A MAN has died after his car left the road and struck a power pole in the Victorian town of Warragul.
Police believe the 19-year-old Warragul man was driving west along Queen Street just before 7pm on Saturday when he lost control on a bend and collided with the pole.
He died before he could be airlifted to a city hospital.
Police are investigating reports the driver was involved in an earlier collision in Drouin and will prepare a report for the coroner.
A man has been caught allegedly skimming money out of ATMs in Sydney's west using stolen card data. Source: AAP
A MAN has been caught allegedly skimming money out of ATMs in Sydney's west using stolen card data.
Police were contacted after the 27-year-old was seen acting suspiciously in Parramatta on Friday morning, walking from one ATM to another, allegedly making transactions with several cards.
Officers later detained and searched the man, finding 15 store cards, which are believed to have been encoded with stolen card data. He also had more than $4000 in cash on him.
The Fairfield man was charged with dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception and two other related charges.
He was granted conditional bail and is due to appear at Parramatta Local Court on July 16.
THE efforts of Australian General John Monash on the Western Front in World War I should be as widely recognised as the story of Simpson and his donkey at Gallipoli, Prime Minister Tony Abbott says.
Mr Abbott revealed on Saturday a new memorial centre to be built in France would be named in honour of the Australian military leader, who is regarded as one of the great tacticians of World War I.
After joining world leaders at D-Day commemorations in Normandy on Friday, Mr Abbott turned his attention to the First World War as he visited the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux for the first time.
While not as famous as the Gallipoli campaign, the efforts of Australian diggers to stop German forces on the Western Front were critical to the outcome of the war.
Of the 295,000 Australians who fought there between 1916 and 1918, 46,000 never made it home and the prime minister is leading a push he believes will help improve a sense of national identity.
"No place on earth has been more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than these fields in France," Mr Abbott said.
"Australians should be as familiar with the story of the Western Front as we are with Gallipoli.
"Australians should be at least as familiar with the achievements of Monash as we are with the heroism of John Simpson Kirkpatrick (in Gallipoli)."
Sir John Monash was involved in the failed Gallipoli campaign but used his experiences to lead several significant battlefield victories, including the decisive Battle of Amiens.
Mr Abbott said he brought organisation and technology to the battlefield to "break the stalemate of trench warfare".
Attendances at the annual Anzac Day dawn service at Villers-Bretonneux have grown steadily in recent years, with the crowd this year surpassing that at Gallipoli.
Some predict it will become the nation's clear focal point of Anzac Day commemorations beyond next year's centenary in Gallipoli.
"Australians should congregate here, every April 25th, no less than at Anzac Cove," Mr Abbott said.
"And on Anzac Day four years hence, the centenary of the Battle of Villers-Bretonneux, I'm sure they will."
Mr Abbott said it was expected the new "interpretive centre", to be built behind the Australian memorial, would open in 2018 to coincide with 100th anniversary commemorations.
The "Sir John Monash" centre will help to better explain Australia's role in the final victories of World War I and the government will put up $6.9 million for the initial planning.
Mr Abbott later followed in the footsteps of former prime ministers by visiting the Victoria School, built in Villers-Bretonneux in 1927 with money donated by school children from the Australian state.
He chatted with schoolchildren and locals in the school's courtyard, where a prominent green and gold sign hangs permanently reading: "Never Forget Australia."
Mr Abbott then visited the memorial site at nearby Pozieres, the sight of a bloody 1916 battle where 23,000 Australians were killed in the space of just six weeks.
The prime minister was expected to meet with French President Francois Hollande on Saturday night before departing Paris on Sunday for Canada and the US.
An Egyptian court has sentenced 10 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood movement to death. Source: AAP
AN Egyptian court has sentenced ten supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement to death in absentia on charges of inciting violence and blocking a road last July.
Judge Hassan Fareed on Saturday referred the sentence to the Grand Mufti, the highest Islamic authority in Egypt, a legal requirement usually considered a formality.
The remaining 38 accused in the case, including the Brotherhood's supreme guide and other senior members, will be sentenced at the next hearing on July 5.
The case is one of several ongoing mass trials of supporters of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Under Egyptian law, those sentenced in absentia will have a new trial if they are arrested or surrender to authorities.
A suspect is in custody after four people were wounded in a shooting on a Seattle university campus. Source: AAP
A GUNMAN has killed one person and injured three others on a college campus in the northwestern US city of Seattle, the latest of what the mayor denounced as America's "epidemic of gun violence".
The most recent bloody rampage to shake the country came on Thursday, two weeks after an apparently mentally disturbed young man opened fire at a California university and killed six people.
The gunman opened fire in the lobby of a science building at Seattle Pacific University, killing a 19-year-old man and wounding three other people.
