Qantas resumes flights after court ruling

Qantas resumed its flights on Monday, following a ruling from Fair Work Australia which ordered a permanent end to the industrial dispute between the airline’s management and the union members. (photo, from lemonde.fr)

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Girls get equal rights to the British throne

The leaders of the 16 Commonwealth countries unanimously agreed on Friday to change succession laws, allowing sons and daughters of any future UK monarch to have equal right to the throne, in a historic blow for women’s rights.

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Qantas grounds entire fleet over labour dispute

All international and domestic flights from Australian Qantas Airways (photo) are grounded a labour dispute, a decision which the airline said would cost Aus$20m a day.

Immediately after the announcement 600 flights were cancelled, affecting 70,000 travelers according to the airline.

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Argentina : Kirchner won presidential re-election

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (photo, from lexpress.fr) has been re-elected in Argentina’s presidential election winning more than 50 per cent of the vote with 75 per cent of results returned.

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New Zealand : oil pumping resumes on the stricken ship

A week ago bad weather forced salvage crews to stop pumping fuel from the stricken cargo ship, the Rena (photo, from bbcimg.co.uk), which ran aground on a coral reef off of New Zealand’s North Island on 5 October.

But the pumping was resumed on Monday, with a second pump being added in order to hasten the removal of oil.

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Hamas and Israel reach prisoner-swap deal

More than 1,000 Palestinians will be released in exchange for Israeli Sgt Gilad Shalit who has been held by Palestinian militants since June 2006, when he was captured in a cross-border raid.

The announcement on Tuesday brought celebration both in the Gaza Strip and in Jerusalem (photo, from europe1.fr).

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Ukraine’s ex PM sentenced to seven years in jail over gas deal

Ukrainian former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko (photo, from france24.com), has been sentenced to seven years in jail on Tuesday by a Kiev court for “exceeding her powers” in 2009 in sealing a gas deal with Russia.

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New Zealand’s questions over oil spill

A container ship ran aground on a coral reef off of New Zealand’s North Island (map, from bbcimg.co.uk) on Wednesday.

On Sunday the country’s prime minister John Key flew over the scene in a helicopter and said two inquiries were already under way to find out why the ship had collided with the Astrolabe Reef.

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Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs is dead

Apple’s co-founder and former chief executive has died on Wednesday at the age of 56.

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Coffee may prevent women from getting depressed, study says

The findings of a research published last month in Archives of Internal Medicine, suggest that women who drink two or more cups of coffee a day are less likely to get depressed.

The study concluded that “depression risk decreases with increasing caffeinated coffee consumption”.

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