THE bodies of an elderly couple have been found at a house in central Queensland.
Police found the bodies in a home at Rockhampton about 10am (AEST) on Tuesday.
They say the death of a 79-year-old woman is being treated as suspicious, but there are no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of a man, aged 83.
Investigations are continuing and a report will be prepared for the coroner.
SYNTHETIC cannabis may be the source of medical problems, including hallucinations and seizures, suffered by people in Aboriginal communities in South Australia's far north.
In a statement on Tuesday, police said they and the communities were concerned about recent reports of what appears to be synthetic cannabis being distributed on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands.
"At least half a dozen people have presented to health clinics recently with medical problems including ailments such as vomiting, stomach cramps, imbalance, hallucinations, disorientation, nausea, seizures, fits, and unconsciousness," police said.
They warned that synthetic cannabis should not even be touched because it can enter the skin through the pores.
Like cannabis, the possession, sale and distribution of synthetic cannabis or a substance that imitates cannabis is illegal.
Police are working with the local community and agencies to identify the source of the drug.
Synthetic cannabis looks like cannabis, is smoked and is sold under a range of brand names including Spice, Kronic, Northern Lights and K2.
CAR maker Ford expects to be back in production on Wednesday with issues surrounding a key component supplier set to be resolved.
Autodom Limited, which operates manufacturing facilities in Adelaide and Melbourne, was placed in voluntary administration at the weekend after closing its doors and standing down about 400 workers last week.
The company supplies parts to all three Australian car producers - Ford, Holden and Toyota.
Talks involving the administrators, the company, car producers and banks have centred on kick-starting production as soon as possible to prevent Ford and Holden having to stand down their own workers.
Ford said it now believed a resolution would be finalised on Monday and there would be no disruption to its production schedule.
The company had already scheduled a down day on Monday and would again be closed on Tuesday for the Melbourne Cup.
Holden was thought to be facing a similar situation, with assembly operations likely to resume on Tuesday, while Toyota was less affected after previously indicating it had enough parts to last until Christmas.
Earlier on Monday, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) Victorian secretary Leigh Diehm said the next 24 hours would be crucial in minimising the impact of Autodom's problems on Australia's car industry.
"The best-case scenario is obviously all our members back at work and the company is able to trade out of this current administration," Mr Diehm said.
"The next 24 hours is crucial and that'll be dependent on the car companies and also the banks, which have been in discussions all across the course of the weekend, and obviously the administrators, being able to find some cash to pay suppliers and get product rolling off the lines again."
POLICE are seeking urgent public assistance to find a four-week-old boy taken from a Sydney hospital by his father.
Police said 26-year-old Justin Groves walked from The Royal Hospital for Women at Randwick in Sydney's east at 11.40am (AEDT) on Monday with his infant son in his arms.
They said Mr Groves did not have a vehicle and may have left the area on foot or by public transport.
Police said they had concerns for the welfare of the baby boy due to his age and Mr Groves' lack of immediate access to baby supplies.
Mr Groves is described as being of Caucasian appearance, 170cm tall, of slim build and sporting a crew-cut hairstyle. He was wearing a white T-shirt with a blue print, and light blue jeans.
He has distinctive tattoos of skulls on his left arm and has "Ally" tattooed on his neck.
Police are asking the public to immediately report any sightings of Mr Groves and ring triple zero.
PM Julia Gillard is to focus on the global economy when she addresses the world leaders in Laos. Source: AAP
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard is to focus on the global economy amid a gloomy outlook for international finances when she addresses Asian and European leaders in Laos.
Ms Gillard was scheduled to arrive in Vientiane on Sunday afternoon ahead of two days of talks at the 9th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) on Monday and Tuesday.
It is her first international trip since the release last week of the landmark "Asian Century" white paper.
The prime minister is also expected to speak about the need to continue free-trade talks as well as the Group of 20 (G20) agenda.
However, the overarching theme of Ms Gillard's remarks, to be given during an address at a plenary session on Monday, will focus on the struggling global economy.
Economists have forecast a gloomy period ahead with global growth predicted to be more sluggish than previously expected as the recession in Europe continues.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cut its forecast for world output to 3.3 per cent for 2012, down from 3.5 per cent, while unemployment across the eurozone has risen to a record 11.6 per cent.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has also forecast slower growth in Australia.
European leaders attending the Laos talks are expected to provide an update on efforts to address tensions in financial market, to restore confidence and to stimulate growth and jobs.
The reform of international financial institutions and protectionism will also be on the agenda.
