Cooking fire claims Qld toddler's life

A TODDLER has died in a house fire west of Brisbane after his 15-year-old aunt accidentally started the blaze during a cooking mishap while babysitting.

The single-storey house in Toowoomba was well alight when emergency services arrived on Thursday about 6pm (AEST).

Firefighters searched the burning house and found a two-year-old boy's body.

Two other boys and two girls aged between seven and 15 were taken to Toowoomba Hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation.

It's been widely reported a 15-year-old girl was babysitting her siblings and nephew and had left cooking oil unattended on the stove, which caught alight.

She attempted to put it out with water, which only exacerbated the problem.

Detective acting Senior Sergeant Scott Stahlhut did not dispute the cause when it was put to him by reporters, but was reluctant to confirm or elaborate.

"Police are preparing a report now which will be provided to the coroner," Sen-Sgt Stahlhut told reporters on the scene.

"Full details of how this terrible event unfolded will be made known in that report, so I can't comment at this stage (about) what's transpired."

Neighbours tried to rescue the toddler, but the blaze, which had entirely engulfed the house within minutes, was too strong.

"A girl came out saying her nephew was still inside and as I went to break through the window to see if I could try to rescue him, I just thought 'nah', because the smoke was too big," neighbour Terrance Mann told reporters.

"At that moment we realised there was just nothing we could have done."

Police also wouldn't confirm the children were left at home unsupervised.

Fire investigators remain at the scene on Friday.

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NT government wants GST to remain at 10%

The Northern Territory treasurer says he's happy for the GST to stay at 10 per cent. Source: AAP

A HIKE in the GST would be detrimental to Australia's competitiveness in the long run, the Northern Territory treasurer says.

Dave Tollner, of the Country Liberals, says the NT is happy for the GST to remain at 10 per cent, and does not support Western Australian Liberal Premier Colin Barnett in his calls to increase it to 12.5 per cent.

"(It) certainly might help some short term problems but I think in the long run would harm our international competitiveness and be detrimental," Mr Tollner told the ABC on Friday.

"We're taking a position that we want to tighten our belts, we want to reduce spending, at the same time try and maintain services but to get to a position where we live within our means."

But he did call for the federal government to review a Commonwealth Grants Commission decision last year to take $100 million in funding from the NT, saying it was the equivalent to stripping $6 billion from NSW or Victoria.

The decision was based on census data that showed more people in the eastern states identifying as Aboriginal and therefore receiving more federal funding, but a spokesman for the treasurer's office said it didn't consider the unique issue of the NT's vast geography.

"The way it was formulated didn't factor in the huge issue of remoteness, and how socially disadvantaged Aboriginal people are by living in remote areas," the spokesman told AAP.

Otherwise, Mr Tollner said, he was happy with how the GST was being allocated.

Around 80 per cent of the NT's budget comes from the GST.

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Raise a glass, Newton-John clinic opens

Olivia Newton-John has opened the final stage of her Cancer and Wellness Centre in Melbourne. Source: AAP

OLIVIA Newton-John says her completed cancer centre in Melbourne should be a place where everybody knows your name, and has a drink waiting for you too - if that's what you want.

Newton-John recently lost her sister to cancer and says the experience taught her how important "loving care and support" is for someone who is dying.

On Friday, after a decade in the making, budget shortfalls and many fundraising campaigns, the star finally opened the final stage of the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre in the city's north.

The opening brings online more palliative care beds, more treatment beds and additional research laboratories.

But the cancer survivor says the centre needs to also be about enabling patients to be surrounded by people who know them and care about them.

"(People who) give you all the food you want, that give you a vodka if you want one," she said.

Newton-John said the marriage of the words "cancer" and "wellness" are important too.

"When you see that you think, 'I can go from cancer to wellness,'" she said.

Her big dream is that, one day, she can erase "cancer" from the centre's logo.

"It will be a wellness centre only because we'll find a cure for cancer."

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Woman holds up pizza shop near Ipswich

A WOMAN has allegedly attempted to rob a pizza shop south of Brisbane armed with a knife.

