Kenya asks UN to drop ICC charges

KENYA has written to the UN Security Council seeking to scrap the international crimes against humanity trials for President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Vice President William Ruto, according to a letter seen on Thursday.

Kenyatta, 51, voted into power in March elections, is to go on trial in July at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for crimes against humanity relating to post-election violence in 2007-08.

Ruto, 46, faces three counts of crimes against humanity for his role in deadly violence.

"What this delegation is asking for is not deferral," Kenya's ambassador to the UN, Macharia Kamau, wrote in a letter to the council seen by AFP.

"What this delegation is asking for is for the immediate termination of the case at The Hague."

The letter, dated May 2 and stamped confidential, is the first such official request for the cases to be dropped.

However, while the security council can ask for a case to be deferred for a year, it does not have the authority to order the ICC drop a case completely.

Kenya, however, appealed to "friendly nations to use their good offices and prevail upon the International Criminal Court to reconsider the continued process".

Some 1,100 people died in bloodshed after the 2007 elections over allegations of vote rigging, shattering Kenya's image as a beacon of regional stability.

What began as political riots quickly turned into ethnic killings and reprisal attacks, plunging Kenya into its worst wave of violence since independence in 1963.

The letter warned that continuing with the trials would risk destabilising Kenya.

"Kenyans... spoke with a loud, clear, concise voice when they overwhelmingly elected Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto as president and deputy president," it said.

"It is obvious that their absence from the country may undermine the prevailing peace and any resultant insecurity may spill over to the neighbouring countries."

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Technology changes how we chat to mum

TECHNOLOGY is changing the way Australians communicate with their mums, with more using social media and video calls to stay in touch, new research suggests.

But no matter what method is used, it seems one thing will never change - we still call mum for help and advice.

In the run-up to Mother's Day, Telstra released data showing that half of all Australians chat to their mums once a week and 20 per cent do so every day.

But the evidence suggests more are using apps like Skype.

"These days more mums are happy to be called on their mobile for the weekly catch up and increasingly they are enjoying video calls too," Telstra's Inese Kingsmill said.

"In fact, 10 per cent of the mums we surveyed like receiving video calls from their kids and grandkids.

"Phoning home will take on a new meaning as technology advances."

Many of the calls - no matter what the medium - are made out of desperation rather than kindness.

That's particularly true among younger people, with 13 per cent of those aged between 18-25 only telephoning mum when they want something, according to Telstra's research.

Mums aged between 40-44 are the least responsive to these sorts of calls, with seven per cent saying they'd ignore them.

"I'm sure many mums can relate to the urgent phone call from their kids wanting to know how to remove red wine stains from the carpet or how to get lumps out of the gravy," Ms Kingsmill added.

Facebook said 27 per cent of Australians aged between 13-18 were connected to their mums via the social networking site.

That's higher than in many other countries, including France (15.5 per cent) and Brazil (13.5 per cent).

Fifteen per cent of Australians have friended their mum on Facebook, listing the relationship in the "family" section on their profiles.

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Remote students less likely to reach uni

HIGH school students from remote and disadvantaged Queensland schools are less likely to be accepted into university.

Year 12 completion rates are almost universal across the state, with close to 100 per cent of students at most state and Christian schools offered a place in higher education.

The results are positive at schools in Brisbane and larger regional cities.

But a closer look at the Queensland Studies Authority data shows pockets of disadvantage in remote areas, and at schools catering to students from indigenous and troubled backgrounds.

Griffith University Dean of Learning and Teaching, Professor Glenn Finger, says the results show the need for the Queensland government to sign up to the federal government's Gonski education reforms, which allocate more funding to disadvantaged and public schools.

"Those negotiations between the federal government and the state government are probably highly politicised, but underneath it the Gonski reform does provide a roadmap for addressing the resourcing needs of different schools that's evident in this data," he told AAP.

"The funding formula for resourcing needs improvement so that the resources actually go to those areas of need."

In central Queensland, Blackall State School had a 100 per cent year 12 completion rate but only 67 per cent of students were successful in securing a place at university or other tertiary study.

The result was even more dire at the small Aboriginal and Islander Independent Community School in Brisbane, where only 60 per cent finished year 12 and no one was accepted for further study.

The Arethusa College at Deception Bay, north of Brisbane, which caters for a small number of disengaged students had even worse results, with only one third completing year 12 and no one going on to higher education.

While most religious schools produced good academic outcomes, the Australian International Islamic College helped just 30 per cent of students finish year 12, while only 56 per cent of tertiary study applicants were successful.

Brisbane Christian College in Salisbury produced another surprise, with just 68 per cent completing year 12.

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US kidnap suspect called himself predator

FOUND inside the house where Ariel Castro allegedly held three women captive for a decade was a note from 2004 in which he called himself "a sexual predator" in need of help, local media reported.

