Jobless rate tipped to rise

THE Australian jobs market is expected to have started the year on a weak note, with not enough jobs created to offset population growth.

An AAP survey of 15 economists, shows the unemployment rate to rise 5.5 per cent in January, from 5.4 per cent the previous month.

Total employment is expected to grow by 5,000 in the month.

AMP chief economist Dr Shane Oliver said the economy needed to add about 15,000-20,000 jobs a month in order for the unemployment rate to remain steady, but that kind of growth was unlikely at present.

"The labour market is going through a softer patch. We've seen month after month a fall in job vacancies, and business hiring plans remain weak," he said.

"I think we are still going through that phase in the economy where the weakness we saw late last year is leading to higher unemployment and that may have a little bit further to go before it has run its course."

The Australian Bureau of Statistics will release the data at 11.30am (AEDT), Thursday.

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Glenn Miller trombonist Paul Tanner dies

PAUL Tanner, a trombonist with the Glenn Miller Orchestra who later played a space-age instrument on the Beach Boys hit Good Vibrations, has died at 95.

His stepson, Douglas Darnell, says Tanner died of pneumonia on Tuesday at an assisted living centre in California.

Tanner performed with Miller from 1938 to 1942. During his long career, he also worked as a movie studio and ABC musician and performed with stars that included Tex Beneke, Henry Mancini and Arturo Toscanini.

He also helped develop the electro-theramin, a keyboard-style electronic instrument. Tanner provided its eerie sound on several Beach Boys recordings, including Good Vibrations.

Tanner also was a music professor and helped write several books.

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Vic firefighters brace for hot weather

FIREFIGHTERS are ramping up their resources in key hotspots across Victoria in preparation for the continued spell of hot weather and strong winds this week.

A total fire ban has been declared for Thursday in the six districts.

Northern Country, North East, North Central, Central, West and South Gippsland, and East Gippsland.

Fire Services Commissioner Craig Lapsley said higher temperatures and strong winds are increasing the fire danger right across the state.

"The weather conditions, combined with heavy fuel loads and dry fuels, pose a serious fire risk," Mr Lapsley said.

Hundreds of DSE and CFA firefighters, together with aircraft continue to work on the Harrietville and Aberfeldy fires, which have burnt out more than 80,000 hectares.

Two aircranes - Elvis and Gypsy Lady - are ready to be dispatched from Essendon and Ballarat if needed.

A third aircrane, Malcolm, on loan from NSW, is in action on the Harrietville fire.

At Harrietville, back-burns have been completed to the south of the town to offer greater protection, with another to Mount Hotham's northwest to limit the potential spread of the fire.

The Department of Health has warned Harrietville residents to boil their drinking water as firefighting operations have pushed sediment into the river, contaminating the town's supply.

"In these hot, windy and dry conditions, if a fire starts and takes hold, it's very difficult to control," Mr Lapsley said.

He said everyone who lives in high fire risk areas should be alert to weather conditions, talk to neighbours, listen to ABC local radio, commercial and designated community stations, check cfa.vic.gov.au and the FireReady app.

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Four dead in attacks on Iraq security

ATTACKS targeting security forces across Iraq have left three policemen and an army officer dead, officials say, amid a spike in unrest as the country grapples with a political crisis.

Two policemen were shot dead and three others were wounded by gunmen at a checkpoint in the town of Mussayib, south of Baghdad, while one police officer was killed and another hurt by gunfire in the main northern city of Mosul.

North of Baghdad in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, an army lieutenant colonel was killed and another officer was wounded by a roadside bomb while on patrol, officials said.

And in the capital, four people, including one policeman, were wounded by a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol.

No organisation has claimed responsibility for the deadly string of attacks, but Sunni militants including al-Qaeda's front group often target security forces and government targets in a bid to destabilise the country and push it back to the sectarian war that blighted Iraq from 2005 to 2008.

The violence took the death toll since Sunday to 72, indicating a spike in attacks amid a political crisis pitting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki against his government partners as weeks of rallies have called for his ouster.

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Woman business chief gets plum cabinet job

PRESIDENT Barack Obama will seek to add another woman to his cabinet by picking business executive Sally Jewell to head the vast Interior Department, a White House official says.

Obama has been criticised for naming middle-aged white men to the top jobs in his second term team, but has pledged to promote diversity in his other picks, and has now settled on several prominent females.

If confirmed by the Senate, Jewell - who heads Recreational Equipment Inc, an outdoors retail chain - will succeed Ken Salazar at Interior, which manages US national resources, wildlife, tribal issues and national parks.

"With years of experience managing a nearly $US2 billion ($A1.93 billion) a year company, she will bring to the position integrity, keen management skills, as well as dedication to the Department's mission of managing our nation's lands," a White House official said.

"She believes deeply in the American tradition of preserving our nation's wild places, while also understanding firsthand the inextricable link between conservation and the economy.

"She also believes we must be good stewards of our nation's natural resources, underscoring the administration's ongoing priority of expanding safe and responsible energy production," the official said, noting that Jewell began her career as an engineer for Mobil Oil Corporation.

