Singapore haze hits critical 400 level

SINGAPORE'S smog index has hit the critical 400 level, making it potentially life-threatening to the ill and elderly people, according to a government monitoring site.

The level was reached at 11am (1300 AEST) on Friday, after a rapid rise in the Pollutant Standards Index, which measures the haze crisis caused by Indonesian forest fires.

Indonesian and Singaporean officials have been holding emergency talks on how to extinguish the fires on farms and plantations on Sumatra island, which are also affecting Malaysia.

According to Singapore government guidelines, sustained PSI average levels above 400 on a 24-hour basis "may be life-threatening to ill and elderly persons".

General practitioner Philip Koh said he had seen a 20 per cent spike in consultations in the past week, and estimated that about 80 per cent of all his patients are suffering from haze-related ailments.

"My patients are telling me they are worried about how long this is going to last and how much higher this is going to go. It is already high at 400 now, how much higher will it go?" he told AFP.

Koh also said many were turning to his clinic to buy protective masks, as supplies are low at retailers.

"Our supplies are running low here too," he said.

If the 400 index average is sustained over a 24-hour period, the government advises all children, elderly people and persons with existing diseases to stay indoors, keep windows closed and avoid physical exertion as much as possible.

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A million Brazilians protest in cities

About 300,000 have rallied in Rio de Janeiro, bemoaning massive spending to stage the World Cup. Source: AAP

BRAZILIAN President Dilma Rousseff has called an emergency cabinet meeting after at least a million people rallied for better public services and against the high cost of staging the World Cup.

Sources quoted by the daily O Estado de Sao Paulo said authorities were "frightened" by protesters' attempts to break into the foreign ministry building in Brasilia. The presidential office would not comment on the reports.

The mounting pressure on Rousseff's government in the face of the biggest street protests the South American country has seen in 20 years prompted her to cancel a trip to Japan planned for next week and call the emergency meeting for Friday.

Late on Thursday, security forces struggled to maintain order in several cities, firing tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse groups of rowdy protesters who hurled stones and lit fires.

Police fired tear gas in Rio de Janeiro, scene of the biggest protest where 300,000 people demonstrated near City Hall, while in the capital Brasilia, security forces blocked protesters trying to break into the foreign ministry and throwing burning objects.

Police and experts quoted by Brazilian media said at least one million marched in more than 100 cities across the country of 194 million people, an intensification of a movement sparked two weeks ago by public anger about a hike in public transport fares.

The protests have spiralled into a wider call for an end to government corruption in the world's seventh largest economy, a call fuelled by resentment over the $US15 billion ($A16.36 billion) cost of hosting the Confederations Cup and the World Cup.

In Rio, police fired tear gas to disperse a small group of stone-throwing protesters. At least one person was hurt in the clashes, which sparked panic in the crowd.

Demonstrators also set ablaze a vehicle owned by the SBT television station.

A protester died after a motorist hit him and two other demonstrators in the southeastern city of Ribeirao Preto, police said.

In the northeastern city of Salvador, one of the host cities for the Confederations Cup, police fired tear gas against some of the 20,000 protesters massed two kilometres from the stadium where Uruguay defeated Nigeria 2-1.

Vehicles used by world football's governing body FIFA were stoned in the Bahia state capital and riot police had to intervene.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, meanwhile, called for an investigation into the possible use of "excessive force" on demonstrators and journalists during protests last week.

On Wednesday, protesters had scored a major victory when authorities in Rio and Sao Paulo, Brazil's two biggest cities, cancelled the controversial transit fare hikes, but that was not enough to placate the demonstrators.

In Sao Paulo, an estimated 110,000 people flooded the main Paulista Avenue to celebrate the fare rollback and keep the pressure on Rousseff's leftist government to increase social spending.

Several protesters called for Rousseff, Sao Paulo State Governor Geraldo Alckmin and Sao Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad to be impeached.

The protest was largely peaceful except for clashes between a group of ultra-leftists marching behind their red banners and a majority of demonstrators who objected to the presence of political parties.

"This is a social movement, not a political movement. This has nothing to do with ideology," 28-year-old protester Maria Vidal told AFP. "We don't want parties in the demonstration."

Protesters say they want higher funding for education, health and housing. They are also railing against what they view as rampant corruption within the political class.

Social media networks have been key to the organisation of the mass protests, with demonstrators using the slogan "It's more than just 20 cents" - a reference to the bus fare hikes - to rally people to their cause.

The movement has no political colouration and no clearly identified leadership.

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Qld hospital concealed fatal death: union

THE Queensland Nurses Union is calling for an independent investigation into the Wesley Hospital manager who did not disclose a previous legionnaires' disease death at the facility.

The Brisbane hospital is dealing with a deadly outbreak of legionnaires', which killed one patient and put another in intensive care this month.

