Sydney (AFP) - Rival anti-Islam and anti-racism rallies saw hundreds protest across Australia at the weekend with violent clashes in Melbourne, as police officers mounted a strong presence in cities Sunday to keep the two sides apart.

About 100 anti-Islam protesters from the Reclaim Australia and United Patriots Front groups waved the national flag and yelled chants at a rally in Sydney Sunday, with signs declaring "Say no to Sharia" and "Immigration is the elephant in the room".

They were met by around 250 counter-demonstrators who carried banners including "No racism, no Islamophobia".

Police -- including riot squad officers and mounted units -- packed Martin Place in the heart of Sydney's central business district to separate the rival groups.

Five people were arrested at the Sydney demonstrations, a New South Wales state police spokesman told AFP, with two expected to be charged.

There were some brief scuffles but no sign of the violence seen in sister city Melbourne on Saturday, where police had to use capsicum spray to subdue protesters.

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Police, including riot squad officers and mounted units, keep separate some 100 protesters from Recl …

"While there were a small number of people who chose to do the wrong thing, the majority of participants cooperated with police, which allowed for a peaceful demonstration," NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Clarke said in a statement.

Reclaim Australia organisers said they were not racist but that the rallies were "a public response to the shock of recent atrocities of 'Islam's radicals' both inside and outside of Australia".

Government MP George Christensen told a Reclaim Australia demonstration in Mackay in northern Queensland state it would be naive to think his country was not at war with extreme Islam.

He added he was "sad" to see neo-Nazis at the Sydney and Melbourne rallies, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Former politician Pauline Hanson -- who rose to prominence in the 1990s as head of the right-wing, anti-immigration party she co-founded -- told a rally in Rockhampton in central Queensland she was "against the spread of Islam", the ABC reported.

"We have other different religions that have never been a problem in Australia," she said, adding: "I'm not targeting Muslims -- I'm targeting the ideology, what Islam stands for."

There were also opposing rallies in the capital Canberra, western city Perth and Tasmania's Hobart, with the anti-racism protests attracting the same number or more participants.

"Reclaim Australia" demonstrations were also held in April and attracted hundreds of people who said they were protesting against Islamic extremism.

NEW YORK (AP) — The widow of Eric Garner and hundreds of protesters rallied outside a courthouse Saturday to call on federal prosecutors to indict the white police officer who put the black New York City man in a fatal chokehold a year ago.

"You all keep me empowered to speak," Garner's widow, Esaw Garner, told the demonstrators at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn.

"I will not stop loving him," she added. "I will never stop fighting for him."

The rally brought Garner's family together with the loved ones of other blacks whose high-profile deaths have prompted outcry and protests: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Ramarley Graham. It was the second day of protests to mark the anniversary of Garner's death on July 17, 2014.

Garner died after the police officer placed an arm around his neck to take him to the ground. A grand jury declined to indict the officer. A federal inquiry is ongoing but the protesters said they want charges to be brought now.

Bertha Lewis, the founder of a nonprofit called the Black Institute, noted that a former official with FIFA, soccer's governing body, was appearing in the same courthouse to face charges of racketeering and bribery.

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The Rev. Al Sharpton, right, is joined on stage by Oscar Grant's mother, Wanda Johnson, left; Ra …

"If you can indict FIFA you can bring an indictment in the Eric Garner case," she said.

Loved ones of Martin, the unarmed 17-year-old shot to death in Florida in 2012 by a man who reported a suspicious person in his neighborhood; Brown, the 18-year-old shot to death by police in Ferguson, Missouri, last August; and Graham, an 18-year-old shot to death by a NYPD officer in 2012, all joined Saturday's demonstration.

Police stopped Garner on a sidewalk on Staten Island because they believed he was illegally selling loose cigarettes. Officer Daniel Pantaleo placed his arm around Garner's neck to take him down and cellphone video captured Garner gasping "I can't breathe!" 11 times before losing consciousness.

His death, coupled with police killings of unarmed black men elsewhere, spurred protests around the country about police treatment of black men.

Protesters in Brooklyn wore T-shirts that said "I can't breathe" and joined the Rev. Al Sharpton in chanting "No justice, no peace!"

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A demonstrator holds a sign calling for justice during a rally in New York on Saturday, July 18, 201 …

"We stand together today by the hundreds saying we don't care how long it takes. We want justice for Eric Garner," Sharpton said.

The city medical examiner found that the chokehold contributed to Garner's death. Chokeholds are banned by New York Police Department policy, but Pantaleo has said that he used a legal takedown maneuver known as a seatbelt, not a chokehold.

