A CYCLIST has died after he was hit by a truck and became trapped underneath it in Newcastle.
The truck collided with the 36-year-old man on Minmi Road at Wallsend just after 8am (AEST) on Sunday morning.
Emergency services were called but the man died at the scene.
The truck driver was not hurt.
Police are continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident.
Robot farming is just one possibility that was on display at the robot convention in Queensland. Source: AAP
SWARMS of robots tend to crops in central Queensland.
A robotic clone hosts a lecture at a Brisbane university for his master, who is more than 7000km away in Japan.
A band plays while flying robots light up the sky around them.
This isn't the future. It's Robotronica - a futuristic event held at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane on Sunday.
QUT creative director Jonathan Parsons says the event doesn't just showcase future possibilities, but highlights how advanced robotics presently is.
"We tend to use the term robots when it's something a bit alien or strange, but in the '50s dishwashers were robots, but we don't refer to them as that anymore," he told AAP.
"Now their completely part of the fabric of our society and one day, all these things will be too."
Swarm Farm Robotics Director Andrew Bate says his project is the future of agriculture.
One his farm near Emerald in central Queensland, Mr Bates is developing small tractors that will operate unmanned with others in a swarm, to replace the bulky, expensive models currently used.
"We keep getting bigger and bigger, but now the focus is on being smaller and more efficient," Mr Bate said.
"It's better for the soil and it's far more cost effective."
The star of the show was Geminoid, a robotic "clone" of his creator, Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro.
Geminoid, who blinks and has other subconscious human traits, had his crowd entranced when he re-presented a lecture his creator did at QUT just days before.
Robotics workshops and a gig from Brisbane pop group 7-Bit Hero, who incorporate smart phone gaming with their live show, was also featured at the event.
Kevin Rudd insists Papua New Guinea is committed to his hardline asylum seeker resettlement plan. Source: AAP
AUSTRALIA and Papua New Guinea stand by their agreement that asylum seekers arriving by boat will be sent to PNG for processing and eventual settlement, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says.
Mr Rudd was queried on Sunday about the deal, signed on July 19, after PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill told Fairfax Media he had not agreed to settle all asylum seekers processed on Manus Island and found to be genuine refugees.
Mr O'Neill was reported as saying Australia would need to take back a share of them.
Mr Rudd said his PNG counterpart was simply reaffirming the conditions of their deal.
"These are all contained and outlined in absolute detail in the agreement that we reached with Papua New Guinea," he told reporters in Sydney.
"He stands by that, I stand by it and frankly, it's there in black and white."
On Saturday night, Mr O'Neill said PNG was "100 per cent committed" to the deal.
"People who are found to be refugees ... will be settled in Papua New Guinea and other participating countries in the region," he said in short statement.
"They will not be returned to Australia under the agreement."
Meanwhile, Immigration Minister Tony Burke says media reports that people smugglers are now offering to fly asylum seekers to Australia show Labor's hardline policies are discouraging people from taking dangerous boat journeys.
Some asylum seekers in Indonesia are apparently being told they can fly to Australia on fake tourist visas to sidestep the Rudd government's Pacific resettlement policy.
"This is just another desperate measure from people smugglers realising that the game's up," Mr Burke told reporters in Sydney.
Mr Burke denied flying was a loophole available to asylum seekers trying to reach Australia.
"If they could have gotten away with this they would have tried it years ago," he said.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison also sought to downplay the report.
"We have very strong controls on who can get on planes and who can get into the country," he told ABC television.
"That's why people get on boats and pay people smugglers many times over what they would pay to get on an airplane to come to Australia."
SHE is a pre-schooler whose name is Monique or Nikki.
But that's all the little girl, who is aged about three, has been able to tell police after she was found wandering along a street at Springfield on the NSW Central Coast about 10am (AEST) on Sunday.
By Sunday evening, fears were growing for the welfare of her parents, who have not yet come forward to claim her.
Police officers spent the day canvassing the local area, but no one was able to shed light on the child's identity.
A photo of Monique went viral on the NSW Police Facebook page, garnering 167,000 views in just a few hours, a police spokesman told AAP.
The little girl is described as having shoulder-length blonde hair, green eyes and pierced ears.
She was wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt bearing the logo 'CUTE', pink three-quarter-length pants and pink slip-on shoes when she was found.
The Department of Family and Community Services (FACS) has been alerted.
HODDLE Street mass murderer Julian Knight says jail authorities are dashing his hopes for freedom, because of their mistaken view he is a psychopath.
Knight is eligible to apply for parole next May, but the parole board has already said he is not ready for release, the Victorian Supreme Court was told on Friday.
Knight, wearing a black suit and representing himself, was back in court to apply for leave to bring proceedings against jail authorities.
He accuses them of failing to provide him with a detailed sentencing plan to improve his chances of release.
He also wants to be transferred to the Judy Lazarus transition centre which gives selected prisoners near the end of their sentence a supervised pathway back into the community.
Knight needs to ask the court's permission to start legal proceedings, because he has been declared a vexatious litigant, and is fighting jail authorities in up to 14 current matters before the courts.
