THE death of a man whose body was found by a cyclist in bushland near Bendigo is not suspicious, police say.
The cyclist discovered the 29-year-old local man's body at Strathfieldsaye, northwest of Melbourne, at about 4pm (AEDT) on Saturday.
Police later said the death was not being treated as suspicious and will compile a report for the coroner.
SYRIA'S rebels have seized a key district in the embattled northern city of Aleppo, a resident and activists said, as troops again bombarded areas south of Damascus.
"Rebel fighters seized total control of Sheikh Said in southern Aleppo, after troops exhausted by 48 hours of fighting withdrew from the district," one resident of the area said Saturday on condition of anonymity.
"Most neighbourhood residents fled the area after rebels took control."
The takeover was a strategic victory for the rebels, as it secured a key route linking Syria's second city to its international airport.
Activists said the takeover also severed regime forces' access to a military airfield.
"Rebel fighters have seized Sheikh Said, which was the last land route linking Nayrab airport to the city," the anti-regime Aleppo Media Centre said.
According to the AMC's Abu Hisham, the battle for Aleppo's airports has become a key rebel objective.
South of Damascus, meanwhile, the army pounded the rebel enclave of Moadamiyet al-Sham on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, in a renewed effort to suppress the insurgency on the capital's doorstep.
More than 60,000 people have died in Syria's 22-month war, according to UN figures.
THE death toll from a Taliban attack on an army post in Pakistan's northwest has risen to 23, officials say.
Twelve attackers were also killed.
Two security officials said on Saturday that nine soldiers and four members of the Frontier Constabulary that polices tribal areas died during the raid on the post in Serai Naurang town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
They say militants killed 10 civilians in a nearby house, including three women and three children.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.
NASA will honour the seven astronauts who perished when the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed 10 years ago.
The space agency will mark the anniversary on Friday at a public memorial service at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Speakers include Evelyn Husband Thompson, who was married to the shuttle's commander.
The accident on February 1, 2003, killed six Americans and Israel's first astronaut.
They were returning home from a 16-day science mission when the shuttle disintegrated over Texas, just minutes from landing in Florida.
An investigation board later determined the cause was damage to the wing that occurred during lift-off.
The shuttles were grounded for more than two years, and resumed flying with more safety features in place. The shuttles retired in 2011.
A WOMAN has been sexually assaulted in Melbourne's inner suburbs, police say.
The 24-year-old woman was walking along Grandview Grove in Prahran about 5.50pm (AEDT) on Thursday when a man grabbed her from behind and sexually assaulted her, police said.
The woman managed to break free before the man ran off.
He is described as being of Southern European appearance, between 40 and 45 years of age, of medium build and with straight, collar-length hair.
At the time of the attack, he was wearing green trousers and a dark long sleeve top.
Police are urging any witnesses to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
AN al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Iraq has called on Sunnis to take up arms against the Shi'ite-led government, as sectarian tensions and large Sunni protests increase.
In an audio statement posted on Friday on the website of the Islamic State of Iraq, spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani says Sunnis can bow to the Shi'ites or to take up arms to restore "dignity and freedom."
Al-Adnani says recent Sunni protests against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki mark the end of Sunni humiliation in Iraq.
Thousands of Sunnis rallied on Friday in the city of Fallujah in the western province of Anbar.
Protesters complain of official discrimination, saying anti-terrorism laws and other policies largely target minority Sunnis.
The protests were sparked by the December arrests of bodyguards of a senior Sunni politician.
ABOUT 500 homes remain without power in the north of NSW following the extreme weather that lashed the state earlier this week.
In a statement, Essential Energy said its crews restored power to almost 3000 houses in northern NSW on Thursday, leaving about 500 residents still without electricity.
It said about 23,000 people had lost their power supply during the worst of the recent flood emergency in NSW.
It said power would remain off on Thursday night in the Tweed hinterland at Numinbah, Round Mountain, Boat Harbour, Murwillumbah, Ocean Shores, Upper Wilsons Creek, Federal, Eureka, Booyong, and Goonengerry.
A spokesman for Essential Energy said the biggest problem for crews trying to reconnect power was gaining access to many of the areas hit by this week's floods.
More than 1000 NSW flood evacuees are expected to return to their homes in the north of the state over the next few days, while about 23,000 people remain isolated.
With weather conditions easing, the SES is focusing on resupplying food and medicine to isolated communities, like Yamba and Iluka at the mouth of the Clarence River.
INDIA has revised its economic growth figures for the previous two years, issuing new data that show a recent slowdown has been even more abrupt than previously thought.
