CANBERRA , May 7 (Reuters) - Australia and Malaysia struck a deal on Saturday on handling boat people arriving on Australian shores, partly addressing an emotive and hot political issue for Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Gillard's minority Labor government has been struggling to handle the flow of boatpeople and violence has escalated in detention centres on the Australian mainland where the asylum seekers are temporarily housed.
Under the agreement, boatpeople arriving on Australian shores “irregularly by sea” will be transferred to Malaysia where their refugee status is determined, Gillard and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said in the joint statement.
In return, Australia will accept a total of 4,000 refugees currently in Malaysia, marking an expansion of Australia's humanitarian programme.
Talks with the government of Papua New Guinea about setting up a regional assessment centre were continuing, the statement said.
The new arrangement will be fully funded by the Australian government.
How to handle boatpeople arrivals, while small in number compared with those crossing the Mediterranean to Europe, is an emotive subject in Australia and was a big issue at last year's election which brought Gillard to power.
Flexible paper phone
Forget the iPhone, here's the smartphone made out of 'paper' that will shape with your pocket
In an industry where unbreakable and smaller are best, the world's first interactive paper computer looks set to dominate for years to come.
The PaperPhone has a flexible electronic display that is set to herald a new generation of computers.
Extremely lightweight and made out of a thin-film, the prototype device can do everything a smartphone currently does.
It can store books, play music, send text messages - and, of course, make phone calls.
Most impressively, the PaperPhone uses no power when nobody is interacting with it.
Inventor Roel Vertegaal, the director of Queen's University Human Media Lab in Kingston, Ontario, said: 'This is the future. Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years.
'This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper, meaning that when users are reading they don't feel like they are holding a sheet of glass or metal.
'You interact with it by bending it into a cell phone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen.'
Its display consists of a 9.5cm diagonal, thin-film flexible E Ink display.
The flexible form of the display makes it much more portable than any current mobile computer -- it will shape with your pocket.
Being able to store and interact with documents on larger versions of these light, flexible computers means offices will no longer require paper or printers.
'The paperless office is here,' said Dr Vertegaal. 'Everything can be stored digitally and you can place these computers on top of each other just like a stack of paper, or throw them around the desk.'
Dr Vertegaal will officially unveil his paper computer on Tuesday at the Association of Computing Machinery's Computer Human Interaction 2011 conference in Vancouver.
© Daily Mail, London
Fed-up father drags son naked through streets after teenager breaks web ban
A furious father pulled his son out of a cyber cafe by his hair, stripped him naked and dragged him home by his feet after the game-addicted teenager disobeyed a computer ban.
Lu Tan, 39, said he had warned son Xiaomeng, 14, dozens of times not to play computer games, adding: 'I chucked the computer in the bin because he spent all his time in his room doing no work - but then when I came home from work I found he had gone to the internet cafe.'
He stormed into the cafe at Hechi city, in Guagnxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, in southern China and dragged his son out in front of his friends.
One eyewitness said: 'He began to beat the boy, who was calling for mercy, but he said he wanted to show everyone how worthless the boy was and dragged him home after stripping him and tying up his hands.
'Someone called the police but they did not intervene - the man said the boy had stolen money to go net surfing.'
Tan told police: 'Xiaomeng's mother passed away when he was only 9 months old. I have brought him up. I worked hard to support the family.
'My hope of my son is not great but I want him to live in the real world, to be a real person.
'I have told him surfing the web is a bad thing many times but he never listened. I beat him because I don't want him to be ruined by the web.'
(c) Daily Mail, London
Women whip off shirts in Gaddafi's support
Half-naked girls descended on the European Commission in Moscow to protest against the war in Libya. They brought mattresses with Gaddafi portraits, claiming the European leaders started the war because they do not sleep well.
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| RU-FEMEN activists protesting against war in Libya (Pic femen-rus.livejournal.coml) |
Wednesday's action saw one of the three girls that had taken off their shirts in front of the Commission building, detained by police.
The slogans of the protest were: "Make Love, not War!", "Send to sleep the spirit of war!" and "Mattress and breasts - forget about war".
The girls say they wanted to attract attention "to the recent events in Libya, where three mighty superpowers fight against a small defenseless state".
They claim that the operation began because EU leaders sleep on "awful, old mattresses".
"With such an approach, they constantly do not get enough sleep, have health problems and thus are mad at the whole world."
Therefore, the activists took along comfortable mattresses for the British and French leaders with a portrait of Colonel Gaddafi and their slogans on them.
A similar action is planned at the US embassy in Moscow with a mattress prepared for Barack Obama.
The protest was the first action of the RU-FEMEN movement, which claims to be the Russian branch of the scandalously famous feminist FEMEN movement that appeared in Ukraine several years ago. However, the original FEMEN movement denies any connection with the Russian one.
The Ukrainian FEMEN is famous for organizing provocative protest actions in big cities, trying to attract attention to acute social and political problems. The actions are quite popular with the media as FEMEN members usually protest naked or with few clothes.
Courtesy Russia Today
Last WW1 combatant Claude Choules dies in Australia
SYDNEY, (AFP) - Briton Claude Choules, the last World War I combat veteran, has died aged 110 in Australia, ending the living connection with a conflict that saw 70 million military personnel mobilised.
