Another month of fixes for Obamacare

THE end of November. That's when the Obama administration now says the new, trouble-plagued website for uninsured Americans to get health care coverage will be working well.

After a week of intensive diagnostics, the administration acknowledged on Friday the site has dozens of complex problems and tapped a private company to oversee fixes.

Jeffrey Zients, a management consultant brought in by the White House to assess the situation, told reporters his review found dozens of issues across the entire system.

It will take a lot of work, but Zients declared that HealthCare.gov is fixable. He stopped short of saying problems will completely vanish.

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Fire bans declared for three SA districts

TOTAL fire bans have been declared for three South Australian districts, with conditions expected to be extreme in the state's northwest.

Bans have been declared for the Northwest Pastoral, West Coast and Eastern Eyre Peninsula districts for Sunday, with very hazardous fire whether conditions predicted, the CFS says.

Conditions are expected to be worst in the Northwest Pastoral district, which includes Coober Pedy, where an extreme rating has been forecast.

A windy top of 37C is forecast for Coober Pedy on Sunday.

A severe rating has been declared for the West Coast district, which includes the town of Ceduna and the Eastern Eyre Peninsula which includes Whyalla.

The total fire ban does not include Adelaide which is expecting a top of only 25C with a chance of rain.

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Sydney school kids welcome Princess Mary

Crown Princess Mary and her husband Prince Frederik dropped in for a visit to a Sydney school. Source: AAP

IF she's a princess, where's her crown?

That was the question on the minds of some children at a Sydney school who nonetheless gave Crown Princess Mary an enthusiastic welcome when she dropped by for a visit.

The Australian-born royal and her husband Crown Prince Frederik are in Australia to help mark the Opera House's 40th birthday.

They were greeted by about 35 pre-school children at Five Dock Public School as they entered the school grounds on Friday afternoon.

The youngsters were wearing cardboard crowns, which they made earlier in the day, and were waving Danish and Australian flags.

Teacher's aid Maria Iacono said a few of the children were wondering why Mary was wearing a simple black dress and not the typical royal attire.

"They were a little bit disappointed she wasn't wearing her dress and her crown," she said.

"They're all asking 'where is she?' because she's got no crown."

The royal couple toured the school library and posed for pictures with NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell and three recipients of the premier's reading challenge.

They then sat down with a number of students and chatted about reading and school.

Pakistani-born Maria Asif, who's in year six, described meeting Prince Frederik as a "once in a lifetime experience".

"He asked us questions about the books we were reading and helped us with our reading," she said. "He's really kind."

The two read Let's Count Goats! by Australian authors Mem Fox and Jan Thomas.

Mr O'Farrell joked with the couple that he was still getting used to dealing with celebrities and royals, after being asked to step aside from photo opportunities by the travelling Danish photographers.

He said he's been impressed with how down to earth the two have been.

"For all the pomp and circumstance that's around them and all the attention they get, they seem to me two very relaxed and well settled individuals," the premier told AAP.

After an hour-long stay, Mary and Frederik received a spirited farewell by about 100 school kids and their parents as they headed for their seven-car entourage.

A gala concert and official reception will be held in honour of the Danish royals at the Opera House on Sunday night.

The royal couple, who first met in a Sydney pub during the 2000 Olympic Games, last visited Australia in 2011.

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O'Farrell, Abbott to meet on defence fire

NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell (2L) says he will be discussing the State Mine fire with PM Tony Abbott. Source: AAP

LEADERS have praised the legions of firefighters and residents who stared down NSW's 10-day bushfire crisis that is only now easing.

But amid the camaraderie and consolation there were concerns about bushfire burnout setting in - a full month out from summer.

"It's just terrifying that we're sitting here in spring and we've had all these hot fires," Blue Mountains Mayor Mark Greenhill told AAP on Friday.

"There's still a lot of unburned bush and we've got the height of summer to come."

His community has been hardest hit by the bushfire crisis that began last week.

More than 200 local families have lost their homes and all three of the blazes burning at a watch and act level on Friday were in the mountains west of Sydney.

At Springwood in the mountains, what had been the most destructive fire in the state was being controlled after burning more than 3,300 hectares and.

Fires at Mount York and the State Mine Fire in Lithgow, started by an army explosives exercise, were also being brought under control.

Firefighters were patrolling and mopping up at Gateshead in the Lake Macquarie area where a fire had threatened homes at Dudley and Redhead, the RFS said.

More than 800 firefighters remained on the state's firegrounds on Friday and just over 50 fires continued to burn, but many interstate and metropolitan firefighters have begun the long drive home.

Governor-General Quentin Bryce toured the charred lower Blue Mountains suburbs of Winmalee and Springwood.

"Thank you for what you've done," she said, speaking not only to locals but to the 2000-odd firefighters from across the country who joined in the effort to save lives and homes in NSW.