The new figures show growth in the financial year to March 2011 was 9.3 per cent, instead of the previously issued 8.4 per cent, underlining how the economy had resisted the effects of the global financial crisis from 2008.
But since then, over a period of high inflation, rising interest rates and declining business confidence often blamed on the government's weak policy-making, growth has fallen dramatically.
In the financial year to March 2012, growth in gross domestic product fell to 6.2 per cent, the new figures from the Central Statistics Office showed on Thursday, less than the previously issued 6.5 per cent.
In the current financial year, the finance ministry forecasts expansion of 5.7 to 5.9 per cent, but the central bank sees it as 5.5 per cent and many private economists expect even less.
The weak figures come before national elections early next year, when the corruption-plagued government led by the centre-left Congress Party is expected to face a tough fight to stay in power.
A string of pro-market reforms starting at the end of last year and the first interest rate cut in nine months this week are expected to help boost the economy.
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram recently said the economy could expand 7.0 per cent in fiscal 2014.
ERICSSON, a leading provider of telecom equipment to global markets, reported on Thursday that net profit plunged by half last year, hit by a charge for its joint venture ST-Ericsson, but was confident about prospects this year as operators boost capacity.
Ericsson said in December that it would book a charge of eight billion kronor ($A1.21 billion) after the announcement that French-Italian group STMicro was pulling out of ST-Ericsson.
The joint venture has not reported a single quarter of profits since being created at the beginning of 2009. In the fourth quarter of last year it reported a net loss of $US133 million ($A128.5 million).
In 2012, Ericsson made a net profit of 5.575 billion kronor on sales of 227.779 billion kronor, about the same as in 2011.
Chief executive Hans Vestberg said that the company should benefit in the second half of 2013 from projects by telecommunications operating companies to increase the capacity of their networks.
The results for the fourth quarter were hit hard by the outcome at ST-Ericsson which Ericsson is reportedly seeking to sell.
Ericsson reported a net loss for the quarter of 6.462 billion kronor.
Sales for the quarter rose by 4.0 per cent on a 12-month basis to 66.936 billion kronor. This was better than the average of estimates by analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires, who had expected 65.66 billion euros.
A 46-YEAR-OLD man has drowned after being swamped by large waves at a beach on NSW's south coast.
Police said the man and a woman, 36, were trying to cross a beach channel at Lake Tabourie when they were hit by large waves and knocked off their feet, about 1pm (AEDT) on Wednesday.
Another man, walking nearby on the beach, ran into the water and managed to pull the woman out of the surf to safety but could not locate the man.
He was found 20 minutes later about 300 metres from where he fell into the water.
The man could not be resuscitated, police said in a statement.
The rescued woman was taken to Milton Hospital suffering from shock.
JULIAN Assange will run for a Senate seat in the 2013 federal election and his mum reckons he'll be awesome.
Christine Assange confirmed her son's candidacy on Wednesday after WikiLeaks tweeted the news.
"He will be awesome," she told AAP.
"In the House of Representatives we get to choose between US lackey party number one and US lackey party number two - between the major parties.
"So it will be great to 'Assange" the Senate for some Aussie oversight."
Queensland-born Assange, who founded the secret-leaking website WikiLeaks, announced his Senate ambition last December from Ecuador's London embassy.
He sought refuge there last June in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden.
Mr Assange fears if he goes to Sweden to be questioned over rape allegations, authorities will allow him to be extradited to the US to be questioned over WikiLeaks' release of thousands of US diplomatic cables.
He said last year he would run as a Senate candidate under a yet-to-be-formed WikiLeaks party banner and was recruiting others to stand with him.
The election will be held on September 14.
RUSSIA says it is pulling out of a decade-old drug control agreement with the United States in the latest sign of a deterioration in ties since President Vladimir Putin's return to the Kremlin last year.
The Russian government website on Wednesday published a decree from Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev saying Moscow had informed Washington it was withdrawing because the deal "does not address today's realities and has exhausted its potential".
Moscow said it lacked the money to fight drugs effectively on its own when it struck the deal in September 2002 at a time of warming relations that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
It added that Washington had "regularly provided ... financial assistance for the implementation of anti-criminal projects" during this time.
The statement implied that Russia - whose economy grew in the past 10 years on the back of high global energy prices - was now sufficiently rich to tackle the fight against drugs on its own.
But the decision's timing suggested that Moscow intended for the move to be interpreted as reprisal for recent US actions against Russia aimed at punishing those responsible for rights abuses.
