Kenya to toughen poaching sentences

Poaching has recently risen in east Africa, with whole herds of elephants massacred for their ivory. Source: AAP

KENYA plans to bolster lenient sentences for convicted wildlife poachers or ivory smugglers in a bid to stamp out a spike in elephant killings, the government says.

Poaching has recently risen sharply in east Africa, with whole herds of elephants massacred for their ivory. Rhinos have also been targeted.

Last year poachers slaughtered 384 elephants in Kenya, up from 289 in 2011, according to official figures, from a total population of around 35,000. This year, poachers have already shot dead 74.

"We intend to fight poachers at all levels to save our elephants," government spokesman Muthui Kariuki said in a statement on Saturday.

A major obstacle to this is that Kenyan courts are limited in their powers to jail or fine those convicted of wildlife crimes, he said.

"One of the major setbacks are lenient penalties and sentencing for wildlife crime by the courts," he said.

"The government is concerned about this and has facilitated the process of reviewing the wildlife law and policy with a view to having more deterrent penalties and jail terms."

Passing tougher wildlife laws will be made a priority for Kenya's parliament, elected last month but which has yet to begin business.

"We look forward to... parliament giving priority to passing of a new wildlife law and policy," Kariuki added.

Kenya's wildlife act caps punishment for the most serious wildlife crimes at a maximum fine of 40,000 Kenyan shillings ($A450), and a possible jail term of up to 10 years.

Last month, a Chinese smuggler caught in Kenya with a haul of ivory was fined less than a dollar a piece.

The smuggler, who was arrested carrying 439 pieces of worked ivory while in transit in Nairobi as he travelled from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Hong Kong, was fined $US350 ($A337) and was then set free.

Such fines pose little if any deterrence, with experts suggesting a kilogram of ivory has an estimated black market value of some $A2406.

The illegal ivory trade is mostly fuelled by demand in Asia and the Middle East, where elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns are used to make ornaments and in traditional medicine.

Africa is now home to an estimated 472,000 elephants, whose survival is threatened by poaching as well as a rising human population that is encroaching on their habitat.

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UK warns of terror attack in Somalia

THE British government says it believes terrorists are in the final stages of planning attacks in Somalia and urged UK nationals to leave the country.

The Foreign Office already advises against all travel to Somalia, including Somaliland, where it says there is a specific threat to Westerners.

It said on Saturday it had revised its travel advice to reflect concerns that terrorists are in the final stages of plotting attacks in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.

Britain has no diplomatic representation in Somalia and is unable to provide consular assistance in the country.

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Italian police find tonne of hashish

ITALIAN police have uncovered a tonne of hashish worth 15 million euros ($A18.7 million) in a frozen foods truck carrying potatoes and arrested its Dutch driver.

The police said they became suspicious when they noticed the truck on the outskirts of Rome as part of an anti-drug investigation and found out that it was very far from its registered delivery point.

Behind the potato boxes being shipped from the Netherlands they found "various boxes containing hashish in bars weighing around 100 grams each and wrapped in cellophane", the statement said on Saturday.

"The total quantity of drugs found was around one tonne," it added.

Police spokesman Alessandro Langello said: "The investigation is ongoing. We are trying to uncover the criminal organisation behind this shipment."

Dutch authorities in 2011 busted a large-scale operation to export homegrown cannabis from the Netherlands to countries including Italy.

Although cannabis is technically illegal in the Netherlands, the country in 1976 decriminalised possession and sale of less than five grammes of the drug.

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Don't bank on Korea evacuation: DFAT

Tensions in North Korea could escalate quickly, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs says. Source: AAP

AUSTRALIANS in South Korea shouldn't assume the government will be able to evacuate them if the threat of war on the peninsular escalates, Canberra says.

North Korea has escalated its rhetoric in recent weeks, threatening to attack the United States and South Korea.

