Three hurt in suspected drug house blast

THREE people are in hospital with serious burns after a suspected clandestine drug lab explosion at a house in Perth's north.

Police, firefighters and ambulance officers went to the Balga property at around 2.25am (WST) today after a neighbour reported a loud blast, flames and screaming.

Two men, aged 34 and 37, have been taken to Royal Perth Hospital (RPH), the younger man with extensive burns to his body.

A 43-year-old woman with serious burns later presented at Joondalup Hospital and was transferred to RPH.

Police said a number of people were seen running from the house and driving off in a car.

Items associated with the manufacture of methylamphetamine were found in the house.

Police said a number of people were seen running from the property trying to escape the flames in the house. They got into a vehicle and drive away.

A 37-year-old man who lived at the house and a 34-year-old man from Baldivis were taken to Royal Perth Hospital by ambulance.

A 43-year-old woman presented herself at Joondalup Hospital but was transferred to Royal Perth Hospital. She and the 34-year-old man have serious burns.

The organised crime squad is examining the property after a number of items associated with the manufacture of methamphetamine were found inside the house, according to police.

Maddie Pulver fights back after bomb hoax

BOMB hoax victim Madeleine Pulver had a return to normalcy, of sorts, this weekend, four days after being subjected to a terrifying 10-hour ordeal at her Mosman home.

The teenager set off before 7.30am yesterday for a swim before returning home with a friend.

After a quick change, she left the house again, this time accompanied by her parents, Bill and Belinda Pulver, to join teammates from Wenona School for Girls for a hockey match, where she was warmly greeted by teammates.

It is believed to be the first school activity she has undertaken since being held in her home on Wednesday as the victim of an elaborate extortion attempt during which a hoax bomb device was chained around her neck.

As she left,, Madeleine said she just wanted to get on with her life.

''I'm doing well,'' she said. ''Every day is getting better. It's good to be getting back to normal.''

The way individuals cope with trauma is influenced by how their lives have been up until that point, according to Sydney neuro-psychotherapist Trisha Stratford, who said not all victims needed counselling.

''If something like this happens to you and you have had a fairly happy, enjoyable life up until that moment, then you cope with it better.''

Mr and Mrs Pulver stood on the sidelines cheering their daughter on.

Mr Pulver, who said his daughter would return to school on Tuesday, said the family would not feel safe until their daughter's tormentor was caught.

The note attached to Maddie - which featured references to Tai-Pan - did not include instructions for a handover of money, but Det Supt Luke Moore confirmed a "demand" had been made.

Yesterday, the 18-year-old donned her shinpads and headed to Sydney's inner west for an inter-school hockey competition.

Leaving home in the company of her father, Bill, and mother, Belinda, soon before 9am, Maddie clearly relished the opportunity to catch up with teammates.

After laughing and chatting with friends in a warm-up session, watched by a slew of television crews, she took to the field for a spirited game.

Her team eventually went down 2-0, but she was commended for her determination in attending.

There were supportive cheers from the crowd, and her teammates patted her on the back as she returned to the change rooms.

Maddie said she had looked forward to rejoining her teammates, saying her friends had been a "very good pillar of support" following her ordeal.

"It will be good to be back to normal," the 18-year-old said.

Earlier, Maddie took advantage of the warmer weather, heading out for an early morning swim with a male friend about 8am.

It was the same friend who had comforted her on Friday night, cuddling and hugging her during a visit from school mates.

But it won't be all fun and games for Maddie in the weeks ahead.

As she tries to come to terms with her horror bomb hoax ordeal, she will also have to resume her studies for her HSC exams.

Along with her fellow year 12 classmates, Maddie had been scheduled to begin the tests last Thursday - the day after she was attacked while studying alone at her Mosman home.

Staff at Wenona postponed the exams in the wake of the attack, citing the distress the incident had caused all students.

4WD driver tested

Epping woman, 34, who was driving a 4WD carrying 10 children when it crashed on Friday night has been released from the Royal Melbourne hospital after taking a blood alcohol test.

