Five killed in another shooting in US

GUNFIRE erupted at an apartment complex in a city south of Seattle and five people were shot to death, including a suspect who was shot by arriving officers, police say.

Officers responding to an emergency call at 9.30pm on Sunday (1430 Monday AEST) at the apartments in Federal Way found two injured men on the ground in a parking lot.

"When we arrived, there was a lot of gunfire already being fired and multiple calls, 911 calls of gunfire," said Federal Way police spokeswoman Cathy Schrock on Monday.

One of the men reached for a gun as police moved in to assist the two on the ground, she said.

At that point, other officers opened fire. The suspect died, but police said it wasn't immediately clear if it was from their gunfire.

The other man on the ground and a third man in the parking lot were found dead.

Police found a fourth man dead in one apartment and a slain woman in another unit.

Schrock said police were trying to determine if the woman was accidentally hit by gunfire.

There was no immediate word what set off the shooting.

"We're gonna continue to go door to door in hopes that we can find some additional witnesses, and hopefully we won't be finding any more victims," Schrock said.

After police flooded the scene and carried out searches of the area, authorities said they did not think another shooter was on the loose.

There were no reports of any officers being injured.

Federal Way is about 30km south of Seattle.

16.57 | 0 komentar | Read More

Fake bus driver 'a misunderstanding'

REPORTS of a man posing as a bus driver and picking up students on the Gold Coast have turned out to be a big misunderstanding.

The alarm was raised on Monday morning by a concerned parent who told police her child feared something was amiss.

The driver didn't seem to know where he was going, and wasn't collecting fares from the students he picked up a number of stops in the Coombabah area.

It turned out that the driver was new, unfamiliar with his route, and didn't know how to work the ticketing machine properly.

16.57 | 0 komentar | Read More

Victims should go to police: churches

A culture of ignoring children helped child sex abuse go undetected, the Anglican Church says. Source: AAP

TWO of Australia's largest churches say it's up to the people who were sexually abused as children to go to the police.

The Anglican and Uniting churches in Victoria have together paid more than $2.25 million in compensation to victims over the past 10 to 15 years but have only referred a small number of allegations to authorities, a Victorian inquiry has heard.

Melbourne's Anglican Archbishop Dr Philip Freier says a culture of disbelieving children who complained of sex abuse and an unwillingness to face up to difficult and shameful things had helped the crime go undetected.

"As you look backwards you can see broadly as a culture we've not readily listened to children when they've made complaints," Dr Freier told the parliamentary inquiry on Monday.

"There have been opportunities for people who wanted to breach the trust of children to do that, and often for children's accounts of that trust being broken, being disbelieved.

"Some were even punished for having raised a question about the conduct of an adult."

He said this was the case for many community organisations not just churches.

Clergy have been responsible for most of the 46 incidents where a child sex abuse complaint has been made to the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne since the 1950s, the inquiry heard.

The church has paid out $268,000 to 10 victims since 2003, but only reported 12 of the 46 complaints to police.

The Uniting Church, which has $2 million in compensation since 1998, said "very few" of the 63 victims in the synod of Victoria and Tasmania had their cases referred to police.

Both churches said they did this to spare the victim further trauma.

Dr Freier said in the cases of historic abuse the church encouraged people to work with a solicitor as they didn't want to risk "revictimising" the complainant.

It's policy to report current allegations.

The Uniting Church synod's legal adviser Philip Battye said it was up to complainants to go to police if they wanted.

"Numbers of care leavers don't want the police to be involved," he said of people who had left children's homes operated by the church.

The church has no records before 1998 of child sex abuse complainants seeking compensation but acknowledged abuse had probably occurred and poor record keeping was to blame for the lack of information.

Mr Battye said it was "theoretically possible" that some alleged perpetrators were still involved with the church, potentially dealing with children.

"I can't say I'm totally confident that they're not but these complaints do go back many years," Mr Battye said.

"We are talking about 30-plus years ago."

The Uniting Church defended legal claims of sexual abuse against its members by invoking the statute of limitations, he said.

"If there are legal proceedings then the church will plead the limitation defence, because it's open to the church to do so," he said.

