Behemoth storm dumps snow on US northeast

Airlines are grounding their planes in New York City in response to an intensifying blizzard. Source: AAP

A BEHEMOTH storm packing hurricane-force winds and blizzard conditions has swept through the US Northeast, dumping more than half a metre of snow on New England and knocking out power to 650,000 homes and businesses.

More than 70 centimetres of snow had fallen on central Connecticut by early on Saturday, and areas of southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire notched 0.6 metres or more of snow - with more falling. Airlines scratched more than 5,300 flights through Saturday, and New York City's three major airports and Boston's Logan Airport closed.

The wind-whipped snowstorm mercifully arrived at the start of a weekend, which meant fewer cars on the road and extra time for sanitation crews to clear the mess before commuters in the New York-to-Boston region of roughly 25 million people have to go back to work. But it could also mean a weekend cooped up indoors.

For a group of stranded European business travellers, it meant making the best of downtime in a hotel restaurant Friday night in downtown Boston, where snow blew outside and drifted several inches deep on the footpaths.

The six Santander bank employees found their flights back to Spain cancelled, and they gave up on seeing the city or having dinner out.

"We are not believing it," said Tommaso Memeghini, 29, an Italian who lives in Barcelona. "We were told it may be the biggest snowstorm in the last 20 years."

The National Weather Service says up to 3 feet of snow is expected in Boston, threatening the city's 2003 record of 27.6 inches. A wind gust of 76 mph was recorded at Logan Airport.

In heavily Catholic Boston, the archdiocese urged parishioners to be prudent about attending Sunday Mass and reminded them that, under church law, the obligation "does not apply when there is grave difficulty in fulfilling this obligation."

Halfway through what had been a mild winter across the Northeast, blizzard warnings were posted from parts of New Jersey to Maine. The National Weather Service said Boston could get close to 3 feet of snow by Saturday evening, while most of Rhode Island could receive more than 2 feet, most of it falling overnight Friday into Saturday. Connecticut was bracing for 2 feet, and New York City was expecting as much as 14 inches.

Early snowfall was blamed for a 19-car pileup in Cumberland, Maine, that caused minor injuries. In New York, hundreds of cars began getting stuck on the Long Island Expressway on Friday afternoon at the beginning of the snowstorm and dozens of motorists remained disabled early Saturday as police worked to free them.

About 650,000 customers in the Northeast lost power during the height of the snowstorm, most of them in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, Mass., lost electricity and shut down Friday night during the storm. Authorities say there's no threat to public safety.

At least four deaths were being blamed on the storm, three in Canada and one in New York. In southern Ontario, an 80-year-old woman collapsed while shovelling her driveway and two men were killed in car crashes. In New York, a 74-year-old man died after being struck by a car in Poughkeepsie; the driver said she lost control in the snowy conditions, police said.

Forecasters said wind gusts exceeding 75 mph could cause more widespread power outages and whip the snow into fearsome drifts. Flooding was expected along coastal areas still recovering from Superstorm Sandy, which hit New York and New Jersey the hardest and is considered Jersey's worst natural disaster.

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Khartoum-backed militia 'kill 17 people'

KHARTOUM-BACKED militia in Sudan's South Kordofan state have killed 17 civilians, rebels say.

They accused the group of ethnic South Sudanese of ambushing a civilian lorry on Friday at Abu Nuwara, about 80km from the border with South Sudan's Upper Nile state.

"They clashed with the civilians there and there's a lot of casualties," said Arnu Ngutulu Lodi, spokesman for the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) which has been fighting government forces in South Kordofan since June 2011.

He said the incident occurred in a government-controlled area and blamed a militia linked to Lam Akol's Sudan People's Liberation Movement-Democratic Change (SPLM-DC).

"This is ridiculous," Akol told AFP from Khartoum. "We don't have a militia."

SPLM-DC is South Sudan's main opposition party, a breakaway group from the Sudan People's Liberation Movement which has ruled the South since independence in 2011 after a 22-year civil war.

He said the rebels in South Kordofan are "just parroting what their masters in Juba are saying."

