Australia bushfires live: fears Blue Mountains fires will join together

RFS chief warns three major fires could join together, endangering entire Blue Mountains, as NSW premier calls a state of emergency to deal with more than 50 fires burning across the state

An aerial image shows a fire-fighting helicopter over a smoke cloud, after a devastating bushfire passed through at Yellow Rock in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, Australia. An aerial image shows a fire-fighting helicopter over a smoke cloud, after a devastating bushfire passed through at Yellow Rock in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, Australia. Photograph:

6.26pm AEST

Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione: all of the arsonists arrested so far have been "young people"

    Today, there has been two arrests with regards to a significant fire which caused about 5,000 hectares of damage. There has been an 11-year-old male taken into custody, has been charged and put before a court, his bail refused by the court.

    We currently have a 15-year-old male in our custody assisting us with similar enquiries, not yet charged but certainly at this stage the intention is he will be before the courts as soon as we can get him there.

    It's very disturbing, all of the arrests we have made with regard to arson attacks since this current crisis have been young people.


6.10pm AEST

RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons says forecasted windy conditions will cause problems in the next 48 hours:

    The weather forecast continues to firm up as being problematic over the next 48 hrs with a continuance of similar conditions to today, albeit with a marginal reduction in temperatures for tomorrow before we see those elevated wind strengths dominate much of the fire affected areas, but also more broadly right up through the Hunter, central ranges, metropolitan and Illawarra regions. We can expect to see most of those areas with widespread severe fire danger ratings.

5.59pm AEST

RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons has just given an update to the media.

He says the conditions are continuing to make things unpredictable, and "as the fire grounds continue to change, we continue to see flare-ups and erratic behaviour".

There is some good news with the previously mentioned Hall Road fire being downgraded.

He says there's a "developing amount of fire activity near the community of Bilpin and Berambing, and we're seeing spot fires and spot fire activity in that local area".

5.35pm AEST

The Wollondilly fire near Hall Road has been downgraded to 'watch and act' by the RFS, and Picton Road has been reopened.



5.04pm AEST

Police have confirmed the second arrest in relation to the Heatherbrae fire in a short statement:

    A 15-year-old boy has been arrested over the large bushfire that started in Heatherbrae last week.

    He’s currently at Raymond Terrace Police Station where he is expected to be charged.

    An 11-year-old boy was charged over the fire earlier today.

    No further details are available at this stage.

4.47pm AEST

Police have arrested a second boy over the Heatherbrae fire, according to the Newcastle Herald's police reporter Dan Proudman:

   
4.40pm AEST

Guardian Australia's political editor, Lenore Taylor, on the political debate around climate change policies and the bushfires:

    According to a creeping conservative political correctness, it is allegedly improper to discuss the link between climate change and the increased risk of devastating bushfires like the ones still burning across New South Wales.

    Columnists start by attacking suggestions such as those made in an article written for the Guardian by the Greens deputy leader, Adam Bandt, that by repealing the carbon tax, Tony Abbott is failing to protect the Australian people from climate change risk. Then they move quickly to the accusation that it amounts to politicising a disaster to discuss the connection between climate change and bushfire at all.

    But report after report has pointed to climate change increasing the likelihood of conditions that pose the greatest risk for fire.

Read the full article here.

4.18pm AEST
Two fires likely to merge, "can't rule out" three

Fitzsimmons said they "can't rule out" that the three fires will join together, but at this stage it is likelier to be two of them — the large state mine fire at Lithgow and the Mt Victoria fire.

"North of Bells Line Of Road, the fire out of Lithgow heading towards Bilpin, will join the fire near Mt York and Mt Victoria," somewhere in the Grose Valley, he predicted, saying backburning efforts have had an impact.



4.14pm AEST

In his latest update on the bushfire crisis, RFS NSW Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons has warned residents of Wilton to take shelter as embers travel kilometres ahead of the fire front. Firefighters are tasked to assist people in the area.

“The fire is well and truly heading towards Wilton," he said.

He also said they were "acutely aware" of the natural gas plant near Wilton. Extra services have been tasked to protect it.

Fitzsimmons blamed weather for the Springwood/Faulconbridge flare up where "dozens of homes" have been lost along Grose Road. It's not entirely clear if the houses have gone in the last few hours or if they are part of earlier assessments.

Both of these fires were upgraded to emergency warnings again just this afternoon. “The last hour or so reminds us to remain vigilant," said Fitzsimmons. "The fire grounds remain dynamic and challenging to firefighters."

