Syria opposition denounce Hezbollah threat

SYRIA'S opposition has denounced what it called "threats" by the head of Hezbollah, and warned against any intervention by the Lebanese Shi'ite group or by Iran in the Syrian conflict.

The speech was also criticised by Lebanese opposition leader Saad Hariri, who accused Hezbollah of "leading Lebanon to ruin" by intervening in Syria.

"The Syrians and the Lebanese hoped... that the Hezbollah leadership would stop their attacks on Homs and Damascus and take into account the gravity of the situation in the region," the Syrian National Coalition said in a statement.

"But they heard nothing but threats... and warnings against setting the region on fire and an admission of their interference in Syrian affairs," the key opposition movement said.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged that members of the group are fighting inside Syria and suggested Iran and other states could intervene to support the Damascus regime against rebels.

President Bashar al-Assad has "true friends in the region who will not allow Syria to fall into the hands of the United States, Israel and 'takfiri' groups," he said of Sunni Muslim groups battling the regime.

"If the situation gets more dangerous, states, resistance movements and other forces will be obliged to intervene effectively in the confrontation on the ground," he added.

"You will not be able to bring down the regime militarily," Nasrallah told Syria's rebel forces. "The battle is still long."

The Syrian opposition has long accused Hezbollah of dispatching fighters to fight alongside government forces, including in Qusayr in central Homs province and at the Sayyeda Zeinab shrine near Damascus.

The Coalition called on the Lebanese government "to immediately put an end to Hezbollah military operations in the regions close to the Syrian border."

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Suspect saw child porn day April vanished

THE man accused of murdering five-year-old British girl April Jones watched child pornography on the day of her disappearance and exchanged text messages with his ex-girlfriend over their break-up, his trial has heard.

Mark Bridger, 47, watched a cartoon of a young girl being raped and also looked up child murders on his computer hours before April went missing, prosecutor Elwen Evans told a court in north Wales.

Outlining the prosecution's case on the second day of evidence, she said search terms discovered on Bridger's laptop included "British girl murdered in France", and "ten-year-old girls naked".

The schoolgirl's disappearance sparked one of the biggest police searches ever mounted in Britain and drew in hundreds of local people to scour the mountainous area, but her body has never been found.

The trial heard that blood and tiny bone fragments found at Bridger's cottage were a near-perfect match with April's DNA.

Showing the jury photographs of the living room, Evans said the blood stains near the wood-burning stove, on the carpet and on the sofa were a "one-in-a-billion" match to April's DNA profile.

Bridger, an experienced slaughterman who once worked at an abattoir, denies abducting and murdering April as she played near her home in the small town of Machynlleth in mid-Wales on October 1 last year.

The prosecution says he went to great lengths to clean up the evidence of her murder, although police officers who went to his home had not realised the significance of his efforts at the time.

Evans said: "When they went in there they stated that the house was uncomfortably hot, that there was a strong smell of detergent, and a smell of cleaning products, air freshener and washed clothes."

Bridger made a series of statements to police, but his final account was that he had run over April in a road accident and had put her, either dead of dying, into his Land Rover.

The trial continues.

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May Day protests against austerity

TENS of thousands of angry protesters have staged traditional May Day rallies in several countries of the crisis-wracked eurozone as fury erupted at demonstrations in Bangladesh after a deadly building collapse.

Thousands took to the street in Spain, some brandishing flags reading "6,202,700", a reference to the record number out of work in the recession-hit country.

"This austerity is ruining and killing us," read one banner in Madrid, a reference to the unpopular German-led policy of squeezing budgets in response to the eurozone's three-year debt crisis.

Jose Antonio Sebastian, a 50-year-old engineer, said he was one of the lucky ones still in work but feared he would soon be joining the ranks of the unemployed, now 27 per cent of the working population.

"With the speed at which we are destroying jobs in Spain, I think this will soon happen to me as well. We have no choice but to look for jobs abroad," he complained.

Meanwhile, a strike in Greece stopped ferry services and disrupted public transport in Athens as workers marched against austerity in a country where the jobless rate is also around 27 per cent.

Waving brightly coloured protest flags, nearly 13,000 people answered the call of unions and leftist groups to rally in the country, facing its sixth year of recession and making painful job cuts to appease international creditors.

