Neil Keene, Ian McPhedran, Jessica Elder and Greg Stolz AS loved ones prepare to farewell Kate Malonyay, friends of her ex, Elliott Coulson, defended him against claims he murdered her.
UK prosecutors have charged celebrity publicist Max Clifford with 11 counts of indecent assault. Source: AAP
PR guru Max Clifford has vowed to clear his name in court as he was charged with 11 historic counts of indecent assault against teenage girls.
The 70-year-old, famed for representing celebrities including Simon Cowell and Jade Goody, said he has been "living a 24/7 nightmare" since his arrest in December.
Clifford was charged with offences linked to girls aged from 14 to 19 between 1966 and 1985 and will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on May 28, Scotland Yard said.
He was arrested as part of Operation Yewtree, the national police inquiry sparked by allegations of abuse against Jimmy Savile.
Clifford told the Press Association: "The allegations in respect of which I have been charged are completely false and I have made this clear to the police during many, many hours of interviews.
"Nevertheless a decision has been taken to charge me with 11 offences involving seven women, the most recent of which is 28 years ago and the oldest 47 years ago.
"I have never indecently assaulted anyone in my life and this will become clear during the course of the proceedings."
Clifford has made a career of taking on some of the most talked-about celebrity stories in the last few decades.
The public relations veteran notably represented OJ Simpson and was behind the rumours that sparked the tabloid headline "Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster".
Clifford said: "I am naturally disappointed about today's decision, particularly because of the distress it has caused my wife, Jo, my daughter, Louise, and all those close to me.
"However, at least I will now be in a position to fully consider all the evidence against me and to answer the evidence in public and ultimately clear my name in a court of law.
"Since last December I have been living a 24/7 nightmare."
THE ranks of World War II veterans are thinning, but thousands of younger men and women stepped up to carry on the Anzac tradition as Sydney marked the Gallipoli landing of exactly 98 years ago.
After a solemn dawn service at the Cenotaph in Sydney's Martin Place, an estimated 20,000 veterans, serving defence force personnel and relatives of old soldiers took part in the Anzac Day parade up George St.
Thousands of flag-waving onlookers cheered as sturdy old veterans marched past and their more frail comrades were pushed in wheelchairs or rode in army vehicles.
Maurice Kriss, 76, a navy gunner in Malaya, said Anzac Day was his favourite day of the year.
"In my life I live from one Anzac Day to another," he said.
"As long as I can do the march I feel alive."
James Thompson marched in honour of his father Horace Thompson, who was just 17 when he landed at Gallipoli, in Turkey, in 1915.
He said it was important to keep the Anzac legacy alive now that no World War I diggers were left and that was a lesson he impressed on his son, who also marched.
"I told him about how proud he should be to have had someone that participated in that war," Mr Thompson said.
Rear Admiral Rothesay Swan, who led the navy's contingent in the parade, reflected on the doubts and fear he felt as a midshipman on HMAS Shropshire in World War II.
It was hard to convey the feeling of being in a big sea battle like Leyte Gulf in 1942, he said.
"It was not easy knowing that you may not be alive at the end of the day or even the next day," Mr Swan said.
Former Defence Force chief Peter Cosgrove, who joined the parade in Sydney, said the cheers from the crowd were uplifting for veterans.
"People wearing grandpa's medals, great-grandpa's medals, turned up and marched with the veterans who are still up and about," General Cosgrove said.
"To me that's special ... I like the idea that there's a transference of something important within family groups from one generation to the next."
At the midday memorial service, NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell said Anzac Day was Australia's most sacred national day, but not a glorification of war.
"No veteran that I've ever met has sought to glorify war.
"Rather, it's a celebration of freedom and a commemoration of those who sacrificed for us and guaranteed the freedoms that we enjoy here today."
RSL NSW President Don Rowe said the younger veterans turning up to march were helping make up for the thinning out of World War II veterans.
"There are battalions there now down to literally platoon size, in other words half a dozen men where there used to be a battalion with a thousand to 1200 men."
Mr Rowe said younger veterans now felt they were part of the Anzac tradition and were more inclined to march.
"So they should, because a lot of those guys have spent more time on the frontline than my father did during the Second World War."