Obama had been under pressure to add more diversity to his new cabinet after picking Chuck Hagel, John Kerry and Jack Lew, to serve as the secretaries of Defence, State and Treasury.

In January, Obama nominated high powered New York prosecutor and organised crime buster Mary Jo White to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission to implement his Wall Street reforms.

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US Post to end Saturday letter service

THE US Postal Service (USPS) has announced that it will halt letter delivery services on Saturday in an attempt to reduce costs that left it $US15.9 billion ($A15.36 billion) in the red in 2012.

USPS chief Tom Donahoe, the US postmaster general, said the national mail agency was taking the step after waiting in vain for Congress to put through reforms that would help it shore up its finances on a long-term basis.

"The Postal Service has a responsibility to take the steps necessary to return to long-term financial stability and ensure the continued affordability of the US mail," said Donahoe.

The USPS said the move is expected to result in $2 billion in cost savings.

The five-day service will begin on August 5. But the USPS will continue to deliver packages on Saturdays, and post offices will remain open on Saturday.

The USPS has been hit hard both by the turn to email and other electronic communications, reducing the volumes of mail it carries, and by competition from more agile private firms like Fedex in the high-margin parcel business.

Its losses more than tripled in the year to September 30 from $5.1 billion in fiscal 2011, with more than $11 billion sucked off to pre-fund health benefits for USPS retirees far into the future.

While package service revenue grew by 8.7 per cent last year, overall mail volume fell 5.1 per cent and operating revenues fell nearly one per cent, to $65.2 billion.

Since 2006 the service has reduced the size of its workforce by 193,000, or 28 per cent.

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Australian workers confident of pay rises

AUSTRALIAN workers are more confident than any other employees around the world about receiving a pay rise in 2013.

The latest Randstad Workmonitor report says three-quarters of Australian workers are confident of a pay rise this year, a dramatic increase on two years ago when just 46 per cent were expecting one.

This confidence is not shared by workers in many of the world's largest economies, with just 41 per cent of French, 42 per cent of Japanese and 57 per cent of German employees expecting a pay rise in the coming year.

Employees in the UK and the US are also less confident, at 61 per cent and 69 per cent respectively.

Randstad, a global recruitment and HR services specialist firm, said the expectations among Australian workers could present problems if organisations weren't performing well financially.

"A patchwork economy is still visible in Australia, with some businesses struggling while others show strong growth, so it is vital people have realistic expectations when it comes to pay rises," managing director Asia Pacific Deb Loveridge said, releasing the report on Thursday.

Businesses needed to be open with employees to prevent workers feeling disappointment and resentment if they didn't get a pay rise, she said.

Only 43 per cent of workers described the economy as "bad", compared with an average 61 per cent of employees worldwide.

The least confident were in the euro zone, where 98 per cent of Greek employees, 96 per cent of Spanish and 94 per cent of Italian labelled their national economic situation as "bad".

Over three-quarters (77 per cent) of Australian workers believed their workload increased last year, above the global average of 73 per cent.

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US man kills bus driver, kidnaps child

Residents look over the school bus where a shooting occurred near Destiny Church,  just north of Midland City, Alabama. Picture: Danny Tindell Source: AP

POLICE, SWAT teams and negotiators are clustered at a rural Alabama property where a man is believed to be holed up in an underground shelter after fatally shooting the driver of a school bus and fleeing with a 6-year-old child passenger, authorities said.

WSFA television said the man boarded the bus at around 3.40pm local time Tuesday, shot the bus driver and took one of the children to an underground shelter, where police are currently communicating with him through a PVC pipe.

Police could not immediately be reached for comment, but Sergeant Rachel David of the Dothan Police Department confirmed to WSFA that an adult male had been shot during the incident and that the suspect was "not in custody".

"We are at the very beginning of this investigation," she said.

The Dale County Sheriff's Office named the victim as 66-year-old Charles Albert Poland, Jr. It said he had been a bus driver since 2009 for the Dale County Board of Education.

WSFA, a CNN affiliate, said area roads had been closed and three local school systems had cancelled classes on Wednesday over the hostage situation.

Law enforcement personnel work a checkpoint in Midland City, below the home where a school bus shooting suspect barricaded himself in a bunker with a young child. Picture: Jay Hare

County coroner Woodrow Hilboldt told The Associated Press the overnight standoff continued today with tactical units, negotiators and other officers at the scene near a church. He said the suspect was believed to be in an underground shelter on his property.

"That's what has been described to me as an underground bunker. Someplace to get out of the way of a tornado," Mr Hilboldt said.

Claudia Davis, who lives on the road where the standoff was taking place, said she and her neighbours can't leave because the one road was blocked by police.

Ms Davis, 54, said she has had run-ins with the man suspected as the shooter.

"Before this happened I would see him at several places and he would just stare a hole through me," Ms Davis said. "On Monday I saw him at a laundry mat and he seen me when I was getting in my truck and he just started and stared and stared at me."

Michael Creel, who lives on the road where the shooting happened, said he went outside after his sister heard gunshots.

