30 October 2011
Last updated at 07:32 ET

Australian airline Qantas says all domestic and international flights will remain grounded until at least midday (01:00 GMT) on Monday, amid an unprecedented industrial dispute.

Australia’s work tribunal is meeting and could order an end to the dispute.

Nearly 70,000 people have been affected by the cancellation of hundreds of flights in 22 countries.

Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the dispute between the airline and unions needed to be ended.

Australia’s industrial tribunal, Fair Work Australia, has resumed an emergency session in Melbourne, and has been hearing evidence from the airline, unions and government.

A government lawyer said the shut-down was costing the Australian economy “tens of millions” of dollars every hour.

The tribunal can order an end or suspension to the industrial action, though it is not clear how quickly flights would resume.

Qantas said a decision would be made on Monday morning about afternoon flights, according to its Twitter feed.

The airline announced its decision to ground all flights on Saturday, saying it was a necessary reaction to a series of costly strikes and other industrial action, which the company said were costing A$15m ($16m) a week.

‘Extortion’

On Sunday, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard urged an end to the row.

“I believe Australians want to see this dispute settled. I want to see this dispute settled and we have taken the appropriate action to bring this before the industrial umpire,” she told a news conference from the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (Chogm) being held in the western Australian city of Perth.

Correspondents say the situation is embarrassing for Mrs Gillard, as some of the leaders had been due to fly on Qantas planes.

Fair Work Australia can decide whether to order an end to industrial action by both unions and management.

“Hour by hour that goes by, there are potentially tens of millions of dollars of harm (being) done to the economy,” AFP quoted Tom Howe, a government lawyer, as saying during the session.

Geoffrey Giudice, the tribunal president, said the situation should be settled urgently.

“We do need to bring this to a conclusion very soon and if it means we have to do it by extortion I will do it,” Mr Giudice said.

Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce has made it clear flights will not resume unless the panel orders a termination of all industrial action.

He says an order to simply suspend it – as the unions are seeking – would not be good enough.

‘Devastating’

A Qantas statement on Saturday said all employees involved in industrial action would be locked out from Monday evening and flights grounded from 0600 GMT on Saturday.

The announcement came after months of wrangling between the airline’s management and unions.

Relations started deteriorating in August after the airline announced plans for restructuring and moving some operations to Asia.

Qantas has a 65% share of the domestic Australian market, but has been making heavy losses on its international flights.

The restructuring is expected to mean the loss of 1,000 jobs from its 35,000-strong workforce.

Pilots have been engaged in protracted talks with management over wages, conditions and outsourcing of jobs to Asia, but they have yet to walk off the job – unlike baggage handlers, engineers and ground staff.

Australian International Pilots Association (AIPA) vice-president Captain Richard Woodward said work stoppages were not in their plans.

“Pilots have made it clear from the start that we would not take industrial action that disrupts passengers. We have stuck to that to this day,” he said.

“Alan Joyce, on the other hand, has opted to disrupt passengers in the most devastating way possible.

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30 October 2011
Last updated at 05:05 ET

There are hopes for a ceasefire between Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip and Israel after violence on Saturday.

Egypt tried to broker an end to a day of retaliatory rocket and air attacks which killed nine Palestinian militants and an Israeli civilian in Ashkelon.

The ceasefire was reportedly due to start at first 01:00 GMT or 04:00 GMT. Israeli officials said the exchange of fire was continuing into Sunday.

The violence is the most serious since a prisoner exchange between the sides.

Earlier this month, 477 Palestinian prisoners were released from Israeli jails in a swap for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

A further 500 Palestinian prisoners are due to be freed later this year as part of the deal between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist militant group that governs in Gaza.

BBC Gaza correspondent Jon Donnison says an escalation of violence could jeopardise those releases.

Amongst the first batch of releases were members of Islamic Jihad, the group involved in the violence on Saturday.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP news agency that 12 rockets were fired into Israel overnight, the last shortly before 07:00 local time (05:00 GMT).

According to the AP news agency quoting an Israeli military statement, Israeli aircraft targeted six militant sites in Gaza overnight.

Israeli officials have closed schools in southern areas within 25 miles (40km) of Gaza, as well as a university in Beersheba and several colleges, which were to have begun their academic year on Sunday.

After the ceasefire times passed, a senior Islamic Jihad official told AFP that his group was still committed to a truce as long as Israel “commits to it”.

‘Bomb maker killed’

Israel said at 38 rockets and mortars were fired into southern Israel since Saturday, killing one man in the coastal city of Ashkelon. Four other people were wounded by the attacks.

