Soldiers patrol riot-hit Myanmar town

TROOPS are patrolling the streets of a central Myanmar (Burma) town after Buddhist-Muslim unrest tore through the area leaving at least 20 dead and spurring the government to declare emergency rule.

Around 50 military trucks were deployed in Meiktila on Saturday, where homes and mosques have been torched by mobs armed with with knives and sticks in three days of communal rioting.

The clashes are the latest sign of worsening tensions between Muslims and Buddhists, presenting a serious challenge for the quasi-civilian regime as it looks to reform the country after decades of iron-fisted military rule.

Violence in Meiktila, located 130 kilometres north of the capital Naypyidaw, began on Wednesday after an apparent argument in a gold shop spiralled into pitched battles.

Mosques have been reduced to ashes, while gangs of young men, including monks, have roamed the streets.

The town's sports ground has become a makeshift refuge for at least a thousand local Muslims, according to a journalist at the scene.

Kyaw Kyaw, a 27-year-old Muslim religious leader who has lived in the town since his childhood, said some Buddhist monks and local people had helped them escape.

"We could not take anything when we left our homes. We had to run for our lives," he said, adding that he was not sure what was behind the sudden explosion of violence.

Meiktila remained tense on Saturday, although no new clashes were reported overnight.

The president's office said the state of emergency would enable the military to help restore order - a significant move in a country trying to emerge from the legacy of junta rule, which ended two years ago.

Journalists in the town have seen the charred remains of bodies on the roadside, while one group of reporters was threatened at knife-point by a group of men and monks who forced them to hand over a camera memory sticks.

The United Nations, US, Britain and rights groups have called for calm and dialogue between communities amid fears that the violence could spread.

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NSW north coast to get NBN: Gillard

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced the rollout of the NBN to the far north coast of NSW. Source: AAP

MURWILLUMBAH will be the first of many towns on the NSW north coast to be connected to the national broadband network under the next stage of the rollout, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced.

During a visit to the town, Ms Gillard said construction to 5000 homes and businesses would begin in the 2015/16 financial year, as part of a soon-to-be-released three year plan for the fibre network.

"Murwillumbah will be the first of a number of communities in this region to see the benefit of fibre to the premises," Ms Gillard told reporters on Saturday.

"(The NBN) will not only transform our economy, enable us to bring services, including health and education services, to people in new ways, but it will end the burden of distance for regional communities including regional communities here in the far north coast of NSW."

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Martin Ferguson resigns from cabinet

Kevin Rudd supporter Martin Ferguson (pic) has resigned from PM Julia Gillard's cabinet. Source: AAP

KEVIN Rudd supporter Martin Ferguson has resigned from Prime Minister Julia Gillard's cabinet.

Mr Ferguson, who was the minister for resources and energy, and for tourism, made the announcement in Canberra on Friday.

He's the second cabinet minister to stand down.

Fellow minister Chris Bowen resigned on Friday morning as minister for tertiary education.

Simon Crean was sacked on Thursday by Ms Gillard, who retained her leadership unopposed at a caucus meeting following Mr Rudd's decision not to stand.

Mr Ferguson said he had come to his decision after considerable thought and had informed Ms Gillard of his intention.

"I have a view it is the only honourable thing to do," he told reporters.

Mr Ferguson supported Mr Rudd's challenge in February last year, when he said he was worried about the direction of the party.

"For those reasons I would have voted for Kevin Rudd yesterday and Simon Crean (as deputy) to try and give this party a fresh start," he said.

"Unfortunately the events of yesterday were not what we have hoped for.

"The caucus has made the decision. I respect that decision."

Mr Ferguson said by resigning he was giving the prime minister and the ALP the opportunity to regain the Labor legacy of reform and embrace an approach which looked after all Australians.

"In doing so, seek the best position for the party I have been a member for 35 years to win the next election," he said.

He also gave credit to Labor stalwart Mr Crean, who had planned to run for the deputy leader spot and called for the spill.

"I thought what he did yesterday was courageous. It was about trying to give the party a fresh start," he said.

"For this reason, I would have supported him."

Mr Ferguson said Labor needed to "reclaim the legacy of the Hawke and Keating governments".

"(The legacy of) being a reforming government, " he said.

He hoped the current government had learned from the "mistakes" made during the development of mining tax debate in 2010, which in part led to Mr Rudd losing the leadership to Ms Gillard.

