International

* Facebook bans foreign political ads during election campaign * Company will also launch fact-check service in Australia * Election expected to be called shortly, due by May Social media giant Facebook Inc said on Friday it would strengthen measures to fight fake news in Australia and briefly block foreigners from buying political advertisements in the lead-up to a national election due in a few weeks. The move comes with the company — and its peers around the world — under growing pressure to rid their platforms of misinformation after Russia allegedly used Facebook to influence the 2016 US presidential election. In Australia, it is not clear which, if any, foreigners had sought to buy campaign ads, but the government warned in 2017 of Chinese interference attempts and said in February a foreign government had hacked parliament's computer network. Facebook's move also comes as its market power and social influence faces greater scrutiny, particularly in the wake of the mass shooting at a mosque in New Zealand which was broadcast live on one of the US firm's platforms. Facebook said its new controls on Australian political advertising would take effect as soon as the vote was called, which is expected to happen in the next few days. Foreigners would be forbidden from buying advertising mentioning political parties, slogans and logos, Mia Garlick, Facebook's director of policy for Australia and New Zealand, said in a statement. To fight so-called fake news and misinformation, the US firm would launch a fact-checking service in Australia in partnership with French news agency Agence France-Presse, she added. It would also remove fake accounts and make sensational stories less prominent in users' newsfeeds. Australia's major political parties, which between them are expected to spend millions of dollars buying Facebook ads during the campaign, had no comment on the company's announcement on Friday. GLOBAL PROBLEM Policing social media content has become a massive global problem, with no template for consistently preventing fake news online or eliminating it. Andrea Carson, a political scientist specialising in media and communications at La Trobe University in Melbourne, said Facebook faced tighter regulation in the future. ‘There's a climate for change,’ she said. Fierce internet disinformation battles have gripped countries such as Brazil and Malaysia ahead of elections. Authorities in Indonesia and the European Union, which are due to hold polls, have also warned of the threat of fake news, while in India, Facebook has ramped up efforts to block fake accounts. The market dominance of Facebook and of Alphabet Inc's Google has also drawn the attention of Australia's competition regulator, which is pushing for greater scrutiny of their power and influence, something the firms are resisting.

Australia continued a string of ‘hottest ever’ months in March, the government said Monday, as global warming emerges as the hot button issue in national elections just weeks away. The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said the country had experienced the warmest March on record, with mean maximum and minimum temperatures above average for nearly all of the vast continent nation. BOM said the national mean temperature was 2.13 degrees centigrade (3.83 degrees Fahrenheit) above the long-term average for the month of March. It was the fourth month in a row of record heat in the country, and January was Australia's hottest month ever, with mean temperatures across the continent exceeding 30 degrees Celsius for the first time. There was some relief for regions suffering from prolonged drought, however, as two tropical cyclones that struck northern and western Australia in March bought badly needed rains. ‘Unfortunately, the rain needed to reduce significant rainfall deficiencies in drought-affected areas is substantial and will require above average rainfall over a prolonged period to completely remove deficits at longer timescales,’ BOM said. Meteorologists say weather patterns over the Indian and Pacific oceans have contributed to the higher temperatures, but that long-term climate change trends were also involved. The problem of climate change has emerged as a key issue in national elections due to be held by mid-May. The conservative coalition government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been reluctant to back steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions blamed for contributing to global warming for fear this would hurt the country's huge coal industry and undermine economic growth. The main opposition labour Party, which leads the conservatives in opinion polls, on Monday unveiled a raft of proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, including through promotion of renewable energy sources and electric motor vehicles.

The Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge were plunged into darkness for an hour Saturday to raise awareness about climate change and its impact on the planet's vanishing biodiversity. The 13th edition of Earth Hour, organised by the green group WWF, will see millions of people across 180 countries turn off their lights at 8:30 pm local time to highlight energy use and the need for conservation. ‘We are the first generation to know we are destroying the world. And we could be the last that can do anything about it,’ the charity said. ‘We have the solutions, we just need our voices to be heard.’ WWF-Australia CEO Dermot O'Gorman told AFP that ‘Earth hour still is the world's largest grassroots movement for people to take action on climate change’. The Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and the ferris wheel are seen before being plunged into darkness from Sydney's Luna Park for the Earth Hour environmental campaign ‘It's about individuals taking personal action but joining with hundreds of millions of people around the world to show that not only do we need urgent action on climate change but we need to be protecting our planet,’ he added. Dozens of companies around the world have said they will join in this year's switch-off. The event comes after some of the most dire warnings yet on the state of Earth's natural habitat and species. WWF's own ‘Living Planet’ report in October said that 60 percent of all animals with a backbone -- fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals -- had been wiped out by human activity since 1970. Another dataset confirmed the depth of an unfolding mass extinction event, only the sixth in the last half-billion years. Paris's Eiffel Tower, New York's Empire State Building, Dubai's Burj Khalifa and the Acropolis in Athens are among the 24 global landmarks that will take part in Earth Hour. Last year's event was observed in more than 7,000 towns and cities in 187 countries, according to organisers. While the lights-off event is a symbolic gesture, Earth Hour has led successful campaigns over the past decade to ban plastics in the Galapagos Islands and plant 17 million trees in Kazakhstan.

