Thousands Of Dead Prawns Washed Up In Chile

Thousands of dead prawns have washed up on Chile's coastline leaving authorities confused about what could have killed them.

The chief investigator said police were compiling as much evidence as possible to determine what killed the vast number of crustaceans off Concepcion province.

"What we are doing today is compiling the most evidence possible to determine if we are facing some kind of environmental crime," a spokesman said.

Victor Casanova, of Chile's Environmental and Cultural Heritage Crimes Unit, said police were going to investigate a variety of possibilities in an effort to understand how the animals died.

"We are going to go out to Coronel Bay to determine the physical temperature parameters, electric conductivity, and above all the oxygen, which is an important issue to highlight," he said.

In recent years a startling number of dead sea creatures have been washing up on South America's Pacific coasts.

In February the bodies of dozens of animals, including sea turtles, sea lions, dolphins, sharks and marine birds, were washed up on a Peruvian coastline.

Environmental experts have said that causes vary depending on the kind of animal and the location, but that some of the possible explanations include viruses, offshore oil exploration, and poisoned food sources.

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Australia: Julia Gillard Challenge Called Off

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has retained the leadership of the Labor party just hours after she was urged to hold a ballot.

Ms Gillard ensured she will lead the party into elections in September after her main rival Kevin Rudd admitted he did not have enough support to defeat her.

The prime minister called the vote after a senior MP said the issue was "killing" the party and needed to be resolved.

The vote was scheduled for 16:30 (05:30 GMT), but minutes before it was due to take place Mr Rudd pulled out, meaning Ms Gillard was elected unopposed, with no actual vote called.

She said: "Today the leadership of our political party, the Labor Party, has been settled and settled in the most conclusive fashion possible.

"The whole business is completely at an end. It has ended now."

Mr Rudd said he was honouring a pledge not to challenge for the top job made after a previous failed bid in 2012.

He said: "I believe in honouring my word... others take such commitments lightly, I do not.

"I have also said that the only circumstances under which I would consider a return to leadership would be if there was an overwhelming majority of the parliamentary party requesting such a return, drafting me to return and the position was vacant.

"I am here to inform you that those circumstances do not exist."

Polls suggest Mr Rudd has more public support than Ms Gillard, who is on course to lose the election to Liberal Party candidate Tony Abbott.

The latest crisis is the third time the prime minister has defeated Mr Rudd for the leadership, but she now faces a tough job to unify a deeply-divided party and turn around public support over the next six months.

"I think they're terminal. There is no way out of this," political analyst Nick Economou told Reuters.

Ms Gillard's leadership has been threatened for most of the past two years as her minority government lumbered from one crisis to another, despite an economy that avoided recession after the 2008 global crisis and has seen 21 years of continuous growth.

She first replaced Mr Rudd in a party coup in June 2010 but the move to oust an elected prime minister angered many voters, who have found it difficult to forgive her for the way she became leader.

Ms Gillard defeated Mr Rudd in a second leadership vote in February 2012, prompting her rival to promise that he would only take on the leadership again with the overwhelming support of his party.

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Bollywood Star Sanjay Dutt Jailed In Bomb Case

India's Supreme Court has sentenced Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt to five years in jail for the possession of illegal weapons.

His conviction involves a case linked to a 1993 bombing that killed 257 people in Mumbai.

The court ordered Dutt to surrender to police within four weeks on the charge of possessing three automatic rifles and a pistol that were supplied to him by men subsequently convicted in the bombing.

The actor's case was part of a trial that has dragged on for 18 years.

Dutt insisted he knew nothing about the bombing plot and said he asked for the guns to protect his family - his mother was Muslim and his father Hindu - after receiving threats during sectarian riots in Mumbai.

The Supreme Court had earlier sentenced Dutt to six years in prison.

He served 18 months in jail before he was released on bail in November 2007 pending an appeal in the top court.

The court had earlier acquitted Dutt of the more serious charges of terrorism and conspiracy.

Dutt's lawyer, Satish Maneshinde, said the 53-year-old actor would take some time before deciding on his next step.

Despite his troubles with the law and his time spent in jail, Dutt's Bollywood career has flourished over the past two decades.

He gained enormous popularity for a series of Hindi films in which he played the role of a reformed thug who follows the teachings of Gandhi.

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Australia: Supermarket Hero Relives Saving Girl

A heroic builder has told Sky News he was "terrified" as he fought to resuscitate a stranger's unconscious child in an Australian supermarket.

CCTV footage shows Rowan O'Neill leaping to the rescue of two-year-old Shaylar Collard, who had collapsed and was not breathing.

