Senate approves $633b defence bill

The US Senate has approved a $A606.41 billion defence spending bill for next year. Source: AAP

THE US Senate has approved a $US633 billion ($A606.41 billion) defence spending bill for next year that tightens penalties on Iran, funds the war in Afghanistan and boosts security at US missions worldwide.

The legislation passed 81-14 on Friday despite furious opposition from Republican Senator Rand Paul, who criticised removal of an amendment that would have provided Americans with protection against indefinite military detention.

Despite a raging partisan row in Washington over how to resolve a year-end fiscal crisis, the compromise bill sailed through the House of Representatives on Thursday and now goes to President Barack Obama's desk.

In addition to covering standard national security expenses like shipbuilding, it provides a 1.7-per cent pay raise for men and women in uniform, authorises the Pentagon to pay for abortions in cases of rape and incest and lifts a ban on same-sex marriage ceremonies on military bases.

The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2013 was hammered out by House and Senate conferees this month after each chamber voted to approve separate versions of the bill.

The White House last month said Obama could veto the act out of concern for the restrictions on his handling of Guantanamo detainees, but Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin said this week he did not expect a veto.

The bill extended for one year the restriction on use of US funds to transfer Guantanamo inmates to other countries, a limitation critics say marks a setback for Obama's efforts to close the detention centre.

Paul said it was a "travesty of justice" that an amendment designed to limit the president's power to indefinitely detain US citizens as terror suspects was stripped from the final bill.

"It's a shame to scrap the very rights that make us exceptional as a people," Paul said, referring to the rights to a trial for anyone held in the United States.

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Two men stabbed outside Xmas party

TWO men have suffered facial and neck wounds after being stabbed with scissors outside a Christmas party on NSW's far north coast.

They were talking outside a community hall in Upper Main Arm near Byron Bay about 11.30pm (AEDT) on Friday when approached by an unknown man.

Police said the man then attacked them with a pair of scissors, wounding them both in the face and neck before driving away.

The two men, aged 46 and 36, who had been at a Christmas party inside the hall, were taken to Tweed Heads Hospital where they remain in a stable condition.

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Ex-Beatle's widow lauds Ravi Shankar

FORMER Beatle George Harrison's widow Olivia has joined hundreds of fans and family of Ravi Shankar at an open-air memorial to the Indian sitar legend near his California home.

Anoushka Shankar, daughter of the late musician who died last week near San Diego, and her step-sister Grammy-winning singer Norah Jones also paid their last respects at the service in a palm tree-lined meditation centre.

Tributes were read out from fellow musicians and artists who had been inspired by Shankar, labelled "The Godfather of World Music" by the Beatles and compared to Mozart by violin maestro Yehudi Menuhin.

Harrison, whose late husband learned sitar from Shankar and collaborated with him notably on the ground-breaking Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, said the former Beatle had learned so much from their friendship.

"They were like father and son as well as brothers... they made each other laugh as if they shared a secret. And I'm sure they did," said the 64-year-old, whose husband died of cancer in 2001.

Shankar "laid the stepping stones from West to East, that led George to new concepts, alternative philosophies and completely transformed his musical sensibilities," she said.

"They exchanged ideas and melodies until their minds and hearts, East and West, were entwined, like a double helix," she added in Encinitas, where Shankar had a home.

Shankar's 31-year-old daughter Anoushka - also a sitar player, and just nominated for a Grammy - told the audience that her father would have approved of the memorial's venue, the Self-Realization Fellowship spiritual centre.

"My father loved spending time here so much, so it feels so right for us to be here celebrating his journey," she said, before tributes were read out from singer Peter Gabriel and film director Martin Scorsese.

Gabriel said: "Ravi Shankar opened the door to non-Western music for millions of people around the world."

"His music has such power, seeming ancient and immediate, impassioned and meditative, full of sorrow and joy. He was a true master," said Scorsese. "From the first time I met him ... his brilliant sitar playing has mesmerised me."

Shankar died last Tuesday at the age of 92, after failing to recover from surgery at a hospital in La Jolla, near San Diego. His family was at his bedside.

Private memorial services were announced both in the United States and India, where Shankar also had a home.

Soul singer Jones, Shankar's daughter from an affair with a US concert producer, was dressed in black and kept a low profile at Thursday's event in Encinitas, up the coast from San Diego.

His widow Sukanya was also at the California memorial, which started with prayers chanted by M.N. Nandakumara of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan institute for Indian art and culture in London.

Nandakumara said that Shankar's music "brought people of various countries, communities together to his soul-stirring music, which was matchless.

"I do not know another musician who has understood the Eastern and Western music the way (Shankar) understood it, and interpreted it in such a way that people around the world were mesmerised by it," he said.

