World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

Ireland prepares to exit bailout - business live
Australians plan to leave more inheritance to their heirs
Scott Morrison denies Amnesty report findings on Manus island detention
Twenty-two Chinese miners trapped underground after blast
Tony Abbott to reveal assistance package for Holden workers
RSA Insurance chief executive quits after third profit warning in six weeks
Naplan results show Northern Territory lagging behind rest of Australia
North Korea executes Kim Jong-un's uncle as traitor
10 grammar books to read before you die of boredom | Mind your language
The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay by Hooman Majd – review
North Korea accused Jang Song-thaek of being 'careerist and trickster'
Coag: ‘one-stop shop’ environmental approval deal alarms conservationists
Royal Commission: abuse victim ‘got a belting’ for reporting priest
Viral Video Chart: One Direction, Doctor Who, Sherlock and Godzilla
Invasive questions dropped from Chevron job application form
Rio Tinto and NSW deny abusing planning process to expedite coal mine
Syrian refugees: UK pilloried for keeping its borders closed
Philippines: Aeta people fight mining companies - video
British judge warns about 'tide of EEC immigrants': From the archive, 13 December 1979
West Papuans tortured, killed and dumped at sea, citizens' tribunal hears
Coag: Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave and disability schemes questioned
Illegal bird deaths continue to rise in UK, RSPB report shows
Asylum seekers: lawyers apply for citizenship for baby born in Brisbane
Church knew of Lismore parish abuse allegations in 1985, inquiry hears
Twitter reinstates its blocking option after user backlash

Ireland prepares to exit bailout - business live

Posted: 13 Dec 2013 01:18 AM PST

Landmark moment in the history of the eurozone as Ireland become the first country to leave a financial assistance programme, but the social cost has been high

Graeme Wearden

Australians plan to leave more inheritance to their heirs

Posted: 13 Dec 2013 12:56 AM PST

HSBC survey found Australians expect to bequeath US$501,909 each to their heirs, compared with US$148,205 globally

Helen Davidson

Scott Morrison denies Amnesty report findings on Manus island detention

Posted: 13 Dec 2013 12:44 AM PST

Immigration minister says he will review report, which says conditions on Manus are tantamount to torture.

Oliver Laughland

Twenty-two Chinese miners trapped underground after blast

Posted: 13 Dec 2013 12:42 AM PST

Rescuers searching for survivors after explosion at Changji mine in western China

A gas explosion in a coal mine in western China has left 22 workers trapped underground.

The blast at Changji mine occurred in the early hours of Friday morning when 34 miners were working, the Xinjiang news agency reported on its microblog. Twelve miners scrambled to safety but 22 remain trapped.

Teams of rescuers were searching for the trapped miners. It is unclear whether there were fatalities among them.

Such accidents are usually caused by a failure to ventilate methane gas from the shaft. China's mines, which are among the deadliest in the world, suffer frequent explosions, floods and cave-ins.

Safety improvements have reduced the number deaths in recent years but regulations are often ignored.

Tony Abbott to reveal assistance package for Holden workers

Posted: 13 Dec 2013 12:29 AM PST

The prime minister anticipated he would have “something to say early next week that will involve numbers”

Daniel Hurst

RSA Insurance chief executive quits after third profit warning in six weeks

Posted: 13 Dec 2013 12:25 AM PST

Simon Lee leaves insurer with immediate effect as problems in Ireland force a further injection of funds

RSA Insurance's chief executive has quit after the company issued its third profit warning in six weeks and admitted its dividend was in question.

Simon Lee has left the general insurer with immediate effect. Chairman Martin Scicluna will run the company until a replacement can be found. Shares in RSA were down 20% at 80p in early trading – more than a third below their pre-profit warning value.

RSA said it had been forced to strengthen reserves in Ireland by £130m to meet potential claims for bodily injuries at its motor insurance arm. The injection of funds is on top of £70m announced on 8 November and comes out of the group's annual profit.

The group will also move £135m of capital into the Irish business to make sure it meets rules on solvency. RSA's problems in Ireland have already claimed the jobs of its top three Irish executives and are being probed by the country's regulators.

RSA also said it had been hit by additional claims for £25m after the UK and Scandinavia were hit by storms in early December.

The result is that profits for 2013 will be reduced further following two profit warnings in a week the group was forced to issue early last month.

