Body found in car in Melbourne dam

Police this afternoon announced the death was not being treated as suspicious and officers were investigating a possible car accident after the discovery of a hatchback in a dam this morning.

Body found in a car thought to have been submerged in a dam for four months could be that of a missing Geelong man.

Farmers draining a dam on a Werribee South property found the car with the body inside on Monday morning.

Police are investigating whether the vehicle ended up in the water after an accident.

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They believe the dead man could be a 46-year-old from Corio who has been missing since January.

"The death is currently not being treated as suspicious and police are looking at a number of factors, including a possible vehicle collision," a police statement said.

Police have not named the person but in January they issued an appeal to help locate 46-year-old Ismet Toprak after he failed to turn up for work in Werribee South.

His wife last saw the father of four leaving his home in the Geelong suburb of Corio about 4.30am on January 12.

But he failed to arrive for work at a broccoli and cauliflower farm in Werribee South.

In January, police and relatives said it was extremely out of character for Mr Toprak, described as a hard worker and family oriented, not to be in contact with his family and friends.

Mr Toprak's brother Huseyin Toprak flew to Melbourne from Turkey to support the family, who migrated to southwestern Victoria in the late 1990s. Their extended family remains in Turkey.

Police at the time said Mr Ismet Toprak reportedly had been upset by his wife's long battle with cancer but remained committed to his family, and usually called his wife every half hour to check how she was.

It's understood the car was covered in algae, indicating it had been in the dam for some time, and that a section of barbed wire fence had been knocked down near the site.

Aussie man busted for drugs in Bali

DENPASAR, Indonesia, May 23, 2011 (AFP) - - Indonesian police on Monday said they had arrested an Australian man with a small amount of methamphetamine and two ecstasy pills on the resort island of Bali.

Ricky Shane Rawson, 49, of Melbourne, could face up to 20 years in jail if convicted of possession of illegal drugs, police said.

He was arrested Saturday at a villa in Seminyak, north of Kuta beach. Police said Rawson was in Bali on holiday.

"At this stage we suspect that he is only an addict, not a distributor," a police officer told reporters.

The chief of the drug squad in Denpasar, Ambariady, said Rawson was arrested on Saturday at a villa where he was staying in the upmarket area of Seminyak.

"He's an Australian citizen who was caught in an operation, called Operation Antique, and carried out by Denpasar police," he said.

He added that police were still investigating the source of the alleged drugs.

Police allege Rawson was caught with a small bag of methamphetamine and two ecstasy pills.

He is expected to be charged with drugs possession, which carries a penalty of between four and 20 years' jail.

Woman can use dead husband's sperm

Sydney woman has won her battle to be able to use her dead husband's frozen sperm to try to have their baby.

Justice Robert Allan Hulme ruled in the NSW Supreme Court that Jocelyn Edwards is entitled to possession of the sperm recovered from the body of her late husband, Mark Edwards.

"Although there is no direct evidence, the clear and only inference is that she desires to have a child with the aid of assisted reproductive treatment," the judge said.

Ms Edwards, 40, married her husband in 2005 and after she had not fallen pregnant, they discussed fertility treatment and assisted reproductive technology and attended a clinic in early August 2010.

The couple expressed a preference for IVF and were to return on August 6 for discussions and to sign consent forms to commence treatment.

"Tragically, at about 12.15pm on 5 August, Mr Edwards was fatally injured in a workplace accident," the judge said.

The next morning a judge made orders allowing the posthumous extraction of sperm from Mr Edwards and this has been held at a laboratory pending the court case

Volcano ash may reach France, Spain

Eruption of Iceland's most active volcano is unlikely to cause a repeat of last year's major disruption to air traffic, an expert said, despite the island having to shut its main airport and maybe closing its airspace. The Grimsvotn volcano burst into life on Saturday in what experts said was a stronger eruption than its last outbreak in 2004. The plume from the volcano shot 20km into the sky, forming a huge, bubbling mass which seeped above the clouds high over the North Atlantic island.

Experts have said it will probably not cause the same kind of disruption as when Eyjafjallajokull erupted last April, grounding European airlines for days, as its eruptions tend to be smaller and the particles from it less likely to disperse so far into the atmosphere.

Authorities halted flights then due to fears that dust and ash would get into aircraft engines and cause accidents after the cloud was blown into European air traffic lanes.

