'Unimaginable terror' of NSW murder victim

Sean Lee King was on parole for drug and firearm offences when he murdered Jazmin-Jean Ajbschitz. Source: AAP

THE last moments of her life must have been filled with unimaginable terror.

Eighteen-year-old Jazmin-Jean Ajbschitz would have been petrified as she struggled to protect herself from the "vicious, inhuman and unprovoked" attack by her murderous boyfriend, Sean Lee King, Justice Geoffrey Bellew said as he jailed King for at least 25-and-a-half years.

King, 27, beat Ms Ajbschitz to death in a ferocious, drug-fuelled murder - kicking and hitting her with three different objects, dragging her bruised and bloodied around her apartment and stomping on her chest until her heart stopped.

At the time, he was on parole for a drug offence, had been placed on a good behaviour bond for a firearm offence and was facing separate assault charges."

A forensic pathologist who performed thousands of autopsies said she had never witnessed such blunt force trauma injuries - describing Ms Ajbschitz's injuries as similar to a high velocity car accident.

The court heard King and Ms Ajbschitz's relationship was "volatile and violent".

He had assaulted her several times before and her mother and brothers constantly implored her to end the relationship.

"He was a powerful man who had violent tendencies," Justice Bellew said on Friday.

Those tendencies were exacerbated by his regular use of the drug ice and steroids - something King was all too aware of, the judge said.

In the early days of his relationship with Ms Ajbschitz in April 2010, he broke the jaw of a man he claimed had spat at her, before stomping on a woman's head while high on ice.

It was an attack that was "identical" to the murder he would carry out 15 months later.

In April 2011, he was sentenced to a maximum 15 month jail term for drug and firearm offences, but was granted immediate parole due to seven months he had previously spent in custody.

Three months later, he murdered Ms Ajbschitz.

King admitted to killing his girlfriend, but he denied murdering her on the grounds he was high on ice at the time and did not intend to kill her or cause her serious harm.

It took a jury less than two hours to find him guilty of murder.

The court heard how King called Ms Ajbschitz several times on July 10, 2011, telling her, "You don't know what I can do" and "You think I'm joking. I'll kill you and then anybody else that you're with".

King eventually persuaded Ms Ajbschitz to let him into the security building at Ultimo where, in the next 26 minutes, he beat her to death.

Justice Bellew noted "the unimaginable terror which must have overcome (her) in the final moments of her life".

"He intended to kill her," he said.

King, who took the stand and apologised for murdering his "beautiful" Jazy, appeared to be genuinely remorseful, the judge said.

But his prospects of rehabilitation would depend entirely on his ability to stay off drugs.

King made no reaction as the judge set a maximum 33-and-a-half jail term for the murder and two assaults.

His mother yelled, "You've got to live with what you've done" at Ms Ajbschitz's family before storming out of court.

Taking into account time already served, King will be eligible for parole in 2037, when he is aged 51.

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US prison term of disgraced Enron CEO cut

A US judge has cut ten years off the prison sentence of disgraced former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling. Source: AAP

A US judge has cut 10 years off the prison sentence of disgraced former Enron chief executive Jeff Skilling after he spent years fighting his original 24-year jail term for fraud.

But he was also ordered to forfeit $US42 million ($A45.81 million) to be used to compensate victims of the Enron debacle, who include employees who saw their pension savings wiped out.

Skilling, who led the high-flying energy and trading conglomerate before its disastrous collapse in 2001, was resentenced in a federal court in Houston, Texas, the Justice Department said.

The announcement came weeks after a deal to cut Skilling's sentence and end the legal battle over it was reached in May.

"The sentence handed down today ends years of litigation, imposes significant punishment upon the defendant and precludes him from ever challenging his conviction or sentence," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman in a statement.

"With today's court action, victims of Skilling's crimes will finally receive more than $US40 million that he owes them."

Skilling was convicted on multiple counts of conspiracy, securities fraud, insider trading and making false statements to auditors on May 25, 2006.

