EGYPT'S powerful military says it "supports dialogue" to resolve the political crisis dividing the nation, in its first statement since street protests against President Mohamed Morsi erupted more than two weeks ago.
"The path of dialogue is the best and only way to reach agreement and achieve the interests of the nation and its citizens," the statement, from the spokesman of the armed forces, said on Saturday.
A POLICE officer clocked driving at more than double the speed limit in Melbourne's southeast has been suspended with pay.
Highway patrol recorded the leading senior constable travelling at 122km/h in a 50km/h zone in Garden Road, Clayton, about 10.15pm (AEDT) on Friday.
His car will be impounded for 30 days and he is expected to be charged on summons with driving offences, a police spokeswoman said.
The ethical standards command will investigate the incident and has suspended the officer with pay.
The officer will also face an internal disciplinary inquiry.
Road Policing Command Superintendent Neville Taylor said anyone caught driving dangerously would be held accountable.
"We expect all motorists to behave responsibly on our roads, regardless of who they are," he said in a statement.
"No one is above the law and if you do the wrong thing you will be caught and penalised."
THE US military has detained more than 200 Afghan teenagers who were captured in the war for about a year at a time at a military prison next to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, the United States has told the UN.
The US State Department characterised the detainees held since 2008 as "enemy combatants" in a report sent every four years to the UN in Geneva updating US compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The US military had held them "to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield", the report said.
A few teenagers are still confined at the detention facility in Parwan, which will be turned over to the Afghan government, it said.
"Many of them have been released or transferred to the Afghan government," said the report, which was distributed this week.
Most of the juvenile Afghan detainees were about 16 years old, but their age was not usually determined until after capture, the US report said.
If the average age is 16, "this means it is highly likely that some children were as young as 14 or 13 years old when they were detained by US forces," Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's human rights program, said on Friday.
Tina M Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, which represents adult and juvenile Bagram detainees, questioned the report's figures.
"I question the number of 200, because there are thousands of detainees at Parwan."
The US State Department was called for comment on the criticism, and a representative said they were seeking an officer to reply.
The report said "the purpose of detention is not punitive but preventative: to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield".
However, Foster said the teens seized are not in uniform or even typically taken in combat.
A US air strike in Pakistan has killed an al-Qaeda leader, Khaled Bin Abdel Rahman al-Hussainan, while he was having dinner after a day of fasting, the group has announced.
The militant, also known as Abu Zaid al-Kuwaiti, was killed when he was having a late dinner after fasting during the day, the group said in a brief statement posted on several jihadist websites late on Friday.
"We announce the martyrdom of Sheikh Khaled al-Hussainan who died as he was having his sohur meal and we pray to God to accept him in heaven," the statement said.
US television network NBC News quoted terrorism experts saying that the militant, a 46-year-old Kuwaiti, was a second generation leader of al-Qaeda.
They said he was among those who could have replaced Ayman al-Zawahiri as head of the extremist network, adding that the militant had been killed in a drone attack.
YOU could call it primitive art - but stone age man knew what he was doing when he daubed figures of animals on cave walls.
In fact, many modern artists could learn a lesson or two from their ancient forbears who lived up to 30,000 years ago, scientists claim.
The lifelike images found at sites such as the famous Lascaux Cave in southwest France are said to demonstrate an ability to depict animal movement superior to that seen today.
Researchers in Hungary examined prehistoric and modern artworks of paintings and statues of animals including horses, bulls and elephants.
They found the majority of depictions of animals walking or trotting had the legs wrongly positioned.
However, prehistoric paintings had the lowest error rate of 46.2 per cent.
In contrast, modern era artworks of animals in motion prior to the late 19th century were incorrect 83.5 per cent of the time.
Even Leonardo da Vinci, famous for his anatomical drawings, got it wrong when he tried to portray animal movement.
After the pioneering work of Eadweard Muybridge, who made the first detailed studies of animal gait in the 1880s, the error rate decreased to 57.9 per cent.
But even then, pictures of moving animals could not match those of the cavemen for accuracy.
The research, led by Dr Gabor Horvath from Eotvos University in Budapest, has been published in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE.
In their paper the scientists wrote: "Cavemen were more keenly aware of the slower motion of their prey animals and illustrated quadruped walking more precisely than later artists."
The Lauscaux Cave in the Vezere Valley of France's Dordogne region contains nearly 2000 figures of animals, human figures and abstract signs painted onto the walls with mineral pigments.
They include more than 300 pictures of horses, 90 paintings of stags, cattle, bison, cats, a bird, a bear and a rhinoceros.
Among the most famous images are four huge black bulls, or aurochs, one of which is 17ft long.
Indonesia's sports minister has resigned after being named as a suspect in a corruption case. Source: AAP
INDONESIA'S youth and sports minister has stepped down, a day after he was named as a suspect in a graft case linked to a sports education construction project near the capital.
Andi Mallarangeng, 49, claimed he was innocent, but said he needed to "focus on my legal case".
"Under the current situation, I won't be able to carry out my duties effectively."
