Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew in hospital

FORMER Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew is recovering in hospital after suffering from an irregular heartbeat, the government said on Saturday.

Lee, 89, will remain at Singapore General Hospital for a few days, said a statement issued by the office of his son, current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The elder Lee was confined on Friday "after experiencing a suspected transient ischaemic attack (TIA) associated with a prolonged episode of atrial fibrillation", or an irregular heartbeat, the statement said.

TIA occurs when blood flow to a part of the brain stops briefly, according to the statement, which added that a person who suffers from this "will have stroke-like symptoms which clear in less than 24 hours".

"He has recovered but will remain warded for a few days for the doctors to adjust his medications and for observation," the statement said.

Lee Kuan Yew, who retired from the cabinet in 2011 but remains a member of parliament, is widely credited with transforming Singapore from an economic backwater to one of Asia's fastest-growing economies.

He served as prime minister from 1959, when Singapore gained self-rule from colonial ruler Britain, until he stepped down in 1990 in favour of his deputy Goh Chok Tong, who in turn handed power to Lee's son in 2004.

The People's Action Party co-founded by the elder Lee has been returned to power in every election since 1959 and holds 80 of the 87 seats in parliament.

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Show with Pistorius' girlfriend to go on

A TV show featuring the murdered girlfriend (pic) of Oscar Pistorius will still be broadcast. Source: AAP

BLONDE cover girl Reeva Steenkamp will appear in a pre-recorded celebrity reality TV show in South Africa, two days after she was shot dead by Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius.

The 29-year-old will make a posthumous prime-time debut in Tropika Island of Treasure.

Pistorius, 26, will be spending a third night in jail during the screening on Saturday.

The reality show, shot on location in Jamaica, features Steenkamp, a law graduate, and several other local personalities competing for one million rand ($A110,000) prize money.

Producers decided not to shelve the show, instead casting its broadcast as a tribute to Steenkamp.

Forensics teams are working at Pistorius's home to try and establish what took place before and after Steenkamp was shot in the head and hand.

"She was happy, healthy, beautiful and vibrant and that's the way she should be remembered," said executive producer Samantha Moon.

In an earlier statement Moon said the decision to broadcast the program was taken after "much deliberation".

"This week's episode will be dedicated to Reeva's memory.

"Yesterday her mother agreed that we should go ahead and we are free to go ahead and we are working on how to pay tribute to her," said Kaizer Kganyagon, a spokesman for the national broadcaster.

The audience is expected to be much larger than normal.

"The number that we expect will be obviously more than the normal because now everybody wants to see this person that was killed."

A special tribute will be broadcast ahead of Saturday's show at 6.30pm (0330 AEDT).

Trailers for the series show a beaming and vivacious Steenkamp clad in a bikini and other skimpy clothing.

The show's website carries a picture of a burning candle with a message: "We are deeply saddened and extend our condolences to Reeva's family and friends."

The series is now in its fifth season.

Born in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, Steenkamp moved to Johannesburg six years ago to pursue her modelling career. She had dated Pistorius for less than year.

After an emotional court appearance on Friday, in which Pistorius broke down repeatedly, a source at Brooklyn police station in Pretoria said the track star had "slept very well".

He was expected to receive visits on Saturday from family and from members of his defence team, who are preparing for a bail hearing that will begin on Tuesday.

The state is expected to strongly oppose any effort to allow him to return to his home.

Prosecutors will argue the murder was premeditated, meaning he could face a life sentence.

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Scientists turn eyes toward Europa

US astronomers looking for life in the solar system believe that Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, is much more promising than desert-covered Mars, which is currently the focus of the US government's attention.

Europa, which has an ocean, is the most "likely place in our solar system beyond Earth to possess ... life", says Robert Pappalardo, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

"And it is the place we should be exploring now that we have a concept mission we think is the right one to get there for an affordable cost," he says.

"Europa is the most promising in terms of habitability because of its relatively thin ice shelf and an ocean. We know there are oxidants on the surface of Europa."

At the request of NASA, a proposed mission to explore Europa was revised to significantly reduce the cost, the scientist told the media on Friday on the sidelines of an annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As a result of this review, the JPL and the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland developed a new exploration project named Clipper with a total coast of $US2 billion ($A1.95 billion) minus the launch.