In France, where unemployment has also hit a record high of 3.2 million people, the National Front party of extreme rightist Marine Le Pen, which also traditionally marches on May 1, called for a light of hope in a France "locked in the darkness of Europe."

France "is sinking into an absurd policy of endless austerity... because it's about always saying yes to Brussels, to Berlin of course, and to financial moguls in all circumstances," she said.

Pope Francis used a private mass in his residence to mark May Day to decry "slave labour" and urged political leaders to fight unemployment in a sweeping critique of "selfish profit" which he said "goes against God."

He said conditions in the Bangladesh factory that collapsed last week killing more than 400 workers were "called slave labour" with employees paid just 38 euros ($50) a month.

In Dhaka, protesters held red banners and flags chanting "Hang the killers, Hang the Factory Owners" after the devastating collapse of the garment factory, as rescuers warned the final toll could be more than 500.

Police put the number of protesters at the main rally at more than 20,000, and there were smaller-scale protests elsewhere in the Bangladeshi capital and in other cities.

In Turkey's biggest city Istanbul, police fired tear gas and water cannon at stone-throwing protesters trying to gather for a banned demonstration.

More than 30 people, mostly police, were injured and 72 arrests were made as fighting erupted in three neighbourhoods leading to Taksim Square.

And some 20,000 protested in Croatia, where unemployment stands at 22 per cent and union leaders warned they were giving their government a "last chance to change direction".

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Eurozone rescue fund nears capital target

A MASSIVE rescue fund created to ward off further crisis in the eurozone has reached more than half its capital target and is on pace to become the world's richest financial institution, the European Stability Mechanism says.

"Thanks to the contributions of our Member States the ESM has a very robust capital structure", said Klaus Regling, Managing Director of the ESM.

"As foreseen, the 17 Member States of the euro area transferred the third tranche of paid-in capital to the ESM by 30 April 2013," he said.

The ESM is a crucial piece of the effort by eurozone countries to bring an end to the three year old crisis.

It is designed to shield the eurozone's most fragile governments from single-handedly recapitalising their country's teetering banks, which has seen public deficits balloon destabilising world markets.

Regling said eurozone member states had boosted their capitalisation of the war chest to 48 billion euros ($A61.44 billion) with two remaining tranches to be paid in October and April next year.

"Upon payment of the final tranche, the ESM will have a paid-in capital of 80 billion euros, becoming the international financial institution with the highest paid-in capital worldwide," Regling said.

In a year the ESM will have reached a lending capacity of 500 billion euros, he said, not counting an existing 192 billion euros in commitments to the ESM precursor, the European Financial Stability Facility.

The ESM is a permanent rescue fund and only came into being after a challenge at the German Constitutional Court was rejected last summer.

Full operation of the ESM however still awaits the creation of an EU-wide banking supervisor.

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India sex crime laws not tough enough: UN

INDIA'S new sex crime laws do not go far enough to protect women or tackle gender inequality, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women says.

The legislation was passed following the fatal gang rape of a student on a Delhi bus in mid-December that sparked nationwide demonstrations over the lack of safety for women.

New measures passed by Indian MPs in March increased punishments for sex offenders to include the death penalty if a victim dies, and broadened the definition of sexual assault.

But Rashida Manjoo, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against women, said the laws were still not tough enough.

She told a news conference it was unfortunate that the opportunity to establish a substantive framework "to protect and prevent against all forms of violence against women, was lost".

Her comments echoed those of other Indian women's activists who praised the intent of the legislation but said it still had huge holes.

Campaigners are unhappy about MPs' refusal to criminalise marital rape or increase the punishment for acid attacks on women from a minimum seven-year jail term.

The UN official, who toured several Indian states to obtain first-hand reports about violence against women, said she would release her findings to the world body next year.

She said she had heard on her 10-day visit about "sexual violence, domestic violence, cast-based discrimination and violence, dowry related deaths, crimes in the name of honour" and other offences.

She quoted one person on her trip as describing violence against women as spanning the "life cycle from womb to the tomb".

Her trip came in the wake of a call in December by UN rights chief Navi Pillay for India to help rid itself of the "scourge" of rape after the 23-year-old bus victim died of injuries inflicted by six drunken men.

Manjoo said demonstrations in the wake of her death seemed not to have had any effect in curbing sex crimes.

