Buildings destroyed in Sydney fire

AN overnight fire in Sydney's south west has caused $2 million worth of damage after burning down a mobile phone tower.

The blaze in Lansvale also destroyed two communications rooms.

Firefighters and police were called to the fire, near Hollywood Drive and Howard Street, at 1am on Saturday.

The buildings had already been razed to the ground by the time they arrived.

Police are investigating the cause of the fire, which they believe may have started in scrub between the street and the phone tower.

A report is to be prepared for the Coroner because of the high cost of damages.

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US senators want Libya video declassified

US Republican senators are demanding that the Obama administration make public the surveillance video taken during last month's deadly attack on the US consulate in Libya.

The US ambassador and three other staff members were killed in the attack.

Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte wrote to President Barack Obama's defence secretary, CIA director and attorney general demanding that the video be declassified.

In the run-up to the presidential election, Republicans have accused the Obama administration of distorting the account of the attack on September 11 that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.

Officials first blamed it on a mob set into motion by an anti-Islamic film.

Obama administration officials have pointed to US intelligence reports that showed conflicting information.

Administration officials did not respond to requests for comment.

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Shot Malala's family arrive in UK

RELATIVES of teenager Malala Yousufzai, who was shot and wounded by a Taliban gunman in Pakistan, are reported to have arrived in the UK to be with her as she recovers.

Ziauddin Yousufzai, her father, is believed to be among those who have arrived in Birmingham, where the 15-year-old is being treated for wounds received in the October 9 shooting.

He had previously told Pakistani state television she will return to Asia after she recovers in Britain.

She was shot for her role in advocating education for girls and was airlifted to the UK on October 15.

Her medical team at the hospital said she was comfortable and was responding well to treatment.

She has received thousands of goodwill messages from around the world.

Malala was travelling home from school with two classmates in northwest Pakistan when she was shot at point-blank range. The bullet hit her just above the back of her left eye and she was lucky to survive.

The bullet travelled through the side of her jaw, damaging her skull and jaw joint on the left-hand side, and went through her neck and lodged above her shoulder blade.

Foreign Secretary William Hague has described the shooting as a "barbaric attack".

The Taliban have vowed to kill her, raising questions about whether it would be safe for her to return.

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Newman must release Caltabiano's CV: Labor

THE Queensland premier must release the CV of a senior bureaucrat accused of misleading a parliamentary committee, the Labor opposition says.

Michael Caltabiano on Thursday stood down on full pay from his $500,000 a year post as transport and main roads director-general.

The parliamentary ethics committee will investigate concerns he may have misled a budget estimates hearing about his relationship with departmental liaison officer Ben Gommers - the son of Arts Minister Ros Bates.

Mr Gommers, who earns up to $105,000 a year, is currently the subject of a Crime and Misconduct Commission investigation into his employment with Mr Caltabiano's department.

During a transport estimates committee hearing last week, Mr Caltabiano said he had known Mr Gommers personally, not professionally.

But media reports allege Mr Caltabiano was named, alongside Mr Gommers, on the register of lobbying firm Entre Vous.

Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk says there's a stench of scandal.

"I call on the premier to immediately release this CV to the media and the public," she told reporters in Brisbane on Friday.

"This CV will clearly state yes or no if Michael Caltabiano worked at Entre Vous."

Ms Palaszczuk said the government had moved at a "snail's pace" on the matter, and only took action after intense media attention.

"The premier didn't have to wait for a week to take action," she said.

"He had four hours during that ethics committee hearing ... all the premier had to ask was, 'did Michael Caltabiano work at Entre Vous?'"

Asked if the matter should be referred to the Crime and Misconduct Commission, Ms Palaszczuk said she was confident in the bipartisan ethics committee.

But she said it probably should not be a private investigation.

"If it's the public interest it can be public, and there is a lot of interest at the moment," she said.

Earlier, the LNP MP who heads the ethics committee said he wasn't in a position to detail the specific allegations against Mr Caltabiano.

Alex Douglas said the matter involved an element of privilege, which could mean a lot of things.

"It could mean anything from that a question was answered incorrectly to elements of deliberately misleading our people," Dr Douglas said.

"It has to be confidential. You can prejudice any matter at any point in time by declaring exactly what may or may not occur."

He said the committee would take submissions on the matter, and would report back to parliament, which would make a decision on what action, if any, would be taken against Mr Caltabiano.

Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said the government was determined to investigate any claims of wrongdoing in a fair and open way.

"I heard Dr Douglas this morning, who is the chair of that committee, and it's obvious that we're making sure we uphold the standards that we always said we would in opposition," he told reporters on Friday.

"I think Dr Douglas pointed out this morning that the government does not have the numbers on the ethics committee, with an independent in there as well.

"I'm also confident the proper processes will be followed."

