Canberra to sell uranium to China
By Robert Hudson,WNS Canberra Correspondent
CANBERRA - Australia will soon be able to export uranium to China, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has said. The two countries signed an agreement earlier this year, which means the exports can begin in 30 days, he said. Australia has 40% of the world's recoverable uranium, while China needs a huge amount of energy for its large population and rising economy. Beijing is keen to increase its use of nuclear power, to cut down its dependence on fossil fuels. Two bilateral nuclear treaties - the Australia-China Nuclear Transfer Agreement and the Nuclear Co-operation Agreement - were signed in April during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Canberra.
The two countries had previously failed to reach a deal amid concerns China would use the uranium in its nuclear weapons programme. But these agreements are designed to ensure that any uranium exported to China will just be used for peaceful purposes. Australia already exports uranium to more than 30 countries, but only does so under strict conditions. India has also tried to buy Australian uranium, but unlike China it has yet to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation and has so far failed to win approval for the purchase.
China is desperate for energy to fuel its booming economy. The old coal mines that the country relies on cannot keep up with demand and there is not enough oil to go around. With power shortages and blackouts in big cities common, the government is looking for new sources of energy and nuclear is top of the list. Beijing wants to build 40 to 50 nuclear reactors over the next 20 years and a steady supply of uranium is vital.
Fiji coup leader sworn in as PM
By Malenie Judy,WNS Pacific Bureau Chief
SYDNEY - The leader of a coup in Fiji, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, has been sworn in as interim prime minister, one month after overthrowing the government. Cmdr Bainimarama deposed prime minister Laisenia Qarase and named himself the country's president. However, Cmdr Bainimarama on Thursday returned executive authority to President Ratu Josefa Iloilo. An interim government is to be appointed and is expected to be dominated by the military.
It will remain in power until elections.
Mr Bainimarama said at a short swearing-in ceremony on Friday: "In all things, I will be a true and faithful prime minister." Mr Qarase remains banished on an outlying island. In a national address on Thursday, Cmdr Bainimarama said he had returned "all executive authority" to Mr Iloilo. The move did not affect his control over the government, but still had important significance, correspondents say. Cmdr Bainimarama did not explain why he made the decision but reports suggest he was trying to appease Fiji's powerful Council of Chiefs, which represent the country's indigenous majority.
The council has been critical of the army's actions, and had objected to the treatment of Mr Iloilo, whom Council members first appointed seven years ago. Soon after he was reinstated, President Iloili made a nationwide address publicly supporting the coup, and saying that, given the circumstances, he would have taken the same actions as Cmdr Bainimarama. "I fully endorse the actions of the commander and the Republic of Fiji Military Forces in acting in the interest of the nation and in upholding the constitution," he said. The military had long accused Mr Qarase's administration of being corrupt, and adopting racist policies against the ethnic Indian minority. Caretaker Prime Minister Jona Senilagakali, who was chosen by the army in the days after the coup, has resigned.
Quiet New Year for NZ police
By Christie Anderson,WNS New Zealand CorrespondentIt has been a very quiet New Year in all the traditional hot spots leaving police breathing a sigh of relief. They say despite a number of arrests there have been no major problems. About 100 people have had a night in the specially constructed 'Alcatraz' facility in Mount Maunganui for breaches of the liquor ban. Bad weather in Wellington forced the event in Civic Square to be cancelled, and Whangamata is reporting its lowest number of arrests for years, just over 100.
In Wanaka, Sergeant Aaron Nicholson says the thirty extra police brought in from Dunedin helped keep arrests down there too. He says there were just a few minor street incidents and nobody got badly hurt. And there were only a handful of arrests in the crowd of three thousand at the Gisborne clock tower. None at all were made from a crowd of about 14,000 at the Waiohika Rhythm and Vines event.
New Year honours awarded
By Serene Hatt,WNS New Zealand Correspondent
AUCKLAND - A diverse pair of New Zealanders top the New Year's honours list - one is a religious scholar and the other a potter whose work graces galleries all over the world. At 92 Doreen Blumhardt's hands may not have the skill of her youth but she has not lost her feel for beauty. "I still enjoy creating, I think everyone should create in some form or another - it's the most satisfying thing you can do," says Blumhardt. "I don't feel any different. But I think it's wonderful that they've awarded me that."
Blumhardt has joined the Order of New Zealand, the elite group of fewer than 20 living New Zealanders. It is as an art teacher that Blumhardt has had her greatest impact and she shares the honour with another teacher, religious studies revolutionary Lloyd Geering. Ordained as a Presbyterian minister, Geering was charged with heresy after questioning the resurrection of Christ. He is the author of several books and the first university chair of religious studies in Australasia.
Another 200 New Zealanders were also honoured in fields ranging from embroidery to life-saving rescues and the arts. Actor Sam Neill, 59, is a little embarrassed at making it to Distinguished Companion of the Order of Merit. Actress Jennifer Ward-Lealand becomes an Officer of the Order of Merit while also in the world of acting and film, director Vincent Ward becomes an Officer of the Order of Merit. Consumer affairs champion David Russell has been made a Companion of the Queen's Service Order.