Garner's family reached a $5.9 million settlement with New York City this week over the death. But family members and their supporters have said they want reform of the criminal justice system, not just a cash settlement.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called for end to secrecy of grand jury system.

"Black lives DO matter," she said.

Baghdad (AFP) - The Islamic State group has executed an Iraqi journalist in the northern city of Mosul on charges of spying, local officials and colleagues said Saturday.

Jala al-Abadi was taken from his home with his phone and laptop on June 4 and executed on Wednesday by firing squad after being sentenced by an IS court.

A former senior security officer in the area and a medical source in Mosul confirmed the young journalist's death.

The father of two was born in 1988 and had worked as a cameraman for a local channel before IS took over Iraq's second city in June 2014.

He left his city then but, according to a someone who was close to the journalist, he returned to Mosul for personal reasons. He did not elaborate.

Abadi was arrested when he tried to leave again and charged by IS, which has run the city since June 10 last year, with "leaking information" about the jihadist group to the national press.

IS has executed several journalists in Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province and the largest IS-held city in the "caliphate" the group proclaimed over parts of Iraq and Syria a year ago.

Mohammed al-Bayati, the head of the Nineveh Media Network, condemned the latest execution and urged the United Nations to support the families of murdered journalists.

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Police move in to contain protesters against the Ku Klux Klan during a rally at the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina July 18, 2015. REUTERS/Chris Keane


By Greg Lacour

COLUMBIA, S.C. (Reuters) - At least five people were arrested on Saturday as white-supremacist and African-American groups clashed outside the South Carolina State House, where the Confederate battle flag was removed last week after a half-century, authorities said.

Beginning at noon, a Florida-based group called Black Educators for Justice demonstrated on the north side of the capitol. Tensions rose quickly when a column of about 50 white supremacists, many carrying Confederate flags and one a Nazi flag, marched toward the south steps of the capitol at 3:15 p.m.

Lines of state police separated them from a large crowd that jeered and booed. When the group reached the State House lawn, a scuffle broke out, and police moved in quickly to keep the fight from spreading.

While no further violence broke out, the atmosphere, on a day when temperatures neared 100 degrees, remained tense. Several times, police had to separate people shouting obscenities at one another.

Ambulances took seven people to hospitals, the South Carolina Department of Public Safety said in a statement that provided no information on the severity of the injuries. No police officers were hurt, it said.

Tensions heated at Columbia flag ralliesPlay video

Racial and cultural tensions have peaked in South Carolina since the shootings last month of nine African-Americans in a historic Charleston church. Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old white man charged in the killings, appeared to have been heavily influenced by such symbols as the Confederate battle flag.

Before the rally, a North Carolina-based chapter of the Ku Klux Klan announced that it would demonstrate outside the capitol. But the group that occupied the south side steps, shouting “white power,” carried the banner of a Detroit-based group called the National Socialist Movement Party, which the Southern Poverty Law Center says is “the largest and most prominent neo-Nazi group in the United States.”

The crowd reached about 2,000 people at its peak, said Lieutenant Kelley Hughes of the state Department of Public Safety. Hughes said in late afternoon that authorities were still compiling information about the arrests, charges and injuries.

The Confederate battle flag has been a flashpoint for racial tensions for decades. Its supporters say it is a symbol of Southern heritage, while opponents argue the banner represents slavery and racism. This month, the state legislature voted to remove the flag from the State House grounds, where it had flown since 1961.

In Richmond, Virginia, more than 100 members of Confederate heritage groups converged on the state capitol grounds to blast efforts to remove the Confederate battle flag out of what they say is "political correctness."

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A Ku Klux Klan supporter marches as he is flanked by a police officer during a rally at the statehou …

“We’re sick and tired of the PC attacks to eradicate our heritage,” said Susan Hathaway, a founder of the Virginia Flaggers, a group known for erecting massive Confederate flags on Interstate highways in Virginia.

The flag’s meaning was a main topic of conversation - and argument - during the Columbia rallies as well.

Ray Johnson, a 55-year-old white man, waved the Confederate flag during the Black Educators rally and found himself in a heated discussion with Mike Scarborough, a 37-year-old black man.

“It’s a tribute to the people, women, children and animals who died for that cause, whether that cause was right or wrong. And I’ve already told you I think it was wrong,” Johnson told Scarborough.

Afterward, Scarborough said he thinks Johnson is sincere but misguided. “My point to him was, it’s not like you’re carrying photos of the soldiers who died or of a cemetery. You have a symbol of the whole system,” Scarborough said. “You can’t separate the two.”