Most recently, it warned foreign embassies in Pyongyang it couldn't assure the safety of diplomats and suggested they should evacuate.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) says it has consular crisis contingency plans for South Korea, as it does for all countries in which Australia has official representation.

"It is important that Australians living and visiting South Korea make their own decisions regarding their safety based on their personal circumstances," a DFAT spokeswoman said.

"Such decisions should not assume that the Australian government will evacuate citizens if the situation deteriorates - this may not always be possible."

There are many thousands of Australians in South Korea but the DFAT spokeswoman said there were no immediate plans to get them out.

Current travel advice warns of tensions between the north and south but remains at the lowest level, advising travellers only to exercise normal safety precautions.

The spokeswoman said travel advice on the smartraveller.gov.au website remained the definitive source of information from the Australian government for Australians travelling and living overseas.

Advice on the website is updated as relevant and credible information is received.

"Australians should monitor developments closely, particularly through South Korean media, because of the risk that tensions on the Korean Peninsula could escalate quickly," she said.

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New PM vows to guard Lebanon from Syria

LEBANON'S newly named Prime Minister Tamam Salam pledged in his first speech to safeguard the country's security from the war raging in neighbouring Syria.

"There is a need to bring Lebanon out of its state of division and political fragmentation, as reflected on the security situation, and to ward off the risks brought by the tragic situation in the neighbouring (country) and by regional tensions," Salam said on Saturday.

Salam, 67, of the Western-backed opposition made the remarks in his inaugural speech shortly after being tasked by President Michel Sleiman with forming a new government.

His appointment comes two weeks after Najib Mikati resigned and effectively brought down his Hezbollah-dominated government.

Salam also pledged to work with all groups across Lebanon's political spectrum, which is split into pro- and anti-Damascus camps.

"I have accepted this nomination... out of conviction that it is my duty to work for my country's interest, in cooperation with all political parties," he said.

Lebanon was dominated politically and militarily by Syria until 2005, and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad still holds sway over Beirut through Hezbollah and other allies.

The March 14 opposition movement, meanwhile, is fiercely opposed to Damascus.

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Rocket attack in Syrian capital kills five

A BARRAGE of rockets has slammed into a contested district on the northeastern edge of Damascus, killing at least five people and trapping others under the rubble, while violence raged around suburbs of the capital, activists say.

The attack on Barzeh, where rebels aiming to topple President Bashar al-Assad are known to operate, follows days of heavy fighting between the rebels and the military in the area.

Rebels have established footholds in districts on the edge of Damascus and in suburbs in the northeast and south, from where they fire mortars into the heavily guarded city. Despite their efforts, they have been unable to break the Assad regime's tight hold in the capital.

The activists said several rockets exploded in a residential area in Barzeh district on Thursday night and Friday morning. The opposition Barzeh Media Center and a militant website claimed the Syrian military fired 14 rockets, leaving people, including children, buried under the rubble.

It said three children, a woman and an elderly man were killed.

"The impact of the rockets was huge," said a Barzeh-based activist on Friday. "Several houses collapsed and others were set on fire," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisals.

Amateur videos posted online by activists showed what appeared to be destroyed and burning houses. Others showed men with a flashlight working to pull out a survivor from the rubble. The videos appeared consistent with AP reporting.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed a barrage of shells hit Barzeh and said at least one person was killed and several others wounded. It said the nature of the attack and exact number of casualties was not clear.

Barzeh is close to Esh el-Wirwar, a suburb of Damascus predominantly inhabited by Alawites and Syrian army volunteers. Rebels frequently target the area with mortar shells.

The Syrian revolt started with largely peaceful protests in March 2011 but has developed into a civil war with increasingly sectarian overtones.

Sunni Muslims dominate rebel ranks, while the Assad regime is composed mostly of Alawites, an offshoot Shi'ite group to which the president and his family belong. More than 70,000 people have died in the conflict, according to the UN

Activists also reported fighting in many parts of the country, including the southern province of Daraa near the border with Jordan, where rebels have been making significant advances.