Castro, 52, was arraigned on Thursday for the rape and kidnapping of Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23 and Michelle Knight, 32, who all emerged on Monday from the unassuming Cleveland house owned by the former school bus driver.

Local television station WOIO investigative reporter Scott Taylor, on his Twitter feed, said the note was among dozens of pieces of evidence that police recovered when they combed the two-story premises after the women's escape.

"I am a sexual predator. I need help," Taylor quoted the note as saying.

In an apparent reference to captives, the note goes on: "They are here against their will because they made a mistake of getting in a car with a total stranger."

"I don't know why I kept looking for another," the note adds. "I already have 2 in my possession."

Taylor said Castro also wrote about wanting to kill himself and giving "all the money I saved to my victims."

Knight was 20 when she was last seen in August 2002. Berry disappeared on the eve of her 17th birthday in April 2003, while DeJesus vanished in April 2004 at the age of 14.

Cleveland's deputy police chief Ed Tomba appeared to confirm the existence of the note when he was asked at a press conference Wednesday by another local TV news channel if "a suicide note" had been found.

"That is another part of evidence that we recovered that I cannot comment on," Tomba said. "There were over 200 items taken from the home on Seymour Avenue. All of those items will be processed."

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Slain Boston bomber suspect finally buried

SLAIN Boston Marathon bomber suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev has finally been buried, ending a growing row over what to do with his body, police in the Massachusetts town of Worcester say.

"As a result of our public appeal for help, a courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the assistance needed to properly bury the deceased," the police department said on its website on Thursday.

"His body is no longer in the City of Worcester and is now entombed," the statement said.

Tsarnaev, 26, died in a gun battle with police three days after the April 15 bombings that killed three people and injured more than 260 at the marathon finish line.

He was killed by bullets and blunt trauma, according to the medical report, and was apparently hit by the car driven by his younger brother Dzhokhar.

Since then, the body of the once promising amateur boxer had been in limbo at a funeral home.

Cemeteries refused to accept him and municipal officials in the Boston area declined to intervene, while protesters besieging the funeral home demanded Tsarnaev's corpse be sent back to his home province of Dagestan in Russia's troubled Caucasus region.

However, an uncle living in the United States said Tsarnaev should be laid to rest in what had become his true home in Boston, leading to an increasingly ugly impasse.

Worcester police did not identify the person who apparently solved the standoff and held off from giving the location of the grave.

"The chief thanks the community that provided the burial site. There is no further information at this time," the department said.

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Bangladesh shuts 18 garment factories

BANGLADESH has shut down 18 garment plants in an attempt to prevent a repeat of last month's factory collapse outside Dhaka, where the death toll has passed 800, with rescuers pulling dozens more bodies from the rubble.

The announcement of the closures came days after Bangladesh agreed with the International Labour Organisation to give safety "the highest consideration" amid government fears that Western garment firms might start sourcing goods from other countries.

"Sixteen factories have been closed down in Dhaka and two in Chittagong," textile minister Abdul Latif Siddique told reporters in the capital, adding that more plants would be shut as part of strict new measures to ensure safety.

"We'll ensure ILO standards in terms of compliance," said Siddique, who heads a newly created high-powered panel to inspect the impoverished country's 4500 garment factories in an effort to avoid fresh disasters.

"We have seen that those who claim to be the best compliant factories in Bangladesh have not fully abided by building regulations."

The death toll from Bangladesh's worst industrial disaster hit 803 on Wednesday.

Brigadier General Siddiqul Alam Sikder told AFP the stench of bodies trapped in the lower floors and under beams indicated the toll would rise as cranes and bulldozers kept clearing debris.

"We're expecting to find some bodies because we still haven't reached the bottom. We've finished around 70 per cent of the job," Sikder said.

Workers drawn from the army and fire service wore masks to ward off the smell as they continued to pull bodies from the rubble of the nine-storey building in the town of Savar, a suburb of Dhaka.

More than 3,000 garment workers were on shift on April 24 when the nine-storey Rana Plaza complex crumbled as they were turning out clothing for Western retailers such as Britain's Primark and the Spanish label Mango.

A total of 2437 people were earlier rescued from the ruins, authorities say.

Efforts to identify bodies were being hampered by their decomposition, officials said, adding that relief workers were taking DNA samples from the victims to match with relatives.

Many bodies were found in the staircases. Panicked workers had raced to stairwells in a rush to get out of the building after hearing a loud noise but the compound collapsed within five minutes, trapping them, officials said.

The disaster was the latest in a string of deadly accidents to hit the nation's textile industry. Last November, a factory fire killed 111 garment workers.

A preliminary government investigation blamed the collapse on the vibrations of giant electricity generators. Police have arrested 12 people including the complex's owner and four garment factory owners in connection with the disaster.

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Dutch probe baby milk sales to China

THE Dutch government has ordered an investigation into persistent shortages of certain brands of baby formula, blamed on networks of traffickers who ship milk powder to China where it is sold at premium prices.