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Photo of blonde girl found in Greece triggers thousands of inquiries

Parents of missing children round the world call charity after seeing photo of blonde, blue-eyed girl found in Roma camp

Blonde girl photo 

The charity said it had been contacted by people in the USA, Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, South Africa and the UK. Photograph: www.hamogelo.gr/Rex

A Greek charity said yesterday that it was pursuing at least 10 "promising leads" – many from parents whose children had gone missing – following a worldwide appeal to help identify a blonde, blue-eyed girl found living in a Roma camp in the country.

Less than two days after launching the international campaign, the philanthropic organisation Smile of the Child announced that it had been bombarded with more than 10,000 calls and emails from around the world.

"Through our hotline we've been contacted by thousands of people in the US, Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, South Africa and the UK," Panaghiotis Partalis, the charity's international communications officer, told the Guardian.

"A lot of emails have come through from families whose own children went missing years ago. Based on pictures that we have also received, there are around 10 cases of children who bear a resemblance to the little girl and we are following them up to see if there is any link."

The girl, who is thought to be about four years old and answers to the name Maria, was discovered last Wednesday when Greek police raided a Roma settlement near Farsala in Larissa, 170 miles north of Athens, in search of weapons and drugs.

Officers were said to be taken aback when the pale-skinned child appeared in the home of a couple with 13 other offspring who were all dark-skinned. Unable to communicate in Greek, the girl could barely talk. What little she did say was conducted in the Roma dialect.

In a bid to unearth her identity, Partalis said the charity was also looking for specialists, including an anthropologist, who might be able to determine the child's origins and age.

"There is still mystery surrounding her age," he said. "We are looking for experts who can examine her teeth and other features to find out exactly how old she is and what her origin may be."

The charity has also compiled a "profile" of pictures of lookalike children. "We've put together a montage with Maria at the centre that we have passed to the police," he said. "There seems to be a lot of hope in the Swedish press that she is Scandinavian."

The girl is expected to be released from hospital on Monday, the same day the couple found raising her are due to appear in court on charges of abducting a minor. Police said it was likely they would be imprisoned pending trial. "The father already has a criminal record," said one officer in Thessaly, the region where the child was found.

DNA tests have proved conclusively that the little girl is not related to the couple – a 40-year-old woman and 39-year-old man.

Although the suspects have vehemently denied accusations of child smuggling, they have given a range of conflicting stories, telling investigators at first that the girl was found in a blanket at birth, before insisting her biological father was Canadian. Suspicions were further raised when the mother was discovered to have two identities and to have claimed to have given birth to six of her children in the same year. Costas Giannopoulos, who founded Smile of the Child after the death of his own son, said the discovery of the girl had not only shone a light on child trafficking in Greece, but revealed the parlous state of birth registrations with municipal authorities in the crisis-hit nation.

"There is a huge gap that allows anyone to claim a child as their own," he said.

On Friday, the parents of Madeleine McCann, the toddler who went missing in Portugal in 2007, said the case was a sign that children who had disappeared could still be found.

Authorities hope that the discovery of the girl will also help crack the mystery of Ben Needham, the Sheffield boy who went missing at the age of 21 months on the Aegean island of Kos 22 years ago. Ben's mother, Kerry Needham, told ITV: "My family and I are extremely delighted at the news that a four-year-old girl has been found in a gypsy camp in Larissa, Greece. We have always believed that Ben's abduction was gypsy-related and have a long ongoing inquiry in Larissa. We hope that the investigation into Ben's disappearance will now be looked at again."

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Francois Hollande's intervention in Roma deportation case sparks a

French president's offer to allow deported teenage immigrant back into France to study without her family backfires

The teenager at the centre of the row, herself condemned the French president as 'having no heart' for suggesting she return without her family. Photograph: Rex Features

The French president, François Hollande, was widely criticised on Sunday for offering to allow a deported teenage immigrant back into France without her family.

Hollande waded into the row on Saturday when he offered Leonarda Dibrani, a 15-year-old of Roma origin who was ordered off a school bus and deported to Kosovo, the chance to return to France to finish her studies, but only if she did so alone.

The proposal drew angry condemnation, including from Leonarda, who said she would not return alone, exposing Hollande to fresh attacks on his leadership.

"What do 80% of the French think about this?" asked François Bayrou, who ran against Hollande in the first round of the 2012 presidential election, on the digital news channel iTele. "They think the state has totally lost its compass, deciding one thing and then deciding its exact opposite one minute later … Hollande's authority is significantly weakened here."

