Japan nuclear safety team received funding

A JAPANESE nuclear watchdog says members of a government team assigned to set reactor safety measures received funding from utility companies or atomic industry manufacturers.

Taking the money was legal but raises questions of independence since the industry would benefit from laxer standards.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority says Nagoya University Professor Akio Yamamoto received 27.14 million yen ($A327,362) over the past three years for research on reactors.

That includes 6.28 million yen from a subsidiary of the utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant sent into meltdowns last year.

The authority said on Friday three others on the standards team received industry funding.

Before, regulators were in the same ministry that promotes the industry. The commission was set up this year after calls for a more independent watchdog.

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Jordan Islamists blast Halloween party

JORDAN'S Muslim Brotherhood has condemned Halloween celebrations held in an Amman cafe as "Satanic" and homosexual, with a newspaper reporting acts of vandalism at the party.

"We watched with disgust and shame last night (Friday) homosexual and Satanic rituals in an Amman cafe," the Brotherhood said in a statement on its website.

"This presents a challenge to the values of the Jordanian people and their Arab and Muslim identity, as well as a violation of religious laws."

The group demanded that those who organised the party be tried for the "grotesque act" and complained that such events are allowed to go ahead in Jordan when the people are "stricken by poverty and amid political crises".

Al-Ghad newspaper, meanwhile, reported that violence broke out when "angry youths tried to prevent the Halloween celebrations from taking place" in the cafe in Amman.

It said they tried to storm the cafe, throwing stones and setting fire to property, causing a traffic jam into the early hours of Saturday.

Poverty levels are running at 25 percent in the desert kingdom, whose capital Amman is the most expensive city in the Arab world, according to several independent studies.

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Japan transsexual denied recognition

A PERSON who had a sex-change to become a man has complained of discrimination after a Japanese court reportedly refused to register him as the father of his wife's child.

The 30-year-old, who was born female, had sought to be registered as the father after his wife delivered a boy in 2009 by way of artificial insemination using donated sperm.

But the Tokyo Family Court has ruled the child must be registered as if he was born out of wedlock as the man is physically not capable of reproduction, despite the fact sterile men are routinely recognised as the fathers of babies born using artificial insemination.

The couple married in 2008, after the husband officially changed his gender, and were recognised as husband and wife under a new law that came into effect in 2004.

"Under the law, Japan decided to treat me as a man. I would like to receive the same treatment as a father too," the man, whose name was not reported, told local journalists on Friday, according to the Mainichi Shimbun.

"I feel I am being discriminated against. I will continue to fight so that I can live as a husband and a father," he said, according to national broadcaster NHK.

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Nigerian forces kill 14 kidnappers

NIGERIAN security forces have stormed the hideout of kidnappers of a Turkish national in oil-rich Rivers State and killed 14 of them in a shootout.

"The hoodlums were shot dead during a gun battle with the security agents in their camp in Kaani community in Ogoni land," state police spokesman Ben Ugwuegbulam told AFP of the incident.

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Syrian rebels blame West for extremism

SYRIAN regime forces have launched new air strikes in what is seen as a desperate attempt to reverse rebel gains, as the opposition blamed the international community for fuelling Islamic extremism.

Reacting after Washington urged Syria's rebels to reject extremism, the head of the main opposition Syrian National Council said the West and its partners were to blame for rising radicalisation.

"The international community is responsible, through its lack of support for the Syrian people, for the growth of extremism in Syria," SNC director Abdel Basset Saida told AFP.

"The international community should criticise itself, and ask itself: What did it give the Syrian people? How has it helped the Syrians to stop the regime's crazy killing?" he said.

Thursday saw helicopter gunships strafing a district of Damascus as warplanes pounded rebel bastions in the capital's suburbs and in the northwestern province of Idlib, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

At least three warplane raids were conducted in the northern Damascus suburb of Harasta, home to some of the rebel Free Syrian Army's best organised fighters, as on the other side of the city gunships hit the neighbourhood of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad, it said.

Clashes meanwhile raged in the northern commercial hub of Aleppo, it said, and in Idlib, where FSA forces backed by the Islamist Al-Nusra Front continued their siege of the Wadi Daif army base.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces have this week launched a wave of intensive air strikes analysts say are a response to opposition gains and aimed at "terrorising" and turning local communities against the rebels.