Scicluna said: "The significant reserve strengthening in Ireland represents a further negative event and places additional strain on the capital metrics of the group.

"The impact of this reserve strengthening, alongside the extreme weather in 2013 and the effect of financial irregularities in Ireland will be taken into consideration in the board's dividend decision in February."

RSA said Lee, who started as chief executive two years ago, would be paid according to his contract.

His position has been under threat since financial trouble emerged in Ireland, where RSA is the biggest general insurer. He had already upset investors with his handling of a dividend cut in February.

RSA blamed its first profit warning last month on claims caused by bad weather but then came back with a second alert raising problems found during a "routine audit" of its Irish business.

RSA has hired audit firm PwC to review its Irish business. The firm will report back to the board in January.

Sean Farrell

Naplan results show Northern Territory lagging behind rest of Australia

Posted: 13 Dec 2013 12:21 AM PST

NT has some of the country’s best-resourced schools but still has the lowest literacy and numeracy rates

North Korea executes Kim Jong-un's uncle as traitor

Posted: 13 Dec 2013 12:11 AM PST

Jang Song-thaek accused of plotting to overthrow state, pornography and instigating disastrous currency reforms

North Korea has executed Kim Jong-un's uncle as a "traitor for all ages" who confessed to planning a coup, state media has announced.

Jang Song-thaek, previously one of the country's most powerful men, was accused of everything from plotting to overthrow the state to instigating disastrous currency reforms and dishing out pornography in the report from official news agency KCNA.

It denounced him as "worse than a dog" and "despicable human scum".

KCNA said a special military tribunal had found him guilty of treason and the Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried a photograph of him handcuffed and held by uniformed guards in the courtroom.

North Korea announced earlier this week that Jang, thought to be in his late 60s, had been stripped of all posts and expelled from the Workers' party for offences including factionalism, corruption and dissolute behaviour. But many had thought his marriage to the youthful leader's aunt – the sister of late leader Kim Jong-il – was likely to save his life.

In Pyongyang, people crowded around subway station billboards displaying the morning paper and news of the execution, Associated Press reported. Others sat quietly and listened as a radio broadcast piped into the subway listed Jang's crimes.

The lengthy, bombastic and at times downright bizarre report from KCNA quoted an alleged admission by Jang that he sought to destabilise the country, triggering discontent among the military and others. He planned to become premier if North Korea approached collapse and use illicitly acquired wealth to ensure that "the people and service personnel will shout 'hurrah' for me" and his coup would succeed smoothly".

It also claimed he pursued a "decadent capitalist lifestyle" – squandering at least €4.6m in 2009 alone, including in a foreign casino – and deliberately hampered construction projects in Pyongyang.

He sold off natural resources "at random" and committed treachery by selling off land at the Rason special economic zone for five decades, it added, apparently in reference to a deal with Russia.

"They are using this opportunity to scapegoat Uncle Jang by relegating responsibility for all policy failures," said Leonid Petrov of the Australian National University.

Other offences cited include halfhearted applause as Kim rose to power and Jang's "reckless" instruction to security forces to erect a granite block with Kim's signature in a shaded corner rather than in front of their headquarters.

Brian Myers, an expert on ideology at Dongseo University in Busan, noted that the denigration of Jang held potential perils for the leadership. It raised questions about his ability to cause so much damage for so long and sat uneasily with North Korea's use of collective punishment.

"This is a member of the clan in a culture where the regime tends to punish entire families for crimes committed by one of them. So it seems odd to be so explicit about [his] crimes," Myers said.

KCNA said Jang had long held a "dirty political ambition" but dared not act while Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il were alive.

"He began revealing his true colours, thinking that it was just the time for him to realise his wild ambition in the period of historic turn when the generation of the revolution was replaced," it added.

That was when Jang – who had been purged twice before – returned to the forefront of North Korean politics. Kim Jong-il appeared to have selected him as a mentor figure who could help smooth Kim Jong-un's path to power.

Adam Cathcart, an expert on North Korea, said accusations of factionalism and seeking power were "pro forma" in such cases, but he noted how specific the charges were and added: "There certainly were discussions about the direction North Korea would take [when Kim Jong-il died]. It would be natural for Jang to want to be part of a collective leadership system.

"But North Korea is not moving towards a collective system: it's all about the one leader … It's the divine right of Kims."

Myers added: "The most surprising and unprecedented thing is not that someone was planning to overthrow the state … but the implication that he had a substantial number of followers. That's the first ever official admission of significant disunity in the North Korean state itself."