The announcement came just days after the United States informed Moscow it was quitting a joint commission on civil society in protest at Putin's record since his return for a third term as president in May.
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Melia said at the time that Putin's restrictions "called into serious question whether maintaining that mechanism (the civil society working group) was either useful or appropriate".
Putin returned to the Kremlin in May after serving four years as premier in the face of the first concerted swell of protests in the past two decades.
The former KGB spy then quickly enacted legislation making it more difficult for the protest movement to organise and limiting its ties with the West.
But the strongest action came after US President Barack Obama signed legislation freezing the assets and barring the entry of officials implicated in the death in a Moscow prison of the whistle-blowing corporate lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
Russia responded by banning all US adoption of Russian children - a highly contentious decision that partially prompted Washington to pull out of the civil society group.
Russia remains an important conduit for the heroin grown in Afghanistan heading for consumers in Europe. It has also suffered through its own drug epidemics in the years since the Soviet Union's collapse.
Premier Colin Barnett says parts of the ambitious $3.8b Perth rail plan by WA Labor are "fantasy." Source: AAP
THE ambitious $3.8 billion Perth rail plan that's a centrepiece of Western Australia Labor's election campaign has been dismissed as fantasy by Premier Colin Barnett.
The campaign ahead of the March 9 poll moved up a gear on Tuesday, with Labor leader Mark McGowan unveiling a proposal to build a $731.5 million rail line to Perth Airport as part of the party's Metronet plan to ease Perth's growing congestion crisis.
But making his own announcement about free public transport for carers, Mr Barnett said parts of Labor's grand rail plan were unrealistic.
"Labor has released a transport plan with rail lines going everywhere, so it is up to Labor if they are to have credibility to come out and commit to which projects are real and which ones are fantasy and to provide accurate costings," Mr Barnett told reporters.
"Labor has vague ideas and maps that look like the London Underground when the rails are not going to look anything like that, and (Mark McGowan) is making promises that will connect every suburb in Perth.
"That is not reality - what you have now is a government that what it says it will do, it does, and it does it on time and on budget."
WA Labor on Tuesday revealed its Metronet plan would cost $3.8 billion over eight years but this figure did not include costings for rail cars.
Mr McGowan said the party had a track record of delivering rail projects in the state, referring to the Perth-to-Mandurah line, which was completed in 2007 under Alan Carpenter's leadership.
State treasurer Troy Buswell has previously claimed Labor's rail plan would cost $6.4 billion, a figure Mr Barnett said he was confident was more accurate than the Labor Party's costing.
ALL 20 people on board a domestic flight of Kazakhstan's SCAT airline have been killed in a crash.
The airline said there were "20 people were on board - five crew members and 15 passengers" when the plane crashed on Tuesday.
It was coming in to land at Almaty airport in bad weather.
"According to preliminary information there are no survivors," said the airline
The plane was flying to Almaty from the northern city of Kokshetau.
A 23-YEAR-OLD man who struck a Mercedes-owner in the head with a machete in a bid to steal the vehicle has been sentenced to three years in prison.
The District Court of Western Australia was told Lawrence John Cashin attempted to carjack the 24-year-old victim while he sat with his girlfriend parked on a street in the northern Perth suburb of Girrawheen on May 13 last year.
During the attack, Cashin threatened to kill the male victim and struck him with a machete on the top of his head and near his ear.
Throughout the ordeal, the victim's girlfriend was cowering on the floor of the car.
"The victim was screaming, the girlfriend wouldn't get out of the car, and ultimately you ran off," Judge Gillian Braddock said during the sentencing.
"Not only did the victim suffer the deep lacerations to the top of the head and the ear, to need to go to hospital and be treated there, it must have been a totally terrifying experience for them."
Judge Braddock said Cashin was at high risk of violent reoffending, given he had a traumatic early life and addictions.
He was beginning to realise the need to address his problems and was attempting to parent his girlfriend's daughter, so there was hope for reform but it wouldn't be easy, Judge Braddock said.
RUSSIAN emergency officials say five more sailors have been rescued from a fishing vessel that capsized in the Sea of Japan, but 15 are still missing.
Ten members of the 30-man Russian-Indonesian crew had already been found in one lifeboat and rescued by a passing freighter.
The fishing vessel Shans-101 capsized on Sunday off of Russia's Pacific coast. The ITAR-Tass news agency cited a representative of the ship's owner as saying the vessel was hit by two waves just as it had changed direction. Ten minutes later, the crew was ordered into the life boats.
The state news agency reported on Monday that eight of the 15 missing crew members had died and their bodies were put into the sea. The search is continuing.
