SYDNEY VERSION...DKPC: 04/01/2009

Rudd's gourmet meals in air criticised

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has his priorities wrong ordering gourmet meals on board official flights, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull says.

News Ltd has claimed that Australian taxpayers are paying thousands of dollars to ensure Mr Rudd is served a three-course meal on every RAAF VIP flight, including the Sydney to Canberra service. Defence overhauled the catering arrangements after an outburst by Mr Rudd on board a flight from Port Moresby to Canberra in January.

Mr Turnbull said Australians were focused on jobs.

"They want to know what the government is doing to promote jobs, they want to know why money isn't being better and more effectively spent," Mr Turnbull told the Seven Network on Wednesday.

"I think the prime minister's got his priorities wrong on the aeroplane as well as he has on the economy."

SOURCE:http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/5514522/rudds-gourmet-meals-air-criticised/

Australian recession and Ian Huntley 's view

I certainly think Australia is in recession, but for various reasons I can't see it being as bad as in the USA or Europe.
The current surge could possibly crest 4,000 before a correction. At this stage the move has performed very similarly to first legs of other significant upward moves - many wait for 'the correction' only to find the market carries on. That builds buyer frustration, more fuel.
My guess is the market will top out early May and correct, but to the surprise of the bears, I don't believe it will correct all the way back to the lows, or take them out. For me, the jury is out as to whether this is the first leg of a new bull market, or whether it is very strong upward move in a series of big trading moves around the lows over the next year or two - as happened after the 1987 crash through to mid-January 1991.
It is obvious the Americans are working hard to re-instil confidence. Bernanke does have evidence to support his 'first green shoots' commentary backed up by the Fed's Beige Book anecdotal report from its 12 districts. Banks led the US market down, and there are certainly 'green shoots' appearing there. There would want to be given the immense effort thrown at kick starting a wrecked US banking system.
American Express reported a slowing in the rate of its bad debt accumulation, a good sign. As RIO has showed there is a thawing in the corporate bond market at a price, and that is a positive. RIO is hardly Robinson Crusoe in wanting to get away from its dependence on a series of banks in a syndicate. As one veteran businessman said to me, "Murdoch learned that lesson in the late 80s".
Copper - the so called guide to global industrial production is up nearly 80 per cent in price in just four months. And that's against a background of a horrendous global economy. It would appear that China is the main buyer as it prepares for its major infrastructure stimulus program which should impact its economic statistics in the second half taking Chinese GDP growth from the first half rate around 6 per cent to levels running at an 8 per cent per annum rate. Its car market is already larger than the USA. Chinese strength is not enough to kick start a global recovery, but it sure is a huge boost to Australia, as we export the materials needed to build its infrastructure!
Time does tell
I look at the cycle as usually kicking off in years ending in two, then ending in years ending from seven to zero. This time in the seven I saw danger and constantly warned against using debt against the portfolio but did not warn against investing in companies with high levels of debt. I did warn against one of the usual causes of Aussie bear market pain - mining specs. Pain came to those who used margin debt to leverage their portfolios, but also there was the odd disaster too. Again, adequate diversification is always the rule.
On the timing front, I recognised that a market running at plus 20 per cent growth rates couldn't last for ever but I felt that after a strong correction it had, say, another year in it. My lesson here is that when you run into the fifth year of such a bull market you not only reduce any debt, but also build some precautionary cash on the basis that you will be able to invest it ever so much better over the next year or so when panic brings bargains galore. A less explosive bull may well last longer but it makes sense to lighten in the later years especially against a climate of rising interest rates, when good returns stem from 10 year bonds.
Source: by Ian Huntley
http://au.pfinance.yahoo.com/b/ian-huntley/32/economys-bottom-behind-us

Scientists discover Earth-sized planet

In the search for Earth-like planets, astronomers zeroed in Tuesday on two places that look awfully familiar to home. One is close to the right size. The other is in the right place.
European researchers said they not only found the smallest exoplanet ever, called Gliese 581 e, but realised that a neighbouring planet discovered earlier, Gliese 581 d, was in the prime habitable zone for potential life.
An exoplanet is a planet beyond the Solar system that orbits a star other than the Sun. "The Holy Grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the 'habitable zone,"' said Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist at Geneva University in Switzerland.
An American expert called the discovery of the tiny planet "extraordinary."
Gliese 581 e is only 1.9 times the size of Earth - while previous planets found outside our solar system are closer to the size of massive Jupiter, which NASA says could swallow more than 1,000 Earths.
Gliese 581 e sits close to the nearest star, making it too hot to support life. Still, Mayor said its discovery in a solar system 20 light years away from Earth is a "good example that we are progressing in the detection of Earth-like planets."
Scientists also discovered that the orbit of planet Gliese 581 d, which was found in 2007, was located within the "habitable zone" - a region around a sun-like star that would allow water to be liquid on the planet's surface, Mayor said.
He spoke at a news conference on Tuesday at the University of Hertfordshire during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science.
Gliese 581 d is probably too large to be made only of rocky material, fellow astronomer and team member Stephane Udry said, adding it was possible the planet had a "large and deep" ocean.
"It is the first serious 'water-world' candidate," Udry said.
Mayor's main planet-hunting competitor, Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, praised the find of Gliese 581 e as "the most exciting discovery" so far of exoplanets - planets outside our solar system.
"This discovery is absolutely extraordinary," Marcy told The Associated Press by email, calling the discoveries a significant step in the search for Earth-like planets.
While Gliese 581 e is too hot for life "it shows that nature makes such small planets, probably in large numbers," Marcy commented. "Surely the galaxy contains tens of billions of planets like the small, Earth-mass one announced here."
Nearly 350 planets have been found outside our solar system, but so far nearly every one of them was found to be extremely unlikely to harbour life.
Most were too close or too far from their sun, making them too hot or too cold for life. Others were too big and likely to be uninhabitable gas giants like Jupiter. Those that are too small are highly difficult to detect in the first place.
Both Gliese 581 d and Gliese 581 e are located in constellation Libra and orbit around Gliese 581.
Like other planets circling that star - scientists have discovered four so far - Gliese 581 e was found using the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile.
The telescope has a special instrument which splits light to find wobbles in different wavelengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.
"It is great work and shows the potential of this detection method," said Lisa Kaltenegger, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.