Khartoum accuses South Sudan of supporting the SPLM-North, and this has been a major obstacle for the failure of Sudan and South Sudan to implement key security and economic agreements signed in September.

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Man gets bail after train station assault

A SYDNEY hotel worker has been charged with the sexual assault of a young male who was passed out drunk at a train station.

The man was granted bail during a brief appearance in Central Local Court on Friday.

Police allege the heavily intoxicated 18-year-old victim had been out with friends before he made his way to Central railway station in the early hours of January 8.

He passed out sometime before 3.30am (AEDT) and awoke to find the man allegedly performing a lewd act on him.

Following inquiries by police, the man was arrested at a hotel in Darling Harbour on Thursday and charged with one count of sexual intercourse.

He was granted conditional bail which included a surety of $10,000.

His wife was among family members who supported him in court.

He will appear before Downing Centre Local Court on April 9.

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Merkel ally resigns in plagiarism scandal

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel has suffered a major political blow with the resignation of her education minister over plagiarism allegations.

Merkel said she had accepted the resignation of Annette Schavan "with a heavy heart". Schavan's former university stripped her of her doctorate, saying she had plagiarised parts of her thesis, Person and Conscience, 33 years ago.

Schavan reiterated her vow to fight the allegations but said she did not want the claims to damage the office, the party or the federal government.

"I think today is the right day to leave my ministerial post and to concentrate on my duties as a member of parliament," said a visibly moved Schavan on Saturday.

Schavan, 57, became the second close ally of Merkel to step down over plagiarism after Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a popular defence minister, resigned in 2011.

The extent of Schavan's alleged plagiarism is thought to be less than that of zu Guttenberg's, whose actions earned the aristocrat the nicknames Baron cut-and-paste and zu Googleberg.

Nevertheless, Schavan's mistakes were seen as indefensible given her position as education minister in a country where academic titles are taken extremely seriously.

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Elderly woman dies in scooter accident

AN elderly woman has died after her scooter collided with a car in southwest NSW.

The 81-year-old woman was riding her scooter in Lavington when she collided with a sedan at an intersection and was thrown onto the road about 8.20am (AEDT) on Friday.

She sustained critical injuries and was taken to Albury Base Hospital but later died.

The 49-year-old driver of the car was uninjured.

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Gunmen kill 9 at two Nigeria polio clinics

GUNMEN have attacked two polio clinics in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, killing nine people before fleeing, police and residents say.

"Nine people were killed in two separate attacks by gunmen on (motorised) tricycles when they attacked two dispensaries where polio immunisation workers were preparing to go out for polio campaigns," police spokesman Magaji Majia said.

The attacks come after a local cleric denounced polio vaccination campaigns this week and some local radio programs repeated previous conspiracy theories about such campaigns being a foreign plot to harm Muslims.

Such conspiracy theories have long spread in parts of northern Nigeria, stoked by local politicians.

Nigeria is one of only three countries still considered to have endemic polio, alongside Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Police declined to say who they believed was behind the killings.

Extremist sect Boko Haram has carried out attacks in Kano, although gangs linked to local politics also operate.

"Six people on a tricycle pulled up outside the dispensary at 9.45am while polio immunisation workers were gathering for the day's house-to-house polio campaign," a resident near the second attack said.

"Two of the men were holding guns. They stormed into the dispensary and began shooting."

Last year, two Nigerian police guarding polio vaccination workers were killed by gunmen, though it was unclear if the attack was linked to the campaign.

Islamist extremists have carried out scores of attacks on police.

In 2003, Kano's state government suspended polio immunisations for 13 months, with the then governor saying claims on its harmful effects had to be looked into.

The suspension followed allegations by some Muslim clerics that the vaccine was laced with substances that could render girls infertile as part of US-led plot to depopulate Africa.

Despite the resumption of polio immunisations, Kano has continued to record polio cases as many parents still reject the vaccine.

Deadly attacks linked to polio vaccination campaigns have also occurred in Pakistan.

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Bomb kills 10 people in northwest Pakistan

A BOMB planted near a market in northwestern Pakistan has killed 10 people and wounded 23 others, in the latest in an uptick in attacks in recent months, government officials say.

