Legacy donations stolen from NSW RSL club

DONATIONS for the families of defence personnel have been stolen from an RSL club on the NSW south coast in a "shocking" robbery in the early hours of Anzac Day, police say.

An unknown number of people broke into the Bomaderry club about 2.20am (AEST) on Thursday after a rock was thrown at a glass door, they say.

The only thing reported missing was a replica digger's tin hat used to collect donations for Legacy, a charity that supports the families of defence services personnel.

Police said the amount of money stolen was not known.

"We are particularly shocked by this theft, given it occurred just four hours before the Anzac Day Dawn Service in Bomaderry," Shoalhaven duty officer Inspector Bruce Griffin said.

He's urged anyone with information about the incident to contact them.

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Remains found in missing Vic woman's home

HUMAN remains have been found in the home of an 82-year-old Melbourne woman who has been missing for almost two years.

Phyllis Kelly was last seen on August 20, 2011, at the State Theatre, just after 6pm.

She had not accessed her bank account since then and police had made public calls for information about her disappearance, having held grave fears for her welfare.

Police, accompanied by a pathologist, searched the woman's home on Little Charles Street in Fitzroy on Thursday after receiving authority from the coroner to conduct the search.

The remains will now be taken to the coroner for testing, a police spokeswoman said.

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40 survivors found in Bangladesh collapse

FORTY people have been found alive in a room inside a collapsed garment factory compound in Bangladesh, the army said in an announcement greeted by loud cheers from waiting relatives.

"We've found 40 people alive in a room," an army spokesman announced at the scene of the country's worst industrial accident, near Dhaka.

"They are being rescued," he added to wild applause from the crowds.

More than 230 people are so far known to have died in Wednesday's disaster but many more are still trapped under the rubble at the Rana Plaza, in the town of Savar.

Thousands of relatives of people still missing have gathered at the site to watch the rescue effort.

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UN votes to send peacekeepers to Mali

THE UN Security Council has unanimously backed sending up to 12,600 international troops and police to take over from French and African forces battling Islamist guerrillas in Mali.

The United Nations is aiming for a July 1 start by the new force, but the 15-nation council will decide later whether the conflict has eased enough for the handover.

French troops moved into Mali in January to halt an Islamist advance on the capital Bamako and have since forced the al-Qaeda-linked militants into desert and mountain hideouts.

France is to keep up to 1000 troops in Mali and they will maintain responsibility for military strikes against the Islamists, who are now waging a guerrilla campaign.

UN resolution 2100 authorises France to intervene if the UN troops are "under imminent and serious threat and at the demand" of UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

The resolution authorised the new force to use "all necessary measures" to stabilise major cities, protect civilians and help the government extend its authority over the vast West African nation.

"The adoption of this resolution confirms the unanimous international support for the stabilisation of Mali and France's intervention," said France's UN envoy Gerard Araud.

Mali's Foreign Minister Tieman Hubert Coulibaly called the resolution "an important step in the process to stem the activities of terrorist and rebel groups".

The proposed UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali, to be known by its French acronym MINUSMA, would have a maximum of 11,200 soldiers and 1440 police.

Mali's army launched a coup in March 2012, which unleashed the chaos that allowed Tuareg rebels and their erstwhile Islamist allies to take over the north of the country and impose a brutal Islamic rule.

Many shrines in Timbuktu and other cities were destroyed, and public executions and amputations staged.

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US weekly jobless claims drop

NEW claims for US unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level since mid-March, the government says, in a fresh sign of a slowly improving job market.

Initial jobless claims totalled 339,000 in the week ending April 20, down from the prior week's revised reading of 362,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

The decline in new claims, which indicate the pace of layoffs, was sharper than analysts expected. The average estimate was for 351,000 claims.

Last week's reading was the lowest since the week ending March 9, when claims hit a five-year low of 334,000.

A Labor Department official noted that claims data were particularly volatile in the weeks near the Easter holiday, which this year fell on March 31.

The four-week moving average, which helps to smooth out volatility, fell by 4,500 to 357,500 last week.

According to employment data published in early April, the US unemployment rate dipped in March by one-tenth of a point to 7.6 per cent, the lowest rate since December 2008.

But the improvement came because people dropped out of the workforce, not because of job growth, which was a paltry 88,000 last month.

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Palmer to re-form UAP party for election

BILLIONAIRE miner Clive Palmer has come good on threats to set up his own political party, saying he will personally run for federal parliament.

Mr Palmer told ABC TV on Thursday he was re-forming the United Australia Party (UAP), which was dissolved in 1945, and had applied for registration in Queensland.

The former life member of the Liberal National Party (LNP) said the new UAP would contest 127 lower house seats in the September federal election, and stand for all seats in the Senate.

"I definitely will be (personally) standing for federal parliament," he confirmed, without revealing which seat.

"I definitely will be running in a seat in Queensland, but it would be presumptuous of me (to say which one).

"Like any political party, it's got to have its own preselections.

"By the end of next week we'll be announcing some of our candidates for federal parliament."