The second plenary session on Tuesday is to focus on terrorism, piracy at sea and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Energy security, water resources management and food security will also be discussed.
Ms Gillard was to meet with her Laotian counterpart, Thongsing Thammavong, on Sunday afternoon local time and was expected to also hold bilateral talks with British Foreign Secretary William Hague and French President Francois Hollande over the coming days.
Some media reports have suggested Ms Gillard will also meet with Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez.
Ms Gillard will travel to Indonesia later in the week for the Bali Democracy Forum at which she is expected to hold talks with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
A MAN has been severely burnt and a house in Sydney's southwest destroyed by an explosion and fire.
Emergency services told AAP a man suffered severe burns from the incident at Kingsgrove on Sunday afternoon.
He was treated on scene and has been taken to hospital.
The man's family was not home at the time of the blast.
It is unclear at this stage what caused the fire, but an emergency services spokesman said liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) was involved.
About 20 firefighters are at the scene, which will shortly be handed over to police who will begin investigations, the spokesman said.
INDONESIAN police have shot dead a suspected militant and seized bombs during a raid in a district that has been at the centre of an anti-terror crackdown in the past week, a spokesman says.
The raid on a house was conducted by local police and the anti-terror unit at sunrise in Kayamaya village in Sulawesi island's central district of Poso on Saturday.
"One suspect was killed in the raid and another has been arrested and taken to police headquarters in the city of Palu," national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar told reporters.
"The suspects resisted arrest and began throwing explosives toward the police, who opened fire in response."
Amar said police had seized several assembled bombs and other materials from the home.
Witnesses, who declined to be named, said the men had attended morning prayers at the neighbourhood mosque and were shot outside a school as they tried to run from the house.
An AFP photographer saw a pool of blood in the school courtyard after the shooting.
The raid came after an alleged militant was killed, two others arrested and explosives seized in a raid in Poso on Wednesday.
There have been three failed bomb attacks in the district in the past week.
Two policemen were found dead in Poso last month, with their throats slit, after disappearing while investigating an alleged terror camp linked to extremist Islamist group Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT).
Poso was the site of sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians between the late 1990s and mid-2000s that left thousands dead. It has since been described by police as a hotbed of terrorism.
A MAN has been killed and at least nine people injured in a collision between a train and a truck in Melbourne.
Emergency services say the man died at the scene after being found and treated by paramedics near the main engine of the train.
A driver of the train was in a serious but stable condition after being freed from the wreckage and taken to The Alfred Hospital with lower body injuries, Victorian Ambulance services said.
He was trapped inside the train for more than an hour after it collided with a truck at Abbotts Road at Dandenong South in Melbourne's south at 11.40am (AEDT) on Saturday.
An ambulance spokesman said eight other injured people, believed to have been passengers on the train, had been taken to hospitals nearby.
Paramedics gave the driver fluids and oxygen as emergency services worked to free him.
"Our team were treating his injuries while he was in there," an ambulance spokesman told AAP.
The spokesman said passengers were being taken to Frankston and Dandenong hospitals with a number being treated at the scene.
Metro Trains said train services on the Pakenham line between Dandenong and Cranbourne will be suspended, with buses to replace trains.
The deceased man was suffering a heart attack when emergency services found him, police said in a statement.
Major Collision Investigation Unit detectives are at the scene, where carriages lie on their side across the tracks after the train jackknifed on hitting the truck.
POLICE are warning of a possible repeat of Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires as they launch a major crackdown on arsonists in NSW.
More than 3000 bush and grass fires have been recorded across the state so far this spring, with 37 burning on Thursday - including a significant blaze near Lake Macquarie.
With temperatures rising into the thirties this week, coupled with strong westerly winds, NSW Police announced it was restarting Strike Force Tronto (Tronto) to target would-be firebugs.
"I'd like the public to understand that the people who light fires put everybody at risk," Detective Acting Superintendent Ian McNab told reporters in Sydney.
"There's a huge risk in even just a small grass fire.
"A small grass fire can turn into something catastrophic as we saw in Victoria back in 2009."
In 2009 the Black Saturday bushfires killed 173 people and destroyed more than 2000 homes.
Rural Fire Service (RFS) deputy commissioner Rob Rogers said about 350 bushfires were investigated every year in NSW and about 100 of those were deliberately lit.
A significant number of fires so far this spring have already been identified as the work of arsonists, including several blazes around St Marys, in Sydney's west, on Wednesday night.
