Business confidence at record highs: CBA

OPTIMISM among mid-sized Australian businesses has hit record highs in the lead-up to Christmas, a quarterly survey has found.

Commonwealth Bank's future business index rose to 9.3 in December, from 4.3 in September.

The survey focuses on companies with a revenue of $10 million to $100 million, assessing their outlook on business conditions and challenges, projected revenue, investment plans and how prepared they are to cope with volatile conditions in the next six months.

The index first hit 9.3 in March this year, and was its highest ever score.

Almost half (45 per cent) of the companies surveyed said they were well-prepared for future business conditions, while 31 per cent said they thought conditions would improve in the next six months.

However, they expressed concern about rising energy costs in Australia, and a potential economic slowdown in Asia.

Looking at individual sectors, transport and logistics, business services and information, and media and technology were the most confident.

The least confident included manufacturing, wholesale trade and mining - with the latter reporting a significant drop.

Commonwealth Banks executive general manager of corporate financial services Symon Brewis-Weston said that despite the confident reading, most firms were approaching 2013 with caution.

"We're finding that its something of a wait-and-see period for the mid-market," he said.

"The feeling is that while companies expect a moderate decline in costs and they're feeling more prepared for the future, there is little appetite for investment and major changes.

"Companies are placing less emphasis on growth at the moment and ensuring they have the financial support required for any unforeseen challenges in the future."

The index showed moderate optimism among the states and territories, with Victoria and Tasmania recording steady confidence, both rising to 14 from 6.2.

Meanwhile, New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory were the only regions in decline, both falling to six from 10.4.

23.53 | 0 komentar | Read More

More Aussies could avoid stroke: experts

MANY stroke sufferers miss out on a lifesaving de-clotting drug and four in 10 get treated in general wards rather than specialist stroke units, an advocacy group says.

Stroke is Australia's second-largest killer and many of the 350,000 survivors live with a disability and struggle with basic daily tasks such as eating and cooking.

The National Stroke Foundation is lobbying the federal government and opposition to commit to a $198 million action plan to boost services and increase awareness of how to prevent stroke and recognise the signs of stroke.

Chief executive Erin Lalor says many patients who attend hospital with stroke don't get access to de-clotting thrombolysis drugs that must be administered within four hours.

"If the hospital is too slow or people delay presentation to hospital they can't have it," she told AAP.

"It's a lifesaving drug."

She said four in 10 people were treated for stroke in general wards, rather than specialist units, and this increased their chances of death or disability.

A number of major hospitals, particularly in Queensland, don't have specialist stroke units, Dr Lalor said.

As part of the plan, the foundation wants the government to spend $121 million extra over three years to fund more stroke units and boost the quality of existing care.

They want a national rollout of a pharmacy health-check program, currently funded by the NSW and Queensland governments, which involves a free blood pressure and diabetes check. Pharmacists then advise people whether they need to go to their GP for more testing.

When Lina Brohier had a stroke in 2008 at age 31, a transient ischemic attack followed, making her dizzy, heavy and voiceless.

The attack passed and she didn't go to the doctor.

"If there was more information and advertising about stroke maybe people like me would be prevented from having a stroke," she told AAP.

"You think ... it's not going to happen to me; it's something that happens to old people."

The stroke left her with no muscle movement on the right side of her body.

After extensive rehabilitation and occupational therapy, Ms Brohier made a full recovery.

Dr Lalor said people over the age of 45 should be able to get an integrated check for their risk of stroke, heart disease, diabetes and kidney disease when they visit their GPs.

She said there also needs to be more support for people living with stroke, as well as their carers.

23.53 | 0 komentar | Read More

Italy's recovery tipped to start in 2013

ITALY'S economic recovery is likely to begin in the third or fourth quarter of 2013, the central bank governor says, urging any new government to continue reforms and cut red tape for businesses.

"Our analyses suggest that there is a higher than 50 per cent probability that the turnaround will come in the third or fourth quarter of 2013," Bank of Italy chief Ignazio Visco said in an interview with La Stampa newspaper.

Visco also said there had been a "significant" lowering of tensions on the debt market for Italy in recent months due to the return of foreign investors and Italian banks that enabled the treasury to sell long-term bonds.

Asked about a possible recourse to European Central Bank assistance on the bond market, Visco said this was not on the cards since "the current conditions are less tense".

He cautioned, however, that "political and economic uncertainty is a burden" and said that "the fruits of austerity must not be wasted".

"The only way is to continue and reduce the negative effects that the reforms could have on certain sectors and at certain times," he said.

"The efforts made must not be for nothing. We have to decisively seek greater efficiency and reduce the limits on entrepreneurs," he added.