"Today should have been a day of celebration at the end of the school year. Instead, it's a day of tragedy and of loss," Seattle mayor Ed Murray told reporters after the shooting.
"Once again, the epidemic of gun violence has come to Seattle, the epidemic of gun violence that's haunting this nation."
The injured, including one who was in critical condition, were being treating in hospital.
"Police have one suspect in custody, an adult male who was subdued after being pepper-sprayed by a student security guard," a police statement said.
The gunman was identified as Aaron Ybarra, 26, and he was not a student at the university, the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper reported.
He was to make an initial court appearance on Friday on suspicion of murder, it said.
Blake Oliveira, a student, said he was in class when he heard gunfire and at first thought it came from a physics experiment. But then he heard screams, the Seattle paper reported.
The 21-year-old grabbed a metal pipe, as he and fellow students were locked in a physics lab.
Oliveira said he heard someone telling others to be calm, and then heard running.
Minutes later, he said, two police officers entered the lab and escorted everyone out.
"I took off my sandals, put them into my backpack in case I had to run," Oliveira said.
"This is all going down. I saw a cop with a shotgun and I thought, 'OK, this is kind of real right now'. And then I saw blood on the floor," the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Police spokesman Chris Fowler described how the young male gunman was taken into custody after opening fire in the lobby of a building on the campus.
He began to reload when a student who was monitoring the building "confronted the shooter (and) was able to subdue the individual", Fowler told reporters.
"Once on the ground, other students jumped on top of them and they were able to pin the shooter to the ground until police arrived."
Less than two weeks ago, a reportedly mentally unstable 22-year-old man killed six people before turning the gun on himself at a college campus in Santa Barbara, California.
School shootings have become a tragic periodic occurrence in the US in recent years.
They include the December 2012 massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 small children dead, and the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007 in which 33 died, including the gunman.
THE Smithsonian has named Australian Melissa Chiu, a museum leader for the Asia Society in New York, as the next director of the Hirshhorn Museum for modern and contemporary art in Washington.
Darwin-born Chiu joins the Smithsonian in September. She succeeds Richard Koshalek who resigned last year after a dispute with the museum's board over funding to build an inflatable pavilion at the museum for special performances and programs.
Chiu has served as director of the Asia Society Museum since 2004 and previously was curator for contemporary Asian and Asian-American art.
Smithsonian officials say Chiu is a prolific fundraiser, securing 80 per cent of the Asia Society Museum's $US29 million ($A31.38 million) budget.
The Hirshhorn has an $US8 million budget, and the Smithsonian provides $US10 million in operating support.
A drowning cow has been saved from a backyard pool in the NSW Hunter Valley. Source: AAP
A COW has been saved from drowning by firefighters who helped it out of a backyard swimming pool in the NSW Hunter Valley.
A woman returned to her Maitland home on Friday afternoon to find her dogs barking at the cow after it wandered through a gap in the fence and fell into the pool.
Fire & Rescue NSW said the cow was treading water in the deep end with one of its legs snared in the plastic pool cover.
Firefighters put a rope around its neck to manoeuvre the struggling animal towards the shallow end.
"Once the cow had worked out it could stand and get out via the steps, firefighters stepped back as the bovine made a quick escape out through the property to her awaiting herd in an adjoining paddock," local station officer Chris Holderberg said.
Police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have focussed their attention to drains. Source: AAP
BRITISH police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are focusing their attention on a new patch of scrubland close to where she went missing in Portugal seven years ago.
Officers in Metropolitan Police uniform were seen on Friday studying a flat area of ground at the opposite end of the area which has seen activity over the past week.
The area of scrubland in Praia da Luz on the Algarve has been marked in various places with tape to highlight areas of interest to police.
Officers could be seen examining the uneven ground inside one marked-out area, which was covered with long grass.
The search entered its fifth day, with officers previously focusing on a hole which had been covered in undergrowth.
Forensics officers sifted through soil in large sieves inside a white tent set up to cover the void, which was thought to have been used as a children's den.
An item of clothing, believed to be a man's sock, was removed from the scene but was thought to have been ruled out of the investigation.
Madeleine's parents on Thursday said they were "encouraged" by the progress made by police as they search for clues as to what happened to her after she disappeared from the resort in May 2007, aged three.
Writing on the Official Find Madeleine Campaign Facebook page, Kate and Gerry McCann thanked their followers for the support they have received.
"We are being kept updated on the ongoing work in Portugal and are encouraged by the progress," the message said.
"Thank you for continuing to stand by us and supporting our efforts to get Madeleine home."
A MILITARY jet has slammed into a Southern California neighbourhood dense with homes and exploded in flames, but the pilot and everyone on the ground emerged unscathed, officials say.