Europe's air traffic control organisation said, "There is currently no impact on European or transatlantic flights and the situation is expected to remain so for the next 24 hours."

"Aircraft operators are constantly being informed of the evolving situation," the Brussels-based organisation said.

The Isavia civil aviation authority said it had decided to shut the island's main airport, which is about 30 miles from capital city Reykjavik.

"The ash distribution forecast over the next six hours shows that the ash from the volcano will spread over Iceland today, leading to the closure of most Icelandic airports as the day goes on," it said.

Isavia on Saturday imposed a flight ban of 120 nautical miles around the area. Grimsvotn lies under the Vatnajokull glacier in southeast Iceland, the largest glacier in Europe.

When it last erupted in 2004 transatlantic flights had to be re-routed south of Iceland, but no airports were closed.

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Icelandic volcano ash could enter UK airspace

Safety experts have warned that ash from an erupting Icelandic volcano that closed the country's airspace may blow across large swathes of western Europe, raising fears of new flight chaos.

Air safety officials said ash from the Grimsvotn eruption may reach north Scotland by Tuesday before sweeping across Britain to hit France and Spain two days later, as experts said the impact should not be as far-reaching as 2010 when a similar event caused widespread flight cancellations.

Ash deposits were sprinkled over the capital Reykjavik on Sunday, some 400 kilometres to the west of the volcano which spewed a cloud about 20 kilometres into the sky.

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Residents living near to Grimsvotn said the skies had turned black in an eerie echo of last year's eruption of the smaller Eyjafjoell volcano which led to the biggest global airspace shutdown since World War II.

"It's just black outside, and you can hardly tell it is supposed to be bright daylight," Bjorgvin Hardarsson, a farmer at Hunbakkar Farm in the nearby village of Kirkjubaejarklaustur said by phone.

"It's been very dark. You'd think it was night," agreed Vilhelm Tunnarsson, a photographer for local Icelandic media staying at a nearby hotel, adding at times he had been unable to see 30 centimetres in front of him.

At the moment if the volcano continues to erupt to the same level it has been, and is now, the UK could be at risk of seeing volcanic ash later this week," said Helen Chivers, Met Office spokeswoman. "Quite when and how much we can't really define at the moment."

Chivers said the weather situation is set to be different to last year, with the wind direction set to change continuously.

She added: "If it moves in the way that we're currently looking, with the eruption continuing the way it is, then if the UK is at risk later this week, then France and Spain could be as well."

While the ash has grounded aircraft in Iceland, it is not anticipated that it will have a similar impact in the rest of Europe.

Dr Dave McGarvie, volcanologist at the Open University, said that the amount of ash reaching the UK "is likely to be less than in the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption", and said the last two times Grimsvotn erupted it did not affect UK air travel.

"In addition, the experience gained from the 2010 eruption, especially by the Met Office, the airline industry, and the engine manufacturers, should mean less disruption to travellers."

The April eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, in south-east Iceland, caused the worst disruption to international air travel since 9/11. Flights across Europe were cancelled for six-days stranding tens of thousands of people and was estimated to have cost airlines £130m a day.

Eurocontrol, the Europe-wide air traffic control network, said in a statement: "There is currently no impact on European or transatlantic flights and the situation is expected to remain so for the next 24 hours. Aircraft operators are constantly being kept informed of the evolving situation.

Climate change is now critical, says the Climate Commission

NO amount of tree-planting or using biofuels in cars will stop the planet warming, the first report by the Climate Commission warns.

The findings are a blow to Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who opposes the Government's carbon tax and has instead proposed to combat global warming through an offsets policy.

The report, which pulled together the latest peer-reviewed science on climate change, concluded that the controversial science behind climate change was beyond denial.

"The atmosphere is warming, the ocean is warming, ice is being lost from glaciers and ice caps and sea levels are rising," it said.

"Global surface temperature is rising fast; the last decade was the hottest on record. Human activities — the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation — are triggering the changes we are witnessing in the global climate.

The report also is highly critical of climate change sceptics, whom it claimed were intimidating climate scientists and confusing the public.

A Federal Parliament forum on climate change will be held tomorrow against a backdrop of Opposition Leader and climate change sceptic Tony Abbott's commitment to a carbon offsetting policy.

Coalition policy would see polluters and government investing in ways of storing greenhouse gases - in forests, biofuels or the earth - rather than being penalised for not reducing emissions.

