Syringe threat in Vic carjacking

A WOMAN has been threatened with a syringe during a carjacking in Melbourne, police say.

The woman was parked in a shopping centre in Dandenong on Saturday afternoon when a man approached her car and allegedly threatened her with a syringe.

He demanded the woman get out of the car and she did.

The man then got into her car and drove away.

Police said the stolen car is a red 2006 Ford sedan with registration number UQI 236.

The man is described as caucasian, with blonde hair and a thin build.

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Chinese plane spots objects in jet search

CHINA'S state news agency says a Chinese aircraft has spotted three suspicious objects floating in a search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.

Xinhua News Agency said on Saturday that the Chinese military plane Ilyushin IL-76 sighted the three floating objects of white, red and orange colours respectively, from an altitude of 300 metres.

Flight 370 disappeared March 8 while bound from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Investigators believed it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, where planes and ships have been looking to recover any debris.

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UK teen catches TB from pet kitten

A BRITISH teenager developed pneumonia and has been rushed to hospital for treatment for severe lung damage after she contracted tuberculosis from her pet kitten.

Jessica Livings, 19, had to have emergency surgery after she caught TB, in what health officials say is among the first cases in the world of humans picking up the disease from cats.

Ms Livings' mother Claire also contracted a dormant form of the disease, the Daily Mail said.

It is thought the pair contracted TB when they were cleaning a wound on their pet, Onyx, which they had adopted only weeks before.

"I lost a stone and a half in five weeks, I was very ill and had fevers, cold sweats and hallucinations," Ms Livings told the newspaper.

She was reportedly diagnosed with the disease in October after a vet voiced concerns over an outbreak of TB among cats in the the Newbury area of Berkshire.

Ms Livings was readmitted to the Royal Berkshire Hospital last month, but is now classed as being at no risk of passing TB on.

Her mother told the Mail that their kitten became ill and they discovered he had an open wound on his belly. Despite taking him to the vet he died, but they had no idea it was TB.

Vet Carl Gorman, who reported the outbreak, told the Mail he believed it started with a local herd of cows contracting bovine TB.

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Search for WA diver hampered by rain

POLICE searching for a diver missing off the WA coast have been hampered in their efforts by rain.

The diver was one of a group of five who were on board a vessel on Saturday about 4-5km off the Dawesville Cut, just south of Mandurah.

Police say the group raised the alarm when the diver failed to resurface.

Water Police and Mandurah Volunteer Marine Rescue (VMR) vessels are helping in the search along with a police dive team.

Two helicopters assisting in the search have had to return to base after heavy rain in the area, but police say all water-based teams are still searching.

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Search for MH370 shifts focus

The search for a missing Malaysia Airlines flight has resumed with weather conditions improving. Source: AAP

THE hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has shifted more than a thousand kilometres from where teams had been scouring the Indian Ocean, but Australian authorities insist their previous efforts have not been a waste of time.

New radar data analysis has prompted authorities to re-focus the six-nation search 1100km to the northeast of its original location, and some 1850km west of Perth, following updated advice from the international investigation team in Malaysia.

Taking into account radar data before contact was lost, the likely performance of the aircraft, its speed and fuel consumption, and 21 days of drift, authorities are now searching an area about 319,000 square kilometres in size - almost as large as Malaysia itself.

The previous focus was in an area 2500km southwest of the West Australian capital.

"Continuing analysis indicates that the plane was travelling faster than was previously estimated, resulting in increased fuel usage, reducing the possible distance it travelled south into the Indian Ocean," Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan said on Friday.

"This is our best estimate of the area in which the aircraft is likely to have crashed into the ocean."

He said the search area could change again as new information emerged.

Australian Maritime Safety Authority emergency response manager John Young said all search planes and ships had been moved to the new zone, which was "now our best place to go".

"We have moved on from those search areas to the newest credible lead," Mr Young said, adding however, that the decision to shift focus was not based on a new theory but a refining of the original analysis used to plot the location of the aircraft's possible resting place.

"The analysis is in fact the same form as we started with," he said.

"I don't count the original work a waste of time."