The blast occurred in Kalaya, the main town in the Orakzai tribal area, said local government administrator Khaistan Akbar.

Orakzai is one of several areas in the semiautonomous tribal region along the Afghan border where the military has been battling a Pakistani Taliban insurgency.

No group has claimed responsibility for the latest bombing, but local militants regularly target security forces and civilians in the area.

The blast occurred near government and security offices, according to another local administrator, Javed Khan.

It damaged one of the shops in the market.

Some of the wounded were in critical condition, he said.

The military has launched multiple operations against the Pakistani Taliban in the northwest since 2009, but the militant have proved resilient and continue to carry out attacks.

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Tunisians mass for slain leader's funeral

TENS of thousands of Tunisians chanting anti-government slogans have attended the funeral of an assassinated opposition politician.

Military helicopters hovered overhead and tensions threatened to boil over as mourners came from all over the country on Friday to mark the assassination of 48-year-old lawyer Chokri Belaid, a harsh critic of the Islamist government.

The country was largely shut down due to a general strike.

Efforts to stem the country's worst crisis since the 2011 revolution deposed dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali have so far failed and the funeral has become a platform to mobilise popular anger.

The anti-government sentiment at the cemetery was palpable and there was a brief scuffle when officials identified as being with the governing coalition were stopped by the crowd from entering.

The army, one of the few state institutions people still respect, provided security for the funeral march.

Once the standard bearer in the region for its political consensus, the country's transition to democracy has been shaken by a economic problems and political turmoil.

Belaid had accused the ruling Islamist Ennahda party of resorting to thugs to attack opposition rallies. His family and allies accuse the party of complicity in his killing on Wednesday. Although they have offered no proof, the allegations have fanned popular dissatisfaction with the government.

"We can't accept that they assassinate freedom, that they assassinate democracy - that's what they are doing - we are burying a martyr," said Mohammed Souissi, a 63-year-old veterinarian who showed up at the cemetery, where the crowd seemed unfazed by the intermittent rain and sang the national anthem.

More than a dozen offices of the Ennahda party were attacked overnight in towns around the country, Tunisian media reported. Schools, shops, banks and other institutions were all shuttered following the general strike.

Tunisia's prime minister offered to replace the government after Belaid's killing in response to longstanding opposition demands, but that attempt may have backfired as his ruling Islamist party rejected his decision - exposing internal divisions between moderates and hardliners.

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Govt wants to reveal MRRT data: Swan

THE federal government will make sure people know how much money is really coming from the controversial new mining tax - if the tax commissioner agrees, Treasurer Wayne Swan says.

The Senate ordered the tax commissioner this week to reveal how much money, if any, has flowed from the minerals resource rent tax (MRRT).

Treasury forecast that the tax on the super profits of iron ore and coalminers would raise $2 billion this financial year, but analysts believe that's unlikely.

Despite calls to reveal the amount, the government has been insisting the commissioner can't reveal the tax receipts of mining companies for legal reasons.

Mr Swan said the government believed any MRRT revenue data should be published but says it is up to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to decide.

"If the ATO assesses it can provide information specifically about MRRT revenue from the second quarter to the government, then we will ensure it is made public," he said in a statement on Friday.

Protecting the confidentiality of individual taxpayers was essential, the Treasurer said. "But I believe there is a case to examine whether large and multinational businesses should have the same level of confidentiality about the taxes they have paid."

Mr Swan said revenues from the mining tax had taken a massive hit because of ongoing uncertainty in the global economy, volatile commodity prices and the high Australian dollar.

"MRRT is a profits-based tax that raises more revenue when profits are higher and less when they are lower; that's the whole point of the tax," he said.

Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury said earlier this week the government was looking into how corporate tax laws could be made more transparent.

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ECB holds key interest rate at record low

THE European Central Bank has decided to leave its main refinancing rate at a historic low of 0.75 per cent, despite worries about slow growth and the strength of the euro.

ECB watchers had not expected the central bank to ease borrowing costs in the euro area this month, but analysts said they would listen to see what central bank chief Mario Draghi had to say later on Thursday about the recent strong rise of the euro exchange rate.

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