But he fought the 24-year sentence, earning appeals court support for his argument that the original judge went too far in setting the punishment, based on the parameters of the law.

In its statement on Friday, the Justice Department reiterated that Skilling had taken part in a scheme to deceive the public and US securities regulators about the problems in Enron's businesses.

"The scheme was designed to make it appear that Enron was growing at a healthy and predictable rate" and artificially push up its share price, the department said.

In fact, the company had deep cash-flow problems and investment losses and collapsed like a house of cards when the US economy turned downward in 2001.

"The fraud scheme eventually unravelled and Enron filed for bankruptcy in December 2001, making its stock virtually worthless," it said.

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Singapore haze hits critical 400 level

SINGAPORE'S smog index has hit the critical 400 level, making it potentially life-threatening to the ill and elderly people, according to a government monitoring site.

The level was reached at 11am (1300 AEST) on Friday, after a rapid rise in the Pollutant Standards Index, which measures the haze crisis caused by Indonesian forest fires.

Indonesian and Singaporean officials have been holding emergency talks on how to extinguish the fires on farms and plantations on Sumatra island, which are also affecting Malaysia.

According to Singapore government guidelines, sustained PSI average levels above 400 on a 24-hour basis "may be life-threatening to ill and elderly persons".

General practitioner Philip Koh said he had seen a 20 per cent spike in consultations in the past week, and estimated that about 80 per cent of all his patients are suffering from haze-related ailments.

"My patients are telling me they are worried about how long this is going to last and how much higher this is going to go. It is already high at 400 now, how much higher will it go?" he told AFP.

Koh also said many were turning to his clinic to buy protective masks, as supplies are low at retailers.

"Our supplies are running low here too," he said.

If the 400 index average is sustained over a 24-hour period, the government advises all children, elderly people and persons with existing diseases to stay indoors, keep windows closed and avoid physical exertion as much as possible.

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A million Brazilians protest in cities

About 300,000 have rallied in Rio de Janeiro, bemoaning massive spending to stage the World Cup. Source: AAP

BRAZILIAN President Dilma Rousseff has called an emergency cabinet meeting after at least a million people rallied for better public services and against the high cost of staging the World Cup.

Sources quoted by the daily O Estado de Sao Paulo said authorities were "frightened" by protesters' attempts to break into the foreign ministry building in Brasilia. The presidential office would not comment on the reports.

The mounting pressure on Rousseff's government in the face of the biggest street protests the South American country has seen in 20 years prompted her to cancel a trip to Japan planned for next week and call the emergency meeting for Friday.

Late on Thursday, security forces struggled to maintain order in several cities, firing tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse groups of rowdy protesters who hurled stones and lit fires.

Police fired tear gas in Rio de Janeiro, scene of the biggest protest where 300,000 people demonstrated near City Hall, while in the capital Brasilia, security forces blocked protesters trying to break into the foreign ministry and throwing burning objects.

Police and experts quoted by Brazilian media said at least one million marched in more than 100 cities across the country of 194 million people, an intensification of a movement sparked two weeks ago by public anger about a hike in public transport fares.

The protests have spiralled into a wider call for an end to government corruption in the world's seventh largest economy, a call fuelled by resentment over the $US15 billion ($A16.36 billion) cost of hosting the Confederations Cup and the World Cup.

In Rio, police fired tear gas to disperse a small group of stone-throwing protesters. At least one person was hurt in the clashes, which sparked panic in the crowd.

Demonstrators also set ablaze a vehicle owned by the SBT television station.

A protester died after a motorist hit him and two other demonstrators in the southeastern city of Ribeirao Preto, police said.

In the northeastern city of Salvador, one of the host cities for the Confederations Cup, police fired tear gas against some of the 20,000 protesters massed two kilometres from the stadium where Uruguay defeated Nigeria 2-1.

Vehicles used by world football's governing body FIFA were stoned in the Bahia state capital and riot police had to intervene.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, meanwhile, called for an investigation into the possible use of "excessive force" on demonstrators and journalists during protests last week.

