'Albo' has nothing to fear from reshuffle

Federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese is likely to remain a part of Julia Gillard's Cabinet after any reshuffle this week. Picture: Sam Ruttyn Source: News Limited

ANTHONY Albanese is not universally liked within the Labor Party - nobody is - but he does have more friends than most.

When Prime Minister Julia Gillard announces her reshuffle, probably today, Albanese will keep his jobs despite having been linked to moves to return Kevin Rudd to the top job.

As Leader of the House, he is the guy who keeps the minority government working, rounding up the essential votes needed and scheduling a legislative agenda which is not just manageable but successful.

Albanese is also the Infrastructure Minister, which makes him something of a 12-months-a-year Santa Claus, handing out money for roads, bridges, ports and other big things that make life easier for voters.

It's natural Labor MPs will like Albanese, including Rudd, who understands the Sydney left-winger can sway opinion in the parliamentary and wider party.

Rudd and Albanese regard themselves as friends - going back to Kim Beazley's last time as leader when the Queenslander offered his colleague a spot as deputy.

A year ago Albanese publicly backed Rudd for the leadership, in large part because of a continuing distaste for what happened to the former prime minister in June 2010.

After that ballot, Albanese offered his resignation to Gillard but she turned it down.

Albanese told colleagues he would not support any move against a sitting prime minister, and he told his good friend Wayne Swan he would never challenge him in any circumstances.

The Rudd forces - like their champion - always exaggerated what they were doing, who was following them and what consequences might occur.

This included spreading the view that Albanese was on a promise from Rudd to be the deputy if the leadership changed, and that the minister was closely involved in renewed agitating for Gillard's downfall.

According to MPs who spoke to him, Albanese made it clear that the only circumstance in which he would support a return to Rudd would be if Gillard quit and there was a clean slate - something that didn't happen and was never likely to happen.

Because Albanese was named incorrectly as one of the Rudd number crunchers - along with Chris Bowen, Kim Carr and Joel Fitzgibbon - who last Thursday gave last-minute advice to the former prime minister, he has been targeted by some commentators and those enemies he does have in the ALP.

If Albanese offered his resignation - which he says is not needed - it wouldn't be accepted by Gillard. She wants him doing the job he does and for which he is widely respected.

 Dennis Atkins is The Courier-Mail's national affairs editor.

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Zygier gave up names of informants: report

THE man known as Prisoner X - Melbourne-born former Mossad agent Ben Zygier - was outfoxed trying to turn a Hezbollah representative into a double agent and unwittingly became one himself, handing over the names of two valuable informants in Lebanon, Fairfax Media says.

That is the reason why he became a top-secret inmate in an Israeli jail where he took his own life.

Fairfax says Mr Zygier, recruited in 2004, was disconsolate that his career as a Mossad agent had become bogged down at a desk job and he took it upon himself to turn the Hezbollah link into a double agent.

But in an effort to prove he was a Mossad agent, he handed over the names of two informants in Lebanon who were subsequently arrested and given hefty jail sentences.

Fairfax says that unable to bear the shame of his downfall, and facing a minimum 10-year jail sentence with no prospect of a return to the Mossad, Mr Zygier apparently took his own life on December 15, 2010.

Fairfax said that he learned that east European man was known to be close to the militant Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hezbollah, and set up a meeting towards the end of 2008 with the intention of turning him into a double agent.

But the reverse happened, and Mr Zygier became the conduit for information flowing from Tel Aviv to Hezbollah.

In an effort to prove his Mossad bona fides he gave up the names of Israel's two top Lebanese informants, Ziad al-Homsi and Mustafa Ali Awadeh.

Both men were subsequently arrested in 2009 and sentenced to 15 years jail with hard labour.

* Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

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Cyprus in last-ditch bailout talks

CYPRUS President Nicos Anastasiades has entered emergency talks with the island's international creditors seeking to avert bankruptcy in a crisis that is again threatening the stability of the wider eurozone.