Its management has previously told reporters there were no past cases.

However, Queensland Health this week told reporters it is now including a 2011 legionnaires' death at the private hospital in its investigation.

UnitingCare Health executive director Richard Royle on Wednesday admitted he knew of the 2011 death; a fortnight ago he denied any knowledge of past cases.

The Queensland Nurses Union's acting secretary, Des Elder, says withholding information and making false statements are serious offences.

"There absolutely has been a cover-up," Mr Elder said.

"I don't think there's any question that the hospital management has tried to conceal that there had in fact been a previous occurrence of legionella previous years ago when they made statements to the press quite openly that there had not been."

He said had the Wesley been a public hospital, Mr Royle would be held accountable for making false statements.

"It would be a breach of the code of conduct in Queensland Health for a CEO to lie," he said.

Mr Elder suggested a public hospital chief executive would face disciplinary action under the same circumstances, but declined to say whether he believed Mr Royle should be sacked.

However, he called for an independent investigation into the false statement and the delay in passing relevant information to Queensland Health.

"For too long the private sector has been treated with kid gloves by both the state and federal governments, and this crosses party political lines," he said.

"There's a reluctance to take strong action to ensure that accountability that everyone requires of a public health system is there in the private health system."

Premier Campbell Newman told reporters earlier on Thursday he was disturbed to hear the 2011 death was never made public.

"I believe the hospital had the duty back then to reveal what went on, but of course Queensland Health had a duty to reveal," he said.

"It's not clear to me why the previous government failed to tell Queenslanders what was going on."

He said private hospitals were required to comply with the same accountability standards as the public sector.

The Wesley withheld information about the 2011 death from media, but it was reported to health authorities at the time.

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Visa crack down put off to next week

THE federal government's crackdown on skilled migration visas appears to be on shaky ground after independent MP Rob Oakeshott said he won't support the legislation.

During heated debate on the bill in parliament on Thursday, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott explosively likened Prime Minister Julia Gillard to anti-immigrant One Nation founder and one-time MP Pauline Hanson.

Mr Abbott said Labor's legislation was divisive and accused Ms Gillard of using it for base political purposes.

"We saw a member of this parliament set out to make perfectly decent Australians feel like strangers in their own country," he told the lower house.

"It's an embarrassment."

Labor claims there's been widespread rorting of the 457 skilled worker visa scheme at the expense of Australian jobs.

Its legislation requires employers to conduct labour market testing and only hire foreign workers if no Australian worker is available.

Mr Abbott said the government should be tackling the problem of asylum seeker boat arrivals.

"Instead, they have decided to raise a false problem," he said.

"They can't get tough on illegal arrivals by boat, so they have decided to get tough on legal arrivals by plane."

Mr Oakeshott won't support the legislative changes, saying authorities should make full use of existing sanctions and penalties to crackdown on any abuses of the 457 visa system.

"We don't need new law. We need existing law to be acted upon," he told parliament.

The NSW MP also called for relevant agencies to show "backbone" in pursuing bosses suspected of breaching the system.

"Let's send the dogs onto those that are breaking the laws," he said.

However, fellow cross-bench MP Craig Thomson said he would support the legislation, while criticising the tone of the parliamentary debate.

"It's quite extraordinary that this parliament is at such a state that we see political points on both sides being made, rather than looking at what is the legislation, what are the real issues here and what are the solutions to it," he said.

"This is not ground-breaking legislation but it's important legislation."

The other key independent MPs - Andrew Wilkie and Bob Katter and Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt - are expect to vote in favour of the bill.

But the positions of NSW independent Tony Windsor and former Liberal Peter Slipper remain unclear.

Debate on the Migration Amendment (Temporary Sponsored Visas) Bill 2013 was adjourned until next week.

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WA power station costs public $250m: Labor

WESTERN Australia's opposition is calling for the head of a minister over what it says is the waste of $250 million of taxpayers' money on the refurbishment of a 47-year-old power station.

The long-running saga of the Muja AB power station resurfaced on Wednesday, when WA Labor leader Mark McGowan said heads should roll over the stop-start revamp of the facility south of Perth.

Premier Colin Barnett said in 2009 refurbishing the coal-fired power station would cost the public nothing, with $100 million of private money earmarked to complete the project.

But four years on, the opposition says the project has cost the public $250 million after massive technical issues surfaced, and remain unfixed.

"Colin Barnett promised that the Muja AB refurbishment would cost 'around $100 million' and be 100 per cent privately funded with no cost to the state or taxpayer," Mr McGowan said.

"The premier must now explain how taxpayers have been left with a $250 million loss."

The opposition said former energy minister Peter Collier, who is now WA's education minister, should resign over the losses incurred in the energy sector over the past four years, which they claim total nearly $1 billion.

"Today in parliament we will call for his dismissal, because we think these issues are so significant that someone in the government needs to pay a price for that," Mr McGowan said.