Following the successful example of Cassini, a probe that explored Titan, a moon of Saturn, a spacecraft would orbit Jupiter and conduct numerous close flybys of Europa.

If the plan is approved, Clipper could be launched by 2021 and take three to six years to reach Europa. By comparison, it takes six months to reach Mars.

But NASA announced at the end of 2012 that there would be no funds for the Clipper mission, he said.

Noting that Mars consumed most attention, Pappalardo said the agency should not ignore planets that have a high scientific priority.

In his view, life could have existed on Mars several billion years ago, but Europa could have life today.

Europa was closely observed for the first time by the twin Voyager probes in 1979 and then, in more detail, by Galileo in the 1990s.

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Pope considered resignation in August

POPE Benedict XVI said last August his strength was diminishing and "not much more" could be expected from him as pontiff, according to a German journalist who interviewed him for a 2010 book in which Benedict said popes should in some circumstances consider resigning.

In an article in Saturday's issue of the German weekly Focus, Peter Seewald recalls that he asked Benedict last August what more could be expected of him and his papacy.

Seewald says Benedict replied: "From me? From me, not much more. I am an old man and my strength is running out. And I think what I have done is enough."

Asked whether he was considering resignation, Benedict responded: "That depends to what extent my physical strength will compel me to."

Benedict announced on Monday that he would resign on February 28, making him the first pope to step down in nearly 600 years.

The announcement stunned the world, but the pope had laid the groundwork for a possible resignation when Seewald interviewed him for his 2010 book, Light of the World.

"If a pope clearly realises that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right, and under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign," the book quoted Benedict as saying.

Resignation was, however, not an option to escape a particular burden, such as the scandal over sexual abuse by clerics.

In Saturday's article, Seewald recalls asking the Pope how badly the scandal over leaks of papal documents, in which the Pope's ex-butler was convicted of aggravated theft, had affected him.

It "is not as though I were somehow falling into a kind of desperation or world-weariness - it is simply incomprehensible to me," Benedict said, according to Seewald.

Benedict said the affair had not thrown him off his stride or made him tired of his office, "because I think this can always happen".

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Bird flu forces ducks to the slaughter

ABOUT 14,000 ducks at a German farm are being slaughtered following a bird flu outbreak.

A federal laboratory confirmed Friday the H5N1 virus was detected at the farm near Seelow, east of Berlin - the first such finding in Germany in more than three years.

On Saturday, officials started slaughtering the farm's ducks. Local council spokesman Tobias Seyfarth said that all poultry within a one-kilometre radius of the facility will be kept under observation for the next 21 days, with owners told to keep their birds where they are and report any symptoms.

The H5N1 virus normally spreads between sick poultry, but it can sometimes spread from poultry to humans. Bird flu has killed 367 people worldwide since surfacing in 2003, the World Health Organisation says.

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G20 must pursue jobs and growth: Swan

TREASURER Wayne Swan says Australia will continue to pursue an economic and jobs growth agenda when it takes over the chair of the Group of 20 nations next year.

Mr Swan is attending a G20 Finance Ministers meeting in Russia this weekend where he will also push for the closure of loopholes used by multinational companies to reduce tax.

The treasurer believes the global recovery is now at a critical point, after slumping in the years after the global financial crisis, and is cautiously optimistic about the prospects for 2013.

"It's been a better start to the year than we thought it might be, but it will take the combined efforts of all G20 nations to continue our momentum," Mr Swan will tell his international counterparts in Moscow on Saturday (AEDT time).

The overriding priority must be to support growth and jobs to cement a sustained recovery.

"The fact there are still nearly 200 million people without jobs around the (developed) world is a blight on our global society," he will say.

He welcomed the commitment by this year's G20 chair, Russia, to focus on jobs and growth, and reinforced Australia's commitment to the same agenda in 2014.

But G20 governments also need to pursue responsible medium-term budget frameworks.

"A strong budget is critical to supporting the investments needed to boost growth, along with structural reforms to create a more dynamic and resilient economy," Mr Swan will say.

Ms Swan also notes a renewed global push to tackle climate change among countries, such as the US where President Barack Obama has called on the US congress to pursue a market-based solution.