Australia pledged Saturday to introduce new laws that could see social media executives jailed and tech giants fined billions for failing to remove extremist material from their platforms. The tough new legislation will be brought to parliament next week as Canberra pushes for social media companies to prevent their platforms from being ‘weaponised’ by terrorists in the wake of the Christchurch mosque attacks. Facebook said it ‘quickly’ removed a staggering 1.5 million videos of the white supremacist massacre livestreamed on the social media platform. A 17-minute video of the March 15 rampage that claimed the lives of 50 people was widely available online and experts said it was easily retrievable several hours after the attack. ‘Big social media companies have a responsibility to take every possible action to ensure their technology products are not exploited by murderous terrorists,’ Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement. Morrison, who met with a number of tech firms Tuesday -- including Facebook, Twitter and Google -- said Australia would encourage other G20 nations to hold social media firms to account. Attorney-General Christian Porter said the new laws would make it a criminal offence for platforms not to ‘expeditiously’ take down ‘abhorrent violent material’ like terror attacks, murder or rape. Executives could face up to three years in prison for failing to do so, he added, while social media platforms -- whose annual revenues can stretch into the tens of billions -- would face fines of up to ten percent of their annual turnover. ‘Mainstream media that broadcast such material would be putting their licence at risk and there is no reason why social media platforms should be treated any differently,’ Porter said. The government was so far ‘underwhelmed’ by the response from tech giants at their Tuesday meeting with Morrison, communications minister Mitch Fifield told reporters Saturday. Facebook said on Tuesday it was ‘committed to working with leaders and communities’ around the world to ‘help counter hate speech and the threat of terrorism’. The company declined to comment further on Saturday. Cyber-security expert Nigel Phair cast doubt over the likelihood the proposed Australian laws could impose jail time. Extradition is complicated and reserved for ‘serious criminal matters’, the University of New South Wales academic and former federal police officer told AFP, while Australian-based executives were not company ‘decision makers’. ‘Jail is for violent offenders not a marketing representatives in Australia of an American social media company,’ he added. But Phair said social media firms can also do more than they pledged at the Tuesday meeting. ‘They didn't read the tea leaves then, it'll be different how they read the tea leaves now,’ he said.

Australia and the Netherlands on Wednesday said they were in talks with Russia over the ongoing investigation into the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine. The Malaysia Airlines jet was hit by a Russian-made BUK missile over war-torn eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 passengers. Close to two thirds of those killed on the flight between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur were Dutch, while 38 Australians were also lost. Last year Australia and the Netherlands blamed Russia for the disaster.  Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and her Dutch counterpart Stef Bok said Wednesday they were making progress on finding those responsible for the disaster after starting trilateral meetings with Russia earlier this month. "We cannot go into the content of the process because confidentiality is vital here," Bok told reporters in Sydney.  "But I can say this: we remain committed to achieving truth, justice and accountability."  International investigators concluded that the BUK came from a Russian military brigade based in southwestern Kursk which had crossed into Ukraine. Moscow has vehemently denied any responsibility. Five countries -- Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine -- continue to investigate the disaster. "Australia remains a strong supporter of the prosecution of the individuals responsible," Payne said.

Hong Kong's human rights have "deteriorated severely" over the past year, with free speech under attack, Amnesty International said Tuesday, the latest report to criticise the city's government for restricting liberties. The watchdog's year-end review cited a string of setbacks in freedoms, including the government's prosecution of leading democracy campaigners, its expulsion of a British journalist, the ban on a pro-independence party, and the barring of candidates from local elections. Semi-autonomous Hong Kong enjoys freedoms unseen on the mainland, which are protected by the 50-year handover agreement between Britain and China, but fears are growing that those liberties are being eroded as Beijing flexes its muscles. Amnesty accused the city's authorities of depriving citizens of their rights with increasing frequency in recent years by "expanding the interpretation of 'national security'". "The concept of 'national security' as used by Hong Kong government... is arbitrarily applied to suppress dissent and political opposition," the report said, drawing comparisons to tactics favoured by repressive governments. Last year Hong Kong authorities refused to renew a work visa for the Financial Times' Asia news editor Victor Mallet after he hosted a talk at the city's press club by pro-independence activist Andy Chan, whose party was later banned for reasons of "national security". The decision to prosecute pro-democracy campaigners "threw a gloom over the right to peaceful assembly" in Hong Kong, the report said, warning that potential convictions could lead authorities to pursue more such charges in the future. The review came days after the US State Department released a report warning that increased restrictions on Hong Kong's freedoms were hurting business confidence, and accused the city's government of sacrificing human rights to support mainland Chinese priorities. The Hong Kong government hit back saying "foreign governments should not interfere in any form in the internal affairs" of the city. In recent months, Hong Kong's government has barred several pro-democracy candidates from running for election and unveiled a draft law to punish anyone who disrespects the Chinese national anthem.