Those fires, which had numerous ignition points, were brought under control about 8pm (AEDT) and Det Sup McNab said police already have intelligence about the perpetrators and arrests expected in coming days.
The 37 bush and grass fires burning on Thursday were mostly in the state's north, Mr Rogers said.
The RFS issued a watch and act notice for the Lake Macquarie fire, near Racecourse Road at Teralba, which had destroyed 40 hectares by 3pm (AEDT).
Mr Rogers said the blaze shouldn't pose a danger to homes, but more would be known by 6pm (AEDT).
While it is unclear how that fire started, authorities have not ruled out arson.
CRIS Valdez began life unwanted by his parents and was soon scavenging in a Philippine rubbish dump, an unlikely start for a boy now hailed as an inspiration for children around the world.
Valdez, 13, won this year's International Children's Peace Prize for his work as head of a charity organisation that educates and hands out gifts to thousands of youngsters in his poverty-plagued hometown.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu gave Valdez his award at a ceremony in the Netherlands in September, declaring him a "voice for the voiceless" and a "true inspiration".
After returning to the streets of Cavite, a coastal city on the outskirts of Manila, Valdez spoke in a soft voice to AFP about his noble philosophies that emerged from personal devastation and the people who turned his life around.
"I help because I see myself in children who roam and live on the streets," Valdez said during one of his weekend community outreach programs.
"Some good-hearted people showed me love and changed my life, and I am just paying it forward."
Valdez, nicknamed "Kesz", was born the third of nine children from a desperately poor couple who lived with hundreds of other squatter families on the fringes of a huge rubbish dump in Cavite.
The city was once a picturesque, colonial Spanish enclave and fish port, but deteriorated into a mostly rundown urban mess in a familiar pattern across the country where a quarter of the population now live on less than a dollar a day.
His parents called him "bad luck" because they tried to sell him when he was a baby but failed, according to Harnin Manalaysay, the head of a local Christian youth charity who eventually rescued Valdez.
Manalaysay said Valdez was forced to start scavenging from the age of two.
At ages three and four, Valdez was sleeping anywhere he could, including atop tombs at the city cemetery, because he frequently fled home to escape beatings by his rickshaw-driver father, according to Manalaysay.
At an age when children are just learning how to make friends, Valdez was learning to beg and steal.
"I found him sleeping on a curbside covered in flies. He was very dirty and being kicked by passers by," Manalaysay said.
Manalaysay enrolled Valdez, then aged four, in his alternative learning program for street children, in which volunteer teachers use mobile classrooms on pushcarts to bring classes to the students.
In between lessons, Valdez still scavenged for scraps to help out his family.
Then bad luck struck Valdez again when he was five.
Fellow scavengers jostling around a dump truck accidentally shoved him into a pile of burning tyres, badly injuring his arms and back.
"My father was angry when I came home and said I deserved it for being stupid," Valdez recalled.
Valdez said his mother took him to Manalaysay, who paid for his medical treatment and allowed him to recuperate at the charity worker's shelter for street children, called Club 8586.
"She came back (months) later to tell me they did not want him back anymore," Manalaysay said.
Manalaysay, a portly marine engineer whose club has been helping troubled youths for more than 27 years, became his legal guardian.
Under his tutelage, Valdez recovered, and his grades improved.
He also began volunteering as a six-year-old to teach other street children about basic hygiene.
When Valdez turned seven, Manalaysay asked him what he wanted as a birthday gift.
"I told him I wanted other children to receive what I had: rubber slippers, toys and candies," Valdez said.
So Valdez and his guardian spent the day giving various items to street children.
The giving became a yearly tradition and led to the creation of Valdez's own charity, called Championing Community Children.
Under Manalaysay's guidance, Valdez built the charity into one that raises funds from private donors to buy basic living items for children, including sandals, toys, food and clothes.
Volunteers, made up mostly of Valdez's friends, also teach basic hygiene, nutrition and gardening, as well as educate children on their rights to help prevent abuse.
Valdez's charity has helped 10,000 children in Cavite over the past six years, according to the judging committee of the International Children's Peace Prize, which was founded by Dutch organisation KidsRights.
"Kesz is like any other normal kid. But his achievements, and the number of people he has helped, surpass those of most adults," Manalaysay said.
Valdez's plans for the immediate future are to continue with his charity, while making sure his school work does not suffer from his busy schedule.
Eventually, he wants to work in one of the toughest jobs of all, while expanding his charity work.
"I'm studying hard because I want to be a doctor ... I want to help more children, not only in the Philippines, but also in other countries," he said.