The 33-year-old is accused of entering the Redbank Plains store in Ipswich on Friday afternoon and demanding cash at knifepoint.

The restaurant's employees refused and the woman left only to be arrested a short time later.

She has been charged with attempted armed robbery and will appear at Ipswich Magistrates court on Saturday.

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Man stalks girl on Sydney's north shore

POLICE are looking for a man who followed a girl in his car and then stalked her into a park on Sydney's north shore.

The 14-year-old was walking in Hunters Hill on Thursday afternoon when she noticed a grey 4WD with roof racks and black and white number plates trailing her.

She ran to a nearby park, and the male driver got out and followed her on foot.

The girl managed to alert a passer by who called police.

The man left the park and drove away.

He is described as being Caucasian in appearance, about 55 years old, with blond shoulder-length dreadlocks.

He was wearing a bright-coloured Hawaiian shirt and jeans, and is about 190cm tall and thin.

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Coppola, Domingo win Japanese arts prize

FILMMAKER Francis Ford Coppola and opera singer Placido Domingo are among five winners of a lucrative arts prize that has been dubbed the "Nobel Prize of the arts".

The Godfather director and the Spanish tenor are recipients of the Japan Art Association's Praemium Imperiale Awards, which come with a Y15 million ($A163,043) purse.

The awards are open to visual and performing artists - and architects - of any nationality. This year's other recipients, announced on Tuesday in London, are British sculptor Antony Gormley; British architect David Chipperfield; and Italian painter Michelangelo Pistoletto.

The winners will receive their awards from Japan's Prince Hitachi at a ceremony in Japan in October.

Previous winners of the prize, founded in 1989, include Italian screen star Sophia Loren and British actress Judi Dench.

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China opens world's highest airport

THE world's highest civilian airport has opened at an altitude of 4411 metres on the Tibetan plateau in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, state media say.

The Daocheng Yading airport in Ganzi prefecture's Daocheng county, or Dapba in Tibetan, launched its first commercial flights on Monday, shortening the travel time from the provincial capital of Chengdu from two days by road to about an hour by plane.

Built in two years at a cost of 1.58 billion yuan ($A275.13 million), the single-runway airport is expected to boost the local economy by promoting tourism to the Yading nature reserve and other nearby sights, said Yexe Dawa, the governor of Ganzi, on Tuesday.

Daily flights will initially operate between Daocheng and Chengdu, but the government plans to open routes to major Chinese cities such as Chongqing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Yexe Dawa as saying at the opening ceremony.

The airport is 77 metres higher than the previous record holder, the 4334-metre Bangda airport in Qamdo in China's Tibet Autonomous Region.

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UN probe exposes Nth Korea rights abuses

A UN-MANDATED investigator has spotlighted "unspeakable atrocities" inflicted on political camp prisoners in North Korea, citing testimony from survivors who saw babies drowned or had to survive by eating lizards.

Retired Australian judge Michael Kirby challenged the secretive Stalinist country to come clean about its record, telling the UN Human Rights Council he aimed to draw up a list of violators within North Korea's regime.

Mr Kirby is at the helm of a landmark commission of inquiry on North Korea set up in March by the council, the UN's top human rights watchdog.

North Korea has refused to co-operate with the commission, which has spent recent months gathering evidence in South Korea and Japan from North Korean defectors and other victims.

"Testimony heard thus far points to widespread and serious violations in all areas," Mr Kirby told the council on Tuesday, to which he is due to deliver a full report next year.

He said the evidence, both sobering and heart-rending, had "given a face and voice to great human suffering".

"The commission listened to political prison camp survivors who suffered through childhoods of starvation and unspeakable atrocities, as a product of the 'guilt by association' practice, punishing other generations for a family member's perceived political views or affiliation," he said.

Among the stark testimony was that from a man imprisoned from birth, who lived on rodents, lizards and grass, and witnessed the public execution of his mother and brother; from a woman who saw a fellow inmate forced to drown her own baby in a bucket; and from a man obliged to burn the corpses of starved inmates and scatter their ashes on fields.