The death toll from a building collapse in Bangladesh reached 113, as rescuers search for survivors. Source: AAP
A GARMENT factory building in Bangladesh that collapsed, killing at least 175 people, had been ordered to be evacuated due to deep cracks but the factories flouted the order and continued working, officials say.
One day after Wednesday's collapse, as hundreds of rescuers clawed through the rubble, the cries of trapped survivors could still occasionally be heard, with the screams of a woman pinned between concrete slabs mingling with the wails of distraught relatives waiting for news or collecting bodies.
An enormous section of the concrete structure appeared to have splintered like twigs.
The disaster in the Dhaka suburb of Savar came less than five months after a blaze killed 112 people in a garment factory.
The incidents underscore the unsafe conditions faced by Bangladesh's garment workers, who produce clothes for global brands worn around the world.
After the cracks were reported on Tuesday, managers of a local bank that also had an office in the building, evacuated their workers and suspended their operations.
However, the garment factories continued working, ignoring the instructions of the local industrial police, said Mostafizur Rahman, a director of the industrial police.
The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association had also asked the factories to suspend work starting Wednesday morning, just hours before the building fell.
"After we got the crack reports, we asked them to suspend work until further examination but they did not pay heed," said Atiqul Islam, the group's president.
On Thursday morning the odour of rotting bodies was evident as rescue workers continued to search for more survivors and victims.
Junior minister for Home Affairs, Shamsul Haque, said that by late Thursday morning a total of 2000 people had been rescued from the wreckage.
Brigadier General Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing army rescue teams, said the death toll had climbed to 175 on Thursday afternoon.
Dozens of bodies, their faces covered, were laid outside a local school building so relatives could identify them.
The garment manufacturers' group said the factories in the building employed 3122 workers but it was not clear how many workers were in the building when it collapsed.
Searchers worked through the night to probe the jumbled mass of concrete with drills or their bare hands, passing water and flashlights to people pinned inside.
"I gave them whistles, water, torchlights. I heard them cry," said fire official Abul Khayer.
Abdur Rahim, an employee who worked on the fifth floor, said a factory manager gave assurances that the cracks in the building were no cause for concern, so employees went inside.
"After about an hour or so, the building collapsed suddenly," Rahim said.
The next thing he remembered was regaining consciousness outside.
On a visit to the site, Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir told reporters the building had violated construction codes and that "the culprits would be punished".
Abdul Halim, an official with the engineering department in Savar, said the owner was originally allowed to construct a five-storey building but he added another three storeys illegally.
Local police chief Mohammed Asaduzzaman said police and the government's Capital Development Authority have filed separate cases of negligence against the building owner.
Habibur Rahman, police superintendent of the Dhaka district, identified the owner as Mohammed Sohel Rana, a local leader of ruling Awami League's youth front.
Rahman said police were also looking for the owners of the garment factories.
AUSTRALIAN authorities have intercepted two more suspected asylum seeker boats with 175 people on board.
The first, with 107 passengers, was spotted near Cocos (Keeling) Island and the other with 65 aboard was intercepted northeast of Darwin, both on Tuesday.
The passengers will soon be transferred to Australian government facilities for security and health checks.
Under current laws, asylum seekers intercepted near the Ashmore Islands, Cartier Island, Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands risk being sent to offshore processing centres, while asylum seekers who reach the Australian mainland have to be processed onshore.
The federal government is seeking to remove this legal loophole with legislation currently before the Senate. If passed, the laws will excise the Australian mainland from the migration zone.
More than 15,000 people have arrived by boat since Labor reintroduced offshore processing in August 2012.
THE violence Sean Lee King inflicted on his teenage girlfriend the night he killed her was "light years" away from anything he had ever done before.
That was because the now 27-year-old Sydney man was "off his face" on ice when he beat 18-year-old Jazmin-Jean Ajbschitz to death in July 2011, his murder trial has been told.
Defence barrister John Stratton SC told the Supreme Court in Sydney there was evidence King and Ms Ajbschitz had a "turbulent, passionate relationship punctuated with terrible fights".
He submitted it was a much more equal relationship than the crown has put forward during the three-week trial.
And he said while King had been violent towards Ms Ajbschitz before, her previous injuries amounted to a bruise on her arm, a black eye and possibly a lump to her head.
"In terms of the actual injuries (previously) observed on Ms Ajbschitz, the injuries were light years away from the sort of injuries inflicted on Ms Ajbschitz the night she was killed," Mr Stratton said.
