More young people drowning

A SIGNIFICANT rise in the number of young people drowning in Australia has led to a call for compulsory swimming lessons at primary schools.

The Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS) says 371 people aged between 15 and 24 drowned between 2002 and 2012 - a 25 per cent increase on previous decades.

RLSS CEO Rob Bradley says many children are no longer taught basic swimming skills, and 20 per cent of youngsters leaving primary school in coming months will be unable to stay afloat for two minutes.

He's launched a petition calling on governments to support and help fund compulsory swimming lessons at primary schools.

The RLSS believes the number of young people drowning could double in the next decade unless action is taken.

"Royal Life Saving believes that the rapid increase in drowning in young adults ... is undeniably linked to a fall in the swimming and water safety skills of children in Australia over the past 10 years," the organisation said.

The RLSS believes many families simply can't afford swimming lessons and having them as part of the curriculum would be one way to ensure all children receive training.

It acknowledged that some schools do offer swimming training but said it was often only a few lessons every year.

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US stocks slip on Caterpillar outlook

US stocks have opened mostly lower as investors braced for a week of earnings reports, with Caterpillar's lowered outlook hurting sentiment.

Five minutes into trade on Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 12.86 points, or 0.10 per cent, at 13,330.65.

The S&P 500-stock index was off 0.12 point, or 0.01 per cent, at 1,433.07.

The Nasdaq Composite rose 4.71 points, or 0.16 per cent, to 3,010.33.

"Some cautious guidance from Caterpillar is helping to keep things in check," said Patrick O'Hare at Briefing.com.

Although the world's largest heavy equipment maker posted its best third-quarter, with record profit and sales that beat forecasts, "the bad news is that it provided FY12 and FY13 guidance that is below current consensus estimates", he said.

"Thus far, the earnings reporting period, even with the financials, has left plenty to be desired," he added.

On Friday, stocks fell sharply after a spate of disappointing earnings from major heavyweights.

The Dow dropped 1.52 per cent, the S&P 500 lost 1.66 per cent and the Nasdaq gave up 2.19 per cent.

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Oldest Auschwitz survivor dies at 108

THE oldest known survivor of the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Antoni Dobrowolski, has died at the age of 108, one of the site's official historians has announced.

Adam Cyra, who works at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum, said on Monday that Dobrowolski died in the town of Debno, northwest Poland.

Primary school teacher Dobrowolski ran secret classes during Germany's brutal World War II occupation of Poland, when the local population was barred from receiving an education.

Arrested in 1942 by the Nazis' Gestapo secret police, he was first sent to Auschwitz, in annexed Polish territory, and later transferred to Gross Rosen and Sachsenhausen, both in Germany.

He survived until the latter camp was liberated by Soviet and Polish forces in 1945.

Returning to Poland after the war, he first ran a primary school in Debno and then a secondary school.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is the most enduring symbol of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany's World War II campaign of genocide against Europe's Jews. After the war's end in 1945, it was transformed into a memorial and museum by Poland.

A year after invading Poland in 1939, the Nazis opened what was to become a vast complex on the edge of the southern town of Oswiecim - Auschwitz in German - initially to hold and kill Polish prisoners such as Dobrowolski.

They later expanded it to the nearby village of Brzezinka, or Birkenau, as they took the Holocaust to an industrial scale.

Of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during the war, one million were murdered at the camp, mostly in its notorious gas chambers, along with tens of thousands of others including Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.

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Emergency planning 'lacks funds'

AUSTRALIA needs to boost its "shamefully inadequate" emergency services funding and set up a national body to oversee disaster management, former federal emergency services minister Robert McClelland says.

Mr McClelland says more attention should be given to preventing poor planning decisions before they lead to unnecessary damage and the loss of life.

"In short, the consequences of failing to develop a more sophisticated approach to emergency management is inevitably more loss in terms of lives, property and environment but also, potentially, in terms of maintaining a civil society," Mr McClelland said in a chapter of a book, Next Generation Disaster and Security Management, to be released on Wednesday.

Australia should consider having a similar organisation to the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Mr McClelland said.

A central body like FEMA would oversee the three Australian agencies that deal with natural and security emergencies - the national security resilience policy division, the national security capability development division and Emergency Management Australia.

Mr McClelland said once a dedicated agency was set up to focus on all aspects of emergency prevention, preparation, response and recovery, it would have to push for enough funds for national emergency management capability.

The commonwealth spends less than $30 million a year on natural disaster mitigation strategies, the former minister said.

"Currently, unfortunately, funding is shamefully inadequate," he said.

Mr McClelland said governments had helped to create a culture of entitlement rather than a culture of prevention.

"This has occurred because the emphasis of government has been on being seen to provide assistance to individuals after they fall victims to a natural disaster rather on developing strategies and working with communities to prevent those communities from falling victim to disaster in the first place," he said.

Mr McClelland said eligibility to Australian government disaster recovery payments (AGDRP) should be tightened for those disadvantaged from natural disasters or terrorism, which would free up funds to prevent injury loss and damage from future events.

An adult affected by a natural disaster or terrorist event is entitled to $1000 while a child can receive $400.

"A 20 per cent saving on the AGDRP commitments in respect to the Queensland floods and cyclones Yasi, for instance, would have released approximately $166 million for future mitigation measures," Mr McClelland said.