As the toddler's mother, Amy Collard, ran outside the Perth store to fetch husband Michael Narkle, Mr O'Neill began trying to clear the girl's airways before starting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

"I was just doing some shopping (and) the mother came by and starting screaming: 'Somebody help me, my baby, my baby's not breathing'," he said.

Mr O'Neill said he had received basic training in resuscitation while at school but thought he had forgotten what to do.

"I was very terrified," he said. "It was one of those situations where you don't know how it's going to turn out. It's the best possible outcome we could have hoped for at that time."

He said Shaylar's father had been euphoric when his daughter eventually began breathing again.

He added: "He was saying thank you. He was extremely grateful.

"He gave me a big hug, he's a very strong man. We were just very overjoyed about the situation, that she had come back.

"I think there's not much that could (match) up to this. I ... think that if I live to be 100, if I never have to deal with something like this again, I'll die a happy man."

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Two Helicopters Crash In Berlin Police Exercise

Two helicopters have crashed near Berlin's Olympic Stadium during a police exercise to thwart hooliganism, German authorities have said.

It is believed one pilot died, following the accident at 10.30am local time.

Onlookers described how one aircraft ended up on its side and how the rotors of both helicopters were destroyed.

One helicopter appeared to be a blue police Puma aircraft while the other appeared to be a military model.

Police were taking part in an exercise against football violence

Bild newspaper said four people were hurt in the snowy weather crash, with two of those listed as seriously injured.

An injured officer was seen walking with blood streaming from facial wounds.

One eyewitness told N-TV: "It was a real snowstorm, suddenly we heard a bang and someone shouted, 'Everybody down'.

Berlin has been hit by snowstorms in recent days

"Then there was blood everywhere. Next to me was a huge puddle of blood."

According to AP, some 400 federal police officers were conducting a training exercise on dealing with football violence.

It is understood around half of the officers in the exercise were pretending to be football hooligans.

Federal Police spokesman Frank Brochert confirmed there "was an incident during an exercise" and that emergency crews were on the scene.

Interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich visited the crash site and said: "Our thoughts are with the families of the victims."

Bild said it appeared one pilot had become disorientated in the snowy Berlin conditions and crashed into the other helicopter.

The helicopters collided at low altitude, shortly after they passed over the affluent Charlottenburg residential area in the west of the city.

The crash occurred further west in an area known as Maifeld, which is adjacent to the historic sporting stadium.

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China: Tornado And Hailstorms Leave 24 Dead

At least 24 people have died and 272 more have been injured after a tornado carrying egg-sized hailstones hit southern China's Guangdong province.

Chinese media reported a ferry had capsized in Fujian province which left 11 people dead and a further four missing.

In the city of Dongguan several people were reported to have been killed after buildings collapsed.

Chinese web portal qq.com showed images of a car windscreen which had been smashed by golfball sized hailstones.

Other areas affected by storms and torrential rain were nearby Jiangxi and Hunan provinces in central China and Guizhou in the southwest.

Around 1.5 million residents have been affected by the severe weather and 215,000 people have been forced to relocate, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Southwest China is still recovering from thunder and hail storms which swept Guizhou province seven days ago. Some 24 counties and cities were hit by the storms which damaged houses and 8,700 hectares of farmland.

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Israel: Obama Meets Abbas After Rocket Blast

President Barack Obama has told Palestinians they deserve an "independent and sovereign" state during his visit to the West Bank.

Mr Obama's trip to Ramallah was bookended by stark reminders of the tensions in the region as Palestinian militants fired rockets across the border and Iran threatened to destroy two Israeli cities.

The President held talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and told a news conference that the US is "deeply committed" to a two-state solution, but the only way to achieve it is through negotiation.

Mr Obama said that Israel's ongoing settlement building was unhelpful to the pursuit of peace but urged the Palestinians not to make halting the policy a precondition for negotiations.

He said: "We do not consider continued settlement activity to be constructive, to be appropriate, to be something that can advance the cause of peace."

President Abbas said that peace with Israel should not be achieved through violence, occupation, settlements, arrests or denial or refugee rights.

There have been angry protests ahead of Mr Obama's Ramallah visit

Later, Mr Obama told an audience of students in Jerusalem that Syria's President Bashar al Assad "must go, so Syria's future can begin" and earned cheers when he described Hezbollah as a "terrorist organisation."

In Iran, the country's supreme leader was warning that it would "annihilate" the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa if it comes under attack by the Jewish state.

In a live televised speech from the holy city of Mashhad, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: "Every now and then the leaders of the Zionist regime threaten Iran with a military attack.

"They should know that if they commit such a blunder, the Islamic Republic will annihilate Tel Aviv and Haifa."

The rockets fired from Gaza, a reminder of heightened tensions in the region, caused damage to land around a house in southern Israel, but there were no injuries.