He said King acted quite differently that night "because of the extreme levels of ice that were pulsing through his veins".
King has admitted to the manslaughter of Ms Ajbschitz on July 10, 2011, but has denied murdering her on the grounds that he was affected by drugs and didn't intend to kill her.
Crown prosecutor Kara Shead pointed to several pieces of evidence which she said showed King was capable of thinking logically and of forming an intent to kill that night.
She referred to phone calls to Ms Ajbschitz that night in which he threatened to kill her and anyone who was with her, evidence he tried to disguise his appearance as he left the building and how he had told his friend to call triple-zero from a nearby phone box after he'd killed her.
She said King was controlling of Ms Ajbschitz - who was seven years younger than him - and had assaulted her on several occasions before her death.
She described how King injured Ms Ajbschitz "over and over again" in different rooms in her apartment during the fatal attack, which lasted a significant amount of time.
"This wasn't a momentary lapse of judgment," Ms Shead said.
"This wasn't a one-punch momentary thing where the accused snapped and killed her.
"... A struggle occurred. A long struggle in a number of places in which the deceased fought Mr King for her life and she failed in the end."
There was evidence King used up to four different objects to strike Ms Ajbschitz, that he beat her and stomped on her and that he forced her head down the toilet while face was bleeding.
There was also evidence he may have jumped on her body as she lay defenceless on the floor, Ms Shead said.
King, 27, put his head into his hands during parts of the crown prosecutor's address.
The trial continues before Justice Geoffrey Bellew.
NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell says the question of where to find $1.76 billion for education funding put him between the "devil and a hard place", but his government ultimately decided to put school kids first.
The coalition-led state is the first to sign up to Federal Labor's offer of a two-for-one funding arrangement, which would deliver $3.27 billion in commonwealth funds for NSW schools over six years, starting next year.
Under the agreement signed by Mr O'Farrell and Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Sydney on Tuesday, the NSW government must find savings in its own budget to round out the total funding boost to $5 billion.
Some of that money may come from the TAFE system.
"Vocational educational reforms are being pursued by the government and yes, IPART will be looking at issues around fees and subsidies, and that will be part of the package," Mr O'Farrell said.
"Ultimately, we've had to make some tough decisions ... we are prioritising school education."
Other funds would be unlocked by keeping Inter-Governmental Agreement taxes in place longer than planned and by introducing a business efficiency dividend by July 2015, he said.
Announcing the partnership on Tuesday, Ms Gillard said the reforms would boost funding for 1.1 million NSW schoolchildren and included a promise from NSW to index its school spending at three per cent annually from 2016.
Under the plan, the state would achieve at least 95 per cent of the school resource standard by 2019.
Ms Gillard said beyond offering a bigger pot of money, the deal would cater better to children with special needs and those in regional areas and top teachers would be rewarded with $100,000 salaries for staying in the classroom.
Asian languages would be a focus and principals and parents would be given more control over school-level decisions.
"No child will be left behind and no school will be left behind," Ms Gillard said.
The Labor-led NSW opposition has cautiously applauded the deal, with leader John Robertson telling reporters any cuts made in the next budget would be scrutinised.
"We'll be looking very closely at that. But today is a very pleasing and historic day for NSW and education in this state," he said.
The Greens said it was "heartening" to see money going into schools but TAFE should not foot the bill.
"It is one step forward and one step back to increase funding to public schools while imposing further cuts on the already struggling TAFE sector," Greens MP David Shoebridge said.
The Greens argue that ending subsidies to the wealthiest private schools, or lifting the tax rate on pokies in clubs to match taxes on poker machines in pubs, would allow a boost to primary and secondary schools without a cut to the tertiary sector.
The head of the NSW Teachers' Federation, Maurie Mulheron, said any further cuts to the TAFE system would be a "travesty".
"TAFE is already underfunded and under-resourced and needs more funding," he told AAP.
"We'll seek a meeting with the minister to clarify exactly what he meant."
Meanwhile, the Public Service Association wants the government to immediately reverse cuts to school support jobs, such as office staff.
"We're thrilled that NSW schools will receive more funding under the agreement. But we won't see real improvements in schools if we continue cutting jobs of the staff who support education," PSA president Sue Walsh said.
THE Australian dollar has fallen to its lowest level in six weeks following the release of disappointing Chinese manufacturing figures.