Police were last night waiting for the results before interviewing the unlicensed driver.

The 10 children are in a stable condition at the Royal Children's and Western hospitals. The Pajero ran off the Western Highway and rolled.

Militants retreat from Mogadishu

MOGADISHU — Somalia's Islamist Shebab rebels pulled out of key positions in the war-torn and famine-struck capital on Saturday, with the country's president proclaiming the city "fully liberated."

"Mogadishu has been fully liberated from the enemy, and the rest of the country will soon be liberated too," Sharif Sheikh Ahmed told reporters.

The Al-Qaeda affiliated Shebab insurgents abandoned several strategic positions overnight that were then taken over by government troops.

"We are very happy -- the fruits of bloodshed and the wars that we fought against the rebels are finally attained," Ahmed said.

African Union-backed government troops have been battling Shebab rebels in Mogadishu in an offensive to secure aid delivery routes for victims of the drought threatening some 12 million people in Somalia and other Horn of Africa countries.

"We have two enemies to fight - one of them is the Shebab, while the other is those who try to rob the people," the president said.

"We will not tolerate looting, and anyone found committing such a crime will be brought to justice."

Lawless Somalia is awash with rival militia factions. On Friday, food aid being handed out to famine victims in Mogadishu was looted by gunmen, who killed five people.

However, a spokesman for hardline rebels, Ali Mohamed Rage, said Saturday's withdrawal involved merely "a change of military tactics."

"The Mujahideen fighters applied military tactic changes to undermine the allied enemy of Allah, and you will soon be hearing a good news."

Shebab fighters are waging a bloody campaign to overthrow the country's Western-backed transitional government, and control large areas of the south and centre of the country.

Until Saturday morning, government and AU troops controlled just over half of Mogadishu, including the airport and port, while the Shebab controlled the city's north-east.

"The enemy is defeated, they pulled out of Mogadishu -- and we will fight them to eliminate them from the rest of the country," Somalia's prime minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said.

Since February, the African Union mission (AMISOM) with its 9,000 Ugandan and Burundian soldiers has clawed back key positions from the insurgents.

Major Paddy Ankunda, a spokesman for the AU's AMISOM force in Somalia, said they were reacting cautiously to the Shebab's move.

Rebel units began trundling out of the city in pickups before dawn after intense firefights with government forces late Friday night. The Al Qaeda-linked militants headed toward their strongholds across Somalia, a desolate terrain awash with hundreds of thousands of starving families enduring the Horn of Africa's worst drought in decades.

The country "welcomes the success by the Somali government forces backed by (African Union peacekeepers) who defeated the enemy of Shabab," President Sheikh Shairf Sheikh Ahmed told reporters at his residence.

He added: "It is time to harvest the fruits of peace. I call on the Somali people to help and to support their soldiers and point out any Shabab member hiding in homes."

Ali Mohamoud Rage, a Shabab spokesman, told a Somali radio station: "We have abandoned Mogadishu but we remain in other towns. We aren't leaving you. We have changed our tactics. Every one of you will feel the change in every corner and every street in Mogadishu. We will defend you and continue the fighting."

Shabab and its fierce interpretation of Islamic law, which espouses stoning adulterers and public beheadings, were despised in Mogadishu, where residents lived trapped by gunfire and artillery barrages between the rebels and government-backed troops. The capital devolved into a fearful, bloodstained, whittled version of itself as bullet-pocked buildings slumped along the Indian Ocean.

The U.S. has been concerned that the Shabab, which has connections to the Al Qaeda extremists in Yemen, would further disrupt the volatile intersection of Africa and the Middle East. In 2010, Shabab carried out twin bombings in Uganda that killed 76 people; the attacks were retribution for Uganda soldiers taking part in the African Union's peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

The rebels have been particularly brutal to their own countrymen. In recent weeks, they have deterred humanitarian organizations from reaching drought regions under their control, leaving swaths of the country scattered with starving families. Shabab has also been criticized for preventing hundreds of thousands Somalis facing famine from fleeing their territory to international aid camps.

