US woman gets 'custody' of her embryos

A US judge has awarded custody of frozen embryos to a 42-year-old Chicago woman. Source: AAP

A US judge has awarded custody of frozen embryos to a 42-year-old Chicago woman over the objections of her ex-boyfriend who said it violates his right to not procreate.

In 2009, Karla Dunston, began dating Jacob Szafranski, a 32-year-old firefighter. A few months into their relationship Dunston was diagnosed with lymphoma and had to undergo chemotherapy that would ultimately destroy her fertility.

She testified that she longed to have a biological child and asked Szafranski to provide his sperm so that embryos could be frozen prior to her treatment, and he did so, despite neither of them thinking the relationship had long-term prospects.

The couple broke up in May 2010. Szafranski said he changed his mind about being a father after friends and a girlfriend reacted negatively, according to court documents.

Judge Sophia Hall said Friday in a written ruling that oral agreements between Szafranski and Dunston concerning use of the embryos stand and added that Dunston's desire to have a child outweighs Szafranski's desire to not procreate.

"Karla's desire to have a biological child in the face of the impossibility of having one without using the embryos outweighs Jacob's privacy concerns, which are now moot," the judge said in the ruling, "and his speculative concern that he might not find love with a woman because he unhesitatingly agreed to help give Karla her last opportunity to fulfil her wish to have a biological child."

Dunston's lawyer, Abram Moore, applauded the ruling.

"Using these pre-embyros is important to our client, but it is equally important to her to set a precedent in Illinois which helps other women cancer survivors who find themselves in this heart-wrenching situation," he said in an email.

Szafranski's lawyer, Brian Schroeder, said they plan to appeal the decision.

"We're obviously very unhappy," he said.

Schroeder said lawyers for both parties have agreed that the embryos should not be implanted in Dunston until the appeal is completed.

Through a lawyer, Dunston previously has said she was not seeking any support, financial or otherwise, from Szafranski.

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Blazes lit in Melbourne's botanic gardens

A 100-YEAR-OLD pavilion was damaged and two others destroyed by an arsonist in Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens.

Firefighters were called to a large blaze in the gardens just before 6am on Saturday and arrived to find two more fires burning.

Police said the arsonist was potentially in the gardens at the same time that firefighters arrived.

"It's too early to say, but it appears that they are all linked because obviously they were all in very close time frames," detective senior constable Megan MacInnes told reporters.

Professor Tim Entwisle, chief executive of the Botanic Gardens, said two buildings were destroyed and another significantly burned.

"Some plants were damaged doing this as well, which for us in the botanic gardens is just as distressing," Prof Entwisle said.

He said the Lakeview rest house is 100 years old and had been damaged, while the William Tell rest house had been burned down.

A toilet block was also burned down.

Prof Entwisle said security patrols spotted the fire, and said it was tough to keep people from getting in at night.

"It's very hard - without putting razor wire around the Botanic Garden - to absolutely keep people out," he said.

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Police hunt two sex predators in Melbourne

A man has tried to sexually assault a woman in the inner Melbourne suburb of Brunswick. Source: AAP

THE hunt is on for two sex predators who attacked three women in the same Melbourne suburb where Jill Meagher died.

Police say an assault on Friday night in Brunswick is not linked to two similar attacks a week earlier.

A 21-year-old woman was walking through a park at 8pm on Hope St in Brunswick West on Friday when grabbed from behind.

The assault continued until she called out to a passing cyclist and the attacker stopped and ran.

Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Michael Phyland said on Saturday police would like to speak to the cyclist and anyone else who might have seen the incident.

It came after another man grabbed two woman from behind and dragged them down side streets in Brunswick in the early hours of May 10.

Both were able to fight him off and escape.

Jill Meagher was raped and murdered after being snatched from a Brunswick street in 2012.

Sgt Phyland said men and women should be careful when walking at night in the suburb.

"Where you can, take well lit areas, be aware of your surroundings, take the safest path that you can," he told reporters.