Deputy Economic Affairs Minister Sharon Dijksma ordered the Dutch Food and Consumer watchdog to probe a huge rise in demand for baby formula linked to so-called "baby milk runners", who bulk-buy powder in shops before sending it to China where it is resold to young parents fearful of local products.

"I want to gather information... over the bulk buying and trade in the Netherlands in order to inform Chinese authorities that they are getting batches of milk powder that do not conform to their regulations," Dijksma said in the statement.

There is growing concern in The Netherlands, one of Europe's leading diary producers, about a looming national shortage of infant formula, with local papers quoting shoppers saying at least two popular brands were almost impossible to find on shop shelves.

"Dutch consumers can still find baby formula, but it's getting harder and harder," Dutch Food Industry Federation (FNLI) director Philip den Ouden told AFP.

The FNLI and food retail representatives met on Monday to discuss the growing concern over shortages, saying a measure to merely restrict the number of tins of formula per customer was not enough.

Alarm bells over infant formula went off earlier this year when retailers saw a 50 per cent spike in sales figures from the last quarter of 2012, said Den Ouden.

"This was strange because the number of births in the Netherlands did not go up," he said.

An initial probe showed growing demand in China, largely driven by the memories of a 2008 scandal over Chinese formula tainted with the industrial chemical melamine, which left six children dead and affected more than 300,000 others.

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Nine feared dead in Italy cargo ship crash

NINE people are feared dead after a container ship crashed in Italy's busiest port of Genoa, bringing down a 50-metre control tower in an accident that revived memories of last year's Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster.

The Jolly Nero ploughed into the dock in the night during a standard manoeuvre as it was being steered to exit the port on its way to Naples with a cargo of industrial vehicles and containers.

Some of the victims were thrown into the water, while others were trapped in the tower's lift, which plunged into the sea, emergency workers said.

"Seven people died, four were injured and two are missing," Transport Minister Maurizio Lupi told parliament after visiting the scene of the tragedy.

Earlier media reports that a 50-year-old man, a telephone operator, had been pulled alive from the rubble on Wednesday were not confirmed.

Lupi said there were three possible explanations for the accident: engine failure, a problem with cables used by the two tug boats towing the ship, or bad steering and excessively high speed.

Prosecutors have placed the ship's captain and a port pilot who had been on board during the manoeuvre under investigation for multiple manslaughter and have sequestered the ship.

Prosecutor Michele Di Lecce said investigators were also looking into a possible charge of "attack on transport security" since the control tower oversaw maritime operations for the entire Liguria region of northwest Italy.

"We do not exclude that other people could be placed under investigation," he said.

The Jolly Nero was following protocol by navigating towards the control tower and should have then turned into the open sea to its next port of call but it instead hit the shore.

The crash carried echoes of the Costa Concordia tragedy last year in which 32 people were killed when a luxury liner crashed into a Tuscan island.

The Costa Concordia had been performing a risky "salute" manoeuvre close to the island of Giglio and six people face charges of manslaughter including the captain, Francesco Schettino.

Initial reports suggested the Jolly Nero, built in 1976, had suffered a mechanical failure.

The company's fleet has been involved in a series of incidents around the world in recent years, including in South Africa and Egypt.

A report by Il Fatto Quotidiano daily said the company's ships had been tied to episodes of toxic waste trafficking in the past.

Rescue divers were still searching the inky waters around the port. Others were using dogs trained to find people in earthquake zones to see if any survivors might be trapped under the rubble.

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Dutch probe baby milk sales to China

THE Dutch government has ordered an investigation into persistent shortages of certain brands of baby formula, blamed on networks of traffickers who ship milk powder to China where it is sold at premium prices.

Deputy Economic Affairs Minister Sharon Dijksma ordered the Dutch Food and Consumer watchdog to probe a huge rise in demand for baby formula linked to so-called "baby milk runners", who bulk-buy powder in shops before sending it to China where it is resold to young parents fearful of local products.

"I want to gather information... over the bulk buying and trade in the Netherlands in order to inform Chinese authorities that they are getting batches of milk powder that do not conform to their regulations," Dijksma said in the statement.

There is growing concern in The Netherlands, one of Europe's leading diary producers, about a looming national shortage of infant formula, with local papers quoting shoppers saying at least two popular brands were almost impossible to find on shop shelves.

"Dutch consumers can still find baby formula, but it's getting harder and harder," Dutch Food Industry Federation (FNLI) director Philip den Ouden told AFP.

The FNLI and food retail representatives met on Monday to discuss the growing concern over shortages, saying a measure to merely restrict the number of tins of formula per customer was not enough.

Alarm bells over infant formula went off earlier this year when retailers saw a 50 per cent spike in sales figures from the last quarter of 2012, said Den Ouden.

