TWO people suffered only minor injuries when light plane crashed on the Gold Coast.
The ultralight plane slammed into a paddock on Saturday afternoon near Stapylton-Jacobs Well Rd at Jacobs Well, at the northern end of the coast.
The male pilot and female passenger suffered minor injuries and were taken to Logan Hospital as a precaution.
The Qld Forensic Crash Unit will liaise with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau in an investigation into the incident.
A DAY after the US officially recognised Somalia's government for the first time in two decades, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud called on Somalis living in Minnesota to help rebuild their war-torn homeland.
Mohamud spoke to about 4000 people at the Minneapolis Convention Center on Friday night.
He said US recognition was "the beginning of a new foundation."
Omar Jamal, first secretary of the Somali Mission to the United Nations, said the president asked the crowd to assist their nation - either by returning to Somalia or from their homes in Minnesota.
Minnesota has the largest Somali population in the US.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had joined the Somali president in Washington DC to announce the change in diplomatic relations.
After Friday's speech, Ilhan Omar said she felt there was a plan to rebuild her homeland.
"I felt like it was the first time in 20 years that we can see a light at the end of the tunnel," said Omar, 30.
Amira Adawe hopes the US government's recognition of Somalia will open the door to widespread international aid.
"I can't wait to go back home and help," she said.
Clinton cited the militant group al-Shabab's retreat from every major Somali city. The US has provided $US780 million ($A743.18 million) to African forces to help that battle.
Authorities say more than 20 young Somali men have left Minnesota since 2007 to join al-Shabab, a terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda. A Minneapolis man was convicted in October of sending young men to Somalia to join the group.
Roda Rabi, who protested the president's visit, said many Somalis were unhappy with Mohamud's efforts since his election in September. Rabi said Mohamud has failed to follow the UN plan for Somalia's reconciliation.
Saeed Fahia, executive director of the Confederation of the Somali Community in Minnesota, said it's too early to judge the new president. Too much has happened in the past two decades to be solved in a matter of months, he said.
"It would be difficult for any human being to take on Somalia's problems," he said.
"After 23 years, Somalia is back in the world community.
"After all these years of fighting and drought ... we will be able to work toward rebuilding."
BRITAIN faces another day of travel disruption as heavy snow that blankets much of the country turns to ice.
Hundreds of passengers were left stranded on Friday as airports across the UK suspended flights and motorists struggled through blizzards along treacherous roads.
British Airways apologised to people trapped on planes in appalling weather at Heathrow airport as they waited for a slot to take off, and hundreds of others had flights cancelled.
More than 400 flights were cancelled at the airport, and hundreds of people spent the night on the floor as they waited for flights to be rescheduled.
The arctic blasts forced nearly 2000 schools to shut their doors, meaning some sixth-form and college students had their A-level exams postponed.
But the weather heaped misery on more than 10,000 households in south Wales, where residents found themselves with no power on Friday morning.
There are warnings of further misery on Saturday.
The UK's weather bureau, the Met Office, is forecasting less snow, but has issued yellow warnings for ice over much of the country. A fleet of snow ploughs and gritters will continue to be out in force across the weekend.
Rail travellers also experienced upheaval on Friday as operators scrapped services.
Snow fell across much of the UK, with south Wales experiencing the worst of the weather, forcing the Met Office to issue a "red" severe weather warning.
Sennybridge in Powys had 25cm of snow, while many other places across the UK saw between 5cm and 10cm.
Further snow fell overnight in the Midlands and London, while Suffolk and Essex had up to 4cm.
Heavy snow showers are expected to develop across parts of northern England and eastern parts of Scotland.
Temperatures are likely to remain low - down to about -3C, and ice is expected to form on any untreated roads.
THE death toll from floods in Indonesia's capital Jakarta has climbed to 14 after searchers pulled three more bodies from the waters.
Indonesia's national disaster management agency said on Saturday that the body of a 35-year-old member of the city's search and rescue team was found on the banks of an overflowing river late on Friday. Another man was found dead near his flooded home in western Jakarta.