On Wednesday, protesters had scored a major victory when authorities in Rio and Sao Paulo, Brazil's two biggest cities, cancelled the controversial transit fare hikes, but that was not enough to placate the demonstrators.

In Sao Paulo, an estimated 110,000 people flooded the main Paulista Avenue to celebrate the fare rollback and keep the pressure on Rousseff's leftist government to increase social spending.

Several protesters called for Rousseff, Sao Paulo State Governor Geraldo Alckmin and Sao Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad to be impeached.

The protest was largely peaceful except for clashes between a group of ultra-leftists marching behind their red banners and a majority of demonstrators who objected to the presence of political parties.

"This is a social movement, not a political movement. This has nothing to do with ideology," 28-year-old protester Maria Vidal told AFP. "We don't want parties in the demonstration."

Protesters say they want higher funding for education, health and housing. They are also railing against what they view as rampant corruption within the political class.

Social media networks have been key to the organisation of the mass protests, with demonstrators using the slogan "It's more than just 20 cents" - a reference to the bus fare hikes - to rally people to their cause.

The movement has no political colouration and no clearly identified leadership.

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PM dividing Australia like Hanson: Abbott

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has likened Julia Gillard to Pauline Hanson, the anti-immigrant founder of One Nation.

Mr Abbott on Thursday told parliament the prime minister of Australia should be a leader for all Australians.

But he said Ms Gillard would use class, gender, and now country of birth, to score political points.

Speaking in the increasingly rancorous debate on Labor's plan to tighten up 457 visas for temporary foreign workers, Mr Abbott referred to a former member of parliament who set out to divide Australia about 15 years ago.

"We saw a member of this parliament set out to make perfectly decent Australians feel like strangers in their own country," he said.

Mr Abbott said he never thought he would see the day when it was not just be an independent member of parliament but the prime minister setting out to deliberately divide Australian from Australian to serve a political purpose.

"It is an embarrassment," he said.

In her first speech to parliament in 1998, Ms Hanson, a disendorsed Liberal candidate, warned that Australia risked being swamped with Asian immigrants.

The government claims there has been widespread rorting of the 457 visa scheme.

Its legislation will require employers to conduct market testing and only hire foreign workers if no Australian is available.

Mr Abbott said the government should be tackling the real problem of illegal boat arrivals.

"Instead they have decided to raise a false problem," he said.

"They can't get tough on illegal arrivals by boat, so they have decided to get tough on legal arrivals by plane."

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Qld hospital concealed fatal death: union

THE Queensland Nurses Union is calling for an independent investigation into the Wesley Hospital manager who did not disclose a previous legionnaires' disease death at the facility.

The Brisbane hospital is dealing with a deadly outbreak of legionnaires', which killed one patient and put another in intensive care this month.

Its management has previously told reporters there were no past cases.

However, Queensland Health this week told reporters it is now including a 2011 legionnaires' death at the private hospital in its investigation.

UnitingCare Health executive director Richard Royle on Wednesday admitted he knew of the 2011 death; a fortnight ago he denied any knowledge of past cases.

The Queensland Nurses Union's acting secretary, Des Elder, says withholding information and making false statements are serious offences.

"There absolutely has been a cover-up," Mr Elder said.

"I don't think there's any question that the hospital management has tried to conceal that there had in fact been a previous occurrence of legionella previous years ago when they made statements to the press quite openly that there had not been."

He said had the Wesley been a public hospital, Mr Royle would be held accountable for making false statements.

"It would be a breach of the code of conduct in Queensland Health for a CEO to lie," he said.

Mr Elder suggested a public hospital chief executive would face disciplinary action under the same circumstances, but declined to say whether he believed Mr Royle should be sacked.

However, he called for an independent investigation into the false statement and the delay in passing relevant information to Queensland Health.

"For too long the private sector has been treated with kid gloves by both the state and federal governments, and this crosses party political lines," he said.