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Renewable energy target succeeding: report

AUSTRALIA'S renewable energy target (RET) has driven $18.5 billion of investment in clean power and eroded wholesale energy prices since it was introduced a decade ago, a new report suggests.

The Clean Energy Council analysis released on Thursday finds wholesale prices are as much as $10 per megawatt hour lower as a result of the RET being in place since 2001.

The target is meant to ensure 20 per cent of Australia's electricity comes from renewable sources by 2020.

It's currently being reviewed by the Climate Change Authority amid speculation that softer demand and the popularity of rooftop solar panels means the 20 per cent target may be exceeded.

Critics say overshooting the target would unnecessarily drive up retail power bills.

But the council-commissioned report by SKM MMA states the RET is doing its job and if left unchanged will result in 12 per cent less coal-fired generation between now and 2030.

Gas-fired generation is estimated to drop 13 per cent.

"Retaining the current RET will also mean we can meet the bulk of our target for reducing carbon emissions with renewable energy projects right here in Australia," council chief executive David Green said in a statement on Thursday.

"But all this is under threat if governments succumb to pressure to tinker with or drop the renewable energy target."

Thursday's report suggests that without the RET Australia would not have met its Kyoto emission-reduction goals.

It suggests the target could deliver an extra $18.7 billion in renewable energy infrastructure by 2030, on top of the $18.5 billion already invested.

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Seniors jump in Australian skydiving first

A 74-YEAR-OLD Queensland man has leapt out of a plane with 12 other seniors in an Australian skydiving first.

The group, aged 60 to 74, accomplished the first sequential formation skydive by people over 60, succeeding 14,000 feet above the town of Toogoolawah, northwest of Brisbane, just after noon (AEST) on Thursday.

Even with 29 years of skydiving experience Gordon Turner, 74, says it's not so easy when you get older.

"But it went very smoothly. There's a lot of very happy old people here," he told AAP.

"It was excellent."

The Ramblers skydiving centre has been buzzing all week with people attending the biennial Post Equinox Skydiving and Music Festival.

Mr Turner said the group, some members of which only met on Thursday morning, could make a second attempt.

"There's some debate on whether we should all have a nap this afternoon, but we could easily be back up there," he said.

"We think it's a good advertisement for old people not to sit on the lounge chair, get out there."

It was the first time a group of people aged over 60 had performed the feat in Australian skies.

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Cancer patient set Taiwan fire: prosecutor

AN elderly man has been arrested and detained in Taiwan on suspicion of starting a fire at a hospital that killed 12 people and injured 60.

The blaze erupted before dawn on Tuesday at Beimen nursing facility in southern Tainan city, whose 115 patients included people in their 90s, with several left on their own to escape dense smoke that filled the building.

The 67-year-old man, surnamed Lin and also a patient at the hospital, said he lit tissue papers and threw them into a storage room full of clothes, said prosecutor Tseng Chao-kai on Wednesday.

Lin said he was feeling upset because he had been suffering from serious illness, the prosecutor said, adding that an initial evaluation found that he did not appear to be mentally ill.

Prosector Tseng said Lin was located by the police several hours after the fire in an empty house near the hospital with a lighter in his pocket and was later arrested after questioning.

Tseng said the man, considered a flight risk, apparently tried to destroy evidence and would face murder and arson charges if his statement was proved to be true.

The China Times newspaper said Lin was suffering from colon and bladder cancer.

Closed-circuit TV footage taken moments after the blaze broke out showed hospital staff scrambling to put out the fire, while elderly patients struggled to escape in their wheelchairs.

Fire officials have said that the blaze possibly started in a storage room on the second floor of the five-floor building mainly housing bed-ridden seniors.

The cause of all the deaths was smoke inhalation. The injured were rushed to a dozen hospitals for treatment, officials said.

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Ex-defence boss backs govt's subs plan

A FORMER defence force chief has backed the federal government's plans to stick with conventional-powered submarines, saying they better serve the strategic interests of Australia's allies.

General Peter Cosgrove, now the Defence SA advisory board chairman, said a report suggesting Australia should consider a nuclear option for its next generation submarines put an "economic rationalist" argument ahead of capability issues.

He said the US would also favour Australia sticking with conventionally-powered submarines.

"The Americans would love us to have a conventionally-powered submarine to complement what they do," the retired general told reporters in Adelaide on Wednesday.

"So a conventionally powered submarine, from our point of view, is very viable.

"It (the report) takes some convenient economic rationalist argument, forgetting that there is a capability question at play here which is what is best for Australia.

"What is best for Australia, in this case, is to have a submarine which is capable, fitted with very, very modern systems which would keep our people in those submarines as safe as possible and which will do the job for Australia."