The third body of a male worker was found on Saturday in the flooded basement parking of a building in a central area of the city.
The agency said most victims were electrocuted or drowned. Electricity supplies have been cut to several flooding areas to prevent electrocutions.
A dyke in central Jakarta collapsed late on Wednesday amid floods that swamped the city. Successive governments have done little to mitigate the flooding threat.
ONE of 12 boys molested by former YMCA childcare worker Johnathan Lord was so ashamed when questioned by his parents that he detailed his horror in a sealed letter to police.
Lord, 26, wept when he was sentenced to a maximum of 10 years' jail on Friday in Sydney's Downing Centre District Court.
With time already served, he will serve a non-parole period of six years.
The court took four hours on Friday to detail all the offences and hear how Lord had groomed his victims.
Judge Michael King noted the serious nature of the 29 offences of child sexual and indecent assault and said Lord's victims, in offences committed between 2009 and 2011, were as young as six.
"The offender is also in breach of the trust placed in him either as a result of the position of trust because of his employment or because he had been commissioned by the parents of the individual victims to babysit them," Judge King said.
Lord worked at a creche at a YMCA in southern Sydney, participated in the organisation's before-and-after-school program and worked privately as a babysitter.
Some of his babysitting jobs were for YMCA parents, a practice that was against YMCA policy, the court was told.
Lord convinced boys to sit on his lap during YMCA bus trips and activities and would then put his hands down their pants.
Following Lord's initial arrest in October 2011, YMCA parents were notified and encouraged to speak to their children.
An eight-year-old victim repeatedly denied that Lord molested him.
Police told the boy's parents that Lord later confessed to sexually molesting the boy, who then detailed it in a letter addressed only to police and left it on his family's kitchen table.
Eight of Lord's victims were molested in YMCA transport vehicles and during YMCA excursions, including movie nights and rock climbing activities.
The other boys were molested while Lord babysat them.
During one incident, Lord had rubbed a victim's penis and then sent a text to update the boy's mother, saying everything was fine.
Lord met another boy's family via his own mother and babysat the victim every Saturday for nearly a year.
When asked, the boy did divulge he was molested.
"He then said he was embarrassed and didn't want to talk about it, putting a rug over his head," Judge King told the court.
During the incidents, the victims asked Lord to stop touching him but he continued to do so.
The court also heard one boy buried his head into a pillow and cried when his parents asked if Lord had abused him.
Another boy had gasped uncontrollably when questioned by his parents.
When Lord met another victim at the YMCA the boy said he only had his brother to play with.
"Do you want to be my friend," the court heard Lord asked the boy.
During one excursion Lord gave him a special coin.
"Because he was my best pal," the boy said.
Judge King said the incidents would have affected the boys to such a degree that their ability to form normal social relationships would be affected for the rest of their lives.
With time already served, Lord will be eligible for parole in October 2017.
ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged that there will be no dismantlement of any Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank if he wins a general election next week.
Asked in an interview with the Maariv newspaper on Friday: "Can you promise that during the next four years, no settlement will be dismantled?" Netanyahu answered: "Yes."
"The days when bulldozers uprooted Jews are behind us, not in front of us. Our record proves it," he said.
"We haven't uprooted any settlements, we have expanded them," he said, recalling that his government had established the first university in a settlement, in Ariel deep in the West Bank.
"Nobody has any lessons to give me about love for the Land of Israel or commitment to Zionism and the settlements," he added.
Netanyahu was alluding to the strong opinion poll showing of the pro-settler Jewish Home party which has been championing accelerated settlement expansion and looks set to take seats from the prime minister's right-wing list in Tuesday's election.
Public radio commentator Hanan Cristal said Netanyahu had, "in the final stretch of the election campaign, steered to the right on the question of settlements to try to woo Likud supporters tempted to vote for Jewish Home."
Likud is the premier's party.
Opinion polls on Friday, the last day they may be published before the election, showed the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu list winning 32-35 seats in the 120-member Knesset, down from 42 in the outgoing parliament.