Australian prosecutors are seeking jail and fines for dozens of journalists and media outlets for alleged contempt of court over their coverage of Cardinal George Pell's child sex abuse trial last year, a court summons showed on Tuesday. The Director of Public Prosecutions in Victoria has asked the state's Supreme Court to send journalists to jail or impose fines for breaching a suppression order on coverage of the trial, aiding and abetting overseas media's contempt of court, and "scandalising the court". The court has set April 15 for a first hearing on the application. The summons included 23 journalists and 13 news outlets. No foreign media or journalists were named. Last year, the County Court of Victoria imposed a suppression order on reporting of the trial of former Vatican treasurer Pell to prevent prejudicing the jury in that case and a second trial on older child sex offences that had been set for March. A jury in the first trial found Pell guilty on Dec. 11 of abusing two choir boys. After the verdict, some Australian media ran headlines flagging that an unnamed high-profile person had been convicted of a serious crime that could not be reported. In February, Judge Peter Kidd sentenced Pell to six years jail. Pell is the most senior Catholic worldwide to have been convicted for child sex abuse. No Australian media named Pell or the charges in their reporting in December although some overseas media, including the Daily Beast and the Washington Post, named the cardinal and reported he had been found guilty of sexually assaulting two choir boys. The gag order, which had applied across Australia "and on any website or other electronic or broadcast format accessible within Australia", was only lifted on Feb. 26 when the charges for the second trial were dropped. Journalists summoned for contempt of court include reporters from Nine Entertainment Co, The Age, The Australian Financial Review, Macquarie Media, and several News Corp publications. The list includes high-profile radio commentator Ray Hadley and the editor-in-chief of the Australian Financial Review, Michael Stutchbury. Hadley's employer, Macquarie Media, declined to comment on the allegations as they are now subject to legal proceedings. "Nine and the named employees deny the allegations but as the matter is now before the courts, Nine will not comment further at this time," a Nine spokeswoman said. Nine is owner of a television network as well as Fairfax Media and the newspapers The Age and the Australian Financial Review named in the summons. News Corp, which had several newspapers and journalists named in the summons, said: "We will vigorously defend all charges and resolutely stand by our editors and journalists." Under the state of Victoria's open courts law, breaches of suppression orders can result in jail time of up to five years and fines of nearly A$100,000 ($71,000) for individuals and nearly A$500,000 for companies. 

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said yesterday she would announce new gun laws within days, after a lone gunman killed 50 people in mass shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch.  “Within 10 days of this horrific act of terrorism we will have announced reforms which will, I believe, make our community safer,” Ardern told a news conference after her cabinet reached in principle decisions on gun reform laws in the wake of New Zealand’s worst ever mass shooting. In addition to the 50 killed, dozens were wounded at two mosques in the South Island city during Friday prayers. The owner of gun shop Gun City, David Tipple, said the suspected gunman had legally bought four weapons and ammunition online from it between December 2017 and March 2018, but it did not sell him the high-powered weapon used in the massacre. “The MSSA, military-style automatic, reportedly used by the alleged gunman was not purchased from Gun City. Gun City did not sell him an MSSA, only A-category firearms,” Tipple told a news conference in Christchurch. Under New Zealand gun laws, A-category weapons can be semi-automatic but limited to seven shots. Live-streamed video of a gunman in one of the mosques showed a semi-automatic weapon with a large magazine. Tipple said he supported Ardern’s decision to reform gun laws as the Christchurch shootings had raised legitimate concerns. Ardern did not give details on new laws, but has said she supports a ban on semi-automatic weapons following the Christchurch shootings. Australia introduced some of the world’s toughest gun laws after its worst mass killing, the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in which a lone gunman killed 35 people using a semi-automatic AR-15 – the same weapon used in the Christchurch massacre. Australia banned semi-automatic weapons, launched a gun amnesty in which tens of thousands of weapons were handed in, and made it much tougher to own them. Ardern encouraged gun owners who were thinking of surrendering their weapons to do so. “The clear lesson from history around the world is that to make our community safer, the time to act is now,” she said.  “I strongly believe that the vast majority of gun owners in New Zealand will agree with the sentiment that change needs to occur.” New Zealand’s top online marketplace Trade Me Group said it was halting the sale of semi-automatic weapons in the wake of Friday’s attack. New Zealand, a country of only 5mn people, has an estimated 1.5mn firearms. Radio New Zealand said in a report based on police data secured through an Official Information Act request, that more than 99% of people who applied for a firearms licence in 2017 were successful. A New Zealand standard A-category firearm licence is issued after a police and background check. Only firearm owners are licensed, not weapons, so there is no monitoring of how many weapons a person may possess. Still, violent crime is rare in New Zealand and police do not usually carry guns. Before Friday, New Zealand’s worst mass shooting was in 1990 when a man killed 13 men, women and children in a 24-hour rampage in the seaside village of Aramoana. He was killed by police.  Ardern was the first person to sign a national condolence book that she opened in the capital, Wellington. Frustration was building among the families of victims as under Islam it is custom to conduct burials within 24 hours, but bodies will not be released until post mortems are carried out.  The two mosques involved in the shootings have been closed since the massacre, but are expected to reopen by Friday prayers after cleansing blessings were carried out.  Over the weekend, tens of thousands flocked to memorial vigils around New Zealand and a victim support website raised more than NZ$5.5mn ($3.8mn).

