NATO airstrike kills civilians: politician

A NATO airstrike has hit two houses, killing nine Afghan civilians and four insurgents in an eastern province near the Pakistani border, a local politician says.

The attack occurred during a joint NATO-Afghan operation in the Shigal district of Kunar province on Tuesday night. The US-led military alliance in Kabul said on Wednesday it was looking into the claim.

Wagma Sapay, a member of parliament from Kunar, said the civilians killed were in one house while four senior Taliban leaders were slain as they were gathering next door in the village of Sharpool in the Chawkam area.

She said the civilians killed included five children and four women. Police confirmed the death toll as nine but did not provide other details.

Provincial Governor Sayed Fazelullah Wahidi said the local government had not been informed about plans for the strike.

He put the death toll at eight - four women and four children.

The conflicting casualty numbers couldn't immediately be reconciled.

"This operation was by coalition and Afghan forces," he said. "We were not aware of it."

The killing of civilians at the hands of US and other foreign forces has been one of the most contentious issues in the 11-year war.

Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, said the alliance was aware of the allegations of civilian casualties in Kunar, but could not confirm any details.

"We take these allegations very seriously and we are in the process of determining the circumstances surrounding this incident," he said.

The reported attack came as President Barack Obama announced in his State of the Union speech that he will bring home within a year about half of the 66,000 US troops now in Afghanistan in a step toward withdrawing all foreign combat forces by the end of 2014.

The UN body monitoring the rights of children said last week that attacks by US military forces in Afghanistan, including airstrikes, have reportedly killed hundreds of children over the past four years.

The Geneva-based Committee on the Rights of the Child said the casualties were "due notably to reported lack of precautionary measures and indiscriminate use of force."

ISAF, which is composed mainly of American forces, dismissed that claim, saying that it takes special care to avoid civilian casualties.

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Six journalists held in new hacking probe

BRITISH police have arrested six current or former journalists in a new probe into alleged phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch's defunct News of the World tabloid.

Investigators had identified a "further suspected conspiracy" by staff at the paper in 2005 and 2006 which was separate to the alleged hacking under which a number of people have been charged, Scotland Yard said in a statement on Wednesday.

The News of the World closed in disgrace in 2011 amid allegations that it had hacked the mobile phone voicemails of hundreds of celebrities, politicians and victims of crime and terrorism.

"Detectives on Operation Weeting have identified a further suspected conspiracy to intercept telephone voicemails by a number of employees who worked for the now defunct News of the World newspaper," the statement said.

"As part of the new lines of inquiry six people were arrested this morning on suspicion of conspiracy to intercept telephone communications... All of them are journalists or former journalists."

Police arrested three men, aged 46, 39 and 45, and two women, aged 33 and 40, in London, and a 39-year-old woman in Cheshire, northwest England, and were questioning them at various police stations, the statement said.

Searches were also under way at a number of addresses.

"In due course officers will be making contact with people they believe have been victims of the suspected voicemail interceptions," the statement said.

British media reported that two of those arrested now work for Murdoch's daily tabloid The Sun.

Those already facing trial over hacking at the News of the World include British Prime Minister David Cameron's ex-spokesman Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, the former head of Murdoch's British newspaper wing.

Operation Weeting was launched in January 2011 to investigate a string of allegations over hacking at the weekly News of the World, which was Britain's biggest selling newspaper.

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Hillsborough inquest coroner appointed

A CORONER have been appointed to the fresh inquest into the deaths of the 96 victims of the Hillsborough disaster in England, and pledged to open the inquiry as soon as possible.

A new inquest into the deaths of the Liverpool supporters at Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough stadium on April 15, 1989, was ordered after the original verdicts were quashed by the High Court in December.

Lord Justice Goldring has been appointed as assistant deputy coroner for the inquiry and will decide in due course where the inquests will be held, the judiciary said on Wednesday.

Lord Justice Goldring was the senior presiding judge of England and Wales from January 2010 to December 2012 and sat on the trial of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor's killers.

His appointment comes after ministers changed the law so coroners are no longer required to hold inquests within their own districts.

Lord Justice Goldring now has the power to hold the inquest anywhere in England and Wales, if it is in the best interest of the bereaved family and others, such as witnesses.

Hillsborough victims' relatives have spoken out against the fresh inquest being held in Sheffield - home of the disaster and the original overturned inquiry.

The fresh inquest into the disaster was ordered when a panel of three High Court judges, headed by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, quashed the accidental death verdicts.

A damning report laying bare a cover-up which attempted to shift the blame for the tragedy on to its victims was published last September.

