Category: AUSTRALIAN

Source: NickXenophon

Qantas chairman must step aside pending investigations Independent Senator for South Australia, Nick Xenophon, has called on Qantas Chairman Leigh Clifford to step aside until overseas authorities, including the UK Serious Fraud Office, the Financial Conduct Authority (UK), the US Department of Justice and the US Securities Exchange Commission, have completed their investigations into the activities of Barclays Plc, at the time Mr Clifford was a director.

Independent Senator for South Australia, Nick Xenophon, has called on Qantas Chairman Leigh Clifford to step aside until overseas authorities, including the UK Serious Fraud Office, the Financial Conduct Authority (UK), the US Department of Justice and the US Securities Exchange Commission, have completed their investigations into the activities of Barclays Plc, at the time Mr Clifford was a director.

Barclays, and a number of its officers, are being investigated for an ‘advisory fee’ of $500 million that was allegedly paid to facilitate a transaction with Qatar Holding LLC for a £9.2 billion injection of capital in 2008. Mr Clifford was a director of Barclays at the time the alleged payments occurred, as reported in the Australian Financial Review today.

The US investigations are examining whether payments made by Barclays to third parties have breached the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Last year, Qantas non-executive director Corinne Namblard resigned, as a result of a corruption investigation in Italy relating to allegations of bid rigging and document fraud for a company of which she was an officer.

“When Ms Namblard stood down, Mr Clifford said the Qantas board ‘appreciated her sentiments’ that she did not want the media coverage of the Italian investigation to impact on Qantas,” Nick said. “Perhaps Mr Clifford should consider these very comments in light of his own circumstances.”

“Mr Clifford needs to explain to Qantas shareholders what he knew about those ‘advisory payments’ and explain what involvement, if any, he had in authorising them,” Nick said.

“The duties of a director in the UK are as onerous in the UK as they are in Australia,” Nick said. “As a director of Barclays, Mr Clifford should have known about all the payments associated with the Qatar capital raising.”

As reported in the Australian Financial Review, the UK Financial Conduct Authority fined Barclays $84 million just last month for not disclosing the secret fees.

“If the ‘advisory fees’ were above board, why weren’t they disclosed to Barclays shareholders?” Nick asked. “They should have been disclosed as relevant information.”

“The question also needs to be asked if the transaction would have been facilitated if not for these ‘advisory fees’.”

“What did Mr Clifford actually know about this murky deal?”

Mr Clifford is due to face Qantas shareholders at its AGM in Brisbane this Friday.

Source: News

A rogue kangaroo has hopped into a chemist at Melbourne Airport.

The bizarre customer was discovered in the domestic terminal – much to the amusement of travellers.

Police are on site.

It is not the first time airport staff have been caught off guard by a wayward kangaroo.

One sneaked into the multi-storey car park of the airport in January this year. A similar incident occurred in October last year.

More to come.

Source: SMH

Charities are turning away more than 10,000 people seeking food parcels and free meals every month in NSW – nearly half the hungry mouths being children – because of depleted food stocks, a national report shows.

Foodbank, Australia’s largest food relief charity, released its End Hunger report on Wednesday, which revealed demand for food rose 8 per cent in the past year. Eighty-five per cent of charities said they had insufficient food to meet requirements. Among people who obtained food assistance, three-quarters did not receive all they required and remained hungry.

Foodbank, which rescues blemished fruit and vegetables, food in damaged packaging and products from discontinued lines, supplied 556 charities across the state in the past year. Each month it helped charities serve 670,000 nutritious meals to 80,000 people in need.

Doing better: Cameron Morgan has relied on the Salvation Army’s Surry Hills “supermarket” to fill his pantry and fridge. Photo: Ben Rushton
Chief executive of Foodbank NSW Gerry Andersen believes they can close the gap by building a larger warehouse which requires a one-off $2 million grant from the federal government.

”To end hunger in Australia, Foodbank has a national target to distribute 50 million kilograms of food in Australia by 2020. This year we sent 26 million kilograms,” he said. ”It’s an achievable target.”

He said more efficient supply chains made sourcing surplus food harder in recent years, forcing Foodbank to create new methods. Its new collaborative scheme to boost supplies of food with long shelf life such as pasta and rice requires farmers and other labourers to donate their time, and companies to donate equipment, packaging and transport.

The report, with results analysed by Deloitte Access Economics, revealed the types of people requiring food relief shifted from the homeless and those with mental health issues, to low-income and single-parent families.
”The situations for many people are quite dire. There’s housing affordability issues, but for those on government income support like Newstart, there’s just been no movement in that allowance for years and years,” said the Salvation Army’s social director, Major Paul Moulds. ”They are falling further behind.”

Melody Pascoe, a welfare worker at the Salvation Army, said a third of her clients now comprised single parents – shifted to the Newstart allowance under government changes – who could barely cover basic living costs. ”We give them vouchers they can spend at our supermarket here, so they don’t have to worry about food costs and focus on the other bills,” she said, referring to the charity’s in-house mini supermarket in Surry Hills stocked with goods such as $1 cereal boxes and $1 soup mix bags supplied by Foodbank.