He said most of the perpetrators were not clergy or employees of the church and were, for example, a spouse of a 'cottage parent' looking after children in the homes.

Victorian and Tasmanian synod general-secretary Reverend Mark Lawrence said the Uniting Church in Australia had apologised unreservedly for any harm that occurred to children while in its care.

"The church continues to offer personal apologies to those who seek them."

Dr Freier said he wished he could undo the harm that had been done.

"It is unfortunate that we cannot change the past, I wish I could - but I give a real and genuine commitment to enhance the processes and culture of our organisation," he said.

"The abuse of children has no place in our society."

16.57 | 0 komentar | Read More

Asian markets mostly up

ASIAN markets mostly climbed on Monday, with Tokyo surging as the US dollar pushes back towards the 100 yen mark after the G20 cautiously endorsed the Bank of Japan's huge stimulus measures.

Chinese shares dipped, however, as insurers suffered a sell-off after an earthquake struck Sichuan province, leaving more than 200 dead or missing and destroying villages.

Tokyo jumped 1.89 per cent, or 251.89 points, to 13,568.37, while Seoul was up 1.03 per cent, or 19.56 points, at 1,926.31. Sydney rose 0.70 per cent, or 34.7 points, to 4,966.6.

Hong Kong added 0.14 per cent, or 30.80 points, to 22,044.37 but Shanghai was 0.11 per cent lower, shedding 2.47 points to 2,242.17.

The yen added to gains made in New York on Friday after the Group of 20 economic powers agreed that Japan's huge monetary easing measures unveiled this month were necessary to boost the country's stagnant economy.

In a statement following their meeting in Washington, G20 finance chiefs said the policy actions "are intended to stop deflation and support domestic demand".

Many countries, including the United States, have expressed concern that Japan could be deliberately trying to force the yen lower to boost exports and cut imports via "competitive devaluation".

But the G20, which includes the United States and Japan, called for more efforts to stimulate "strong, sustainable and balanced" growth globally, and took note of Japan's efforts towards that.

The US dollar jumped in New York to 99.52 yen on Friday, from 98.23 yen the previous day.

In afternoon Asian trade it stood at 99.74 yen. The greenback is expected soon to break the 100 yen barrier, a level it has not seen since April 2009.

The euro fetched $US1.3042 and 130.05 yen, against $US1.3057 and 129.94 yen.

"The G20 effectively gave the green light for further yen weakness by supporting the aggressive easing by the Bank of Japan," National Australia Bank said in a note.

"However, the G20 did add that it would like to see Japan also detail the structural reforms it can take to further boost growth."

On Wall Street, the Dow ended flat, the S&P 500 jumped 0.88 per cent and the Nasdaq added 1.25 per cent.

In Shanghai, insurance firms weighed on the market after Saturday's quake, which flattened thousands of houses.

Ping An and China Life were among the losers, although construction companies were up slightly on speculation of short-term construction work.

Oil prices were mixed. New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in May, added 39 cents to $US88.40 a barrel in the afternoon and Brent North Sea crude for June delivery fell 15 cents to $US99.50.

An ounce of gold fetched $US1,420.73 at 0800 GMT, compared with $US1,414.20 late Friday.

In other markets:

-- Taipei added 0.50 per cent, or 39.58 points, to 7,970.38.

-- Manila surged 2.35 per cent, or 163.38 points, to 7,120.48.

-- Wellington advanced 0.88 per cent, or 39.16 points, to 4,438.66.

16.57 | 0 komentar | Read More

China criticises US on human rights record

CHINA has slammed the human rights record of the United States in response to Washington's report on rights around the world, saying that US military operations have infringed on rights abroad and that political donations at home have thwarted the country's democracy.

The report released on Sunday in China - which defines human rights primarily in terms of improving living conditions for its 1.3 billion people- also cited gun violence in the US among its examples of human rights violations, saying it was a serious threat to the lives and safety of America's citizens.

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2012 said the US government continues to strengthen the monitoring of its people and that political donations to election campaigns have undue influence on US policy.