The Islamic militants began seeping across Mogadishu in 2007, a year after Ethiopian troops invaded the country and a transitional government attempted to form a semblance of order among warring clans and religious extremists. The transitional government has received millions of dollars in Western assistance but is rife with corruption, tribal politics and an often noncommitted, underpaid army.

Surges by Africa Union forces, however, had weakened Shabab's grip on the capital. The rebels had been divided on tactics in recent months, and shortly before midnight Friday they launched attacks on government bases and troop positions. Gunshots and explosions rang across the city for hours as government-backed forces advanced on rebel strongholds.

"The government repelled the attacks and we have cleared Mogadishu this morning," government spokesman Abdirahman Omar Osman told The Times. "The security committee is in emergency meeting to restore law and order in the vacuum left by" retreating Shabab forces.

Somalis watched as militants streamed out of the city.

"I saw a convoy of about dozen pickup trucks full of fighters coming from Mogadishu," Osman Farole, a resident of Afgoye, about 22 miles outside the capital, told The Times. "Among the convoy were two black-tinted 4x4 vehicles that are supposed to carry their leaders.

Norway polar bear attack: grieving family pays tribute to Horatio Chapple

JUST before Patrick Flinders headed out on the expedition to the Arctic Circle he and his father posted a short film on the internet to express his excitement over the ''fantastic'' trip.

The 16-year-old, like his friends, Horatio Chapple and Scott Smith, both 17, dreamed of experiencing raw nature and were particularly excited about seeing polar bears in their natural habitat.

However, it was the brutality of the wilderness they had to face after their group was attacked by the world's biggest land carnivore.

A 2.1-metre, 254-kilogram bear rampaged through their camp on Friday, ignoring traps designed to keep it at bay. By the time it was shot, Horatio, an Eton schoolboy, was dead and Patrick, from Jersey, and Scott along with their two guides were seriously injured.

Patrick survived by punching the bear repeatedly on the nose.

Police who arrived by helicopter found the group in shock, the bloody carcass of the bear still lying among the tents and the injured.

The injured have undergone surgery and are recovering in hospital.

The victims were part of a group of 80 that landed last month on the Norwegian arctic island of Spitsbergen, home to more than 3000 polar bears.

Michael Reid sustained injuries to his face and neck in the incident and remained in hospital today, along with fellow leader Andrew Ruck, 27, Patrick Flinders, 16, and Scott Bennell-Smith, 17, who also underwent treatment overnight.

Mr Ruck's and Mr Reid's injuries were described as severe, while Scott and Patrick sustained less serious injuries. All were stable after operations.

The five men and boys attacked were part of a group travelling on a British Schools Exploring Society (BSES) expedition, which was camped on the Von Postbreen glacier near Longyearbyen on Svalbard, north of the Norwegian mainland.

Peter Reid described his shock when the BSES called him on Friday to inform him of the incident in which Horatio, from near Salisbury in Wiltshire, died.

"We were very anxious," he said. "We're upset, but there's a family in Wiltshire with a 17-year-old son who's been killed and we can't imagine the grief they're going through."

On hearing that his son had shot the bear, he felt a "mixture of anxiety and pride", he said.

His son, who lives in London and works as an events co-ordinator for the Royal Geographical Society, spoke warmly of Horatio in his email, he added.

Michael Reid described the schoolboy as "one of the best members of our group" and wrote "I am so devastated".

Hospital staff said it was hoped the survivors could be transferred to a hospital in the UK as soon as possible.

Jane Owen, the British ambassador to Norway, has visited the four survivors and said they were "all bearing up well".<

She said: "It's clearly a priority to get them home as soon as possible. They're receiving extremely good treatment here at the hospital in Tromso.

"We are working with the hospital authorities to establish when will be the right time to arrange for them to be medevaced (given a medical evacuation) back to the UK so that they can be with their families as they go through the recovery process.

"Our priority is obviously to support those involved and respect families' need for privacy at this very difficult time.

More than two dozen U.S. deaths in Afghan copter crash

Nato helicopter crashed overnight in east Afghanistan following an operation against Taliban insurgents.