A police expert clears the remains of a rocket from outside a Sderot house

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said: "One exploded in the back yard of a house in Sderot, causing damage, and the second landed in a field."

Military officials cited by army radio said they believed the attack was timed deliberately to coincide with Mr Obama's visit.

Israel pointed the finger for the attacks at Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, although a small Islamist group later claimed responsibility in an online statement.

The Magles Shoura al-Mujahddin said it fired the rockets to show that Israeli air defences could not stop attacks during the visit, Reuters reported.

President Obama - who visited the town where the rockets landed as a presidential candidate in 2008 - was miles away in Jerusalem at the time, preparing to visit the Israel Museum.

Mr Obama reaffirmed US support for Israel during talks in Jerusalem

There were protesters outside the Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah ahead of his arrival for talks with Palestinian leaders, who have accused him of riding roughshod over their hopes of statehood.

Sky News Middle East Correspondent Sam Kiley said settlements and the controversial "right of return" for Palestinians to their former lands in Israel would be on the agenda.

He added: "The crucial thing is for President Obama to get back into the peace process."

Code Red sirens wailed in Sderot shortly after the rockets hit at 7am, forcing commuters and schoolchildren to run to bomb shelters.

Yossi Haziza, a Sderot resident in whose courtyard the first rocket exploded, was looking at the walls of his home sprayed with shrapnel and shattered windows.

He said: "I wish this was merely damage to property but my eight-year-old daughter and my wife are terrified. We just want to live in peace. We don't want to keep having to run to bomb shelters."

Mr Obama, on the first foreign trip of his second term, says he has come to the Holy Land simply "to listen" to the parties about how to resume peace talks frozen for two-and-a-half years.

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

The US President's new approach was in stark contrast to early in his first term, when he declared Israeli settlement building to be illegitimate and promised to dedicate himself to peace.

Meanwhile, Palestinian activists set up a protest camp on West Bank land east of Jerusalem where Israel has announced controversial plans to build, demanding an end to Obama's "bias and support for Israel".

Israel's plan to build thousands of new settler homes in an area called E1 has sparked a major international backlash, with experts saying it could wipe out hopes for a viable Palestinian state.

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Cyprus Crisis: Cash Queues Despite 'Plan B'

Russian Money Talks In Cyprus Bailout

Updated: 12:52pm UK, Thursday 21 March 2013

By Tim Marshall, Foreign Affairs Editor

Even allowing for inflation, 10 billion euros can still buy you quite a lot these days.

For example, if you were Russia, and you used your 10 billion to bail out Cyprus, you could buy another few decades of European dependence on you for energy.

You might also get a dent in people's confidence in the EU thrown in. If you invested it all wisely, in the longer term you could even get a warm-water naval port out of it.

Not bad a return.

The Russian offer to better the terms of the EU bailout for Cyprus is not just commercial. It is an attempt to regain influence in a region of growing energy importance.

Russia had already lost power in the Mediterranean and Middle East when Egypt was flipped and turned towards the USA.

After the implosion of the Soviet empire in 1989, Moscow lost any chance of a quick return to the region and was left only with a small port on the coast of Syria to play with.

But Russia is now back on its feet, and the discovery of the potentially huge gas field in the eastern Mediterranean has given it an opportunity to again engage in the region.

It has already done a deal via Gazprom with the Israeli's over its gas fields, and is now trying to get in on Cyprus's potential gold pot.

Europe has for years been looking for a way to wean itself off energy dependency on Russia, and Cyprus was one route.

However, if Gazprom secures the rights to explore the Cypriot gas fields, this will give Moscow massive influence there.

Influence is power and that power could feasibly result, down the line, in Cyprus suggesting that the British bases on their island close.

From there, the possibility of a Russian base might emerge in what is a key part of Nato's Mediterranean strategy and an intelligence gathering post.

The UK, Greece, Turkey, and the US - all Nato members - might object. But money talks and we have seen in the last decade that Russia wins some and loses some. 

The ties between Cyprus and Russia are not just commercial and political.

We should not underestimate the cultural ties between the two, which are based on Russia's perception of itself as the guardian of Orthodox Christianity.

Whether Russia wins this geopolitical fight or not, it will continue to watch with interest the political and social fallout of the euro crisis and the democratic deficit which has been part of it.

The EU has crossed an intellectual line in Cyprus. Previous bailouts of other countries may have required austerity measures, but now unelected Eurocrats, in consultation with Cypriot leaders, have told the people that they are going to take up to 10% of their money without asking them. In Cyprus they have a word for this - theft.

This has been noticed across the European Union. If it might happen in Cyprus then it might happen in Greece, or Spain, or Italy. The raison d'etre of the Union is to ensure prosperity and the safety of its peoples, not to take money from their bank accounts.