Mr Young also stressed, however, that he would not use the term "debris field" in relation to various objects spotted by satellite.

The new location will also allow search planes to spend more time on the scene. Previously, they only had one to two hours before having to return to RAAF Base Pearce.

Mr Young said weather conditions in the new search area were also more favourable.

"We will see what that does in terms of satellite imagery as the re-tasking of satellites starts to produce new material."

The new area is shallower, with water depths ranging from 2000 to 4000 metres.

Any wreckage found would be handed over to Malaysian authorities.

The new "credible lead" on a possible crash site, almost three weeks to the day since the plane carrying 239 people disappeared on March 8, also came with a warning from Malaysia Airlines of the effect on the families of rumours and speculation about the flight's fate.

"Whilst we understand that there will inevitably be speculation during this period, we do ask people to bear in mind the effect this has on the families of all those on board," the airline's group chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said.

"Their anguish and distress increases with each passing day, with each fresh rumour, and with each false or misleading report."

Mr Yahya said preparations were underway for family members of passengers and crew to be taken to Perth, should physical wreckage be found.

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Mum wed my abuser, inquiry hears

A WOMAN who'd been abused as a young girl says she felt doubly betrayed when the Salvation Army officer who raped her ended up marrying her mother.

The woman, identified only as JD, told a hearing into child sexual abuse in Sydney her mother and her church disbelieved her story of abuse which started when she was a four-year-old attending an army Sunday School in Queensland.

"I was one of their own and they turned their back on me," said JD.

When JD was 18 her mother told her she was going to marry the army envoy who taught at the school.

JD said her mother accused her of lying about the abuse because "I didn't want a new daddy".

She and another girl who had been raped by the man went to see Colonel Stan Everitt, the army's divisional commander for south-east Queensland.

He asked them if they were making it up and told them not to go to police.

JD told the commission on Friday she was still angry.

"I came to him (Mr Everitt) as an 18-year-old girl. I needed help," she said.

"The man who abused me was going to marry my mother ... They were married in a Salvation Army church. I was kicked out of home."

She described sexual abuse as one of the most evil things to happen to a child and said it was a "terrible thing" when an institution like the Salvation Army reacts like it did.

"I hadn't done anything wrong. I was a little girl going to church and a predator got me," she said.

"Because he wanted to and he could."

She was told by the army that Mr Everitt, who is now old, was refusing to apologise because "he did nothing wrong".

Other witnesses told Friday's hearing they felt disbelieved and unsupported by the Salvation Army.

Cherryl Eldridge was placed in Horton House, a Salvation Army orphanage in Toowoomba, Queensland when she was six.

She never knew why she, her six sisters and their brother were taken from their home.

At Horton House when she wet the bed, the sheets were rubbed in her face.

She was beaten with a belt and a strap and locked in a storage cupboard, by a matron who seemed "out of control" during the beatings.

Three witnesses on Friday were asked by counsel for the Salvation Army Kate Eastman SC, what they would like the army to do by way of apology.

Ms Eldridge said she found the question offensive.

"I find if you, The Salvation Army, really wanted to give me a genuine apology, and really mean it you would not be asking me the question - how do I expect you to apologise to me or any of us who went through what we went through."

One man, who had been kept in solitary confinement at the Salvation Army's Riverview Training Farm in Queensland in 1971 where he was made to sleep where he defecated, vehemently refused to accept an apology.

"If I see one of those uniforms come within a metre of me, you'd better be there ... okay, just keep them away from me," the man said.

"If I see that Gestapo come near me ...," he added.

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NY college to offer Miley Cyrus class

A US college will offer a course called The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender and Media. Source: AAP

A COLLEGE in upstate New York is offering a course on Miley Cyrus and won't even make students do any class twerk.

The Saratogian newspaper reports the course will be offered by Skidmore College, a private liberal arts college in Saratoga Springs.

Visiting Assistant Professor Carolyn Chernoff calls the course The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender and Media.

Chernoff says she'll focus on the 21-year-old performer and all her incarnations as a way to study such topics as gender, race, class, fame and power.