Tributes flowed on Friday for pilot David Black, who died when his aircraft crashed while fighting a fire at Wirritin in Budawang National Park, west of Ulladulla.

His was the second life lost in the fires. A 63-year-old man died defending his Central Coast home last Thursday.

Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers said there was a sense of hiatus at the Rural Fire Service (RFS) headquarters, but dangerous fire weather could hit within days and dozens of fires continued to burn across the state.

"The fact is it's going to take weeks, not days, to get containment on all these fires," he told AAP.

"People do get fatigued - particularly when it's warning after warning going out to the same communities."

No one should be under any illusion that the dire scenarios predicted for Wednesday - like the fear that major fires could merge to form a super fire spanning the Blue Mountains - were over-hyped, he said.

Firefighters had worked "way beyond" the hours they would ordinarily be allowed to put in, forgoing sleep to run risky back-burning operations around the mountains in a bid to avoid catastrophe.

"I genuinely did fear that we were going to lose people in that fire," Mr Rogers said.

"The community tends to view the fact that we didn't have mayhem and destruction by saying, 'Oh, well it didn't happen'.

"Well it didn't happen because a lot of people worked hard to stop it happening."

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Shares outlook bright - Nomura strategist

THE outlook for shares may be better than many people think, according to an investment strategist with one of the world's biggest banks.

Kevin Gaynor, global head of asset allocation strategy at Japanese banking behemoth Nomura, thinks the global share market - along with the major economies - is heading for what he calls "The Great Normalisation".

"I think the landscape's changing quite materially, and I don't think it's fully embedded into expectations."

He said the shift was evident in the US and the UK, which were the source of the global financial crisis.

"I think there's growing evidence that the factors that gave us this weak trend growth rate for the past four years are starting to ebb.

"The investment psychology that we've had, the expectations formation process, and indeed the asset allocations we've ended up with are appropriate for the last four years and, being human, we've extrapolated and probably taken them too far.

"I think we're starting to move towards a quite different scenario," he said at the briefing in Sydney on Thursday.

He said funds managers had been focusing on tactical asset allocation, trying to pick when the share market moved below the trend and when it moved above trend.

But they were losing sight of the trend itself, which in normal business cycle conditions is responsible for 90 per cent of returns relative to safe assets.

Many big investors have become preoccupied with so-called "risk-on, risk-off" tactics in response to shifts in market sentiment as every time a recovery seemed to be on the way it would be dashed.

But this is changing.

The global crisis not only caused a "nasty cyclical contraction", he said, it also depressed the trend in growth.

For three and a half years, "every economist and equity analyst" repeatedly predicted a recovery to pre-crisis growth rates, only to be disappointed as the slow trend persisted.

But the underlying trend is starting to pick up.

The trend, the underlying pace of growth in the United States and the UK is returning to levels that look a bit like pre-crisis, Mr Gaynor said.

Forecasters were now as guilty of excessive pessimism as they were of being overly optimistic earlier.

"No one in their right mind wants to come out with a very bullish US growth forecast for next year, having done it for the last four years and been wrong."

He also said equity analysts had not adjusted their forecasts for corporate earnings upward in response to "positive data surprises" that in the past have led to a brighter earnings outlook.

A normalisation of monetary policy in the developed world would mean an upward drift in interest rates, which would usually result in lower share valuations from analysis using discounted earnings models.

But the improved economic outlook and the incorporation of a more positive earnings outlook into valuations would "swamp" the effect of higher interest rates and push prices higher, he said.

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Defence apologises for massive fire

The acting Defence chief has apologised over the NSW bushfire caused by an army explosives exercise. Source: AAP

THE defence department has apologised for starting the biggest blaze in the NSW bushfire crisis but some Blue Mountains residents don't think "sorry" goes far enough.

Acting Chief of Defence, Air Marshall Mark Binskin on Thursday offered an apology over the massive State Mine Fire that has destroyed three homes and burned through nearly 50,000 hectares of land west of Sydney.

The bushfire continues to rage at emergency level between Lithgow and the Blue Mountains more than a week after it was sparked by explosives training on army land at Marangaroo on October 16.

Blue Mountains resident Erin Cater said no one should criticise the army, but she said it would be fair for people who lost their homes to receive more than an apology.

"I don't reckon that's enough honestly ... they should offer the people some compensation," she said.

Paul Andrews, another local, said the incident had created "incredible anxiety" but he said it was good the army was being transparent.

Air Marshall Binskin said a small fire that started during a routine training exercise was responsible for the blaze.

"I do apologise, because it has been identified that this fire was the start of this mine fire," he told reporters at Rural Fire Service headquarters in Sydney on Thursday.

Blue Mountains Mayor Mark Greenhill said the apology was a positive gesture.