Moments after the pilot ejected to safety Wednesday afternoon, the Harrier jet went down in a residential area of Imperial, destroying two homes and heavily damaging a third.
Eleven-year-old Christopher Garcia was watching TV with his father and brother when he heard a frightening boom. Outside, he said he saw a pilot in a parachute falling from the sky, and what looked like a mushroom cloud of dark smoke two blocks away.
He ran to the crash scene to find one house with a collapsed roof, the neighbouring house on fire, and a crying woman shouting, "That's my house!" The boy and other witnesses said panicked neighbours were running in every direction.
Debris from the Harrier jet hit the roof of one of the houses, which was destroyed, Marine Lt Col John Ferguson said. The subsequent explosion and fire destroyed another house and badly damaged one more.
The pilot, the only one aboard the aircraft, landed in a nearby field. He was taken to a hospital for evaluation and released, Ferguson said.
Jose Santos had seen the jet go down and was driving to the crash scene when he saw the pilot "rolling from side to side," but looking unhurt.
Leonardo Olmeda, 25, was racing remote-controlled cars in a street with many children playing when they saw the pilot eject and the nearby explosion.
"It was a big flash, a bunch of black smoke, like a mushroom effect," Olmeda said.
The Harrier AV-8B had taken off from Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Arizona, and was almost at his destination at Naval Air Facility El Centro when he ejected and the jet crashed for reasons not immediately clear, Ferguson said.
It came down in the yard on a street lined with small homes on one side with a large park on the other in Imperial, a city of about 15,000 near the US-Mexico border about 90 miles (145km) east of San Diego.
Residents of eight more homes had to evacuate for the investigation and cleanup but later returned, officials said.
ARMED men have killed a 42-year-old Red Cross staffer in the coastal Libyan city of Sirte, firing at his car after he left a meeting, the organisation says.
Michael Greub, a Swiss national, died in the attack on Wednesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement on its website.
"We are devastated and outraged," said ICRC Director-General Yves Daccord on Thursday.
"Michael was a devoted humanitarian who spent many years of his life helping others."
Greub was in his car with his driver and another man, neither of whom were harmed, the Red Cross said.
Driver Ali Mohamed told The Associated Press that three masked attackers wearing civilian clothes stopped them at gunpoint at a checkpoint as they were on their way back from the meeting.
"They started shouting 'put your hands up,' and we put our hands up but they started shooting," he said.
"We just crumpled to the car's floor but all of the firing was at the back seat where Michael was sitting."
Since the fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, there has been a spike in targeted killings with attacks on government employees, activists, clerics and security officials.
It was unclear who was behind Wednesday's attack, but Libyan military officers have said that hard-line Islamic militias including the extremist Ansar al-Shariah have stepped up their presence in recent months in Sirte, once Gaddafi's stronghold.
Greub worked for the ICRC for more than seven years, with assignments in Iraq, Sudan, Yemen and Gazi. He had been head of the organisation's delegation in Misrata since March, the ICRC said.
The ICRC has had a permanent presence in Libya since 2011, providing humanitarian services for detainees, tracing missing persons and working with local organisations to help injured or displaced people.
GM is to release the results of a probe into the company's response to an ignition problem. Source: AAP
GM CEO Mary Barra says 15 employees have been fired over the company's recent ignition switch recalls.
Barra made the announcement on Thursday as she released an internal investigation into the recall of 2.6 million older small cars for defective ignition switches.
Barra called the internal investigation into its recent ignition switch recall is "brutally tough and deeply troubling".
It took GM more than a decade to report the switch failures, which it blames for 13 deaths.
In a town hall meeting at GM's suburban Detroit technical centre, Barra says attorney Anton Valukas interviewed 230 employees and reviewed 41 million documents to produce the report, which makes recommendations to avoid future safety problems.
FEUDING couples can tell each other where to go but their counsellors won't be able to.
The federal government is offering $200 vouchers for couples to undergo relationship counselling.
From July, 100,000 couples will undergo a trial by registering online for the subsidy.
Senators at a committee hearing on Thursday expressed concern that same-sex couples could be shown the door by conservative-minded counsellors.
The Department of Social Services assured them that to get government funding, service providers have to demonstrate they are willing to work with a diverse range of couples with different backgrounds and beliefs.
"They can't tell them where to go," deputy secretary Barbara Bennett told the hearing.
"No, they might be telling each other that," Liberal senator Sue Boyce offered.
PRESIDENT Barack Obama has met Ukraine's president-elect Petro Poroshenko, in a show of US support for Ukraine's right to chart its own future, before an encounter with Russia's Vladimir Putin.
Obama sat down with Poroshenko on Wednesday in Warsaw, during a trip designed to assuage security concerns in eastern Europe following Russia's annexation of Crimea and what Washington says is an effort to destabilise Ukraine.
