Pakistan PM in Kabul to discuss Taliban

PAKISTAN'S prime minister says that the recent release of a senior Taliban leader shows he is committed to helping bring peace to Afghanistan.

Nawaz Sharif said after meeting in Kabul with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday that an agreement had been reached for members of an Afghan peace council to continue talks with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was released from Pakistani detention last September.

The Taliban's former No. 2 was set free after years in detention and some officials hope he can help jumpstart the peace process, while others have their doubts. An Afghan delegation met with him last week, officials said, the first such encounter since his release.

"A few days ago Salahuddin Rabbani, the head of the peace council, visited Pakistan so we once again discussed the peace process," Karzai said after meeting Sharif. "We discussed how Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States can work together to bring peace to the region."

Both men made very short remarks after their meeting and provided no other details. Both expressed their general desire for closer ties, trade and regional peace and agreed to work toward those goals.

Pakistan is beset by its own Taliban insurgency that has claimed the lives of thousands of soldiers and civilians in recent years.

It was Sharif's first visit to Afghanistan since being elected. Karzai has been pushing Pakistan for help in talking to the Taliban, where of its leaders are thought to be based. Kabul has sought Islamabad's help to bring the militant group to the table.

Sharif also said they discussed trade and energy issues.

The topics under discussion included a plan to expand an electricity distribution network to ship surplus power from the Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan through Afghanistan and into Pakistan, which suffers massive power shortages that threaten its industrial production and economy.

Another project is a planned natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan that will pass through Afghanistan to Pakistan and end up in India.

Relations between the two countries have been testy and Afghanistan has often accused Pakistan of aiding Taliban leaders sheltering across the border. Sharif has nonetheless made improving ties with Afghanistan a priority.

Karzai was in Pakistan last August and the two leaders again met in October, where they agreed during a London meeting for Islamabad to allow an Afghan peace delegation to meet with

Pakistan has released around four dozen Taliban prisoners over the last year in an attempt to help peace talks, but there is no sign they have made any difference.

The Taliban have refused to talk directly with Karzai, his government or its representatives. US-backed talks between Afghanistan and the Taliban failed in June after Karzai accused the militants of setting up a government in exile. The Taliban have since closed their office in the Gulf state of Qatar.

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No Aussies caught in helicopter pub crash

IT appears that no Australians were in a Glasgow pub when a police helicopter crashed into the roof on Friday night killing at least one person.

There were more than 100 revellers in the Clutha pub when the incident occurred and the death toll is expected to rise.

Thirty-two people had been taken by ambulance to three Glasgow hospitals. Rescuers are still searching through the ruins of the pub.

"We are not aware of any Australians involved," a spokeswoman for the Australian High Commission in London said on Saturday morning.

"We remain in contact with the Scottish authorities."

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond called it a "black day" for Scotland as he sent his condolences to the bereaved on Saturday.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said UK authorities had not advised it of any Australians affected "at this stage".

"The rescue operation is still underway," a spokeswoman told AAP in a statement.

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New test may help with Bladder cancer

A SIMPLE urine test may be able to distinguish between aggressive and low-grade bladder cancers, allowing doctors to tailor personalised treatments, say scientists.

Researchers measured levels of a protein shed by bladder tumours in 600 patients. They found that higher amounts of the protein, EpCAM, in the urine were associated with more aggressive cancers.

Study author Dr Douglas Ward, from the University of Birmingham, said: "This protein could be used to help doctors to decide what the best course of investigation or treatment for the patients is, and may prevent unnecessary delays.

"We've known for some time that the protein EpCAM is released from some tumour cells but it wasn't clear whether it would be useful as a way to decide the best investigation and treatment for patients suspected of having bladder cancer. We are now planning further studies to test the benefits of urine biomarker testing to patients and the NHS."

Each year around 10,300 bladder cancers are diagnosed in the UK and 5,000 people die from the disease.

In many cases, the tumours are superficial and do not pose a significant risk to life. Invasive cancers that spread into the surrounding muscles of the bladder are less common but can be fatal.

Martin Ledwick, head information nurse at Cancer Research UK, which funded the study, said: "This research has shed new light on a protein that we've known for some time is linked to certain types of cancer. Developing a urine test to work out how aggressive or advanced a patient's tumour is could replace the need for more invasive and costlier tests used by doctors at the moment."

The research is published in the British Journal of Cancer.

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Haiyan rebuilding to take five years

The death toll from Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines has soared past 5600 and continues to rise. Source: AAP

REBUILDING areas devastated by a super typhoon that killed thousands in the Philippines will take up to five years and cost more than two billion dollars, officials said.

The comments came as the death toll from Haiyan, one of the most powerful typhoons to ever hit the country, continued to rise.

On Saturday, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said 5,632 people had been confirmed dead while 1,759 were still missing following the category five storm earlier this month.