"American citizens do not enjoy a genuinely equal right to vote," the report said, citing a decreased turnout in the 2012 presidential election and a voting rate of 57.5 per cent.

The report from the information office of the State Council, or China's Cabinet, which mostly cited media reports, said there was serious sex, racial and religious discrimination in the US and that the country had seriously infringed on the human rights of other nations through its military operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

The US's annual global human rights report issued Friday by the State Department said China had imposed new registration requirements to prevent groups from emerging that might challenge government authority. It said Chinese government efforts to silence and intimidate political activists and public interest lawyers continued to increase, and that authorities use extralegal measures such as enforced disappearance to prevent the public voicing of independent opinions.

It also said there was discrimination against women, minorities and people with disabilities, and people trafficking, the use of forced labour, forced sterilisation and widespread corruption.

China's authoritarian government maintains strict controls over free speech, religion and political activity - restrictions that the US considers human rights violations.

16.57 | 0 komentar | Read More

Hotelier stuck in a lift for four days

A HOTELIER says skills learned on a military survival course allowed him to survive four days trapped in the lift of his Austrian hotel.

A friend delivering bread eventually alerted rescue services on Friday after noticing post piled up outside the hotel in Bad Gastein near Salzburg.

The 58-year-old man had forgotten his mobile phone on his desk. His repeated desperate cries for help went unheeded and attempts to escape through the lift roof failed.

The Swedish-born man is now "in good health, telling officers that a survival course with the Swedish military had set him in good stead," police said.

16.57 | 0 komentar | Read More

AG wants Racing Queensland investigation

QUEENSLAND'S attorney-general wants a parliamentary committee to investigate how the former Labor-aligned Racing Queensland board approved projects, and if anyone should face criminal charges.

A forensic audit by accountancy firm Deloitte, commissioned by the government, found that $150 million worth of contracts were awarded to engineering firm Contour Consulting Engineers without first going to tender, News Limited reports.

About $60 million worth of work was undertaken before the Newman government froze the program, $20 million of which was approved by the Bligh government before the 2012 state election.

Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie says the report shows an obscure procurement process.

He'll ask cabinet on Monday to set up an investigation into the board's procurement processes, favouring an open parliamentary committee inquiry.

He'd want the inquiry to have the power to impel witnesses and believes current deputy opposition leader and former racing minister Tim Mulherin and Labor heavyweight and former RQ board member Bill Ludwig should give evidence.

Mr Bleijie wants to know who approved the payments and if it went through cabinet.

"Or did Bill Ludwig get on the phone to his Labor mates and say we need the money and got it approved?" he told AAP.

"If it shows that there is any criminality that has occurred, then we will then have the options to follow through."

Mr Bleijie insists an inquiry isn't throwing good money after bad.

Late last year, former RQ chairman Bob Bentley said everything he and his board did was "above board" and tenders were not called because Contour was a preferred contractor doing specialist work, News Limited reports.

Comment is being sought from Mr Mulherin.

Mr Mulherin says as minister he properly fulfilled all of his responsibilities.

He described the potential inquiry as a diversion, and accused Mr Bleijie of making political and prejudicial comments.

"Every time (the government) is on the ropes it hits the diversion button," he said.

"It shows a government obsessed with fruitless attacks on past governments and with no plans of its own for the state's future."

16.57 | 0 komentar | Read More

Federal, state govts urged to cut spending

Treasurer Wayne Swan has revealed a $7.5 billion hit to the national budget. Source: AAP

FEDERAL and state governments are being urged to live within their means and make more aggressive cuts in public spending.

In a report released on Sunday, the Grattan Institute warned Australia must prepare for more difficult economic times ahead by reducing its overall budget deficit.

The think tank says Australia faces a "significant risk" of posting deficits of around four per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) over the next 10 years.

Averting them would require governments to find savings and tax increases worth $60 billion a year.

"This alarming task is not impossible, but it will require tougher choices than those made over the last decade," the report said.

"To be sustainable, current budgets need to be in surplus."

The institute acknowledged that clawing back a deficit of four per cent of GDP required that everyone experienced some "budget pain".