"You don't have to agree but you need to consult, argue it out, and work out a balance in society," he said.

"That is what I learned as a young trade union official."

Mr Ferguson is one of the only ministers to have remained in the same portfolio since the election of the Rudd government in 2007.

He said he would stand for election for his seat of Batman in September and remain in parliament for the full term if elected.

Mr Ferguson said he had spoken to very few people about his decision to stand down.

"This is a personal decision, and having made it I sat down today and re-read my first speech," he said.

The final paragraph was along these lines: "If I leave parliament with the same sense of dignity and standing that that my farther did, having left school at 13 gone on to be a bricklayer and deputy premier of NSW then I will have achieved something and maintained my dignity and honour."

He said it was not an easy decision to resign but it was honourable and he did not resile from it.

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Pope to celebrate mass at juvenile prison

Pope Francis has chosen to celebrate a mass in the run up to Easter at a juvenile prison. Source: AAP

POPE Francis has chosen to celebrate one of the traditional masses in the run up to Easter at a juvenile prison.

On March 28, Francis will lead Holy Thursday mass in the Casal del Marmo prison in Rome, during which he will wash the inmates' feet.

In a statement on Thursday, the Vatican said that in his previous role as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, the Argentine-born Jorge Mario Bergoglio used to celebrate Holy Thursday mass in old people's homes or in prisons.

"With the celebration in Casal del Marmo, the Pope is continuing this use," the Vatican said.

Since his election last week, Francis has often broken protocol and displayed a preference for simplicity. He has shunned elaborate papal clothing, refused to ride a limousine and called for "a poor Church, for the poor."

According to a report in the Italian daily La Stampa, the new pope will occupy a smaller portion of the apartment that was used by his predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. "There is room for 300 people here," he reportedly said when he saw it.

Francis is living temporarily in Santa Marta, the guesthouse that hosted cardinals during the conclave, until restoration work is completed in the papal apartments.

On Thursday, Francis held audiences with German cardinal Paul Josef Cordes and two fellow Argentinians - Monsignor Carlos Maria Nannei, a member of the Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic group, and artist Adolfo Perez Esquivel, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

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ALP figures urge Rudd backers to pull back

SENIOR Labor figures have urged caucus members seeking leadership change to "pull back" for the sake of the federal government's survival.

Cabinet minister and former Labor leader Simon Crean intervened on Thursday - the final sitting day of parliament before a seven-week break - and expressed his frustration about the internal warfare.

"You stop the stalemate by getting people to pull back, understand it is in our interests to act in a more unified way and get on with the task in presenting ourselves as an united government with a pretty scary opposition," Mr Crean told reporters in Canberra.

Mr Crean said he had not spoken to Kevin Rudd about pulling back his supporters pushing for the former prime minister to take over from Julia Gillard.

"They have to unify because it is killing us, in my view, the disunity. It has never been a good thing," he said.

Mr Crean, who has been reported as having switched his loyalty to Mr Rudd, said Labor MPs should rally behind Ms Gillard.

"The party should unite behind her as the prime minister," he said.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said Ms Gillard had "overwhelming support" in caucus.

"There is not going to be a leadership spill," he told reporters.

Leadership speculation spiked on Wednesday when chief government whip Joel Fitzgibbon, a key Rudd backer, said it was "stating the obvious" that there were concerns in the caucus about the prospect of an election "wipeout" in September.

He denied the numbers were being counted for a vote in the caucus, saying any suggestion of a leadership ballot between budget day and the election was a "silly concept".

Labor backbencher Graham Perrett said if caucus members were still discussing the leadership after parliament rose on Thursday then they might as well "put down our drinks and go home".

"They either need to resign or re-sign (to Gillard), one or the other," he told reporters.

Mr Perrett said Mr Fitzgibbon should reaffirm his support for the prime minister or stand down as whip.

"He needs to get on with the job of looking after the prime minister's back, that's what he's paid for," he said,

Independent MP Tony Windsor, who has supported the minority Gillard government since the 2010 election, said the current leadership jitters was a "one-way street to oblivion".

Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne taunted Mr Rudd, saying he had made a mockery of Ms Gillard and Labor since Mr Rudd lost the leadership in 2010.

"I think if Kevin Rudd had the numbers he'd have used them by now," Mr Pyne told reporters.

"That's what we do in politics."