As New Zealanders struggled to cope with the deadly mayhem in Christchurch, stories of heroism have emerged from the tragedy, including a worshipper who chased away the gunman armed only with a credit card machine. Fifty people were killed on Friday and dozens more injured. Brenton Tarrant, 28, has been charged with murder in relation to the killings, and police have said he will face further charges. But the police and eyewitnesses say a second attack by the gunman was partly thwarted by Abdul Aziz, 48, who was born in Afghanistan. Aziz said he charged at the shooter outside the Linwood mosque when someone shouted that a gunman had opened fire. The gunman had already killed dozens at the Al Noor Mosque nearby, and on the streets. “He had on army clothes. I wasn’t sure if he was the good guy or the bad guy. When he swore at me, I knew that he’s not the good guy,” Aziz told Reuters in an interview. When he realised the mosque was being attacked, he ran towards the gunman, picking up a credit card machine as a makeshift weapon. The shooter ran back to his car and got another gun.  Aziz said he threw the credit card machine, ducking between the cars as the shooter opened fire. He then picked up a gun dropped by the shooter and pulled the trigger, but it was empty: “I was screaming at the guy, come over here, come over here – I just wanted to put his focus on me.” Aziz said the gunman went inside the mosque, and he followed, eventually confronting the shooter again.  “When he saw me with the shotgun in my hands, he dropped the gun and ran away toward his car. I chased him,” he said. “He sat in his car and with the shotgun in my hands, I threw it through his window like an arrow. He just swore at me and took off.” Aziz said four of his children were with him at the mosque when the attack occurred. Nearly 100 Muslim worshippers who had taken cover in the mosque as the rampage unfolded were left unharmed. When I came back in the mosque I could see that everybody was very frightened and trying to cover,” Aziz said. “I told them, ‘Brother, you are safe now, get up, he’s gone. He’s just run away.’ And then after that everybody started crying.” The attack is the worst ever peacetime mass killing in New Zealand. The shooter was arrested within 36 minutes after the attack started and charged with murder on Saturday, even as the death toll continued to rise and families waited to bury their dead. Footage of the attack on one of the mosques was broadcast live on Facebook. Under New Zealand’s contempt rules, there are limits on what can be published about the suspect, to preserve his right to a fair trial. Aziz is from Kabul, Afghanistan, but left the war-torn country several years ago. He has been in Christchurch for two and a half years and owns a furniture shop. More heroes came to light as investigators pieced together the incident. Naeem Rashid, 50, was seen lunging at the gunman in the livestream video from the Al Noor Mosque. Rashid, from Abbottabad, Pakistan, and a New Zealand resident for nine years, was in the mosque with his 21-year-old son.  Both were killed in the attack. Safi Rizwan, a nephew of Naeem Rashid in Abbottabad, said his uncle had left a message for everyone. “If you see something happening that is not good for other humans, or if that is hurting other people, you give your everything to save them, even it means giving your life,” Rizwan said. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern travelled to Christchurch on Saturday to comfort the Muslim community. She said in a news conference later that the gunman had planned to continue the killing spree if he had not been stopped.  Police say they caught him 36 minutes after being alerted of the incident at Al Noor Mosque at 1:42pm on Friday. Shortly before that, gunman began the livestream, in which he was seen parking outside the mosque. The video showed him pulling a gun from the rear of his car and heading into the mosque, where he fired at worshippers for about two minutes.  He went back to his car to reload, then returned to the mosque to kill more people.  The shooter then left the Deans Avenue mosque, driving for about seven minutes to the Linwood mosque, which is on the other side of Christchurch’s botanical gardens.  He began shooting outside the Linwood mosque, killing several people walking towards the building. Some shots hit the mosque windows and walls.  After Aziz confronted him, the gunman was chased down by two police officers who blocked his car and captured him, police say.  He had two homemade bombs in the car, police say. “Those two police officers acted with absolute courage,” Police Commissioner Mike Bush said at a news conference yesterday.  “They have prevented further deaths and risked their own lives to do so,” he added. Bush said armed police staff arrived at the first mosque within six minutes of an emergency call, and within 36 minutes, the gunman was in custody. Speaking about the hours after the attack, Greg Robertson, head of surgery at Christchurch Hospital, said the scale of victims arriving had shaken his staff. “We had patients that were delivered in cars ...  rather than ambulances,” Robertson said.  “The ambulances start to arrive and then lots of ambulances arrived after that.” “It’s just comprehending what is the incomprehensible.”

British singer-songwriter Joss Stone performed an informal gig in the capital of nuclear-armed North Korea as part of her ambitious project to perform in every country on earth.  Stone, has performed in more than 175 countries since embarking on the Total World Tour five years ago, was pictured singing in a bar in Pyongyang in front of a small group of tourists and guides on Wednesday night.  The 31-year-old artist, who has recently sung in Syria, Pakistan and Iraq, announced the trip on Instagram Tuesday before boarding a plane to the North.  “It’s a fine day to go to North Korea,” she said in a video message taken at the Beijing Capital International Airport.  “We’ll be getting on a plane very soon to go to Pyongyang ...? A place in North Korea, anyway. It’s gonna be fun,” she added.  Stone said she was practising a traditional Korean folk song Arirang — listed as Unesco Intangible Cultural Heritage in both the North and South — for her audience in Pyongyang.  The visit was arranged by Simon Cockerell, who runs Koryo Tours, which specialises in trips to the isolated country.  Cockerell described the performance as an “unofficial gig” and posted photos of Stone singing for around 40 tourists and guides at a bar he identified as the Yanggakdo cinema complex.  “Let’s do it again with a full band and thousands of local fans not too far in the future!!” he wrote on his Instagram with a picture of Stone departing from the North Korean capital.  It is rare for North Korea to allow foreign musicians to perform for ordinary citizens, though last year a handful of South Korean pop artists were invited to Pyongyang amid a rapid rapprochement on the Korean peninsula.