As well as Indian family and friends, Thursday's event - at which speakers were flanked on stage by photos of Shankar at various stages of his life - was attended by locals and other fans and followers.

"He's local, he's part of the community here," said Eddy Jimenez, a musician and trumpet player from Encinitas, comparing Shankar's influence and music with that of Harrison's fellow Beatle John Lennon.

"He's a bridge between humanity, really, not just East and West. I'm just here to pay my respects," the 61-year-old said.

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WikiLeaks to release a million files

WikiLeaks plans to release one million documents next year affecting every country in the world. Source: AAP

WIKILEAKS will release one million documents next year affecting every country in the world, founder Julian Assange has announced.

Assange made the announcement while delivering a Christmas message from the balcony of the Ecuadorean embassy in London to mark six months since he sought asylum there to avoid extradition to Sweden over claims of rape and sexual assault.

The Australian-born Assange said, to cheers from around 100 supporters, that despite spending half of 2012 holed up in the building it had been a "huge year" in which his anti-secrecy website had released documents about Syria and other topics.

"Next year will be equally busy. WikiLeaks has already over one million documents being prepared to be released, documents that affect every country in the world - every country in this world," he said.

It was Assange's first public appearance since he addressed a crowd from the same balcony on August 19, and Ecuadorean officials have since said he is suffering from health problems.

Britain has refused to grant him safe passage to either Ecuador or to hospital, saying it has a legal obligation to extradite him to Sweden after Assange lost his final battle in the British courts in June.

Assange claims that if he is extradited to Sweden he could eventually be sent to the United States for prosecution over WikiLeaks' controversial release of secret US military and diplomatic files.

He says he could face life in prison or even the death penalty in the US.

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Assange set to address supporters

WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange will deliver a message from the Ecuadorian embassy on Thursday to mark six months since he sought refuge inside the building.

The Australian is set to step on to the embassy's balcony for only the second time since he suddenly arrived on June 19 as part of his campaign to avoid extradition to Sweden.

The 41-year-old is wanted for questioning in Sweden over allegations of sexual assault, but he fears being sent to the United States to be quizzed over the WikiLeaks website for publishing top secret US government documents, including dossiers on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His supporters are expected to pack into the street outside the embassy in Central London, close to Harrods in Knightsbridge, to hear his speech.

Mr Assange gave a speech from the balcony in August, watched by officers from the Metropolitan Police, which has mounted a round-the-clock guard on the embassy.

Police will arrest Mr Assange if he steps outside the embassy after he broke bail conditions.

Ecuador's government has granted Mr Assange political asylum, but there has been no sign of a resolution to the impasse.

He gave a briefing to a handful of journalists last month, revealing that a block on processing donations by credit card companies to WikiLeaks had cost the whistle-blowing website over STG30 million ($A46.79 million), with staff having to take a 40 per cent pay cut as a result.

He described the block as an economic "death penalty" after the European Commission said it was unlikely to have violated EU anti-trust rules.

Mr Assange said WikiLeaks had lost 95per cent of its revenues, claiming that documents he had obtained showed that hard-right politicians in the United States were behind the blockade.

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Man charged with nurse murder in court

A 57-YEAR-OLD man charged with the murder of Perth nurse Tracey Jane Holloway has appeared in Perth Magistrates Court.

Bradley James Stinson, of the southern suburb of Kelmscott, did not enter a plea and was remanded in custody.

A rubbish truck driver found Ms Holloway's naked body on Valencia Way, Maddington - an industrial area - early on Tuesday morning.

Police are yet to reveal how Ms Holloway died, but it is understood she suffered major head injuries.

Her mother Anne Tucker was quoted as saying Ms Holloway "would walk home late at night from nursing and never thought about her safety", and "would have fought back against her attacker".

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Premier hopes Buswell soap opera will end

WEST Australian Premier Colin Barnett wants a legal stoush between the state's treasurer and his ex-lover resolved soon as it's proving a distraction.

Troy Buswell, who is also WA's transport and emergency services minister, last week slapped a defamation writ on independent MP Adele Carles after she made a string of accusations about his behaviour.

The writ warned the former Greens MP that further defamatory comments would lead to Mr Buswell seeking a Supreme Court injunction against her.

But on Sunday, she held a press conference in which she urged Mr Buswell to "stop it" - conceding the matter had turned into a "soap opera" - and showed journalists a recent card in which he pleaded for her to reunite with him, to counter claims she was acting as a "jilted lover" or "woman scorned".

Mr Barnett told reporters on Wednesday he hoped they could reach a settlement.

While the matter had been distracting, it was not affecting Mr Buswell's work, he said.

"We have a situation where two people have fallen out with each other and it's become quite bitter," the premier said.

"It's a matter for them.

"I would very much hope that they could resolve it because it simply is a distraction for myself and the government."

