POLITICS & POLICY

Family and friends are currently mourning with the death of 12-year-old Bailey O’Neill after suffering a brutal attack from his two classmates. What makes this story heartbreaking is that Bailey celebrated his 12th birthday on Saturday then his life support was taken off on Sunday morning.

A start-up political party led by a retired clown won 25% of the vote in Italy's recent elections. This must be applauded as a big upgrade in the calibre of Italy's political class. Clowns are merely clever buffoons. Politicians are dangerous psychopaths.

Australian newspapers and Web sites saw a 3 per cent rise in the number of jobs advertised in February compared to January, according to the Job Ads survey released on Monday by the ANZ. The growth likewise reflected an improvement that was the highest level since October 2012.

Effective March 31, Australian rare earths miner Lynas Corp will have a new chief executive officer as Nicholas Curtis steps down to give way to Eric Noyrez.

For three years in a row now, Adelaide remained Australia's most liveable city, mainly due to its affordable housing payment schemes, cleanliness and good standard of living, according to a report released by the Property Council of Australia on Monday. Following it on second was Canberra and Hobart at third.

A 5.5 magnitude earthquake, in what Chinese media described as just shallow or moderate, struck the nation's Yunnan province on Sunday. Although no casualties have been reported as of presstime, the earthquake did damage at least 3,000 buildings and toppled some 700 homes.

The Hurun Report has released its Global Rich List 2013 where it stated that most of the world's top billionaires are found in Asia.

Australia has broken its own hottest summer record, according to data released by the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM).

Some 2000 agitated members of the West Australian Prison Officers Union (WAPOU), dismayed over how the state government continued to stall their back pay dispute, has called a snap 24-hour strike on Friday morning, effectively abandoning their posts at 13 public prisons across WA.

Bell FX Currency Outlook: The Australian dollar has resumed its softer tone this morning after a quick move up yesterday afternoon.

Experts have identified that the mysterious shark caught two years ago by a local fisherman off Rottnest Island was a mandarin dogfish, a specie that's only usually found between Indonesia and Japan as well as in New Zealand.

China continued to intensify its campaign against online porn sites with its latest crackdown leading to the closure of 225 Web sites, including 4,000 Web channels and columns as well as 30,000 blogs and microblogs that allegedly contained and disseminated "obscene and vulgar information," according to the country's State Internet Information Office (SIIO).

Probably seeing what he did could mean the death of his business, the Chinese owner who had earlier put up a sign on his restaurant window banning Japanese, Filipino and Vietnamese nationals has voluntarily put it down.

The federal government of Australia has assured some $100 million in flood relief amount to Queensland to enable the state government rise from the series of floods that battled it in the month of January this year.

Watch out, China. Australian rare earths miner Lynas Corp on Wednesday announced it had produced its first batch of rare earths products from its Malaysian processing plant, in what could be a fitting finale to its hardships battling out for the operation of the facility.

A man aged 40s has died in New Zealand after a shark attacked him while swimming off Muriwai Beach, about 40 kilometres west of Auckland. However, police said they open fired at the shark from a boat and witness accounts said they were actually two sharks hovering at the time. Investigations are now being made if the man was indeed killed by which shark or by the bullets that flew from the cops' guns.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 108 points, or 0.8%, to 13893 in afternoon trading, reclaiming about half of Monday's 216-point tumble, which was triggered by Italian election results that ushered in political uncertainty.

Bell FX Currency Outlook The Australian Dollar continued its weak tone overnight as no clear result occurred in the Italian election and Fed President Bernanke testified before a US Senate committee.

Prices of safe haven yellow metal gold rose to $1,598.55 an ounce, or as much as 0.3 per cent, at 11:25 a.m. in Singapore on increased from China even as the country continued to produce more gold within its confines.

The torrential rain pounding across southern Queensland and the resulting flashfloods has claimed at least one life on Tuesday. But hopes returned in favor of the rescue teams who were able to find a 47-year-old woman after being reported missing for more than 12 hours. Efforts to rescue another stranded motorist is underway.

Authorities in Western Australia have sounded off the alert warnings on Tuesday as Cyclone Rusty continued to pack in strength and had developed into a Category 3 storm.

Bell FX Currency Outlook: Australian Dollar dips in morning trade on Italian political instability.

Blue-chip stocks headed toward their third decline in four sessions as Italian election exit polls raised fears the country might abandon austerity measures. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 64 points, or 0.5%, to 13937 in midafternoon trading Monday.

A United Nations (UN) scheme to surreptitiously seize property rights from people worldwide and pack the world's populations into tiny micro-cities controlled by a centralized government has a new ally, Monsanto, which recently joined the so-called World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in pushing for the widespread implementation of the infamous "Agenda 21."

Prior to the November elections, Republican efforts to overhaul voter identification laws, according to the White House, congressional Democrats and most of the mainstream media, were nothing more than thinly veiled attempts to prevent legal Americans (especially minorities) from voting.

Every state legislator in the U.S. takes an oath to uphold their state and federal Constitutions. However, in the real world, those oaths can apparently be meaningless.

Some 16 young students of Brisbane Christian College have been plucked out into safety as the school bus they were riding got stranded in flash flooding near the intersection of Learoyd and Paradise roads at Acacia Ridge on Monday morning at 8.40am. All children were safely recovered.

Bell FX Currency Outlook: The Australian Dollar opened this morning above 1.0300 but has since fallen to similar levels seen at the end of last week.

Residents in Western Australia have been advised to take cover as Cyclone Rusty intensified on Monday to become a Category 2 storm. The development has forced the closure of major iron ore ports in the region, essentially derailing exports of the steelmaking key ingredient. Iron ore prices are likewise forecast to spike in the world market.