"This was strange because the number of births in the Netherlands did not go up," he said.

An initial probe showed growing demand in China, largely driven by the memories of a 2008 scandal over Chinese formula tainted with the industrial chemical melamine, which left six children dead and affected more than 300,000 others.

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Syria internet 'restored' after blackout

SYRIA'S internet appears to have been restored after a two-day blackout, residents and state media say.

The blackout was blamed by state media on a technical fault, but activists and a watchdog accused the regime of deliberating cutting the connection to shield military operations.

In a breaking news alert, Syrian state television announced internet and communications were back up and running.

Landline phone services between Syrian provinces had also been down since Tuesday, state news agency SANA said.

US tech firms and the US State Department reported the blackout on Tuesday but did not specify any reasons for it. A similar blackout happened last November.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the blackout appeared to be a deliberate cut to help regime forces carrying out military operations.

Syria is ranked 176 out of 179 countries in a worldwide press freedom index compiled by international press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

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Thick-skulled fossil cuts dino theory down

THE discovery of a new thick-skulled dinosaur the size of a large dog may challenge our image of a pre-historic Earth dominated by supersized lizards, a study says.

The planet may, in fact, have been inhabited by many more types of small dinosaur than widely thought, a group of researchers wrote in the journal Nature Communications.

"It would have been a world filled with a diversity of dinosaur life, both large and small," study co-author David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum's natural history department said of the results.

Today, Earth is dominated by small-bodied animals, including mammals and reptiles.

But dinosaur fossil finds have painted a picture of a very different world during the Mesozoic era, from about 250 to 65 million years ago, in which monster-sized creatures prevailed.

Scientists disagree on whether this meant the bigger animals were simply more numerous, or that their remains have been better preserved.

Now, evidence for the latter theory has been found in fossilised skull fragments discovered in the Milk River Formation of southern Alberta, Canada.

The remains are from a small, plant-eating dinosaur that strode the Earth hunched on two muscled hind legs some 85 million years ago.

About 1.8 metres from nose to tail and weighing in at 40 kilograms, the animal had a ridge of solid bone more than 10 centimetres thick on the top of the skull -- possibly used in head-butting contests.

The feature gave rise to its name Acrotholus audeti, after the Greek for "high dome".

Acrotholus is the oldest species from a group of thick-skulled dinosaurs known as pachycephalosaurs in North America, and possibly the world, the researchers wrote.

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Woman indecently assaulted on NSW train

POLICE are looking for a man who indecently assaulted a woman on a train on the NSW Central Coast.

About 6pm (AEST) on Tuesday a 20-year-old woman was indecently assaulted on a train near Gosford, police say.

She was then followed by the man after leaving the train at Point Clare station, but he soon disappeared.

Police searched the area and were unable to find the man, described as being in his late 20s with a Caucasian appearance, about 173 centimetres tall with brown hair, unshaven and of thin build.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Crime Stoppers on 1300 333 000.

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Libya minister rescinds resignation

LIBYA'S defence minister resigned but then changed his mind and the army chief of staff was sacked, as a political crisis deepened over gunmen besieging government ministries.

"I find myself compelled, despite opposition from my colleagues in recent days, to present (my resignation) voluntarily and without hesitation," Mohammed al-Barghathi said, quoted by the official Lana news agency.

"I cannot accept the policy of force used by armed groups in our new state," he added.

But just hours later, the government issued a statement saying Barghathi had changed his mind after Prime Minister Ali Zeidan asked him to stay on.

"The chief of the government asked the defence minister to rescind (his decision) and the minister said he understands, given the circumstances the country is going through, that he should continue in office," a statement said.

Separately, members of the National General Congress (NGC), said it had sacked army chief of staff General Yusef al-Mangoush, who has long been accused of delaying the formation of a proper army.

Other deputies said Mangoush would stay on for another month until a replacement is named.

Militiamen, mostly former rebels who fought to oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, have surrounded the justice and foreign ministries since last week to demand the removal from public posts of former officials of the slain dictator's regime.

Initially, the gunmen intended to pressure the NGC, the highest authority in the country, to adopt the law on political exclusion.

But they remained camped outside the ministries despite the adoption of the legislation, with some of them now calling for the resignation of Zeidan's government.

On Tuesday, a dozen vehicles armed with anti-aircraft guns and rocket-launchers were still parked in front of the foreign ministry, an AFP correspondent reported from the site.

"We are thuwars (revolutionaries) and we want to correct the process of the revolution," said one of the gunmen who identified himself as Mohamed Ben Neema.

"The employees and officials of the former regime who massacred the Libyan people continue to occupy important positions, especially the foreign ministry. The revolution has not come to this building."

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Ireland pardons WWII soldiers who deserted

THOUSANDS of Irish soldiers who deserted their neutral nation's military to fight with the Allies in World War II will be officially pardoned under a new law.