Italy is expected to go to the polls in February.

23.53 | 0 komentar | Read More

Gay rights campaigners protest at Vatican

GAY rights campaigners have held a small protest near St Peter's Square during the Pope's weekly prayers after he said legalising gay marriage threatened the institution of marriage.

About 15 activists held up colourful paper hearts with slogans written on them including "Gay Marriage", "Love Has No Barriers", "Talk About Love", "Homophobia = Death" and "Marry Peace".

One of the hearts read "Love Thy Neighbour".

The protesters were prevented from accessing St Peter's Square, which was packed with tens of thousands of faithful for the traditional Angelus prayer on the third Sunday of Advent.

The protest came as thousands prepared to take to the streets in France in support of a government proposal to legalise gay marriage that is fiercely opposed by sections of the opposition right, Roman Catholic bishops and other religious leaders.

In a message intended for World Peace Day on January 1, the Pope on Friday reiterated the Catholic Church's position against gay marriage.

He called for promotion of "the natural structure of marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the face of attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different types of union.

"Such attempts actually harm and help to destabilise marriage, obscuring its specific nature and its indispensable role in society," he said.

23.53 | 0 komentar | Read More

Disputed islands are Japan's: new PM

SHINZO Abe, who has led his Liberal Democratic Party to an election win, says there is no doubt about Japan's ownership of islands at the centre of a dispute with China.

"China is challenging the fact that (the islands) are Japan's inherent territory," said Abe, who is expected to become prime minister.

"Our objective is to stop the challenge. We don't intend to worsen relations between Japan and China."

Japan and China have been at loggerheads for decades over the sovereignty of a small chain of islands in the East China Sea.

The dispute flared badly in September after Tokyo nationalised islands that it calls the Senkakus, but China knows as the Diaoyus.

Chinese boats have plied waters near the chain most days since and on Thursday Beijing sent a plane to overfly them. Japan scrambled fighter jets to head it off.

"Japan and China need to share the recognition that having good relations is in the national interests of both countries. China lacks this recognition a little bit. I want them to think anew about mutually beneficial strategic relations," Abe said on Sunday.

China urged Japan's new leaders not to "pick fights" with neighbours.

The official news agency Xinhua noted Abe's "landslide" victory but said the incoming leadership must find a way to manage disputes with neighbours.

"Instead of pandering to domestic hawkish views and picking fights with its neighbours, the new Japanese leadership should take a more rational stand on foreign policy," it said.

The commentary came just days after Beijing's latest effort to bolster its claim to the islands, by submitting to the United Nations information on the outer limits of its continental shelf.

Meanwhile, Abe said his first port of call as prime minister would be the United States.

Tokyo relies on Washington for its security under a post-World War II treaty that allows the US to station tens of thousands of troops in Japan.

But that alliance has been seen to drift under the three-year rule of the Democratic Party of Japan.

He also spoke of the need for Japan to boost its other ties in the region.

"We also need to deepen ties with Asia. I want to build up ties with Asian nations including India and Australia. After enhancing our diplomacy, I want to improve relations with China."

23.53 | 0 komentar | Read More

Abe: A once and future PM for Japan

SHINZO Abe, whose Liberal Democratic Party stormed to victory in Sunday's election, returns to the prime ministership as a hawk with strident views on Japan's place in the world.

He was the country's youngest ever prime minister when he stepped into the role in 2006, aged 52, and the first one to be born after World War II, but left office abruptly citing illness after an election loss.

Now 58, the conservative ideologue will return to the prime minister's official residence with promises of a more assertive diplomacy in the face of an increasingly confident China and an always unpredictable North Korea.

Casting himself as an uncompromising leader, Abe has also voiced his willingness to amend laws to force monetary easing moves from the Bank of Japan, which would see it print more money, buy more bonds and have to meet an inflation target to achieve economic growth.

The prime minister-in-waiting will be the second man in modern Japan to serve as prime minister twice, after Shigeru Yoshida, who led the nation in 1946-47 and 1948-54.

The LDP have achieved a commanding parliamentary majority, but analysts say mostly by default with voters looking to punish the disappointing rule of the Democratic Party of Japan.

Despite the landslide, Abe may struggle with the electorate at large, where voters remember his disappointing first tenure, which ended in ignominy and bowel problems in 2007.

He was to become the first in a series of short-lived premiers in Japan, each of whom lasted around a year. His return to the job will make him the seventh change in six years.

Abe came to power as a preferred successor named by then-popular prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, for whom he had served as an eager and earnest deputy.