"The total rehabilitation will take three to five years, depending on the pace of our support system and the projects we implement," Eduardo del Rosario, executive director of the NDRRMC, said.

He told reporters that President Benigno Aquino did not want to merely repair the damage but wants the new structures to be better than those that were standing before the storm.

"Our president wants the rehabilitation to be 'build-back better communities," so they can withstand future storms," del Rosario said.

Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson said: "We are looking at over a hundred billion pesos ($A2.42 billion) of reconstruction, from livelihood, commerce, social services," as well as infrastructure and power facilities.

That figure does not include the huge amounts already spent on immediate relief for the millions of people who were injured or left without food, water or shelter.

About 15 to 20 billion pesos will go to providing shelter with some 60,000 to 80,000 families to be re-settled in two to three years, said Singson.

This will include the people whose homes were destroyed by the storm as well as those who will have to move out of a recently-declared 40-metre "no-build zone" from the coastline, Singson added.

The zone is intended to prevent a repetition of the large number of deaths that occurred after Haiyan brought massive storm surges that flattened seaside communities.

A spokeswoman for the local UN office, Orla Fagan, told a news conference on Friday that donors had forked out $US164 million ($A180.41 million) so far.

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Plane crash in Alaska, four dead

A PLANE crash near the remote western Alaska village of Saint Marys has killed four of the 10 people aboard, including a baby boy, an Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman said.

The pilot and three passengers died in the Friday night crash, spokeswoman Megan Peters said on Saturday.

Peters had no immediate word on the six survivors' condition.

The single-engine, turboprop Cessna 208 was a Hageland Aviation flight from Bethel to Mountain Village and Saint Marys, said Kathy Roser, a spokeswoman for Era Alaska airline.

The wreckage was found about six kilometres east of Saint Marys.

An emergency locator beacon signal helped pinpoint the crash site, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Clint Johnson said.

There was no immediate word on what might have caused the crash. The NTSB plans to send two investigators to the scene Saturday.

The temperature in the area Friday night was about minus eight degrees Celsius.

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Toddler found walking down NSW road

A TODDLER has been found wandering along a main road on the NSW mid-north coast.

A driver spotted the one-year-old boy while heading through Edgeworth, near Lake Macquarie, on Friday night, police said.

The boy is in good health and has been taken to the Toronto police station.

A door knock is underway as police search for the toddler's parents.

Anyone with information about the child or his parents is asked to contact police.

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Myanmar family to contest return to Nauru

A family of asylum seekers from Myanmar will be allowed to argue against their return to Nauru. Source: AAP

A FAMILY of Rohingya asylum seekers from Myanmar will be allowed to stay in Australia to argue their case against their return to a Nauru detention centre.

The family of five has been living in detention in Brisbane after they were transported from the Pacific island nation to allow the mother Latifar to give birth to baby boy Ferouz earlier this month.

Ferouz's parents fled persecution in Myanmar more than a decade ago and lived for years in a Malaysian refugee camp, before arriving on Christmas Island with their two other young children in September.

Lawyers for the family had sought a court injunction to stop their return to Nauru, which the family feared was imminent.

They said there were real concerns for the health of the diabetic mother and premature Ferouz if the family returned to detention on the tiny island nation.

But in Brisbane on Friday lawyers struck a deal with the government allowing them to stay in Australia until there is a hearing for "procedural fairness".

The government also agreed to give the family two days' notice if it intended to send them back to Nauru, after their case is heard.

Federal Circuit Court judge Margaret Cassidy recognised the settlement.

Defence lawyer Murray Watt said it was a fair outcome for the family, their sick baby boy and the Australian community.

But he also said it was a time to reflect on the entire practice offshore detention "in conditions that only this week the UN has reported are inhumane".

"I think we can do better than that as Australians," Mr Watt added.

"We have international obligations that require us to do better than that and I now call on the minister and the entire Australian community to think about whether these are the kind of conditions that we think are acceptable for very small children and their families."

Refugee Action Coalition welcomed the deal, but said they had been hoping a legal precedent would have been set.

"...for the minister to be required to give judicial fairness to everyone he intends to send offshore," the organisation's Ian Rintoul told AAP.

The Australian Council of Church Taskforce called for Prime Minister Tony Abbott to release all children from detention while their refugee applications were dealt with.

The group also called for Immigration Minister Scott Morrison to release the findings of the investigation he promised into why Latifar was separated from Ferouz while he was in hospital.

Comment has been sought from the federal government.

The court will also need to determine whether baby Ferouz is entitled to Australian citizenship as he was born here.

The case has been adjourned until March 21.

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Slain SKorean woman's dad seeks justice

Through a translator, the father of a young murdered Korean woman hopes Queensland delivers justice. Source: AAP

IN a foreign country and unable to speak English, the father of a young murdered Korean woman is hoping Queensland delivers justice.