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Instant phone translation begins in Japan

JAPAN'S biggest mobile operator says it will launch a translation service that lets people chat over the phone in several different languages.

The application for NTT DoCoMo subscribers will give two-way voice and text readouts of conversations between Japanese speakers and those talking in English, Chinese or Korean with a several-second delay, the firm says.

"Hanashite Honyaku" will be a free application that can be used on smartphones and tablet computers with the Android operating system, DoCoMo says.

Customers will also be able to call landlines using the service, it says.

It plans to next launch voice-to-text readouts in French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai.

"We hope that with this application, our subscribers will be able to widen the range of their communication," a company spokeswoman said.

However, she conceded the service does not offer perfect translations and has trouble deciphering some dialects.

DoCoMo also said it has launched a separate service that lets users translate menus and signage using a smartphone camera.

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Pregnant women going further to give birth

OVERWORKED maternity hospitals in Melbourne are being forced to turn down bookings from pregnant women, forcing them to hospitals further away or into expensive private care.

Fairfax says staff at the recently expanded Werribee Mercy Hospital have told several local women this year that the hospital is too full to book them in for antenatal care.

Victorian Health Services Commissioner Beth Wilson is looking into the matter and said she had also received complaints from women who had been turned away from the Royal Women's Hospital.

Ms Wilson said the government needed to invest in growth corridors, particularly in Melbourne's west.

"The west is one of the fastest growing districts in the world," Ms Wilson said.

"There are new suburbs springing up and there are young people buying houses and moving in, but the health services are not keeping up with that spurt of growth. Unless we do something about this quickly there are going to be big problems," she said.

Doctors told Fairfax the shortage of beds at Werribee and the Royal Women's was impacting on Sunshine Hospital, which was taking the overflow despite a lack of birth suites.

They said it was also causing many women to be discharged home one day after birth, jeopardising postnatal care.

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Caterpillar cuts outlook in weak economy

CATERPILLAR says the world's economy is weaker than it thought, and it doesn't expect growth to pick up until the second half of next year.

The company on Monday cut its 2012 revenue and profit guidance, and said next year won't be much better.

Caterpillar makes the yellow-painted excavators, heavy tractors and other construction equipment often seen on road-building projects. It's the world's largest maker of construction and mining equipment, and also makes engines, so its results are watched closely for signs of where the broader economy is headed.

Where it's headed right now is for some weak growth, based on what Caterpillar was saying on Monday.

It predicted worldwide economic growth of 2.7 per cent for next year, up from the 2.5 per cent growth it expects for 2012. It expects the cheap lending offered in most countries to continue next year, although "growth has been slow to respond", the company said.

"As a result, we are not expecting improvement in overall economic growth until the second half of 2013," the company said.

Caterpillar sells to dealers, who turn around and sell to end users such as construction and mining companies. Those dealers are trying to cut inventory, so they're ordering less equipment than customers are buying.

In response, Caterpillar said it has reduced production, resulting in temporary shutdowns and layoffs. Lower production will continue until dealer demand lines up with end user demand, Caterpillar said.

As a result, Caterpillar cut its 2012 outlook for the second time this year. Revenue is expected to grow 9.7 per cent to $US66 billion ($A64 billion), after rising 41 per cent in 2011. Profit is now forecast at $US9 to $US9.25 per share, down from a previous forecast of $US9.60 per share.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected revenue of $US67.2 billion, with profit of $US9.41 per share.

The economy this year "has been a disappointment", Caterpillar said, with growth lower than expected in the US and China, and with much of Europe in recession.

Caterpillar expects 2013 revenue to be about the same as this year, in a range of up five per cent to down five per cent.

"We're not expecting rapid growth, and we're not predicting a global recession," chairman and CEO Doug Oberhelman said.

The company said sales of mining gear will fall next year. Lower prices for metals and coal, along with higher operating costs, have hurt profit margins at many mining companies, Caterpillar said. Sales of construction gear are expected to increase, and it expects improving activity in the US. It expects engine sales to be flat.

Profit in the third quarter rose 49 per cent to almost $US1.7 billion. That compares with profit of $US1.14 billion a year earlier. Revenue rose 4.6 per cent to $US16.45 billion.

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11-year-old in US court on manslaughter

AN 11-year-old US girl charged with juvenile manslaughter in the death of a three-month-old baby has entered a "no answer" plea.

The girl bit her nails and looked down during the hearing in Maine on Monday. Her other plea choices were "admission" and "denial".

Three-month-old Brooklyn Foss-Greenaway was staying at the girl's home in the care of the girl's mother. The mother called police on July 8 to say the infant wasn't breathing.

The state hasn't released the cause of death, but the infant's mother, Nicole "Nicki" Greenaway, was told that her child ingested medication and was suffocated.

The state chose not to try the girl as an adult. If convicted as a juvenile, the maximum penalty is incarceration until age 21.

The girl's lawyer, John Martin, said he felt the manslaughter charge was "too harsh" given the girl's age.

The judge on Monday ordered a competency evaluation for the girl.

The Associated Press generally does not identify juveniles accused of crimes.

The Maine Department of Health and Human Services removed the girl from her mother's care. In a letter, an agency case worker said the girl had a behaviour disorder that made her unsuitable for caring for the infant.

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