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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Concerns raised over 100 childcare workers

At least 25 SA childcare workers have been assessed as unfit to work with children and stood down. Source: AAP

AT least 25 Families SA workers will be stood down after an audit raising questions about their suitability for working with children.

EDUCATION and Child Development Minister Jennifer Rankine on Friday said 25 residential carers would be immediately suspended from working one-on-one with children following the examination of the employment records of almost 500 staff.

The audit by former police commissioner Mal Hyde also identified a further 77 staff as being of "high concern".Although no recommendation has been made to immediately remove those workers from one-on-one care responsibilities, Ms Rankine said they will face further assessment."It has raised serious concerns about the employment processes of staff working in residential care, and the department is now acting to address those concerns as a matter of priority," she said."The department either already has or will today be directing them away from their workplace, while an immediate assessment is undertaken into their suitability for ongoing employment."Ms Rankine said the department will be instituting heightened levels of supervision, and increasing random audits on relevant workplaces.The audit has been provided to Royal Commissioner Margaret Nyland, as part of her inquiry into South Australia's child protection system.

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HK police separate residents, protesters

Hong Kong's embattled leader has rejected protesters' calls for him to resign. Source: AAP

PUSHING and yelling, hundreds of Hong Kong residents have tried to force pro-democracy activists from the streets they are occupying as tensions rose in the weeklong protests that have shut down parts of the city.

THE protesters said that if authorities do not act to protect the unarmed, peaceful demonstrators, they would retract an agreement to hold talks with the city government as proposed by Hong Kong's leader, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.

"Stop the violence or we call off the talks," the groups of students and other activists said in a statement.The scuffles in Kowloon's crowded Mong Kok district were the most chaotic since police used tear gas and pepper spray on Sunday in an unsuccessful attempt to disperse protesters pushing for greater electoral reforms.Police were hard-pressed to keep order as the two sides tussled in a tense standoff.The visibly older people trying to force the vastly outnumbered protesters out were yelling, shoving and at times trying to drag the younger protesters away.The democracy activists linked arms and held hands as they tried to stand their ground against the huge crowd.Police formed cordons and escorted some of the protesters away as hundreds of onlookers chanted, "Go home!".In Causeway Bay, a major shopping area that has also been occupied by protesters, groups of young men in face masks were forced away from the protesters by police.Hong Kong's top civil servant, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, said on Friday she had begun organising the talks with the protesters, who have continued their sit-ins after Leung rejected their calls to resign."I am indeed very concerned about the clashes we have seen in the streets," Lam said."Sentiments are running high and there is a high chance of conflict on the streets," she said."So I am urging protesters who have been occupying parts of the territory to consider retreating... so that the police can restore law and order."The police were linking arms in an attempt to keep those agitating to get the area cleared of protesters from pushing into their ranks.The protesters and many onlookers were filming the confrontations; one man tried to grab a video camera from a demonstrator's hand."I would like to appeal to members of the public that they should observe the laws of Hong Kong when they are expressing their views," police spokesman Steve Hui said when asked about the confrontation in Mong Kok, a working class area far from the main protest site in downtown Hong Kong, the Admiralty area near the territory's government headquarters.Benny Tai, leader of the broader pro-democracy movement Occupy Central With Love and Peace issued a public call for all protesters to shift back to Admiralty where they began their protests last weekend.He said the group was confident they could guarantee the protesters' safety if they moved back to that area.Witnesses said the scuffles broke out when citizens began to dismantle the tents and barricades put up in the streets by the demonstrators who are demanding the government implement universal suffrage in municipal elections in 2017.While calm was quickly restored in Causeway Bay, in Mong Kok shouting matches broke out which threatened to escalate into physical violence, the witnesses said.The demonstrators, mostly students, formed lines to keep back the angry crowds while police also formed human chains to separate the two sides.One of the students, who identified herself as Cynthia, said the citizens causing the trouble were paid government agitators brought in from outside."They're people paid by the government. They're not from here (because) they don't speak Cantonese", which is the dialect spoken in Hong Kong, she said.Some who are sympathetic to the protesters' demands for wider political reforms complained the police were not doing enough to protect the demonstrators."We saw people with no uniforms in Causeway Bay and Mong Kok attack protesters and take away their belongings," said Cyd Ho, vice-chairwoman of the Labour Party."Police have the duty to safeguard peaceful demonstrations by Hong Kong citizens," Ho said."If police do not intervene this sets a dangerous precedent ... that if people are unhappy with protesters they can attack them with impunity."But some Hong Kong residents complained that the protests were undermining their livelihoods."It affected my company, a perfume business, to deliver goods in the area," said Ken Lai in the bustling Causeway Bay neighbourhood."I really dislike the fact that they occupied so many areas, all scattered around the city. I'm a Hong Konger too. The occupiers don't represent all of us."

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UK man jailed for fake bomb detectors scam

A MAN has been jailed for making bogus bomb detectors that he claimed could find missing Madeleine McCann.

SAM Tree, 68, of Dunstable, Bedfordshire, who made the devices in his garden shed, claimed they could track down explosives, drugs and people.

Detectives heralded the sentencing as the "concluding act in a highly complex, extensive and significant investigation" in which three other British con artists have been convicted of making fake detectors.It is believed the criminals made about STG80 million ($A146.03 million) from the scam.Tree was jailed for three and a half years at London's Kingston Crown Court on Friday after being found guilty at the Old Bailey in August of making an article for use in a fraud between January 2007 and July 2012.His wife, Joan Tree, 62, was handed a two-year prison sentence suspended for two years and ordered to carry out 300 hours of unpaid work in the community after being convicted over the same offence.The Trees broke down in tears and embraced each other after the hearing.The instruction manuals that accompanied their products claimed the user's own static electricity would power the aerial to move if it detected the substance it was searching for.In passing sentence, Judge Richard Marks QC told the pair: "The aerial would point to the vicinity or direction of the objects or person being looked at."One only has to look at the facts to see this as a bizarre and fantastic proposition as to be almost akin to something out of Alice in Wonderland."Detective Constable Joanne Law, who led the investigation for the City of London Police's Overseas Anti-Corruption Unit, said after the hearing: "It really is just an empty plastic case. It's wishful thinking and nothing more."It plays on people's desire to find a very simple solution to a very complex problem."She said the detectors and the so-called science behind them were examined by experts who concluded "it's absolute rubbish, none of it is true".

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US jobless rate dips to 6-year low of 5.9%

RAAF jets to launch IS strikes within hours

AUSTRALIA has declared war on the terrorist armies of Islamic State and RAAF fighter jets to strike tomorrow night. The Telegraph gained exclusive access to the top secret mission control.

Silk's guilty son walks free

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