"They are trying to make the civilian population so angry and so scared that it will not be possible for the rebels to find safe havens," said Riad Kahwaji, head of the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.

The air raids - often using crude barrel bombs stuffed with dynamite and chunks of metal - were not precision strikes on rebel positions but indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas under rebel control.

"These are dumb bombs, not smart bombs, and when you are using them you are not trying to gain any tactical advantage," said Kahwaji.

Violence on Wednesday killed at least 152 people across Syria, including 58 civilians, said the Observatory.

It says more than 36,000 people have now been killed since the uprising against Assad's regime broke out in March 2011 and evolved into an armed civil conflict.

Most of the rebels, like the population, are members of Syria's Sunni Muslim majority, while Assad's government is dominated by his Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

The country's fractured opposition, whose members range from pro-Western liberals to hardline Islamists, has struggled to find common ground against Assad, especially on the political front.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday said Washington wanted to help the Syrian opposition unite against Assad, but warned against Islamic extremists trying to "hijack" the revolution.

"There are disturbing reports of extremists going into Syria attempting to take over what has been a legitimate revolution against an oppressive regime for their own purposes," Clinton warned during a visit to Croatia.

The opposition should "strongly resist the efforts by the extremists to hijack the Syrian revolution," she said.

The international community's divisions over the conflict were exposed once more on Wednesday, as UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi urged China to do more to help tackle the crisis and talks between French and Russian officials in Paris failed to resolve disagreements over Assad's regime.

After the talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov defiantly accused the West of fuelling the violence by insisting on Assad abandoning power.

"If the position of our partners remains the departure of this leader who they do not like, the bloodbath will continue," Lavrov said.

Brahimi, who visited Moscow and Beijing this week in bid to revive peace efforts after a failed ceasefire bid for last weekend's Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday, is due to present new proposals for resolving the conflict to the UN Security Council later this month.

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Saudi gas truck blast kills at least 22

A GAS tanker truck has exploded on a main road in the Saudi capital, killing at least 22 people, injuring about 111 others and leaving a trail of destruction, officials say.

The lorry veered into a bridge pylon at a junction on Khurays Road in Riyadh about 7.30am (1530 AEDT), causing a gas leak that spread out and then burst into flames, destroying nearby cars and a business, the officials told AFP.

An AFP photographer at the scene reported widespread damage to the area, with dozens of cars mangled by the blast and burned out.

A bus that had been gutted by the fire stood idle on the flyover, with witnesses saying that the vehicle had been transporting workers whose fate remained unknown.

Another truck fell off the bridge from the impact of the explosion, the witnesses said.

Amateur video footage posted on the internet showed thick black smoke billowing from different spots around the flyover whose pylons were also damaged.

Civil defence personnel carried two "completely charred" bodies from the site.

"The death toll of the gas truck fire in Khurays has increased to 22 people, in addition to 111 wounded," a civil defence official said.

Earlier, a civil defence official who requested not to be named told AFP that at least 14 people were killed and around 60 others hurt "in the explosion of the truck when it hit a bridge pylon".

Civil defence spokesman in Riyadh, Mohammed al-Hammadi, said the explosion took place after gas leaked from the tank of the lorry, according to SPA state news agency.

"The explosion and fire happened after leaked gas filled the area. Huge damage happened, in addition to many traffic collisions," he said, adding there were fatalities without specifying how many.

Hammadi said a nearby show yard of construction machinery was severely damaged by the explosion.

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Nigeria accused of massive rights abuses

NIGERIAN security forces have committed massive rights violations including summary executions in trying to crush the insurgency by the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, Amnesty International says.

In a report on Thursday, the London based rights groups charged Nigeria's military with carrying out extra-judicial killings and showing "little regard for the rule of law or human rights" in its campaign against Boko Haram.

"The cycle of attack and counter-attack has been marked by unlawful violence on both sides, with devastating consequences for the human rights of those trapped in the middle," said Salil Shetty, Amnesty's secretary general.

Violence linked to the Boko Haram insurgency is believed to have left more than 2,800 people dead since 2009, including killings by security forces.

Nigeria has deployed special military units to several areas hit hardest by the group, including the northeastern city of Maiduguri, considered the Islamists' base.

"Amnesty International received consistent accounts of witnesses who saw people summarily executed outside their homes, shot dead during operations, after arrest, or beaten to death in detention or in the street by security forces in Maiduguri," the rights group said.