A Jordanian security official said Thursday the kingdom has tightened security along its 370-kilometre border with Syria, doubling the number of soldiers in the last two days. He declined to disclose the size of the force.

The stepped up security reflects the kingdom's fears that the chaos from Syria's 2-year-old civil war could lead to a failed state on its doorstep where Islamic militants have a free hand.

President Bashar Assad's regime warned Thursday the kingdom is "playing with fire" by allowing the US and other countries to train and arm Syrian rebels on its territory.

The warnings followed statements from US and other Western and Arab officials that Jordan has been facilitating arms shipments and hosting training camps for Syrian rebels since last October.

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Fukushima fuel cooling system stops again

ONE of the cooling systems for spent atomic fuel at the Fukushima nuclear plant has temporarily failed, the second outage in a matter of weeks, underlining ongoing instability at the plant.

Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said an alarm sounded at the facility at 2.27pm local time (0327 AEDT) on Friday, and technicians soon confirmed that the cooling system for the pool attached to Reactor 3 was not working.

Nuclear fuel, even after use, has to be kept cool to prevent it from overheating and beginning a self-sustaining atomic reaction that could lead to meltdown.

The problem, which was fixed in about three hours, occurred as work crew placed a metal mesh around a switchboard in a bid to prevent small animals from touching it, a TEPCO spokesman told a press conference.

The measures were taken after a rat got inside the switchboard last month, causing a short-circuit that knocked out power for sections of the crippled plant and stopped cooling systems for four storage pools.

That time, it took nearly 30 hours for TEPCO to fully fix the problem.

The TEPCO spokesman said a wire or the mesh might have touched the ground while crews put the mesh in place, unintentionally grounding the equipment and knocking it offline.

TEPCO apologised for the problem, but stressed that it had not posed any immediate danger.

However, the incident reveals the precarious state of the Fukushima plant, more than two years after it was hit by the giant tsunami of March 2011, and critics were quick to jump on the fault.

"Rather than TEPCO assuring us there is no safety threat, both the company and government officials must now follow up with robust and effective action," Greenpeace International energy campaign team leader Jan Beranek said.

"Japan needs to focus its efforts and capacities on maintaining the troubled reactors, instead of rushing to restart other risky nuclear plants," Beranek said.

TEPCO and the government said in December 2011 that the reactors were "in a state of cold shutdown" - a phrase carefully chosen, commentators said, to imply normality in units so broken that standard descriptions did not apply.

Authorities insist they are getting on top of the problem and the reactors are not leaking significant amounts of radiation.

But the plant, which TEPCO and the government plan to dismantle over the next four decades, is kept stable only with makeshift systems to supply power, cool reactors and clean radioactive materials from water used as coolant.

At 2pm on Friday, the time of the outage, the temperature inside the pool affected by the latest glitch stood at 15.1 degrees Celsius, well below the safety limit of 65 degrees Celsius, TEPCO said.

Equipment measuring radioactivity, placed in and around the plant, has shown no new abnormality related to the latest trouble, the company added.

Fukushima was the site of the worst nuclear crisis in a generation. Reactors went into meltdown and spewed radiation over a wide area, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes and polluting farmland.

Although the natural disaster that spawned the emergency claimed around 19,000 lives, no one is officially recorded as having died as a direct result of the atomic catastrophe.

However, pressure groups like Greenpeace maintain the long-term health effects for people in the area are being vastly underestimated by a government they say is in hock to a powerful nuclear industry.

Although many voters now distrust the technology, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has openly said Japan must consider continued use of nuclear as a less-expensive energy source to power the world's third-largest economy.

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Ben Ali's brother-in-law dies in custody

MONCEF Trabelsi, the brother-in-law of ousted Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who was jailed for fraud, has died in custody of a brain tumour, the country's prisons chief says.

"He died at the neurological hospital where he was taken (from jail) on March 18. He had been operated on for a brain tumour," the prisons chief, Habib Sboui, told AFP on Friday.