A Gaza Health Ministry spokesman said nine people had been killed and 15 wounded in separate attacks on militant targets.

An Israeli military spokesman confirmed a total of four strikes in Gaza, saying the military hit Islamic Jihad militants.

The spokesman said that the first attack, about midday local time, specifically targeted a cell responsible for a long-range rocket attack on Wednesday that exploded deep inside Israel. That attack had caused no casualties.

Israel’s military said its aircraft “targeted a terrorist squad… that was preparing to launch long-range rockets”.

Islamic Jihad confirmed that five militants had been killed in the attack on Rafah, including one of its commanders, Ahmed al-Sheikh Khalil. Four more militants had been killed in the later air strikes.

A spokesman said Khalil was one of the group’s chief bomb makers.

“Today it was a great loss for us in the Islamic Jihad,” he said. “The size of our retaliation will equal our loss.”

Islamic Jihad is one of the main militant groups in Gaza but is not directly affiliated with Hamas.

The group released photos of rockets being launched from the backs of pickup trucks. It said this was the first time they had used this system; in the past it has fired them from ground launchers.

28 October 2011
Last updated at 09:45 ET

International prosecutors have had “informal contact” with the son of slain ex-Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) said intermediaries had been used in indirect talks with Saif al-Islam.

Prosecutors said the court had made it clear to Gaddafi’s son, who is wanted for crimes against humanity, that he was innocent until proven guilty.

Saif al-Islam, who was once the presumed successor to his father, has been in hiding for months.

Recent reports claimed he was in a convoy heading toward Libya’s desert border with Niger, where other Gaddafi allies have fled.

But those reports have not been confirmed, and the ICC said it did not know where he was.

Zimbabwe-bound?

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo said in a statement that the ICC wanted him to face trial.

“The office of the prosecutor has made it clear that if he surrenders to the ICC, he has the right to be heard in court, he is innocent until proven guilty. The judges will decide,” the statement said.

The ICC arrest warrant issued for Saif al-Islam in June accuses him of murder and persecution.

The document claims that he played an essential part in the systematic attacks on civilians in various Libyan cities carried out by Gaddafi’s security forces in February.

Mr Moreno Ocampo said the ICC had learnt “through informal channels” that mercenaries were offering to move Saif al-Islam to a country that has not signed up to the ICC’s statute.

“The office of the prosecutor is also exploring the possibility to intercept any plane within the airspace of a state party in order to make an arrest,” the statement said.

Reports say Zimbabwe is a likely final destination for Saif al-Islam if he chooses to flee from the ICC.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was a long-time ally of Muammar Gaddafi.

The former Libyan leader, who was deposed in August after six months of civil conflict, died from gunshot wounds last week after fierce fighting in the city of Sirte.

28 October 2011
Last updated at 09:43 ET

Sons and daughters of any future UK monarch will have equal right to the throne, after Commonwealth leaders agreed to change succession laws.

The leaders of the 16 Commonwealth countries where the Queen is head of state unanimously approved the changes at a summit in Perth, Australia.

It means a first-born daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge would take precedence over younger brothers.

The ban on the monarch being married to a Roman Catholic was also lifted.

Under the old succession laws, dating back more than 300 years, the heir to the throne is the first-born son of the monarch. Only when there are no sons, as in the case of the Queen’s father George VI, does the crown pass to the eldest daughter.

The succession changes will require a raft of historic legislation to be amended, including Britain’s 1701 Act of Settlement, the 1689 Bill of Rights and the Royal Marriages Act 1772.

The change to the Royal Marriages Act will end a position where every descendant of George II is legally required to seek the consent of the monarch before marrying.

In future, the requirement is expected to be limited to a small number of the sovereign’s close relatives.

Announcing the succession changes, Prime Minister David Cameron said they would apply to descendents of the Prince of Wales. They will not be applied retrospectively.

“Put simply, if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were to have a little girl, that girl would one day be our queen,” he said.

“The idea that a younger son should become monarch instead of an elder daughter simply because he is a man, or that a future monarch can marry someone of any faith except a Catholic – this way of thinking is at odds with the modern countries that we have become.”

Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard said it was an extraordinary moment: “I’m very enthusiastic about it. You would expect the first Australian woman prime minister to be very enthusiastic about a change which equals equality for women in a new area.”

She said the changes appeared to be straightforward. “But just because they seem straightforward to our modern minds doesn’t mean that we should underestimate their historical significance, changing as they will for all time the way in which the monarchy works and changing its history.”