Easy Forex currency dealer Tony Darvall said the Australian dollar fell on Tuesday after HSBC's Flash China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index showed activity in the sector grew at a slower pace in April.
"That really put a dent in demand for the Aussie dollar," he said.
The currency fell to 102.21 US cents during the afternoon session, its lowest level since March 11.
At 1700 AEST on Tuesday, the currency was trading at 102.33 US cents, down from 102.83 cents on Monday.
Mr Darvall said the Chinese figures added to the downward pressure on the Aussie dollar, which had been weighed down for the past week or so due to weaker commodity prices.
He said traders would be closely watching the release on Wednesday of official Australian inflation figures for the March quarter.
If the figures show inflation remains relatively benign it would mean the Reserve Bank of Australia has room to cut further the cash rate, currently at three per cent.
That would put further downward pressure on the Aussie dollar, Mr Darvall said.
At 1700 AEST, the Australian dollar was at 101.12 Japanese yen, down from 102.62 yen on Monday and at 78.35 euro cents, down from 78.67 euro cents.
Meanwhile, Australian bond futures strengthened following the Chinese manufacturing figures.
Westpac senior market strategist Damien McColough said the local bond market started Tuesday strongly following a rise in US Treasuries and that prices continued to rally from there.
"It's as strong as 10 men today, really," he said.
At 1630 AEST on Tuesday, the June 10-year bond futures contract was trading at 96.865 (implying a yield of 3.135 per cent), up from 96.785 (3.215 per cent) on Monday.
The June three-year bond futures contract was at 97.380 (2.620 per cent), up from 97.310 (2.690 per cent).
Brendan O'Connor says no decision has been made to send asylum seekers to Curtin detention centre. Source: AAP
THE federal government has yet to decide whether children will be sent to a controversial West Australian detention centre, noted for its history of riots and self-harm.
The government is reportedly considering housing asylum-seeker families, who have arrived by boat, at the isolated Curtin detention centre which is currently only used for single adult males.
The former Howard coalition government opened the facility in 1999 but closed it three years later following incidents of self-harm, riots and a mass escape.
The news comes as another two asylum-seeker boats, with 132 people on board, were intercepted near Christmas Island and Darwin on Sunday.
Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor would not rule out sending children to the Curtin detention centre.
"What we will do is make decisions about what's the best way to look after those who are in our care," he told ABC Radio on Monday.
"That decision will be made ensuring we protect the interests of those kids."
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said the only way to avoid detaining women and children was to stop the boats.
"I regret to say that it's very difficult to avoid having women and children in some form of detention if you've got illegal arrivals on this scale," he told reporters in Perth.
Mr Abbott reiterated a coalition government would reinstate Howard-era policies such as temporary protection visas and turning boats back.
"The Howard government was able to end the detention of women and children because it stopped the boats - it's as simple as that," he said.
Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young urged the Gillard government not to send children to the "disastrous" Curtin facility while refugee advocates ChilOut said community detention was a more cost-effective and less harmful option.
Meanwhile, Mr O'Connor accused Mr Abbott of being "happy to risk the safety of our servicemen and women" after the opposition leader conceded on Sunday that turning boats back might be dangerous.
But the opposition leader says Australian authorities, who managed to turn seven boats around under former prime minister John Howard, will be able to do it again.
"I don't pretend for a second that this is simple or easy but it can be done," he said.
"I have a lot of faith in the professionalism of the Royal Australian Navy and I am confident that what they have done in the past they can do again in the future if needs be."
Mr O'Connor said the opposition's tow-back policy was irresponsible and against the national interest.
A culture of ignoring children helped child sex abuse go undetected, the Anglican Church says. Source: AAP
CHILDREN complaining of sex abuse were rarely believed and sometimes punished under a culture in church and community organisations that helped the crime go undetected, Melbourne's Anglican archbishop says.
Archbishop Philip Freier said an unwillingness to face up to difficult and shameful things had created opportunities for people who wanted to breach the trust of children to do so.
Since the 1950s the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne has received 46 complaints of child sex abuse, the majority of which were perpetrated by the clergy, a Victorian parliamentary inquiry heard on Monday.
Twenty-six of these allegations were received after 2002.
"As you look backwards you can see broadly as a culture we've not readily listened to children when they've made complaints," Dr Freier told the inquiry.