The original UAP was established in 1931 and was the predecessor to the Liberal Party, with Robert Menzies serving as a UAP prime minister between 1939 and 1941.

Late last year Mr Palmer gave up his life membership of the LNP after a bitter and public dispute with the Newman government in Queensland, and since then has threatened to set up his own party.

Mr Palmer said there were key differences between his new political party and the Liberals, including on refugee policy and the axing of the carbon tax.

The party already had a number of "notable Australians" that wanted to stand for federal parliament, he said.

"The United Australia Party, it's a reformation of the original party ... which has had three prime ministers in our history and is a shining example of where we should go."

Before his falling out with the LNP, Mr Palmer had considered running against Treasurer Wayne Swan in his Brisbane seat of Lilley.

But asked if the deputy prime minister should be looking over his shoulder, Mr Palmer would only say: "I'm sure there will be a good candidate running there.

"It will be up to the United Australia Party to decide who runs everywhere," he said.

"Wayne Swan is a very nice guy. His problem is he can't count. He said we'd have a balanced budget but it's going to be $60 billion over."

Mr Palmer dismissed comparisons with former Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen's aborted "Joh for Canberra" campaign in 1987.

As to whether formation of the party was part of a push to one day be prime minister, the billionaire businessman said: "It's up to the people to decide.

"As you know, the people of Australia elected me as a living national treasure, and that was their choice not mine," Mr Palmer said.

"Whatever it goes, I think I'm prepared to do.

"After all, it's really crazy to think that a person that's never run anything more than a tuckshop can run a trillion dollar economy."

Mr Palmer said there were key differences between his new political party and the Liberals, including on refugee policy and the axing of the carbon tax.

The party already had a number of "notable Australians" that wanted to stand for federal parliament, he said.

"The United Australia Party, it's a reformation of the original party ... which has had three prime ministers in our history and is a shining example of where we should go."

Before his falling out with the LNP, Mr Palmer had considered running against Treasurer Wayne Swan in his Brisbane seat of Lilley.

But asked if the deputy prime minister should be looking over his shoulder, Mr Palmer would only say: "I'm sure there will be a good candidate running there.

"It will be up to the United Australia Party to decide who runs everywhere," he said.

"Wayne Swan is a very nice guy. His problem is he can't count. He said we'd have a balanced budget but it's going to be $60 billion over."

Mr Palmer dismissed comparisons with former Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen's aborted "Joh for Canberra" campaign in 1987.

As to whether formation of the party was part of a push to one day be prime minister, the billionaire businessman said: "It's up to the people to decide.

"As you know, the people of Australia elected me as a living national treasure, and that was their choice not mine," Mr Palmer said.

"Whatever it goes, I think I'm prepared to do.

"After all, it's really crazy to think that a person that's never run anything more than a tuckshop can run a trillion dollar economy."

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Google foretells stock movements: study

GOOGLE Trends, a tool that looks at patterns of searches on the internet, is a potential money-spinner for investors as it provides hints of impending stock movements, a study says.

Researchers led by Tobias Preis at Warwick Business School in central England analysed data from Google Trends from 2004 to 2011.

They looked at the volume of searches for 98 terms, such as "metals", "stock", "finance", "forex", "house", "unemployment" and "health" as well as non-specific or neutral words, such as "ring", "train", kitchen" and "fun".

They then constructed a virtual portfolio of investment in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), with a strategy based on search volumes that occurred on Sundays.

If the search volume that day was high compared with a week earlier, the DJIA investment was systematically sold at the closing price the following day, and then repurchased at the end of the first day of trading in the week after.

Conversely, if the search volume on Sunday was low compared with the previous week, the researchers "bought" the following day.

Using the keyword "debt" - the term that saw the most fluctuation during the study period - the strategy netted a whopping cyber-profit of 326 per cent over seven years.

By comparison, a strategy of buy-and-hold - purchasing in 2004 and selling in 2011 - would have yielded only 16 per cent profit, equal to the rise in the DJIA during this time.

A third strategy, of buying or selling on the basis of movements in the Dow itself, would have netted a gain of 33 per cent.

The paper, published in the journal Scientific Reports, suggests that search requests are a potential indicator of intent about investment decisions.

When a mass of people seek information about a particular subject on a Sunday, this is a sign of worry and boosts the likelihood that they will ditch stock when the market opens on the Monday, it argues.

"Notable drops in the financial market are preceded by periods of investor concern," according to the research, published in the journal Scientific Reports.

"In such periods, investors may search for more information about the market, before eventually deciding to buy or sell.

"Our results suggest that, following this logic, during the period 2004 to 2011, Google Trends search query volumes for certain terms could have been used in the construction of profitable trading strategies."

In a phone interview with AFP, Preis said that the online world was a goldmine of data for behavioural experts.

"All these new data resources from online activities, which are an essential part of our everyday life these days - we are tweeting on Twitter, we are using Wikipedia, we are using search engines like Google and upload photos to Flickr and share information on Facebook - all of this leaves indicators of behaviour," he said.

"From a scientific point of view, our interest is to link this to behaviour in the real world ... it's extremely exciting."

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