But the campaign group Republic – which wants an elected head of state in Britain – said “nothing of substance” had been changed.

“The monarchy discriminates against every man, woman and child who isn’t born into the Windsor family. To suggest that this has anything to do with equality is utterly absurd,” spokesman Graham Smith said.

Queen’s speech

On scrapping the ban on future monarchs marrying Roman Catholics, Mr Cameron said: “Let me be clear, the monarch must be in communion with the Church of England because he or she is the head of that Church. But it is simply wrong they should be denied the chance to marry a Catholic if they wish to do so. After all, they are already quite free to marry someone of any other faith.”

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, said the elimination of the “unjust discrimination” against Catholics would be widely welcomed.

“At the same time I fully recognise the importance of the position of the established church [the Church of England] in protecting and fostering the role of faith in our society today,” he said.

Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond also welcomed the lifting of the ban but said it was “deeply disappointing” that Roman Catholics were still unable to ascend to the throne.

“It surely would have been possible to find a mechanism which would have protected the status of the Church of England without keeping in place an unjustifiable barrier on the grounds of religion in terms of the monarchy,” he said.

“It is a missed opportunity not to ensure equality of all faiths when it comes to the issue of who can be head of state.”

In her opening speech to the summit, the Queen did not directly mention the royal succession laws, but said women should have a greater role in society.

“It encourages us to find ways to show girls and women to play their full part,” she said.

Previous attempts

The BBC’s royal correspondent, Nicholas Witchell, said this was a hint that the Queen herself backed the change.

The Queen will celebrate her Diamond Jubilee next year and there are already two generations of kings-in-waiting – Prince Charles and his son Prince William.

In January 2011, Labour MP Keith Vaz tabled a Succession to the Crown Bill in the Commons to end gender discrimination in the succession to the throne.

He said his bill – due for its second reading on 25 November – could be used to introduce the reforms announced in Perth.

“As a society that values gender equality so highly, this is a long overdue,” he said. “We will now have modern laws that fit our modern monarchy.”

The royal author Robert Hardman said there had been 11 attempts in recent years by individual MPs and peers to change the succession laws.

The laws are not a matter for the 54-nation Commonwealth as a whole, only for the 16 countries which have the Queen as their head of state, known as realms.

These are Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Papua New Guinea, St Christopher and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Tuvalu, Barbados, Grenada, Solomon Islands, St Lucia and the Bahamas.

Chogm summit

Mr Cameron said the realms would work to implement the changes but that for historic reasons the UK would have to publish its legislation first.

The necessary changes to laws will be introduced in the next session of Parliament and New Zealand will lead a working group co-ordinating the measures across the other nations.

In his speech, the prime minister also praised the Queen’s 60 years of public service and announced the creation of a Diamond Jubilee Trust to help those in need across the Commonwealth. The trust will be chaired by former Prime Minister Sir John Major.

Mr Cameron said Britain would make a multi-million pound donation to the grant-making body and encouraged other commonwealth nations to do the same.

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings (Chogm) are held every two years, and present an opportunity for the 54 nations with current or former ties to Britain to discuss a range of issues.

The Chogm summit will also discuss economic growth, climate change and human rights at this year’s meeting.

OAKLAND, Calif. – Anti-Wall Street demonstrators held vigils for an Iraq War veteran seriously injured during a protest clash with police in California as some Occupy encampments came under growing pressure from authorities to abandon sites in parks and plazas.

A crowd of at least 1,000 people, many holding candles, gathered Thursday night in Oakland in honor of 24-year-old Scott Olsen, who is hospitalized with a fractured skull.

In Nashville, police cracked down overnight on an Occupy protest camp near the Capitol under a new policy setting a curfew for the complex. They moved in a little after 3 a.m. and arrested about 30, who were later released after a judge wouldn’t sign the warrants. About 20 protesters who stayed on a nearby sidewalk were not arrested and were still there later in the morning as state troopers stood guard at the steps to the Capitol.

Protesters also held a vigil for Olsen in Las Vegas, which drew a handful of police officers. Afterward, protesters invited them back for a potluck dinner.

“We renewed our vow of nonviolence,” organizer Sebring Frehner said.

The Marine veteran, who won medals in Iraq, has become a rallying cry for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators across the nation, with Twitter users and protest websites declaring, “We are all Scott Olsen.”

Joshua Shepherd, 27, a Navy veteran who was standing nearby when Olsen got struck, called it a cruel irony that Olsen is fighting an injury in the country that he fought to protect.

Despite the financial underpinnings of the protests, Olsen himself wasn’t taking part out of economic need.