Obama said he had "been deeply impressed" by Poroshenko's vision for his troubled country.
"The United States is absolutely committed to standing behind the Ukrainian people not just in the coming days, weeks, but in the coming years," Obama told reporters.
The talks on day two of Obama's European tour come after the president met central and eastern European leaders in Warsaw and before he heads to a G7 summit in Belgium.
The summit takes place against a backdrop of signs that Western unity over how to handle Russia is fracturing.
Obama will come face to face with Putin during 70th anniversary commemorations of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France on Friday, but officials in Washington and Moscow say there are no plans for a formal meeting.
In contrast, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany will hold one-on-one talks with Putin, who said Wednesday he could not understand Obama's stance.
"It is his choice, I am ready for dialogue," Putin said in an interview with French broadcasters Europe1 and TF1 conducted at his dacha in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
Putin went on to accuse the US administration of hypocrisy in its "aggressive" attempts to isolate Russia over its conduct in Ukraine.
"We have almost no military forces abroad yet look: everywhere in the world there are American military bases, American troops thousands of kilometres from their borders. They interfere in the interior affairs of this or that country. So it is difficult to accuse us of abuses."
The accelerating diplomacy over Ukraine comes as a seven-week pro-Russian insurgency in Ukraine's eastern rust belt grows only more violent after Poroshenko swept to power in a May 25 presidential ballot.
Hundreds of separatist gunmen on Monday attacked a Ukrainian border guard service camp in the region of Lugansk on the border with Russia.
Obama said Tuesday that US commitment to eastern European security was absolute.
"Our commitment to Poland's security as well as the security of our allies in central and eastern Europe is a cornerstone of our own security and it is sacrosanct," Obama said after inspecting a joint unit of Polish and US F-16 pilots.
He proposed a "European Reassurance Initiative" of up to $1 billion (730 million euros) to finance extra US troop and military deployments to "new allies" in Europe.
NATO defence ministers also agreed Tuesday a series of steps to bolster protection in eastern Europe after the Ukraine crisis, but insisted they were acting within the limits of a key post-Cold War treaty with Moscow.
A YOUNG peacock found strutting his stuff in suburban Perth has a new home after doing time in an animal shelter.
He also has a new name: Gerald.
The juvenile bird was seen wandering in Westminster about a month ago and was cared for at the RSPCA Animal Care Centre in Malaga while the owner was sought.
On Wednesday, an animal lover who has a 4ha property in Wanneroo adopted the colourful bird.
"We are thrilled to hear he has found a loving new family," RSPCA WA chief inspector Amanda Swift said.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has arrived in Indonesia for long-awaited talks with the president. Source: AAP
PRIME Minister Tony Abbott has pledged to resolve the spying row with Indonesia to the mutual benefit of both nations, and has told the outgoing president that his policy on asylum-seeker boats means they shouldn't be a problem for much longer.
Mr Abbott on Wednesday met President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for the first time since the president last year learned Australia had tapped the phones of his wife and other confidants under the previous Labor government.
The president wants to mend severed ties before he leaves office in October, and Mr Abbott is keen to seize the opportunity before a new administration takes over.
Following their brief meeting in Batam, Indonesia, Dr Yudhoyono told reporters he believed the partnership could be stronger in future, with "mutual benefit and mutual respect".
"We have always thought in Indonesia that in time, cooperation between our two great countries can truly be implemented, and even better," the president told reporters.
Foreign ministers Marty Natalegawa and Julie Bishop are expected to complete a code of conduct within weeks, with Mr Abbott confident of a resolution to the "mutual benefit" of both parties.
"Intelligence sharing in dealing with common problems is the way forward for both of us," he said.
On the other thorny issue in the relationship - turning asylum-seeker boats back to Indonesian territory, Mr Abbott said there were now so few boats: "I believe this is an issue which will not substantially further trouble us".
Before they met for dinner, the prime minister praised SBY as the leading statesman of the ASEAN region.
"I believe when the history of Indonesia is written, the Yudhoyono presidency will be a watershed," Mr Abbott said.
"Marked by peace abroad, prosperity at home, the consolidation of democracy and the strengthening of national unity.
"This is a marvellous legacy that you, Bapak President, leave your country and I have to say I have been proud and thrilled and honoured to get to know you over the last few years and I will be very pleased and proud and honoured to call you a friend in the months and years and decades ahead."
Dr Natalegawa has been dampening expectations of a quick fix, pointing out that Australia's "unilateral" approach on asylum seeker boats would continue to be a problem.
He wouldn't comment on Mr Abbott's view following the meeting, but said he was keen to finish the code of conduct because, "addressing one issue will no doubt help the other one".