"Me and her started running down the road," Creel told the Dothan Eagle. "That's when I realised the bus had its siren going off. Kids were filing out, running down the hill toward the church."

- with AP and AFP

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Boeing Q4 sales strong but earnings not

US aerospace giant Boeing reported a sharp fourth quarter fall in earnings as expected on Wednesday, as tax costs surged from a year earlier but operating earnings gained on strong sales growth.

Meanwhile, the company's chief executive said the company was focused on solving the battery problem that grounded its newest aircraft, the 787 Dreamliner, worldwide.

"Our first order of business for 2013 is to resolve the battery issue on the 787 and return the airplanes safely to service with our customers," said Boeing chairman and CEO Jim McNerney.

Net earnings for the quarter came in at $US978 million ($A939.35 million), compared to $1.39 billion a year earlier, when earnings were buoyed by a favourable one-off tax settlement.

But sales jumped 16.7 per cent to $19.79 billion, and net earnings before tax gained 6.3 per cent to $1.54 billion from the year-earlier quarter.

Earnings per share came in at $1.28 compared to $1.84 a year earlier; "core" earnings per share, after the tax gain of a year earlier is stripped out, were $1.46, well above analysts' forecasts.

For the full year Boeing net earnings came in at $3.9 billion, down from $4.0 billion in 2011. While total revenues grew nearly $13 billion to $81.7 billion, operating and production costs rose faster, keeping net gains flat.

But core earnings per share were $5.88, better than the $5.01 analysts had predicted.

The company said that after delivering more than 600 aircraft last year, it had a record backlog of orders worth $390 billion going into 2013, both for civilian aircraft and in the defence and security sector.

"We remain focused on our ongoing priorities of profitable ramp up in commercial aeroplane production, successful execution of our development programs, and continued growth in core, adjacent and international defence and space markets," said McNerney.

The company still faces the challenge of the 787 grounding after two planes were hit by still-mysterious battery problems, one a fire. That has forced the company to halt deliveries of the aircraft, though production continues at a five-unit a month pace.

Boeing nevertheless forecast revenues in 2013 to grow slightly to $82-85 billion, leaving basic earnings per share in the range of $5.01-5.20. But it said that core earnings per share should improve to $6.10-6.30.

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Egypt opposition urge talks amid violence

EGYPTIAN opposition leaders are calling for urgent talks on the political crisis gripping the country, as a fresh eruption of violence killed two more people in Cairo.

Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading figure in the National Salvation Front, called for the talks just two days after the opposition had rejected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi's call for dialogue.

"We want an immediate meeting between the president, the ministers of defence and interior, the ruling party, the Salafist movement and the National Salvation Front to take urgent measures to end the violence and begin a serious dialogue," ElBaradei said in a tweet.

Former Arab League chief Amr Mussa, another NSF leader, said "the serious current situation" required the acceptance of dialogue "in order to stop the confrontations and the violence."

It was not immediately clear whether this represented a step back by the NSF, which had been demanding the formation of a national salvation government and the amendment of the Islamist-drafted constitution, before agreeing to any talks.

But Khaled Dawoud, spokesman for ElBaradei's Al-Dustur party, said ElBaradei's Twitter statement was a "denial of all the claims by the presidency that we reject dialogue.

"We are looking for a way out of this (crisis) because we're extremely worried."

The latest round of unrest began with protests marking the second anniversary of the Egyptian uprising on Friday, and took a violent turn a day later after a court sentenced 21 residents of Port Said to death over football related violence last year.

Anger on the streets has been directed primarily at Morsi, who is accused of betraying the revolution that brought him to power and of consolidating power in the hands of his Muslim Brotherhood.

The protests have also underscored long-standing tensions between protesters and the police, a force long accused of abuse.

In Cairo, two people were killed near Tahrir Square on Wednesday. Their identities were not immediately known, but medics said they had both been hit by buckshot.

Their deaths bring to four the number of people killed in Cairo and to 54 nationwide since violence erupted late on Thursday, prompting Egypt's defence minister to warn that the crisis could lead to the collapse of the state.

"The continuing conflict between political forces and their differences concerning the management of the country could lead to a collapse of the state and threaten future generations," General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi said on Tuesday.

Most of the deaths have been in Port Said, where clashes erupted on Saturday after a court issued death sentences against 21 supporters of local football club Al-Masry for their role in deadly riots last year.

Meanwhile, the NSF indicated that some of its leaders would meet during the day with representatives of the main Salafist party, Al-Nour, in response to an invitation from the ultra-conservative Islamist group to discuss the "deterioration of the situation."

As the call for talks was made, Morsi was in Berlin for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel on a visit that had been shortened from two days to just a few hours because of the unrest at home.

The visit, Morsi's first to Germany since he was elected in June, will centre on bilateral cooperation as well as the situation in Egypt, state news agency MENA said.

MENA said he is to meet with business people as well as Merkel.

Hours before Morsi's arrival, Germany's foreign minister warned that German financial aid to Egypt is contingent upon democratic progress.

Morsi took over last year from an interim military administration in charge since the February 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, who ruled the country for three decades.

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