The report, by analyst Simon Cowan, said Australia should consider leasing up to eight US Virginia class nuclear submarines at an all-up cost of about $24-27 billion.

Mr Cowan, from the conservative thinktank the Centre for Independent Studies, argued nuclear boats offered far greater range and endurance, higher top speed, more weapons and better sensors.

"The nuclear-powered Virginia class is an altogether better submarine than any diesel-powered Collins Class replacement might be," he said.

The government is considering options for a Collins replacement, with an evolution of the Collins design, to give greater range and endurance, billed as most likely, with various cost estimates going as high as $40 billion.

General Cosgrove said the defence sector was mindful that budget constraints could impact on what option the government went with.

But he said maintaining the defence industry's construction capability was important to the nation's future.

"It is not a cost. It is an added value for this nation to have a defence capability in industry which includes a very vibrant, powerful, ongoing shipbuilding industry," he said.

"If we move all that stuff to other countries, not only will we be losing the capacity, we'll be paying billion and billions of dollars to overseas shipbuilders and shipyards to maintain warships because we will have lost the capacity to take care of them ourselves."

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Man raped five women in their homes: crown

FIVE women were raped at knifepoint in their own homes by a man who disguised his face before blindfolding and tying them up, an Adelaide jury has been told.

One woman was tied up on her bed after hearing the man open the door to the room where her three daughters were sleeping, said crown prosecutor Sandi McDonald on Tuesday.

He returned, pulled her out of her bed, put her in her car, drove a short distance and then raped her in the back seat, Ms McDonald said in the crown opening address in the South Australian Supreme Court.

Phillip Gordon Lindsay, 52, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of burglary, 12 of rape, one of false imprisonment and one of taking a motor vehicle without consent.

The offences took place in Adelaide in the early hours of the morning between February 1990 and January 1993.

Ms McDonald said DNA from all the rapes matched Lindsay's DNA.

The five women came from different backgrounds, from different walks of life and did not know each other, she said.

"Those are the five women whose homes were invaded and those were the five women who were raped during the period between 1990 and 1993.

"On each occasion, he forced his way into the house while they were asleep.

"He disguised himself. He threatened them with a knife. He bound and gagged them with their own clothing."

One woman, who was alone in her home with her seven-week old baby, was woken by a man who had one of her infant's nappies wrapped around his head.

Another woman who was raped had tried to get rid of him by saying her husband would be home soon.

Ms McDonald said the man had then taken the woman's car, which was found the next day in easy walking distance from the house Lindsay had rented at the time.

Referring to the DNA evidence, Ms McDonald said Lindsay had four brothers.

But she said one died before the rapes, one was in jail at the time, and a third's DNA did not match the rape samples.

The fourth brother was alive at the time of the offences, but has since died.

Ms McDonald alleged that the DNA from the crime scenes was 6,305 more times likely to match the DNA of Lindsay, than his brother, and extra testing resulted in that statistic increasing to 159,000.

Paul Charman, for Lindsay, warned the jury that DNA can never identify anyone.

All it could do was show statistical relationships between samples taken at a crime scene and from various people.

"It does not mean there are no other people on this planet that will be a match," he said.

The trial is continuing.

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New medical research centre for Sydney

A MEDICAL research centre in Sydney's southwest could lead to groundbreaking new treatments for cancer and other diseases, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.

At the official opening of the Ingham Institute's new home at Liverpool Hospital on Tuesday, Ms Gillard said she hoped to see more Australian discoveries such as the anti-cancer Gardasil vaccine.

"It is this kind of research that we need and has been done in the past that we can do in the future," Ms Gillard said.

The institute, which was founded in 1996 by chicken farmer and businessman Bob Ingham AO, received almost $47 million in federal funding in 2009 to help complete the new centre at the hospital - the first medical research centre in the region.

The centre has more than 200 researchers working on seven disease areas, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, trauma and injury and mental health.

Clinicians, researchers, nurses and students will also be able to get hands-on training at a simulation centre, set to be completed later this year.

The institute is also pioneering new MRI-Linac cancer treatment technology, one of only three in the world, which can more accurately locate tumours during a treatment session.

"We have never been able to do that before," the institute's Research Director Professor Michael Barton OAM said.

He said it was one of only three currently under development in the world and will place Liverpool at the centre of world's best practice for radiation treatment.

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Govt forced to find $16.4bn in savings

THE federal government has been forced to find an extra $16.4 billion of budget savings over the next four years to keep its surpluses intact, after a troubled global economy took a further toll on tax receipts.

Treasurer Wayne Swan's mid-year budget review released on Monday predicts a $1.1 billion surplus in 2012/13, down about 27 per cent from the $1.5 billion surplus forecast in the May budget.

But it would still be a massive turnaround from a final $43.7 billion deficit for 2011/12.

