Refugees highest level in history: UN

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says there are more displaced people in the world than at any time in history, with the bulk of them coming from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Launching its report in London, the UN agency said 67 million people have been forced out of their homes by conflict, persecution and natural disasters.

In recent years, resettlement in Afghanistan had seen numbers drop, but in 2007 the total cared for by the UNHCR jumped by 3 million people, and the UN says the number is likely to rise.

There are 3.1 million Afghan refugees, mostly now in Pakistan and Iran and 2.3 million Iraqis, with many of them now in Syria and Jordan.

In addition there are also 2.4 million people still in Iraq who have been forced to leave their homes.

Web still 'in its infancy' on 15th birthday

Tim Berners-Lee, the British inventor of the world wide web, says the web is still only in its infancy on the 15th anniversary of its effective launch.

Sir Tim said that the web, which started life in the CERN physics laboratory on the Franco-Swiss border in the early 1990s, could develop in unimaginable directions but above all should be a force for good.

"What's exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance," he said.

"My hope is that those will produce... new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet."

The comments come on the anniversary of the announcement by CERN on April 30, 1993 that the world wide web could be used by everyone, after Sir Tim and a colleague persuaded their bosses to provide the program code for free.

The web is now the most commonly used network via which information is shared on the internet.

An estimated 165 million websites now exist.

"The web has been a tremendous tool for people to do a lot of good even though you can find bad stuff out there," said Sir Tim, adding that one day the web will put "all the data in the world" at the fingertips of every user.

But "we have only started to explore the possibilities," he said, adding that it was "still in its infancy".

Robert Cailliau, who worked with Sir Tim to open up the web, stressed that not all the bosses at CERN were in favour of making the web universally accessible.

"We had to convince them that this was going to take off and it was a really big thing. And therefore CERN couldn't hold on to it and the best thing to do was to give it away," he said.

He says competing technologies - such as Gopher developed at the University of Minnesota in the United States - were also offering a way of connecting documents on the internet.

"If we had put a price on it like the University of Minnesota had done with Gopher then it would not have expanded into what it is now," said Mr Cailliau.

"We would have had some sort of market share alongside services like AOL and Compuserve, but we would not have flattened the world."

Thousands take part in anti-war protests

A demonstrator joins thousands of people as they protest in London to mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war.

Thousands of anti-war protesters have marched in Britain and the United States to mark the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq.

They took to the streets in London and the Scottish city of Glasgow, demanding that British troops pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A spokesman for the Stop The War coalition, which organised the marches, says five years after the invasion of Iraq, the world had become "a much more dangerous place."

"Estimates suggest as many as one million people have died violent deaths as a result of the occupation of Iraq," spokesman Paul Collins said.

He said Prime Minister Gordon Brown was sending more troops to Afghanistan and claimed "this hidden war is fast becoming a disaster mirroring Iraq."

But the Foreign Office disputed Stop the War's conclusions.

"In Iraq, there is clear evidence we are making steady progress, particularly in terms of security," a spokesman told Reuters.

"In Afghanistan NATO forces are winning the struggle against the Taliban."

Organisers estimated that the London march had attracted up to 40,000 protesters, although police put the figure at 10,000.

In Glasgow the demonstration attracted several hundred protesters.

US protest

Another protest in the United States has drawn thousands of people, led by veterans from various conflicts, holding coffins draped with the US flag.

Police said about 2,000 protesters, most of them young, marched down Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, denouncing President George W Bush and calling for an end to the conflict.

Organisers put the figure at 10,000, and hope several California politicians and actors will gather for the final part of the march on Sunset Boulevard.

The Australian branch of the Stop The War Coalition is planning a demonstration in Sydney today.

Hundreds rally for Iraq troop withdrawal

ABOUT 200 people rallied in central Sydney yesterday calling for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq.

Speakers at the rally in Belmore Park, to mark the coming fifth anniversary of the invasion, said the pledge by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, to withdraw 500 combat troops from Iraq did not go far enough.

A spokesman for the Stop the War Coalition, Alex Bainbridge, said 1 million people had been killed since the war began, and all troops needed to be withdrawn. "This war is a crime, and we need to end it," he told the rally. Mr Rudd also needed to end his support for the war in Afghanistan.

A peace campaigner, Donna Mulhearn, who travelled to Iraq to be a human shield before the war started, said Australia needed to apologise to the Iraqi people. She also questioned whether Australian athletes should compete at the Beijing Olympics after China's crackdown in Tibet.

The Greens senator Kerry Nettle said the Iraq war had a human and financial cost estimated by one US economist at $3 trillion.

Another peace rally was held in Parramatta.