Howard backs nuclear power shift
By Howart Dan,WNS Australia Bureau Chief
SYDNEY - Australian Prime Minister John Howard has backed a controversial report which calls on the country to start building nuclear power stations. Mr Howard said the report, released last month, showed that nuclear power was "part of the solution" to Australia's growing energy needs. It said Australia could have a nuclear power industry in 10 to 15 years. Critics say Mr Howard is using the nuclear issue to build his green credentials ahead of 2007 elections.
Mr Howard said nuclear energy was not a "silver bullet" to solve global warming or energy security. But a nation like Australia - which has the world's largest known uranium deposits - would be "crazy in the extreme if we didn't allow for the development of nuclear power", he said. Most of Australia's energy needs at present are met by coal and gas, bestowing on the country the highest per capita greenhouse emissions in the world. A shift to nuclear energy would also help the country tackle pollution and cut greenhouse emissions. "The reality is we won't have nuclear power stations tomorrow, but over time if we are to have a sensible response, we have to include nuclear power," he told reporters.
But the move towards nuclear has been questioned by Mr Howard's political opponents. The opposition Labor Party, which introduced a ban on any new uranium mines while in power in 1983, has asked him to explain where the nuclear reactors would be built and where the radioactive waste would be dumped. Mr Howard has called for the ban on new uranium mines to be lifted. His backing of nuclear power has also been opposed by the environmental and coal lobbies. Critics argue that Australia does not need nuclear power because of its huge coal resources. Australia is one of only two major industrialised nations not to have signed the Kyoto agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the other being the US. Australia faces international pressure to reduce emissions, and experts say nuclear power could be one way to do it. Australia currently has one small research reactor, located at Lucas Heights in Sydney.
Nature, not humans, blamed for Australia drought
By Margaret Hilda,WNS Sydney Correspondent
SYDNEY - Australia's devastating drought is far more likely to be part of a natural cycle than a result of the man-made greenhouse effect, an Australian climate scientist has said. Barrie Hunt, a researcher with government science agency CSIRO, dismissed suggestions that global warming, believed to be caused by carbon emissions, is responsible for the "Big Dry" gripping much of south-eastern Australia. "It is very, very highly likely that what we are seeing at the moment is natural climatic variability," Hunt told the Australian newspaper.
After studying a CSIRO model of Australia's natural climate patterns over the past 10,000 years, Hunt said the current drought, whose severity has led some scientists to label it a once in a millennium event, was by no means unique. He said historical data -- which used air pressure, temperature, wind and rainfall information -- put current conditions into perspective, revealing 30 periods of drought lasting longer than eight years in the past ten millenia. "The longest sequence was 14 years in Queensland-New South Wales, 11 in the south-east and 10 in the south-west."
He said that each of those significant dry spells occurred at random times and had an unpredictable duration. For example, the Queensland-NSW area went 800 years without a drought longer than eight years, "but there is another period of 462 years where you get five of these", he said. "When people talk about it as a 1,000-year drought, they haven't got the information. They don't understand that according to natural variability we could get another one in 50 years or it might be another 800 years, and there's no way of predicting it," Hunt said. However, he did not deny global warming risked raising Australia's temperatures, which CSIRO predicts will rise up to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) by 2030 and six degrees Celsius (10.8 Fahrenheit) by 2070.
Australia doubles spy operatives
By Samson Zahn,WNS Australia Senior CorrespondentSYDNEY - An influx of Chinese spies has forced Australia's home espionage agency into a recruiting drive to counter the threat as well as that posed by Muslim extremists, a newspaper report said on Thursday. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has doubled the number of foreign-language speakers in its ranks since 2004, with most newcomers fluent in Chinese, the Australian daily reported, citing unnamed sources. Attorney General Philip Ruddock declined to confirm any increase in Chinese-language-speaking spies, but said ASIO had been on a major recruitment drive since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. "We have committed very significant resources which has enabled ASIO to expand its staffing to 1,200, double the number it had at 2001," Ruddock told local media. "This campaign that we have been engaged in has been certainly very innovative and recruited high-quality staff with a range of experience and backgrounds," he said.
The Australian newspaper said around 88 linguists had been employed since 2004 under the recruitment drive which plans to see ASIO grow to more than 1,800 by 2011. ASIO is Australia's domestic security agency, similar to MI5 in the United Kingdom, and is responsible for protecting the country against espionage, acts of terrorism and sabotage. Its sister agency, responsible for overseas intelligence and spying, is the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), which has close ties with Britain's MI6 and the CIA. ASIO agents have no arrest powers and are not armed. A government source said Australia, a close U.S. ally and major trading partner with Beijing, was being aggressively targeted by Chinese agents, who were mostly operating undercover as diplomats or business figures. "They have built up their capabilities over the last 10 years," the source told the newspaper. China's embassy in Australia has previously rejected spying accusations. China is Australia's second-largest trade partner, with exports of goods and services worth A$16 billion ($12.5 billion) in 2005. Australia, a staunch U.S. ally, also has close political ties with Beijing on the back of Canberra's refusal to publicly berate China over human rights abuses. But ASIO, like both the CIA and the FBI in the United States, was having less success recruiting fluent Arabic speakers, with fewer than a dozen working inside security and intelligence agencies, the newspaper report said. Arabic speakers were needed to monitor the Muslim community, which has complained of unfair targeting by Australian authorities. Australia has never suffered a major terrorist attack on home soil, although 92 Australians have been killed in bombings blamed on Islamic militants in neighboring Indonesia since 2002.
By Robert Hudson,