"I think this is a really open sign and I think it's a sign that defence is going to work close with the RFS ... so that we can find out what happened and take steps to stop it happening again," he said.

While Air Marshall Binskin said Defence was "not shying from our responsibilities", he stopped short of offering compensation.

Deputy Fire Commissioner Rob Rogers said it wasn't known exactly what went wrong.

"When fires start, where there's human intervention, there's carelessness and then there's just simply accidents happening," he said at Faulconbridge in the Blue Mountains.

"I think it would be prejudging to suggest there was any sort of negligence."

Air Marshall Binskin said the decision to go ahead with the training exercise was made on a day of light winds and 23 degree-temperatures.

"The fire (danger) was on the lower end of the scale and there was not a fire ban," he said.

Defence personnel acted quickly after an explosion started a small fire but were hampered by the live ordnance around them.

RFS crews arrived within half an hour, Air Marshall Binskin said.

"It was considered too dangerous to go onto the particular site where the fire had started to burn, so they waited till it cleared that area and then started to fight it," he told reporters.

"This was not deliberately starting a fire, this was an accident as part of a training activity on a day there wasn't a fire ban."

Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said he didn't know how many hours the fire burned before the RFS was able to work on it.

"The fire occurred on a live firing range ... you can't send firefighters or fire trucks into a live firing range," he said.

"Nor can you put aircraft above or into close proximity to assist in water bombing."

Air Marshall Binskin said the force's in-house investigation into could prompt changes to training procedures around Australia.

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Plane missing after leaving NSW for Vic

A SEARCH is under way for a missing light plane that left coastal NSW bound for Victoria.

The single engine Cessna took off from Moruya on the far south coast of NSW at 8.15am (AEDT) on Wednesday.

The plane, carrying only the pilot, was due to land at Mangalore Airport, about two hours north of Melbourne, at 11am but never arrived.

Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokesman Sam Cardwell said five aircraft, including three helicopters and two planes, are involved in a search.

"They'll be searching until last light and there's the possibility our plane will continue to search at night," he said.

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Man pleads guilty to $13m WA drug haul

A MAN who took part in a massive drug haul involving 35kg of methamphetamine hidden in ceramic tiles has pleaded guilty to drug importation and trafficking.

Chung Yin Tam, 22, was one of five people arrested after police intercepted the drugs at Fremantle Port in January.

The drugs were imported from China and police said they had a street value of about $13 million.

Tam pleaded guilty in the Stirling Gardens Magistrates Court on Wednesday to one count each of illegally importing the drugs and trafficking it.

He will be sentenced in the Supreme Court in December.

His four co-accused are due back in court next month.

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Dutch turns to tribunal to free Arctic 30

The Netherlands has asked an international tribunal to free Greenpeace activists jailed in Russia. Source: AAP

THE Netherlands has asked an international tribunal to order Russia to release a Greenpeace protest ship and the activists who were on board.

Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said on Monday the government made the request to the Hamburg, Germany-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

A group of 28 Greenpeace activists and two journalists have been held since their ship, the Arctic Sunrise was seized by the Russian coastguard after a protest near a Gazprom-owned oil rig on September 18.

The activists are being held in the northern Russian city of Murmansk. They have been charged with piracy, an offence that carries a 15-year sentence in Russia.

Timmermans said the request was a procedural step in an arbitration case the Dutch launched two weeks ago seeking to free the activists and their ship, which sails under the Dutch flag.

He told reporters in Luxembourg "it will come as no surprise to the Russian Federation" that the Dutch have now asked for the tribunal to order the release pending a final decision in the case.

In a statement, Greenpeace International welcomed the Dutch initiative and called on other governments whose nationals are among the detained activists "to step up their work to ensure the immediate release of the detainees".

The tribunal the Dutch are turning to adjudicates in disputes arising from interpretation and application of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The wife of the Arctic Sunrise's captain said on Monday that she had spoken with her husband for the first time since the ship was seized last month .

Maggy Willcox, of Norwalk, Connecticut, told The Hour of Norwalk newspaper that she spoke briefly with her husband, Peter Willcox, on Monday morning.

"He sounds strong and positive and he said the people around him were treating him well," she said.

Maggy Willcox said during the three- to four-minute call, her husband reported doing push-ups and yoga in his prison cell.

"He's a vegetarian. He said he's been straining meat out of everything, so he's lost weight, which he's pleased about," she said.

She said he sounded so upbeat, it "put a little starch in our own backbone".

Timmermans said it would likely take about a month for the international tribunal to reach a decision on the request.

"That's what we're pinning our hopes on at this point," Maggy Willcox said.

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Vic premier heartened by talks with Toyota

VICTORIAN Premier Denis Napthine says he is heartened by talks with Toyota executives about its Melbourne manufacturing plant.

A week after Toyota announced it would axe 100 jobs at its Altona plant, Dr Napthine has met with executives at the company's Japan headquarters.