Disgraced Australian Cardinal George Pell was yesterday sentenced to six years in prison for sexually abusing two choirboys, in what the judge lambasted as a “brazen” attack and “grave” abuse of power.   Pell, who has maintained his innocence and plans to appeal, appeared in a Melbourne court after being convicted on five offences including rape and molestation of the boys in 1996-1997.  The 77-year old — wearing a black shirt but without his usual white clerical collar  — sat impassively, hands interlaced on his lap as Judge Peter Kidd graphically described his “breathtakingly arrogant” attacks.   You “may not live to be released from prison” Kidd acknowledged, as he accused the former Vatican number three of “appalling offending” and a “brazen and forceful sexual attack on the two victims.”  He was ordered to sign the sex offender register and stood as the judge set the minimum sentence Pell would have to serve at three years and eight months, due to Pell’s “otherwise blameless life.”  The cardinal faced a maximum 50 years in prison for the five charges.  Pell was found guilty of cornering the two boys, who were aged 13 at the time and on scholarships to the prestigious St Kevin’s College, in the sacristy after Sunday mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral in December 1996, when he was archbishop of Melbourne.   The boys had “nicked off” from the rest of the choral procession and were taking swigs of sacramental wine before the cardinal found them, and sexually assaulted them.  “There is an added layer of degradation and humiliation that each of your victims must have felt in knowing that their abuse had been witnessed by the other,” said Kidd.   The judge added that the attack, and another two months later, in 1997, when he forced one of the boys up against the wall of a corridor before abusing them had a “profound impact” on the life of his victims. One of the victims died of an accidental heroin overdose in 2014 having never disclosed the abuse he suffered at the hands of Pell.   “A small amount of justice has been done today. I don’t think six years is long enough,” said a victims’ advocate outside the court who gave her name as Rhonda.  Pell is the most senior member of the clergy to be convicted of historical child sex abuse. Until recently he ran the Vatican’s finances and helped elect popes. With global attention on historic abuse within the Catholic church, Kidd, however, stressed that it was Pell rather than the Vatican that was on trial.  He began the hearing, which was broadcast live, by stating that Pell was “entitled to the balanced and steady hand of justice” and lamenting “lynch mob mentality” among some of the public. “You are not to be made a scapegoat,” he said.  Pell did not take the stand in his defence, but in a video of his police interview in Rome in 2016, he called the allegations against him “deranged falsehood” and “a load of absolute and disgraceful rubbish”.   During a pre-sentencing hearing in February, Pell’s lawyers submitted 10 character references for the Cardinal — including from former Prime Minister John Howard and Australian National University vice chancellor Greg Craven. The lawyer told Judge Kidd that behind bars, Pell would be considered a “lightning rod” for the sins of the Catholic Church.  Pell’s appeal has been slated for a hearing on June 5 and 6.  His legal team is appealing on the grounds that the jury’s verdict was unreasonable, that Pell was not arraigned in the presence of the jury panel, and that the defence was prevented from showing the jury a visual presentation — described as similar to a “Pac Man” video game — depicting the movement of priests in the cathedral on the day of the choirboys’ abuse.  Pell’s conviction — which has been criticised by prominent commentators and friends of the Cardinal —  came about as a result of a retrial after the first jury was unable to reach a verdict in September. Media outlets were unable to report the guilty verdict until last month, when a suppression order was lifted after a second trial mounted against Pell —  involving allegations stemming from a Ballarat swimming pool in the 1970s —  was dropped.   One complainant in that case, who alleged he was molested by Pell, has launched civil proceedings against him, as well as against the State of Victoria, the Sisters of Nazareth and Child and Family Services Ballarat.

Fifty-seven male asylum seekers deemed to be a security risk will be sent to a remote Pacific island detention centre for medical treatment instead of Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday. Under Canberra's hardline immigration policy, asylum seekers trying to reach Australia by sea are intercepted and sent for processing to camps in Papua New Guinea and the tiny South Pacific island of Nauru - a policy criticised internationally. The government suffered an embarrassing defeat in parliament in February when opposition and independent lawmakers voted to allow doctors to transfer some 1,000 men and women held in PNG or Nauru to Australia if they need medical care. The amendment included a provision to allow the government to overrule any medical transfer, but Morrison said the veto powers are too limited to prevent the transfer of 57 asylum seekers assessed to be a ‘national security threat’. The men have been accused of crimes such as sexual assault and posted extremist imagery online, Morrison said. They will be treated at a detention centre on Christmas Island, a territory some 1,550 km (960 miles) north-west of the mainland. ‘The laws that have been passed deny us the opportunity to prevent people coming to Australia who otherwise would never be able to,’ he told reporters during the first visit by an Australian prime minister to the island. Opponents have accused Morrison, who is trailing badly in the polls, of trying to use the border security issue to boost his standing with voters ahead of an election due by May. Bill Shorten, leader of the opposition labour party, said Morrison was on a ‘marketing campaign’. ‘Frolicking on Christmas Island, what a waste of money,’ he told reporters in Sydney. The Christmas Island detention facilities - shuttered last year after a decade in operation - have been an issue in the outcome of previous elections. In 2001, conservative Prime Minister John Howard refused permission for a Norwegian ship carrying 433 rescued refugees to enter Australian waters. Howard, who was trailing in the polls at the time, won re-election and held onto power until 2007. After he left office, the centre-left labour government began holding refugees on Christmas Island. As a stream of new arrivals swelled already cramped conditions, protests broke out that fuelled an image of a government that had lost control of national security, propelling the conservatives back to power in 2013.

At least five properties have been lost in two out-of-control bushfires and more are at risk in Australia's south-eastern state of Victoria, officials said Sunday. There are more than 30 fires burning across Victoria, with hot and windy conditions making it harder for fire fighters to work, according to emergency services.  Hundreds of people have been evacuated from their homes. ‘There's every likelihood that there will be further property losses,’ Victoria's Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp told reporters. ‘It's a dangerous time.’  ‘This is an active fire. It is moving and there is every likelihood there will be more fire losses,’ he added. The biggest out-of-control fire is at Bunyip state park, some 100 kilometres east of Melbourne, Australia's second largest city, with three properties destroyed. Videos shared by local media showed one house exploding in the blaze. The bushfire was sparked by multiple lightning strikes on Friday and has already burnt more than 6,300 hectares. It is dangerously close to two electricity transmission lines linking the Latrobe Valley and Melbourne, electricity authorities said. Some 850 firefighters with 120 fire trucks, bulldozers and 20 aircraft are battling the blaze.