She says she got the idea after teaching a course on youth culture that featured video of Cyrus twerking at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards.

But Chernoff says students will have to learn how to twerk on their own time.

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500 litres of CSG water leaks in forest

ABOUT 500 litres of contaminated waste water has leaked from a coal seam gas well in northern NSW.

The spill, which occurred on Tuesday at a Santos gas field at Pilliga forrest, south of Narrabri, is being investigated by the NSW Environment Protection Authority.

Santos has downplayed the incident, saying "there was no impact to any nearby water source and no risk to the environment."

"The water was contained within a surface diversion drain on site and was captured and returned to the holding pond," the company said in a statement.

But the Greens and The Wilderness Society say the leak proves coal seam gas is dangerous to the environment.

"Santos has a long tragic history of failure in the Pilliga forest, with at least 20 toxic coal seam gas waste water spills including uranium contamination and continuing leaks from evaporation ponds," Wilderness Society spokeswoman Naomi Hogan said.

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Tough budget decisions coming: Abbott

PM Tony Abbott has warned that "tough decisions" are coming to restore the federal budget. Source: AAP

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott has warned that "tough decisions" are coming to restore the federal budget.

In the last parliamentary sitting day before Treasurer Joe Hockey brings down his first budget on May 13, Mr Abbott said of all the government's commitments, the most fundamental was to restore the budget.

"Tough decisions are coming," he told parliament.

"They are necessary for the prosperity of our country."

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen asked Mr Hockey why, if he is concerned about the budget, did he double the deficit and add $68 billion of new spending, and change economic assumptions to his mid-year review in December.

Mr Hockey described this as "great fiction" which came from a party with a record of $190 billion of deficits in five years.

"The legacy of Labor is that over the next 10 years there is no surplus, there is no repayment of debt," he said.

"The Labor party legacy of debt and deficit wasn't just for the period they were in government, it is for as far as you can see in the years ahead."

He said the government plans were very clear, and entirely consistent in dealing with what were changing economic circumstances over the last few decades.

"We said government cannot afford to waste taxpayers' money," he said.

He said the pink batts program was a terrible waste of money and cost lives; GP super clinics were medical facilities that did not treat any patients; and the NBN was a litany of waste and incompetence.

"We are going to fix the mess," he said.

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Canning of safaris a croc: NT govt

THE federal government's decision not to allow crocodile hunting safaris in the Northern Territory has been derided as "a croc" by the NT government.

Two NT ministers have accused federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt of being shortsighted and ill-informed.

"Canberra needs to take its foot off the Territory's throat," Minister for Land Resource Management, Willem Westra van Holthe said in a statement on Thursday.

"Crocodile safari hunting has the potential to create real employment for indigenous people in remote parts of the Territory."

Mr Westra van Holthe said the NT government had extensively consulted with traditional owners and lodged an application for a one-year crocodile safari trial, under a scientifically researched plan that demonstrated the economic benefits to the Territory.

Under the existing crocodile management plan, the NT government is able to harvest up to 500 crocodiles from the wild each year, while the safari proposal sought to harvest 50 crocodiles from within the existing quota on a one-year trial basis.

It was suggested that crocodile safari packages could cost between $20,000 to $50,000, appealing to high-end hunters from around the world seeking to bag themselves a croc.

Mr Westra van Holthe said the proposal was humane, with animal welfare standards maintained by having a conservation officer and traditional owner attend every safari.

"We are severely disappointed with Greg Hunt's short sighted and ill-informed decision," he said.

It was taking away work opportunities for indigenous people who needed it the most, said Bess Price, Minister for Parks and Wildlife.

"Greg Hunt has made a decision which will do nothing to improve the lives of indigenous Territorians living in remote communities," she said.

The decision was at odds with the Commonwealth government's priorities of developing the north and ending welfare dependency, she said, as well as boosting tourism.

The NT government is now exploring alternative pathways to make crocodile safari hunting a reality.

It may be able to legislate to permit the safaris but could face an obstacle with foreign hunters being unable to take crocodile carcasses out of Australia without a federal permit.

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