The clock is ticking for the tiny country after the European Central Bank threatened to halt life-support funding if there is no deal by Monday, a day before Cyprus's banks are due to reopen after a 10-day shutdown.

Cyprus and its creditors are trying to nail a deal that will restructure the island's banks and deliver up to six billion euros ($A7.5 billion) from large bank deposits in order to resurrect an agreement for a bailout worth up to 10 billion euros.

European Union economics head Olli Rehn acknowledged Cypriot leaders faced hard choices to try to limit the damage from the blow to its bloated banking sector, after a firestorm of protest over the EU plans to impose a special levy on bank customer deposits.

Anastasiades's cortege entered EU headquarters in Brussels shortly after 2pm on Sunday (0001 AEDT Monday), an AFP correspondent said.

Anastasiades was to meet with ECB head Mario Draghi, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, EU president Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem and Rehn, sources told AFP.

Dijsselbloem will also bring in the finance ministers from all 17 currency partners from 1700 GMT (0400 AEDT) for what is likely to prove yet another sleepless night in snow-covered Brussels.

Cypriot reports suggested officials had made progress with EU and IMF representatives, having agreed a 20 per cent haircut on Bank of Cyprus and a 4.0 per cent levy on other banks.

A radical restructuring of the island's second largest lender Laiki (Popular Bank) will see all deposits over 100,000 euros put into a "bad bank" where they will be tied up for years and may never be fully recovered.

But negotiations stumbled on EU-IMF demands for a substantial levy on deposits above the same threshold in the Bank of Cyprus to avoid it facing similar restructuring. It holds more than a third of all deposits.

The haircut would take the form of a bond or share swap in a bid to get the measure through parliament.

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Brit in India 'shouted for help for hour'

A BRITISH woman who jumped from a hotel balcony in India fearing a sexual assault says she shouted for help for more than an hour before she fled.

Jessica Davies, 31, from London, says she barricaded the door of her hotel room in Agra with furniture to stop two men from entering.

"I held my key in the lock and I could feel them turning it from the other side," she told the BBC.

Davies, a dental hygienist, injured both legs in the jump but said her ordeal could have been a lot worse.

The manager of the hotel and another member of staff appeared in court on Wednesday accused of harassing Davies, with their lawyer saying they denied the charges.

Davies said she wanted to talk about her experience "because the shame of sexual assault makes many people too scared to speak out".

She also said it was "disgusting" that her fellow hotel residents had failed to help.

The incident came just days after a Swiss cyclist was allegedly gang-raped in the central state of Madhya Pradesh by a group of villagers, while on a cycling trip with her husband that was meant to include a stopover in Agra.

Davies, who is now back in Britain, told the BBC her ordeal began when she was "surprised" by a knock at her door at 3.45am.

She denied claims by the hotel manager's lawyer that she had asked for a wake-up call, saying she had set her phone alarm for 4.30am to catch a taxi for a train to Jaipur.

"By hook or by crook this person - or persons - were going to get into my room. I'm 100 per cent certain. And there was only one way out, to jump two floors."

She said a passing rickshaw driver took her to a police station where he stayed with her for hours and acted as translator.

"He was amazing," she said, but added: "I don't know his name and I don't know how to thank him."

She said she had not been put off from returning to India, but was "never going to travel alone again".

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Spain paper retracts Merkel Hitler column

SPANISH newspaper El Pais has retracted a column that compared German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Adolf Hitler and apologised for its "inappropriate" content after sparking an indignant internet outcry.

In the column, published on the paper's website and in its Andalusia regional edition, economist Juan Torres Lopez of the University of Seville wrote that "Angela Merkel, like Hitler, has declared war on the rest of the continent, this time to guarantee (Germany) its vital economic space".

"She punishes us to protect her large companies and banks and also to hide from her electorate the shameful model that has seen the poverty rate in her country rise to its highest level in 20 years, 25 per cent of employees earn less than 9.15 euros an hour and half the population represent ... a miserable one per cent of all the nation's wealth."