Sgt Phyland said descriptions of the two men were different and the attacks were not linked.

The Friday night offender is described as Caucasian, with a medium to solid build, aged in his 30s, with dark hair, blood-shot eyes and a beard.

Police have released CCTV footage of the other man wanted for the May 10 attacks.

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Newman rallies states on income tax reform

Campbell Newman wants the federal government to return part of the income tax paid by Australians. Source: AAP

THE Abbott government will "hang" the states and territories unless they demand a slice of income tax to cope with budget cuts, the Queensland premier says.

Campbell Newman says the federal government must return a chunk of the income tax paid by Australians to state and territory governments so they can properly fund schools and hospitals.

He says states and territories are more than happy to assume full responsibility for those services, but must be given the means to fund them.

He'll make the case for his tax plan on Sunday, when premiers and first ministers will meet in Sydney over the federal budget's $80 billion cut to health and education funding.

Mr Newman said he floated the plan with Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Thursday, but Mr Abbott was "non-committal". But the Queensland premier says he has early support from some of his counterparts, although he won't say who.

"If the states and territories don't hang together on Sunday they will be hung separately by this federal government," he told reporters on Friday.

"The prime minister has said that we should go on and run schools and hospitals. We're very happy to do that - I certainly am - but we need the revenue coming directly."

The premier stressed he wasn't arguing for an increase in taxes but rather for a certain percentage of taxpayers' money - for example 10 to 20 cents in the dollar - to go directly to the states without federal interference.

"Queensland mums and dads pay their fair share of tax. They deserve a fair share of that funding coming back directly to Queensland so we can run hospitals and schools," Mr Newman said.

He again ruled out endorsing an increase to the GST, saying he wasn't playing the federal government's "game".

"If the prime minister and treasurer expect this state to go and ask for an increase in the GST he's mistaken. We're not going to do that," he said.

Mr Newman said his tax plan would end fighting between federal and state governments and Australians wanted that.

"They want politicians to work this out, to sort out the federation, to make the country work better and I assure people that's what I'm about."

Mr Abbott said he was happy the premiers were thinking about proposals they could put to the federal government, particularly on tax reform and improving the federation.

"What I'm on about is lower, simpler, fairer taxes and I'm on about a federation that works better," he said.

"I'm not interested in picking fights - I'm interested in finding pathways forward."

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Truck driver guilty of fatal NSW crash

A DRUG-AFFECTED and sleep-deprived truck driver who crashed his vehicle head-on with a car, killing three people, has been found guilty of manslaughter.

Vincent Samuel George's B-double veered across the Hume Highway, near Menangle in Sydney's southwest, and collided with a sedan, killing Calvyn Logan, 59, and his 81-year-old parents Donald and Patricia Logan, in January 2012.

Blood samples taken afterwards revealed George, 34, was on methadone. Expert evidence also showed he had little rest leading up to the crash.

Parramatta District Court Judge Stephen Hanley on Friday found George guilty of three counts of manslaughter.

He had pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Gary Logan, whose parents and brother died in the crash, praised the court's "just decision".

"It was emotional (today) but it's time to move on," he told reporters outside.

"We've had two and a half years of trauma."

The Logans were on their way to Gary's home for lunch when the crash happened.

Gary sent multiple text messages to his family throughout the day asking where they were.

Later that afternoon, the grim realisation of what had happened struck him when he saw a picture of their car crushed under a truck on a news website.

"I knew it was them," he said.

The court heard George was driving about 100km/h when the B-double veered onto the median strip, before colliding head-on with the Logans on the wrong side of the road.

George claimed he lost control trying to avoid hitting another car.

But Judge Hanley didn't accept the explanation, saying there was no evidence of his brakes being applied and that his truck had instead "gradually" veered off the road.

The combination of fatigue and the effects of the methadone George was on, which he obtained illegally, led to his loss of concentration.

Judge Hanley added that George had previously rolled his truck while under the influence of methadone.