Kim has made sweeping changes to the hierarchy in North Korea, changing key military personnel repeatedly as well as removing civilian members, but family members are normally dealt with more leniently and quietly. It is unclear how the position of Jang's wife Kim Kyong Hui – also seen as something of a mentor for Kim following her brother's death – has been affected.

Nor is it clear whether Kim himself initiated his uncle's ousting or whether other parts of the elite were behind Jang's fall. While some analysts predict increased instability in the North, as those associated with Jang are removed, others argue that Kim has consolidated his position effectively.

Patrick Ventrell, White House National Security Council spokesman, said: "If confirmed, this is another example of the extreme brutality of the regime."

The KCNA report raises further questions about the development of North's economic and foreign policy, alleging Jang believed that after his coup his "reformist" reputation would encourage foreign countries to recognise him quickly.

Cathcart noted: "Kim has been very lucky in the external environment and I think he will continue to be. For all the bile [the North has] directed at South Korea, Japan and the US and even China, none of those countries are interested in grabbing this hornets' nest and shaking it right now."

Tania Branigan

10 grammar books to read before you die of boredom | Mind your language

Posted: 13 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST

A seasonal selection of new (and not so new) books about language that are anything but dull

Books about English fall into various categories, mostly offputting ones: the academic, rarely of much interest, and often incomprehensible, to the general reader; the lament for a (mythical) golden age "when everyone knew how to use grammar"; the prescriptions of Dr Grammar (do this, or you are clearly illiterate). Here are some that avoid these traps.

Best of the new

Taking as its premise that what you say matters less than how you say it, Mark Forsyth's Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase (Icon Books) takes us on an informative but highly entertaining journey through the figures of rhetoric, demonstrating the tricks used by writers as diverse as John Milton and Katy Perry to produce memorable phrases.

As in his previous books, The Etymologicon (which dealt with the connections between words) and The Horologicon (which covered obsolete words), the author employs his ingenious trademark of ending one section with a word that starts the next, which I think is a form of anadiplosis. It means you are likely to start off reading a couple of chapters, and end up reading the whole book in one go.

Some of the rhetorical devices he discusses are well known, such as alliteration (Pride and Prejudice, Power to the People), but most will be unfamiliar terms. Forsyth's examples bring them immediately to life: for example polyptoton, where you repeat a word in a different sense (Please Please Me, "but me no buts").

It's packed with obscure but fascinating facts. On page 24 we learn that "to be bonny and buxom, in bed and at board, till death us do part" was part of the medieval marriage service; on page 25, that the first world war song "Bless 'em all, bless 'em all, the long and the short and the tall" originally went "Fuck 'em all".

Like Doug Piranha in the old Monty Python sketch – "he knew all the tricks: dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and satire" – Mark Forsyth wears his considerable knowledge lightly. He also writes beautifully. And I am not just saying that because he said something nice about my own book. Which brings me to ...

Best of the rest of the new

The title of Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing, by Melissa Mohr (OUP), is not just to grab the attention: it encapsulates her theme, which is that swearing falls into two categories: the holy ("zounds", from "God's wounds", or my dad's favourite, "blood and thunderbolts"), and the shitty (any taboo bodily function, whether sexual or scatological). In an implicit endorsement of the Guardian's approach to bad language, Mohr concludes that swearing is basically a good thing.

Within five minutes of his appearance on Radio 4's Midweek to publicise his English for the Natives: Discover the Grammar You Don't Know You Know (John Murray), Harry Ritchie had somehow been tricked into answering a silly question about gerunds. As the nation turned off, I stayed tuned, and I'm glad I did, as this book is a refreshing change from the didactic and pedantic, recognising that we all use grammar and that non-standard forms are as valid as Standard English. Examples quoted range "from Ali G to John Betjeman, Margaret Thatcher to Match of the Day", as is essential with books of this type (I speak from experience, only in my case it is "from Shakespeare to The Simpsons, from Red Hot Chili Peppers to Yoda").

Two Guardian journalists joined this year's rush to share their thoughts about language in a wise and witty way – or so we claim. But if you haven't bought Steven Poole's Who Touched Base in My Thought Shower? A Treasury of Unbearable Office Jargon (Sceptre) or my For Who the Bell Tolls: One Man's Quest for Grammatical Perfection (Guardian Faber) by now, you probably aren't going to. So here are three of my favourite golden oldies, all still in print and given a recent facelift.

