Rio approves $400m for iron ore expansion

Rio Tinto has allocated $400 million to increase its iron ore production to 360 million tonnes. Source: AAP

MINING giant Rio Tinto will spend $400 million to expand its Pilbara iron ore production capacity to 360 million tonnes per annum.

Mine production capacity will increase by more than 60 million tonnes a year between 2014 and 2017.

The rapid expansion is expected to be achieved through boosted production at existing mines, productivity gains and the development of the Silvergrass mine.

"The majority of the low-cost growth will be delivered in the next two years with mine production of more than 330 million tonnes in 2015," Rio said in a statement.

Rio plans to reach a run-rate capacity of 290 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) by the end of the first half of 2014 after completing the first phase of its expanded port rail and mine operations.

The second phase of expansion of the port, rail and power infrastructure to get to 360 mtpa is expected to be completed in the first half of 2015.

Rio recently said it was confident of hitting its 2013 iron ore production target of 265 million tonnes.

But Rio has deferred an investment decision on Silvergrass until the third quarter of 2014, and a decision on the proposed Koodaideri mine has been deferred until 2016.

It comes after Rio targeted a reduction of $US5 billion ($A5.49 billion) in its overall operating cost cuts by the end of 2014.

Chief executive Sam Walsh said the expansion of the company's Pilbara operations represented the most attractive investment opportunity in the sector.

"It's in line with my commitment to be totally focussed on only allocating capital to opportunities that will generate the best returns to shareholders," Mr Walsh said in a statement.

The expansion would be delivered at an estimated capital cost of more than $3 billion below previous expectations, he said.

Analysts were expecting $US5 billion to be allocated on an iron ore expansion to achieve 360 million tonnes a year.

The expansion is subject to government and joint venture approvals.

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Abbott backs Bishop over China dispute

Tony Abbott says Australia will speak its mind on China's territorial dispute with Japan. Source: AAP

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott says Australia will speak its mind on China's territorial dispute with Japan, after his foreign minister was accused of finger-pointing over the East China Sea stand-off.

Julie Bishop expressed concern this week over China's moves to impose an air-defence zone over what it calls the Diaoyu Islands, saying the provocative action was done without consultation and could increase tensions in the region.

That strained diplomatic ties with China, which has described her comments as irresponsible.

But the prime minister says while the issue has to be treated reasonably and proportionately, it is important for Australia to speak out when its interests are at stake.

"We believe in freedom of navigation, navigation of the seas, navigation of the air, and I think there is a significant issue here - that's why it was important to call in the Chinese ambassador to put a point of view to him," Mr Abbott told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.

"We're a strong ally of the United States, we're a strong ally of Japan, we have a very strong view that international disputes should be settled peacefully and in accordance with the rule of law and where we think that's not happening, or it's not happening appropriately, we'll speak our mind."

Mr Abbott dismissed suggestions trade relations with China could be damaged.

"China trades with us because it's in China's interests to trade with us," he said.

"I think China fully understands that on some issues we're going to take a different position to them."

Ms Bishop said Australia was not taking sides in the territorial dispute, but pointed out other countries had expressed concerns about China's actions.

"This is a matter of long-standing Australian policy. We've raised it before and the response from China was to be expected," she told Sky News.

"Australia has a key stake in the region and we would oppose action by any side that we believe could add to the tensions or add to the risk of a miscalculation in disputed territorial zones in the region."

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said the government had a "rocky start" to foreign affairs after China emerged as a new diplomatic hot-spot as it also tried to rebuild trust with Indonesia following spying revelations.

"We accept that they've had a rocky start in foreign affairs, we want them to get it right," he told reporters in Canberra.

Chinese Ambassador to Australia Ma Zhaoxu issued a statement overnight criticising the federal government's "finger-pointing" and defending Beijing's actions.

"The move is aimed at safeguarding national sovereignty and security of territory and territorial airspace and maintaining the order of flight," he said.

"It is not directed against any specific country or target. China does not accept Australia's groundless accusations."

The United States has also criticised Beijing's establishment of the air-defence zone and Vice President Joe Biden will address the controversy during a trip to Beijing next week.

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera that China's move "is a potentially destabilising action designed to change the status quo in the region, and raises the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation."