After the column provoked shocked reactions online, the newspaper took it down from its website and apologised.

"El Pais has withdrawn the article 'Germany against Europe' ... because it contained statements that this newspaper considers inappropriate," it said.

"El Pais regrets that a supervisory error allowed the publication of this material. The opinions expressed by Torres Lopes are his alone."

The article had set media commentators and German Twitter users aflutter.

"Bitter. Now El Pais has also published an editorial, in which Merkel is compared to Hitler," wrote Robin Alexander, a journalist with German daily Die Welt, on Twitter.

"To put Merkel's policies on a level with Hitler's is as loco (crazy) as it gets," Mathieu von Rohr, Paris bureau chief for German weekly Der Spiegel, wrote on Twitter.

"Of course Merkel's (and everybody's) stance may be criticised. But to use Hitler is incendiary, stupid and irresponsible."

But the retraction also drew criticism.

"Shameful El Pais censoring an article by J. Torres Lopez for criticising Merkel," wrote Twitter user Adrian Arcas Munoz.

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French gay marriage foes stage protest

TENS of thousands opposed to French legislation allowing gay marriage have protested on a route leading to the Champs Elysees after police banned them marching on the famed Paris avenue.

The hugely controversial bill to legalise same-sex marriage and adoption has been comfortably adopted by the lower chamber of parliament and will go to the Senate for examination and approval in April.

The upper house is unlikely to prevent the groundbreaking reform from becoming law.

The protestors want the government to withdraw the project and put it to a referendum.

The demonstrators highlighted France's flagging economy, beset by mass layoffs and spiralling unemployment, attacking Socialist President Francois Hollande's government of ignoring pressing issues while pushing ahead with his election pledge of "Marriage for All".

Banners held up from balconies read "We want work not gay marriage" and "No to gayxtremism".

The Paris police had turned down a request from the protest organisers to march on the Champs-Elysees on the ground it would be a threat to public order, partly because it borders the French presidential palace.

The demonstrators lined a five-kilometre route from the Paris business district of La Defence to the roundabout where the Arc de Triomphe is located.

Police sprayed teargas to keep up to 200 protesters from trying to march on the Champs Elysees, AFP photographers said.

The movement against gay marriage has given France a new celebrity in the form of its public face, Virginie Tellenne, a Parisian socialite who goes by the name of Frigide Barjot.

Her assumed name - a play on the name of French film star Brigitte Bardot - translates as Frigid Loony.

"We want the president to deal with the economy and leave the family alone," Tellenne said on Sunday.

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NY mayor to pour millions into gun control

NEW York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he will invest $US12 million ($A11.5 million) in a nationwide ad campaign to counter the powerful US gun lobby and rally support for background checks in gun sales.

"We're running ads around the country. We have people manning phone banks and calling. We're trying to do everything we can to impress upon the senators that this is what the survivors want," Bloomberg told NBC's Meet the Press.

"I don't think there's ever been an issue where the public has spoken so clearly where Congress hasn't eventually understood and done the right thing."

He added: "If 90 per cent of the public wants something and their representatives vote against that, common sense says they are going to have a price to pay."

Wayne LaPierre, head of the powerful National Rifle Association, brushed off the billionaire mayor's plans, telling the same news program his group's members had already mobilised to oppose new gun control legislation.

Bloomberg is "going to find out this is a country of the people, by the people, and for the people. And he can't spend enough of his $US27 billion to try to impose his will on the American public," LaPierre said.

"We have people all over, millions of people, sending us $US5, $US10, $US15 cheques, saying stand up to this guy."

He said the NRA would support a better system of keeping records on the mentally ill and convicted criminals, as well as harsher penalties for individuals who use firearms to commit crimes.

Bloomberg has said he will focus his campaign on legislation to expand background checks, which is seen as having a much better chance of succeeding than an outright ban on assault weapons or high-capacity magazines.

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