The couple’s son, Sonny, was outside his fibro shack with his five children, watching the monster surf, lashed by north-west winds, rise ever higher. In the commotion, everyone had forgotten that Sedoi, the baby, was still inside. They heard her crying and found her in her cot, covered in sand. Water had surged in after a wave picked up a big wooden pallet and flung it through the front wall.

No one on Murray had ever seen such a high tide before. Other islands in the Torres Strait, which lies between the far north-eastern tip of the Australian mainland and Papua New Guinea, have witnessed similar scenes in recent years. Houses, roads and graveyards have been flooded, and the locals believe they know the reason: climate change.

While the Taliban have launched sporadic suicide attacks in Kabul, the militants have not before been detected in any numbers inside the city which they have vowed to target this year in their fight to overthrow the pro-Western Afghan government.

The clash comes just days after Taliban gunmen fired at a state parade sending President Hamid Karzai, his cabinet and the military top brass diving for cover. Three people were killed in Sunday’s attack before troops killed three Taliban attackers.

One of the men who died in Wednesday’s siege had taken part in the parade attack, a Taliban spokesman said. One other militant, a woman and her daughter were also killed in a raid on the house, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press quoted the spokesman as saying.

Discrimination would be removed in laws covering taxation, pensions, health care and veteran’s entitlements.

“The recognition of same-sex de facto couples is long overdue and will bring Australian national law into line with all Australia’s states and territories and many other Western nations,” Australian Coalition for Equality spokesman Rodney Croome said.

He said that draft legislation should also cover provisions for same-sex marriages.

Most weeknights, a smuggler leads clandestine migrants across the maze of motorways that encircle Calais to parking lots like this, where drivers sleep before catching a ferry to Dover, 33 kilometers, or 21 miles, away.

Truckers like Juan Antonio Santiago of Spain, sipping coffee at a gas station at 1 a.m., face hefty fines or even jail if stowaways are found hidden inside their vehicles, or clinging to the ledge behind the axle. “It’s a fear we all have,” he said. “But the greatest risk is taken by the migrants, because of the danger of falling off.”

Just down the street at Populart a crowd of jazz aficionados sip gin and tonics from giant goblets. A few young Turks in leather jackets stick to beer at the far end of the bar as the West Africa-born Justin Tchatchoua and his Afro Group warm everyone up with selections from their new CD of African fusion beats.

Similar scenes — some rowdy, others refined — are replicated nightly all across the city. Within a 10-minute stroll from the Puerta del Sol, the center of historic Madrid, music lovers can take their pick of live jazz, rock, flamenco or folk-rock, or an ever-growing fusion of all the above by top Spanish artists like Manu Chao or the rising flamenco star Esperanza Fernández. Mixed in you might find international names like Busta Rhymes or the Strokes.

Tens of thousands have crossed into India since 1959, when Chinese put down a Tibetan uprising.

Many of the refugees were housed in settlements in southern and other parts of India in the 1960s and 1970s.

Because of dwindling economic opportunities in the settlements, more recent refugees have settled in the north.

The city of Dharamsala in the Himalayan foothills, where the Dalai Lama and Tibetan government-in-exile are based, is the hub of the diaspora.

President Kibaki speaks during the ceremony that also saw the swearing in of Cabinet Ministers and Assistant Ministers.

The ministers now join their Party of National Unity counterparts and those from other small parties to form what President Kibaki called a unified Government devoid of divisions.

And foreign envoys accredited to Kenya described Thursday’s development as a milestone, but called for caution in implementing the remaining phases of the peace deal brokered by former UN chief, Dr Kofi Annan, on February 28.

Yesterday, UK rates came down a quarter to 5%. ECB rates held steady as expected at 4% and all of us who continue to feel poorer can be grateful that we’re not paying a mortgage in Iceland. There a surprise upward move has taken rates 50bps higher to 15.5% as they try to cool inflation near 9% and prop up their sickly currency, the krona.

What did the markets make of these monetary decisions? Not much. European stocks, as measured by the Eurofirst 300, closed down 0.4%. The FTSE 100 was down 0.3%. Again, be grateful if you didn’t invest in Icelandic stocks. The Icelandic index, two-thirds of it bank stocks, is down 80% over one year!

An appeals court rejected a bid by Vancouver police on Tuesday to block a hearing on whether Peter Hayes’ rights were violated when an officer refused to grant him the permit he needed to get a chauffeur’s job.