"There's a reluctance to take strong action to ensure that accountability that everyone requires of a public health system is there in the private health system."

Premier Campbell Newman told reporters earlier on Thursday he was disturbed to hear the 2011 death was never made public.

"I believe the hospital had the duty back then to reveal what went on, but of course Queensland Health had a duty to reveal," he said.

"It's not clear to me why the previous government failed to tell Queenslanders what was going on."

He said private hospitals were required to comply with the same accountability standards as the public sector.

The Wesley withheld information about the 2011 death from media, but it was reported to health authorities at the time.

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WorleyParsons shares rise on Nigeria deal

SHARES in mining engineer WorleyParsons are up three per cent after a South Korean shipbuilding giant awarded it a $US100 million ($A105.97 million) offshore oil and gas contract in Nigeria.

The news comes a month after a profit downgrade saw its shares plunge to a four-year low.

Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) awarded WorleyParsons a design and engineering contract for a floating production, storage and offloading vessel, which will operate at an offshore deepwater oil field in Nigeria.

WorleyParsons chief executive Andrew Wood said the contract to design topside process modules for the floating vessel was significant and represented "a strong development of our ability to locally support the offshore oil and gas business in West Africa".

WorleyParsons shares rose by 3.2 per cent, or 62 cents, to $19.92 on Tuesday.

They hit a four-year low of $19.50 on May 17, after the company blamed a slowdown in the West Australian mining industry for a profit downgrade.

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Freed Ohio mum, daughter 'doing well'

A MENTALLY disabled woman and her daughter are doing well after they were freed in October following two years in captivity and after police investigated an abuse allegation one of the suspects made against her, authorities say.

"The victim in this case is slowly recovering," US Attorney Steve Dettelbach said.

Jordie Callahan, 26, Jessica Hunt, 31, and Daniel J. "DJ" Brown, 33, were charged with forced labour. Callahan also was charged with tampering with a witness in the investigation.

The suspects had an initial appearance in US District Court in Cleveland and were ordered jailed until a bond hearing on Monday.

Callahan's mother, Becky Callahan of Ashland, said in a phone interview that the allegations were "all lies".

She said the alleged victim was friends with her son and Hunt, her son's girlfriend, and that they tried to help the woman out by offering her a place to live because she didn't have a home.

Andrew Hyde, who represented Callahan on related state kidnapping charges that were dismissed on Tuesday as the federal case was announced, called the charges ludicrous and said the woman at the centre of the alleged forced-labour plot moved in and out as she pleased.

"There was never any forced labour, any forced cohabitation. She was never forced to do anything. She used this story to get out of trouble she was in" with regard to a child-abuse allegation, Hyde said.

Hyde said county social service workers placed the girl with her mother when the woman was living with the three suspects.

A federal court lawyer for Callahan declined to comment. A second defence lawyer, Ed Bryan, said Hunt will plead not guilty and said there are credibility issues with the mother.

There was no immediate response to phone and email messages left for the lawyer representing Brown.

Police first got involved when the woman was charged with shoplifting a chocolate bar and asked to be jailed because the three suspects "had been mean to her".

Police checking into her "mean" claim went to the apartment after one of the suspects said it was the woman who was abusive. Authorities said the allegation was a ruse complete with a video staged by the suspects. They said the suspects forced the woman to act as if she were mistreating her child.

Defence lawyer Hyde said police told the woman they would help if she felt she had been framed with an incriminating video. According to Hyde, she bought that argument and made up the enslavement allegation.

"I think the feds just failed to fully investigate this before they jumped to some conclusions," Hyde said.

A woman in the Ashland neighbourhood said Tuesday she was surprised by the allegations, saying that Callahan sometimes helped her husband with yard work and other chores and that she never saw signs someone was being held captive in the house.

Tara Williams, 51, said she occasionally saw Callahan walking down an alley with a large yellow-and-white snake draped around his neck, but never saw him threaten anyone with it. She said three pit bulls also lived in the apartment, along with a pot-bellied pig that once got loose.