About 5,000 deserters were court martialled or dismissed from the Irish defence forces in 1945, a move that left them without military pensions and barred from any state job for seven years.

Defence Minister Alan Shatter formally apologised last year for the discharge order, known as the "starvation order" because of the devastating effect it had on ex-servicemen and their families.

On Tuesday, MPs were set to approve legislation enshrining this apology and an amnesty in law, in a move Shatter said "goes some way to right the wrongs of our past".

"The bill is being enacted in recognition of the courage and bravery of those individuals court martialled or dismissed from the defence forces who fought on the Allied side to protect decency and democracy during World War II," the minister said.

"It gives important statutory expression to the apology given by me on behalf of the state last year for the shameful manner in which they were treated."

He acknowledged that only a handful of those affected were still alive, but said the amnesty would restore their reputations and help their families find peace.

Peter Mulvany, co-ordinator of the Irish Soldiers Pardons Campaign, said it was a "good day for the country".

He said the ex-servicemen "were treated horrendously".

About 60,000 Irish people are thought to have fought in the British army, navy or air force during World War II, but tensions between London and Dublin over British-controlled Northern Ireland meant their efforts were for decades virtually forgotten.

Since the landmark 1998 Good Friday peace deal in Belfast, however, recognition of their role has become a powerful symbol of reconciliation between the neighbouring countries.

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4 UN peacekeepers seized in Golan Heights

AN armed group has abducted four UN peacekeepers from the Philippines in the Golan Heights, which has been hit by mounting spillover from the Syrian civil war, the United Nations says.

The four were patrolling near the Al Jamlah locality in the ceasefire zone between Israel and Syria where 21 Filipino peacekeepers were seized by Syrian rebels in March, said a UN peacekeeping spokeswoman, Josephine Guerrero.

"An unknown armed group" took the men, Guerrero told AFP. "Efforts are underway to secure their release."

In a posting on their Facebook page, the "Yarmuk Martyrs Brigade" rebel group said they had taken the four peacekeepers for their own safety because of fierce fighting in the area.

"The leadership of the Yarmuk Martyrs Brigade announces... an operation to secure and protect United Nations forces in Wadi Yarmuk in the area between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights," the group said.

The posting showed a photograph of four men in blue flak jackets, with three of them marked "UN" and "Philippines."

The statement said shelling by regime troops and fighting in the area "seriously threatened the safety" of the peacekeepers and had prompted the fighters to "intervene and work to get them out."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog confirmed there was heavy fighting underway in the area.

The UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which has been in the Golan Heights since 1974, has about 1,000 troops and civilian staff.

The 917 troops from Austria, India, the Philippines, Morocco and Moldova carry only very light arms.

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EU sets out post-horsemeat food standards

THE European Commission has set out what it says will be a revolution in food safety from farm to fork, drawn up in response to the scandal of horsemeat sold as beef.

But the EU executive was careful to underline that the new rules would not in and of themselves prevent willful future mis-selling.

The agri-food industry is the European Union's second biggest, in the world's largest tariff-free market of half a billion consumers.

It is worth, the Commission says, some 750 billion euros per year and employs nearly 50 million people across Europe.

If passed by EU member governments and the European Parliament, the proposed revamp, boiling down existing legislation and sharpening testing regimes, will introduce:

-- financial penalties directly related to profits from "fraud";

-- and mandatory spot-check testing, as opposed to the power only to recommend inspections, as now.

In a departure, national authorities will be encouraged to publish league tables where consumers can check food data from everything from big-brand producers to individual restaurants, the Commission's proposals said.

But the changes will not affect, in the main, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or "micro-businesses," a large part of the post-industrial food chain.

Neither will stipulations governing the important seed sector be applied to "private gardeners," who will still be able to buy seeds "in small quantities" on open markets.

"The recent horsemeat scandal has shown that there is room for improvement," said EU Health and Consumer Commissioner Tonio Borg, in announcing the rulebook rewrite.

He said the changes "take on board" some of the lessons of a scandal that stunned consumers in large part due to links to organised crime.

Borg's office spelled out that the labelling of food, as seen in the horsemeat scandal, is a problem of fraud, not origin -- already covered in legislation due to take effect from December 2014.

"This fraud could have occurred, even if there was mandatory origin labelling in place," it said of the equine scandal.

The Commission is to report to the European Parliament by December on whether or not it is desirable or feasible to extend origin labelling to meat provenance, it added.

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Hollande marks unhappy victory anniversary

BELEAGUERED French President Francois Hollande marked the first anniversary of his election win with a promise to launch a major investment programme that will transform the country.

Under fire from right and left, Hollande outlined what amounts to a comeback strategy constructed around a ten-year programme of investment in digital and other new technologies, alternative energy, health and infrastructure.

"We have achieved a lot in a year, but there remains a considerable amount to do," Hollande told his ministers, asserting that "the coming year will be a year of results."