But it was vital to cut back on spending, with "far more negative than positive forces" on the economic horizon.

"This will be politically difficult, but the alternative is unsustainable budget deficits that will be even more painful to reverse in the future," the report said.

The institute warned company and carbon tax revenues were likely to be one per cent of GDP - or $15 billion a year - less than current forecasts.

"Current revenues are inflated by the mining boom and Australia's high terms of trade.

"If, as many predict, minerals prices fall, government revenues will fall by another one per cent of GDP."

In the federal government's financial statement for February 2013, released last week, there was an underlying cash deficit of $23.646 billion, higher than $17.993 billion forecast in the mid-year budget update released in October.

The difference of $5.713 billion was mainly due to lower tax revenue and higher welfare payments, the government says.

A spokesman for Treasurer Wayne Swan said the government was committed to making the budget sustainable over the long term.

He said it had "demonstrated this again recently with the announcement of responsible savings to help pay for better funding for schools".

He said without such measures, the budget position in 2020-21 would be $250 billion worse off.

"This includes tackling unsustainable spending on health - which this report identifies as a significant issue - through measures such as means testing the private health insurance rebate and cutting the millionaires' dental scheme," the spokesman said.

Mr Swan on Sunday revealed that the high dollar and lower terms of trade have resulted in a $7.5 billion hit to revenue in the federal budget.

He said the same factors would also impact forward estimates.

16.57 | 0 komentar | Read More

Online detectives flourish in US manhunt

THE intensive manhunt for the bombers behind the deadly Boston Marathon attacks didn't take place only on the streets with professional police officers and SWAT teams.

In an era of digital interactivity, it also unfolded around the country on laptops manned by ordinary citizens.

Fuelled by Twitter, online forums like Reddit and 4Chan, smartphones and relays of police scanners, thousands of people played armchair detective as police searched for men who turned out to be suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, ethnic Chechen brothers who had immigrated from southern Russia years ago.

As amateur online sleuths began identifying possible culprits, caught in the virtual manhunt were people who were wrongly accused or placed under suspicion by crowdsourcing.

It showed the damage that digital investigators can cause and raised a relevant question: In the social-media generation, what does law enforcement unleash when, by implication, it deputises the public for help?

"The FBI kind of opened the door," said Hanson Hosein, director of the University of Washington Master of Communication in Digital Media program. "It was almost like it was put up as a challenge to them, and they rose to it.

"They can be either really helpful or mob rule."

The bombings have been the highest-profile case in which the public has joined an active investigation, using ever-evolving crowd-sourcing tools, showing the pitfalls and benefits of new technology.

It's certainly not vigilantism, but it's not standard policing, either. It's something in the middle, perhaps something new - the law-enforcement equivalent of citizen journalism.

While listening to the police scanner, Reddit and Twitter users thought they had heard the name of a Brown University student missing since March, and one user posted a news story about his disappearance.

That assumption proved wrong - and there was a cost.

The missing student's family, besieged with ugly comments, temporarily took down a Facebook page asking for help finding him.

A few hours later, the online detectives said sorry - in the words of one moderator, "Rather Confused," for "any part we may have had in relaying what has turned out to be faulty information."

Several Reddit users who posted on r/findbostonbombers did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

The rush to informal sleuthing began on Monday soon after the smoke cleared as pictures and videos from the marathon began to circulate on the internet.

Salah Eddin Barhoum, a 17-year-old track star who was a spectator at Monday's race, had his picture posted all over the internet and ended up on the cover of the New York Post.

He told The Associated Press on Thursday that he is now afraid to leave his house.

Some of the amateur police work didn't sit well with the professionals.

Boston's police department, for example, has a very active Twitter account with more than 220,000 followers, but the onslaught of misinformation proved to be too much.

At one point, Boston police asked people to stop tweeting information from their scanner traffic.

While Reddit and 4Chan have been around for several years, their prominence has grown of late. More and more news organisations have learned to use them to mine information.

For Hosein, sub-sections on Reddit have become something like local newspapers, except it's the users providing the content.

"Citizens think they almost have an obligation to rise up to do the work," he said.

