NASA marks 10 years since loss of Columbia

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.

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Woman assaulted in Melbourne's inner east

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.

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Call for Iraqi Sunnis to take up arms

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.

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NSW homes still without power after floods

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.

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Revised Indian growth data show slowdown

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.

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Ericsson reports profit halved

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.

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Man drowns on NSW south coast

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.

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Julian Assange to run for Senate

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.

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Russia pulls out of US drugs agreement

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.

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Metronet plan is fantasy, says Barnett

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.

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