Highway reopens after horror crash

THE Great Western Highway has reopened after a crash that killed four people, and left a man with critical injuries.

The highway reopened in both directions around 12.45am (AEDT) on Sunday, the Transport Management Centre said.

All lanes of the highway had been closed between Bathurst and Lithgow after the crash at Glanmire, east of Bathurst, around 1.40pm on Saturday.

"A lengthy recovery operation has been completed and all diversions have been lifted," a spokeswoman said.

It was reported that the horrific crash - involving a car, a ute and a semi trailer - occurred after one of the vehicles swerved to miss a dog that had run onto the road.

Three people in the car were killed instantly, while a passenger in the ute also died at the scene.

The ute driver was trapped for an hour and half before being airlifted to Westmead Hospital with life threatening injuries.

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Anti-immigration couple lose foster kids

THREE children from ethnic minority groups have been taken away from their foster parents because the couple support the anti-immigration UK Independence Party.

The couple from Yorkshire in northern England said they had been fostering children for seven years but have been told by social workers that they were not suitable because of UKIP's calls for curbs on immigration to Britain.

Education Secretary Michael Gove said the decision was "indefensible" and opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband, whose party runs the local authority involved, called for an urgent investigation into the "very disturbing" claims.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage, a member of the European Parliament, said the situation was "appalling" and "disgraceful".

He accused the council of bigotry, insisting that decisions on foster care should be "colour-blind".

Following the outcry, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council announced it would launch an investigation into the actions of its staff.

The couple involved told the Daily Telegraph newspaper they had been "stigmatised and slandered" by the removal of the baby girl, boy and older girl they had been caring for for eight weeks.

The decision came after two officials visited to question them about their membership of UKIP, Britain's fourth-biggest party which campaigns for an end to Britain's membership of the European Union and a freeze on immigration.

The woman, a qualified nursery nurse, said the social worker told her: "We would not have placed these children with you had we known you were members of UKIP because it wouldn't have been the right cultural match".

She asked what UKIP had to do with the decision, "then one of them said, 'Well, UKIP have got racist policies'. The implication was that we were racist."

The identity of the couple, who are in their 50s, has been kept secret to protect the children.

Mr Gove condemned the council for making "the wrong decision in the wrong way for the wrong reasons" and said he would be looking into what happened.

Rotherham council's director of children's services, Joyce Thacker, told BBC radio the children had been placed with the couple as an emergency and it was never meant to be a long-term arrangement.

She added: "These children are not UK children and we were not aware of the foster parents having strong political views. There are some strong views in the UKIP party and we have to think of the future of the children."

UKIP started life on the fringes of politics but a recent ICM poll suggests it now has the support of seven per cent of voters.

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Iran congratulates Hamas 'victory'

IRAN'S President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has congratulated Gaza's Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya on a "great victory" over Israel, the two sides say.

Haniya in turn "thanked Iran for its support," they added, days after Tehran confirmed it had supplied military aid to Gaza.

"The Iranian president congratulated the people of Gaza and the (Palestinian) resistance facing Zionist aggression ... on their great victory," Iran's news agency ISNA reported on Saturday.

Haniya's office said Ahmadinejad called late on Friday to praise Gaza's "victory after eight days of Israeli aggression," referring to the Jewish state's Operation Pillar of Defence which ended with a Wednesday ceasefire.

"We stand beside the Palestinian people," the Iranian president added.

Parliament speaker Ali Larijani on Wednesday said Iran had supplied military aid to Islamist movement Hamas, which controls Gaza and which fired missiles at Tel Aviv for the first time during the eight-day conflict with Israel.

"We are proud to defend the people of Palestine and Hamas ... and that our assistance to them has been both financial and military," Larijani said in remarks reported by parliament's website, ICANA.ir.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards chief General Mohammad Ali Jafari also said on Wednesday that Tehran had provided the "technology" for the Fajr 5 missiles used to target Tel Aviv, but denied supplying the actual weapons.

He said they were being "rapidly produced" in Gaza.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal on Wednesday thanked Iran as well as Egypt for their support during the conflict, saying Iran "had a role in arming" his Islamist movement.

The truce ended eight days of cross border attacks in which 166 Palestinians and six Israelis died.