The Cypriot politicians fear they could become the target of retribution from the people and so have hot-footed their way to Russia.

Not only might they get what in the short term looks a much better deal from Moscow, but, and this might be really what's going on, they might force Brussels to offer a much better deal to prevent Cyprus from "falling" to the Russians.

Either way - terms and conditions apply.

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'Oldest Light' In Universe Picture Released

By Tom Parmenter, Sky News Correspondent

A new picture of space indicates that the universe is even older than first thought - around 60 million years to be precise.

Space scientists have released an image of "the oldest light" ever seen.

The ground-breaking picture from Europe's Planck satellite shows an image of light from when the universe was just 380,000 years old.

The experts say it shows the 'relic radiation' left over from the Big Bang - the widely accepted theory for the start of the universe.

Dr George Efstathiou of the University of Cambridge said: "It may look like a dirty rugby ball or a piece of modern art" but "to cosmologists this is a gold mine of information," he added.

The scientists also revealed that they believe the universe is older than originally thought.

Data from the Planck satellite dates the universe at 13.82 billion years old - 60 million years earlier than previously thought.

Dr Chris Castelli of the UK Space Agency said: "With its ability to make such a detailed and accurate observations, Planck is helping us to place the vital pieces of a jigsaw that could give us a full picture of the evolution of our Universe, rewriting the textbooks along the way." 

Launched in 2009, the Planck satellite is a joint European venture that is supported by various UK institutions. 

Scientists are still analysing the wealth of complex new information from this project and say the next set of cosmology data will be released in early 2014.

Joanna Dunkley from the University of Oxford said: "The size of these tiny ripples hold the key to what happened in that first trillionth of a trillionth of a second.

"Planck has given us striking new evidence that indicates they were created during this incredibly fast expansion, just after the Big Bang."

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North Korea Issues Fresh Threat To America

By Mark Stone, Asia Correspondent

North Korea has threatened to attack American airbases on the Japanese island of Okinawa and the Pacific island of Guam.

A statement by Kim Yong Chul, the spokesman of the Supreme Command of the Korean People's Army warned of "military actions".

"The US should not forget that the Anderson Air Force Base on Guam where B-52 bombers take off and naval bases in Japan and Okinawa where nuclear-powered submarines are launched are within the striking range of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) precision strike means," the statement read.

"Now that the US started open nuclear blackmail and threat, the DPRK, too, will move to take corresponding military actions."

The words mark the latest escalation in a lengthy stand-off as North Korea defies calls from the rest of the world to halt its dual nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

North Korea has threatened an attack over B-52 drills

The American government has not yet responded to the threat.

British diplomatic sources speaking to Sky News from Seoul have said the UK Government "takes any threats seriously and there is some concern over the more harsh rhetoric coming from the DPRK".

However, the source insisted that there was no panic or alarm among diplomatic circles and that UK travel advice to South Korea remains unchanged.

The latest threat from North Korea is a direct response to a series of joint military exercises involving the US and South Korea.

On Tuesday, the US Air Force deployed its giant B-52 bombers from their base on Guam. The planes, which are capable of carrying and deploying nuclear bombs, flew sorties over the Korean peninsula as part of the military exercise.

The Pentagon in Washington confirmed the B-52 deployment. Spokesman George Little said the US wanted to underline its commitment and capacity to defend South Korea against an attack from the North.

Military guard posts of South Korea (front) and North Korea (far)

However, the flights were condemned by Pyongyang as "an unpardonable provocation".

"The US is introducing a strategic nuclear strike means to the Korean peninsula at a time when its situation is inching close to the brink of war," the North Korean statement added.

The North Korean military does have rockets capable of reaching both Okinawa and Guam.

The surprisingly successful rocket launch in December followed a trajectory similar to that which any strike against Okinawa would take.

The Pentagon has confirmed the B-52 deployment

Okinawa is 600 miles due south of the Korean peninsula. Guam is further away, to the east of the Philippines.

While Pyongyang has proved it has the range capability, it is not clear whether or not their missiles are accurate enough to hit a specific target. And the country does not yet have the ability to carry out a nuclear strike at this range.

Earlier this month, the UN imposed the toughest sanctions yet on North Korea.

Kim Jong-Un reacted with anger, threatening to attack America, South Korea and Japan. The young and unpredictable leader toured military units calling for them to prepare for 'all out war'.

Computers are seen down at the main office of broadcaster YTN in Seoul

Meanwhile, Wednesday's unusually large cyberattack in South Korea, which brought down banks and broadcasters for one hour, has been traced to China.

Experts in Seoul claim the simultaneous attacks all bore the same IP address which was traced to the Chinese mainland.

Many of North Korea's internet and computing operations are tied to China. There is no suggestion that the Chinese government had any involvement.

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