An emergency sitting of parliament passed special laws on Thursday allowing Sydney police to “lockdown” parts of Australia’s biggest city to stop racial unrest. After two nights of racial violence in Sydney’s beachside suburbs this week, the New South Wales (NSW) state parliament also increased the penalty for rioting from 10 to 15 years and doubled the sentence for affray to 10 years. “Louts and criminals have effectively declared war on our society and we are not going to let them undermine our way of life,” Morris Iemma, NSW state premier, told the emergency sitting of parliament in Sydney. Full Story