Ms Carles faces a damages bill of up to $3 million under the civil court action.

It emerged on Tuesday she has hired high-profile lawyer John Hammond to defend her.

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UN puts peacekeepers on new DR Congo alert

THE United Nations has put peacekeeper reinforcements on alert after hundreds of rebels moved around the key Democratic Republic of Congo city of Goma.

The United Nations raised new worries about the M23 and other rebel groups as it announced that at least 126 women were raped in a nearby town, mainly by Congolese government troops as they retreated from Goma last month.

The DR Congo government has been battling the M23, which UN experts say is backed by Rwanda, since March when the rebel group launched a mutiny.

The M23 briefly took Goma last month before withdrawing and agreeing to start talks with the government in Kampala.

UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladous briefed the UN Security Council about renewed tensions around Goma and preparations in case new hostilities erupt.

Afterwards, he told reporters hundreds of M23 fighters have been reported to be inside a ceasefire zone 20km around Goma.

"We are ready to send reinforcements to Goma very, very quickly if circumstances demand," Ladsous said on Tuesday.

He said rebels are carrying out "erratic but worrying movements" around the city and the UN mission "is very much on the alert and patrolling constantly, including with aircraft."

The UN has its biggest peacekeeping mission in DR Congo, with more than 17,000 troops who are spread thin in the huge country.

The M23 agitation could be linked to the talks between their leaders and the government in Kampala, Ladsous speculated.

Ladsous als warned that hundreds of fighters of another rebel group, the self-styled Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), had also been spotted around Goma.

The presence of the FDLR, created by perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide who fled to DR Congo, so near to the border is one reason for Rwanda's sensitivity to events in its neighbour, diplomats said.

The advance by M23 is just the latest episode of near continuous turmoil to hit the resource-rich region since the 1990s.

Hundreds of thousands of people are said to have died in that time while DR Congo has also become what the UN has called the "rape capital of the world".

It said UN investigators had found that at least 126 women were raped around the town of Minova, near Goma, as government forces retreated between November 20 and November 30.

Ladsous said there had been "terrible violations" mostly carried out by government troops.

UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said earlier that nine government soldiers have been arrested so far -- two for rapes and seven for looting -- around Minova.

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Fed govt cuts forcing bed closures: Vic

THOUSANDS of patients will suffer, with every Victorian hospital copping the brunt of "unprecedented" federal funding cuts, the state government says.

Up to 700 Royal Melbourne Hospital patients will be forced to wait longer for elective surgery, while Health Minister David Davis has written to the state's 86 health bosses urging them to plan for the commonwealth's mid-financial-year cuts.

Mr Davis says the commonwealth's revised funding arrangement with the state, which will strip some $107 million from the state's hospitals, is unprecedented and based on false population figures.

The arrangement will cut $15 million from Victorian hospitals in December alone, Reserve Bank of Australia figures show.

In a letter to federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek, Mr Davis says bringing the cuts in halfway through the financial year makes it difficult for hospitals - which planned their annual budgets in May - to adjust.

"These cuts are unprecedented ... this is no way for the commonwealth to run healthcare in this country," he told reporters in Melbourne on Tuesday.

"We're obviously very angry with the commonwealth, hospitals are angry ... and the commonwealth could still reverse this very unfortunate cut."

"It will be hundreds of beds and it will indeed be thousands of patients that are impacted."

Mr Davis said the government had attempted to justify the cuts on "shonky" population figures, which claim Victoria's population fell by 11,000 last year, while Australian Bureau of Statistics in fact shows the state swelled by 75,000 people.

"Never before has this style of adjustment been made so harshly, and never before has such a spurious set of figures been used to justify what in my view is an attempt to prop up the commonwealth budget," Mr Davis said.

But Ms Plibersek says the state is trying to cover its mismanagement.

"This is a smokescreen for the Victorian government's own failures," she said.

"Before any of this was in discussion, there were record high numbers of people on Victorian elective surgery waiting lists."

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New species old threats to Mekong wildlife

FROM a devilish-looking bat to a frog that sings like a bird, scientists have identified 126 new species in the Greater Mekong area, the WWF says in a new report detailing discoveries in 2011.

But from forest loss to the construction of major hydropower projects on the Mekong River, existing threats to the region's biodiversity mean many of the new species are already struggling to survive, the conservation group warned on Tuesday.

"The good news is new discoveries. The bad news is that it is getting harder and harder in the world of conservation and environmental sustainability," Nick Cox, manager of WWF-Greater Mekong's Species Programme, told AFP.

Some 126 species were newly recorded last year in the Greater Mekong region, which consists of Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan.

Some, such as the Beelzebub tube-nosed bat discovered in Vietnam, depend on tropical forests for survival and so are especially vulnerable to deforestation.