Knight, who is in maximum security Port Phillip Prison, complained to the court he is being treated differently to other murderers.
"All other cases, they've all progressed out of maximum security within a third of their minimum term," he told Justice Anthony Cavanough.
Knight was jailed for life for killing seven people and wounding 19 in a shooting spree in Melbourne in 1987.
He is serving a minimum 27 years and last August was reduced from a maximum security to a medium security prisoner.
Knight says that having a minimum term gives an expectation he will eventually be released.
"Corrections Victoria have the mistaken belief, apparently forever, that I'm a psychopath with a personality disorder," he told the court.
Knight says this is affecting his progress through the jail system and if the parole board believes he is not ready for release then it should "hurry up and get me ready for release".
Claire Harris, for Corrections Victoria deputy commissioner Brendan Money, denied Knight's claim authorities failed to consider psychological reports recommending his gradual integration into the community.
Ms Harris said sentencing plans were tailored to each inmate and were not fixed.
She said Knight's sentencing plan was reviewed in August last year and again last December.
Ms Harris added jail authorities had no duty to transfer Knight to the transition centre.
Justice Cavanough will rule on the matters at a date to be fixed.
AUSTRALIA'S biggest private hospitals operator, Ramsay Health Care, is urging patients to quit Medibank should a dispute with the insurer over funding not be resolved satisfactorily.
But Medibank, which is Australia's largest health insurer, says Ramsay's requests are excessive, and payments to hospitals are outstripping growth in health insurance premiums.
Ramsay said on Friday that Medibank had lifted health insurance premiums by 6.2 per cent in April 2013.
But the insurer had offered to pay Ramsay only two per cent more for the provision of healthcare services.
Ramsay said a two per cent increase was less than the inflation rate, far less than the rising rate of healthcare costs, and so low that it could threaten the quality of care for patients.
The hospitals group said Medibank appeared to want members' premium income but not actually spend it when members needed access to quality healthcare.
"To ensure that patients' choice is not compromised by Medibank's actions, Ramsay would be suggesting that patients transfer to another health fund," Ramsay said in a statement.
Ramsay said Medibank had not passed on sufficient increases to private hospitalS for some years.
In was essential that health insurers pay appropriate rates to private hospitals given the rising costs of wages and healthcare technology and infrastructure.
Medibank has written to 9,000 doctors at Ramsay Health Care, saying that each year its payments to hospitals grow by more than the increase in premiums.
"Medibank contracts more than 450 private hospitals across Australia on behalf of our members," Medibank group executive of provider networks, Dr Andrew Wilson, said in a statement.
"We believe Ramsay Health Care's current request is excessive.
"We will not simply sign a contract with a hospital at any cost."
Medibank said hospital charges must be affordable, otherwise they would not be sustainable and would affect member premiums.
Shares in Ramsay Health Care were $2.25, or 6.29 per cent, lower at $33.52 at 1531 AEST on Friday.
A Chinese zoo under fire for disguising a hairy dog as a lion has closed for "rectification". Source: AAP
A CHINESE zoo ridiculed for disguising a dog as a lion has shut down temporarily for "rectification", media report.
The zoo's supposed "African lion" was exposed as a fraud when the dog used as a substitute - a Tibetan mastiff - started barking, the state-run Beijing Youth Daily had reported earlier.
The zoo, in central China's Henan province, has "altered several misnamed animal signs", the Beijing Times reported on Friday, adding that zoo officials have issued a public apology and "closed for rectification".
Three other species housed incorrectly in the zoo reportedly included: two coypu rodents in a snake's cage, a white fox in a leopard's den, and another dog in a wolf pen.
A photograph of a dog sitting in a cage in front of a sign reading "African lion" drew ridicule on Chinese social media services, with one user saying: "They should at least use a husky to pretend to be a wolf".
The Tibetan mastiff is a large and hairy dog breed.
Authorities in the park in the city of Luohe, where the zoo is located, said the facility had been contracted out to a private zookeeper since 1998.
TWO families devastated by a killing that shocked Alice Springs are united in the sense of betrayal they feel towards the mental health system.
Gwvynyth Cassiopeia-Roennfeldt and Rocky Manu were flatmates for 18 months before the paranoid schizophrenic Manu killed her in November 2011.
Ms Cassiopeia-Roennfeldt, 36, was found with multiple stab wounds in what Coroner Greg Cavanagh described as "a frenzied attack".
The flat was leased to the pair by the Mental Health Association of Central Australia (MHACA), but an inquest into the killing has heard that they were left completely unsupported by authorities when Manu, now 45, stopped taking his anti-psychotic medication four months before the tragedy.
There was confusion about who was responsible for following up Manu's treatment, and although several people knew he was relapsing, there were no proper channels for them to report it.
Counsel assisting the coroner, Peggy Dwyer, said in her closing submissions on Friday that the systems of the Alice Springs Hospital and the Central Australian Mental Health Service (CAMHS) had been "deficient in the extreme".
She said Manu's committed and supportive family were led to believe doctors had his treatment under control, when they did not, and that the concerns they repeatedly expressed to Manu's psychiatrist, Dr Prosper Abusah, asking for more involved treatment should have been given more weight.