Australia’s defence minister and his deputy both announced they were quitting politics yesterday, bringing to five the number of cabinet members retiring as Prime Minister Scott Morrison heads into a fraught election. Defence Minister Christopher Pyne, the most moderate remaining member of Morrison’s conservative coalition government, said he was stepping down at the next election, due by mid-May, to begin a business career. The junior defence minister, Steven Ciobo, announced separately that he would also not contest the May election and would give up his portfolio immediately so Morrison could name a replacement. Pyne, who was also responsible for managing government business in parliament, batted aside suggestions the string of recent ministerial retirements was motivated by the prospect of their Liberal party losing the upcoming election to the opposition Labor, as widely predicted by opinion polls. “Being in politics is not a life sentence, and I’ve been there for 26 years and I didn’t want to run again,” Pyne told reporters in announcing his decision, adding, “I believe we will win the election in May... I think the Morrison government will replace itself.” Morrison moved quickly to fill the new cabinet gap, announcing that Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds, a former army brigadier, would replace Ciobo immediately as minister for defence industries, and would replace Pyne as defence minister if the Liberals win re-election. Pyne and Ciobo were the fourth and fifth cabinet members in Morrison’s six-month-old government to announce they would quit politics at the May election. Several backbench Liberal MPs, including the most senior women in the party, have also announced they won’t contest the next election, or will do so as independents. A senior Labor Party official, Penny Wong, said the latest departures illustrated a “stampede for the exits” from the embattled Morrison coalition. “What will the Morrison government be remembered for? A stampede for the exit and jobs for their mates,” she said following the announcements by Pyne and Ciobo. Morrison came to power after hardline conservatives in the Liberal party ousted centrist prime minister Malcolm Turnbull last August. Morrison has since led the party hard to the right. It now faces a tough battle to win re-election and the prospect of spending time on the opposition benches appears to have hastened the departure of several MPs. Those included former foreign minister Julie Bishop, the most prominent woman in the Liberals and the party’s deputy leader under Turnbull. Current polls show the Liberals, who have been in power since 2013, heading for their worst electoral defeat since 1983 and Australia getting a seventh change of prime minister in 10 years.

An Australian court has found Cardinal George Pell, one of the highest ranking Vatican officials and a former top adviser to Pope Francis, guilty on five charges of child sexual offences committed more than two decades ago against 13-year-old boys. The verdict was made public yesterday following the lifting of a court suppression order on the trial, after a second abuse case against Pell – the most senior Catholic clergyman worldwide to be convicted for child sex offences – was dropped by the prosecution. Pell’s lawyers have said they will appeal the verdict, which embarrassed the Vatican because it became public just two days after a major conference on preventing sex abuse. He had pleaded not guilty to all five charges. In the Vatican’s first response, spokesman Alessandro Gisotti told reporters the conviction was “painful” for many but that the cardinal had proclaimed his innocence and had the right to “defend himself until last level” of judicial process. A jury in the Country Court of Victoria in Melbourne found Pell guilty on Dec 11 last year following a four-week trial. He was convicted of five sexual offences committed against the 13-year-old choir boys 22 years earlier in the priests’ sacristy of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, where Pell was archbishop. One of the two victims died in 2014. Each of the five offences carries a maximum 10 years in jail. Pell’s lawyers have filed an appeal against the verdict on three grounds, which if successful could lead to a retrial. “Cardinal Pell has always maintained his innocence and continues to do so,” Pell’s lawyer, Paul Galbally, said outside the court. Pell, who remains on bail, left the court yesterday without speaking to reporters, who virtually mobbed him as he walked from the courthouse steps to a waiting car. A child abuse survivor, who identified himself as Michael Advocate as his real name is suppressed under Australian law, shouted to Pell: “Burn in Hell.” Pell is due to return to court today for the start of his sentencing hearing. Gisotti disclosed hitherto unpublished restrictions that Australian Church leaders had imposed on Pell when the cardinal returned to his native country in June 2017 to defend himself. The spokesman said Pope Francis “confirmed” measures prohibiting Pell from practising his ministry in public and from having contact with minors “in any way or form”. The verdict has been made public as the Catholic church tries to deal with a growing child sexual abuse crisis, following scandals in the United States, Chile, Germany and Australia. The Pope ended the conference on sexual abuse on Sunday, calling for an “all out battle” against a crime that should be “erased from the face of the earth”. The Vatican said in December that Francis had removed Pell, 77, from his group of close advisers, without commenting on the trial.  Gisotti said that Pell’s five-year term as economy minister for the Vatican had expired on Feb 24 but would not say if Pell was still technically in the position pending the naming of a successor. The cardinal took indefinite leave from the post when he returned to Australia to fight the charges, and the department has been run by someone else. Pell was not called to the stand in the trial. Instead, the jury was shown in open court a video recording of an interview Australian police held with Pell in Rome in October 2016, in which he strenuously denied the allegations. The jury was also shown a video recording of the surviving victim’s testimony behind closed doors. The victim, who was a schoolboy when abused by Pell, yesterday asked for his privacy to be respected. “Like many survivors I have experienced shame, loneliness, depression and struggle. Like many survivors it has taken me years to understand the impact upon my life,” the victim said in an e-mailed statement through his solicitor Vivian Waller. “The process has been stressful and it is not over yet. I need space and time to cope with the ongoing criminal process.” Mark Coleridge, the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, who attended the Vatican conference, said the conviction “has shocked many across Australia and around the world”. “We pray for all those who have been abused and their loved ones, and we commit ourselves anew to doing everything possible to ensure that the Church is a safe place for all, especially the young and the vulnerable,” he said in a statement.