At the time, he symbolised the continuity of Koizumi's reform agenda as well as youth that could breathe life into an increasingly tired-looking country weighed down by a fragile economic recovery.

His tough talking on North Korea, which admitted in 2002 that it had abducted Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s, also appealed to voters.

But the third-generation politician, groomed from birth for the job by his elite, conservative family, complained of illness following an election defeat in 2007 and after a series of scandals involving his ministers.

Since his return to the helm of the LDP he has aggressively championed an uncompromising Japan on the world stage.

One of his most passionate causes has been revising the country's pacifist constitution, which was imposed on a defeated Japan by the United States in 1947, seven years before he was born.

He has promised to instil patriotism among school children and to visit the controversial Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo, seen as a symbol of Japan's war-time aggression in Korea and China.

He has long attempted to roll back the legacy of World War II defeat, including revising Japan's contrition on so-called "comfort women".

The issue has flared anew in South Korea, with calls for Japan to compensate women pressed into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers.

During his earlier premiership, Abe remained studiously ambiguous about his beliefs and proved more pragmatic than many had expected, working to improve ties with China and South Korea.

His grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was a World War II cabinet member and was briefly jailed as a war criminal. Kishi later became a post-war prime minister, fighting leftists to build a new alliance with Washington.

His father was Shintaro Abe, a foreign minister who never achieved his ambition of becoming prime minister. Shinzo Abe took his father's parliamentary seat in 1993 following his death and fulfilled his goal, albeit temporarily.

Abe's hawkish image may be softened by his wife, Akie Abe, the daughter of a prominent businessman. She is known for her love of South Korean culture.

The couple have no children.

23.53 | 0 komentar | Read More

Taliban in deadly raid on Pakistan airport

FOUR people have been killed when police and troops battled militants armed with automatic weapons, grenades and mortars in northwest Pakistan's Peshawar, a day after a deadly Taliban raid on the city's airport.

Fierce firing broke out after police acting on an intelligence report tried to storm a building near the airport, where a suicide and rocket attack on Saturday night killed five civilians and the five attackers and wounded 50 other people.

The assault late on Saturday, claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, sparked prolonged gunfire and forced authorities to close the airport, a commercial hub and Pakistan Air Force (PAF) base in Peshawar on the edge of the tribal belt.

It was the second Islamist militant attack in four months on a military air base in nuclear-armed Pakistan. In August 11 people were killed when heavily-armed insurgents wearing suicide vests stormed a facility in the northwestern town of Kamra.

Three militants and a police officer were killed in Sunday's fighting, senior police official Imran Shahid told AFP. Troops also took part in the clashes.

Five insurgents took refuge in the half-built building overnight after the airport attack, Shahid said, and the two survivors were still firing at security forces.

Provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain confirmed the casualties and said the raid was launched after intelligence reports that militants were hiding in the construction site.

Live television footage showed troops and police entering a street amid gunfire, while an AFP reporter heard fierce firing in the area.

A PAF statement said five attackers were killed on Saturday and no damage was done to air force equipment or personnel.

Doctor Umar Ayub, chief of Khyber Teaching Hospital near the airport, said five civilians had also been killed and some 50 wounded.

"The base is in total control and normal operations have resumed. The security alert was also raised on other PAF air bases as well," the air force added.

Peshawar airport is a joint military-civilian facility. Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Pervez George said the passenger side remained closed but there had been no damage to the terminals.

The air force said Saturday's attackers used two vehicles loaded with explosives, hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons. One vehicle was destroyed and the second badly damaged.

Security forces found three suicide jackets near one of the vehicles, it said.

"Security forces consisting of Pakistan Air Force and Army personnel who were on full alert, cordoned off the base and effectively repulsed the attack," the air force said.

Television pictures showed a vehicle with a smashed windscreen, another damaged car, bushes on fire and what appeared to be a large breach in a wall.

Five nearby houses were destroyed after rockets landed on them and several other houses developed cracks, while the bomb squad detonated five out of eight bombs found near the base after the attack.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP from an undisclosed location the group would continue to target the airport.

"Our target was jet fighter plans and gunship helicopters and soon we will target them again," he said.

The armed forces have been waging a bloody campaign against the Taliban in the country's northwest in recent years and the militants frequently attack military targets.

Aside from the August attack on Kamra, in May 2011 it took 17 hours to quell an assault on an air base in Karachi claimed by the Taliban. The attack piled embarrassment on the armed forces just three weeks after US troops killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Pakistan says more than 35,000 people have been killed as a result of terrorism in the country since the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Its forces have for years been battling homegrown militants in the northwest.

23.53 | 0 komentar | Read More