"I'm heartened by the discussions, I'm heartened by Toyota's understanding of their history in Melbourne and Victoria and their ongoing commitment," Dr Napthine said from Japan on Tuesday.

In return, the car manufacturer has asked for more government assistance to keep the plant viable.

"We'll look to work with them in a productive way, with the federal government, in terms of their future," Dr Napthine said.

The company announced last week it would call for voluntary redundancies at its Altona plant, where it currently employs about 2500 people, with the jobs to go by the end of November.

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Gravity remains No 1 at Aussie box office

FOR the third week in a row, Gravity remains high above its competition at the Australian box office.

The Sandra Bullock thriller defied physics by rocketing to the top of the local box office and now weeks later, not even Australian Hugh Jackman can knock it from its perch.

According to the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia, Gravity added another $2.407 million to its takings, bringing its total to $12.270 million.

Meanwhile Jackman's new film Prisoners debuted in third place, while About Time, the latest film from Love Actually writer/director Richard Curtis came in at No.2 with $1.688 million.

Action flick 2 Guns, starring Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington, fell two spots to fourth along with Adam Sandler's Grown Ups 2, now in fifth.

Rush, starring Aussie Chris Hemsworth, also dropped in the charts from fifth to sixth, as did Naomi Watts' Diana, which slipped to eighth.

However, Australian Cate Blanchett's Blue Jasmine did the opposite, and climbed back into the Top 10 after falling to No.12 last week.

Children's movies weren't so lucky. The Smurfs 2, Planes, and Percy Jackson: The Sea of Monsters all dropped off the Top 10, leaving one kid's film left on the ladder - Ryan Reynold's animated movie Turbo, which fell five spots but still hung on in ninth place.

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Search for missing mum now a murder probe

THE disappearance of Perth mother Helen Rocha is now being investigated as a murder by West Australian police.

Officers began searching the bushland area surrounding the Kwinana train station in Bertram on Sunday as they looked for Ms Rocha, who was last seen on September 26.

The mother-of-two is reported to have been sighted in Parmelia, Orelia and Kwinana later the same day and WA's Major Crime Squad has now revealed Ms Rocha was last seen with an unnamed man.

The iPad, iPod and coin purse she is believed to have been carrying have not been found.

Ms Rocha is about 157 centimetres tall, of slim build, with an olive complexion, black hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a black top, black tights and black running shoes.

Police searched a house in Parmelia earlier this month and are appealing for anyone who thinks they may have seen Ms Rocha - or spotted suspicious activity in bushland in Parmelia, Orelia or Kwinana - to contact them.

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Vic fire fighters in NSW to be replaced

VICTORIA'S contingent of fire fighters battling the NSW blaze will be replaced by a fresh crew.

Victoria's fire services commissioner Craig Lapsley says a 120-strong replacement crew will leave Victoria for NSW on Monday.

The crew will replace the fire fighting team Victoria sent last week and will begin work from Tuesday to Thursday helping the NSW effort.

The contingent includes 100 Country Fire Authority (CFA) fire fighters and 20 incident management experts from the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB), CFA, Department of Environment and Primary Industries and Parks Victoria.

Mr Lapsley says NSW authorities will inform Victoria on Monday whether further assistance is needed.

"This week in NSW there's a critical couple of days," he said.

"Tuesday and Wednesday is the real critical fire weather. There could be a chance NSW could ask for more."

The contingent of Victorian crews has been drawn from northern and central Victoria.

South Australia sent a crew of 51 and Tasmania a team of 20 staff.

A Tasmania Fire Service spokesman said crews would be deployed for six days until Thursday, but could not comment on whether further crews would be replaced.

A SA Metropolitan Fire Service spokesman said a request had been received from NSW for more troops and it would send another six replacing 12 coming home on Tuesday.

He said he was unable to comment on the team of 40 from the SA Country Fire Service, who could not be contacted.

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NSW premier declares state of emergency

NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell has declared a state of emergency as bushfire conditions worsen. Source: AAP

A STATE of emergency has been declared across NSW, as firefighters prepare themselves for deteriorating weather being forecast throughout the state.

Rural Fire Service (RFS) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons wrote to Premier Barry O'Farrell on Sunday requesting he declare a state of emergency.

Mr O'Farrell, who has since signed the order, said there were concerns weather conditions would deteriorate significantly over the next few days.

"There is potential for a significant and widespread danger to life and property across the State," Mr O'Farrell said in a statement.

"This is not an action taken lightly by either the Commissioner, the Minister or myself, but it's important the Rural Fire Service and other emergency services have the powers and the resources they need to combat this threat.

"We are planning for the worst but hoping for the best," he said.

The declaration triggers a range of measures, including allowing emergency services to direct the public to evacuate or to order power and gas supplies be shut off.

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