Afghan provincial spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said the helicopter crashed in the Sayd Abad district of Wardak province. The volatile region borders the province of Kabul where the Afghan capital is located and is known for its strong Taliban presence.

Nato said the alliance was conducting a recovery operation Saturday at the site and investigating the cause of the crash, but did not release details or a casualty figure.

"We are aware of an incident involving a helicopter in eastern Afghanistan," said US Air Force Captain Justin Brockhoff, a Nato spokesman. "We are in the process of accessing the facts."

Nato said insurgents were in the area at the time of the crash.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed the downed aircraft was a US military helicopter and that the Taliban fighters had brought it down with a rocket attack.

The Taliban claimed militants downed the helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade. Mohammad Hazrat Janan, head of the provincial council said Tangi village elders reported that insurgents shot at the craft when it was flying back from an operation.

The incident took place in the eastern province of Wardak, an area rife with insurgent activity. There has been a swell of recent attacks in the country's southern and eastern provinces.

The crash comes just as NATO is drawing down and handing over security control to national forces. Ten thousand U.S. soldiers are scheduled to depart by year's end, while the full drawn-down is expected to take place by the end of 2014.

However, NATO's International Security Assistance Force has not said how the incident occurred. ISAF spokesman Justin Brockhoff confirmed the crash and acknowledged the helicopter had been flying in area where there was reported insurgent activity, but declined to offer additional details.

Officials are being especially tight-lipped because recovery operations at the site are still under way and body identifications and family notifications are just beginning, the U.S. military official said.

Last month, a NATO helicopter was brought down by insurgent fire in the country's eastern province of Kunar. The Taliban also claimed responsibility for that attack, though no injuries were reported.

In a separate incident, a NATO service member died Saturday after an improvised explosive device detonated in southern Afghanistan.

Elsewhere Saturday, a joint Afghan and coalition force conducted raids in the eastern province of Nangarhar, killing "several insurgents," NATO reported.

The operation also targeted a "Taliban facilitator," who NATO says was responsible for supplying ammunition and bomb-making materials to the Taliban.

In July, a series of gun battles in Nangarhar between insurgents and NATO forces left at least 10 militants dead.

Wallabies blacked out at hoodoo ground

AUCKLAND — An intensive defensive effort by the All Blacks created a 30-14 win over Australia in their Tri-Nations clash Saturday, giving their self-belief a boost in the countdown to the World Cup.

It was a far from perfect performance by the All Blacks who allowed the Wallabies an advantage with possession.

But while Australian attacks were swiftly shut down for most of the match the All Blacks, with Richie McCaw, Piri Weepu and Dan Carter to the fore, were able to find holes around the Australian ruck and out wide.

The three tries to two victory in the clash of the world's top two sides ensured the All Blacks retained the Bledisloe Cup, the symbol of trans-Tasman superiority, which they have held since 2003.

It also left them on track for an 11th Tri-Nations title in the 16-year history of the competition and gave an insight into the game they are working on for the World Cup which starts here next month.

"I thought the defence was outstanding," said All Blacks coach Graham Henry while playing down any psychological edge it could give them going into the World Cup.

"I think there's far too many occasions in the past where (a Tri-Nations win) hasn't amounted to a result in the Rugby World Cup so if we get complacent about this victory it will be curtains I'd say"

The Wallabies did finish the stronger of the two sides as the pace of the game told on several All Blacks having their first run since the Super 15 series, but Wallabies coach Robbie Deans said the damage had been done by then.

"Tactically we didn't help ourselves. We allowed the All Blacks to establish the D (defence) line and really create some linespeed in their defence and stymie our attack. We left a lot of points out there as well. We lacked a bit of patience in the way and where we attacked."

Weepu, getting a start at number nine after coming off the bench in recent Tests, stamped his mark with a series of breaks close to the maul and the All Blacks backs feasted off a supply of front-foot ball.

Other Wallabies youngsters in their first Auckland Tests were also rattled as New Zealand's biggest crowd of the modern era of 55,000 roared at every slip-up in the 22nd straight home win at their bastion.