"The reforms undertaken will change the face of France - profoundly."

Hollande marked the anniversary of his May 6, 2012 win over right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy as the most unpopular president in modern French history.

The Socialist leader has paid a heavy political price for his failure to revive a flagging economy and prevent unemployment rising to a 16-year high.

Newspapers marked Monday's anniversary with harsh criticism, with even the left-wing daily Liberation's front-page headline depicting the president as "A Man Alone".

"A year after the election of Francois Hollande, France is in crisis -- political, economic, social and moral," Liberation wrote, saying Hollande "has not been able, for the moment, to win the confidence of his countrymen."

Right-wing daily Le Figaro said: "The Socialist Party is in hiding for the first anniversary".

With criticism of the government mounting, some are predicting a cabinet reshuffle before the summer. Polls suggest voters would support the widening of the government to include some prominent centrist figures.

But that is unlikely to go down well with the left, both inside and outside of the Socialist Party.

Tens of thousands of left-wing protesters took to the streets of Paris on Sunday to accuse Hollande of turning his back on Socialist principles, while thousands more demonstrated across the country against a government bill legalising gay marriage.

Hollande's opponents rounded on him again on Monday, with the head of the right-wing UMP's parliamentary faction, Christian Jacob, telling France Info radio: "Simply put, right now the boat is sinking and we have a president who is incapable of taking action."

Since his election, Hollande's approval rating has fallen faster and further than any other president's since the founding of France's Fifth Republic in 1958.

His popularity has been especially dented by two recent crises -- a tax-fraud scandal involving his ex-budget minister Jerome Cahuzac and the deeply divisive debate on gay marriage.

A new TNS Sofres poll for i-Tele released Monday showed more than 76 of respondents saying they were disappointed with Hollande's performance and 56 percent of those who voted for him considering his record negative.

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Bangladesh building collapse murder probe

BANGLADESHI police are considering murder charges against the owner of a shoddily built factory that collapsed nearly two weeks ago, after the wife of a garment worker crushed in the accident filed a complaint.

The development comes as officials said on Monday that the death toll from the country's worst industrial disaster had reached 675.

Sheuli Akter, the wife of Jahangir Alam, filed the complaint with Dhaka magistrate Wasim Sheikh, saying her husband and other workers were "pushed toward death" by building owner Mohammed Sohel Rana and two others.

Alam was employed in New Wave Styles Ltd, one of the five garment factories housed in the eight-story Rana Plaza that collapsed on April 24 as workers started their morning shift even though cracks had developed in the building.

New Wave Styles owner Bazlul Adnan and local government engineer Imtemam Hossain were the two others accused in the case.

Magistrate Sheikh has ordered police to investigate the complaints, and local police chief Mohammed Asaduzzman said on Monday that they would now investigate possible murder charges.

A conviction for murder can result in a death sentence in Bangladesh.

Nine people, including Rana and Adanan, have already been arrested on other charges. Rana faces charges such as negligence and illegal construction, which are punishable by a maximum of seven years in jail.

By Monday evening, the death toll had reached 675, according to the police control room at the scene. It is not known how many people are still missing, as workers use heavy equipment to search through the rubble. There is a stench around the collapse site from decomposing bodies.

An architect whose firm designed the initial floors of the building said on Sunday it had not been designed for heavy industrial work. Masood Reza, an architect with Vastukalpa Consultants, said they designed the building in 2004 as a shopping mall and not for industrial purposes.

Officials say Rana illegally added three floors and allowed the garment factories to install generators. Vibrations from garment machines and from the generators are thought to have contributed to the collapse.

The disaster is the worst ever in the garment sector, surpassing the 1911 garment disaster in New York's Triangle Shirtwaist factory, which killed 146 workers, and more recent tragedies such as a 2012 fire that killed about 260 people in Pakistan and one in Bangladesh that killed 112, also in 2012.

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Germany arrests 'Auschwitz guard'

GERMAN authorities have arrested a 93-year-old alleged former guard at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz on charges of complicity in the mass murder of prisoners.

Prosecutors in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said the man was believed to have worked at the camp between autumn 1941 and its closure in 1945.

Authorities declined to release the suspect's name but media reports indicated it was Hans Lipschis, who figures among the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most-wanted Nazis and is said to have served in the SS "Death's Head" battalion.

The man, who was detained at his home, "appeared before a judge and was taken into custody", the prosecutor's office in the state capital Stuttgart said in a statement.

"The indictment against him is currently being prepared."

Stuttgart prosecutors confirmed to AFP last month that they were working on a probe launched late last year against a suspect who had worked at Auschwitz.

Lipschis has been living in the Baden-Wuerttemberg town of Aalen and reportedly told the authorities that he worked as a cook, not a guard, in the camp in occupied Poland.

However prosecutors said the evidence pointed to the fact that the suspect in question had broader responsibilities.