The reunion has been months coming and the pair were forced to wait a little longer than planned on Wednesday, when a technical problem on Mr Abbott's RAAF jet delayed him by more than two hours.
From Indonesia, he will travel to France, Canada and the US, for talks with President Barack Obama.
US businesses pulled back on hiring in May, adding the fewest jobs in four months, a private survey shows.
Payroll processor ADP said on Wednesday that private employers added 179,000 jobs last month, down from 215,000 in the previous month. April's figure was revised slightly lower. Still, the gain in May was in line with the ADP's average monthly hiring figures for the past 12 months.
The data suggest that the government's jobs report, to be released on Friday, could also show a modest slowdown from April's big gain of 288,000 jobs.
But the ADP numbers cover only private businesses and often diverge from the government's more comprehensive report.
Economists forecast that the government's figures will show that employers added 220,000 jobs in May, according to a survey by FactSet.
Hiring appears to be holding steady even though the economy shrank in the first three months of the year at a one per cent annual rate, the first contraction in three years.
Most of the slowdown has been blamed on unseasonably cold weather, which shut factories, disrupted shipping, and kept shoppers away from stores and malls.
"The labour market remains strong and the economy is still recovering from the weather-induced hit in the first quarter," Paul Dales, senior US economist at Capital Economics, said in a note to clients.
The slowdown in the ADP figures occurred mostly in professional and business services, a category that includes many higher-paying jobs such as accountants and engineers, but also lower-paid temporary workers.
THE Australian Bureau of Statistics has admitted it is difficult to counter the threat of a trusted insider leaking market-sensitive information.
Former ABS public servant Christopher Russell Hill, 24, of Belconnen in the ACT is facing criminal charges over his role in an alleged $7 million insider trading operation.
Police allege Hill gave market-sensitive information to his university friend, National Australia Bank associate director Lukas Kamay.
Kamay, 26, allegedly used the labour force, retail and trade figures, which had yet to be publicly released, to predict fluctuations in the Australian dollar.
The activity generated about $7 million in profits between August 2013 and May this year.
At a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday night, ABS acting statistician Jonathan Palmer defended security protocols in place, describing the breach as unprecedented in the bureau's 100-year history.
"Fortunately in this case police were clear that this person acted alone," he said.
"That gives me some level of confidence."
The bureau has recruited Belinda Gibson, former deputy chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, to conduct a review.
Staff must sign undertakings and declarations when they begin employment to show they are aware they risk jail if they leak sensitive information.
Mr Palmer said there were strict access controls on sensitive information and the bureau reviews access logs.
The hearing was told the bureau's procedures did not trigger any alerts to the alleged criminal behaviour.
Mr Palmer said Hill had been a trusted insider.
"It's a very difficult threat to counter," he said.
"If someone has a trusted need to access the number and they only have to leak an aggregate number or communicate in some obscure way that the number is contrary to market expectations, there's no requirement for them to take [numbers] out of the building."
He said staff were not allowed access to their mobile phones in lock-ups but that control measure did not extend to the office.
Labor senator Mark Bishop asked whether it was possible to have a staff lock-up between the data being finalised and then released to the market in order to restrict access to phones and computers.
He pointed to the Canberra press gallery's six hour budget lock-up as an example.
But Mr Palmer said that was not practical because sometimes data reports were completed days in advance.
WESTFIELD Retail Trust (WRT) shareholders are eagerly waiting for the outcome of a Supreme Court application over merger plans by the shopping centre giant.
Westfield is seeking approval to conclude an investor vote on a controversial proposed merger with the Australasian business of Westfield Group.
The planned merger hit a brick wall last week when the shareholder vote was postponed at the last minute amid heated debate about its merits.
WRT is in the Supreme Court in Sydney on Tuesday afternoon, seeking approval to send documents to securityholders ahead of a rescheduled vote.
Details of the date and venue for the conclusion of the meeting are included in the documents, which are likely to be made public soon after court approval is granted.
But a spokeswoman on Tuesday night said no date had been yet set for a fresh vote.
"I can confirm that we have not confirmed a date," the spokeswoman said. "When a date has been confirmed, we will send out a (media) release."
The spokeswoman's comments come despite a media report that June 20 had been set for fresh meeting and vote.
Under the restructure plan, Westfield's Australian and New Zealand businesses would merge with WRT to create a new entity, to be called Scentre.
Westfield Group's international business, which includes malls in Great Britain and at Westfield World Trade Center being built in New York, would become Westfield Corporation.
A significant number of WRT securityholders believe the proposed restructure favours Westfield Group to the detriment of WRT, and a number of proxy votes lodged last week by WRT securityholders in favour of the proposed merger fell just short of what was needed to push the restructure over the line.