Cameron Morgan, 49, who lives in public housing in Waterloo, has relied on the Salvation Army’s supermarket for five years to fill up his fridge and pantry, after surviving a period of crisis where he regularly sacrificed eating food.
Each week Mr Morgan, who has a disability, stocks up on cut-price bread, biscuits, peanut butter and diet soda that are covered by his monthly welfare payment. ”I’m doing much better now. The food is very good, it’s wonderful.”

Source: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

BIRD flu has been confirmed in a flock of 400,000 layer hens near Young in the State’s west.

However NSW Chief Veterinary Officer Ian Roth said the flu was the H7 Avian Influenza strain, not the highly dangerous H5N1 strain that can pass to humans and has gained worldwide attention. .

The property has been quarantined and the NSW Department of Primary Industry’s “First Response Team” was working with the property owners and the egg industry, he said.

“The remaining birds on the property will now be culled in-line with national agreements.

“Control restrictions are now in place within a 10km radius of the quarantined egg farm and extensive surveillance and tracing is now underway to ensure the virus does not spread,” he said.

The NSW Food Authority has confirmed that there are no food safety issues and that poultry and eggs remain safe to eat.

Mr Roth said Australia has previously had a small number of outbreaks of H7 Avian Influenza viruses which were all quickly and successfully eradicated.

Source: HeraldNews

THE longest cruise ship to enter Newcastle harbour, The Radiance of the Seas, arrived in Newcastle this morning.

The 293-metre vessel has 2500 passengers on board, the majority of whom are Canadian.

It is the first of 10 ships that will visit Newcastle this cruise season.

The cruise season is expected to inject $10 million dollars into the region’s economy.

Source: ABC

Today is the first day of HSC with about 75,000 students sitting the English exam across New South Wales.

English is the only compulsory subject in year 12, helping to make one of the biggest in the world in terms of the number of candidates.

The exams run for the next couple of weeks and students will receive their results before the end of the year.

The Board of Studies says there has been an increase in the number of students studying science and there are also more students doing vocational courses.

New South Wales Board of Studies President Tom Alegounarias has wished all students well.

“We’d like to wish every HSC candidate a good day, a good beginning to their exams,” he said.

“The HSC is a significant credential and you’ve worked hard to achieve it.

“Remember you’ve done half the work and today all you need to do is express yourself.”

State Minister for Education Adrian Piccoli says it is an important day but students should remember it is not the be all and end all.

“There are 117 different exam papers that students will sit for those 75,000 students,” he said.

“It’s going to be a stressful four-week period, but they should know the HSC is one of many paths to success.

“If you don’t do as well as you thought, then of course there are other avenues open to you.”

Source: TheAustralian

A DRUG being trialled by Australian researchers could control leukemia without the harrowing side-effects that plague conventional treatments.

Clinical trials of the antibody, known as KB004, have produced no side-effects even at high doses. And while the trials are designed to test the drug’s safety, some patients – most of whom have acute myeloid leukemia, one of the most untreatable forms – have already responded positively.

The drug targets a protein called EphA3 which clings to cancer stem cells but is undetectable on normal cells. Conventional chemotherapy does not target stem cells, according to molecular biologist Martin Lackmann, who has researched the protein for 15 years.

“Tumour stem cells give rise to tumour cells again and again,” said Dr Lackmann, of Monash University’s School of Biomedical Sciences. “The hope with this drug is that the response may be more lasting.”

While chemotherapy kills tumours it also targets other rapidly proliferating cells, leading to hair loss and gastrointestinal problems including nausea, loss of appetite, constipation and diarrhoea. “The side effects are what normally limit the dose of a conventional therapy,” Dr Lackmann said.

He said the absence of side effects from the new drug, combined with its targeting of stem cells, increased the likelihood of eradicating the tumours.

The second phase of clinical trials, to assess the drug’s efficacy, will begin in the next few months. If these and large scale phase three trials prove successful, the drug could be on the market in five years.

Dr Lackmann said other drugs targeting cancer stem cells were being tested, but none so far had worked. “Often clinical trials stop at this point, especially in the current climate, because side effects and limited positive effects make the financial risk of continuing too high.”

Separate trials are planned next year to test the drug on other forms of cancer.

The leukemia trials have been underway for two years at four hospitals in Australia and the US. They also involve researchers from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, the international Ludwig Cancer Research network and US-based KaloBios Pharmaceuticals.

Source: ABCNews

Pole sitter Jamie Whincup took a gamble and handed the reins to co-driver Paul Dumbrell for Sunday’s crucial start of the Bathurst 1000 at Mount Panorama.

Racing began with Dumbrell starting from the front row alongside Ford threat Mark Winterbottom – yet to taste victory on the mountain.

Usually, lead drivers were behind the wheel for the critical race start but Whincup said he had more than enough confidence in Dumbrell to hold his nerve.

“I find it challenging jumping into the car after the race has started so I did not want to put that pressure on Paul at all.

“So with me being a regular driver and knowing the car well, I can jump into the second stint – well that’s the plan anyway.

“We are really lucky that Paul’s times are as quick as mine, so we don’t need to concentrate on Paul doing the minimal amount of laps.

V8 Supercars series leader Whincup and Dumbrell are the defending champions for the 161-lap epic which is expected to be hit by showers later on Sunday.

It also marks Whincup’s Holden teammate and five-time Bathurst champion Craig Lowndes’ 20th Bathurst start and 500th V8 touring car start.

He was set to start from sixth on the 29-car grid but handed the first shift to co-driver Warren Luff.