Best of the old

The 19th-century American journalist Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary, published in 1911, is an A-Z of ironic observations on language, politics, religions and other targets, for example "Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated." Perfect for tweeting, and now available in various formats – including a free ebook.

First Aid in English (Hodder), by Angus Maciver, a Scottish teacher, was first published in 1938. We loved it at my primary school and it's still going strong, newly available in a reassuringly not-very-colourful "colour edition". It explains the basics very clearly. If you took the 11-plus, or wonder what it was like, this is for you; if you are eager to learn more about Chomsky's paradigm, it isn't.

If you haven't read The King's English, by Kingsley Amis, originally published posthumously in 1997, you might be surprised by its relatively liberal approach to usage. Superbly written and very funny, it is now a Penguin Classic, suggesting that if Amis had only kept at it, he might have attained the literary stature of a Morrissey.

And for next year

NM Gwynne's Gwynne's Grammar, a kind of First Aid in English for grownups who miss the 1950s (or possibly 1850s), was a huge success this year. In April, Gwynne's Latin (Ebury Press) is due. Gwynne's approach – that of a stern, but kindly, headmaster – should be well-suited to the subject, although he is unlikely to tell us the Latin for "bell-end" (luckily, it's in Holy Shit).

I've had a sneak preview of the fourth edition of Tony Thorne's Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (A&C Black), due in February, so I can tell you that "the sesh was gout – a sausage-fest of keeners and Brendans" is student slang for "that seminar was awful – an all-male gathering of swots and unattractive losers". Many of the entries are far too rude to repeat, even in the Guardian, but let's just say I will never look at an aardvark in quite the same way again.

David Marsh and NM Gwynne will discuss Questions of Grammar at Kings Place, London, on Monday 20 January 2014, with Matthew Riesz of the Times Higher Education Supplement in the chair. Tickets available here.

David Marsh

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay by Hooman Majd – review

Posted: 13 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST

Tehran's streets are brought to life as a New Yorker explores his relationship with his Iranian past

There's a certain type of westernised Iranian. Not the plastinated Tehrangelinos held up for ridicule in the TV series Shahs of Sunset. Highly educated, wealthy, into contemporary art and fashion, they are more likely to call New York home, but can be spotted in London, Paris or Basel too. You might catch them at a gallery opening, a GQ party, or sitting in a cafe leafing through the latest issue of Monocle or Bidoun.

This is the subspecies to which Hooman Majd (pictured) appears to belong. An ambassador's son, his career embraces writing for the New Yorker and designing menswear for his fashion label, House of Majd. Now in his 50s, he's smokily good-looking and always impeccably turned out; suave, well-connected and perhaps a little smug. There are worse crimes, of course. But his public image seeps into his political and observational writing on Iran – this is his third book about the country – and if you're not charmed by that sort of thing, you'll find it distracting.

I did, but I also found myself engrossed. Many of his stories will have a familiar ring to semi-detached Iranians like me, either from paranoid fantasy or actual experience. Such as his description of a hair-raising weekend in Tehran, when, having been pulled aside at immigration, he was given instructions to attend the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance a day or two later. What awaited him was a classic entanglement with the Iranian state: an experience that would've been funny if it hadn't been so laden with menace. He had to wait, sweating, and then spend three hours with a couple of goons who seemed to have read everything he'd ever written. This is a bureaucracy that isn't efficient or single-minded enough to eliminate all dissent. As Majd points out, the Islamic republic is less of a police state than a regime run by the shah. But it lashes out unpredictably, stopping some at airports and letting others go, imprisoning the unlucky ones and subjecting the others to mildly comic, if disconcerting, interviews.

The incident came just after he'd decided to move with his young wife, Karri, and their infant son, Khashayar (Khash for short), to Iran for a year. Despite his encounter, they pressed ahead with their plans, which were motivated in part by Majd's desire to reconnect with a home he'd never really known (his youth was spent shuttling between boarding school and various foreign capitals), and to give Khash a kind of baptism in Iranian culture.