HUNDREDS of thousands of residents have been urged not to "panic" after a Telstra blackout left them with no phone, internet, or Triple Zero access everywhere north of Gladstone. Source: AFP
TELSTRA has repaired services affected by a damaged fibre-optic cable in central Queensland.
The damage to the cable at Colosseum, north of Bundaberg, brought down landline, mobile and broadband services across central and northern Queensland.
"Many services are now live and others are expected to come online throughout the evening," the company said in a statement this afternoon.
"As landline services are restored, customers will also regain the ability to reach the triple-zero emergency service."
Has your service been restored? Let us know in the comments section below
Along with the cable north of Bundaberg, a backup cable near Kingaroy, northwest of Brisbane, was also damaged late on Sunday.
That, combined with a number of power blackouts, resulted in the loss of most landline and broadband services in Mackay, Freshwater, Cairns, Rockhampton, Townsville, Mount Isa and Gladstone.
A team of repair technicians arrived in Colosseum by helicopter this morning with more than a kilometre of fibre-optic cable on board to fix the damaged cable.
Meanwhile, another group of technicians reached the damaged cable at Kingaroy and commenced restoration works, Telstra says.
Earlier,
hundreds of thousands of residents have been urged not to "panic" in a Telstra blackout that has left everywhere north of Gladstone with no phone, internet, or Triple Zero access .
It is likely to be days before the nation's biggest carrier, Telstra, can get crews in by helicopter into fix destroyed fibre-optic cable because of severe flooding both on the coastal and back-up inland route.
Authorities urge residents to stay calm and avoid "panic" or "hysteria" with more than half the state off the grid with power blackouts and total communication breakdown under an unprecedented flood crisis.
There has been loss of landline and broadband services in a line everywhere north of Gladstone including Mackay, Cairns, Rockhampton, Townsville, Mount Isa and Weipa.
ROLLING COVERAGE: QLD FLOODS - Dams full, river rising, CBD left in tatters
MAPS: Is your street on flood list? Check maps here
GALLERY: Queensland floods - Monday pictures
GALLERY: Queensland floods - Sunday pictures
DAM LEVELS: Praise for early dam releases - a lesson learnt in 2011
Q&A: Your flood questions answered
000: Emergency numbers for northern and central Queensland
Telstra declined to put a figure on the number of customers and businesses affected but it is likely to be in the hundreds of thousands.
In some parts, flights have been grounded and there has been a rush on banks to withdraw cash, get fuel supplies and stock up on food.
Telstra has resorted to using satellite phone and ABC radio to get out the message with reports airports are delaying flights because of the information blackout.
On Friday, Telstra's coastal fibre-optic cable that carries much of the state's communications needs was damaged by severe flooding in the Colosseum area, 370km north-west of Brisbane.
This was followed by further damage to a back-up cable north of Harlin, near Kilcoy late yesterday.
Many 2G, 3G and 4G mobile services throughout Central and Northern Queensland have also been impacted.
"You do feel like you are naked without it," said Brisbane-based Telstra spokeswoman Jane de Gault.
"For so many of us, our mobile phone is our right hand. But we have helicopter and crews on standby ready to go as soon as we can get the all-clear.
"It is a major concern. But the worst thing to do is panic."
The Telstra executive is working from her car because her Bulimba home and George Street office are both without power.
In most cases, customers will not be able to make landline calls outside their region, but may still be able to dial locally. While communications are limited in these areas, Telstra encourages customers with mobile service to use their device in emergency situations only.
ROLLING COVERAGE: QLD FLOODS - Dams full, river rising, CBD left in tatters
MAPS: Is your street on flood list? Check maps here
GALLERY: Queensland floods - Monday pictures
GALLERY: Queensland floods - Sunday pictures
DAM LEVELS: Praise for early dam releases - a lesson learnt in 2011
Q&A: Your flood questions answered
Repair crews are flying to Colosseum and Kingaroy by helicopter to repair the cable damage and begin restoring services but efforts are being hampered by heavy weather and flooding.
It is possible it will take days to restore the service given the severity of the flood event.
Overnight, Telstra fibre repair technicians attempted to attend the site of damage affecting the cable 6.7 kilometres north of Harlin, near a river crossing in Kingaroy, but due to extensive flooding were required to turn back 20 kilometres from site.
It should be noted that the emergency triple zero service is impacted by the damage. If customers are unable to reach triple zero, local emergency services such as police, fire and ambulance stations will be in operation and should be contacted directly where possible. Temporary numbers established by emergency services are provided below.
