Seoul to aid companies shut out of Kaesong

SOUTH Korea's government will provide more than $US270 million ($A263.88 million) in emergency loans to help companies affected by the shutdown of a jointly run factory park in North Korea.

The finance ministry said on Thursday the 300 billion won ($A266.81 million) in relief funds will help cover debts and operating costs of about 120 South Korean companies that were forced early last month to halt production at factories in the Kaesong industrial complex amid high tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Additional financial support will be provided once the parliament approves a bill for an extra budget this year that is part of a broader stimulus plan for South Korea's economy, a joint statement from government ministries said.

Pyongyang has blocked the entry of South Korean vehicles and personnel to the jointly run factory park since April 3. The move came as North Korea issued a daily torrent of threats aimed at US-South Korean military drills and UN sanctions over Pyongyang's February nuclear test.

Six days later, it pulled out its 53,000 North Korean workers, halting the factories that had run on cheap labour from North Korea, and capital and technology from the South.

One of the companies that operated at Kaesong said the funds will help ease the burden for businesses that are facing a financial crunch as they have to make payments to contractors and employees. But the loans do not cover the financial losses that would be suffered if South Korean business owners cannot return to Kaesong where they constructed factories, installed production lines and made other investments.

"It will give relief," said Park Yun-kyu, chief executive of a South Korean apparel company that used to employ 700 North Koreans in Kaesong.

South Korea's government offered insurance to companies at Kaesong through a state-owned bank, which compensates up to 7 billion won in the event of shutdown lasting more than one month. However, 27 companies out of 123 did not take the insurance for various reasons, including questions about its usefulness and how the compensation is determined.

Park said he was worried that he would lose a 2 billion won investment that he made after signing the insurance policy as the additional spending is not covered by it.

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China reports 27th death from bird flu

The death toll from the H7N9 bird flu virus in China has risen to 25, state media reports. Source: AAP

THE death toll from the H7N9 bird flu virus has risen to 27, state media says, after a man died in central China's Hunan Province.

The 55-year-old whose surname was given as Jiao died on Wednesday after receiving medical treatment, state news agency Xinhua said on Thursday, citing local authorities.

More than 120 people have been diagnosed with the virus since it was first reported in late March, with most cases confined to eastern China.

The only one reported outside the mainland has been in Taiwan. That victim was infected in China, but led to Asian countries urging renewed vigilance against the virus.

Experts fear the possibility of the virus mutating into a form easily transmissible between humans, with the potential to trigger a pandemic.

The World Health Organisation has said so far there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission but warned H7N9 is "one of the most lethal" influenza viruses ever seen, and urged travellers against contact with live poultry.

Chinese researchers, reporting in The Lancet a week ago, said they had confirmed poultry as a source of the virus.

Chinese health officials have acknowledged so-called "family clusters", where members of a single family have become infected, but have not established any confirmed instances of human-to-human transmission.

Most of the cases reported have not yet resulted in death, and some patients have been discharged from hospital after apparently recovering.

China confirmed 19 new cases of the virus in the week leading up to May 1, Xinhua said.

But the number new cases in Shanghai has seen a "dramatic slowdown", Nancy Cox, director of the influenza division at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week, describing the slowdown as "very encouraging".

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I'll ditch the NDIS levy: Palmer

Clive Palmer says there is no justification for raising the Medicare Levy to help pay for the NDIS. Source: AAP

CLIVE Palmer says his United Australia Party would abolish the increase in the Medicare Levy designed to help pay for the national disability insurance scheme (NDIS) if it is elected at the September election.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced on Wednesday the levy would rise 0.5 percentage points to two per cent from July 2014.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said on Thursday the coalition would consider the rise.

But Mr Palmer says there is "no justification" in raising the levy.

"Mr Abbott and Ms Gillard are incompetent and this is resulting in this increase of the Medicare levy," he said in a statement on Thursday.

He said both leaders had resorted to increasing taxes to pay for their policies.

"When the United Australia Party takes government at the next federal election, any increase in the levy will be abolished," Mr Palmer said.

