PHARMACISTS would be asked to step up and perform duties including administering vaccines under a controversial plan to alleviate huge pressures on bush doctors.
QUEENSLAND'S great resources saviour, the multibillion-dollar LNG boom at Gladstone, may also prove a curse to consumers with gas prices set to leap.
Five cabinet ministers from former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi's party have quit the government. Source: AAP
ITALY is mired in a fresh political quagmire after Silvio Berlusconi pushed his party's ministers to quit the fragile coalition government, a move Prime Minister Enrico Letta has called a "crazy act".
All five ministers from the People of Freedom (PDL) party on Saturday took the decision to step down at Berlusconi's urging, said deputy prime minister Angelino Alfano, the number two in government who was among the resignations.
Italy newspapers put the blame for the new government crisis squarely at the ex-prime minister's feet.
"The convict has made Italy fail," read the headline in the leftist daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, alluding to Berlusconi's conviction for tax fraud.
The centre-right La Stampa and business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore decried "the madness" of the actions taken by the media mogul who has dominated Italian politics for most of the last two decades.
The flamboyant billionaire, who turns 77 on Sunday, dismissed as "unacceptable" a demand by Letta on Friday for parliament to express support for the government next week, in a bid to end a crisis that has plagued the bickering ruling coalition.Now President Giorgio Napolitano will have to mediate to find a way out of the latest political impasse. He is expected to meet Letta on Sunday.
Letta's government was cobbled together following a two-month stand-off after an inconclusive general election in February.
The premier of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) had won the confidence of financial markets by managing to keep together the improbable right-left coalition.
Italian media on Sunday speculated that if the crisis deepens there could be a reversal in market confidence, making it harder for Italy to deal with its economic difficulties and enact needed reforms.
The revolt among Berlusconi's backers boiled over on Thursday when they first threatened to resign over the former leader's legal problems.
A Senate committee was preparing to vote on whether to eject Berlusconi from the chamber after he was sentenced to a year in prison for tax fraud, a ruling that was upheld by Italy's top court in August.
Letta on Friday told a cabinet meeting tasked with approving key measures to rein in the recession-hit country's budget deficit that no further legislation would be enacted until the political crisis was resolved.
The cabinet had convened to determine how to delay a controversial planned rise in value-added tax, but the meeting ended in disarray amid the escalating tension over Berlusconi's conviction.
As a result, the VAT hike from 21 per cent to 22 per cent will go ahead, with effect from Tuesday, as economists worry that it will dampen consumption.
In encouraging the PDL ministers to resign, Berlusconi said they should not be "complicit in the latest vexation imposed on Italians by the left".
Letta retorted: "To try to justify his crazy and irresponsible act, aimed fully at protecting his personal interests, Berlusconi is... using the VAT as an alibi."
THE state should back institutions such as schools and courthouses that require individuals to remove face-coverings worn by some Muslim women, British Prime Minister David Cameron says.
Cameron said he did not believe there should be a ban on wearing the niqab - which conceals the whole face except for the eyes - in the streets.
But he made clear he was "happy" to look at the issue of whether the state needed to do more to back up institutions which choose to implement a ban.
"We are a free country and people should be free to wear whatever clothes they like in public or in private," Cameron told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show.
"But we should support those institutions that need to put in place rules so that those institutions can work properly.
"So for instance in a school, if they want that particular dress code, I believe the government should back them. The same for courts, the same for immigration.
"I think we should back those institutions that want to have sensible policies that actually have a particular purpose."
Asked if he would respond to a judge's suggestion that there should be guidelines for the country on the wearing of the niqab in court, Cameron said: "I'm very happy to look at that.
"Obviously, in court the jury needs to be able to look at someone's face. I've sat on a jury, that's part of what you do.
"When someone is coming into the country, an immigration officer needs to see someone's face.
"In a school, it's very difficult to teach unless you can look at your pupils in the eye.
"It's a free country and I think a free country should have free and independent institutions. No plans for anything on the street, but if the government needs to do more to back up institutions, then I would be happy to look at that."
PHARMACISTS would be asked to step up and perform duties including administering vaccines under a controversial plan to alleviate huge pressures on bush doctors.
QUEENSLAND'S great resources saviour, the multibillion-dollar LNG boom at Gladstone, may also prove a curse to consumers with gas prices set to leap.
PHARMACISTS would be asked to step up and perform duties including administering vaccines under a controversial plan to alleviate huge pressures on bush doctors.
QUEENSLAND'S great resources saviour, the multibillion-dollar LNG boom at Gladstone, may also prove a curse to consumers with gas prices set to leap.
A COURT in Russia has sent six more Greenpeace activists to jail for two months and showed no sign that the remaining two activists would be treated any differently for a protest at a drilling platform in Arctic waters.
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KENYA'S interior minister says that another arrest has been made in connection with the deadly Westgate mall attack, which left 67 people dead in a four-day siege.
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