BBC news 2011-10-31
BBC News with Sue Montgomery
An independent tribunal in Australia has ordered workers to end a strike which led the management of the Qantas airline to ground all its flights. The ruling by a panel of three judges is binding. The Australian Council of Trade Unions said it would work with the airline to ensure Qantas planes were back in the air as soon as possible. Its secretary Jeff Lawrence said the decision meant that further negotiations could be held on the airline's restructuring plan, which involves hundreds of job losses.
"It's unfortunate that it's taken the intervention of the federal government to force Qantas to negotiate about those issues around job security and to end the lockout. But that has been necessary and the fact that the federal government has taken their action, I think, has led to this generally positive result."
The chief executive of Qantas said the company might be able to resume a limited flight schedule by Monday afternoon.
As Israeli aircraft attacked Palestinian fighters in Gaza for a second day, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that such raids would continue until rocket fire from the Palestinian territory stopped. His comments came as one Palestinian was killed and another wounded in an air strike near Rafah. It brought the number of Palestinian militants killed by Israel since Friday to 10. During that period, one Israeli died in a Palestinian rocket attack in the town of Ashkelon. Jon Donnison reports.
The latest Israeli air strikes happened around the southern Gazan town of Rafah. The Israeli military said it was targeting militants preparing to launch rockets across the border. They are believed to have been from a small group called the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The bulk of rocket fire, though, this weekend has come from another group, Islamic Jihad. Hamas, the Islamist movement, which governs in Gaza, has so far refrained from firing although Israel says as the ruling power Hamas will be held responsible for all attacks.
The Indonesian foreign minister, who's been visiting Burma, has described the reforms underway there as significant and says he's been assured that the process towards democracy is irreversible. In talks with the government and opposition figures, Marty Natalegawa had been assessing Burma's readiness to chair the Southeast Asian grouping Asean in 2014.
The United States is reported to be drawing up plans to increase its military presence in the Gulf after the final withdrawal of troops from Iraq later this year. The New York Times says the US is negotiating with Kuwait to station a standby force there and is considering sending more warships to the region. The paper says that the Pentagon had hoped to keep as many as 20,000 troops in Iraq beyond the end of this year and is now drawing up an alternative to deal with any possible deterioration in security in Iraq or a clash with Iran.
World News from the BBC
At least 10 people have been killed and more than 40 wounded by a Kenyan air raid in southern Somalia. The attack occurred in an area controlled by al-Shabab militants. Farhana Dawood reports.
The details of the air attack remain unclear. The Kenyan army says it had intelligence that a senior al-Shabab leader was visiting a camp and it followed through with air strikes that killed 10 al-Shabab fighters and wounded 47 others. They deny reports from witnesses that bombs were dropped on a refugee camp and that those killed and injured were all internally displaced civilians, including children. Kenyan forces crossed into Somalia earlier this month after a series of kidnappings they blame on Somali militants.
The Bishop of London Richard Chartres has told anti-capitalism demonstrators camped outside St Paul's Cathedral that their protest cannot continue forever. Accompanied by the dean of the cathedral, he said legal measures which might lead to their eviction were prudent but there was no need for a violent confrontation between the demonstrators and police. Our religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott has more details.
The steps outside St Paul's became a theatre for passionate debate when the bishop and dean appeared. They faced questions about the violence that could follow any eviction of the protesters. Doctor Chartres had already issued a statement saying if the campaigners packed up their tents and left voluntarily, he would make sure their voice was heard in debates about the financial crisis held in the cathedral. Today he said he, too, was concerned about issues such as executive pay and giving shareholders more control over it, but that the camp threatened to distract from discussing them.
Russian police have arrested a naked motorist in Moscow after he slammed into 17 vehicles in a drunken rampage. Four police cars were amongst those damaged in the chase. The driver is reported to have told police he'd just broken up with his girlfriend.
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