Vietnamese police have stepped up security at a remote rail station on the Chinese border where North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is expected to enter the country by train next week ahead of a summit with US President Donald Trump.  Vietnam is preparing for Kim to arrive by train for the Feb 27-28 summit in the capital, Hanoi, two sources with direct knowledge of security and logistics planning told Reuters on Wednesday. Kim’s train will stop at the border station of Dong Dang where he will disembark and drive 170km to Hanoi by car, the sources said. A Reuters witness saw construction workers tidying up the Dong Dang station yesterday. Plain-clothed police were also monitoring the area and two prevented a Reuters cameraman from filming, and asked to see his identification. Two other security officers followed the Reuters TV crew on motorbikes, with another keeping watch from a car. Flowers pots have been laid alongside the platform, which appeared to have been recently been cleaned. An official at the local People’s Committee told Reuters provincial authorities had issued instructions for the station to be tidied up. “We have been told to prepare for the possibility of an important event at the train station,” said the official, who did not elaborate and was not authorised to speak to media. Two trains, usually carrying goods, pass through the station daily on the way to or from China. Although Vietnam and China have different gauge train tracks, the line to Hanoi from the border can take Chinese trains. Kim Jong-un, however, travels in his own heavy, armoured train which could pose a problem for Vietnam’s outdated, colonial-era rail network. There have already been four derailments of trains in Vietnam this year, the transport ministry said yesterday.  Travel by train has been a favourite mode of transport for Kim Jong-un, and his father, Kim Jong-il, and grandfather, Kim Il-sung. Meanwhile, a UN Security Council sanctions committee has agreed to allow North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s delegation to travel to Vietnam for a summit meeting with US President Donald Trump, diplomats said. Vietnam had asked the committee to grant an exemption to senior North Korean officials who are on a UN sanctions blacklist to allow them to attend the February 27-28 summit in Hanoi.  The sanctions provide for a global travel ban that bars governments from granting them visas to come into their countries.  UN diplomats said Vietnam had requested a blanket exemption for the North Korean officials and that none of the 15 Security Council members had objected.  The committee also granted exemptions to allow the delegation to attend the US-North Korean summit in Singapore in June.  Trump and Kim are due to meet in Hanoi next week to try to achieve progress on scrapping North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missiles programme.  In Washington, Trump said Kim must make a “meaningful” gesture on denuclearisation if he wants to UN sanctions to be eased.  Led by the United States, the Security Council has adopted a raft of sanctions resolutions that ban sales of North Korea imports such as coal and severely restrict oil supplies to the communist-ruled country.  The United States has insisted that “maximum pressure” from sanctions must remain in place until Pyongyang has fully scrapped its nuclear and ballistic missiles programme.  But North Korea insists that easing sanctions would build trust along the way to denuclearisation – a stance that has won support from China and Russia. “Chairman Kim and I have a very good relationship. I wouldn’t be surprised to see something work out,” Trump said ahead of the summit.

Former Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop announced her retirement from politics yesterday in a fresh blow to the conservative government already struggling just months ahead of general elections.  Bishop, widely considered the most popular politician in the ruling Liberal Party of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, stunned her parliamentary colleagues with the decision not to re-contest her West Australian seat in elections due by mid-May.  “I will leave this place, positive about the future, proud of the service that I have been able to give to my electorate of Curtin, my beloved Liberal Party, the state of Western Australia and my country,” she said to standing applause from both sides of parliament.  Bishop was the first woman to serve as Australia’s foreign minister, from 2013 to 2018, and as the deputy Liberal leader, a position she held for 11 years. She is the latest of several Liberal women MPs to either retire or quit the party to become independents.  Her standing in the party suffered when right-wing powerbrokers ousted moderate Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader and prime minister in August. Bishop was one of three candidates to run for the leadership in Turnbull’s place, but was snubbed by party colleagues despite opinion polls showing her as the most popular Liberal politician.  “Thank you @JulieBishopMP for your service to our nation and our Party and, above all, your friendship over so many years,” Bishop’s close ally Turnbull tweeted soon after her announcement.   “You have been our finest Foreign Minister — eloquent, elegant and always courageous advancing our national interest in these challenging times,” he said.  Defections by female Liberal MPs and a by-election loss have put the Morrison government into the minority in parliament, while opinion polls show the opposition Labor Party comfortably ahead in the run-up to the elections.  But in announcing her decision, Bishop said she was confident the Liberals and their National Party coalition partners would still prevail in the election, accusing Labor of “learning nothing from its past failings”.  She said the current government “will be returned to office because it is focusing on the matters that matter to the Australian people.”  “On that basis I have reconsidered my position as the member for Curtin.”  Morrison, who won the vote to replace Turnbull, heralded Bishop as a “ground-breaker” for women in public life.  “Julie has been a good friend. I have valued her judgement, appreciated her insight and admired the tireless way she has served the party, the parliament and Australia,” he said. The departure of Bishop and a number of other moderates from Liberal ranks since Turnbull’s ouster has coincided with a shift to the right by Morrison’s government on issues ranging from immigration and national security to climate change.  It has also again put the spotlight on the Liberal Party’s difficulty in recruiting and retaining women in its top ranks.  Renowned for her steely gaze dubbed the “death stare”, Bishop’s highlights as foreign minister included her strong condemnation of Russia over the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014.