Sboui added that Trabelsi, 69, had been unconscious for the past "four or five days".

Trabelsi had been sentenced to prison for fraud soon after the January 2011 uprising that toppled Ben Ali.

His sister is Leila Trabelsi, the wife of Ben Ali, who was also accused of stealing state funds.

The couple fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14 of that year amid a massive popular uprising against his rule.

Other members of Moncef Trabelsi's extended family, including in-laws, were arrested in Tunisia where they faced trials in a military court.

But unlike some members of the Trabelsi clan, which wielded much sway during Ben Ali's rule, he himself held little influence in the country's affairs.

One of his brothers, Belhassen, fled Tunisia for Canada, where in May the immigration board rejected his residency appeal.

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UK woman 'killed family' in web of lies

A BRITISH social worker has been struck off after lying to bosses about the deaths of her father, mother, uncle, aunt, brother and ex-husband to get time off work.

Rachael Miles took 66 days off work with Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, where she was part of a 16-plus team working with vulnerable people.

After a two-day hearing concluding on March 28, the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) found she fraudulently claimed compassionate leave and carers' leave.

The panel heard evidence that Miles made up stories about the deaths of loved ones, including claims her ex-husband had hung himself and she needed to identify his body.

In her first claim in February 2010, less than two weeks after starting work for the council, she told bosses her father had been in a car crash, later reporting he had died.

The following month Miles claimed her mother had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, and later that year that she had died during surgery.

In 2011, she told bosses her brother died, followed by her ex-husband.

In November that year, Miles asked for more time off after telling bosses her uncle and then her aunt died seven days apart.

The council launched an investigation and decided to redeploy her to another post in the authority but she resigned instead.

Miles did not attend the hearing in London and was not represented.

The HCPC struck her off its register and placed an interim suspension order on Miles, who can choose to appeal against the decision.

A spokesman for Solihull council said it did not comment on individual staff matters.

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Panicked Cypriots queue at banks

European Central Bank boss Mario Draghi says Cyprus' bailout was poorly managed and "not smart". Source: AAP

PANICKED Cypriots have queued outside banks on rumours that a new levy would be imposed on deposits as part of a bailout, but the authorities moved quickly to assure them this was not the case.

Cyprus wrapped up talks this week paving the way for the 10 billion-euro ($A12.49 billion) bailout from EU-led lenders, but fears swirled that it was still well short of the 5.8 billion euros to fund its end of the deal.

As the speculation spread on Friday morning, customers formed long queues outside some of the larger branches of the Co-op bank, prompting the government to issue a denial of the reports as "unjustified" and "groundless".

"Such an issue was never tabled or discussed, therefore we categorically state that no such issue exists, not even as an intention," said the finance ministry.

"The memorandum has been agreed with the troika and it does not include any additional measure that leads to the need to implement any new haircut on deposits," it said, referring to the EU, European Central Bank and IMF.

The ministry said the measures agreed by the Eurogroup on March 25 for restructuring the Cypriot banking sector were being implemented and the system was "on track towards stabilisation and consolidation".

The central bank also denied reports of any plans to introduce a "general" haircut of deposits to pay for the conversion of uninsured deposits above 100,000 euros into shares in the island's biggest lender, the Bank of Cyprus (BoC).

"We refute this because such an action is not provided for in the policy decisions taken by the Eurogroup," it said in a statement.

The supervisory authority for the Co-op societies also warned anxious customers to ignore "slanderous rumours" being spread by text messages that a haircut on deposits was imminent.

Under the deal to downsize the banking sector, large BoC depositors could lose all of the remaining 60 per cent of their balances over 100,000 euros depending on the costs of winding up and merging second-largest lender Laiki.

Savers in that bank will have to wait for years to see any of their cash over 100,000 euros.

Banks have been operating under stringent capital controls since they reopened last week, after a near two-week lockdown prompted by fears of a run on deposits.

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