UK 'cancels' Assange working group

Last Updated: June 19, 2014

THE UK Government has cancelled a working group set up with Ecuador to find a way of resolving the future of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder has claimed.

Coldplay perform hottest gig in town

IF you saw Coldplay perform their intimate gig for the Max Sessions count yourself very lucky, because the band are only doing seven concerts this year.

More teen angst for Ashleigh

GALORE: Puberty Blues' Ashleigh Cummings, a teenage love triangle and the 2003 Canberra bushfires. Does Australia really need another coming-of-age drama?

Appealing rapport fights appalling script

BLENDED: With the regular release of two-tonne turkeys Adam Sandler is clearly Not Really Trying. But no matter how bad, enough tickets will be sold to justify another one.

The cleverest sequel to a dumb movie of all time

22 JUMP Street: Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill share a rare comedic connection that money just can't buy in a film that cracks plenty of strong gags at its own expense.

Oil duo lose their Pot of Gold

WHICH TV talent show judge rejected the stars of Midnight Oil? Drummer Rob Hirst still has the 'f--- off' letter and reveals all.

Blues end eight-year stranglehold

FINALLY. The reign is over. After eight years of frustration, defeat and heartbreak, NSW have ended Queensland's Origin stranglehold.

Men and makeup? Yep, it's a thing

DON'T be surprised if you bump into a bloke next time you're shopping for makeup. More Aussie men use skincare and makeup in their grooming routines.

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Knox defence turns to Italy's last resort

Last Updated: June 19, 2014

AMANDA Knox's lawyers have formally asked Italy's court of last resort to review the US student's appeals court conviction for the 2007 murder of her British room mate.

Blues end eight-year stranglehold

FINALLY. The reign is over. After eight years of frustration, defeat and heartbreak, NSW have ended Queensland's Origin stranglehold.

Men and makeup? Yep, it's a thing

DON'T be surprised if you bump into a bloke next time you're shopping for makeup. More Aussie men use skincare and makeup in their grooming routines.

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Nine dead after boat sinks off Malaysia

AT least nine people have drowned and 26 others are missing after a boat carrying Indonesian migrants sank off Malaysia, officials said.

FISHERMEN recovered the bodies of a man and a woman, believed to be from the boat, floating near the mouth of the Sungai Langat river in the town of Kuala Langat, 45 kilometres west of Kuala Lumpur, said Jazlizad Jalil, from a local fire and rescue department.

More bodies - six male and one female - were recovered by rescuers at sea, according to the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA).Sixty-two people were rescued after the accident, which occurred before dawn about three kilometres from the coast, the agency added.MMEA official Ibrahim Mohamed said the wooden fishing boat was believed to be heading for the Indonesian province of Aceh, whose nearest point is about 400 kilometres from the coast of Kuala Langat."A survivor said the boat was overloaded and began taking in water after it was battered by huge waves, causing it to sink," Ibrahim said."It's difficult to speculate on the fate of the missing since the accident happened near the shore, so some of them could have swum to safety."We will just continue our search and hope to recover more survivors."The Indonesian workers were returning home to celebrate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a source at the MMEA said.An Interior Ministry official says of the estimated 1.5 million undocumented migrant workers in Malaysia, more than half are from Indonesia and many make the journey between the two countries on rickety wooden boats in search of employment."Most of these illegal Indonesian workers are working as maids, helpers in restaurants, or in palm oil and rubber plantations," he said.Malaysia has a high demand for Indonesian labour migrants, the International Office of Migration said, "and is highly dependent on their contribution to its development and industrialisation".

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ANAO says Customs missing most contraband

CLOSE to half a million prohibited items could have evaded Customs mail screening in 2012-13, allowing guns, drugs and quarantine risk items into the community.

THE Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) says Customs' seizure of 67,123 prohibited imports represented around 13 per cent of potential prohibited imports.

In a 2012 report on its own performance, Customs cited the increasing number of successful seizures of contraband and concluded that this demonstrated "low level of leakage of a small number of prohibited imports of a minor nature."But the ANAO said Customs really didn't know as it had never calculated its leakage rate - done by sampling cleared mail items.ANAO did its own calculations and estimated Customs missed 467,893 prohibited items in 2012-13."Customs' high estimated leakage rate, particularly in unscreened non-letter class mail would suggest that Customs' screening activities miss a large number of prohibited imports," it said.ANAO acknowledged screening was a challenging job.In 2012-13, Australia Post reported that around 180 million international mail items arrived in Australia. Over the last five years, parcels have increased 200 per cent with the rise in online shopping.Most pose no threat but some contain drugs, guns and risky plant or animal products.International mail arrives at four Australia Post gateway facilities in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth where it's screened by Customs and Agriculture visually and by x-ray scanners and sniffer dogs.Where previously everything was screened, it's now done according to risk assessment.Since 2006-07 the number of items screened by Agriculture has reduced by 76 per cent and 45 per cent for Customs. The government provided funding this year to increase the screening rate.ANAO said Customs described its targeting approach as "intelligence-led and risk-based".But in practice targeting decisions were often not documented and did not align with risk analysis, providing little assurance that it was adequately and consistently targeting high risk mail groups.Customs and the Department of Agriculture have agreed to ANAO recommendations to improve screening procedures.

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Slipper says he's been vindicated

James Ashby says he is ditching his case against former parliamentary Speaker Peter Slipper (pic). Source: AAP

FORMER house of representatives speaker Peter Slipper says sexual harassment claims by a former staff member caused enormous personal stress which require ongoing psychiatric treatment.