A spokesman for Mr Rudd told AAP on Thursday that the former leader stood by his previous commitment, made after the failed February 2012 caucus ballot, not to challenge again.

"Regarding the Labor leadership, Mr Rudd has made his position clear in numerous media statements," the spokesman said.

"He stands by those statements."

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Obama on way to Mideast

US President Barack Obama is heading to the West Bank to meet Palestinian leaders dismayed by his failure to make good on expectations that he can help deliver Middle East peace.

Obama was to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas at 0900 GMT (2000 AEDT) on Thursday and then Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

He is on the second day of his visit to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan.

The president, on the first foreign trip of his second term, says he has came to the Holy Land simply to listen to leaders on both sides of the peace talks, which have been frozen for two-and-a-half years.

He said he decided against coming armed with a comprehensive peace plan that might not be fit for current political conditions.

"Ultimately, this is a really hard problem," Obama said during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday.

"It's been lingering for over six decades. And the parties involved have, you know, some profound interests that you can't spin, you can't smooth over. And it is a hard slog to work through all of these issues."

Obama's new approach was a stark contrast to early in his first term, when he declared that Israeli settlement building that ultimately scuppered his peace efforts was illegitimate and promised to dedicate himself to peace.

He admitted on Wednesday that he had perhaps made mistakes, but argued that he was not the only US leader to have come a cropper on the issue.

"I hope I'm a better president now than when I first came into office," Obama said.

"I'm absolutely sure that there are a host of things that I could have done that would have been more deft and, you know, would have created better optics."

Palestinian peace negotiator Nabil Shaath on Wednesday published an op-ed message to Obama in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, urging him to prove his commitment to a two-state solution by turning pledges into deeds.

"We could have saved lives and political capital if President Obama had shown the determination to create the right environment for meaningful decisions leading to a two-state solution," he wrote.

"Now, rather than calling for the resumption of a meaningless peace process, we Palestinians expect real action on the ground."

Shaath added that Obama had disappointed Palestinians who once warmed to his calls for an end to settlement building.

"President Obama appeared to give up on his goal," he said.

Netanyahu on Wednesday re-committed Israel to the notion of a two-state solution.

"Let me be clear: Israel remains fully committed to peace and to the solution of two states for two peoples," he said as he stood with Obama.

The Palestinians are hoping Obama will help broker the release of more than 1000 prisoners held by Israel and also free up $US700 million ($A678 million) in blocked US aid.

At the news conference on Wednesday, Obama, who met Netanyahu for two hours and then had dinner with the Israeli leader, accepted the Jewish state would not cede its right to confront Iran's nuclear threat to the United States.

Tension and apparent mistrust that stained some previous encounters between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to have dissolved when the leaders emerged from two hours of talks.

"Israel is differently situated than the United States, and I would not expect that the prime minister would make a decision about his country's security and defer that to any other country."

Obama is apparently determined to remove all doubts about his commitment to Israel, which have harmed his reputation here, and proven a thorny political issue at home.

He will return from the West Bank to redouble his Israeli charm offensive by giving a speech to hundreds of young people in Jerusalem.

Obama also issued a stark warning to Syria about using chemical weapons against its civilians, saying it would be a "game-changer that would invite international action.

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Time for supermarkets talks over: farmers

THE peak farmers' body is stepping up pressure on the federal government to stop major supermarkets abusing their market power.

The National Farmers' Federation (NFF) on Wednesday said it was time for a mandatory code of conduct for supermarkets, as efforts to develop one voluntarily had failed.

After months of discussion with the giants Coles and Woolworths and other retailers, NFF president Jock Laurie says the group has "lost confidence" a voluntary code can deliver what producers need.

"We want to put some clout in this, so let's move it to the next step," he told reporters in Canberra.

The last thing the NFF wanted was to impose more red tape or compliance costs on the agricultural sector.

But the back and forth bickering wasn't resolving the situation and it was time for the government to get tough.

"Let's actually cut out all the rubbish and get down and find out what the facts are," Mr Laurie said.

He said this didn't mean the NFF was walking away from discussions with retailers.

A mandatory code would strengthen measures to stop supermarkets misusing their power, possibly through mandated financial penalties.

Importantly, it would address concerns about contract negotiations between farmers and retailers.

The NFF has also suggested setting up an ombudsman-like figure to independently resolve disputes.

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