Company tax top priority, says business

BUSINESS has told the federal government that balancing the budget is not their main concern, with a survey finding cuts in company tax and infrastructure spending as far more important.

According to an Australian Industry Group survey of 330 manufacturing, services and construction companies, 35 per cent listed company tax cuts as the top priority, while 33 per cent nominated infrastructure spending.

Only 16 per cent said balancing the 2013-14 budget was a top priority, Ai Group said.

"It (the survey) shows that business believes that in this current economic environment balancing the Budget is not the main game," Ai Group chief Innes Willox said in a statement.

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NSW sex abuse inquiry to start Monday

A SPECIAL NSW inquiry into allegations of a child sex abuse cover-up in the Catholic Church will begin in Newcastle on Monday.

The special commission of inquiry was announced by NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell in last November, following explosive allegations made to the media by police officer Peter Fox.

Detective Chief Inspector Fox will be the first of a long list of senior police who will take the witness box when the inquiry begins in the Newcastle Supreme Court on Monday.

The senior investigator asserted the church had covered up evidence in relation to pedophile priests in the Catholic diocese of Maitland-Newcastle in the Hunter region of NSW.

The inquiry will look at how the church handled complaints about former priests Denis McAlinden and Jim Fletcher, both now deceased.

It will also look at the circumstances in which Inspector Fox was asked to stop investigating sex abuse in the diocese.

The NSW inquiry will sit for two weeks in May and three weeks through June and July.

It is separate from the Federal Royal Commission into child sex abuse.

Margaret Cunneen SC has been appointed as Special Commissioner to the inquiry.

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Qld men cop highest sun risk: report

ONE in eight men and one in 12 women in Queensland get sunburnt on an average weekend, according to a report in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Young men who work outdoors appear to be most at risk, and people who take part in physical activity are more likely to report sunburn.

Sunburn is defined as redness that lasts more than 12 hours.

The report is based on interviews with 16,473 Queensland residents aged 18 years and over during 2009 and 2010. They were asked if they had been sunburnt on the previous weekend.

Queensland has the highest melanoma rate in the world.

People aged 18 to 24 years are seven times more likely to suffer sunburn than those aged over 65. People aged 35 to 44 are five times more likely to be burnt.

Sunburn is less likely among people who generally take protective measures in summer, the authors write.

"Our results are broadly consistent with a 2004 Queensland survey showing young age and male sex greatly increase odds of sunburn," write the authors from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and the Preventive Health Unit at Queensland Health.

They say sunburn is still a major public health issue despite 50 years of attempts to educate the public.

The most common reason given for getting burnt is a failure to use sunscreen or protective clothing.

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Belgian chemical train accident toll rises

THE casualty toll in Belgium from the derailing of a train carrying highly toxic chemicals -- which exploded and sent spectacular strips of fire into the night sky -- has risen dramatically to one dead and 49 injured.

Two victims were in intensive care and three of the injured were rescue workers exposed to fumes from chemicals that spilled from the train that derailed near the city of Ghent, officials said.

The accident and blaze happened around 2am (1000 AEST Saturday) and prompted authorities to evacuate around 300 people from their homes.

The victims were people living well away from the scene of the accident, and Interior Minister Joelle Milquet blamed toxic fumes from the highly flammable liquid chemicals for their injuries.

Six of the train's 13 wagons derailed and two were left lying on their sides, said Infrabel, the state-owned company that operates Belgian railways.

The blaze led to a series of explosions in the railway wagons, then a spectacular strip of fire spread over hundreds of metres prompting authorities to evacuate residents living within 500 metres of the scene of the accident.

The train was transporting the toxic chemical compound acrylonitrile, which is used in the making of plastics, officials said.

Exposure to acrylonitrile can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea and mucus membrane irritation.

Milquet said toxic fumes reached much farther, via the drainage system, than the 500-metre perimeter that was set up.

"Some of the chemical product went into the drains and caused a kind of chemical reaction with gases that are toxic and escaped into certain streets beyond the perimeter that had already been evacuated due to the fire," she said.

Firefighters let the wagons burn out in a controlled manner as water could have released further toxic chemicals.

The causes of the accident remained unclear. The cars derailed as the train changed tracks. The train driver said he had been travelling faster than the speed limit for the area.

The train came from the Netherlands and was bound for Ghent's seaport.

Train services between Schellebelle and Wetteren were disrupted and problems were expected for two days, with buses laid on to transport passengers.

Two similar accidents involving trains carrying tanks of toxic products have occurred in Belgium since May last year.

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ANZ ranks lowest for business customers

THE Commonwealth and Westpac rank highest for customer satisfaction among the big four banks, while ANZ and National Australia Banks are still languishing.

A monthly survey of satisfaction among the big four's business customers shows the Commonwealth and Westpac tied for first place with an average satisfaction rating of 7.4 out of 10.

By contrast NAB had an average satisfaction rating of 7.0, but ANZ ranked lowest with an average score of 6.9.

The monthly DBM Consultants' Business Financial Services Monitor (BFSM) shows the Commonwealth had the highest satisfaction rating for small, medium and large businesses and was tied with Westpac among micro businesses.

DBM Managing Director Dhruba Gupta said ANZ was still making up ground with business customers after a difficult 2012.

Satisfaction with ANZ dropped sharply after the bank shifted the timing if its monthly interest rate decision away from the Reserve Bank of Australia's board meeting.

Mr Gupta said the bank's recent pledge to lend $1 billion to start-up businesses over the next year may help to improve its standing.

"It will be interesting to see if ANZ's pledge will impact positively on its business customers' satisfaction levels," he said.