Majd's analyses of that culture are occasionally superficial. The usual badges of pride and shame that Iranians are fond of displaying to outsiders are trotted out. Among the qualities he cites are a propensity to sulk ("boy do Iranians know how to sulk"), to stare, to party ("boy do we like our parties"), to be fatalistic and to be nosy. His politics are interesting, though, as he is something of a reformist insider. His links to various bigwigs, and his family connection to the former president, Mohammad Khatami, are mentioned more than they need to be. But they shed light on the internal dynamics of what is too often presented as a monolithic political culture. The Ministry of Guidance actually has little to fear from Majd, who is no enemy of the Islamic republic. He understands how it got there, and doesn't presume to know what's good for Iranians better than Iranians themselves – most of whom want evolution, not revolution.

But he is more impressive on the human than the political. There are some nice pen portraits of the partygoers, taxi-drivers and bored babysitters who help make Tehran's streets come to life. The Iranian attitude to children – far more indulgent and demonstrative than in Europe or America – is beautifully captured. Khash is mollycoddled by an assortment of baristas, doormen and other strangers, with one young man in a park even spontaneously scribbling down a poem for him. There is a powerful section in which Majd wanders with a friend around the neighbourhood where his grandparents lived, and which he only dimly recalls, partly through the smell of the mud walls, the trees and the gutter.

And this is the nub of the book: it is subtitled "An American Family in Iran", but Karri is two-dimensional and Khash just a baby. Majd's relationship with his Iranian past is the real subject. He writes from the point of view of someone whose "home" is an unfamiliar place. Whose clerical ancestors are about as far from New York socialites as you could possibly get. The book ends with a postscript on his father, who had been living in London, and died shortly after the family ended their year abroad. It's a resolution of sorts to a dislocated life: "It was a little ironic," he writes, "but fitting and gratifying ... that the man who had been my bridge to another world, the half that was a part of me but that I didn't know growing up, was now looking to me to be his bridge."

David Shariatmadari

North Korea accused Jang Song-thaek of being 'careerist and trickster'

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 11:59 PM PST

• Pyongyang statement 'justifies' execution of Kim's uncle
• Jang accused of plotting to overthrow leadership
• Described as 'despicable human scum … worse than a dog'

North Korea has said it has executed the uncle of Kim Jong-un, the country's leader, claiming he was a traitor who tried to grab power and that he was a corrupt womaniser.

The North's official Korean central news agency said in a 2,700-word English-language statement about the decision to execute Jang Song-thaek:

– "Every sentence of the decision served as sledgehammer blow brought down by our angry service personnel and people on the head of Jang, an anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional element and despicable political careerist and trickster.'

– "The accused is a traitor to the nation for all ages who perpetrated anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts in a bid to overthrow the leadership of our party and state and the socialist system."

– "Despicable human scum Jang, who was worse than a dog, perpetrated thrice-cursed acts of treachery in betrayal of such profound trust and warmest paternal love shown by the party and the leader for him."

– "From long ago, Jang had a dirty political ambition. He dared not raise his head when Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il were alive … He began revealing his true colours, thinking that it was just the time for him to realise his wild ambition in the period of historic turn when the generation of the revolution was replaced."

– "When … the decision that Kim Jong-un was elected vice chairman of the central military commission of the Workers' party of Korea at the third conference of the WPK in reflection of the unanimous will of all party members, service personnel and people was proclaimed, making all participants break into enthusiastic cheers that shook the conference hall, he behaved so arrogantly and insolently as unwillingly standing up from his seat and half-heartedly clapping, touching off towering resentment of our service personnel and people."

– "When Kim Jongil passed away so suddenly and untimely to our sorrow, he began working in real earnest to realise his long-cherished greed for power."

– "The revolutionary army will never pardon all those who disobey the order of the supreme commander and there will be no place for them to be buried even after their death."

– "He instructed his stooges to sell coal and other precious underground resources at random. Consequently, his confidants were saddled with huge debts, deceived by brokers."

– "He let the decadent capitalist lifestyle find its way to our society by distributing all sorts of pornographic pictures among his confidants since 2009. He led a dissolute, depraved life, squandering money wherever he went. He took at least €4.6m from his secret coffers and squandered it in 2009 alone and enjoyed himself in casino in a foreign country. These facts alone clearly show how corrupt and degenerate he was."

– "The era and history will eternally record and never forget the shuddering crimes committed by Jang Song-thaek, the enemy of the party, revolution and people and heinous traitor to the nation.

"The decision was immediately executed."