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had accepted his resignation, and he had also stepped down from the advisory board of Yudhoyono's Democratic Party, the former minister said.
A project to build a sports education centre on Jakarta's outskirts showed signs of corruption costing the state around 243 billion rupiah ($A24.15 million), auditors have said.
The Corruption Eradication Commission has said it suspects Mallarangeng of delegating the signing of the contract to build the 1.1-trillion-rupiah centre to his secretary, breaching a law that requires a minister to sign any contract over 50 billion rupiah.
Democratic Party chairman Anas Urbaningrum has also been implicated, but not named as a suspect in the case, the latest in a series of corruption scandals involving top officials of the ruling coalition's largest party.
Party former treasurer and legislator Muhammad Nazaruddin is serving a jail term of more than four years and 10 months for taking a 4.6-billion-rupiah bribe for awarding the construction of an athletes' village for the 2011 South-East Asian Games.
Nazaruddin has accused Mallarangeng of receiving a kickback of 20 billion rupiah in connection with the sports education complex project.
Another senior party official and legislator, Angelina Sondakh, is on trial in a separate corruption case.
Mallarangeng was on Thursday banned from travel to be questioned over the allegations.
SENIOR Labor senator John Faulkner will move reforms at NSW Labor's next annual conference aimed at opening up the ALP and eliminating corruption.
Senator Faulkner this week said ALP powerbrokers held too much control over the party and Labor rank-and-file needed a greater say.
He's called for a code of conduct covering MPs and senators, including a "one strike and you're out" policy for any Labor member found guilty of corrupt behaviour.
Senator Faulker on Friday said he would take his reforms to NSW Labor's 2013 annual conference.
"It's my intention to move those proposals as rule changes at the next NSW annual conference," Mr Faulkner told ABC television's 7:30 Report.
"I don't intend to let those matters go. I intend to proceed with them."
Mr Faulkner said reform was urgent and conceded that without it Labor would take a hit at the next federal election.
"In a federal election this will cost us votes and cost us support as it will in a state election," he said.
The ALP stalwart said one key reform would be to end binding factional votes, an internal rule blamed for making it easy for party powerbrokers to maintain control.
"The problem comes when factions' interests are put before the interest of the Labor Party," Mr Faulkner said.
"The binding issue is just unacceptable, there's no need for that."
Mr Faulkner's call comes as a NSW corruption watchdog inquiry probes the involvement of former Labor ministers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald in the opening up of coal mining in the state's upper Hunter.
The inquiry has heard Mr Obeid was able to exert considerable control within parliamentary Labor as leader of a faction called the "Terrigals".
FEDERAL prosecutors say they have filed espionage charges against a German-Moroccan man on allegations he spied on Moroccan opposition supporters in Germany for the country's government.
Spokesman Marcus Koehler said on Friday that Bagdad A., 59, was charged on November 8.
His last name was not given in accordance with German privacy laws.
He's accused of providing Morocco's spy agency information on opposition supporters living in Germany that he had collected through a network of contacts from 2007 to 2012.
Among other things prosecutors say he provided details of opposition leaders who planned anti-government demonstrations.
A SOUTH Sudanese reporter often critical of the government has been shot dead at his home in the capital Juba, colleagues say, adding that he been recently threatened to stop writing.
Diing Chan Awuol, who wrote for news websites including Sudan Tribune and Gurtong under the pen-name Isaiah Abraham, was shot dead by unidentified men in his home in the early hours of Wednesday morning, police said.
"Police are investigating and they will be discovering what happened... they suspect an assassination as nothing has been stolen," said police spokesman James Monday Enoka.
One of his last articles urged Juba's government to improve relations with former civil war foes in Khartoum and stop any support for Sudanese rebel groups.
"Journalists said Chan had been threatened several times in the past and had received anonymous phone calls warning him to stop writing," the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists said, calling for a "thorough investigation".
"His real name was recently discovered and as a friend, he told me that security agents are after him," said a friend of Awuol, who asked not to be named.
"I advised him to abandon using 'Isaiah Abraham' and create a different pseudonym, but it was too late."
South Sudanese journalist Ayuen Panchuol said the killing was a way of saying "look, this is what will happen to you if don't shut up".
South Sudan, the world's newest country after it split from Sudan in July 2011 following decades of war, is struggling to rebuild basic institutions.
Awuol, who was married and with five children, fought with the South Sudanese rebels who battled Khartoum from 1983-2005, now the official army of the fledgling country.
Most recently he worked at the national justice commission.
Tanks have been deployed outside Egypt's presidential palace following a night of deadly clashes. Source: AAP
EGYPT'S army has deployed tanks outside the presidential palace after a night of deadly clashes between opponents and supporters of President Mohamed Morsi.
Three tanks and three armoured personnel carriers were stationed metres from the front gate of the palace in northern Cairo on Thursday as hundreds of Morsi's partisans chanted slogans in support of the president.
The military pledged on Thursday not to use violence against protesters.
General Mohammed Zaki, head of the Republican Guard tasked with protecting the president, said that "the armed forces, and the Republican Guard, will not be an instrument of oppression against protesters," the official MENA news agency reported.