Leonarda's expulsion after her family failed to obtain political asylum has tested Hollande's ability to handle the issue of illegal migration, a source of increasing public frustration in France.

Students protested to demand the schoolgirl be allowed back, but opinion polls showed that most French did not want the family to return. Opponents from the centre-right UMP party accused Hollande of being so obsessed with satisfying his Socialist base that he had betrayed the will of the public. Even members of his own party appeared dissatisfied with the president's attempt at a compromise.

Minutes after Hollande's TV appearance, in which he said police had followed rules but lacked tact in doing so, the Socialist party leader, Harlem Désir, appeared on a different channel saying Leonarda's family should be let back into France.

"I am going to talk to the president and the government about this," he said, adding that he wanted "all the children of Leonarda's family to be able to finish their studies in France, accompanied by their mother".

The Dibrani family suffered a further crisis on Sunday when Leonarda's mother Dzemila Dibrani was beaten and briefly treated in hospital in Kosovo.

She and Leonarda's father Resat Dibrani were accosted by another Roma couple in downtown Mitrovica, and she sustained unspecified injuries when the Roma man inquired about the fate of a child from their past romance, a Kosovo official said on condition of anonymity. Both couples are being questioned by police.

A poll in the weekly JDD newspaper showed Hollande's approval rating had sunk to 23%, the lowest level in his presidency and beating record low popularity ratings set by his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy.

But while Hollande wilts under grim economic data and attacks on his authority, his tough-talking interior minister, Manuel Valls, has become France's most popular minister.

A JDD poll published this month showed Valls had the support of 61% of the public, far ahead of any other minister. By emphasising a tough stance on Leonarda's family rather than the offer to allow her back, he appears to have come out of the affair unscathed.

"Nothing will make me deviate from my path," Valls told JDD in an interview published on Sunday. "The law must be applied and this family must not come back to France."

Valls has toughened his rhetoric against illegal migration and makeshift Roma camps as the far-right National Front party has surged in popularity ahead of municipal and European elections next year.

Leonarda, who was born in Italy, and her five brothers and sisters attended school in France, where they arrived in 2009. But an official report showed their attendance record was patchy and said the family's attempts to assimilate were disappointing.

Repeated requests for asylum by her father, Reshat, who is from Kosovo, were undermined by the fact that he lied about their nationality.

Leonarda, speaking in French from a house in the Kosovo city of Mitrovica, criticised Hollande as "having no heart" and said her family would return to France anyway.

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In Afghan, U.S. soldier murder trial declines to withdraw guilty plea

 U.S. army soldier who in June admitted the slaughter of 17 Afghan civilians declined to withdraw his guilty plea in a military court on Monday.

U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales made his decision in advance of legal arguments set to begin Tuesday that will determine whether his life sentence will come with the possibility of parole.

The judge, Army Colonel Jeffery Nance, asked Bales whether he wanted to withdraw the guilty plea in light of possible misinformation about the length of time before he could be eligible for parole.

Bales pleaded guilty in June to walking off his base in Afghanistan's Kandahar province before dawn on March 11, 2012, and killing 16 unarmed civilians, most of them women and children, in attacks on their family compounds.

The slayings marked the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on a single, rogue U.S. soldier since the Vietnam War and further strained U.S.-Afghan relations after more than a decade of conflict in that country.

Lawyers for both sides on Monday signaled the arguments that they would make when the sentencing hearing begins.

But prosecutors hope to show that he engaged in a pattern of bad behavior that predated his multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bales' attorneys said they would argue that post-traumatic stress disorder and a brain injury were factors in the killings.

Prosecutors also said they intended to play for jurors taped phone conversations between an incarcerated Bales and his wife Kari laughing about the charges leveled against him and discussing a possible book deal for her.

Bales' lawyers argued against playing just snippets of the conversation, saying that the recordings needed to be heard in context. As a result, Nance ruled that the full phone conversations, totaling over two hours, would be played.

The defense also objected to the prosecution calling as an expert witness an Afghan man who has interviewed survivors of the rampage and family members of victims.

Nance said he would permit the expert to testify in general terms about how traumatic events and their aftermaths are dealt with in Pashtun culture but would allow 'no speculation about the specific impact on these specific victims.'
Several survivors are scheduled to speak during the proceedings this week.

Bales, a decorated veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, acknowledged the killings upon pleading guilty in June and told the court there was "not a good reason in this world" for his actions.