Blind and almost totally deaf, Choules, nicknamed "Chuckles", died in his sleep at his hostel home in Perth overnight. He was Australia's oldest man.
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| An undated handout photo released by the Australian Department of Defence on March 2, 2010 shows World War One Navy veteran Claude Choules at the Gracewood retirement villiage in Salter Point, suburban Perth. AFP |
On active service: Mr Choules pictured in 1918, when he was 17 |
"His passing marks the end of a significant chapter in world history," Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Thursday. "Mr Choules was the last known link to those who served in the Great War. We must now, more than ever, ensure that the contribution of those who fought in the First World War is never forgotten." Australian Defence Force spokesman Gary Booth, who is close to the family, described his death as the end of an era.
"He was a living part of history and with his death, it's gone. There is no more link with active service personnel," he told AFP. "It's hard to imagine all the things he's seen in his life -- two world wars, horse and cart to man on the moon." After American Frank Buckles died earlier this year, Choules was declared the last known combat survivor of a war that left 37 million soldiers dead or wounded.
The only other surviving veteran is said to be Britain's Florence Green, who served with the Royal Air Force in a non-combat role as a mess waitress and is now aged 110.
Choules' son Adrian told the Sydney Morning Herald he had been overwhelmed with phone calls offering condolences.
"He treated his family very, very well, and so they all responded by looking after him very well," Adrian said. "He knew you only get out what you put in, and he was a fine example of that. He was a good family man." Born in Worcestershire, England, Choules served with Britain's Royal Navy on board the HMS Impregnable in 1916 at the age of 15 and witnessed the surrender of the German Imperial Navy in 1918.
He was also present for the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow off Scotland.
After the war, he moved to Australia and was seconded to the Royal Australian Navy in 1926.
As the acting torpedo officer at Fremantle in Western Australia in World War II, he disposed of the first German mine to wash up on Australian soil.
He was also tasked with preparing explosives to sink the Australian fleet in Fremantle harbour in the event of a Japanese invasion.
Choules remained with the navy after the war but spent his final working years in the crayfishing industry at Safety Bay, south of Perth.
Married for 80 years to Ethel, a Scottish children's nurse who lived to 98, he had two daughters, a son, 13 grandchildren, 26 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.
As attention began turning his way as one of the last World War I veterans, Choules wrote an autobiography, "The Last of the Last", which was released in 2009, making him the world's oldest first-time published author at 108.
The memories of his life were also immortalised in the BBC documentary "Harry Patch - The Last Tommy", named after British veteran Harry Patch who died in 2009.
Despite his navy years, Choules made clear his dislike for war and the people who sent young men into battle, saying World War I for him was a "tough" life of privation and tedium, marked by occasional moments of extreme danger.
"He always said that the old men make the decisions that send the young men into war," son Adrian told the Herald. "He used to say, if it was the other way around, and the old politicians were off fighting, then there would never be any wars."
Kate's first U.S. encounter
World tour for newlywed Royals lands them in California this July
By Sadie Whitelocks
St James's Palace announced on Friday that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be visiting California from July 8 to 10 after their Canadian tour.
It will be the first time that Kate has ever visited the United States and the first time that William has visited the continent in an official capacity.
They will begin their first week-long official overseas trip as a married couple touring Canada from June 30 to July 8 visiting Ottawa, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Alberta and the Northwest Territories, including a trip to the Arctic.
Their California visit will be hotly anticipated across the U.S. as President Obama told the Prince of Wales that last Friday's wedding left Americans mesmerised.
The U.S. president told the groom's father in an informal meeting in the Oval Office of the White House that he was taken with the way Prince William and Kate handled the pressure of the big day, which attracted the largest ever on-line audience for a single event.
Other celebrities across the U.S. told how they were whipped up in the Royal frenzy.
In an interview with People magazine Julia Roberts said that she watched the entire wedding at home with her 6-year-old daughter.
The 43-year-old actress said: 'I sat with Hazel in my lap watching it.
'It was very exciting.'
American Secretary of State, Clinton, also said that she got up early to catch the live coverage of wedding.
She said: 'I was on e-mail with my daughter and my 92-year-old mother lives with us.
'So the three generations of women in my family were watching the royal wedding.
'I deal with so many...painful decisions about what's going on around the world every day; to relish the happiness of these two young people who carry a lot of the hopes - of not only their fellow countrymen and women but people around the world who tuned in - it was very joyous.'
When the state visit was announced Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper said: 'Canada is delighted that Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton will be travelling to Canada as they embark on their first overseas tour as a married couple.
'Canada looks forward to welcoming the young couple this summer and providing them with all that our country has to offer - including, of course, the special hospitality and warmth reserved for members of the Royal Family.
It is my sincere hope that their tour will be the start of a lasting relationship with Canada by the royal couple.'
Prince William visited Vancouver aged 15 in 1998 with his father the Prince of Wales and brother Prince Harry.
The Queen visited in July last year and in 2009 Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall spent 11 days there.
St James's Palace said a detailed itinerary for the California visit would be published at a later date.
© Daily Mail, London
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