The white, two-storey house of three apartments, including the defendants' apartment, is set back from the road with a "no trespassing" sign near the front.

Williams said she occasionally saw the presumed victim walking by quickly and sometimes underdressed for cold weather. The woman never spoke or looked at others, Williams said. Williams never saw a child, she said.

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China warned on cyber-hacking: Obama

US President Barack Obama says China has understood his "blunt" warnings against cyber-hacking as he credited new leader Xi Jinping with accepting more global responsibility for Beijing.

"We've had very blunt conversations about this. They understand, I think, that this can adversely affect the fundamentals of the US-China relationship," Obama told The Charlie Rose Show on Monday.

Obama raised charges of a vast Chinese cyber-hacking campaign when he met Xi on June 7-8 at a desert resort in California. Xi insisted that the Asian power was also a victim of cyber theft.

"I don't think you ever expect a Chinese leader to say, 'You know what, you're right, you've caught us red-handed. We're stealing all your stuff, and every day we figure out how we can get into Apple," Obama said.

Obama, who has faced criticism at home for disclosures of US surveillance, said that every nation gathered intelligence but that China went beyond "standard fare" such as trying to "find out what my talking points are when I'm meeting the Japanese."

"There's a big difference between that and a hacker directly connected with the Chinese government or the Chinese military breaking into Apple's software systems to see if they can obtain the designs for the latest Apple product.

"That's theft. And we can't tolerate that," Obama said.

Obama, calling the United States "the world's innovator" of products, said: "If countries like China are stealing that, that affects our long-term prosperity in a serious way."

A private US report earlier this year said that hacking by China cost the US economy hundreds of billions of dollars per year through the theft of intellectual property.

The Pentagon has charged that Chinese hackers have broken into both US companies and government agencies, including secret designs for sophisticated weapons systems.

But Obama had favourable words for Xi, the 60-year-old son of a founding revolutionary who assumed the presidency in March.

"My impression of President Xi is that he has consolidated his position fairly rapidly inside of China, that he is younger and more forceful and more robust and more confident, perhaps, than some leaders in the past," Obama said.

Xi's ascent offers a second chance for Obama to shape his relationship with a rising China after he grew frustrated during his first term by what US officials saw as a stilted, formal style by then president Hu Jintao.

After initial outreach, the Obama administration took a harder tone on China following concerns by Southeast Asian nations and Japan over Beijing's claims to territories in the South China Sea and East China Sea.

"We've got to get this relationship right and China does need to be a stakeholder. And I think that they recognise that," Obama said.

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Chinese supercomputer world's fastest

A CHINESE university has built the world's fastest supercomputer, almost doubling the speed of the US machine that previously claimed the top spot and underlining China's rise as a science and technology powerhouse.

The semiannual TOP500 listing of the world's fastest supercomputers released on Monday says the Tianhe-2 developed by the National University of Defence Technology in central China's Changsha city is capable of sustained computing of 33.86 petaflops per second. That's the equivalent of 33,860 trillion calculations per second.

The Tianhe-2, which means Milky Way-2, knocks the US Energy Department's Titan machine off the No. 1 spot. It achieved 17.59 petaflops per second.

Supercomputers are used for complex work such as modelling weather systems, simulating nuclear explosions and designing jetliners.

It's the second time a Chinese computer has been named the world's fastest. In November 2010, the Tianhe-2's predecessor, Tianhe-1A, had that honour before Japan's K computer overtook it a few months later on the TOP500 list, a ranking curated by three computer scientists at universities in the US and Germany.

The Tianhe-2 shows how China is leveraging rapid economic growth and sharp increases in research spending to join the United States, Europe and Japan in the global technology elite.

"Most of the features of the system were developed in China, and they are only using Intel for the main compute part," TOP500 editor Jack Dongarra, who toured the Tianhe-2 facility in May, said in a news release.

"That is, the interconnect, operating system, front-end processors and software are mainly Chinese."

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