Shortly before WRT investors were due to vote, Mr Lowy said Westfield Group would still seek to split its Australasian arm from its international business even if WRT securityholders did not approve the planned merger.
Proxies lodged before the original meeting will remain valid, but securityholders will be allowed to lodge new proxy votes if they have changed their view on the proposal, the company has said.
THE parents of an Australian man killed in a US drone strike in Yemen want to know how their son died and what evidence the federal government has of his possible links to terrorism.
Christopher Harvard, 27, was killed in a US drone strike in Yemen on November 19 last year.
The Townsville man's parents, Neill and Bronwyn Dowrick, say they feel abandoned by the Australian government after being given conflicting information about his death.
"Every time we ask questions, they just won't answer," Mrs Dowrick told the ABC on Tuesday.
Mr Dowrick said it took at least a month after their son was killed before they were told.
First they heard he was killed in a Yemen government strike on a mosque, then in a car, then the federal government "changed the story every week".
Mr Harvard had told his parents he was going to Yemen to teach English after someone paid for his trip.
But the federal government apparently suspects he was linked to terrorism in Yemen and to the kidnapping of three Westerners in 2012.
Mr and Mrs Dowrick say they received a call in 2012 to advise their son's passport had been cancelled.
"So then he had to stay in Yemen," Mr Dowrick said.
The ABC showed freedom of information documents from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop's office that say Mr Harvard was being investigated for possible involvement in activities in Yemen linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, including the kidnapping of three Europeans.
Mr Dowrick says all that is hearsay and no one has ever given them any proof either way.
They want the truth.
"No lies, the straight-out truth," he said.
Mrs Dowrick said it has been a terrible ordeal.
"How do we move on? We have got no closure.
"We've got no proof of Chris's body, a death certificate or how he was actually killed," she said.
Queensland Treasurer Tim Nicholls has handed down his third budget in Brisbane. Source: AAP
ASSETS worth $33.6 billion will be sold or leased if the Newman government wins next year's election, with a quarter of the proceeds going towards state building projects.
Six months after initiating scoping studies to gauge investor appetite, Treasurer Tim Nicholls has finally revealed that all assets originally earmarked for sale or lease will go.
The asset sales document, handed down separate to Tuesday's budget, is a draft report and a final decision will be made in September.
Electricity generators CS Energy and Stanwell would be offloaded, and Ergon's retail business would also be offered to sweeten the deal.
The industrial pipelines of Sunwater would be sold, and long-term leases would be offered for the Gladstone and Townsville ports, including the Mount Isa rail line.
About $29 billion could be raised by private investment in electricity distributors Ergon, Energex and Powerlink.
Investors will be offered a share of revenue if they undertake $9.8 billion of infrastructure upgrades.
There was no final figure on how much revenue Queenslanders will miss out on if assets are sold, but Mr Nicholls says its impact on the fiscal balance is expected to be minimal.
"But it will really free up a lot more opportunities to invest in the future," he said.
Three-quarters of the money raised would reduce state debt by $25 billion, taking it to $55 billion.
The rest, totalling $8.6 billion, would fund infrastructure projects over six years.
A billion dollars would be put aside for the Brisbane underground, a five-kilometre bus and train tunnel that goes under the Brisbane River.
Another $3 billion would be spent on roads and one billion dollars on new schools, with up to 48 needed by 2021.
Half-a-billion dollars would be set aside for future natural disasters
The asset sales document detailed public responses to the "Strong Choices" survey, which found 46 per cent of the 55,000 respondents favoured asset sales and 46 per cent preferred tax hikes and reduced services.
To further win over the public, another advertising blitz will be launched, at the cost of $5.2 million.
Mr Nicholls said there would be a strong appetite to buy the state's assets.
"Not everyone will agree with all of the choices this government has made about how to pay for things into the future," he said.
"But at least Queenslanders now know we will have funding certainty into the future, so we can invest in things we need for a growing and ageing population."
Malcolm Turnbull says claims he might mount a leadership challenge are 'demented' and 'unhinged'. Source: AAP
MALCOLM Turnbull's fluey quest for spicy soup has been miscast as a leadership challenge, the cabinet minister's wife and former Sydney lord mayor Lucy Turnbull says.
Lucy Turnbull told the ABC's Q&A on Monday there was no conspiracy when her husband met Mr Palmer, the leader of the Palmer United Party, for dinner last Wednesday night.
Mr Turnbull sent a text message at 6pm on Wednesday saying he had the flu and needed some spicy soup.
"He sent me a message at 6.30 in the morning saying 'guess what, having dinner and then Clive came along.'"
"It was completely spontaneous.
"It has been completely miscast."
Mr Turnbull on Monday labelled conservative political commentator Andrew Bolt "demented" and "unhinged" for suggesting he's trying to take back the Liberal leadership.
Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, also a guest on the program, said he thought Mr Turnbull went too far in criticising Mr Bolt.
"It was inappropriate, it was unwise to do," he said.
It kicked the whole thing along.
"Malcolm I just think went a bit too heavy today."
On Sunday Mr Bolt asked Prime Minister Tony Abbott at the weekend whether Mr Turnbull's recent dinner with Mr Palmer was an indication Mr Turnbull has designs on the party's top job.
Mr Abbott on Sunday played down Mr Turnbull's actions, saying it was "perfectly reasonable" for senior members of the coalition to talk with crossbenchers to help get the budget passed.
Mr Bolt has written on his popular blog that he is sure Mr Turnbull is not contemplating any imminent challenge.
Greens patriarch Bob Brown is being courted as the face of Tasmania's tourism campaigns. Source: AAP
BOB Brown is being wooed as the face of Tasmanian wilderness tourism.
The former Greens leader has been sounded out by the state's tourism industry to promote Tasmania's World Heritage Area.
The idea builds on the recent Go Behind the Scenery campaign, which sought to make the state's environmental battles a point of interest for tourists.
Tourism Industry Council boss Luke Martin has said Dr Brown defines the state's recent history.
But the Greens' patriarch may not be easily wooed.
Tasmania's new Liberal state government wants to open up national parks to eco-tourism development, a move Dr Brown has called "stupid" and "greedy".
Premier Will Hodgman is also backing a federal government move to cut 74,000 hectares from the World Heritage Area.
Dr Brown says he already pushes destination Tasmania but there would be conditions to him fronting a tourism campaign.
"I'm very woo-able but not unless they get the (balance) right," he has told the Hobart Mercury.
"Private development should be outside World Heritage and outside national parks, and developments inside national parks should be public and they should be well funded."
The Hodgman government has called for potential investors to pitch "sensitive and appropriate" eco-tourism ideas.
Mr Martin says they are the norm in countries such as New Zealand and Canada, where green groups support them.
Greens leader Christine Milne said the tourism industry should oppose the federal government's World Heritage wind-back.
"It's a bit rich for the Tourism Industry Council to be appealing to Bob Brown to help it sell tourism in World Heritage Areas while the Abbott government is trying to destroy them," she said in a statement.
AVIATION industry plans to improve global tracking following the Malaysia jet disappearance will be ready in September, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) says.
Announcing the date, the association's chief Tony Tyler repeated his earlier message that there must be "no repeat" of the flight MH370 incident.
Nothing has been found of the Malaysia Airlines' Boeing 777, which vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
"The loss of MH370 points us to an immediate need," Mr Tyler, IATA's director general and chief executive, told a world air transport summit in Doha on Monday.
"A large commercial airliner going missing without a trace for so long is unprecedented in modern aviation. It must not happen again.
"IATA, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and experts from around the world are working together to identify the best recommendations for improved global tracking.
"By September, we will deliver draft options to ICAO.
IATA's global aviation data management project is building the world's largest resource of operational information with data from a global spectrum of industry and government contributors.
"Our ultimate goal is to predict the potential for accidents and so ensure that they don't happen," Mr Tyler added.
"This is not science fiction. Each new data contribution and every improvement in our analytical capabilities moves this closer to reality."
Last week, Australia's Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre announced an end to the search in the southern Indian Ocean for the missing plane, after nothing had been found.
The agency said that an expanded search, based on satellite analysis of the plane's most likely route, would probably begin in August after commercial side-scan sonar operators were contracted.
US defence secretary Chuck Hagel has defended a prisoner exchange with the Taliban for a US soldier. Source: AAP
THE White House has defended the release of five Guantanamo detainees in exchange for a US soldier held by the Taliban, saying a potential threat had been "sufficiently mitigated."
Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl - the only US soldier held by the Taliban after being captured in Afghanistan - was freed on Saturday in a dramatic deal brokered by Qatar.
In exchange, five Taliban prisoners were turned over to the Arab emirate, where they will remain for a year, sparking criticism from some Republicans, who claimed they could return to the battlefield and pose a threat to Americans abroad.
But White House Press Secretary Jay Carney took to the US morning talk shows on Monday to downplay the threat posed by the men - influential former officials of the Taliban regime that was toppled by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
"We have a history in this country of making sure that our prisoners of war are returned to us, we don't leave them behind," Carney told CNN.
"And it's entirely appropriate, given the determination made by the secretary of defence, in consultation with the full national security team, that the threat potentially posed by the returned detainees was sufficiently mitigated to allow us to move forward and get Bowe Bergdahl back home where he belongs."
Carney added that a travel ban and monitoring was in effect, giving Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel "the confidence to make the determination he did.