In just four decades, 30 percent of the Greater Mekong's forests have disappeared, the report says.

Others, such as a short-tailed python species found in Myanmar are more at risk from illegal hunting for meat, skins, and the exotic pet trade, the report said.

"Poaching for the illegal wildlife trade poses one of the greatest threats to the existence of many species across Southeast Asia," Cox said in a statement accompanying the report.

The list, dominated by plants, included 21 reptiles and five amphibians, such as a frog that sings and another that has black and white eye patterns that look like yin and yang symbols.

The WWF said that while the number of new species discovered was testament to the region's astounding biodiversity, there had been some "worrying developments" that posed a threat to their future.

WWF singled out Laos' determination to construct the Xayaburi dam on the main stream of the Mekong River as a significant threat to the river's "extraordinary biodiversity" and the livelihoods of more than 60 million people.

"The Mekong River supports levels of aquatic biodiversity second only to the Amazon River," according to Cox.

"The Xayaburi dam would prove an impassable barrier for many fish species, signalling the demise for wildlife already known and as yet undiscovered," he added.

The Mekong River supports around 850 fish species and the world's most intensive inland fishery, the report said.

Last month, Laos said it had begun work on the controversial multi-billion dollar Xayaburi dam, defying objections from environmentalists in its bid to become a regional energy hub.

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Nelson starts role as war memorial chief

BRENDAN Nelson professes no encyclopaedic grounding in Australian military history.

But the former senior politician and diplomat believes that will be an asset in his new role as director of the Australian War Memorial.

"Most of the people working at the memorial have forgotten more about our military history than I will ever know," he told AAP on his first day in the job on Monday.

"The people here have skills and knowledge I will never have, but I have skills and knowledge that complement that."

Dr Nelson sees the role of director as much like that of a government minister.

"It's not to be an expert," the former Howard government minister said.

"It's to listen, to read, then seek out the views of the experts and then to apply intellectual rigour to the process of exercising judgement."

Of the many duties Dr Nelson undertook as NATO ambassador in Brussels, it was the commemorative events that he enjoyed the most.

"It wasn't work, it was a privilege," he said, adding he had attended the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate memorial 73 times.

"If it had been in Brussels I would have gone every night."

The memorial honours the missing from the World War I battle of Passchendaele, and the ceremony has been conducted every night since 1928 save for the years of German occupation in World War II.

"The Australian sacrifice there was horrendous," Dr Nelson said, noting the names of 6169 Australian names are listed at Menin Gate.

"There are 12,900 Australians buried in Flanders from World War I."

Dr Nelson believes the soul of the Australian nation is represented by the war memorial and the sacrifices of the men and women who stood behind its collection.

"This building has as much to do with our future as it does our past," he said.

"I will do everything I possibly can to see that we have a meaningful respect and understanding of our history and are able to apply that for the future horizons we face and the challenges."

Increasing numbers of young people were looking for a sense of what it meant to be an Australian, Dr Nelson said.

"A lot of those young Australians are finding and will find the values that will best shape their lives by what's represented here."

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PMP retains Woolworths print contract

PRINTING and distribution business PMP has received some welcome good news after it retained the contract to print catalogues for Woolworths.

"PMP confirms Woolworths has indicated that, subject to the supply agreement being finalised, it has retained the printing of Woolworth national catalogues following Woolworths request for tender," PMP said in a statement on Monday.

PMP has held the the Woolworth's printing contract, believed to be one of the largest print contracts in Australia, for about 10 years.

The company said in November it would shut its Chullora printing plant in Sydney in June 2013, as part of a transformation plan to adapt to the new digital landscape.

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US returns Guantanamo prisoner's remains

The remains of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner who died in September have been returned to Yemen. Source: AAP

US authorities say the remains of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner who died in September have been returned to his native Yemen.

A spokesman for the military's Miami-based Southern Command said on Saturday that the medical examiner ruled Adnan Latif's September 8 death a suicide.

Colonel Greg Julian said Latif died of a self-induced overdose of prescription medication, adding that acute pneumonia also contributed to the 32-year-old's death.

Latif had been held at Guantanamo for more than a decade.

The US accused him of training with the Taliban to fight in Afghanistan. He was never charged but could not be returned to Yemen because of instability there. He challenged his confinement all the way to the US Supreme Court.

Officials said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was still investigating Latif's death.

* Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467.

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Shot fired outside Gold Coast home

POLICE are trying to track down a group who fired a shot outside a Gold Coast home.

The four men and one woman tried to force their way into the Chevron Island home on Saturday evening, as a group of people were socialising on the front balcony.

The group couldn't bust through the door but became involved in a verbal fight with those on the balcony.

As they were leaving, one of the men fired a shot at the rear of the house.

No-one was injured.

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