"There have been opportunities for people who wanted to breach the trust of children to do that and often for children's accounts of that trust being broken, being disbelieved.
"Some were even punished for having raised a question about the conduct of an adult."
He said this was the case for many community organisations not just churches.
Dr Freier said the church had strived to ensure all priests were made aware of their responsibilities but acknowledged in the past there had been gaps in the system.
"We've always had high expectations and I expect that as a culture, churches generally, and community organisations have not had the necessary checks and balances," Dr Freier said.
However the Anglican Church's requirement that allegations of criminal misconduct be reported to police only applies to contemporaneous complaints.
Dr Freier said in the cases of historic abuse the church encouraged people to work with a solicitor.
He acknowledged the church's responsibility to report, but said they didn't want to risk "revictimising" the complainant.
Of the 46 complaints recorded by the church, 12 were reported to police and 20 were not, according to the church's independent director of professional standards, Claire Sargent.
She said the church's policy is to always report current allegations of child sex abuse but not historic allegations.
"If someone has knowledge they are required to report that," Ms Sargent said.
Dr Freier said he wished he could undo the harm that had been done.
"It is unfortunate that we cannot change the past, I wish I could - but I give a real and genuine commitment to enhance the processes and culture of our organisation," he told the inquiry.
"The abuse of children has no place in our society."
Since 2003, there have been 10 financial settlements for child sex abuse totalling $268,000 in the Melbourne diocese.
QUEENSLAND'S premier has recalled his haunting visit to the Western Front while farewelling five students who will follow his steps.
The students have won the inaugural Premier's Anzac Prize to visit the Western Front and Gallipoli.
Mr Newman, who is the son of a war veteran and former member of the army, farewelled the students at Brisbane airport on Sunday.
Marking the occasion, he recounted an emotional experience in 2008 while visiting the battlefields in France where his great uncle died in World War I.
His body was never recovered.
"To stand on a field where your ancestor died and to be there perhaps one hundred metres from where he was last seen, and knowing his body lies somewhere on the field, is a truly amazing, very sobering and surreal experience," he said.
Mount Isa student Elijah Douglas, 16, won a spot for his multimedia presentation on indigenous soldiers fighting despite not being classified as Australian citizens.
He played a didgeridoo at the farewell which he made and painted.
He will give it to a school in France.
"I thought of travelling, but I never thought this would come," he told AAP.
Some 50 students will be chosen to visit the battlefields over the next three years.
Mr Newman wants them to have priority for the 2015 centenary celebrations at Gallipoli, after the federal government announced it would hold a ballot to decide who goes.
LABOR faces no real danger of losing the Melbourne electorate of Lyndhurst at next weekend's by-election.
Former shadow treasurer Tim Holding triggered the contest for the outer south-eastern seat when he resigned in February.
He was first elected MP for Springvale in 1999 and returned in 2002 after a redistribution in which the seat was re-named Lyndhurst.
Mr Holding won more than 55 per cent of the primary vote at the last state poll and was 13.9 per cent ahead of the Liberals on a two-party preferred basis.
Labor is likely to win Saturday's race comfortably given the Liberal Party is not fielding a candidate and the Greens achieved little more than six per cent of the primary vote in 2010.
Lyndhurst includes parts of Springvale, Noble Park and Keysborough as well as Dandenong South and Hampton Park.
Almost half its electors are overseas born and more than a quarter are manufacturing workers with local glass, dairy, pharmaceutical and other factories.
ALP candidate Martin Pakula is the favourite in a field of eight candidates comprised of the Greens, the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), Family First, the Sex Party and three independents.
Mr Pakula is using the by-election to move into the lower house from the Legislative Council, where he represented the western metropolitan region.
He says the issues most concerning Lyndhurst constituents are jobs, local roads and TAFE cuts.
The Chisholm Institute of TAFE, which has a campus in the neighbouring electorate, has lost $30 million in funding cuts and about 200 jobs as part of state government reforms.
"I have been down at Noble Park footy club, I've been at the Cambodian festival - I've been everywhere," Mr Pakula said.
"I've treated the by-election as if it's a one per cent seat."
Greens candidate Nina Springle, who contested the seat at the last state election, is campaigning on closing the local toxic waste dump, increased bus services and building a new primary school in Keysborough.