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-- Peter Michael, North Queensland Correspondent
Five people have been rescued after their boat overturned off Rottnest Island. Source: AAP
A MAN has been plucked from the sea and four others picked up by a rescue vessel after their craft overturned seven kilometres off the western tip of Rottnest Island.
RAC Rescue joined with Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) to locate the boat following an EPIRB activation on Monday.
RAC Rescue winched one man from the water while four others were picked up by the Rottnest Island Ranger's vessel.
The winched man was taken to Rottnest Island where he received treatment at the local nursing post.
TWO landslides triggered by heavy rains killed at least 11 people and left 19 others missing on Indonesia's Sumatra island, officials said on Sunday.
The National Disaster Management Agency said seven people were killed and three people were injured in a landslide in Agam district in West Sumatra province early on Sunday.
"At this point, seven people were found dead and three others were injured... and 18 were missing," agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said in a text message.
Fifteen houses were also buried by the landslide, he added.
Separately, a landslide caused by heavy rains late on Saturday killed four workers at a drilling site belonging to PT Pertamina Geothermal Energy in Kerinci district in Jambi province, the company said in a press release.
"The landslide killed four people, injured five people, and left one person missing. All victims were workers who were drilling," it said.
Floods and landslides are common in Indonesia, which is prone to frequent bursts of heavy rain.
Heavy rain in the capital Jakarta this month caused 32 deaths and at its peak forced nearly 46,000 people to flee their inundated homes, Nugroho told AFP earlier.
PARTS of Brisbane and Ipswich will flood but the levels will not be as devastating as they were in 2011, authorities say.
If current projections play out, 3600 residential properties will be affected in Brisbane and of those, 2100 are unit dwellings where only ground floor flooding is expected.
About 1250 business properties are also expected to be affected in Brisbane while about 50 homes are projected to be inundated in the Ipswich suburb of Goodna.
Queensland Premier Campbell Newman says flood peaks would be much less than what was experienced in 2011.
Brisbane is expecting a 2.6 metre flood peak, nearly half of the 4.46m peak in 2011.
The Ipswich peak is expected to be five metres less than the 19.4m level in 2011.
"There will be flooding but the flooding is much much lower than what we saw in 2011," he said.
Mr Newman said the projections were based on the best scientific modelling by forecasters.
There would be minor floods in the Brisbane River, and in the Bremer River that flows through the city of Ipswich to the west of Brisbane.
"The peak of any flood will occur in Ipswich we believe around midnight (AEST) tomorrow (Monday) night," Mr Newman said.
"Similarly the peak at the western side of the Brisbane City Council boundary will be about midnight on Monday night."
Moggill is projected to be the first Brisbane suburb to be flood-affected on Monday afternoon.
Mr Newman said flood maps would shortly be released by the Brisbane and Ipswich councils, showing lists of affected suburbs.
The worst of the projected flooding would be seen further downstream around noon on Tuesday, with another peak expected at noon on Wednesday.
"If it doesn't occur, then I'm sorry in advance," the premier said.
"We want to give the communities in Brisbane and Ipswich, on the Brisbane and Bremer rivers, the best possible information as soon as it is available."
He urged people not to panic, but to check the flood maps and to prepare if they were in an area that may flood.
Mr Newman said there was flooding in the Lockyer Creek and the Bremer River which fed into the Brisbane River downstream from the Wivenhoe dam.
However rainfalls are easing in the Brisbane and Stanley river catchments, which flow into Wivenhoe and Somerset dams.
FRENCH fighter jets bombed Mali's far northern Islamist stronghold of Kidal and destroyed the home of the head of an al-Qaeda-linked group, a security source and local official said.
"There were air raids on Islamist bases in Kidal," 1,500 kilometres north of the capital Bamako, a Malian security source said, adding that the home of Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith) chief Iyad Ag Ghaly was destroyed.
A local official gave a similar account.
"The French planes fired on a military camp at Kidal and destroyed Iyad Ghaly's home. There were also strikes by French warplanes to the west of Kidal, not far from the village where Iyad Ag Ghaly was born," the official said.
Kidal has been a bastion of Ansar Dine, whose leader Iyad Ag Ghaly is a former soldier and a Tuareg ex-rebel, who formed the group last year.
In April last year after a coup in Bamako, an alliance of Tuareg rebels seeking an independent homeland in the north joined forces with several Islamist groups, seizing Kidal first and then the northern towns of Gao and Timbuktu.
The Islamists quickly sidelined the Tuaregs, imposing a harsh version of Islamic sharia law in the region. Transgressors were flogged, stoned and executed, they banned music and television and forced women to wear veils.