The Medicare levy increase will raise about $3.3 billion a year - less than half the $8 billion or more to run the care scheme each year when it begins full operation from 2018/19.

It will add $350 a year to the tax bill of a person earning $70,000 a year.

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UN sounds alarm on record Arctic ice melt

THE Arctic's sea ice melted at a record pace in 2012, the ninth-hottest year on record, compounding concerns about climate change underscored by extreme weather such as Hurricane Sandy, the UN weather agency says.

In a report on the situation in 2012, the World Meteorological Organisation said on Thursday that during the August to September melting season, the Arctic's sea ice cover was just 3.4 million square kilometres.

That was a full 18 per cent less than the previous record low set in 2007.

WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud dubbed it a "disturbing sign of climate change."

"The year 2012 saw many other extremes as well, such as droughts and tropical cyclones. Natural climate variability has always resulted in such extremes, but the physical characteristics of extreme weather and climate events are being increasingly shaped by climate change," he said.

"For example, because global sea levels are now about 20 centimetres higher than they were in 1880, storms such as Hurricane Sandy are bringing more coastal flooding than they would have otherwise," he added.

October's Hurricane Sandy killed almost 300 people and caused major destruction in the Caribbean before developing further strength and causing tens of billions of dollars in damage and around 130 deaths in the eastern United States.

Typhoon Bopha, the deadliest tropical cyclone of the year, hit the Philippines twice in December, sparking floods and landslides which killed more than 1,000 people.

The WMO said that the 2012 global land and ocean surface temperature was estimated to be 0.45C above the 1961-1990 average of 14.0C.

That marked the ninth warmest year since records began in 1850 and the 27th consecutive year that the global land and ocean temperatures were above the 1961-1990 average, it underlined.

Jarraud noted that the rate of warming varies from year to year due to a range of factors, including the El Nino and La Nina weather phenomena - which see warming and cooling, respectively, in the Pacific Ocean - as well as volcanic eruptions.

Last year's warming came despite a cooling La Nina at the beginning of the year.

"The sustained warming of the lower atmosphere is a worrisome sign," said Jarraud.

"The continued upward trend in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and the consequent increased radiative forcing of the Earth's atmosphere confirm that the warming will continue," he added.

Above-average temperatures were observed across most of the globe's land surface areas, most notably North America, southern Europe, western Russia, parts of northern Africa and southern South America, the WMO noted.

Nonetheless, cooler than average conditions were observed across Alaska, parts of northern and eastern Australia, and central Asia, it said.

Precipitation also varied, with drier-than-average conditions across much of the central United States, northern Mexico, northeastern Brazil, central Russia, and south-central Australia.

Northern Europe, western Africa, north-central Argentina, western Alaska, and most of northern China were meanwhile wetter than average.

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Major Australian exhibition in London

THE British are being encouraged to overcome their "shameful ignorance" of Australian art by attending the most extensive exhibition of Australian works ever shown in the United Kingdom.

It was revealed on Thursday that the Prince of Wales will be the patron of the September exhibition which is simply called Australia.

"People in this country have been, historically, shamefully ignorant of Australian art," Royal Academy of Arts chief executive Charles Saumarez Smith said at the press launch in London.

"The exhibition will be, for everyone in this country, a great revelation."

The exhibition includes indigenous and non-indigenous art from 1800 to the present day.

It focuses on the influence of landscape and was several years in the making.

"There has never been an exhibition like this before," co-curator Kathleen Soriano from the Royal Academy said.

"This survey is long, long overdue."

The last major UK exhibition of Australian art was in the 1960s but it focused on contemporary works only.

The academy last hosted an Australian exhibition in the early 1920s.

The 2013 exhibition brings together works from the most important public collections in Australia.

Works by artists including Albert Namatjira, Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts, Arthur Boyd, Brett Whiteley and Tracey Moffatt will be on display in London.

Controversial photographer Bill Henson will also be featured.

Judy Watson has been commissioned to create a new sculpture that will be displayed in the academy's courtyard.

Based on a bowerbird's mating structure it will be a larger version of an existing Watson work.

It will stand 6m high as opposed to the 2m-tall Fire and Water in Canberra.