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Dubai plans world's largest mall, new city

DUBAI famed for its mega-projects before it was hit by the global financial crisis, has announced a new development to open the world's biggest mall and a park larger than London's Hyde Park.

The ruler of the Gulf desert city state, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, announced the plan for a "new city within Dubai," according to an official statement on Saturday, naming it after himself.

No cost was stated for "Mohammed bin Rashid City," to be carried out by his Dubai Holding and the publicly-listed Emaar Properties, which developed many of Dubai's prestigious projects, including Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest tower.

The plan also features new residential areas, although the emirate continues to have a surplus of units built during a five-year bubble which burst in 2009.

The "Mall of the World" will have a capacity of 80 million visitors a year to become the "largest in the world," said the statement, while its park will be "30 per cent bigger than Hyde Park of London."

The mall will be connected to a family entertainment centre to be developed in cooperation with Universal Studios International that will be the largest in the region, aiming to attract six million visitors a year.

The emirate already has countless malls and hotels, including the Dubai Mall, touted as the world's largest shopping, leisure and entertainment destination, with 62 million visitors this year.

"The current facilities available in Dubai need to be scaled up in line with the future ambitions for the city," Sheikh Mohammed said in the statement.

Dubai's tourism is growing by 13 per cent a year, according to the statement, with hotel occupancy hitting 82 per cent in 2011 while hotel revenues grew 22 per cent last year, exceeding 16 billion dirhams ($4.26 billion).

The emirate rocked global financial markets in autumn 2009 over its debt crisis, but Dubai has restructured the mountain of debt owed by its corporations, and its economy has returned to growth after contracting in 2009.

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India to log 5.5% quarter growth: minister

INDIA'S economy logged around 5.5 per cent growth in the last financial quarter, a rate that could boost calls for lower interest rates to spur activity.

India's once-booming economy has been hit by high interest rates, Europe's debt crisis that has slowed exports, and sluggish investment caused by domestic and overseas concerns about policy and corruption.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Saturday said he expected official data to be released next Friday to show that the economy grew by "around 5.5 per cent" in the three months to September 30.

That would be down from 6.9 per cent in the same second-quarter period a year earlier.

"It goes without saying that we face a difficult situation," Chidambaram said at a bankers' conference, adding the "global economy is still in crisis".

India's economy was growing by more than eight per cent before 2011/12.

But it has been performing increasingly worse with the Congress-led government of Prime Minister Manmohan widely criticised for its handling of the situation.

Even though 5.5-per cent growth would be the envy of much of the world, it is not enough for India, which has been aiming for close to double-digit expansion to substantially reduce crushing poverty.

"For us eight per cent growth is not an aspiration but a necessity. India cannot afford to grow below eight per cent," Chidambaram said.

The slow growth comes at a time when it is more difficult for the Indian government to pep up the economy than in the 2008/09 financial crisis.

Then, the government had more fiscal room to stimulate the economy but now it is struggling to cut a widening budget deficit and avert a downgrade of its sovereign debt to "junk" status by global credit ratings agencies.

In addition, the central bank has been keeping interest rates high to combat stubbornly high inflation.

Inflation eased marginally in October to 7.45 per cent year-on-year, but economists said the level is still too high to permit the bank to lower rates.

Indian businesses have been calling for lower rates, saying the slowdown is in large part due to high borrowing costs that have curbed consumer spending.

Chidambaram said India must boost growth "through innovation, through finding ways of increasing the production of goods and services".

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Syria rebels attack army in Aleppo

SYRIAN rebels have attacked army positions in the northern province of Aleppo, while Islamist fighters clashed with Kurdish militias on the border with Turkey.

Insurgents also attacked troops guarding the strategic Tishrin dam, located on the Euphrates river between the provinces of Aleppo and Raqa.

The rebels have surrounded the area, about 10 kilometres from the town of Manbij, local resident Abu Mohammed told AFP.

Opposition fighters already control one of the main routes to Raqa and the Tishrin dam would give them a second passage, connecting a wide expanse of territory between the two provinces, both of which border Turkey.

In Aleppo city, the commercial capital where fighting has reached stalemate after five months of deadly urban combat, clashes broke out near an air force intelligence building, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Insurgents earlier this week captured Base 46, just west of Aleppo. Nearly 300 soldiers were killed in the sprawling army garrison, according to the rebels, and a large cache of arms and ammunition seized.