A new police investigation, as well as an inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) are also being conducted.

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Victim contracts SARS-like virus in UK

A BRITISH resident has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal SARS-like virus which they are believed to have caught from a family member, in the 11th confirmed case worldwide.

Britain's Health Protection Agency said on Wednesday the person had no recent travel history, but was a relative of a person who had recently travelled to the Middle East and Pakistan and contracted novel coronavirus.

"Confirmed novel coronavirus infection in a person without travel history to the Middle East suggests that person-to-person transmission has occurred, and that it occurred in the UK," said John Watson, head of the agency's respiratory diseases department.

"This case is a family member who was in close personal contact with the earlier case and who may have been at greater risk of acquiring an infection because of their underlying health condition."

The person was in intensive care in hospital in Birmingham, central England, the HPA said.

But the agency added that despite the apparent person-to-person transmission in this case "the risk of infection in most circumstances is still considered to be very low."

"If novel coronavirus were more infectious, we would have expected to have seen a larger number of cases than we have seen since the first case was reported three months ago," it said.

This is the third case to hit Britain after a 49-year-old Qatari man was treated at a London hospital in September for the virus.

The HPA said five patients had died worldwide as a result of the disease.

Five cases have been confirmed in Saudi Arabia resulting in three deaths, while two patients treated in Jordan have died, the agency said. A patient from Qatar was treated for the virus in Germany and given the all-clear.

Coronaviruses cause most common colds, but can also cause SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).

The SARS epidemic killed more than 800 people when it swept out of China in 2003, sparking a major international health scare.

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Iran calls for end to all nuclear arms

SANCTIONS-HIT Iran has called for the destruction of all atomic weapons in the world after North Korea announced that it had staged its most powerful nuclear test yet.

"We need to come to the point where no country has any nuclear weapons and at the same time all weapons of mass destruction and nuclear arms need to be destroyed," foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said on Tuesday when asked for a response to Pyongyang's claim to have detonated a "miniaturised" device.

"At the same all countries should have the right to make use of nuclear activities for peaceful purposes," Mehmanparast said at his weekly press briefing.

Iran has been slapped with numerous international sanctions due to its controversial nuclear program, which the West insists masks a drive for atomic weapons despite repeated denials by Tehran.

"For such a world to exist those who are the front runners in producing the nuclear ... who are proud of their nuclear stockpiles ... who upgrade them and allocate budgets to maintain them, need to be the first people to disarm so that no country would pursue these weapons," Mehmanparast said.

The test by the pariah nation has been met with the world condemnation.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has said he is "gravely concerned about the negative impact of this deeply destabilising act" as the UN Security Council prepared to hold an emergency session at 9am in New York (0100 AEDT on Wednesday) .

Tehran was among the few nations who congratulated North Korea on successfully launching a scientific satellite in orbit last December, but denied having a role in preparing the launch.

Iranian officials denied a South Korean newspaper report and a Western diplomatic source claim that a number of Iranian missile experts were in North Korea offering technical assistance for the launch.

Leaked US diplomatic cables in 2010 showed that US officials believe Iran has acquired ballistic missile parts from North Korea.

Pyongyang and Tehran are both under UN security council sanctions for their ballistic missile and nuclear programs.

A 2011 UN sanctions report said Tehran and Pyongyang were suspected of sharing ballistic missile technology.

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Man missing after Sydney speedboat crash

POLICE and emergency services continue to search for a man in the Georges River after a speedboat crash southwest Sydney.

Emergency services were called to a boat ramp off River Road at Revesby just before 4pm (AEDT) on Tuesday after two men were thrown into the water when their boat capsized.

A 27-year-old Hurstville man was rescued and taken to St George Hospital for minor injuries and later released.

His friend, a 28-year-old Picnic Point man, has not been found.

Their boat was found, although it is completely submerged.

An extensive search has been launched and involves police officers along with PolAir, Police Rescue and Police Divers.

Volunteers from the State Emergency Service, Roads and Maritime Services and Fire and Rescue NSW personnel have helped with the search.

It was likely the search would be postponed later on Tuesday night, police said.

A police guard will remain at the location overnight and the search will continue at first light on Wednesday.

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Uganda deports British gay play producer

UGANDA has deported a British theatre producer who last year staged a play about homosexuality, which is illegal in Uganda, the British High Commission said.

David Cecil was arrested in September on charges of disobeying orders to cancel the staging of a play whose main character was a gay man. He was briefly jailed before being granted bail.

In January a court dropped the charges for lack of proof.

"We have confirmation of deportation," High Commission spokesman Chris Ward told AFP on Tuesday.