"He took on supervisory duties although he did not only work as a guard," a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office told AFP.

"We will try to determined concretely when and what he did at Auschwitz."

She said the suspect was not believed to have killed prisoners himself but rather "that he abetted the actions of the perpetrators".

Despite his advanced age, the suspect underwent a medical examination and was determined fit to be taken into custody.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, in its 2013 report, lists Lipschis as its fourth most-wanted Nazi, saying he served in the SS-Totenkopf Sturmbann (Death's Head Battalion) from 1941 until 1945 at Auschwitz and "participated in the mass murder and persecution of innocent civilians, primarily Jews".

Lithuanian-born Lipschis was granted "ethnic German" status by the Nazis. He moved to the United States in 1956 but was deported to Germany in 1983, Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported last month.

More than one million people, mostly European Jews, perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1940 until it was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1945.

Germany has broadened the scope of its pursuit of Nazi war criminals since the 2011 conviction of Ukraine-born John Demjanjuk, a former guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.

In that case, the court ruled that any role at a death camp amounted to accessory to murder, widening culpability from those found to have personally ordered or committed murders and atrocities.

Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years' prison for complicity in some 28,000 murders. He died at a nursing home last year while free awaiting an appeal.

Lipschis is among 50 surviving Auschwitz staff who are being investigated in Germany under the broadened culpability rules.

Renowned French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld said he had mixed feelings about the news from Germany.

"I am torn between my idea of justice and the necessity to chase down war criminals until they take their last breath," he told AFP.

"You need evidence and documents to incriminate them and I think there won't be any more eyewitnesses to implicate them."

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European stocks close lower

EUROPE'S leading stock markets closed with small losses on Monday, with London shut for a bank holiday.

In Frankfurt the DAX 30 index of leading German shares eased back from a new record on Friday, giving up 0.13 percent to 8,112.08 points, while in Paris the CAC 40 was 0.15 percent lower at 3,907.04 points.

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Qld men cop highest sun risk: report

ONE in eight men and one in 12 women in Queensland get sunburnt on an average weekend, according to a report in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Young men who work outdoors appear to be most at risk, and people who take part in physical activity are more likely to report sunburn.

Sunburn is defined as redness that lasts more than 12 hours.

The report is based on interviews with 16,473 Queensland residents aged 18 years and over during 2009 and 2010. They were asked if they had been sunburnt on the previous weekend.

Queensland has the highest melanoma rate in the world.

People aged 18 to 24 years are seven times more likely to suffer sunburn than those aged over 65. People aged 35 to 44 are five times more likely to be burnt.

Sunburn is less likely among people who generally take protective measures in summer, the authors write.

"Our results are broadly consistent with a 2004 Queensland survey showing young age and male sex greatly increase odds of sunburn," write the authors from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and the Preventive Health Unit at Queensland Health.

They say sunburn is still a major public health issue despite 50 years of attempts to educate the public.

The most common reason given for getting burnt is a failure to use sunscreen or protective clothing.

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Protests mark Hollande's first anniversary

TENS of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Paris on Sunday to mark Socialist President Francois Hollande's first year in office by accusing him of turning his back on the left.

On the eve of the anniversary of Hollande's May 6 win last year over right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy, the Communist-backed Left Front gathered supporters for a march starting at the Bastille, the iconic square of the French Revolution.

Many were also expected to gather for separate protests in Paris and other cities to oppose the government's plans to legalise same-sex marriage and adoption by gay couples.

The demonstrations come with polls showing Hollande as the most unpopular president in modern French history. Many voters are angered by an economy on the edge of recession and unemployment hitting a 16-year high.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, the Left Front's firebrand candidate in last year's vote, called the protest in Paris last month at the height of a scandal over Hollande's ex-budget minister Jerome Cahuzac being charged with tax fraud.

Melenchon, who said he expected 100,000 to attend the rally, told the crowd the Socialist government had betrayed its supporters on the left.

"We do not want the world of finance in power! We do not accept the politics of austerity!" he told protesters waving the red flags of left-wing movements.

In an interview Sunday with newspaper Le Parisien, Melenchon called on Hollande to "return to the left, where he was when he was elected".

He accused Hollande of contributing to Europe's economic crisis by focusing on "the interests of shareholders, of big business and of European austerity policies, to the detriment of the workers."

Melenchon called for a government reshuffle with himself or Industrial Renewal Minister Arnaud Montebourg -- considered one of Hollande's most left-wing ministers -- as prime minister.

Opponents of gay marriage were meanwhile to rally in major cities in a bid to force Hollande to back down from signing a bill approved in parliament last month.

The bill, which is also facing a constitutional challenge, sparked months of demonstrations across the country, with some descending into violence.

It has been one of the most controversial reforms of Hollande's first year in office, with right-wing opponents demanding the issue be put to a referendum.