Hosein says that the FBI's call for help was no different than a "Wanted: Dead or Alive" poster from the 1800's - albeit with much more amplification and distribution. But he feels that after this week's saga, people will eventually learn to exercise caution.

"There's a sense that we're learning collectively quickly, that we actually have to take on some of the sourcing rules that journalists have had in the past," Hosein said.

16.57 | 0 komentar | Read More

Scores dead, 1,000 injured in China quake

Hundreds of people are dead or injured after a 6.6 magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province. Source: AAP

DOZENS of people have been killed and more than 1,000 injured in an earthquake that hit China's southwestern Sichuan province, five years after a massive quake devastated the area.

The shallow quake struck on Saturday near Lushan county in the city of Ya'an on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau just after 8am (1000 AEST), setting off landslides, destroying homes and triggering a major rescue operation.

Just over seven hours after the quake struck the death toll stood at 100, CCTV News said, citing the China Earthquake Administration.

Lushan authorities estimate numbers of the injured ranged from 1,000 to 2,200, while the provincial government said more than 10,000 homes were destroyed.

Local seismologists registered the quake at magnitude 7.0 while the US Geological Survey gave it as 6.6 at a depth of 12km. More than 260 aftershocks followed, the People's Daily said on its website.

The shaking was felt in the provincial capital Chengdu, 110 kilometres to the east, and even in the megacity of Chongqing several hundred kilometres away.

Panicked residents fled into the streets, some of them still in their slippers and pyjamas.

"Members of my family were woken up. They were lying in bed when the strong shaking began and the wardrobes began shaking strongly," said a 43-year-old Chongqing resident surnamed Wang. "We grabbed our clothes and ran outside."

About 6,000 soldiers and police were heading to the area to help rescue work, the Xinhua news agency said.

Some had to contend with roads blocked by debris, CCTV reported, while one military vehicle carrying 17 troops plummeted over a cliff, killing one soldier and injuring seven others, Xinhua said.

"There are mountains on all sides, it is very easy to trigger mudslides and very dangerous," one user wrote on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter.

The disaster evoked comparisons to the 2008 Sichuan quake, the country's worst in decades, which left 87,000 people missing or dead, and President Xi Jinping ordered all out efforts to minimise casualties, Xinhua said.

Premier Li Keqiang arrived in Sichuan in the afternoon and was taking a helicopter to the quake zone.

"The current most urgent issue is grasping the first 24 hours since the quake's occurrence, the golden time for saving lives," he was quoted as saying.

Amid the rescue efforts, a 30-year-old pregnant woman surnamed Zhao was pulled out of the rubble along with a young child and sent to hospital for treatment, the People's Daily said on its Weibo account.

A local TV journalist due to get married on Saturday turned up instead for work and a photograph of her reporting on the disaster in her wedding dress with bright makeup and a corsage was widely circulated on Weibo.

Meanwhile Ya'an residents were offering to donate badly needed blood, the People's Daily said.

But volunteers outside the city were discouraged from flocking to Ya'an to help with relief efforts, Xinhua said, to avoid blocking already busy phone lines and worsening road congestion.

"A fair amount of telecoms facilities have been damaged," it said.

Three reservoirs in the area had shown cracks and people downstream were being relocated, a Sichuan government website said.

Pandas at a reserve less than 50km from the epicentre were not harmed, Xinhua said, citing an employee.

A Sina Weibo user posted a photo purportedly showing a badly damaged kindergarten in Lushan, its dark red stone slabs lying on the ground beside a row of trees. The authenticity of the photo could not be verified.

"Hang in there Ya'an!" the user wrote.

Weibo users in other cities reported feeling tremors.

Residents ran on to the street to get away from high rises, made phone calls and cried, a Sichuan government website reported. A few had even packed bags in case they needed to take shelter elsewhere.

Earthquakes frequently strike the country's southwest. In April 2010, a 6.9 magnitude quake killed about 2,700 people and injured 12,000 in a remote area of Qinghai province bordering the northwest of Sichuan.

16.57 | 0 komentar | Read More