"Even the replacement energy minister Mike Nahan admits it has turned into 'a sow's ear' and it is giving him nightmares."

Premier Barnett had previously admitted in parliament the Muja project had been a mistake.

"That project has not gone well, and that is probably a great understatement," Mr Barnett said.

"The boiler system there has failed, and therefore, the cost of rehabilitating Muja A and B is way above what was estimated."

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50 plots foiled by US spy program: NSA

SECRET US surveillance has foiled more than 50 terror plots since 2001, including a planned bomb attack on the New York Stock Exchange, a US spy chief says.

Google, meanwhile, asked a federal surveillance court to grant it permission to release the number of national security requests and secret court orders it has received in order to be more transparent with users.

Since the disclosure of vast government surveillance programs targeting phone logs and internet data, Silicon Valley firms have scrambled to respond to users angered by perceived privacy violations. The government has defended the programs as fully legal and vital in preventing terror attacks.

National Security Agency (NSA) director-general Keith Alexander on Tuesday described four thwarted plots, including a plan to bomb the New York subway he called "the first core Al-Qaeda plot since 9/11, directed from Pakistan."

Alexander, FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and others defended the digital snooping, which they insisted has kept America safe since 2001, but which has come under global criticism after leaks of classified details.

"In recent years, the information gathered from these programs provided the US government with critical leads to help prevent over 50 potential terrorist events in more than 20 countries around the world," Alexander said, adding that at least 10 threats were "homeland-based".

He told the House Intelligence Committee that most details were classified and would not be made public.

But in an effort to win political support for the spy programs, details of four incidents, including the New York Stock Exchange plot, were released.

Joyce said a tip from the NSA, which had traced international phone calls from terror suspects to Kansas City, led the FBI to get a court order to begin electronic surveillance on Khalid Ouazzani.

FBI agents then determined that Ouazzani had provided information and support for a "nascent" plot to bomb the NYSE, and arrested him and his co-conspirators.

The controversy over the spying programs erupted after rogue defence contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of them to Britain's Guardian newspaper and The Washington Post earlier this month.

According to material leaked to the Guardian, the NSA acquires the call logs of Americans from phone companies and monitors digital communications with data obtained from internet titans like Apple, Facebook and Google.

US officials insist the phone metadata includes no names or addresses, that investigators must obtain a separate order to listen in on calls, and that the internet data searches were only carried out on foreigners residing abroad.

"If you're looking for a needle in the haystack, you have to have the haystack first," Deputy Attorney General James Cole testified, referring to the huge amounts of raw data, which he said were only used "sparingly".

Critics have slammed the spying operations as government overreach, insisting the public has the right to know the scope of the programs and the role major internet firms played in surrendering personal data to authorities.

Google and other companies say they have received thousands of requests for information targeting tens of thousands of accounts.

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'Tweet' to feature in Aussie dictionary

IN a further sign technology is changing the way we speak, the social networking term 'tweet' has entered the English Oxford Dictionary for the first time.

Tweet will also debut in Australia's printed Macquarie Dictionary later this year.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) chief editor John Simpson confirmed 'tweet' had been formally recognised in his hallowed tome's June update - more than seven years after Twitter was invented.

"The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED," Mr Simpson said.

"This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be current for ten years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on."

Tweet's inclusion comes after the OED in 2011 recognised the acronyms 'LOL' (laugh out loud) and 'OMG' (oh my god) - both frequently used online and in SMS messages.

The EOD defined 'tweet' as simply: "To make a posting on the social networking service Twitter. Also: to use Twitter regularly or habitually".

'Tweet' will also be included in the printed Macquarie Dictionary, the respected compendium of Australian-English, for the first time in October.

Macquarie editors recognised 'tweet' in 2009 and included it in online editions from 2010.

But the sixth printed edition of the Macquarie Dictionary will be the first to carry the word, Editor Susan Butler told AAP.

Earlier this year, the Macquarie Dictionary included 'Phantom vibration syndrome' in its online edition - describing anxiety and an obsessional conviction that one's mobile phone has vibrated in response to an incoming call.

Other words or phrases which made it into the new EOD included: 'wingsuit' (a full-body garment having wings), 'sega' (a dance form of the Mascarene Islands) and 'metabolic syndrome' (a cluster of biochemical and physiological abnormalities).

The OED also recognised the slang phrase "to have a cow" - synonymous with the cartoon character Bart Simpson, but which in fact the OED says dates back to 1959.

Another slang phrase, "handyman special" made it too.

The OED said that term described "something (especially a house) which is in need of repair and therefore available at a discounted price".

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Customer likely planted Qld bomb: police

AN angry customer likely planted a bomb that caused several Gold Coast businesses to be evacuated on Monday, police say.