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Tears, cheers for shark victim

Shark attack victim Chris Boyd (R) has been remembered in an emotional service in the WA waves. Source: AAP

CHRIS Boyd - the surfer killed by a shark in the waters off Gracetown - has been remembered in an emotional service in the West Australian waves.

Mr Boyd's parents and his partner Krystle Westwood were joined near the spot where he died last weekend by dozens of well-wishers and mourners who remembered the 35-year-old's life.

About 100 surfers paddled out into the ocean at Gracetown Beach, where there were cheers and tears.

Mr Boyd's parents Charlie and Barbara set off a flare in their son's memory, while a wreath sent from his friends at the Coolum Boardriders Club in his native Queensland was laid.

A paddle-out in Mr Boyd's memory is planned in Queensland for December 8.

Through Christian Surfers Australia, an appeal has been launched to raise money to help cover Mr Boyd's funeral costs.

Donations can be made through the Christian Surfers Australia Facebook page.

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Russian court releases Aussie activist

Jailed Australian activist Colin Russell is set to appeal his detention in Russia on Friday. Source: AAP

GREENPEACE activist Colin Russell has been released on bail from a Russian jail.

The Australian was the last of the Arctic 30 being held in detention in St Petersburg, Russia, after his fellow activists were released in the past week.

A Russian court on Thursday released Mr Russell, with Greenpeace tweeting: "Excellent news! Colin Russell from Australia is granted bail."

Mr Russell's wife Christine, who departed Australia for Russia this week, said this was wonderful news.

"My daughter and I are one step closer to being in the arms of my darling Col. I am so relieved that my beautiful, peaceful man will soon be out of detention," she said in a statement released by Greenpeace.

Mr Russell, from Tasmania, was the radio operator aboard the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise. He and the other 29 activists were detained in September following a protest against Russian oil drilling in the Arctic Sea.

He was the last to be released on bail after 71 days in detention.

Like those already released, Mr Russell will have to post bail of two million roubles ($A66,190).

Greenpeace International will put up the bail with the expectation that Mr Russell will be released by the weekend.

However, he and the others still face charges of hooliganism, downgraded from the initial charges of piracy.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific chief executive David Ritter said this was an enormous relief.

"We will not rest until Col and the rest of the crew no longer face these ridiculous charges for what was a peaceful attempt to hang a banner off an oil platform," he said in a statement.

"The crew was there to raise awareness of the risk of spills to the pristine Arctic and for this they should be congratulated, not punished."

A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the government welcomed the decision to grant Mr Russell bail and looked forward to his early release from detention.

"Australian officials are seeking urgent clarification of the bail conditions that will apply to Mr Russell," he said.

"The government will continue to urge that Russian authorities extend due legal process to Mr Russell during the remainder of the investigation period."

The spokesman said Foreign Minister Julie Bishop would continue to monitor developments in the case.

If necessary, she will follow up her recent representations to her Russian counterparts.

Officials from the Australian Embassy in Moscow are continuing to provide consular support to Mr Russell and are planning to visit him as soon as practical, he said.

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Nigella's PA spent $86,000 monthly on card

TV chef Nigella Lawson has been described as a 'habitual criminal' in a London court. Source: AAP

MILLIONAIRE art dealer Charles Saatchi's accountant has told a London court he did not tell his boss and his ex-wife, Nigella Lawson, his suspicions that their personal assistants were spending thousands of pounds of their money as he did not want to bother them with "trivial matters".

Rahul Gajjar said he first became aware that Italian sisters Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo were using credit cards loaned to them by the celebrity couple on themselves at the beginning of last year.

While Francesca's average monthly spend was STG48,000 ($A86,564) and Elisabetta's was STG28,000, the other personal assistants employed by Saatchi spent a maximum of STG8000.

Asked by prosecutor Jane Carpenter why he did not go to Saatchi and Lawson with his suspicions straight away, Gajjar said: "It was on the back burner. We were dealing with more corporate matters - more serious corporate matters - and Mr Saatchi and Miss Lawson normally didn't have time for what we thought were trivial matters."

On Wednesday, jurors at Isleworth Crown Court in west London heard the sisters were alleged to have spent the money on luxury goods and lived the "high life" as "portrayed in glossy magazines".

Gajjar said both defendants had been given credit cards in Saatchi's Conarco Partnership account with Coutt's bank to buy items for the household.

While 35-year-old Francesca's credit limit was STG25,000 in June 2008, it went up to STG50,000 in February 2010 and rose to STG100,000 in June 2011.