About 1,000 people protested against the bill in Strasbourg on Saturday and other protests were due Sunday in Paris, Rennes, Lyon, Montpellier, Toulouse, Dijon and Lille.

Sunday's protests follow another demonstration on Wednesday that brought hundreds of supporters of the far-right National Front to the streets of Paris, as a poll showed its leader Marine Le Pen would come second to Sarkozy if an election were held now, far ahead of Hollande in third place.

Since his election, Hollande's approval rating has fallen faster and further than any other president's since the founding of France's Fifth Republic in 1958.

The government has said it will hold a meeting on Monday to set its agenda for the months to come, with the focus on tackling unemployment, boosting economic growth and controlling public finances.

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French ballistic missile self-destructs

A FRENCH test of an M51 submarine-launched ballistic missile failed on Sunday as it self-destructed off the coast of Brittany, officials said.

"It was a failure, the reasons will be determined by an investigation," said Lieutenant Commander Lionel Delort, a spokesman for the Atlantic Naval Prefecture.

He said the missile "self-destructed during its first propulsion phase... for an unknown reason."

The missile was test fired, without a nuclear warhead, from the Vigilant -- a strategic nuclear submarine -- from the Bay of Audierne at 0730 GMT (1730 Sunday AEST) and had been due to go down in the isolated north Atlantic.

The defence ministry said in a statement that it "was destroyed shortly after launch, over the ocean," without providing further details.

Delort said the area had been cleared of vessels and aircraft prior to the launch and that debris from the missile -- which fell about 25 kilometres from the coast -- would be collected for analysis.

The M51, which has a range of 8,000 kilometres, was put into operation in 2010 following five successful test launches.

Witnesses told AFP they heard a loud explosion and saw trails of smoke when the missile test failed.

"We saw flashes in the sky, I thought it was a plane exploding," Claude Jean, a resident of Cap Sizun on the northern end of the bay, told AFP.

France is estimated to have a stockpile of about 300 nuclear warheads, the majority of them designed for launching from its four Triomphant-class submarines. The remainder are designed for delivery from both land- and carrier-based aircraft.

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NSW Labor support still in slump: Newspoll

POPULAR support for NSW Labor still lags way behind support for the state coalition, a Newspoll has found.

The poll published in The Australian on Monday found NSW Labor recorded a primary vote of 28 per cent in March, up one point from the previous poll.

The coalition, by contrast, polled two points better at 48 per cent of the primary vote.

The Liberal-National coalition holds a big 61 to 39 per cent lead over Labor on a two-party preferred basis, the poll found.

Support for the performance of Labor leader John Robertson was steady at 28 per cent.

Dissatisfaction with him fell one point to 34 per cent, according to the poll.

Premier Barry O'Farrell recorded a one-point jump in his satisfaction rating to 44 per cent, while his dissatisfaction rating didn't move at 38 per cent.

Fifty-two per cent of those polled thought Mr O'Farrell would do a better job as premier, compared to 20 per cent who preferred Mr Robertson in the top job.

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Belgian chemical train accident toll rises

THE casualty toll in Belgium from the derailing of a train carrying highly toxic chemicals -- which exploded and sent spectacular strips of fire into the night sky -- has risen dramatically to one dead and 49 injured.

Two victims were in intensive care and three of the injured were rescue workers exposed to fumes from chemicals that spilled from the train that derailed near the city of Ghent, officials said.

The accident and blaze happened around 2am (1000 AEST Saturday) and prompted authorities to evacuate around 300 people from their homes.

The victims were people living well away from the scene of the accident, and Interior Minister Joelle Milquet blamed toxic fumes from the highly flammable liquid chemicals for their injuries.

Six of the train's 13 wagons derailed and two were left lying on their sides, said Infrabel, the state-owned company that operates Belgian railways.

The blaze led to a series of explosions in the railway wagons, then a spectacular strip of fire spread over hundreds of metres prompting authorities to evacuate residents living within 500 metres of the scene of the accident.

The train was transporting the toxic chemical compound acrylonitrile, which is used in the making of plastics, officials said.

Exposure to acrylonitrile can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea and mucus membrane irritation.

Milquet said toxic fumes reached much farther, via the drainage system, than the 500-metre perimeter that was set up.

"Some of the chemical product went into the drains and caused a kind of chemical reaction with gases that are toxic and escaped into certain streets beyond the perimeter that had already been evacuated due to the fire," she said.

Firefighters let the wagons burn out in a controlled manner as water could have released further toxic chemicals.

The causes of the accident remained unclear. The cars derailed as the train changed tracks. The train driver said he had been travelling faster than the speed limit for the area.

The train came from the Netherlands and was bound for Ghent's seaport.

Train services between Schellebelle and Wetteren were disrupted and problems were expected for two days, with buses laid on to transport passengers.

Two similar accidents involving trains carrying tanks of toxic products have occurred in Belgium since May last year.

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