The economic growth forecast for this financial year in the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook (MYEFO) was also marked down to three per cent, from 3.25 per cent previously.

Mr Swan says anyone suggesting Australia is immune from the global fallout of economic weakness in Europe, the US and China is "kidding themselves".

"It's pretty obvious to all that ... this mid-year review has been put together amid storm clouds which are hanging over the global economy," he told reporters in Canberra.

"This lower global growth outlook has had another very big whack at government tax revenues and has made it harder to deliver a surplus."

The latest round of savings includes a cut in the baby bonus from $5000 to $3000 for second and subsequent children from mid-2013, further changes to the private health insurance rebate and increased visa application costs.

"Our savings send a very clear message to the world that we have world beating public finances," Mr Swan said.

"That is very important given global economic uncertainty."

But Mr Swan said the savings were made with the circumstances of lower and middle-income Australians in mind and would give the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) room to cut interest rates in the future.

Under other changes, large companies will progressively shift to remitting taxes to the government each month, instead of quarterly, from 2014.

This will deliver a revenue gain of $8.3 billion over four years and make the system "more accurate, more timely and more clear".

"It's not an increase in tax; it's simply a change in the timing of it," Mr Swan said.

Finance Minister Penny Wong said some of the savings measures would "no doubt be unpopular".

"But the government is focused on making the right decisions for our circumstances and ensuring a strong and sustainable budget position now and into the future," she said.

One budget casualty is the expected revenue from Labor's minerals resource rent tax (MRRT), which has been hit by falling commodity prices, particularly for iron ore.

Total MRRT revenue for 2012/13 and the next three years is estimated at $9.1 billion, down from $13.4 billion in the May budget.

First instalments of the 30 per cent MRRT on the profits of large iron ore and coal miners, which started on July 1, were due to be received on Monday.

Meanwhile net commonwealth debt, which peaked at 10 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011/12, is in a declining trend.

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Japan island protests against US rapists

THE legislature of the Japanese island of Okinawa has passed a protest resolution after the arrest of two US sailors on rape charges, and says US bases should be shrunk or returned.

The resolution approved on Monday demands proper punishment and victim compensation in the rape case.

The prefectural assembly also demands that the US military educate its personnel better to prevent crimes against locals.

The legislature says 5,747 crimes are on record involving US military personnel since Okinawa was returned to Japan in 1972.

The US has placed an 11pm to 5am curfew to all its military personnel in Japan.

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Missing Tassie devil returns to WA zoo

ONE of three Tasmanian devils on the loose in rural Western Australia has been found.

The four-month-old male devils - Itchy, Scratchy and Genghis - escaped from Peel Zoo, on the outskirts of Pinjarra, south of Perth, after a tree smashed their enclosure on Tuesday.

Zoo owner David Cobbold said Scratchy was found in the early hours of Sunday but the other two hand-reared animals remain on the loose.

Mr Cobbold has urged members of the public who see the devils to call him on 0400 788 289 but warned against anyone trying to capture them.

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Aust stocks set to open one per cent lower

THE Australian sharemarket is expected to open about one per cent lower on Monday following falls in Europe and the US on Friday.

Markets plunged in the US, with the Nasdaq pulled down by more than two per cent by a tech stock rout led by Apple and Microsoft as a raft of disappointing earnings and trimmed forecasts spooked investors.

AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver said Australian stocks were likely to be weaker following the disappointing US results and investor worries about a lack of progress at the European leaders' summit, particularly regarding Spain.

"Consequently the US sharemarket had a fairly steep fall and our futures have traded down with that," Dr Oliver said.

"It looks like we're going to have a fairly soft start to trade on Monday.

"I'd say we're probably going to be off about one per cent."

The Australian futures market is pointing to a 0.99 per cent fall at the open.

In economic news, RBA assistant governor Guy Debelle is to deliver a speech to the Australian Securitisation Forum on Monday.

Market watchers are also awaiting the release on Wednesday of inflation figures for the September quarter.

The figures are expected to show an increase in the annual inflation rate, adding impetus to the case for another interest rate cut in November.

The local annual general meeting season is also getting under way.

Dr Oliver said there was some talk that the federal government would release its mid-year economic and forecasting outlook, which will contain an update on the budget for this year.

"There's a risk that could entail further tightening measures because the budget is running well behind the surplus," he said.

At the closing bell on Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 187.92 points (1.39 per cent) at 13,361.02.

The broad-based S&P 500 lost 24.17 (1.66 per cent) at 1433.17, and the Nasdaq Composite was off 67.25 points (2.19 per cent) at 3005.62.

At the close of trade in Australia on Friday, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was up 11.7 points, or 0.26 per cent, at 4571.1, while the broader All Ordinaries index had gained 12.6 points, or 0.28 per cent, to 4593.5.

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