AS Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak prepares to travel to Perth to thank those searching for Malaysia Airlines flight 370, Australia's former defence chief has warned the operation could take a long time.
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CLIVE Palmer's party maintains election candidates were told that only 10 advertising banners would be paid for by head office.
LIAM Knight walked in to court, using a walking stick, to face two teenagers who allegedly speared a steel bar through his head.
Clive Palmer is planning a news website containing anonymous posts by professional journalists. Source: AAP
A NEWS website filled with anonymous editorial written by journalists is being set up by wealthy businessman and federal MP Clive Palmer.
After lodging a trademark for The Australian Times last year, the Palmer United Party leader continues to toy with the idea of taking on media mogul Rupert Murdoch in the same spirit as his bid to break the nation's political duopoly.
He said it should go live before the end of the year.
"I'm setting up a website - I haven't got time to do it at the moment - called News on News," Mr Palmer told AAP in Perth, where he was campaigning on Tuesday for Saturday's re-run West Australian Senate election.
"I'm trying to get the editor of one of the newspapers to be the editor of it.
"And I'm trying to have it so that news (reporters) worldwide can log on and post an anonymous article - what's happening in Cincinnati, what's happening in Australia - all over the world.
"You might be a journalist who for some reason can't run a story, you can go and put it on News on News."
Mr Palmer said he still avoided speaking with News Corp Australia, saying he was often denied a right of reply, but still thought its journalists were largely nice people just following orders.
"There's only a point talking to a journalist if you get some fair coverage. You might get 10 per cent fair and that's still worth putting your point of view. But if you get zero coverage, you're only talking to them because they're looking for a headline."
An out-of-control bushfire is threatening homes in the small Victorian town of Narrawong. Source: AAP
RESIDENTS whose homes are threatened by a fast-moving bushfire near the small Victorian town of Narrawong have been warned to leave.
An emergency warning has been issued for the blaze in Victoria's southwest and a relief centre has been set up in the town and community meeting held for residents.
The fire has already burnt through more than 270 hectares.
It is travelling in a southerly direction from Golf Course Road, Mt Clay State Forest and towards Mt Clay fire tower, a Department of Environment and Primary Industries spokesperson says.
Residents in the vicinity of the bushfire have been warned they should leave now, before conditions become too dangerous.
The message applies to residents in the vicinity of Blackers Road, Devlins Road, Beavis Road, Brabender Lane, Kerrabrae Road and Angelino Road.
Community meetings were held at the Narrawong Hall and Portland Civic Centre on Tuesday night and a relief centre has been set up at the Portland Civic Centre.
Several roads have been closed and should be avoided.
Clive Palmer says Queensland Nickel's $36 million carbon tax bill has been paid. Source: AAP
QUEENSLAND Nickel has paid its overdue carbon tax debt of nearly $7 million, but the company owned by federal MP and mining magnate Clive Palmer is not out of the woods just yet.
The Clean Energy Regulator has confirmed that on Tuesday it received a payment from Mr Palmer's company Queensland Nickel for $6.8 million.
The payment was for the company's outstanding $6.1 million carbon tax debt to June 2013, plus 20 per cent interest a year through to the end of the year.
This clarification from the regulator backs Mr Palmer's insistence earlier on Tuesday that he'd already authorised the payment. But the regulator also said the amount it received did not include the interest accrued on the debt since December 31, and Queensland Nickel still had more cash to cough up.
"A further debt in the amount of $2.27 million fell due in February 2014 at the end of the final surrender period," a spokesperson for the regulator told AAP in a statement on Tuesday evening.
"The Clean Energy Regulator will continue to pursue the debts using appropriate means, including payment plans and court proceedings."
Queensland Nickel also confirmed it paid around $6,815,000 to the regulator on Tuesday, reducing its carbon tax liability as of December 31 to zero.
A statement from the company said as an exporter trading in international commodity markets, Queensland Nickel could not pass on the costs of the carbon tax to its customers.
"Queensland Nickel's international competitors are not plagued by the same high level of carbon pricing," the statement read.
Mr Palmer earlier said the payment was authorised to be made this week, well before the April 5 deadline imposed by the regulator.
But he did not know exactly when the authorisation was made, but denied it was done at the very last minute.
"Do you pay your tax months in advance?" he told reporters in Perth on Tuesday.
"Most people will pay their tax just before it's due and that's what our company's decided to do."
He said Queensland Nickel would continue with its High Court challenge to the legal validity of the carbon pricing scheme.
The development of Australia's natural gas reserves will benefit the nation, an industry body says. Source: AAP
AUSTRALIANS should welcome the nation's looming gas boom, despite warnings it will cost thousands of jobs, a global industry body says.
Meeting in Australia this week, the International Gas Union (IGU) said Australia was on the way to overtaking Qatar as the world's top gas exporter by the end of the decade.
The comments come less than a week after Manufacturing Australia warned 10,000 jobs would be lost unless the federal government intervened to keep cheap gas available for domestic use.
IGU vice president David Carroll, who heads the Illinois-based Gas Technology Institute, said he believed liquefied natural gas exports (LNG) would benefit Australia.
"There has been independent study after study commissioned by the US department of energy that indicates the more gas we export from the US the more our economy benefits," he told reporters.
"As a net overall its a benefit to our economy and in geopolitical relations and a variety of things."
IGU president Jerome Ferrier, a senior executive at French giant Total Oil, said Australian gas exports were an exciting opportunity to supply the world's fastest growing economies in the Asia-Pacific.
The IGU supports market based principles when it comes to gas prices, but Mr Ferrier said he supported the methods employed by newly emerging gas producing African nations, where gas supplies are reserved for their poor populations.
Canada, Israel, Qatar and the US - where manufacturers are enjoying cheap energy thanks to the shale boom - all reserve gas for domestic use.
Among those to call for intervention to protect Australian gas users from soaring export-parity prices include US-based Dow Chemical chairman Andrew Liveris and the heads of Incitec Pivot, Brickworks and BlueScope Steel.
THE British government cost taxpayers millions by selling off the Royal Mail at too low a price, the country's public-spending watchdog says.
The Conservative-led government sold a majority stake in the postal service last year, putting the system under private control for the first time in its 500-year history.
The National Audit Office said on Tuesday the government sold the shares "substantially below" their actual trading price.
Shares were offered at 330 pence, but on the first day of London Stock Exchange trading in October closed at 455 pence. They traded on Tuesday at 565 pence.
Audit Office chief Amyas Morse said the government's approach "was marked by deep caution, the price of which was borne by the taxpayer."
"The government retained 30 per cent of the company," Morse said. "It could have retained even more and allowed the taxpayer to participate further in the rapidly increasing share price and thus limit the cost to the taxpayer."
The auditor also said 12 of the 16 institutional "priority investors" given the chance to buy chunks of shares sold all or part of their stake within weeks at a substantial profit, contrary to the government's expectation "that they would form part of a stable long-term and supportive shareholder base". Most of the 16 institutions have not been named publicly.
Business Secretary Vince Cable said the government had succeeded in selling the Royal Mail, "predominantly to responsible long-term investors.
"Achieving the highest price possible at any cost and whatever the risk was never the aim of the sale," Cable said.
But opposition Labour Party spokesman Chuka Umunna said the sale had left taxpayers "shortchanged by hundreds of millions of pounds."
PRIME Minister Tony Abbott says Japan should "appropriately reflect" on the international court's ruling about its whaling program, but insists trade remains the top priority for his trip to Tokyo.
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