Police end Mexico City plaza occupation

Police have raided Mexico City's historic centre to remove striking teachers from Zocalo plaza. Source: AAP

RIOT police have swept thousands of striking teachers out of the heart of Mexico City.

The authorities used tear gas, flash grenades and water cannon against protesters to bring a swift end to weeks of occupation of the Zocalo plaza over reforms to the country's dysfunctional education system.

Three days before Mexican Independence Day, the teachers armed themselves with metal pipes and wooden clubs and blocked off the Zocalo with steel grates and plastic traffic dividers, threatening to scuttle the traditional national celebration in the massive colonial-era square.

Before moving in, the government had promised that Independence Day celebrations would take place in the Zocalo as scheduled, and the head of the federal police warned on national television that police would move in at 4pm local time.

The teachers, many veterans of battles with police in poor southern states, promised not to move from the square where they have camped out since last month.

Some fixed knives and nails to wooden planks and declared themselves ready to fight.

Others set up sewage-filled portable toilets in the path of police vehicles.

Shortly after 4pm, the police swarmed in, shooting tear gas from specially equipped fire extinguishers, tossing flash grenades and spraying water from armoured trucks.

Protesters hurled sticks and chunks of pavement broken from the streets around world-famous tourist attractions including the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Templo Mayor and the National Palace.

But within a half hour, police had cleared the Zocalo and much of the surrounding historic centre of virtually all protesters.

Union organisers said they would reassemble away from the main plaza at the nearby Monument to the Revolution.

Small knots of teachers, self-described local anarchists and other supporters hurled bottles and rocks at police on some of the main avenues of downtown Mexico City.

It was a dramatic reassertion of state authority after weeks of near-constant disruption in the centre of one of the world's largest cities.

The teachers have marched through the capital at least 15 times over the last two months, decrying a plan that aims to break union control of education with a new system of standardised teacher testing that become law on Tuesday.

The teachers say blocking the reform itself is no longer the point.

They say they are now trying to maintain pressure to protect their rights and privileges as the government puts the labour reforms into effect and reduces union control over teacher hiring and assignment.

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Singer Joan Regan dies aged 85

BRITISH singer Joan Regan has died in London aged 85, the BBC reports.

Regan had chart hits in the late 50s and early 60s with records including Ricochet, May You Always and If I Give My Heart To You and also had her own BBC TV series Be My Guest.

Born in Romford, Essex, she was signed up by theatre impresario Bernard Delfont and went on to star on both sides of the Atlantic with artists including Perry Como, Max Bygraves and Cliff Richard and performed on many occasions at the London Palladium.

An accident in the shower in 1984 caused a blood clot on the brain and left her paralysed and without speech, but through therapy she made a complete recovery and was able to sing again.

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Qld prison stand-off ends peacefully

A 10-HOUR prison stand-off that began when two inmates scaled the roof of a Brisbane jail has ended peacefully.

A spokesman for Queensland corrective services said two men who climbed onto the roof of the Brisbane Correctional Centre at Wacol to protest the placement of another inmate in solitary confinement were successfully talked down by police.

"They've come down off the roof. The protest is over," the spokesman said about 10pm (AEST).

"Police and corrective services negotiated and talked them down."

The prison, in the city's west, had to be placed into lockdown as police negotiators worked to coax the men down.

The two inmates had been on their way back from an oval when they climbed on top of a building just before noon.

The corrective services spokesman said the situation was resolved peacefully.

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Bomber attacks funeral in Iraq

OFFICIALS in Iraq say a suicide bomber has attacked a funeral for members of an ethnic minority in the country, killing 11 people.

Police say a suicide bomber set off an explosive belt inside a funeral held by members of Shabak minority near the northern city of Mosul on Saturday afternoon. Authorities said that at least 13 were wounded in the attack.

The Shabaks are ethnic Turkomen and Shi'ite Muslims. Most of them live in villages east of Mosul, the provincial capital of the ethnically mixed Ninevah province that is predominantly Sunni Muslim.

Officials in nearby hospitals confirmed the death toll.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to journalists.

The attack came amid a surge in nationwide violence that has left more than 4000 people dead so far this year and sparked concerns Iraq is slipping back into the all-out sectarian war that plagued it in 2006 and 2007.