Jewish Home was credited with 13-14, and the ultra-Orthodox Shas party 11-12.
The centre-left Labour party would win 16-17 seats and the centrist Yesh Atid and Hatnuah, 10-13 and 7-8, respectively.
A poll published on January 11 showed that one in four voters had still not decided whom to back.
The town of Seaton is counting the cost of a bushfire burning in Victoria's east. Source: AAP
THE town of Seaton is counting the cost of a bushfire burning in Victoria's east that is "as bad as it gets".
A man's body was found in a burnt-out car in the area, where at least one home and as many as five have been destroyed on Friday.
The fire has burnt through an area of about 48,000 hectares, ravaging mainly forest country about 200km east of Melbourne.
Seaton local Peter, who did not want his surname used, said the man might have been someone who lived next door.
"(It's) very sad. It could be a neighbour of mine," he told AAP.
"(He might have) left it too late and tried to drive through the fire. That's the worst thing to do in a car ... but we don't know if his house was destroyed.
"It's not a nice feeling."
Peter has been stranded in neighbouring Heyfield since Thursday night awaiting the go-ahead to return.
He said the death may have led to delays in authorities allowing desperate locals back in the area.
"You can put up with a loss of property but not with a loss of life."
Heyfield incident controller Bill Johnstone said four to five houses are believed to have been lost in Seaton, with residents not allowed to return until given the all-clear.
"We've got burning trees ... there's a lot of timber we need to clear," Mr Johnstone said.
"We're certainly here for a very protracted firefight. We could be here for days, possibly weeks."
Peetika Hobson, who has lived in Seaton for 30 years, was told her home was lost.
"As we were driving back to Heyfield hoping to see if the house was still there, we got a text message from our son that he heard our house had burned down," she told Network Ten.
"It becomes quite sad thinking about what you've missed.
"You'll never go home again to the house where your family grew up."
Along with Seaton, towns such as Glenmaggie and Heyfield and the hamlet of Dawson came under threat on Friday.
Mr Johnstone said the fire could affect Licola and the Macalister River Valley.
"We're still experiencing some dynamic fire behaviour," Mr Johnstone told journalists at Heyfield on Friday.
"It's a very dangerous environment we're experiencing today.
"Given the conditions it's probably as bad as it can get."
Mr Johnstone said CFA strike teams would be protecting Licola with holidaymakers already evacuated from Macalister valley.
Premier Ted Baillieu urged residents to keep informed.
"This is obviously a very big fire. In barely 24 hours this fire has grown from nothing to over 40,000 hectares," he said at Heyfield.
"It's a big fire. It's travelled very quickly and represents still a very significant threat."
Mr Johnstone said authorities' focus would be on stopping the fire entering national parkland.
"If that does occur, it's very difficult terrain, very limited access and essentially very few limited fallback options," he said.
"So we'll be working very, very hard to make sure that doesn't happen."
THE thermometer reads 48 degrees outside.
Firefighters have been on high alert on Friday hoping the Deans Gap forest fire, on the NSW south coast, doesn't break its containment line.
There are 42 fire trucks and five water-bombers and four remote teams tackling hot spots in the bush.
More than 9000 hectares have burnt since the Deans Gap fire took off early last week.
A handmade sign nailed to a power pole across from the Rural Fire Service Wandandian staging area, near Nowra, says Libby sends her love to Robert, one of the firies.
RFS logistics officer Robyn Bolton told AAP: "The boys are exhausted after going hard at it for over a week."
She said the firefighters' spirits were high and they were being looked after well by catering teams.
Despite the extreme heat, it's been a "quiet one" for fire crews.
But Ms Bolton knows first-hand the danger of becoming complacent.
A forest fire in the area 11 years ago unexpectedly swung back towards her farm, and she lost 28 head of cattle.
Lloyd Dutton's Bawley Point RFS brigade is stationed on a farm property and are "playing the waiting game".
There's a spot fire coming closer in the distance.
"We're going to give it a big hit," he said.
