Beattie calls for states to be 'abolished'

FORMER Queensland premier Peter Beattie has called for the abolition of the states, saying they could be replaced by larger councils.

Mr Beattie has told The Australian newspaper the states needed to be redefined or abolished given a 2006 High Court decision that upheld the Work Choices laws.

He said in the wake of the federal industrial relations laws the states had become "hand maiden of the Commonwealth".

Mr Beattie is reported as suggesting that larger regional councils could in the long term erode the power of the states and lead to a new structure of government for Australia.

This would reduce duplication and provide better government services, the newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Mr Beattie said one of the reasons he quit state politics was because he thought the future of state governments was "dim".

The call comes after recent urgings from former prime minister Bob Hawke for state governments to be scrapped.

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Rohingya boat people found near Thailand

A BOAT carrying about 70 asylum seekers from Myanmar's (Burma's) beleaguered Rohingya minority has been found adrift in the Andaman Sea off the Thai resort of Phuket.

Thai navy, police, health and other officials have supplied medicine and food and water to the asylum seekers, along with fuel for the boat so it could continue its journey without landing in Thailand.

Thai policy is to not accept boat people but to aid them in reaching a third country.

The passengers include about 10 children.

The exodus of Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladesh, where many are also confined to refugee camps, has become seasonal, peaking in December and January.

Their fate became an international issue in 2008-2009, when predominantly Buddhist Thailand towed broken-down boats crammed with refugees back to sea, where they were cast adrift. Hundreds are believed to have died when the boats later sank.

The latest batch of asylum seekers told officials they had been at sea for 13 days and were headed for Malaysia, Thailand's southern neighbour.

Malaysia is seen as a welcoming destination because its own Muslim population is dominant, though it too considers the Rohingya undesirable.

On Sunday, about 450 asylum seekers from Myanmar landed in Malaysia after a similar boat journey that left one dead, a man who tried to swim to shore.

It was one of the largest groups of Rohingya this past year to reach Malaysia, where about 25,000 Rohingya are registered with the UN refugee agency.

The UN estimates the Rohingya population in Myanmar at 800,000, but the government does not recognise them as one of the country's 135 ethnic groups, and most are denied citizenship.

Rohingya speak a Bengali dialect and resemble Muslim Bangladeshis, with darker skin than most people in Myanmar. They are widely regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and heavily discriminated against. But Bangladesh also refuses to accept them as citizens.

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US 'fiscal cliff' solution goes to House

A LEGISLATIVE fix to patch up America's fiscal crisis will be taken up by lawmakers in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives after passing the Senate.

The White House and top Republicans struck a deal after dramatic 11th-hour negotiations to avert huge New Year tax hikes and postpone automatic spending cuts that had threatened to send the US economy back into recession.

If the legislation passes the House as expected, it will represent a win for President Barack Obama as it raises taxes on the richest Americans - albeit above an income threshold higher than he and other Democrats had wanted.

But the victory will be hollow as it fails to tackle the deep spending cuts needed to resolve America's austerity crisis, setting up the prospect of another bitter Washington battle at the start of Obama's second term.

After months of agonising over the crisis, weeks of debate about a possible solution, and days of intense, closed-door bartering, the US Senate voted overwhelmingly 89-8 early Tuesday to pass a controversial bill that averts the so-called "fiscal cliff".

Although the midnight deadline was technically missed, any serious impact on the world's biggest economy will be avoided as long as legislation passes the House of Representatives in the coming days.

Obama issued a statement shortly after the Senate vote, urging lawmakers in the Republican-controlled House to "pass it without delay".

A vote could come as early as Tuesday.

If the measure is agreed by both chambers of Congress, tax rates will be hiked on households earning over $US450,000 a year but remain where they are for everyone else.

While not matching Obama's campaign threshold of $US250,000, it would represent a major concession from Republicans who have stuck solidly to a pledge of no higher taxes since then president George Bush failed to win re-election in 1992 after breaking a promise not to raise rates.

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Syria sees in New Year with more violence

SYRIANS woke up to air strikes near Damascus on New Year's Day as Aleppo airport was closed after repeated rebel attacks, casting doubts on diplomatic drives to end the 21-month conflict.

The violence came a day after activists reported finding the corpses of dozens of people who had been tortured, another sign of the gruesome nature of the conflict, and as the regime said it welcomed any initiative for talks to end it.

Warplanes bombed the northeastern and southwestern suburbs of Damascus in a fresh bid to push rebels further from the capital, and troops attacked insurgent strongholds on the road to Damascus airport.

"Three air strikes by MiG planes have targeted Daraya since the morning, and the shelling is continuing," Abu Kinan, an activist from the town southwest of Damascus told AFP over the internet.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the raids came amid fierce clashes near the towns of Bait Saham and Aqraba along the airport road, and that shelling killed three civilians in nearby Ziabiyeh.

Battles have raged for weeks outside Damascus where insurgents have set up rear bases.

Analysts say the army is set on taking total control of Damascus and its immediate surroundings to create conditions necessary for future dialogue.

In northern Syria, where insurgents hold huge swathes of territory, authorities announced the temporary closure of Aleppo international airport after rebel attacks in recent days.

"There have been continued attempts by opposition militants to target civilian aircraft, which could cause a humanitarian disaster," an airport official told AFP.

But he added that the airport would be closed for a "very short period of time" while the army tries to regain control of rebel-held areas around it.

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Russian ban on US adoptions kicks in

RUSSIA'S controversial ban on adoptions of Russian children by American families has come into force, days after its signing by President Vladimir Putin sparked an international outcry.

The ban is part of a law rushed through parliament to hit back at the United States over its passing of a law sanctioning Russian officials implicated in the death in jail of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.