"I'm hoping people will experience the strangeness of this structure encircling them and inviting people to walk through it," Watson told AAP.

The Australian government has contributed $200,000 towards the exhibition.

There's also $50,000 for other Australian events, such as screenings of indigenous films, on the sidelines.

Deputy high commissioner Andrew Todd says the government is "immensely proud" of the show.

"Artists can portray through moving images or still images a real sense of the history, the nature and the dilemmas that Australia faces," Mr Todd told AAP.

"This exhibition brings together iconic works of art from the past and works of art that will be iconic into the future."

The BBC will broadcast a three-part series on Australian art to coincide with the London exhibition.

The series will be presented by former Art Gallery of NSW director Edmund Capon.

The exhibition, organised in partnership with the National Gallery of Australia, opens on September 21 and will run until early December.

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Nationals WA president stands down

COLIN Holt has stood down as The Nationals' West Australian president because of his increasingly heavy parliamentary workload.

Mr Holt, who held the position for four years, was last month appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister for training and workforce development Terry Redman and is also leader of The Nationals WA in the Legislative Council.

David Eagles has accepted the role of acting state president until the party's state conference in August.

Meanwhile, several nominations were received for the party's new candidate for the federal seat of O'Connor, currently held by retiring MP Tony Crook, before the close of nominations on Tuesday.

While the party's policy is to not name nominees, one that is known is William "Chub" Witham, who worked as a geologist in the Goldfields and is well known in the Great Southern region.

The successful candidate will be ratified at the State Council meeting on May 25.

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US boy, 5, accidentally shoots sister dead

A FIVE-YEAR-OLD boy playing with a rifle given to him as a gift accidentally shot dead his younger sister, officials say, thrusting the issue of US gun violence back into the spotlight.

The boy's two-year-old sister was pronounced dead after being rushed to a hospital following the shooting on Tuesday in rural Kentucky, police said.

Cumberland County Coroner Gary White on Wednesday identified the girl as Caroline Starks and said the children's mother was cleaning the house at the time and had stepped outside onto the porch.

"She said no more than three minutes had went by and she actually heard the rifle go off. She ran back in and found the little girl," White said.

The .22 calibre rifle had been given to the boy last year and was kept in the corner of a room. The parents didn't realise a shell had been left in it.

"It's a Crickett," White told the Lexington Herald-Leader. "It's a little rifle for a kid. ...The little boy's used to shooting the little gun."

An autopsy was set to be conducted but White said he expects the shooting will be ruled accidental.

"Just one of those crazy accidents," White said.

"Down in Kentucky where we're from, you know, guns are passed down from generation to generation," White said. "You start at a young age with guns for hunting and everything."

What is more unusual than a child having a gun, he said, is "that a kid would get shot with it."

The Crickett is just one of many child-sized rifles on the market and is sold with the tag line 'My First Rifle.'

It comes in a number of child-friendly barrel designs and colours, including hot pink for little girls. A host of accessories are also available, like story books and a gun-toting beanie baby of the rifle's mascot, a cartoonish cricket.

"It's a normal way of life, and it's not just rural Kentucky, it's rural America - hunting and shooting and sport fishing. It starts at an early age," said Cumberland County Judge Executive John Phelps. "There's probably not a household in this county that doesn't have a gun."

In Cumberland County, as elsewhere in Kentucky, local newspapers feature photos of children proudly displaying their kills, including turkey and deer.

It was the second fatal shooting involving minors in America this week.

The Anchorage Daily News reported that a five-year-old girl in a remote Alaska community had been shot and killed by her eight-year-old brother on Monday. The circumstances of the shooting were not immediately clear.

The United States has been embroiled in a heated debate over gun control and gun culture in the wake of a horrific December shooting at a school in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 26 young children and educators.

President Barack Obama has pushed for tougher federal gun laws to require universal background checks on gun buyers and called for a ban on assault weapons like the one used in Newtown.

But last month, his background check proposal - condemned by the powerful National Rifle Association as an infringement on Americans' constitutional right "to keep and bear arms" - failed to muster the necessary 60 votes needed to clear the US Senate.

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