The powder-filled device that was found under a car at a Burleigh Heads car canopy manufacturer is linked to two crude bombs found at Robina car dealership Von Bibra in April, Detective Inspector Brian Swan told reporters on Tuesday.

He said the car at the centre of Monday's drama had been bought from Von Bibra, he said.

Police suspect the culprit is an angry or dissatisfied Von Bibra customer and would like to talk to the driver of a car captured on CCTV near the dealership in April, he added.

Police released images of the car to media on Tuesday.

A plastic container filled with powder and with a long wick hanging from it was found secured with cable ties to the petrol tank of a car by staff at Australian Work & Leisure Canopy on Monday.

The entire block was evacuated before the bomb squad removed the device and safely detonated it.

Improvised bombs were found at Von Bibra on April 8 and 23 this year.

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Tasmanian forestry boss to quit

FORESTRY Tasmania boss Bob Gordon is quitting as the controversial government business prepares to implement the state's forest peace deal.

Chief executive Bob Gordon says he has come to a mutual agreement with the company's board after six years at the helm of the Tasmanian logging agency.

"I have reached agreement with the board that now is the right time for a change," Mr Gordon said in a Forestry Tasmania (FT) statement.

"My departure will allow the board to select a long-term leader that can take the organisation forward into what I believe is a challenging but exciting future."

That future includes the "significant challenges" to implement the agreement between environmentalists and the timber industry, the FT statement said.

The Tasmanian Forests Agreement was legislated last month after three years of negotiations between mainstream green groups and the industry.

It aims to end 30 years of bitter conflict by protecting around 500,000 hectares of forest.

In return, the federal government will provide hundreds of millions of dollars to restructure the industry in an attempt to make it sustainable.

FT chairman Bob Annells said the agreement's implementation was one of several challenges facing the company.

They also include gaining the tick of approval from the Forest Stewardship Council, an international non-government organisation that certifies sustainable forestry practice.

"The transfer of reserve areas and the new focus on a more concentrated wood production zone require a long-term commitment which the board and Bob have agreed would be best met through new leadership," Mr Annells said.

Mr Gordon's announcement comes days after he told a Senate inquiry FT had "stuffed up internally" its handling of a $45 million government compensation program for contractors exiting the ailing industry.

Mr Gordon will officially leave in July with chief operating officer Steve Whitely FT's interim CEO.

AAP dpb/

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Defence reveals details of major battle

RAKED by fire from Taliban machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, Australian special forces soldiers were pinned down in the Afghanistan dust and, in the words of their commander, "digging holes with their eyelids".

Overhead, helicopters rained gunfire on insurgent positions. One soldier saved the day - Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith - whose charge directly at Taliban machine guns earned him a Victoria Cross.

Defence has now revealed further details of surrounding actions which won Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) members 13 bravery decorations and SOTG the first battle honour awarded since Vietnam.

What's called the battle of Eastern Shah Wali Kot unfolded in May and June 2010, with SOTG charged with securing northern approaches to Kandahar city in the major coalition operation to oust insurgents from their heartland.

In a media briefing on Thursday, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Burns, SOTG commander at the time, said the operation was carefully orchestrated to draw the Taliban into a decisive defeat.

Early on June 10, helicopters landed 100 members of the 2nd Commando Regiment in the middle of the insurgent stronghold in Chenartu, an area where earlier coalition incursions had been repelled.

"At 10am precisely every single position was exposed to a hail of gunfire, heavy machine gun fire and RPGs," he said.

The soldiers pushed the insurgents back. Taliban attacked again in the afternoon. Enemy positions on high ground were obliterated by a US A-10 ground attack aircraft.

"The enemy broke contact, withdrew again to lick their wounds," he said.

Local people expressed delight to see the back of the Taliban who had been sponging off them at a time of drought.

Five kilometres away in the village of Tizak, there were indications some Taliban leaders were present and Lt Col Burns dispatched a team of 25 Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) operators aboard four Black Hawk helicopters, supported by a pair of Apache gunships.

They encountered a hail of insurgent fire.

"All they could do was crawl into a position so they didn't die. The guys said, 'I was digging a hole with my eyelids,'" he said. Helicopters were riddled with holes.

At this point Corporal Roberts-Smith dashed 40 metres across open ground, destroying three enemy machine gun positions.

"The guys systematically broke down that position and destroyed every single enemy machine gun position and every enemy in that village," Lt Col Burns said.

The Australian Defence Force doesn't reveal enemy body counts but some reports put the toll as high as 80-90, including a number of senior commanders. One Australian, one Afghan soldier and one Afghan civilian were wounded.

The Taliban propaganda machine claimed that as a great victory. SOTG knew otherwise.

For a victory of this magnitude, SOTG had escaped very lightly but that wasn't to last. In one of the final operations of the campaign on June 21, a helicopter crashed and killed three Australian commandos.

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