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For house arrest, Mubarak of Egypt's to leave jail

Egypt's Hosni Mubarak is expected to leave jail on Thursday after a court ordered him released pending trial, but he will immediately be placed under house arrest.

The court order for Hosni Mubarak's conditional release came on Wednesday, but was quickly followed by a government announcement that he would be placed under house arrest if released.
 

It was unclear when Hosni Mubarak might leave Cairo's Tora prison, or where he would be taken, with sources telling state media that two military hospitals where he has been treated in the past were possible candidates.

Interim prime minister Hazem el-Beblawi, in his capacity as deputy military ruler under Egypt's current state of emergency, ordered Mubarak held, the cabinet said.

"In the framework of the emergency law, the deputy military ruler ordered Mubarak to be placed under house arrest," a statement said.

Mubarak still faces trial on charges including corruption and complicity in the deaths of some of the 850 people who died in the 2011 uprising against him.

His next court session is on Sunday, though he has not always attended hearings in the cases against him in the past.

State news agency MENA said Hosni Mubarak's file would be sent to the prosecutor general on Thursday morning for confirmation that there was no basis for his continued pre-trial detention.

If the prosecutor confirms that, and no new charges are filed, the ex-president will then be flown by military helicopter to house arrest, MENA said.

Beblawi will have the final word on where Mubarak will be held, the agency said.

The decision to grant Mubarak pre-trial release added a volatile new element to the political turmoil that has gripped Egypt since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi on July 3 following massive protests against him.

More than 1,000 people have been killed in the past week in violence following the forcible break-up of two pro-Morsi camps in the capital.

Authorities have arrested dozens of members of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, including its supreme guide Mohamed Badie -- the first time the group's chief has been arrested since 1981.

Morsi himself is being held at a secret location and faces charges related to his 2011 escape from prison and inciting the death and torture of protesters.

Badie and several other Brotherhood leaders are also accused of inciting the deaths of protesters, and are also expected in court Sunday.

Overnight, arrests of Brotherhood leaders continued with authorities detaining Ahmed Aref, a spokesman for the group, in Cairo.

Despite the pressure, a Brotherhood-led coalition has defiantly called for mass rallies on Friday, in a test of its remaining strength as members are arrested.

Egypt has experienced unprecedented political bloodletting since August 14, when security forces stormed two pro-Morsi protest camps in the capital.

The crackdown and resulting violence across the country killed nearly 600 people in a single day, the bloodiest in Egypt's recent history.

Islamists have torched and attacked dozens of Christian churches, schools, businesses and homes -- mostly in the rural south accusing Egypt's sizable Coptic minority of backing Morsi's ouster.

The unrest has prompted international criticism, and EU foreign ministers agreed at an emergency meeting Wednesday to suspend the sale of arms and security equipment to Cairo in response to the mounting violence.

But they expressed concern over the economic situation and said 'assistance in the socio-economic sector and to civil society will continue.'

They issued a statement calling recent operations by Egyptian security forces "disproportionate", while also condemning "acts of terrorism" in the Sinai and attacks on churches blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said., 'We must keep faith with the majority of the people of Egypt who want a stable, democratic and prosperous country for themselves and that means we mustn't do anything that hurts them or that cuts off support to them,'
Washington has also criticised the violence, as well as Badie's arrest, and announced the cancellation of joint military exercises.

But it has stopped short of halting its $1.3 billion annual defence aid package to Egypt, and denied reports it was withholding aid.

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia, which backs the army-installed interim government, has said it would step in with other Arab nations to fill any funding gap if Washington halts aid.

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from Saudi Arabia, 25,000 Nepalis return

Almost 25,000 Nepali, working illegally in Saudi Arabia, have returned home under the amnesty programme introduced by the Saudi Arabia government, according to the Nepali Embassy in Riyadh.

The government introduced a three-month amnesty programme in May. The duration was later extended by four months until November 3

The embassy has said nearly 32,000 others have secured travel documents and are looking forward to leaving the country. The undocumented migrants still have nearly two months to either leave the country, or apply for legal status and keep working there.

According to the Saudi government estimates, there are around two million illegal migrants in the country, around 71,000 of whom are said to be Nepalis.
'So far we have issued 280 temporary passports for those wishing to stay and continue working by changing employment sponsorship. A majority of Nepalis living in the country illegally have decided to leave,' said Nepali Ambassador Uday Raj Pandey.

Some of the Nepalis, meanwhile, are having problems leaving the country, though they already received exit permit. The embassy said such cases are associated with the people involved in litigation or facing criminal charges.

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