"Witnesses interviewed by Amnesty International described seeing people who were clearly no threat to life, unarmed, lying down or with their hands over their head or cooperating shot at close range by the security forces," the report further said.

Residents of Maiduguri have previously accused soldiers of firing on bystanders after suspected Boko Haram attacks, although the military has consistently denied wrongdoing.

Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa, the military spokesman in Maiduguri, told AFP he was not yet familiar with Amnesty's allegations and would respond later Thursday.

The rights group said Boko Haram's relentless targeting of civilians "may constitute crimes against humanity," but urged Nigeria "to take responsibility for its own failings" in its campaign against the insurgents, who have said they want to create an Islamic state in the north.

President Goodluck Jonathan has faced intense criticism over what some term his failure to stop the killings.

Oil-rich Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is roughly divided between a mainly north and mostly Christian south.

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4 wounded in campus Halloween shooting

AUTHORITIES say four people were shot and wounded during a Halloween party on the University of Southern California campus and two suspects are in custody.

It happened around 11.45pm local time on Wednesday outside the Ronald Tutor Campus Centre, where about 100 people had gathered for a party hosted by a student organisation.

USC Department of Public Safety Capt David Carlisle says an argument between two men not tied to the school led to one of them pulling out a gun and shooting another person.

That victim was critically wounded. Three bystanders were taken to the hospital with less serious injuries.

The Los Angeles Times reports USC sent a text alert telling students to stay inside. Hours later, another text said the threat was over and classes would go on as scheduled.

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Cyclone barrels towards south Indian coast

SCHOOLS and ports have shut down in southeast India as a cyclone heads towards the coast, with forecasters predicting it could make a direct hit on Chennai later in the day.

Cyclone Nilam was likely to do extensive damage to thatched roofs and huts and also uproot trees, causing power blackouts and communication problems across Tamil Nadu and Andra Pradesh states, officials said on Wednesday.

A bulletin from the India Meteorological Department warned of winds gusting up to 110 kilometres an hour and flooding of low-lying areas because of a sea surge and heavy rain.

It advised residents living in huts along the coast to move to safer areas and ordered fishermen not to go out to sea.

The cyclone was expected to make landfall on Wednesday evening at some point along a 350-kilometre stretch of coast. Chennai, the state capital of Tamil Nadu, is in the middle of the affected zone.

"We have advised all the schools and colleges to remain close for the day," Jayraman, a government administrator in Chennai who uses only one name, told AFP.

"All maritime activities have been suspended and the government is monitoring the situation closely," he added. "So far, no evacuation process has started."

Local authorities said they were preparing helicopters and boats for any emergency. Existing cyclone shelters, schools and community halls have also been identified to serve as potential relief camps.

Neighbouring Sri Lanka on Tuesday allowed thousands of people who had been evacuated to return to their homes after the storm, which had been expected to hit the island, changed course and moved towards India.

The last cyclone in India struck in the same southeast region in January, claiming 42 lives and leaving a trail of destruction across Tamil Nadu.

India and Bangladesh are hit regularly by cyclones that develop in the Bay of Bengal between April and November, causing widespread damage to homes, livestock and crops.

India's Andhra Pradesh state saw its worst cyclone in 1977 when more than 10,000 people were killed.

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Russian upper house passes treason bill

RUSSIA'S upper house of parliament has passed a hugely controversial bill broadening the definition of high treason to include passing NGOs harmful information.

The Federation Council passed the bill on Wednesday with 138 senators in favour, none against and one abstention, clearing the final legislative hurdle before President Vladimir Putin, as expected, signs the bill into law, state media said.

The bill lists as high treason not only passing secret information to foreign governments, but also giving out consultations or financial help, including to international organisations, if they are engaged in "activities directed against the security of Russia".

The current treason law does not mention international organisations and applies only to activities hurting "foreign security."

The bill also creates a new criminal charge, punishable by up to four years in prison, for people who receive state secrets through illegal means defined as kidnapping, bribery or blackmail.

Rights activists and lawyers have said that the broader definitions could criminalise sharing information with international organisations such as Amnesty International or even appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.

The bill follows the passing of laws that have branded rights groups with foreign funding as "foreign agents", criminalised slander and blacklisted websites unfavourable to the government.

Activists say all the legislation is part of a broad crackdown against the opposition in revenge for the unprecedented protests that erupted as Putin returned to the Kremlin in May for a third presidential term.

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