George will be sentenced on August 1.

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Food maker accepts $1.37b in takeover bid

ONE of Australia's largest food companies Goodman Fielder has accepted a sweetened $1.37 billion dollar takeover offer from two Asian firms.

Sydney-based Goodman Fielder, which makes and sells bread, biscuits, sauces, spreads and oils, had been given a deadline of 2000 AEST on Friday to support the bid and open its books to due diligence.

The company's board met on Friday to consider the new bid from Singapore-listed Wilmar, the world's biggest palm oil processor, and Hong Kong investment firm First Pacific.

Goodman Fielder released an after-market statement saying that in the absence of a superior proposal, the board will unanimously recommend that Goodman shareholders vote in favour of the revised offer.

Goodman Fielder's major shareholders Perpetual and Ellerston Capital had increased pressure on the board, agreeing to sell nearly half of their stakes to the Singapore-Hong Kong consortium subject to the bid being approved.

That would give Wilmar and First Pacific a 19.9 per cent stake.

The company, which owns iconic brands such as Helga's, MeadowLea, Vogel's and Olive Grove, rejected an initial $1.27 billion takeover offer as too low.

The offer has now been raised from 65 cents a share to 70 cents plus a one cent dividend.

That is a 33 per cent premium to the 52.5 cents it traded at before the first offer on April 23.

The companies said they would go no higher.

Morningstar analyst Peter Rae said he thought it was a good offer that was above his fair value estimate of 50 cents a share.

"I tend to think if the shareholders are behind it they have to support it," he told AAP.

Shares in the company plunged more than 18 per cent in a day on April 2, following a profit downgrade and flagging of writedowns and job cuts and it posted a half year net loss of $65 million in February.

The attraction for the suitors is to expose the company to high growth Asian markets.

Shares in Goodman Fielder fell 1.1 per cent to 66.5 cents on Friday.

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RBA confirms relaxed view on house prices

YOU might disagree with the RBA about the state of the housing market, but you sure can't accuse them of ignoring it.

And the central bank is sticking with its view that we aren't in the midst of an inflating housing market bubble.

The RBA's head of financial stability, Luci Ellis, repeated that view in a speech in Sydney on Thursday.

She acknowledged what many commentators have pointed out, that in the 15 years or so to around 2005 growth in housing prices outpaced the rise in incomes.

"This was in large part a transition to a new equilibrium of lower inflation and interest rates, and thus higher debt and housing prices relative to incomes," she said.

The implied explanation for that is that most financial assets, like government bonds, become more valuable in a low-inflation environment.

That's because the income streams they are expected to produce are worth more today with low inflation.

Inflation, and the risk of even more inflation, erodes the value of future income.

So the present value of income-producing assets tends to increase as an economy moves from a high inflation environment to a period of low inflation.

And, although we most often think of them as somewhere to live, houses and apartments are also income-producing assets.

If anything, the housing market's transition to a higher price level was somewhat belated compared with rallies in bonds and shares.

But, backed by charts showing both debt and housing prices stabilising as a percentage of household income for most of the past decade, Dr Ellis said the transition is now over.

And that means it won't be a one-way street for investors in housing, with housing prices fluctuating around a flatter trend, meaning there will be more times when prices are falling than there used to be, she said.

That's created a different set of problems for the RBA.

For individuals, it means there will be less chance that a rising housing market will make up for mistakes they might make by paying too much for a property.

But for the central bank, the risks are magnified.

There would be little room for another bout of the kind of "property exuberance" seen in 2002 and 2003.

"Australia managed to have its housing boom end without a major disaster," she said.

"Plenty of other countries weren't so lucky."

An overstretched household sector would be a problem if something were to go wrong elsewhere in the economy she said.

So the RBA is focusing on making sure home buyers don't become overstretched by too much debt.

It's a risk for the RBA to monitor.

But it's a different risk than having to manage exponentially rising housing prices.

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Govt cuts big on social studies fees

SOCIAL studies students will be the biggest losers once the government cuts its contribution to course costs.