(Additional reporting by Gary Robertson in Richmond, Virginia; Editing by Frank McGurty and Jonathan Oatis)

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras arrives for a parliamentary session in Athens, Greece July 16, 2015. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

By Paul Taylor

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The latest paroxysm of Greece's debt crisis has exposed growing rifts in the euro zone which, unless addressed soon, could lead to the break-up of European monetary union, the EU's most ambitious project.

The most worrying sign for European leaders is that public opinion and domestic politics are pulling them increasingly in opposing directions - not just between Greece and Germany, the biggest debtor and the biggest creditor, but almost everywhere.

Germans, Finns, Dutch, Balts and Slovaks no longer want taxpayers' money to go to bail out Greeks, while the French, Italians and Greeks feel the euro zone is all about austerity and punishment and lacks solidarity and economic stimulus.

With central and east European states growing more assertive and the Dutch and Finns facing mounting domestic constraints, a compromise between euro zone leaders Germany and France, increasingly hard to find over Greece, is no longer sufficient to settle the problems.

There are so many stakeholders with divergent views that crisis management is becoming ever more difficult. A far-reaching reform of the 19-nation currency area's flawed structure seems a remote prospect.

After weeks of late-night emergency meetings of leaders and finance ministers, culminating in a tense all-night summit, the euro zone produced a fragile deal to keep Greece afloat by making it a virtual protectorate under intrusive supervision.

Few, if any, of the main protagonists think it will work.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said it was a bad deal that would make life worse for Greece but he had swallowed it because the alternative was worse. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Athens would have done better to leave the euro zone - "temporarily" - to get a debt write-off.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe's dominant leader, made clear the main virtue of the deal was to avoid something worse.

"The alternative to this agreement would not be a 'time-out' from the euro ... but rather predictable chaos," she said.

A senior EU official involved in brokering the compromise, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was now a "20, maybe 30 percent chance of success".

"When I look at the next two to three years, the next three months, I see only black clouds," the official said. "All we succeeded in doing was to avoid a chaotic Grexit."

Problems are likely to resurface in late August or September when it comes to concluding the detailed negotiations on a three-year bailout program. By then Greece's economy may have gone further off the rails and Greeks may be heading for early elections.

The International Monetary Fund is due to make another analysis of Greek debt before a deal is concluded which may well show that only a "haircut", or outright write-down of loans, can make it sustainable.

Schaeuble, who says a "haircut" is illegal in the euro zone, will be waiting with his Plan B for debt relief with Greece outside the currency area.

Even if the third Greek bailout in five years does not trip up at that stage, the chances of it being fully implemented and delivering an economic recovery look slim.

The Greek crisis has also widened divisions between euro and non-euro members, with Britain and the Czech Republic insisting on guarantees for their taxpayers' money in exchange for using an EU-wide bailout fund for bridge finance.

If the Greek crisis were the euro zone's only worry, it might be easier to isolate and resolve it, since financial markets have shown little sign of the contagion to other weak sovereigns' bonds that threatened to tear it apart in 2012.

Greece has been such a distraction that leaders barely noted an important report authored by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker with the heads of four other EU institutions on how to make the monetary union work better.

That is arguably the biggest challenge facing the EU, yet there is little sign of willingness to contemplate pooling more fiscal sovereignty or sharing more common liabilities as the authors say is required.

The debt crisis that began in 2010 led to the creation of some new institutions to strengthen the currency area - a permanent bailout fund, stricter enforcement of fiscal rules, a single banking supervisor and a joint mechanism for winding down failed banks.

But German-led opposition to mutualising debt, French-led resistance to yielding more control over national budgets and the electoral rise of Eurosceptic populist parties prevented the euro area going further.

In Brussels, there is much talk of how the latest Greek crisis should prompt a leap forward in integration to strengthen the euro zone, but it's not clear what progress is possible.

Among the quick wins suggested by the "five presidents' report" is a common deposit insurance scheme for euro zone banks that are under ECB supervision and a fiscal backstop for a bank resolution fund being raised from the finance sector.

Whether such ideas will fly in Berlin remains to be seen. In the longer term, after 2017, the report envisages setting up a euro area treasury accountable at the European level.

French President Francois Hollande suggested this month creating a parliament for the euro zone to give decisions greater democratic legitimacy.

Such ambitious visions stand at odds with frantic nocturnal crisis management and the increasingly divisive nationalist tone of much of the debate in the euro area.

(Writing by Paul Taylor, editing by Richard Mably)