Dr Dwyer said Dr Abusah was ultimately responsible for allowing Manu's treatment to lapse.
Multiple witnesses testified that Manu had never been homicidal or suicidal, and that he had no history of violence.
But they also said he could be aggressive and intimidating when unwell.
They said his paranoia and suspicion resulted in increasingly controlling behaviour towards his housemate, such as forbidding her friends and family from visiting the unit, making her remove all technology from the house, banning her from speaking his name, and suspecting her of poisoning his food.
Mr Cavanagh said Manu could be difficult to manage.
"A man called Rocky: intelligent, manipulative, full well knowing after 20 years the mental health requirements for him and not liking them, could work the system to get what he wanted, and not what the community wanted," he said.
Manu wanted his own life and was resistant to having a case manager watching over him.
Ms Cassiopeia-Roennfeldt was a peer worker with the MHACA, and her colleagues may have forgotten she was also vulnerable, and did not check on her regularly, Dr Dwyer said.
"Because she was such a competent, clever woman, it appeared on the surface things were going well."
But Ms Cassiopeia-Roennfeldt didn't feel she could speak to authorities about concerns she had about Manu's behaviour, motivated by a desire to help him get well as she had.
The coroner will hand down his findings at a later date.
Scottish star Calvin Harris has topped Forbes magazine's list of the world's highest-paid DJs. Source: AAP
SCOTTISH singer-songwriter Calvin Harris must be glad he abandoned performing live for taking a stand behind the decks, after topping the Forbes magazine list of the world's highest-paid DJs.
The 29-year-old Scottish star, who holds the record for the most UK Top Ten hits from a studio album (nine) took home $US46 million ($A50.71 million) over the past year.
Harris pushed last year's list-topper Tiesto into second place, with the Dutch record-spinner earning $US32 million.
They were followed by French house music producer David Guetta, the trio Swedish House Mafia and Canada's Deadmau5.
Swedish DJ Avicii is the youngest on the list, pocketing $US20 million at just 23 years old, followed by Afrojack ($US18 million) and fellow Dutchman Armin van Buuren who took home $US17 million, while US Djs Skrillex and Kaskade rounded out the Top Ten.
Indian divers and engineers are struggling to refloat a stricken submarine after it exploded. Source: AAP
INDIAN divers are pumping water out of a submarine that has sunk at its mooring in a Mumbai military shipyard after it exploded, with 18 sailors on board.
India's prime minister voiced "deep regret" over the accident which is feared to have left no survivors.
The fully armed INS Sindhurakshak, returned by its original maker Russia earlier this year after a major refit, was engulfed by a fireball that lit up the night sky at a Mumbai dock early on Wednesday. The vessel then sank.
The disaster, considered the navy's worst since the sinking of a frigate by a Pakistani submarine in 1971, has cast a long shadow over India's military capabilities as it seeks to counter a build-up by increasingly assertive China.
Divers had opened the main hatch and were pumping out water on Thursday to raise the diesel-powered vessel, which is lying in shallow water, officials said. Part of the stricken submarine protruded out of the water.
"So far we have not found any survivors but we have not gone through the entire boat yet. Also we have not sighted any bodies in the area searched," a senior navy official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Separately, a top defence ministry official, who asked not to be quoted, told AFP that the vessel had suffered "very, very extensive damage".
"The dewatering of the submarine is on," the official said.
Three sailors who were on the outside of the vessel managed to leap to safety.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, addressing the nation in the traditional Independence Day speech at the Red Fort monument in Delhi, voiced sorrow over the tragedy, which marked a major setback for the rapidly modernising navy.
"We have deep regret that we lost the submarine INS Sindhurakshak in an accident. Eighteen brave sailors are feared to have been martyred," he said.
"The accident is all the more painful because the navy had recently achieved two major successes in the form of its first nuclear submarine, INS Arihant, and the aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant," Singh said.
In recent days India launched its first domestically produced aircraft carrier and began sea trials for the first Indian-made nuclear submarine, trumpeted as a "giant stride" for the country.
Newspapers lamented the loss of the submarine on their front pages. "Navy Catastrophe", said the Indian Express in a headline. "Defender of the seas meets fiery end", said The Hindustan Times.
The Times of India called it the country's "worst peacetime disaster".
The world's biggest democracy has been expanding its armed forces to upgrade its mostly Soviet-era weaponry and respond to what many in India perceive as a growing threat from regional rival China.
Defence Minister A.K. Antony described it as the "greatest tragedy in recent time".
Navy chief D.K. Joshi said on Wednesday no sign of life had been detected since the submarine was engulfed by flames.
Amateur video footage showed a fireball in the forward section of the Sindhurakshak, where torpedoes and missiles were stored as well as battery units.
An inquiry board will probe the cause and look at the possibility of sabotage, but "the indicators at this point of time do not support that theory", Joshi said.
The board is due to report its findings within a month.
Other sailors on vessels near the INS Sindhurakshak were admitted to a navy hospital in Mumbai with burns.