The family of Eunji Ban gathered in Brisbane on Friday - five days after the 22-year-old woman was found murdered in an inner-city park.

She had been in Australia a few weeks, killed on the way to a cleaning job in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Her father Hyeonggyu Ban had flown from the South Korean port city of Busan to express, through a translator, his desire for justice.

"I trust the justice system to impose a firm and just sentence on the offender," he told reporters at Queensland police headquarters after his daughter's funeral.

Eunji's uncle Seongkyu Ban was beside him, holding a framed picture of the young woman.

Hyeonggyu Ban read from a statement in Korean, describing his grief.

"There is nothing to replace her," he said.

"To a parent, your children are your biggest treasure.

"My daughter was my hope and she was bigger than life itself.

"For me as a parent, the loss of my daughter was sadness and despair - it is impossible to express with words."

The murder victim's father described his appreciation at Brisbane's outpouring of grief, after more than 1000 people gathered at Wickham Park on Wednesday to pay their respects at the crime scene.

"Watching from a distance, I was deeply moved by the large number of Queensland community who attended and paid their respects," he said.

Mr Ban expressed gratitude to Queensland police, Premier Campbell Newman and Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk "for their kind words and condolences", along with the Korean consulate.

"I can only hope that my daughter's death plays a role in making this community more aware of their safety and aid, and further protecting the lives of Queenslanders," he said.

"I sincerely hope my daughter's death will not go to waste."

A 19-year-old man, Alex Reuben McEwan, fronted court on Tuesday charged with Ms Ban's murder.

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UN report on trauma of Syrian refugee kids

SYRIAN refugee children are paying a cruel price as civil war rips their country apart, the United Nations warns in a report with heart-rending testimony from youngsters driven from their homes.

"This is impossible to forget. It's like someone has stabbed me with a knife when I remember," 15-year-old Taha, who saw seven corpses near his house in Syria, told interviewers with the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).

He and scores of other Syrian refugee children in Jordan and Lebanon were interviewed for a 60-page UNHCR report, starkly laying out the trauma of young exiles from a conflict that has killed more than 120,000 people.

The children's last names were not revealed, to protect them and their families.

"It is important that this human face of the refugee crisis is not forgotten," Volker Turk, UNHCR head of international protection, told journalists in Geneva on Friday.

"And if you look at what children face, they illustrate very strongly what this crisis is all about," he said.

Children make up about half of the more than 2.2 million Syrians who have fled their homeland, according to UN numbers of registered refugees.

Syria's neighbours meanwhile estimate some three million Syrians have already left the war-ravaged country, which means around 1.5 million Syrian children are living as refugees.

"Looking back over the last 20 years, the Syria refugee crisis for us is unparalleled since the Rwanda crisis," Turk said, referring to the 1994 genocide in the African nation.

He pointed out that children also represent about half of the 6.5 million people driven from their homes but who remain inside Syria.

In the report, the children describe in words and with drawings the horrors they have witnessed and the turmoil within.

"There is blood up to people's knees in Syria," said 17-year-old Sala.

And 16-year-old Maher, who was tortured in Syria and whose father remains missing there, said: "My first wish would be to go back to Syria and to have my father released."

Some of the children also drew pictures of weapons of war and bodies.

"The idea of home and warmth is gone with a stroke," said Turk.

"There is a lot of psychological scarring and a lot of trauma ... You see it in sleeplessness, children being very withdrawn, there is stuttering, bed-wetting."

Anger was also common, with some boys wanting to return to Syria to fight.

Other scars are physical: 741 Syrian children were treated for war wounds in Lebanon in the first six months of this year, and 1000 cared for in the vast Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan.

The massive influx of Syrians has stretched food, water, healthcare and accommodation resources to the limit in the host countries, and also overwhelmed their education systems.

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German policeman kills, mutilates victim

A GERMAN police officer who expressed fantasies about cannibalism killed and mutilated a man he met on the internet, prosecutors say.

The officer, arrested on suspicion of murder and in custody in the eastern state of Saxony, has admitted to committing the crime on November 4, shortly after making online contact with the 59-year-old victim.

Though there is no evidence to suggest the officer engaged in cannibalism, prosecutors told journalists on Friday that he had repeatedly expressed the desire to eat other human beings since adolescence.

The 55-year-old suspect, who worked as a police officer at Saxony's Office of Criminal Investigation, is alleged to have delivered a fatal knife wound to the victim's throat, subsequently taking up to five hours to cut the body into pieces.

The 59-year-old victim is said to have entered into the agreement willingly.

Prosecutors said the victim had been searching the internet for like-minded people who wanted to live out violent fantasies including torture-sex.

Despite admitting to the murder, the police officer denied the crime had been sexually motivated.

A special committee is investigating the incident.

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