Word: australia
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...places from Cape Town to Minneapolis. But not all who have been forced to make new lives far away from Africa have done so easily. The past few years have seen the arrival in Somalia of 200 to 300 young ethnic Somali men from the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, Norway and Sweden, migrants' children returning to their ancestral homeland, according to diplomatic and intelligence sources in East Africa. A Western soldier working in Somalia says these foreign-born Somalis now dominate al-Shabab. "All their cells are commanded by a foreigner," he says. "All tactical and strategic decisions are taken...
...Australia has long been a strong opponent of whaling. During the conservative John Howard administration, the federal environmental minister lobbied for the International Whaling Committee (IWC) to ban whaling altogether in 2005. Two years later, a promise to put pressure on Japan to stop culling whales was part of Rudd's own election campaign platform, though last week's announcement was the first major step his administration has taken on the issue. "The Australian government promised to do something two years ago. They have been stalling on the issue," says Wally Franklin of the Southern Cross University Whale Research Centre...
...Calling Japan out on its whaling program could put Australia in a sticky position; Japan is, after all, Australia's largest export market. After Rudd's announcement last week, Japan's Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada and his Australian counterpart Stephen Smith held a pre-scheduled meeting in Perth. "We were able to confirm that the Australia-Japan relationship has gone beyond that of economic complementarity and is now a strategic partnership," Okada told reporters after the meeting. "Should court action become a reality, then Japan will seek to represent its case to the IWC, supporting the fact that its activities...
...Australia is due for an election at the end of this year and Rudd's approval rating has slumped from 65% in November to 55% in February. This could be due to the rising popularity of Tony Abbott, the leader of the opposition since December. Stopping whaling to the country's south has so far sat on a list of unfulfilled election promises with issues such as health care and housing. "I challenge the prime minister either to take Japan to the International Court or to admit that that was always just an empty gesture," Abbott told a government meeting...
...meantime, for many in Australia, even if Japan does end its whaling program in November (which history would suggest that it won't) that's still too long to wait for any decisive action. "Australia should seek an injunction to stop current whaling while the International Court of Justice determines the matter," Bob Brown, the leader of the Australian Greens Party, said in a statement. Watson, who was named by The Guardian in 2008 as one of 50 people that could save the planet, agrees. "It's as if the Australian government has told a bunch of bank robbers, 'Look...