SYDNEY, Oct 12, 2007 (AFP) - Aboriginal leaders Friday cautiously welcomed Prime Minister John Howard's plan to grant special constitutional recognition to indigenous people but said they still deserved an apology for past wrongs.

Critics also questioned the timing of Howard's push to recognise indigenous people, accusing him of trying to win votes in middle Australia as he trails badly in opinion polls with an election looming.

SYDNEY, Oct 11, 2007 (AFP) - Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Thursday pledged to hold a referendum on whether to formally recognise Aborigines in the constitution if he is re-elected later this year.

Howard, who has repeatedly refused to apologise to Aborigines for historical wrongs, said in a rare admission that he was partly to blame for the failure to achieve reconciliation with indigenous Australians.

SYDNEY, Sept 19, 2007 (AFP) - The world's native languages are dying out at an unprecedented rate, taking with them irreplaceable knowledge about the natural world, according to a National Geographic study.

The study identified five global 'hot spots' where languages are vanishing faster than anywhere else -- eastern Siberia, northern Australia, central South America, the US state of Oklahoma and the US Pacific Northwest.

LOS ANGELES, Sept 18, 2007 (AFP) - A teenage member of an Indian tribe in the southwestern state of Arizona will be jailed for life after pleading guilty to murdering a Japanese tourist last year, justice officials said Tuesday.

Randy Wescogame, 19, admitted stabbing 34-year-old Tomomi Hanamure to death after robbing her on the Havasupai Indian Reservation, a justice department statement said. By pleading guilty, Wescogame has agreed to a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release, officials said.

SYDNEY, Sept 18, 2007 (AFP) - Olympians Ian Thorpe and Cathy Freeman Tuesday backed a campaign to narrow a 17-year gap in life expectancy between Aborigines and other Australians.

As authorities revealed the cost of a controversial plan to seize control of Aboriginal communities has soared past one billion US dollars, Thorpe and Freeman put their names on an 80,000-signature petition demanding action on indigenous health.

LAKE AKAN, Japan, Sept 16, 2007 (AFP) - Amid a long stalemate between Japan and Russia over four disputed islands, another player is striving to be heard -- the Ainu people, who were the indigenous inhabitants.

The Ainu, an ethnically distinct people who have long faced discrimination, are hoping to win new dignity by having a say in the fate of the four Russian-ruled islands near Japan's northern coast.

PARIS, Sept 16, 2007 (AFP) - After fetching record prices in Australia, Aboriginal art is carving out a place on the art market in France, spurred by the opening last year of Paris' Quai Branly museum of tribal arts.

The art work dates back to the 1970s, when teacher Geoffrey Bardon first supplied Aboriginal elders with acrylic paints to help sedentary children learn beliefs once acquired by travelling on foot.

The tales now told on modern-day canvas of the 'Dreamtime', or creation, previously were set down in sand or on bark.

CANBERRA, Aug 7, 2007 (AFP) - The Australian government introduced legislation to parliament Tuesday allowing it to seize control of Aboriginal communities under a controversial plan to prevent child abuse.

The government has already sent police backed by army support into Aboriginal camps in the Northern Territory and introduced the legislation to parliament to provide a legal framework for the controversial intervention.

SYDNEY, Aug 1, 2007 (AFP) - An Aborigine removed from his family as a baby in 1958 has won compensation in a landmark court case over Australia's 'stolen generation' scandal, the national broadcaster reported Wednesday.

Bruce Trevorrow was awarded damages of 525,000 dollars (448,717 US dollars) in the first such case to have succeeded, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said.

On Christmas Day in 1957, 13-month-old Trevorrow was taken to hospital with stomach pains. When he recovered he was put into foster care without his parents knowing.