Gajjar said he had been employed as finance director of Saatchi Gallery Group, part of Conarco Partnership, since June 2002.

He told jurors the couple, who went through a high-profile divorce earlier this year, had a number of personal assistants who worked "flexible" hours for them.

Asked what their roles were, he told the court: "It could be personal matters, looking after the home. It could be some work-related matters very close to Charles and Nigella."

Saatchi and the TV chef broke up after pictures were published in a newspaper showing him holding his wife of 10 years by the throat.

The court previously heard that Saatchi alleges that Lawson was so high on drugs that she was unaware of what she had or had not permitted the sisters to spend money on.

The Grillos deny the charge against them.

It is alleged that between January 1, 2008, and December 31, 2012, they committed fraud, abusing their positions as PAs by using a company credit card for personal gain.

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East Timor again raises Aust spying claim

East Timor has again raised allegations that Australia bugged its leaders during talks in 2004. Source: AAP

AMID the furore over allegations of spying on Indonesia's leaders, East Timor has repeated claims that Australia bugged its leaders during delicate negotiations on the Timor Sea resources treaty in 2004.

East Timor is pursuing international arbitration to have the 2006 treaty overturned, a process it launched last December after the Australian government failed to respond to the bugging claims.

But it says it would halt this process if the Australian government gave a detailed response to their spying allegations.

Agio Pereira, president of East Timor's council of ministers, said his country's development depended on revenue from the Timor Sea Greater Sunrise gas field.

"When you bug the negotiation team's evaluation of the impact of their negotiations, you do have an advantage. It's more than unfair," he told ABC television on Wednesday.

"It actually creates incredible disadvantage to the other side."

Former Labor MP Janelle Saffin, now a legal adviser for East Timor, said there had to be protocols around spying.

"If spying has been taking place and somebody is able to gain a commercial advantage, that is certainly of deep, deep concern," she told the ABC.

East Timor claims Australian intelligence bugged the East Timor cabinet room where their negotiators discussed tactics.

Canberra journalist Paul Daley, an adviser to the East Timor government during the negotiations, told the ABC they were advised that all their communications would be monitored.

To avoid eavesdropping during negotiations in 2005, East Timor negotiators left the foreign affairs building in Canberra and held their discussions in the nearby National Gallery sculpture garden, leaving all their phones 100 metres away.

Mr Pereira said compelling evidence would be presented at a preliminary hearing at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague next week.

"It's not about money. It's about sovereignty, it's about certainty and it's about the future of our future generations. It's really important for Timor," he said.

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Vitamins, minerals help AIDS patients

A DAILY dose of multivitamins and minerals in the early stages of HIV infection can delay the disease's progression by as much as 54 per cent in people who are not receiving antiretroviral drugs, a US study reveals.

Researchers from Florida International University (FIU) and Harvard University followed 878 HIV-infected patients in Botswana and tracked the progression of their disease for two years, finding that patients who received daily supplements of vitamins B, C and E plus selenium had a lower risk of depleting the number of immune response cells in their bodies.

The supplements also reduced the risk of other measures of disease progression, including AIDS symptoms and AIDS-related deaths, of which there were four in the study group.

Vitamins B, C and E are essential for maintaining a responsive immune system, and selenium may play an important role in preventing HIV replication, said FIU professor of dietetics Marianna Baum, the study's lead investigator.

"The disease impacts metabolism and increases the requirement for vitamins and minerals and if people don't take additional vitamins and minerals they become deficient, which in turn impacts immunity," Professor Baum said.

She said the findings were significant in countries such as Botswana, where HIV-infection rates were among the world's highest and healthcare systems struggled to provide antiretroviral medications to low-income populations.

Over-the-counter multivitamins and minerals, Professor Baum said, were "a low-cost alternative" and easily accessible therapy that proved safe and effective in delaying HIV progression.

Patients participating in the study received three to five times the recommended daily amounts of the vitamins, and about 200 micrograms of selenium every day.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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Church dissent over abuse approach

Dr Philip Aspinall says the Anglican church needs an external compensation scheme for abuse victims. Source: AAP

ANGLICANS in Australia would take a dim view if the church sold off its multi-million dollar assets to settle with abuse victims, the head of the church says.

The primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, Phillip Aspinall, told a royal commission the church needs a mandatory compensation scheme imposed on it so it can deal fairly with sex abuse victims.

