Main stories in ABC's World Today

AAP General News (Australia)
12-19-2006
Main stories in ABC's World Today

SYDNEY, Dec 19 AAP - Main stories in ABC's World Today:

* The ACT coroner hands down her long-awaited report into the 2003 bushfires that killed
four people and destroyed almost 500 homes and it is scathing of the ACT's emergency services
bureau, saying it was a miracle more people didn't die. Maria Doogan's inquest singled
out the bureau for failing to attack the fires that had been burning for ten days before
they reached the capital and she has criticised their failure to warn residents of the
danger early enough saying this exacerbated the property losses and caused panic and confusion
on the day of the firestorm.

* Australia's green movement is celebrating what it says is one of the most important
environmental court cases since the 1983 Franklin Dam case. This morning Greens Senator
Bob Brown won his Federal Court case in which he took on loggers in one of Tasmania's
most contentious forest areas. Environmentalists say the case puts into question logging
operations across Australia.

* In the US, debate is intensifying over a proposal to send tens of thousands of extra
troops into Baghdad to crush the worsening sectarian violence in the Iraqi capital. The
idea of a troop surge is one of several being considered by US President George W Bush
as he formulates a new approach to a war that has killed nearly 3,000 Americans and continues
to take a similar number of Iraqi lives nearly every month.

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