Irish president signs abortions into law

ABORTION has become legal in Ireland in limited cases where the mother's life is at risk, after President Michael D. Higgins signed a law that has exposed deep divisions in the Catholic-majority nation.

Irish MPs had overwhelmingly voted through the abortion bill earlier this month, prompted by an outcry over the death last year of an Indian woman who had been refused an abortion in an Irish hospital.

"President Higgins has today signed the bill into law," a statement from the president's office confirmed on Tuesday.

The law permits the termination of a pregnancy if doctors certify there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother.

The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act ends years of uncertainty over the legal status of terminations in Ireland.

It follows a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in 2010 that found Ireland had failed to properly implement the constitutional right to abortion where a woman's life is at risk.

Under a 1992 Supreme Court ruling, women in Ireland are also legally entitled to an abortion if it is needed to save a mother's life - but six successive governments had failed to introduce legislation to reflect this.

The death of 31-year-old Savita Halappanavar in a Galway hospital last October placed Ireland's restrictive abortion laws under global scrutiny and forced the current government to act.

Halappanavar, who was from India, had sought a termination when told she was miscarrying, but the request was refused as her life was not at risk at the time. She died of blood poisoning days later.

In a sign of the rifts that remain on abortion in predominantly Catholic Ireland, tens of thousands of people protested both in favour and against a change in the law following Halappanavar's death.

The lower house of the Irish parliament passed the legislation with 127 votes in favour and 31 against earlier this month. It passed through the upper house last week.

But seven MPs including a junior minister were expelled from Prime Minister Enda Kenny's Fine Gael party for voting against the legislation.

Lucinda Creighton, junior minister with responsibility for European affairs, quit her cabinet post after voting against the bill over her concerns that a woman deemed suicidal will be allowed a termination.

The new act permits a termination when one obstetrician and two psychiatrists unanimously agree that an expectant mother is a suicide risk, in a clause that deeply divided opinion.

Pro-life groups are widely expected to challenge aspects of the new law through the courts.

Almost 4000 Irish women had abortions in England or Wales last year, according to the British health ministry.

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UBS reports firm profits for Q2

SWISS bank UBS has reported strong results for the second quarter in its drive to refocus activities and turn the page on the financial crisis.

The bank, which is slimming down after turmoil during the crisis, reported pre-tax operating profit of 775 million Swiss francs ($A910.39 million).

This was 21.0 per cent less than the outcome in the first quarter, but it showed a big switch from a loss of 130 million francs for the second quarter of last year.

Last week, the bank had already signalled its results, reporting a net profit for the second quarter of 690 million francs, marking an increase of 62.5 per cent from the figure in the same period of last year.

Those figures were announced when the bank said it was settling a dispute in the United States over subprime instruments by paying a fine of $US885 million.

On Tuesday, it said that operating profit in the second quarter rose by 15.0 per cent on a 12-month comparison to 7.3 billion francs.

The activities of managing private wealth turned in a pre-tax operating profit of 557 million Swiss francs from a profit of 502 million francs last time, and from 664 million francs in the first quarter of this year.

It explained the figure had fallen between the first and second quarters because it had had to pay 104 million francs under a tax agreement between Switzerland and Britain.

Excluding this charge, the pre-tax outcome had risen, it said.

Wealth management activities in the Americas, presented separately, raised pre-tax operating profit by four per cent from the first-quarter figure to 243 million francs.

Managing director Sergio Ermotti said in a statement that he was highly satisfied with the results for the quarter.

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Signal-jumping focus of Swiss train probe

GRANGES-PRES-MARNAND, Switzerland, July 30 AFP - Swiss investigators have pointed to signal-jumping as the likely cause of a head-on train collision in the west of the country that killed a driver and injured 26 other people.

"The investigation focuses on the likelihood that the train travelling from Payerne failed to respect a signal," Jean-Christophe Sauterel, police spokesman for Switzerland's Vaud region, told reporters.

Monday's crash between two local trains occurred just outside the station in Granges-pres-Mornand, a village between the Geneva and Neuchatel lakes in Switzerland's French-speaking region.

One train had been travelling from the town of Payerne to the lakeside city of Lausanne, 38km to the south, while the other one, a faster regional service, was travelling north from Lausanne.

The driver of the northbound train, a 24-year-old French citizen who lived in the region, was killed in the collision. His body was pulled from the wreckage early Tuesday after a frantic rescue operation.

Daniel Antonez, a resident of nearby Moudon, said he had heard the impact.

"It's one I often take. I'm sure I know some people who were on the train," he said.

Flanked by cornfields, the two mangled trains were still on the track on Tuesday, both engines locked into each other and lifted slightly off the ground as workers used beams to prepare to remove them.

Forty-six people were believed to have been travelling on the two trains. Police did not rule out the possibility of finding another victim in the wreckage.

"Two adults and a child are still in hospital out of the 23 recorded injured, but their lives are not in danger," said Jocelyn Corniche, the emergency services' chief physician.

The relatively slow speed of the southbound train, 40km/h, appeared to be one explanation why more people had not died. The speed of the northbound train has yet to be confirmed.

Accident investigators were still trying to understand why the southbound train, operating a slower service between a string of communities, failed to wait for the passage of the faster northbound service, which does not stop at Granges-pres-Marnand.

Sauterel stressed that the issue of criminal responsiblity for the crash was not under discussion for the moment.

Swiss federal railway company CFF offered its condolences to the dead driver's family.

"The management and employees of the CFF are shocked by the death of their colleague," the company said in a statement.

Rescuers had worked into the night under arc lamps, using special equipment to cut through the wreckage and reach the missing driver. They retrieved his body but it was not clear whether he had died on impact.

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Eight killed in Iraq violence

VIOLENCE in Iraq has killed eight people, among them seven police as an al-Qaeda front group claimed a wave of attacks that killed dozens the day before.

The country is witnessing its worst violence since 2008, when it was emerging from a bloody sectarian conflict.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that Iraq is "on the brink," and the interior ministry warned of civil war.

On Tuesday, gunmen killed three police and wounded two in an attack on a checkpoint south of Baghdad, while bombings in Kirkuk province, north of the capital, killed a policeman and a civilian, and wounded four people.

And gunmen killed three more policemen in the northern city of Mosul.

Security forces are frequently targeted by militants opposed to the government.

The attacks came as al-Qaeda front group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed a wave of attacks that killed some 60 people the day before.

"Security and military detachments of the state of Baghdad and the south on Monday ... simultaneously hit targets that were surveyed and chosen specifically," a statement posted on jihadist forums said.

The statement said the violence, which struck the capital and areas to its south, was the beginning of a new campaign dubbed "Harvesting the Soldiers".

The al-Qaeda front group said last week that brazen assaults on two Iraqi prisons marked the end of its previous campaign, called "Breaking the Walls".

At least 53 people were killed in the attacks, and more than 500 inmates, among them senior al-Qaeda members, managed to escape.

"Iraq is at another crossroads," UN chief Ban was quoted as saying in a statement released by a spokesman.

"Its political leaders have a clear responsibility to bring the country back from the brink, and to leave no space to those who seek to exploit the political stalemate through violence and terror."

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European stocks close higher

EUROPEAN stock markets have closed slightly higher, with London's FTSE 100 index of leading shares adding 0.16 per cent to 6570.95 points.

Frankfurt's DAX 30 rose 0.15 per cent to 8271.02 points on Tuesday, while the CAC 40 in Paris inched upwards 0.45 per cent to 3986.61 points.

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