Dr Aspinall said the only way a compensation scheme would work was if it was imposed from outside.

The Anglican Church of Australia is not a unified structure, dioceses have primary power and can reject or adopt laws passed by the General Synod, Dr Aspinall told the final day of public hearings into how the Diocese of Grafton dealt with victims of sex abuse at a church orphanage in northern NSW.

"Many confuse our structures with the Roman Catholics and presume the primate has coercive powers akin to the pope," he said in a statement submitted to the royal commission.

"The belief that the primate of the Anglican Church is effectively the CEO of Australian's Anglicans is wrong.

"It may well be helpful if the royal commission were able to achieve a uniform mandatory compensation scheme which would ensure parity, not just between Anglican dioceses, but across government organisations, so that we don't have different classes of victims.

"It would be much quicker and simpler for us if that were imposed on us from outside and dioceses would not fall into the trap that Grafton did in terms of focusing on financial matters to the detriment of victims."

The commission has learned that Grafton is asset rich with properties valued at approximately $200 million, but had a debt of between $10 million or $12 million dollars because it built a private school that was not attracting students.

Dr Aspinall told the commission that across 23 Anglican dioceses their wealth would be in assets, not cash.

Justice Peter McClellan asked if there had been any church discussion that it might need to sell assets to make settlement payments.

Dr Aspinall said there might have been, but every diocese would find it hard to achieve as the assets were houses and churches and the people who had raised funds to build them would take a "dim view" if they were being sold for this purpose.

He went on to say that with a mandatory compensation system a diocese would simply be given a determination by a statutory body and be required to find the money.

"Then they could focus on the financial aspects and be forced to deal with it."

He also said it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the church to implement that kind of system itself, as it would require every diocese to agree.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard Grafton diocese tried to deny liability for the North Coast Children's Home when more that 40 former residents alleged horrific physical, sexual and psychological abuse.

After years of legal wrangling, a without-prejudice settlement was reached in 2007 which saw 39 victims accept what has been described as a paltry payment of about $10,000 each.

The commission also heard that the then Bishop of Grafton, Keith Slater, was focused on the diocese's debt problems.

Bishop Slater has apologised for his handling of the affair.

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Indigenous smoking falls but still high

SMOKING rates among indigenous people have fallen by 10 per cent in a decade, but are still far higher than the rest of the community.

New figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics show 41 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 15 or over smoked each day in 2012-13.

That's a significant decrease from 51 per cent in 2002.

But the smoking rate in the rest of the community was 20.4 per cent of men and 16.3 per cent of women in 2011-12.

Close the Gap co-chairs Mick Gooda and Kirstie Parker said the figures show measures to improve the health of indigenous people could work, but sustained long-term commitment was needed.

"The decline in smoking is good news but health outcomes for our communities will continue to reflect the long-term damage caused by the high level of smoking. And it will take time for the closing the gap initiatives to be reflected in health data," Mr Gooda said in a statement.

Ms Parker said improving the health of indigenous people had to remain a national priority.

"Our people are significantly more likely than other Australians to experience major health problems such as heart or circulatory disease (twice as likely), diabetes (three times more likely), and almost one-third of participants reporting psychological distress," she said.

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UK man spared jail for Venables tweet

A UK man who tweeted images purporting to be of James Bulger's killer Jon Venables as an adult has been given a 14-month suspended prison sentence.

The term was handed down at London's High Court for a flagrant contempt of court on the part of 27-year-old security guard James Baines.

Baines, who is from Liverpool and close to the Bulger family, will also have to pay STG3000 ($A5,360) in costs.

He admitted disobeying a January 2001 injunction binding on the whole world that prohibits the publication of any information purporting to identify the appearance, whereabouts, movements or new identities of Venables or Robert Thompson, who were convicted of the two-year-old's murder in November 1993.

It was made on the basis that the pair would face an acute risk of serious physical harm or death upon their release.

The case was referred by Attorney General Dominic Grieve after Baines put images purporting to identify Venables as an adult on his Twitter profile on February 14 this year - the 20th anniversary of the crime.

One image showed Venables in a school photograph as a child while below and alongside were different images of an adult male.

They were accompanied by the tweet: "Its on bbc news about the jon venables pic on twitter saying its been removed eerrm no it hasn't."

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