Mr Kirby also spotlighted torture and sexual violence, detention for watching foreign soap operas or having religious beliefs, kidnapping citizens of South Korea and Japan, massive malnutrition, and the total control by the regime's propaganda apparatus.

North Korean diplomat Kim Yong-ho hit back, telling the council the evidence was "fabricated and invented by forces hostile" to his country, singling out Washington, Tokyo and Brussels.

North Korea has claimed such testimony is slander from "human scum", but Mr Kirby shot that down.

"An ounce of evidence is worth far more than many pounds of insults and baseless attacks. So far, however, the evidence we have heard has largely pointed in one direction - and evidence to the contrary is lacking," he said.

North Korea has long been subject to international sanctions over its nuclear program.

Mr Kirby said it was also essential to ensure full accountability for human rights violations.

"We will seek to determine which state institutions and officials carry responsibility for gross human rights violations proved to have been committed," he said.

But he cautioned that his commission was "neither prosecutor nor judge" and responsibility for action lay with the international community.

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ALP members show strong support for Albo

Anthony Albanese received a standing ovation as he launched his bid for the Labor party leadership. Source: AAP

The cheer from the outgoing deputy prime minister Anthony Albanese's supporters belted through the trade union hall in Sydney as he entered.

The member for Grayndler was there on Tuesday evening to launch his bid for the leadership of the federal Australian Labor Party.

Mr Albanese is competing against outgoing minister and Right faction powerbroker Bill Shorten for the job, the winner to be decided by a vote of rank-and-file members and caucus.

If he wins, Mr ALbanese reckons he can oust the newly-elected Coalition government in one term.

From the eruption of support in the room, it seems a couple of hundred NSW rank and file members and several senior current and former ALP MPs agree.

Outgoing health minister Tanya Plibersek, former NSW premier Nathan Rees, ALP national president Jenny McAllister and retiring former cabinet minister Greg Combet were among the members at the launch.

Mr Combet, who studied economics with Mr Albanese at Sydney University in the 1980s, told the crowd "he's the right leader for the Labor party in these times."

"When you've just lost an election, you really need to look for ... someone steeped in Labor tradition, someone true to Labor values, someone who'll fight," he said.

"Where else can you look but Anthony Albanese?"

The room lit up as Mr Albanese took the podium, praising the reformed leadership selection process as "opening up... the most significant decision that a political party can make."

He backed himself as being "up for this job", referring to the many portfolios he's held and his challenging role as leader of the House of Representatives in a minority government.

"I have the capacity, I had to deliver Bob Katter and Adam Bandt on the same platter."

Mr Albanese was careful to stick to a "civil debate about ideas, not personalities," agreed to by himself and Mr Shorten.

"(Bill Shorten's) a very good candidate and would make a very good leader of the Labor party," he told the crowd.

Mr Albanese is embarking on a three-city tour over the next three days and will be taking along his three word slogan "Vision. Unity. Strength." as he seeks wider support for his tilt at the ALP's top job.

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Limos for a Gay time on OS trade mission

AN eight-day trip to the United Arab Emirates and Asia cost NSW Roads Minister Duncan Gay more than $51,000 of taxpayers' money, the opposition claims.

But the minister insists there were "no stretch limos for us".

Mr Gay, his chief of staff and Roads and Maritime Services chief executive Peter Duncan went on a trade mission to Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong in July this year.

Labor MP Walt Secord asked him in upper house question time on Tuesday how much of the $1000 plus spent on ground transport went on "limousines and other chauffeured vehicles".

Mr Gay replied that, to the best of his knowledge, they hadn't travelled anywhere in limousines.

"I attended 20 business meetings, two functions and several government meetings," he said.

"On the period we were away, we spent three nights sleeping in planes."

While in Singapore and Abu Dhabi, he said they used the consul-generals car, while in Hong Kong and Dubai they used hire cars.

"(There were) no stretch limos for us."

In a statement, Mr Secord later said My Gay owed it to country families to explain why he was undertaking expensive overseas travel when his government was slashing services in rural and regional areas.

He said the trip cost a total of $51,240.

"While I support official trade missions and study tours, this trip is clearly extravagant - and goes beyond what is expected from the NSW taxpayer," he said.

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