"We are quite concerned that he has not had the opportunity for due process under the Ugandan system."

Cecil's partner Florence Kebirungi, who has two children with him, said he was likely "already back in the UK."

She said he was taken on Monday night from the police station where he was being held to the capital's main airport, where he was put on a flight for Britain.

"He called me from the airport, he didn't sound OK," she said, adding that immigration officials told her that Cecil was being deported because he was an "undesirable" person.

"It is a big surprise as we did not have a chance to make a legal challenge," she told AFP.

The groundbreaking play The River and The Mountain was performed at several venues around Kampala in August despite an injunction by Uganda's government-run media council. It had issued a temporary ban on the play pending review of the script.

The play examines the plight of a man coming out as a homosexual and the motivations of Uganda's vociferous anti-gay lobby.

Written by British playwright Beau Hopkins, it was directed and performed by Ugandans.

Homosexuality is already a crime in Uganda but proposed legislation currently before parliament would see the death penalty introduced for certain homosexual acts.

Although legislators have said the bill could be changed, in its current form, anyone caught engaging in homosexual acts for the second time, or engaging in gay sex where one partner is a minor or has HIV, would be sentenced to death.

Public discussion promoting homosexuality -- including by rights groups -- would be punished by up to seven years in jail.

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Queen tops Britain's female power list

SHE has no formal political role, but Queen Elizabeth II has been named Britain's most powerful woman by a BBC radio program.

The monarch topped the list of 100 female figures announced on Tuesday on Woman's Hour.

Home Secretary Theresa May - Britain's interior minister - ranks second, followed by Ana Botin, chief executive of Santander UK bank.

The top five also includes Supreme Court judge Brenda Hale and Elisabeth Murdoch, chair of television company Shine Group and daughter of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

The list was assembled by a panel that included journalist Eve Pollard, politician Priti Patel and crime novelist Val McDermid.

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French anti-fraud teams search meat firms

Retailers have pulled frozen meals from shelves following a scandal over horsemeat sold as beef. Source: AAP

FRENCH anti-fraud agents have searched two firms at the centre of a scandal over horsemeat disguised as beef in ready-to-eat frozen meals sold in supermarkets across Europe.

The inspections on Monday came as French ministers prepared to hold a crisis meeting with key players in the meat industry, as the scandal that erupted in Britain continued to spread across the continent.

The DGCCRF fraud office said its inspectors were in the Comigel plant in the northeastern city of Metz and on the premises of Spanghero, which is based in the southwest.

Supermarket chains in Britain, France and Sweden have begun pulling millions of packs of lasagne, other pasta dishes, shepherd's pies and moussaka after it emerged that frozen food companies had used horsemeat instead of beef.

British supermarkets were the first to pull the products last week after Comigel warned that the beef it supplied to Findus frozen food firm - which sold its ready-to-eat meals to supermarkets - was suspect.

Comigel, which got its meat from Spanghero, said it had been cheated by its suppliers, while Spanghero in turn said it had been duped by abattoirs in Romania.

Both firms said they will sue suppliers, and the French and British governments have vowed to punish those who sold horsemeat purporting to be beef.

French Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll warned on Monday that more trouble lay ahead if Europe's complex system of wholesale meat trading was not reformed to make it simpler to trace the origin of food.

"We have to get out of this fog, because we can go on calling for traceability ... but if the system is so murky, if the fog is so thick that we are all lost, then we will end up with big problems," he told RTL radio.

"There are people who are out to defraud, who are trying to cheat," said Le Foll, who was due to meet later Monday for emergency talks with Consumer Affairs Minister Benoit Hamon and meat industry leaders.

The meat used in these products has been traced from France through Cyprus and The Netherlands to Romanian abattoirs.

The head of France's ANIA food industry association, Jean-Rene Buisson, who was due to attend the talks with the government, insisted Monday that his country's regulatory system was "the best in the world".

"We are not responsible for the fraud of one of our suppliers," he told Europe 1 radio.

"The traceability of food products is not being called into question in this affair. We put in place the best system in the world after the 'mad cow' crisis which will enable us to find out in two or three days who is responsible," he said.

The French government has promised the results of an urgent inquiry into the scandal by Wednesday.

Officials in Bucharest announced on Saturday their own inquiry after it emerged that abattoirs there allegedly produced the horsemeat sold on as beef.

Findus has said it will file a legal complaint in France on Monday after evidence showed the presence of horsemeat in its supply chain "was not accidental".

Its Nordic branch said on Sunday it planned to sue Comigel, which sells its products to customers in 16 countries, and its suppliers.