He's hoping a cool change will come through and turn the fire back on itself.
A BOY accused of hurling a metal pole like a javelin at another youth after trying to gatecrash a party may have been "fingered" by others involved in the incident, a Sydney court has heard.
The 16-year-old wiped tears from his eyes with his T-shirt as he sat in the dock of Bidura Children's Court at Glebe on Wednesday.
His mother and sister also wept during his application for bail, which was denied.
The North Ryde youth, who can't be named for legal reasons, is charged with recklessly causing grievous bodily harm by allegedly piercing the skull of a 17-year-old boy with the pole.
The victim, who remains in critical condition in Royal North Shore Hospital in an induced coma, was attending a friend's 18th birthday party on Friday at a house in Forestville, when a group of young people allegedly tried to enter the home about 11.30pm (AEDT).
A fight erupted and the accused youth allegedly punched the father of the birthday boy, the court heard.
He then went to the back of the house, climbed on to a roof and began throwing building materials from that position.
"The young person is not just throwing around the items but throwing them in a javelin-type motion," police prosecutor Sergeant Gabriel Combes told the court.
A metal pole pierced the victim's head so deeply that part of it had to be cut off before paramedics could transport him by ambulance.
After leaving the party, the accused allegedly challenged a 16-year-old boy outside, allegedly punching him so hard that he fractured his eye socket.
The teenager is also charged with affray, assault and other offences.
Sgt Combes opposed bail, saying the boy's cousin had identified him as being at the party and three independent witnesses had given statements.
She also told the court the boy was on bail for shoplifting offences and had breached those conditions by not residing at his mother's home.
The boy's barrister Gregory Stanton said there were major flaws in the prosecution's case.
His client had offered to participate in a line-up and a photo identification process which did not take place, he said.
Mr Stanton also challenged the reliability of evidence from other alleged gatecrashers, suggesting they may be trying to deflect attention away from themselves.
"He is possibly being fingered by persons allegedly involved in this offence," he told the court.
The "ruthless front-page media campaign" over the incident gave his client reason for not surrendering until five days after the incident, he said.
Magistrate Elizabeth Ellis said the prosecution's case was weaker rather than stronger, but she acknowledged the boy allegedly breached his bail conditions.
She also said if the victim's condition worsened, the alleged offender could face more serious charges.
"I have to weigh up those competing matters," Ms Ellis told the court.
She denied bail and adjourned the matter to February 26.
Outside court, the boy's family and another woman clashed with the media and hurled abuse at reporters.
US retailer Wal-Mart says it will buy more US-made goods in a bid to support the nation's economy. Source: AAP
WAL-MART, the world's biggest retailer, says it will spend $US50 billion ($A47.53 billion) more on US-made goods and boost hiring of military service veterans to support the nation's economy.
Wal-Mart Store's retail chains in the United States, Walmart and members-only Sam's Club, will buy an additional $US50 billion worth of domestic products over the next 10 years, the company said.
Wal-Mart noted that two thirds of its spending on products for Walmart US already goes to US products.
The US goods included in the latest move include sporting goods, apparel basics, storage products, games, and paper products.
It pledged to help promote US production in "high potential" areas like textiles, furniture and higher-end appliances.
The nation's largest employer also announced plans to hire more than 100,000 military veterans over the next five years.
Beginning on May 27, this year's Memorial Day holiday, it will offer a job to any honorably discharged veteran within the first 12 months of his or her leaving active duty.
"Taking action on the economy is our responsibility as Americans, but it's also our opportunity as retailers," Walmart US president and chief executive Bill Simon said at an annual retail industry convention, according to the text of his speech.
"We in this room can invest. We can grow, and we can hire -- and we can use the power of what we buy and sell to make a difference."
The Bentonville, Arkansas-based company employs about 1.4 million people in its Walmart chain.
Wal-Mart shares were up 0.6 per cent to $US68.71 in afternoon trade in New York.
The move follows a rise in domestic production by several US companies in the past several years, due in part to rising wages for production abroad and a desire to bring output closer to clients.