"I can say that we do believe and have confidence that the measures put in place in agreement with the host country allow us to feel confident that the threat is sufficiently mitigated," he said.
Bergdahl's almost five years in captivity saw him transferred between various militant factions along the volatile Afghanistan-Pakistan border, finally ending up in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal district, according to militant sources.
The circumstances of the Idaho native's disappearance, from a base in Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province in 2009, remain unclear.
He arrived Sunday at the US military medical centre in Landstuhl in southern Germany where he is to continue his "reintegration process," the army said.
Australia has pledged 100 million dollars to go towards eradicating polio in northern Africa. Source: AAP
AUSTRALIA has pledged $100 million to help eradicate polio for good.
The funds will be spread over five years and will go towards making countries in northern Africa and the Middle East - where outbreaks have been reported - polio-free.
It will also help Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria, where the disease is endemic.
About $20 million will be provided over the next year to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative for immunisations to fight the disease's re-emergence.
Announcing the pledge on Sunday, Foreign minister Julie Bishop said Australia is committed to helping finish the job of eradicating polio.
Flights in Darwin are expected to resume later today as plumes from an Indonesian volcano dissipate. Source: AAP
FLIGHTS to and from Darwin have resumed after they were grounded by an ash cloud from an Indonesian volcano, as Jetstar grounds flights to Bali.
Darwin was cut off to all air services on Saturday as ash plumes billowed from the Sangeang Api volcano off the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. It erupted continuously after an initial blast on Friday afternoon.
The major plume affecting Australian aviation swept southeast over the west side of the Northern Territory and as far south as Alice Springs.
Cyndee Seals of the Bureau of Meteorology's Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre in Darwin said Australia was now clear but airlines were meeting to discuss an ash cloud near Bali.
"I can advise that the ash cloud across Australia is dissipating but there are still ash clouds southwest of the volcano and another to the east east-northeast from an earlier high eruption," she said.
The southwesterly ash cloud was nearing Bali but its effects on flights to Denpasar were not yet clear, Ms Seals said.
"Right now, unless the winds change - and they are a little variable - it will take the ash south of Denpasar, away from Bali," she said.
"The airlines are meeting about it."
On Sunday night Jetstar cancelled 12 flights in and out of Bali as the Sangeang Api cloud drifted towards Denpasar International Airport.
Qantas announced it had resumed its flights, while Virgin, Air Asia and Jetstar also resumed operations in and out of Darwin, Darwin International Airport spokeswoman Virginia Sanders told AAP.
But she urged travellers to stay in touch with their airline for updates on flights as some changes might be made.
"Flights are coming back on line but there are some scheduled changes so people still need to check with the airline with regards to what's happening with their particular flight," she told AAP.
A SHOTGUN has been fired at a house in Hobart.
The occupants were home when the shot was fired on Saturday evening, police said.
Neighbours heard the blast but the occupants of the Bridgewater residence did not report the incident until the following morning.
Police said damage consistent with shotgun pellets was visible at the scene.
No one was injured.
VIOLENCE has claimed the lives of 799 Iraqis in May, the highest monthly death toll so far this year, the United Nations says, underlining the daunting challenges the government faces as it struggles to contain a surge in sectarian violence.
The figures issued by the UN mission to Iraq, known as UNAMI, put last month's civilian death toll at 603, with 196 security forces killed.
UNAMI added that 1409 Iraqis, including 1108 civilians, were wounded.
The previous month's death toll stood at 750, making April the second deadliest month of the year.
The worst-hit city was the capital Baghdad, with 315 people killed.
The northern province of Nineveh came in second with 113, followed by nearby Salahuddin province with 94.
The figures exclude deaths in embattled Anbar province, where militants have controlled parts of the provincial capital Ramadi and nearby Fallujah since December.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a militant group that also operates in neighbouring Syria, has intensified its attacks across Iraq as political rivals work to form a new government following parliamentary elections on April 30.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's bloc emerged as the biggest winner, securing 92 seats in the 328-member parliament, but it failed to gain the majority needed to govern alone.
"I strongly deplore the sustained level of violence and terrorist acts that continues rocking the country," the UN Special Representative in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, said in the statement.
"I urge the political leaders to work swiftly for the formation of an inclusive government within the constitutionally mandated time frame and focus on a substantive solution to the situation in Anbar," he added.
Last year the death toll climbed to its highest levels since the worst of the sectarian strife in 2006 and 2007, when the country was on the brink of civil war.
The UN says 8868 people were killed in 2013.
The 2011 withdrawal of US forces, which had for eight years often acted as a buffer between Shi'ites and Sunnis, is thought to have contributed to the rise in violence, in addition to the use of deadly force by the Shi'ite-led security forces against Sunni protesters.