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No bail for worst child porn suspect

A MAN described by the FBI as being the largest facilitator of child porn on the planet has been remanded in custody after being refused bail for a second time.

Eric Eoin Marques is wanted in the United Stated on four charges linked to website images described as being extremely violent, graphic and depicting the rape and torture of pre-pubescent children.

Justice John Edwards, sitting at the High Court in Dublin where extradition proceedings are under way, accepted evidence from the FBI and Irish police that the 28-year-old is a flight risk or likely to destroy evidence if released.

Marques, who has Irish and US citizenship, is wanted in connection with four counts involving the advertising of child pornography, distribution of child pornography, conspiracy to advertise child pornography, and conspiracy to distribute child pornography.

If convicted in the US on all four counts he could be jailed for up to 100 years.

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China vows air pollution cuts

China has announced plans to reduce levels of pollutants in the air by up to 25 per cent in Beijing. Source: AAP

CHINA has vowed to reduce levels of atmospheric pollutants in Beijing and other major cities by as much as 25 per cent to try to improve their dire air quality.

China's State Council, or cabinet, said on Thursday that "concentrations of fine particles" in the capital's air will fall by "approximately 25 per cent" from 2012 levels by 2017.

Other major Chinese cities on China's affluent east coast, including Shanghai and Guangzhou, will see reductions of between 10 and 20 per cent from 2012 levels over the same period, said a plan posted on the central government's website.

Cities across China have been hit by intense air pollution in recent years, much of it caused by emissions from coal-burning power stations, with levels of small particles known as PM2.5 reaching as high as 40 times World Health Organisation (WHO) limits this year.

The pollution has been linked to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, and has tarnished the image of Chinese cities including Beijing, which saw an almost 15 per cent drop in tourist visits during the first half of this year.

The plan said pollution levels would be cut by slowing the growth of coal consumption, so that its share of China's total energy consumption falls to 65 per cent by 2017.

China relied on coal for 67 per cent of its energy needs last year, environmental group the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said in a statement.

"We call on the Chinese government to set a more positive target, to more strictly limit coal consumption," WWF China's climate and energy project manager Lu Lunyan said in the statement.

China is the world's biggest coal consumer and is forecast to account for more than half of global demand next year.

Three of China's most populated coastal regions - including the areas surrounding Shanghai, Beijing, and the manufacturing hub of the Pearl River delta - should "strive to achieve a reduction in total consumption of coal", the plan said.

But it did not state any precise targets for reductions, and activists gave the proposals a mixed assessment.

The plan "takes very important steps" towards controlling rapid growth in coal consumption, said Li Yan, climate and energy campaign manager at Greenpeace East Asia.

But to reduce air pollution significantly "it will be necessary to limit coal consumption in other areas as well", she said in a statement.

The plan did not call for cuts in coal consumption in China's vast inland provinces, which researchers earlier this year said are responsible for 80 per cent of China's carbon dioxide emissions, mostly as a result of coal-burning.

China's coastal areas are "outsourcing" pollution internally to meet emissions reduction targets, researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this June.

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Yahoo now has 800 million users: CEO

Yahoo boss Marissa Mayer says the internet company now has about 800 million worldwide users. Source: AAP

YAHOO boss Marissa Mayer says the internet company now has about 800 million worldwide users, a 20 per cent increase since she was lured away from Google 15 months ago to steer a turnaround.

The gain disclosed on Wednesday at a technology conference in San Francisco is the latest evidence of the progress that Yahoo is making under Mayer's leadership.

The Sunnyvale, California, company's stock has nearly doubled since Mayer came aboard, though she and analysts say that gain primarily stems from the value of Yahoo's holdings in China's rapidly growing Alibaba Group.

Mayer says the figure for the 800 million Yahoo users doesn't include the traffic that the company has picked up from its $US1.1 billion acquisition of internet blogging service Tumblr earlier this year.

Despite the increased traffic, Yahoo is still struggling to boost its online advertising revenue - the main way that the company makes money. In recent quarters, Yahoo's ad revenue has been barely rising while Google and another rival, Facebook, have been thriving.

Mayer says she believes it her strategy for accelerating Yahoo's revenue growth will require at least three years to unfold.