The rebels are aiming to also seize Sheikh Suleiman base, also west of the city, that they have encircled for nearly two months, to give them full control of a swathe of northwest Syria from Aleppo to the Turkish border.

In Hasakeh province, northwest Syria, Ras al-Ain saw its fiercest violence since the town near the Turkish border was captured by rebels two weeks ago, a resident told AFP.

"There are so few people, most have left. There is no electricity, no water and no mobile coverage," said Ali, a farmer in his 40s, who fled with his family on Saturday.

"The fighting has been non-stop for five or six days now, but in the last 24 hours it has gotten worse ... The Kurds are bringing reinforcements from Derik and other nearby villages," he said.

Two main Kurdish groups have joined forces in a standoff with hundreds of Islamist rebels, a Syrian Kurdish representative and an activist said on Friday.

Hundreds of fighters loyal to the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) - which has close ties to Turkey's rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) - have been locked in fierce battles with fighters of the jihadist Al-Nusra Front and allied Ghuraba al-Sham group in Ras al-Ain.

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Probe into attempt to set bear on fire

AN INQUIRY has been ordered into an attempt by a jeering mob to set a terrified bear on fire in northern Indian, a state minister said.

Television footage showed the frightened bear scrambling up a tree in the state of Jammu and Kashmir as one of the men in the crowd tied a flaming cloth to a pole and tried to poke the animal.

"We've ordered an inquiry - a senior government official will hold the inquiry," Kashmir forest minister Mian Altaf told India's NDTV network.

The incident took place in the southern Kashmir district of Shopian earlier in the week, the network said.

The bear eventually climbed down from the tree and managed to escape but its fate was unknown, Mr Altaf said.

The attack was reported just two days before India's environment ministry was due to host a global conference on bear conservation in New Delhi.

Vivek Menon, executive director of the Wildlife Trust of India, blamed the the incident on the increasing incursion by humans into bears' natural habitats in Kashmir and in other parts of the country.

"There has been a great land use change in Kashmir. People are living closer and closer to the forests and therefore coming into contact with bears - and both people and bears are suffering," he said.

According to medical officials, a large number of hospital beds in Kashmir are occupied by people suffering from wounds inflicted by bears, Mr Menon said.

"That is spreading fear and panic among people and resulting in absurd retaliatory measures," he said.

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Mideast nuclear conference moved to 2013

UN leader Ban Ki-moon says he has given up hope of holding a conference on a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East this year, but hopes it can be held in 2013.

Ban and Finnish special envoy Jaakko Laajava have been trying to persuade Middle East powers to attend the conference but hit opposition from Israel and others.

The conference, organised by the United States, Britain and Russia, was to be held in 2012 in Finland.

But Ban on Saturday said he was now aiming for it "to be convened at the earliest opportunity in 2013".

The US State Department on Friday said the conference could "not be convened because of present conditions in the Middle East and the fact that states in the region have not reached agreement on acceptable conditions for a conference".

"The United States believes that a deep conceptual gap persists in the region on approaches toward regional security and arms control arrangements," it said.

But Britain said the three co-organisers also wanted it held as soon as possible in 2013.

Ban also appealed to Middle East states to overcome their differences "to seize this rare opportunity to initiate a process that entails direct engagement on security issues".

Laajava will continue talks "in the shortest possible time which will allow the conference to be convened at the earliest opportunity in 2013," Ban said.

Israel had said it would not attend a conference now because of the tense security in the region and it would become a target of diplomatic attacks in any talks, diplomats said.

US diplomats had expressed similar fears, which have heightened since the eight days of conflict between Israel and the Hamas movement in Gaza this month.

Iran and Arab states criticise Israel for its suspected nuclear arsenal.

Israel refuses to say whether it has nuclear arms, though security experts say it has a substantial number of weapons.

Israel and the United States and its allies say Iran is the main proliferation threat, even though Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons.

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Sirens go off in Tel Aviv, 1 dead in Gaza

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories, Nov 17 AFP - Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed 10 Palestinians and destroyed the Hamas government headquarters as Israel called up thousands more reservists for a possible ground war.