The BFSM is based on interviews with 20,000 businesses a year.

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Vic family violence 'worse than feared'

THE scale of domestic violence in Victoria is worse than imagined, police Chief Commissioner Ken Lay says.

Some 51,000 family violence incidents were recorded in 2011-12, but Mr Lay says he expects the figure to rise above 60,00 this financial year.

He told Fairfax newspapers that while the rise was mostly due to more reporting, it was an alarming situation.

"There's still a hell of a lot of work to be done, and still a lot of very vulnerable people being injured every night," Mr Lay said.

"We never had a true sense of how big this problem was ... it's quite frightening."

Mr Lay said he was undaunted by the high numbers.

"No matter how much pressure we put on the courts or broader system, we're keeping on going with this," he said.

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NSW prison staff win on back pay

HUNDREDS of NSW prison workers will share in thousands of dollars in back pay after the Industrial Relations Commissions found they were owed money.

In a statement, the Health Services Union (HSU) said around 250 of its members would share in about $650,000 in underpaid allowances, dating back to 2002.

The HSU said the payments were for a range of prison workers including social workers, cooks and cleaners.

HSU NSW secretary Gerard Hayes said the IRC found the workers weren't being properly compensated.

"We began this court action after learning that on average, these employees were being underpaid by more than $20 a week," Mr Hayes said.

"Over time this has added up to thousands of dollars for some Justice Health staff.

"This is a big win for Justice Health staff."

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Abbott's hit on retail workers' super

KITCHEN hands, hospitality workers, retail staff and cleaners are among those that will be hardest hit by the coalition's plan to scrap the low-income superannuation tax offset, Superannuation Minister Bill Shorten says.

Mr Shorten said the super savings of 3.6 million Australians earning less than $37,000 will be $500 worse off under an Abbott-led government.

He said women made up 60 per cent, or 2.2 million of those affected.

"Mums working part-time while they care for young kids being hit with a $500 tax bill for contributing to her superannuation (is) not fair or smart," Mr Shorten said, adding that women were already retiring with less money because of pay disparity and time out of the workforce to raise children.

Mr Shorten has released new figures with a breakdown of 20 occupations that will be hardest hit by the opposition's plan.

These included retail staff, kitchen hands, hospitality workers, cleaners, receptionists, labourers, childcare workers.

"I'd rather see a $500 boost to the super account of a kitchen hand or a checkout operator or a farm hand than into Tony Abbott's pocket," he said.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has committed the coalition to scrapping the low-income superannuation tax offset funded by the government's mining tax, which it wants to repeal.

The coalition is opposed to the federal government's plan to impose a 15 per cent tax on superannuation earnings over $100,000, a measure likely to affect some 16,000 high income earners.

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Brazil police jailed for prison 'massacre'

TWENTY-THREE Brazilian military police officers have been sentenced to 156 years in jail each for their role in the killing of 111 inmates during Brazil's deadliest prison uprising in 1992.

The 23 were among 26 officers on trial before the Sao Paulo state tribunal. The three others were cleared.

The officers, most of them now retired, were accused of killing 15 prisoners in Sao Paulo's Carandiru prison during the operation to quell the revolt on October 2, 1992, which came to be known as the "Carandiru massacre".

The defence, which argued the police officers fired in self-defence after being threatened and assaulted by the prisoners, said it would appeal.

None of the officers involved in the operation were harmed. In addition to the 111 prisoners killed, some 87 others were wounded.

Survivors accused police of firing on inmates who had already surrendered or were hiding in their cells.

Authorities initially claimed the police were trying to break up a fight between prisoners who had seized control of one of the cell blocks.

But evidence uncovered later suggested military police had shot prisoners and then destroyed evidence that could have determined individual responsibility for the killings.

The commanding officer of the operation, Colonel Ubiratan Guimaraes, was initially sentenced to 632 years in jail for his mishandling of the revolt and the subsequent killings.

But in 2006, a court voided the conviction because of mistrial claims. Later that year, Guimaraes was found dead in his apartment under unclear circumstances.

The massacre in what was then Latin America's biggest prison sparked outrage among inmates, and prosecutors said it was a key factor in the emergence of a criminal gang known as First Command of the Capital (PCC) in 1993.

The PCC is believed to have ordered the death of the director of the prison at the time, Jose Ismael Pedrosa.

From the prison, PCC bosses organised a series of assaults on police stations and other buildings that left more than 170 people dead and paralysed Sao Paulo for four days in May 2006.

The unrest eventually spread to other cities, and scores of suspected criminals were gunned down in a subsequent wave of police reprisal attacks.

Late last year, the PCC was also blamed for a wave of police killings and bus burnings.

The Carandiru prison was demolished in 2002.

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Sudan army men jailed over coup plot

A GROUP of Sudanese military officers have been sentenced to between two and five years in prison for their role in an alleged coup against the Sudanese government last year, a lawyer says.

"Today the military court issued its decision about the members of SAF who have been accused of a coup. It gave various jail sentences from five years to two years against nine of the soldiers," one of their lawyers, Hashiem Al-Jali, said on Sunday.

All were expelled from the military but a 10th accused was freed for lack of evidence, Jali said.

He added the heaviest sentence, five years, went to Brigadier Mohammed Ibrahim who played a role in the 1989 coup that brought the current regime of President Omar al-Bashir to power.

Most of the detainees are close to a vocal group of former volunteer mujahideen fighters and an elite group within them called Al-Saihun or "tourists for the sake of God".

They are veterans of the country's 1983-2005 civil war.

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