But opponents say it makes Russian orphans - many with physical or mental difficulties - the blameless victims of a diplomatic standoff between Washington and Moscow.

The law came into force on January 1 after being signed by Putin on December 28, Russian state media said.

The blanket ban brings to an end a process that according to the US State Department has seen US families adopt more than 60,000 Russian children over the past 20 years.

It also forbids US citizens who are deemed to have hurt the rights of Russians from entering Russia, and allows the authorities to shut down NGOs funded by the United States.

The ban on adoptions caused an unusual amount of dissent within the political establishment, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicating his discomfort and Deputy Prime Minister in charge of social policy Olga Golodets vehemently opposed.

The anti-Putin opposition is trying to play on the splits within the elite by holding a mass rally against the law on January 13 in central Moscow, which organisers hope will muster up to 20,000 people.

Activists have said that American families were in particular prepared to adopt ill Russian children and the law risks consigning the most disadvantaged to orphanages for the rest of their childhood.

There is also concern about some 50 children caught in limbo after the law thwarted ongoing adoption processes, where in some cases the orphans had already met future adoptive parents.

The death of Magnitsky - who was charged with the very tax scam that he claimed to have uncovered - in pre-trial detention in 2009 has become a symbol of human rights abuses in the Russian prison system.

The Russian legislation responding to the US Magnitsky Act was dubbed as the Dima Yakovlev law, named for a Russian boy adopted in the United States who died after being locked in a hot car by his adoptive US father in 2008.

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Nigerian officials deny report of massacre

NIGERIA'S emergency agency has denied a report from one of its officials that 15 people were killed at a church in the country's volatile northeast, saying two were dead in unclear circumstances.

An official from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) on Monday told reporters that attackers had killed 15 people during a church service on Sunday in a remote village outside the town of Chibok.

The official who spoke is the agency's co-ordinator for the northeast region, but the agency's headquarters issued a statement on Tuesday providing a drastically different version. The military meanwhile denied any incident occurred.

The statement said the emergency agency had contacted the official quoted, Mohammed Kanar, and he had denied giving the information.

NEMA "has denied a report claiming that 15 worshippers were killed in an outskirt of Chibok local government council of Borno state on Sunday", the statement said.

"Though some of the reports claimed a source from NEMA provided the information, the agency not only contacted the same officer who denied it in its entirety, it also assigned a special team to investigate and verify the allegation which was later found to be unsubstantiated and untrue.

"Meanwhile the team has also discovered that two people were killed by unidentified gunmen around the area on Sunday and whose bodies had been deposited in a hospital. The victims were a security man and a bystander."

Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa, a spokesman for a military task force in the region, which has been hard hit by Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, told AFP he was not aware of any incident in the area on Sunday.

Asked about the NEMA statement saying two were dead, he maintained his previous statement and declined further comment.

Death tolls and information on attacks are often controversial and conflicting in Nigeria, with authorities under pressure to show progress in the fight against Boko Haram.

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Mariah Carey hosts family affair

FOR all the diva demands and high-profile fallouts, Mariah Carey can still hit the high notes when it comes to the real business of singing.

The 42-year-old star showed her unique vocal range as she delivered her first Australian concert in 15 years at the Gold Coast Convention Centre on Tuesday night.

After husband Nick Cannon warmed up the crowd with a DJ set, Carey made the occasion a family affair by bringing on her two young children, Moroccan and Monroe.

Visibly shy in the spotlight after spending their New Year's Eve on a luxury yacht, the pair left it to mum, one of the greatest female artists in history with 200 million album sales, to entertain the sellout audience.

Opening with the upbeat Can't Take That Away and Touch My Body, Carey moved through classics from her 22-year career, including fan favourite Hero and the rarely performed Close My Eyes from her Butterfly album.

While the voice has matured from her heyday, the Grammy winner turned American Idol judge was still able to reach her famous 'dolphin squeak' - the hard to master G#7 - during the song Obsessed.

She also gave a spine-tingling performance of the Michael Jackson classic I'll Be There alongside Trey Lorenz, who duetted on the 1992 hit cover.

Stopping for several costume changes throughout, Carey also showed off her diva side, complaining about bad sound and bizarrely breaking into song between numbers to vent her frustration.

"There's like two hundred of you, can one of you just fix the ear thing," she called to her sound crew.

"I hope I'm not asking for the moon and the stars."

Mariah Carey's concert tour continues to Sydney and Melbourne with tickets still available to the Melbourne show.

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Fires leave 4000 homeless in Cape Town

SEVERAL unrelated fires have ripped through informal settlements in Cape Town, killing at least three people and leaving some 4000 homeless on New Year's Day.

"The cause of these fires has not been established, however it is alleged that they were caused by negligence by persons under the influence of alcohol," said city disaster management official Wilfred Solomons-Johannes.

Authorities battled to put out the blazes that ravaged homes in the township of Du Noon and various sections of the notorious Khayelitsha slum late Monday and early Tuesday.

Fire and rescue services - including a helicopter - as well as emergency medical services and law enforcement agencies were deployed to the scenes.

But they could not prevent the blaze spreading and destroying hundreds of shacks and houses, cutting electricity and forcing the closure of major nearby roads.

"The gusting wind ... has fuelled the spread of these fires that made it challenging for firefighters to effect fire suppression," said Solomons-Johannes.

Disaster management teams supplied food parcels, blankets, baby packs, clothing and building material and trauma counselling to victims.

Cape Town authorities encouraged residents to take care with open flames and when using electrical devices.

The use of gas burners, candles, lamps and paraffin stoves is common in poor areas throughout South Africa.

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