Mr Swan will also raise the need for the G20 to address the "unscrupulous behaviour" of multinational companies avoiding tax payments.

"This hurts us all," he will say.

"Across the world, a small number of profitable multinational companies are exploiting differences in global taxation regimes to effectively pay no tax."

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Burger King's earnings $US48.6m in Q4

BURGER King's fourth-quarter net income nearly doubled in part because of lower expenses and strengthening results in the US and Canada.

For the three months ended December 31, the hamburger chain earned $US48.6 million ($A47.18 million). That compares with $US25 million a year earlier.

Revenue fell 30 per cent to $US404.5 million from $US580.6 million. Analysts forecast revenue of $US375.3 million.

Burger King Worldwide Inc. has more than 12,900 locations in 86 countries and territories.

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Zygier told reporter: I'm no spy

AN Australian journalist who interviewed Ben Zygier shortly before he was detained by Israeli authorities says the Melbourne man "strenuously" denied being a spy.

But reporter Jason Koutsoukis says he suspected that his conversations with Mr Zygier, which began two months before the man's arrest in February 2010, were being monitored by Israeli intelligence.

Mr Zygier was found hanged in a supposedly suicide-proof cell on December 15, 2010.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr has ordered a review of the case, which has rocked the Australian and Israeli governments, after the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade apparently gave him conflicting advice about who knew what.

Koutsoukis on Thursday told the ABC he interviewed Mr Zygier three or four times and that their last conversation may have been the same month Mr Zygier was arrested.

Koutsoukis said he had been tipped off in October 2009 by an Australian intelligence source who believed three dual national citizens - including Mr Zygier - had used Australian passports to spy for Israel in countries including Syria, Iran and Lebanon.

Koutsoukis said he interviewed Mr Zygier on a handful of occasions and that Mossad may have been aware the pair were in contact.

"He listened to what I had to say and it was, even to me, an outlandish story, what I was putting to him, and at the end of what I had to say he responded and denied it as strenuously as he could," Koutsoukis told the ABC.

"He was just incredulous."

The former Fairfax Media reporter said at first he found Mr Zygier "very convincing" but continued to interview him.

"It seemed to me that he was doing some kind of intelligence gathering but I couldn't be more certain than that," he said on Thursday.

He added that at the time, he thought it was possible his interactions with Mr Zygier were under Israeli surveillance.

"There were a couple of strange incidences which happened around my home in Jerusalem, which I didn't take seriously at the time, but in hindsight it is possible that they were monitoring our conversations," he said.

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Labor likely to shift to Rudd: Turnbull

THE Labor government will probably switch to former prime minister Kevin Rudd from Julia Gillard before the election, opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull says.

"I think it is likely they will put him back," Mr Turnbull told ABC Television on Thursday.

"The Gillard government goes from one catastrophe to another."

Labor's standing in the electorate fell in the most recent Newspoll, with the coalition having a 12-point buffer in the two-party-preferred vote.

Mr Turnbull, an opposition leader during Mr Rudd's tenure as prime minister, said the government had made a mess of the mining tax.

Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan has received great criticism in parliament this week for his handling of the minerals resource rent tax (MRRT).

MRRT revenue was $126 million for the six months to December, short of the $2 billion forecast for this financial year.

"The fate of the mining tax is colossal," Mr Turnbull said.

The Labor government switched to Ms Gillard as leader in June 2010, and she subsequently defeated Mr Rudd in a leadership challenge in February 2012.

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Man missing after Sydney speedboat crash

POLICE and emergency services continue to search for a man in the Georges River after a speedboat crash southwest Sydney.

Emergency services were called to a boat ramp off River Road at Revesby just before 4pm (AEDT) on Tuesday after two men were thrown into the water when their boat capsized.

A 27-year-old Hurstville man was rescued and taken to St George Hospital for minor injuries and later released.

His friend, a 28-year-old Picnic Point man, has not been found.

Their boat was found, although it is completely submerged.

An extensive search has been launched and involves police officers along with PolAir, Police Rescue and Police Divers.

Volunteers from the State Emergency Service, Roads and Maritime Services and Fire and Rescue NSW personnel have helped with the search.

It was likely the search would be postponed later on Tuesday night, police said.

A police guard will remain at the location overnight and the search will continue at first light on Wednesday.

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