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US police arrest three suspects in Boston

US police have announced that they have arrested three more suspects as part of their investigation into a bomb attack on the Boston marathon that left three dead and more than 260 wounded.

"Three additional suspects taken into custody in Marathon bombing case. Details to follow," the Boston Police Department said on Twitter.

One of two ethnic Chechens, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was already in custody and has been charged with carrying out the bombing.

His brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed on April 18 during the manhunt for the pair.

The brothers are alleged to have detonated backpacks holding pressure cookers packed with explosives near the finish line of the April 15 race. They are also accused of killing a police officer during their time on the run.

Boston police did not immediately offer more details of the arrests, but the Boston Globe newspaper reported the new suspects were college students who are alleged to have helped Dzhokhar after the attack.

Officials have said they are investigating a recent period Tamerlan spent in the volatile North Caucasus region of Russia and intelligence reports that he had developed an increasingly radical view of his Islamic faith.

But investigators have not suggested the pair were part of a larger group.

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UK police track dementia patients via GPS

A BRITISH police force is hoping to save time and money by giving a few dementia patients GPS tracking devices, a move condemned by some campaigners as "barbaric."

Last week, Sussex police announced a plan to buy GPS devices for 15 people with dementia who are at high risk of getting lost.

The device can be worn around the neck or attached to a keychain. It sends the person's GPS location to a website every four minutes.

Chief Inspector Tanya Jones described it as a "cost-effective" strategy, which would save police time and money by not having to frequently search for lost patients.

The National Pensioners Convention on Wednesday slammed the idea as inhumane and said patients could be stigmatised and made to feel like criminals.

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London stocks rise amid May Day holiday

THE British stock market has risen in low-volume deals, amid a public holiday in much of Asia and Europe, before the Federal Reserve's latest interest rate call and following disappointing US data.

London's FTSE 100 index of top companies won 0.33 per cent to 6,451.29 points, as dealers also absorbed better-than-expected British manufacturing data.

The US central bank's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will announce the outcome of its latest monetary policy meeting at 1815 GMT.

Ahead of the decision, investors digested US jobs and manufacturing data. Payrolls firm ADP reported that the American private sector added only 119,000 jobs in April, the slowest job growth in seven months.

Elsewhere, US manufacturing activity slowed sharply in April to the slowest pace of the year, the ISM report released on Wednesday showed.

"With European equities closed for the May day bank holiday, UK traders initially sent stocks (higher) as strong corporate earnings, optimism over a European rate cut and better than expected (British) PMI manufacturing numbers contributed to strong risk appetite early on," said CMC Markets trader Tobias Morris.

"The bullish mood dissipated in afternoon trade however, as weaker than expected macro data from the States capped gains in the short term."

In foreign exchange activity, the euro rallied to a nine-week high at $1.3243 on growing hopes of a rate cut from the European Central Bank this Thursday.

The single currency later stood at $1.3186, up from $1.3165 late in New York on Tuesday. On the London Bullion Market, gold fell to $1,454.75 an ounce from $1,469 Tuesday.

Later on Wednesday, the Fed is widely expected to maintain its extraordinary $85 billion-a-month bond purchasing programme.

The central bank also was seen holding its key interest rate at zero to 0.25 per cent, where it has been since December 2008.

The Fed has already signalled that it would not raise the interest rate at least until unemployment falls below 6.5 per cent or if inflation threatens its 2.0 per cent annual target rate over the medium term.

The ultra-low rate and the bond purchase programme, or quantitative easing (QE), are aimed at spurring growth in the economy and supporting recovery in the battered jobs market, where the unemployment rate is 7.6 per cent.

"Most investors expect the Federal Reserve to continue with their QE and bond purchasing stimulus plan to provide momentum to the economy," noted Currencies Direct dealer Amir Khan.

Wall Street fell in midday trade Wednesday ahead of the Fed rate decision. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.42 per cent to 14,777.30 points.

The broad-based S&P 500 lost 0.43 per cent to 1,590.89 points a day after hitting a new record closing high

In Asian trade on Wednesday, Tokyo stocks fell 0.44 per cent as the yen's strength and gloomy eurozone economic data offset positive sentiment after the S&P 500 closed at another record high.

Markets in China, Hong Kong, South Korea, India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan and Singapore were all closed on Wednesday for the May Day holiday.

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