people naturally modulate their coffee intake to experience the optimal effects exerted by caffeine and that the strongest genetic factors linked to increased coffee intake likely work by directly increasing caffeine metabolism.Marilyn Cornelis, research associate in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and lead author of the study, said: "Coffee and caffeine have been linked to beneficial and adverse health effects. Our findings may allow us to identify subgroups of people most likely to benefit from increasing or decreasing coffee consumption for optimal health."Daniel Chasman, associate professor at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the study's senior author, said: "Like previous genetic analyses of smoking and alcohol consumption, this research serves as an example of how genetics can influence some types of habitual behaviour."The study appears in online journal Molecular Psychiatry.

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People conscious after 'death', study says

PEOPLE may still have consciousness after "death".

A LARGE-SCALE study involving 2060 patients from 15 hospitals in the UK, US and Austria has found that patients experience real events for up to a three-minute period after their heart has stopped beating.

Dr Sam Parnia, director of resuscitation research at the State University of New York, explained that it was previously thought that only hallucinatory events were experienced in these circumstances.These are normally described as out-of-body experiences (OBEs) or near-death experiences (NDEs).The Awareness during Resuscitation (Aware) study, sponsored by the University of Southampton in the UK, used objective markers to establish whether the experiences were real or hallucinatory.The results showed that 39 per cent of patients who survived cardiac arrest described a perception of awareness but did not have explicit recall.A total of 46 per cent experienced a broad range of mental recollections, nine per cent had experiences compatible with NDEs and two per cent exhibited full awareness compatible with OBEs with explicit recall of "seeing" and "hearing" events.And one case was validated and timed using auditory stimuli during cardiac arrest."This is significant, since it has often been assumed that experiences in relation to death are likely hallucinations or illusions, occurring either before the heart stops or after the heart has been successfully restarted, but not an experience corresponding with 'real' events when the heart isn't beating," Dr Parnia said."In this case, consciousness and awareness appeared to occur during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat."This is paradoxical, since the brain typically ceases functioning within 20-30 seconds of the heart stopping and doesn't resume again until the heart has been restarted."

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