MR Slipper said he'd now been vindicated by the decision of James Ashby to drop his sexual harassment claim.

He said the impact of those allegations had been "immeasurable and irreparable.""The allegations brought by Mr Ashby have caused enormous personal stress which has required ongoing psychiatric and psychological treatment and many weeks of inpatient hospital care," he said in a statement on Wednesday."My mental illness is both ongoing and debilitating."Mr Ashby announced on Wednesday he would drop his legal action.That started in 2012 when he revealed lurid details of alleged sexual harassment by Mr Slipper, then the Labor government-appointed house speaker.His appointment was highly controversial as it had increased Labor's majority in the finely balanced parliament. At the height of the scandal, Mr Slipper stood down from the speaker job.In a scathing decision in 2012, Federal Court Justice Steven Rares threw out Mr Ashby's case, finding his main purpose was to pursue a political attack against Mr Slipper.However, the full bench of the Federal Court reversed that decision and the case was set to proceed on June 30.Mr Ashby said he was aware of reports Mr Slipper was mentally unwell and he did not want to continue lengthy proceedings that could cause further harm."After deep reflection and consultation with those close to me, I now have decided to seek leave to discontinue my Federal Court action against Peter Slipper," he said in a statement."This has been an intense and emotionally draining time for me and my family, taking its toll on us all."Mr Ashby also cited the potential costs, given the Abbott government had confirmed the Commonwealth continued to cover Mr Slipper's legal fees.He said this kind of "deep pocket litigation" was fundamentally unfair for an ordinary person seeking justice.Mr Slipper said the decision came as a complete surprise and it meant no court had ever found sexual harassment occurred."I very much regret that these horrendous allegations have meant that I was never able to complete my reform agenda for the House of Representatives," he said.However, Mr Slipper, 64, still faces three criminal charges relating to dishonest use of a taxpayer-funded Cabcharge card for trips to wineries near Canberra in 2010, before he became speaker.After failing in a Supreme Court bid to have those charges thrown out of court, he's now set to argue they should be dropped on grounds of his mental illness. That's listed for the ACT Magistrates Court for next Wednesday.

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Fish feel pain too: Expert

FISH have feelings and intelligence on a par with other animals and deserve better consideration of their welfare, according to a behavioural biologist at Australia's Macquarie University.

DR Culum Brown came to the conclusion after reviewing the scientific evidence on fish capabilities.

He found that fish have good memories, lived in social communities, co-operated, and learned from one another.They displayed behaviours normally seen in primates and were even able to build complex structures and use tools.While their brains differed from those of other vertebrates, they contained structures that performed similar functions seen in other animals.There was also mounting evidence that they felt pain in the same way humans do.Brown believes fish are just as likely to be sentient as other animals.He wrote in the journal Animal Cognition: "Although scientists cannot provide a definitive answer on the level of consciousness for any non-human vertebrate, the extensive evidence of fish behavioural and cognitive sophistication and pain perception suggests that best practice would be to lend fish the same level of protection as any other vertebrate."We should therefore include fish in our 'moral circle' and afford them the protection they deserve."People rarely thought about fish other than as food or pets, said Brown.He pointed out that fish were second only to mice in terms of the numbers used in scientific experiments.With more than 32,000 known species, fish far outweighed the diversity of all other vertebrates combined, he added.

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FedEx Q4 profit rises to $US730m

FEDEX says its quarterly profit rose as growth in online shopping gave its ground-shipping business a lift.

THE earnings of $US2.46 per share beat Wall Street's forecast by a dime. Revenue also topped expectations.

Its shares rose 4 per cent in premarket dealings before the opening bell.The package-delivery company said on Wednesday that it earned $US730 million ($A789.83 million) in its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended May 31, compared with $US303 million a year ago, when write-downs weighed on the results.Revenue rose 3.5 per cent to $US11.84 billion. Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected $US11.66 billion.Revenue in the ground-shipping business grew 8 per cent, helped by gains in e-commerce. That helped offset slower growth in FedEx Express, which accounts for more than half the company's revenue.The Memphis-based company said that it would earn between $US8.50 and $US9 per share in the new fiscal year, which ends in May 2015. That is in line with analysts' average expectation of $US8.74.Last month, FedEx announced that it will start charging more for large but light packages that take up space in its delivery trucks and add to costs. That includes bulky products that consumers buy online instead of in stores. Rival United Parcel Service said on Tuesday that it would do the same by considering a bulky package's dimensions and not just its weight in setting prices for ground shipments.The results marked an improvement over FedEx's third quarter, when the company was slowed by winter storms that raised costs and cut into shipping volumes. They also indicated that that while e-commerce continues to boost the ground-shipping business, express-delivery remains virtually flat as customers shift to slower, cheaper services for international shipments.

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Scientist gets World Food Prize for wheat

Last Updated: June 19, 2014

A CROP scientist credited with developing hundreds of varieties of disease-resistant wheat adaptable to many climates has been awarded the 2014 World Food Prize.

Blues end eight-year stranglehold

FINALLY. The reign is over. After eight years of frustration, defeat and heartbreak, NSW have ended Queensland's Origin stranglehold.

Men and makeup? Yep, it's a thing

DON'T be surprised if you bump into a bloke next time you're shopping for makeup. More Aussie men use skincare and makeup in their grooming routines.

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