Coag: ‘one-stop shop’ environmental approval deal alarms conservationists

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 11:54 PM PST

Fears for protection of world heritage areas as Tony Abbott deal transfers environmental powers to states and territories

Oliver Milman

Royal Commission: abuse victim ‘got a belting’ for reporting priest

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 11:43 PM PST

Catholic church records show Father Paul Rex Brown was later dumped from his priestly duties after a litany of complaints

Viral Video Chart: One Direction, Doctor Who, Sherlock and Godzilla

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 11:23 PM PST

Watch 1D sing with the Anchorman cast, Sesame Street parody Lord of the Rings and the Doctor meet Sherlock in the Tardis

One Direction took a different direction when they were joined by the cast of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues including Saturday Night Live host Paul Rudd for a rendition of Afternoon Delight. There was a huge reception for Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson as they walked on to the NBC set. "You've got your boy band, well I've brought my man band," Rudd said as his Anchorman 2 co-stars Will Ferrell, Steve Carell and David Koechner joined him to form "Nine Direction".

We've got another blend of talent for you with The Hungover Games, which combines the narratives of The Hunger Games and The Hangover. The trailer follows four men at a party who wake up on their way to a battle to the death and it also pokes fun at Carrie, Ted and Willy Wonka.

Staying with the film theme, Sesame Street: Lord of the Crumbs is a Lord of the Rings parody which features a monster called Gobble. A far more terrifying prospect is the monster in the new Godzilla movie, which is due to be released next May. Directed by Gareth Edwards, it stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen and Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston.

What would happen if Doctor Who met Sherlock? We have a great mash-up that features the BBC's ratings winners in the Tardis. Finally we've got a couple of festive offerings for you this week. Grumpy Cat, Colonel Meow, Oskar the Blind Cat, Nala Cat, and Hamilton the Hipster Cat feature in a Christmassy video and there's a heartening tale from WestJet which played Santa to some of its passengers. Enjoy!

Guardian Viral Video Chart. Compiled by Unruly Media and mashed by Janette

1. Anchorman crew and One Direction on SNL
Don't act like you're not impressed

2. Sesame Street: Lord of the Crumbs (Lord of the Rings Parody)
This takes the biscuit

3. The Hungover Games Official Trailer #1 (2014) - Hunger Games Parody Movie HD
Hang on in there

4. Godzilla Trailer - Official Warner Bros.
Will this be a monster hit?

5. YouTube Rewind: What Does 2013 Say?
All your favourites

6. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - OFFICIAL Trailer - In Theaters May 2014
Taster on the web

7. Grumpy Cat Stars in "Hard To Be a Cat at Christmas" Music Video
Santa Claws

8. WestJet Christmas Miracle: real-time giving
Giving takes off

9. WHOLOCK - Sherlock meets The Doctor!
Watch this space

10. Sherlock: Series 3 Launch Trailer - BBC One
We deduce he's back

Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 14:00 on 12 December 2013. The Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately 2m blogs, as well as Facebook and Twitter.

Janette Owen

Invasive questions dropped from Chevron job application form

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 11:11 PM PST

Union says the information required by the company breached discrimination and privacy laws

Rio Tinto and NSW deny abusing planning process to expedite coal mine

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 11:05 PM PST

Mining giant rejects suggestions it coerced workers into writing positive submissions to the NSW state government

Helen Davidson

Syrian refugees: UK pilloried for keeping its borders closed

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 11:03 PM PST

EU countries should 'hang their heads in shame' for resettling so few trying to flee conflict, Amnesty International says

Philippines: Aeta people fight mining companies - video

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 11:00 PM PST

The activities of mining companies in Zambales province in the Philippines is disrupting life for the Aeta, a group of indigenous people. But they are fighting back

British judge warns about 'tide of EEC immigrants': From the archive, 13 December 1979

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 11:00 PM PST

Lord Denning claims new arrivals are putting a strain on local authority services

Local authorities are facing a "tide" of immigrants from the Common Market seeking to take advantage of Britain's laws on housing the homeless, Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning, said yesterday.

Word had got round that in England "they will look after you if you have nowhere to live."

The Treaty of Rome gives EEC nationals working in England "the self-same rights as time-worn Englishmen" with regard to pay, working conditions, social security, trade union rights, and access to housing, said the judge. Housing rights include the right of homeless families with young children to claim accommodation from a local authority.

It was just such a claim that was causing concern to Crawley Borough Council in Sussex, which has Gatwick Airport on its doorstep.