Details of the new Commonwealth contributions, to apply from 2016, show government funding for social studies will drop by more than one-third.

Engineering, science, surveying and visual and performing arts courses face cuts of about one-quarter of present amounts.

But for maths courses, the government will pay about a quarter more than it does now.

It will also pay more of the costs for humanities, clinical psychology, foreign languages and allied health.

Tuesday's budget revealed the government contributions would drop by an average of 20 per cent across the board.

It's likely students will have to make up the difference.

The categories of Commonwealth funding have been streamlined from eight clusters of disciplines to five.

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Engaged dads improve children's wellbeing

SYDNEY, May 15 AAP - Children who have positive relationships with their dads interact better with peers, have better developed social skills and cope with distress, research shows.

KidsMatter, a mental health and wellbeing initiative in early childhood education and care, is running a National Week to acknowledge the role of dads.

Research says the positive relationships with dads improve wellbeing and life satisfaction for children.

"Dads play a role in boys in terms of learning how to be a man. For girls, the father is a model of what dads should be in the community," KidsMatter psychologist Lyn O'Grady said.

But factors such as time and distance affect father-child relationships.

"Quality time spent with dads and other family members is really important for a child's development," Dr O'Grady said.

She said when fathers are not able to see their children on a regular basis, they should still keep in contact.

"Using technology such as mobile phones and Skype to make contact and let children know that they are thinking about them is very important," she said.

Dr O'Grady said spending time with male family members and friends such as uncles and grandfathers also benefit children.

"Sometimes they can't see a dad. It could be a dad or grandfather who can really play a male supportive role," she said.

"We know parenting is a challenging thing and we try to help people to find a way which works for them," she said.

KidsMatter was created in 2006 to make a positive difference in the lives of Australian children.

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Child labour on US tobacco at risk: report

Human Rights Watch says children as young as seven are working long hours in US tobacco fields. Source: AAP

YOU may have to be at least 18 to buy cigarettes in the US, but children as young as seven are working long hours in fields harvesting tobacco leaves under sometimes hazardous and sweltering conditions, according to an international rights group.

A Human Rights Watch report released on Wednesday details findings from interviews with more than 140 children working on farms in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, where a majority of the country's tobacco is grown.

The group acknowledges that most of what it documented is legal under US law, but aims to highlight the practice and urge both governments and tobacco companies to take further steps to protect children from the hazardous harvesting of the cash crop, which is nicotine- and pesticide-laced, that has built businesses, funded cities and influenced cultures.

"The US has failed America's families by not meaningfully protecting child farm workers from dangers to their health and safety, including on tobacco farms," said Margaret Wurth, children's rights researcher and co-author of the report.

"Farming is hard work anyway, but children working on tobacco farms get so sick that they throw up, get covered by pesticides and have no real protective gear."

Children interviewed by the group in 2012 and 2013 reported vomiting, nausea and headaches while working on tobacco farms. The symptoms they reported are consistent with nicotine poisoning often called Green Tobacco Sickness, which occurs when workers absorb nicotine through their skin while handling tobacco plants.

The children also said they worked long hours - often in extreme heat - without overtime pay or sufficient breaks and wore no, or inadequate, protective gear.

According to the report, US agriculture labour laws allow children to work longer hours at younger ages and in more hazardous conditions than children in any other industry.

With their parent's permission, children as young as 12 can be hired for unlimited hours outside of school hours on a farm of any size. And there's no minimum age for children to work on small farms.

In 2011, the Labor Department proposed changes that would have prohibited children under 16 from working on tobacco farms, but they were withdrawn in 2012.

Human Rights Watch met with many of the world's biggest cigarette makers and tobacco suppliers to discuss its findings and encourage them to adopt or strengthen policies to prevent the practices in their supply chains.

The companies are concerned about child labour in their supply chains and have developed standards, including requiring growers to provide a safe work environment and adhere to child labour laws, the group said.

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