After Palestinian militants fired rockets at the heart of Israel on Friday, Israeli warplanes carried out 180 air strikes overnight, Israel TV reported, with the strikes levelling the headquarters of the Hamas government.

Medics said 40 Gazans have been killed and more than 350 wounded since Israel launched an aerial campaign on the enclave on Wednesday afternoon, with at least five militants among the 10 people killed in Saturday's raids.

As the toll rose, sirens went off in Tel Aviv on Saturday for a third day running, sending people scuttling for cover, a day after a rocket crashed into the sea near the city centre, AFP correspondents said. The fire was claimed by Hamas's armed wing.

While Cairo was at the centre of efforts to halt the violence, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti appealed for a truce in a telephone conversation with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, Monti's office said.

He called for "a truce between the parties as soon as possible, to bring to an end the fighting and allow dialogue and peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to begin again".

Since the start of Operation Pillar of Defence, the Israeli army says militants have fired more than 600 rockets over the border, of which 404 hit and 230 were intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system.

Over the same period, three Israelis have been killed and 18 injured, including 10 soldiers, with the army saying the air force had hit more than 830 targets in Gaza.

On Saturday, four Israeli soldiers and five civilians were hurt in separate rocket attacks on the south which hit a building and a car, police and the army said. Another militant group in Gaza, Islamic Jihad, claimed those attacks.

The military said it had sealed off all main roads around Gaza and declared a closed military zone, in the latest sign it was poised to launch its first ground offensive on the territory since the 22-day campaign over New Year 2009.

Overnight, the air force hit Gaza City, targeting Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya's headquarters, other government buildings, including the interior ministry and police compound, militant training facilities and "dozens of terror sites", it said.

Correspondents at the scene said the headquarters, which had been emptied over attack fears, was reduced to a pile of rubble but there were no reports of casualties.

Air strikes in southern Gaza, notably Rafah, killed six people while three more died in an Israeli raid on a refugee camp in central Gaza, medics said. Another man died of injuries sustained in a morning strike on Gaza City.

Saturday's violence came as Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem paid a brief solidarity visit to Gaza, a day after a similar mission by Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil.

The world must stop Israel's "blatant aggression", Abdessalem told AFP on his arrival in Gaza City, where he visited the ruins of the cabinet building where a day earlier Haniya had received Qandil.

The Tunisian minister called on the Arab League to act to halt the aggression as it gathered for talks in Cairo.

Egypt and Turkey, meanwhile, put the onus on Israel to end the fighting, as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Cairo a day after Washington urged the two Muslim countries to pressure the Palestinians.

After a meeting with his counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu, Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr said they both agreed on "denouncing Israel's aggression and on the need to swiftly stop this aggression".

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Albania buries exiled king's remains

ALBANIA'S top leaders and thousands of people have paid their last respect to the country's only post-independence monarch, King Ahmet Zog I, half a century after he died and was buried in exile.

The nation's television stations on Saturday broadcast live the burial ceremony in the capital, a day after Zog's remains were returned from France.

He was buried in the family's mausoleum, alongside his Hungarian wife, Queen Geraldina, his son Leka I and his wife, Susan.

Zog proclaimed himself Albania's monarch in 1928 and ruled until 1939 when he fled Albania after it was occupied by fascist Italy. Albania's post-World War II communist regime abolished the monarchy in 1946.

Albania remains a parliamentary republic after the fall of communism in 1990.

The royal family returned to Albania in 2002, leading a quiet life though never relinquishing the claim to the throne.

Prime Minister Sali Berisha said that Albanians honour Zog "for his historic contribution in building up this country".

Berisha was joined at the ceremony by President Bujar Nishani and Kosovo's President Ahtifete Jahjaga. The ceremony was ignored by the country's opposition parties.

Nishani said Zog "is one of the most important figures of the Albanian history".

After Albania's communist regime fell in 1990, Zog's son, Leka I Zog, made two disastrous attempts to return home - first in 1993 when Berisha's government then threw him out and in 1997, when he was charged with leading an armed uprising after failing to convince Albanians to vote for monarchy in a referendum.

Since then, the family has been given back some of its old royal properties and granted diplomatic passports. Zog's grandson, Leka II Zog, has since served as an adviser to several Albanian governments.

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