But report author Professor Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute, said yesterday offsetting simply could not substitute for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

"We have to reduce fossil fuel use and while locking away CO2 can be a good thing, it can't work alone. It must be accompanied by fossil fuel use and emissions reductions," he said.

"Putting CO2 into, say, soil, doesn't actually remove it from the ecosystem and it can be vulnerable to changes in land use. And if we get temperatures in the future higher than expected, offsetting might make warming worse because that carbon, that CO2, you paid people to put back into the earth can go back up into the air.

"Poorly constructed offsetting could lock in more severe climate change for the future."

Prof Steffen said the next decade was critical with Australia already suffering social, environmental and economic consequences of warming.

Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the Director of the Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, said the report should guide politicians and compel them into action.

"It is vitally important that responsible governments everywhere face up to the urgency of the situation that we face with respect to climate change, and to act on the recommendations of their experts," he said.

"They must listen to the experts, devise meaningful responses and act immediately on this important issue.

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Icelandic volcano eruption grounds flights

A volcanic eruption under Europe’s largest glacier, Vatnajokull, forced the closure of the main international airport in Iceland, the second disruption in 13 months to the island nation’s air traffic.


The eruption sent an ash plume more than 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) into the air, causing delays today of some Scandinavian trans-Atlantic flights. “We expect the ash cloud to enter Norwegian airspace over the course of the night,” said Jens Petter Duestad, chief of control centers for Norwegian airport operator Avinor.


Iceland’s Keflavik International Airport was shut down this morning amid fears that the ash plume might damage jet engines. The halt grounded 11 airplanes in Iceland, affecting about 2,000 passengers. Another 13 airplanes will be unable to land in the country.


An eruption began at about 6 p.m. yesterday in a Grimsvotn Lake crater underneath Vatnajokull, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of Reykjavik. The volcano is the most active in Iceland and its last eruption ended in 2004.


Eyjafjallajokull’s eruption on April 14, 2010, closed European airspace for six days at a cost of $1.7 billion, according to an estimate then by the International Air Transport Association. Iceland, with about 320,000 inhabitants, is one of the world’s most volcanically and geologically active countries and eruptions are frequent.


Ash soon covered nearby villages and reached the capital, Reykjavik, nearly 400 kilometres to the west. ''It's just black outside, it is supposed to be bright daylight,'' Bjorgvin Hardarsson, a farmer, said.

Iceland's airport administration, Isavia, announced yesterday that the country's main airport, Keflavik, was shutting and basically all the country's air space was closing.
Last year's eruption caused the world's biggest air-space shutdown since World War II, lasting almost a month.

Festival crowd flocks to Hicks' book signing

David Hicks received a standing ovation at his first public appearance, at the Sydney Writers Festival today.

Hicks is the Australian who was branded a terrorist by the US Government and spent five and a half years in Guantanamo Bay, after he was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, and sold to the Americans.

Hicks was being interviewed by journalist Donna Mulhearn following the publication of his book Guantanamo : My Journey about his experiences as a freedom fighter and then enemy of the United States.

The audience of 900 were people of all ages, most of whom clapped during his talk and gave him a standing ovation at the end.

At times, the quietly-spoken Hicks found it difficult to recount some of his experiences of torture inside Guantanamo.

During the interview, Hicks repeated his assertion that not only was he not fighting for al-Qaeda but had not even heard of the terrorist group until his American interrogators mentioned the name.

Hicks, who grew up in Adelaide and was a high school drop-out, said he had converted to Islam to gain a sense of belonging. He travelled to Kosovo and Kashmir to help suffering civilians after he had worked in Japan as a horse trainer.

Mr Hicks was convicted by a US military commission on charges of providing material support for terrorism but has faced no charges in Australia.

The US Military Commissions Act of 2006, ''which is the one I was forced to plead guilty under'', had since been scrapped by US President Barack Obama, Mr Hicks told the festival.

''Because of that my US lawyers say that my conviction is now null and void,'' he said.

Mr Hick said he never hurt anyone, and never planned to hurt anyone during his time in Kosovo and Pakistan and Kashmir.

''I went overseas with the intention to help people. Some people may think it's a bit weird, a bit strange, impulsive, naive - OK. But my intentions were good. And unfortunately I ended up being detained and tortured and accused of being a terrorist.'' A long queue formed as Mr Hicks signed copies of his book, under the gaze of the ABC's Australian Story cameras, but he refused to answer media questions.