His friends say he makes a good living as a network engineer and has a nice apartment overlooking San Francisco Bay. Still, he felt so strongly about economic inequality in the United States that he fought for overseas that he slept at a protest camp after work.

“He felt you shouldn’t wait until something is affecting you to get out and do something about it,” said friend and roommate Keith Shannon, who served with Olsen in Iraq.

It was that feeling that drew him to Oakland on Tuesday night, when the clashes broke out and Olsen’s skull was fractured. Fellow veterans said Olsen was struck in the head by a projectile fired by police, although the exact object and who might have been responsible for the injury have not been definitively established. Officials are investigating exactly where the projectile came from.

Even as the vigil was held in Oakland, protest organizers prepared to defy Oakland’s prohibition on overnight camping at a plaza near City Hall.

Shake Anderson, an organizer with Occupy Oakland, said half a dozen tents were erected on the plaza Thursday evening where police armed with tear gas and bean bag rounds disbanded a 15-day-old encampment Tuesday. More tents, food and supplies arrived during the meeting and vigil for Scott Olsen, with about 25 tents erected late Thursday.

“We believe in what we’re doing,” Anderson said. “No one is afraid. If anything, we’re going to show there’s strength in numbers.”

Few police were seen in the area during late Thursday night, though Oakland Mayor Jean Quan issued a statement asking protesters not to camp at the plaza.

Elsewhere across the United States, protesters brushed off pressure from authorities and maintained the camps that have sprung up in opposition to growing economic inequality.

Protesters at San Francisco’s Justin Herman Plaza braced for a police raid early Thursday that never came. Still, police have warned the protesters that they could be arrested on a variety of sanitation or illegal camping violations.

Officials told protesters in Providence, R.I., that they were violating multiple city laws by camping overnight at a park.

Anti-Wall Street protesters camped out in downtown Los Angeles said they’re planning to continue their demonstration indefinitely, although both they and the mayor’s office were eyeing alternate sites.

Meanwhile, Olsen has been improving. Doctors transferred him from the emergency room to an intensive care unit and upgrading his condition to fair.

Dr. Alden Harken, chief surgeon at Alameda County Medical Center, said Olsen was still unable to speak but had improved dramatically since he was hospitalized unconscious with a fractured skull and bruised brain that caused seizures.

By Thursday afternoon, Harken said, Olsen was interacting with his parents, who flew in from Wisconsin in the morning, doing math equations and otherwise showing signs of “high-level cognitive functioning.” The doctor said he may require surgery, but that’s unlikely.

“He’s got a relatively small area of injury and he’s got his youth going for him. So both of those are very favorable,” Harken said.

Olsen smiled when Mayor Jean Quan stopped by to visit and expressed surprise at all the attention his injury has generated, hospital spokesman Vintage Foster said. The mayor apologized and promised an investigation, according to Foster.

His uncle in Wisconsin told The Associated Press that Olsen’s mother was trying to understand what had happened.

“This is obviously a heartbreaker to her,” George Nygaard said. “I don’t think she understands why he was doing this.”

The group Iraq Veterans Against the War blamed police for Olsen’s injury. Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said officials will investigate whether officers used excessive force. He did not return calls seeking comment Thursday.

Police have said they responded with tear gas and bean bag rounds only when protesters began throwing bottles and other items at them.

On Tuesday night, Olsen had planned to be at the San Francisco protest, but he changed course after his veterans’ group decided to support protesters in Oakland after police cleared an encampment outside City Hall.

“I think it was a last-minute thing,” Shannon said.

A video posted on YouTube showed Olsen being carried by other protesters through the tear gas, his face bloodied. People shout at him: “What’s your name? What’s your name?” Olsen just stares back.

People at OPSWAT, the San Francisco security software company where Olsen works, were devastated after learning of his injuries. They described him as a humble, quiet man.

Olsen had been helping to develop security applications for U.S. defense agencies, building on expertise gained while on active duty in Iraq, said Jeff Garon, the company’s director of marketing.

Olsen was awarded seven medals while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, which he left as a lance corporal in November 2009 after serving for four years. One of them was the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal.

Olsen moved to the Bay Area in July, and quickly found friends in the veterans against the war group.

His tours of duty in Iraq made him more serious, Shannon said.

“He wasn’t active in politics before he went in the military, but he became active once he was out … the experience in the military definitely shaped him,” Shannon said.

___

Dearen reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee, Garance Burke in San Francisco, Julie Watson in San Diego, Lucas L. Johnson II in Nasvhille, Tenn., and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas contributed to this report.