Yahoo's stock shed 29 US cents on Wednesday to close at $US29.19.

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Unemployment tipped to hit four year high

Unemployment has hit a four year high and could get up to six per cent. Source: AAP

THE unemployment rate is expected to have hit a four year high in August as businesses held off on hiring until after the federal election.

Official labour force figures are to be released on Thursday morning, and the median forecast from an AAP survey of 11 economists is for the unemployment rate to rise to 5.8 per cent, from 5.7 per cent in July.

Unemployment hasn't been that high since August 2009.

The number of people with jobs is expected to have risen by 10,000 in August, compared to a fall of 10,200 in July.

But JP Morgan Australia chief economist Stephen Walters said jobs growth of 10,000 a month is not enough to absorb the increase in population and keep the unemployment rate from rising.

"It is possible that firms held back hiring decisions close to the federal election, which would depress the August numbers," he said.

"It is difficult to disentangle the impact of an election from the prevailing macro backdrop of the time, but there is circumstantial evidence of a pre-election hiring stall in one recent case."

Mr Walters there was a similar pattern ahead of the November 2007 election, when Labor's Kevin Rudd defeated the then prime minister John Howard.

The participation rate - the percentage of the working-age population either in work or looking for a job - is expected to rise to 65.2 per cent in August, from 65.1 per cent in July.

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Computer upgrades cut US jobless claims

THE number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits plummeted 31,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 292,000, but the drop was mostly due to technical issues in two states that delayed the processing of applications.

The Labor Department said on Thursday that the less volatile four-week average fell to 321,250, the lowest in six years.

A government spokesman said the steep drop occurred because two states upgraded their computer systems last week and did not process all their applications.

"This is not necessarily an indication of a change in labour market conditions," he said.

The spokesman would not identify the states, but said one was small and one large. Big states like California and Texas can swing the weekly data by 10,000 or more.

Applications will likely rebound in the coming weeks, he said.

The broader trend in unemployment benefit applications has been favourable. Prior to the glitch applications had dropped 7 per cent in the previous three months. However, the decline in jobless claims has not been followed by rapid hiring.

"It's hard to believe that claims can keep declining indefinitely without a commensurate pickup in job growth," said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG. "Then again, that's exactly what they have done."

Applications are a proxy for layoffs. Layoffs have been falling since 2009 and in July reached the lowest level on records dating back to 2000, according to a separate government report released this week.

But unemployment remains painfully high at 7.3 per cent more than four years after the Great Recession ended. And the economy grew at a modest 2.5 per cent annual rate in the April-June quarter.

That's made the unemployment applications data less reliable for predicting job growth than in past recoveries.

Historically, falling applications have pointed to a pickup in hiring and stronger economic growth.

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Torture weapons 'promoted at UK fair'

ILLEGAL torture weapons are being promoted at an arms fair being held in London, according to the Green Party's Caroline Lucas.

Lucas said the French company MagForce International and the Chinese company Tianjin MyWay International Trading are promoting the weapons at the DSEI arms fair in London's Docklands.

The Brighton Pavilion MP said it was not the first time illegal weapons have been found at the arms fair, being held at the ExCeL centre, and called on ministers to urgently make a statement about how it was allowed to happen.

"I have evidence here that French company MagForce International and Chinese company Tianjin MyWay international trading have been promoting illegal weapons of torture at the DSEI arms fair being held in London Docklands this week," Lucas told Britain's House of Commons.

"Can you advise me what to do to get this information to BIS (Business, Innovation and Skills) ministers as fast as possible to get them urgently to make a statement in this House about how this can have happened, especially since it is not the first time that illegal weapons have been found at DSEI?"

Speaker John Bercow confirmed that Lucas had taken the speediest action possible.

"You have found your own salvation," he replied.

"The Treasury bench will have heard what you have to say, it will be a matter only I'm sure of seconds before your remarks wing their way towards the Business Secretary (Vince Cable).

"I may simply say it is then for him to decide how to respond. It is not a matter of order for the chair but you are well aware of the opportunities that you have to call ministers to account and I feel sure that you will deploy the weapons at your disposal."

The DSEI arms fair began on Tuesday and will end on September 13.

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