Australia officially declared a Great Barrier Reef rodent extinct on Tuesday, making it the first mammal believed to have been killed off by human-induced climate change. The rat-like Bramble Cay melomys -- whose only known habitat was a small sandy island in far northern Australia -- has not been spotted in a decade. Researchers from Queensland determined a key factor in its disappearance was ‘almost certainly’ repeated ocean inundation of the cay -- a low-lying island on a coral reef -- over the last decade, which had resulted in dramatic habitat loss. Australia's environment ministry on Tuesday said it had officially transferred the animal to the ‘extinct’ list. The declaration was expected. The researchers completed a wide-ranging survey in 2014 in a bid to track down the species, but found no trace. Available data on sea-level rise and weather events in the Torres Strait region ‘point to human-induced climate change being the root cause of the loss of the Bramble Cay melomys’, a study released in 2016 said. The Melomys rubicola, considered the Great Barrier Reef's only endemic mammal species, was first discovered on the cay in 1845 by Europeans who shot the ‘large rats’ for sport.

Australia on Monday said a ‘sophisticated state actor’ had hacked the country's main political parties and parliament, just weeks before a closely fought election. Prime Minister Scott Morrison told lawmakers that investigators looking into a hack of parliament computer systems revealed two weeks ago ‘also became aware that the networks of some political parties’ had been breached. ‘Our cyber experts believe that a sophisticated state actor is responsible for this malicious activity,’ he said. Australian security agencies said they did not know who was behind the attack or their motives. It is not yet clear what, if any, material was stolen during the hacks, how long the perpetrators went undetected, or whether it could make some political figures vulnerable to blackmail. Earlier this month, Australia reported a ‘security incident on the parliamentary computing network’. That forced users -- including the prime minister and the cabinet -- to change passwords and take other security measures. Experts warn that attribution is time-consuming and difficult. ‘I think it's definitely too early to say,’ said Fergus Hanson, a cybersecurity expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. He added, however, that there were only ‘one or two actors’ capable of carrying out such an attack. Hanson said he would put China ‘at the top’ of the list of possible suspects, but ‘wouldn't rule out’ Russia's involvement. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said such speculation about Beijing was ‘irresponsible’ and an attempt to ‘smear’ the country. ‘When investigating network breaches, there should be sufficient evidence, unreasonable guesses can't be made,’ Geng said at a regular press briefing in Beijing. Geng urged media to ‘stop using so-called cyber leaks and hacking attacks to discredit China and stop compromising China's interests and China's bilateral relations with the countries concerned’. Beijing and Canberra have sparred over access to natural resources, maritime claims and the use of Chinese state-backed technology companies. Relations have recently been frayed over Canberra's decision to ban Huawei from the country's 5G network amid national security concerns and the expulsion of Huang Xian, a Chinese billionaire who doled out millions in Australian political donations. - High-value target - Australians are expected to go to the polls mid-May, raising fears that hackers could be trying to influence the outcome of the vote, or change the tenor of the debate. Both Russia and China have used cyber operations in a bid to influence democratic votes. Beijing's spies are accused of targeting Taiwanese officials before the election there last year. Dozens of Russians have been indicted for trying to tilt the 2016 US presidential election, and alleged Russian involvement in Britain's referendum on leaving the European Union in the same year has been well documented. Moscow has denied the accusations. As part of the Five Eyes intelligence network -- which also includes Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States -- Australia is a particularly rich target for foreign interests. ‘Our political institutions represent high-value targets. But we have resilient systems in place to detect compromises and remediate them,’ said Alastair MacGibbon, head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre. Five Eyes membership also gives Australia access to a host of signals and human intelligence to back up any suspicions of state hacking. MacGibbon said the hackers were sophisticated enough to get into the network, but ‘not sophisticated enough to remain undetected’. His organisation has already briefed electoral commissions across the country and could be deployed to provide technical support to those affected. He said it was unclear whether the attackers gained access to sensitive data or emails. ‘We don't know. These are very early days,’ he said. ‘We genuinely do not know.’ Morrison insisted, however, ‘there is no evidence of any electoral interference’. ‘We have put in place a number of measures to ensure the integrity of our electoral system.’

The viability of a key river that feeds into Australia's biggest water system is under threat if poor conditions that killed millions of fish are not improved within six months, scientists warned Monday. The management of the Murray-Darling River system, which stretches thousands of kilometres across several states and supplies Australia's food bowl, has been under close scrutiny following three mass fish deaths in December and January. Authorities said millions of fish died in the Darling River events, blamed on low water flow and oxygen levels in the river as well as possibly toxic algae. Leading scientists who studied the three bouts of kills said that while a severe drought plaguing inland eastern Australia contributed to the deaths, there were also ‘serious deficiencies in governance and management’ of the river network. ‘Our review of the fish kills found there isn't enough water in the Darling system to avoid catastrophic outcomes,’ said Craig Moritz, chair of the independent expert panel commissioned by the opposition labour Party to investigate the deaths. He said an analysis of rainfall and river flow data over recent decades points to ‘excess water extraction upstream’ in the agricultural regions of Queensland and New South Wales (NSW) states. If urgent steps are not taken within six months to increase the flow of water, the expert report said, the ‘viability of the Darling’ as well as the communities that depend on it for their livelihoods would be under threat. Authorities in 2014 launched a vast Murray-Darling Basin Plan to manage water sharing and usage along the length of the system, which runs through five states and territories. Last month a Royal Commission launched by South Australia state accused officials of ‘maladministration’, ‘negligence’ and ‘unlawful’ actions in implementing the plan. Environmental activists and many residents living along the lower reaches of the Murray-Darling system have put much of the blame on abusive water extraction for irrigation by agribusinesses, including major cotton farms in Queensland and NSW. But officials of Australia's conservative federal government have focused on the impacts of prolonged drought and an unprecedented heat wave during this southern summer as the primary causes of low water flow in the Darling River. Federal Environment Minister Melissa Price said Monday that ‘significant rainfall’ was needed to alleviate the poor water quality and that release of more water into the system from upstream dams would not improve the conditions.