Lord Denning, upholding Crawley Council's decision not to accommodate two Italian families because they had deliberately made themselves homeless, said the borough had to stop the flood of such immigrants.

"If any family from the Common Market can fly into Gatwick, stay a month or two with relatives and then claim to be unintentionally homeless, "it would be a most serious matter for the over-crowded borough," said the judge.

The Court of Appeal dismissed appeals by the two families - who were backed by Shelter and fought their case on legal aid - against a High Court judge's ruling last month that Crawley Council was not obliged to house them, pending a full hearing of their claim.

Lord Denning said the council, in the light of surrounding circumstances, was in effect telling the families: "You left Italy and came to Crawley where we are absolutely crowded out ... You ought not to have come here unless you had arranged for permanent accommodation here."

West Papuans tortured, killed and dumped at sea, citizens' tribunal hears

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 10:38 PM PST

Witnesses to the 'Biak massacre' in 1998 tell of alleged atrocities by Indonesian security forces

Marni Cordell

Coag: Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave and disability schemes questioned

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 10:08 PM PST

Two of his biggest spending promises challenged by states as prime minister flags use of ‘truancy officers’ for schools

Lenore Taylor

Daniel Hurst

Illegal bird deaths continue to rise in UK, RSPB report shows

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 10:00 PM PST

Uplands losing birds of prey as buzzards, sparrowhawks and peregrine falcons are shot dead or poisoned

Cases of the illegal persecution of British birds are continuing to rise, according to the latest figures from the RSPB.

The Birdcrime report, published on Friday, shows there were 208 reports of the shooting and destruction of birds of prey in 2012, including confirmed shootings of 15 buzzards, five sparrowhawks and four peregrine falcons.

In the same year there were more than 70 reported poisoning incidents including nine buzzards and seven red kites, the report found. But the numbers of poisoning incidents has fallen in recent years, with 101 reports in 2011, 128 in 2010 and 153 in 2009.

The RSPB said it was difficult to tell whether there was a decline in poisoning overall because not all incidents are reported, although there were early signs in Scotland that the number of incidents were fewer. This is possibly due to the introduction of the offence of vicarious liability, where employers and landowners are held legally responsible for the wildlife crimes committed by their employees.

"Levels of reporting could potentially be less but the real numbers may be higher as many incidents are likely to go unnoticed and unreported," said an RSPB spokesman.

Some areas of the UK's countryside including parts of the Peak District, Yorkshire Dales and Northumberland have become "no-fly zones" for birds of prey, the report warned, with grouse moors the key issue affecting some bird of prey populations. The intensively managed upland has prevented the populations of species such as the golden eagle and hen harrier from occupying parts of their natural range, especially in England.

Martin Harper, the RSPB's director of conservation, said: "There are few sights in nature as breathtaking as witnessing a peregrine stooping or hen harriers skydancing. These are sights we should all be able to enjoy when visiting our uplands. However, these magnificent birds are being removed from parts of our countryside where they should be flourishing."

The report comes at the end of the first year since the 1960s in which hen harriers failed to breed successfully in England – despite enough suitable habitat to support more than 300 pairs. Just two pairs attempted to nest this year in England, but both failed.

Harper said current legislation was failing to protect the hen harrier. "The absence of successfully breeding hen harriers in England this year is a stain on the conscience of the country. It is therefore vitally important that the government brings forward changes to wildlife law in England and Wales that deliver an effective and enforceable legal framework for the protection of wildlife."

Birds of prey have been protected by law in the UK since 1954. But the current laws regulating wildlife are spread over a collection of acts dating back to 1829, resulting in a legal landscape that has been called "out of date, confused and often contradictory".

In 2011 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs tasked the law commission with a review of UK wildlife law. In October, the independent body set out its proposed principles, which will be published as final recommendations for a draft bill in summer 2014.

They included measures to bring into line with EU regulations the rules on the killing and capture of wild birds, extending criminal liability to those who ultimately benefit from wildlife crime and introducing stronger penalties. Most wildlife crimes committed in the UK carry a maximum sentence of six months' imprisonment and/or a fine of up to £5,000.

The RSPB said it was "heartened" by some of the commission's recommendations, but called for the introduction of vicarious liability throughout the country to punish employers whose staff commit wildlife crimes. This may already be having some deterrent effect in Scotland with a reduction in the number of confirmed poisoning incidents, it said.