The All Blacks burst out of the blocks to lead 10-0 after nine minutes and, when it was 17-0 after half an hour, the game was as good as gone.

Australia had their chances, and more possession in the attacking half but, as hard as they probed, just couldn't convert.

The All Blacks' defence under pressure was superb, a cornerstone for the victory, holding out the Wallabies for 14 consecutive phases in their 22 early on to set the tone.

In contrast, the Wallabies couldn't hold out the ruthless Kiwis when they had a sniff near the line.

Centre Ma'a Nonu shrugged off Adam Ashley-Cooper and Rocky Elsom to dive over in the eighth minute to finish a raid sparked by Piri Weepu while, similarly, Keven Mealamu burrowed over shortly after another Weepu blind-side raid.

Australia's attack wasn't predictable or slow but New Zealand's patient, smart and disciplined defence twice forced five-eighth Cooper into low percentage cross-field kicks which never paid off.

Direct rival Dan Carter delivered a five-star performance to underline his standing as the world's best playmaker, starring in attack, defence and slotting six from six with the boot.

Ironically, Australia's pre-match problem area, the scrum, held firm but they paid dearly for the All Blacks' superiority at the restarts.

When Digby Ioane, Australia's best by far, revived some hope with a brilliant counter-attacking try in the 51st minute, it was an immediate hit-back off the kick-off which snuffed out any thought of a comeback.

Australian economy safe and strong - Labor

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's decision for the first time ever to downgrade the US from a AAA to AA+ rating caps a two-week period that has seen the Australian market drop more than 10 per cent, wiping off more than $50 billion.

Wall Street finished up higher after a rally late on Friday following stronger than expected employment figures, but investors remain nervous about toxic debt levels in Spain and Italy.

Amid the turmoil, Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday called on Australians to trust in the "strong fundamentals" of our economy.

Ms Gillard said while Australia was not immune to global events, the nation was in a strong financial position.

We should have confidence that our economic credentials are among the best in the world," she said.

"We should also have confidence that we have handled in the past global instability.

"This Government has a proven track record of handling global instability. And we should also have confidence in the strong fundamentals of our economy.

"We have low debt, low unemployment, the Budget coming into surplus in 2012-13, a AAA credit rating and we are looking to strong economic growth."

Ms Gillard said that with a quarter of Australian exports going to China, Australia had its best terms of trade in 140 years.

"We are in the right part of the world. The part of the world that continues to grow. That means we will continue to see strong economic growth in our region," she said.

Treasurer Wayne Swan yesterday assured Australians our AAA credit rating was safe.

S&P attached a "negative outlook" to the new rating.

"The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilise the government's medium-term debt dynamics," S&P said in a statement.

But Ms Gillard called on Australians to remain confident about Australia's economy and its "strong fundamentals" despite what was happening globally.

"People should look with confidence at our economic credentials and fundamentals, and people should look with confidence at the ability of this government to deal with global instability," she said.

"We have done it before.

"We came out of the global financial crisis without having gone into recession."

Treasurer Wayne Swan today said Australia's own gold-plated triple-A credit rating was safe and secure and could not be more different to the US.

Mr Swan said Australia had known for some time the US faced a long and painful adjustment to get its budget back on a sustainable medium-term footing.

"But they've taken an important first step towards this objective," he said.

"S&P's announcement comes amid heightened volatility over the past week in international financial markets driven by continuing concerns about the weakness of the US economic recovery and sovereign debt levels in Europe."

Mr Swan said Australia was not immune from events in the rest of the world but the Australian economy's fundamentals remained strong.

He said unemployment was low, public finances were strong with very low debt and a huge pipeline of mining investment.

"Australia's gold-plated triple-A rating is safe and secure," he said.

"It's been recently affirmed and we are widely considered to be in the top-tier, even among the exclusive club of developed economies in the world to share the highest rating."

Mr Swan said the parliament had just about passed the budget in full, a budget that included the biggest fiscal consolidation in the nation's history.