Comigel head Erick Lehagre told AFP the company had been fooled by its suppliers and vowed to seek compensation.

In Britain, tests have found that some frozen ready meals produced in mainland Europe and labelled as processed beef actually contained up to 100 per cent horsemeat.

But Food Minister Owen Paterson dismissed calls for a ban on EU meat imports, describing the idea as a "panic measure".

The scandal has had particular resonance in Britain, where eating horsemeat is considered taboo. British authorities have also said they are testing to see whether the horsemeat contains a veterinary drug that can be dangerous to humans.

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Pope Benedict is diehard traditionalist

POPE Benedict XVI, who has announced his intention to resign this month, will be remembered as a staunch defender of Roman Catholic orthodoxy, a diehard traditionalist and a lightning rod for controversy.

The German intellectual succeeded the long-reigning and popular John Paul II in April 2005 aged 78 after serving nearly a quarter-century as the Church's doctrinal enforcer, earning himself the nickname "God's Rottweiler."

The 85-year-old, who blamed his age for preventing him from continuing at the head of the papacy, will be the first pope to do so in centuries.

"I have had to recognise my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me," the head of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics said as he would step down on February 28.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's hardline approach, his nationality and his age were all seen as handicaps to his becoming Pope, and Benedict had famously said in a 2010 interview that he would resign if he felt he could no longer carry out his papal duties.

As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and then as Pope, he rejected the ordination of women and marriage for priests. He opposed homosexuality and communism and was never afraid of upsetting political sensibilities.

In 1984, he said "communist regimes which came to power in the name of the liberation are one of the disgraces of our times."

Ratzinger has also attacked rock music, calling it "the expression of basic passions".

As Pope, Benedict championed Christianity's European roots and showed his conservatism by repeatedly stressing family values and fiercely opposing abortion, euthanasia and gay marriage.

He also reintroduced the long-discarded Latin mass under certain conditions.

Above all, Benedict will be remembered for a disastrous public relations record that got him into hot water with Muslims, Jews, gays, native Indians, Poles, AIDS activists and even scientists.

Memories are still fresh of the fury the German Pope unleashed in the Muslim world with a speech in September 2006 in which he appeared to endorse the view of an obscure 14th-century Byzantine emperor that Islam is inherently violent.

The academic lecture sparked violent protests in several countries as well as attacks on Christian targets.

In 2009, the Pope struggled to mollify Jews after he invited a breakaway ultra-conservative faction back into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church by lifting the excommunication of four bishops, including one who insists that no one died in Nazi gas chambers.

Just weeks later Benedict added AIDS activists to the list of groups he has angered.

On a trip to Africa, the region hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic, he said that condom use could be aggravating the crisis.

Born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn, in the predominantly Catholic southern German region of Bavaria, he was the son of a policeman.

Ratzinger gravitated gradually towards the priesthood, entering a seminary in 1939, the same year he was required to join the Hitler Youth movement.

He was ordained priest at the same time as his older brother Georg in 1951, and began teaching theology at Freising College in 1958.

Ratzinger went on from there to teach at several other German universities, notably in Bonn, Meunster and Regensburg.

The brilliant scholar caught the eye of Cologne Archbishop Joseph Frings, a cardinal who brought him to Rome to work as an adviser to the Second Vatican Council, hammering out modernisation reforms from 1962 to 1965.

Pope Paul VI named Ratzinger archbishop of Munich in 1977 and made him a cardinal the same year.

The four-year stint in Munich was his only real pastoral experience before he became Pope.

It was during the 1978 conclave of cardinals to elect a successor to Paul VI that Ratzinger got to know Karol Wojtyla, the future John Paul II.

Three years later he agreed to head the Vatican's doctrinal congregation.

One of his first moves was to spearhead opposition to liberation theology, the movement with Marxist overtones that swept Latin America in the 1970s.

It focuses on Christ as the liberator of the oppressed and emphasises the Christian mission of bringing justice to the poor and oppressed, particularly through political activism.

A quiet, almost shy person, Benedict never succeeded in generating the fervour enjoyed by John Paul II.

Instead, he shunned rock star status, once describing himself as "just the vicar" at the Roman Catholic Church's periodic World Youth Days.

The Polish Pope was greeted with enthusiasm bordering on hysteria at these events, and he did little to dampen down the adulation, to the consternation of some in the Church hierarchy.

The intellectual Benedict, an accomplished pianist, was a prolific writer.

Apart from three encyclicals, or instructions to the Roman Catholic flock, he wrote around 40 other works including a best-seller, "Jesus of Nazareth," that contested political interpretations of Christ's role.

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