Students want sex ed sooner: study

HIGH school students want sex education sooner and topics including pregnancy and puberty taught in primary school, a study has found.

But most teachers of grade five and six students are uncomfortable talking about the reproductive system in sex education class, another study by the same researchers has found.

More than half of students in years 7, 8 and 9 thought almost all aspects of sex education topics should be introduced in primary school, according to the survey of about 100 students in the Victorian regional city of Ballarat, Fairfax Media reports.

"Across the board they wanted information much, much earlier than they were getting it," researcher Bernadette Duffy said.

"I think that they should be at least being taught about [puberty] in grade 3 and 4.

"Some of them wanted information so they knew what was being talked about when they got to high school."

The University of Ballarat researchers presented three studies on sex education at an education conference at the University of Sydney on Monday.

The Australian curriculum authority would introduce sex education in grades 5 and 6, but not in grades 3 and 4, as earlier recommended, Fairfax Media reported in October.

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News Corp announces end of The Daily

NEWS Corp has announced a new head of its British newspaper arm and said it was ending publication of its iPad app, The Daily.

The media conglomerate said Mike Darcy, a former chief operating officer of BSkyB, will replace Tom Mockridge as CEO of News International. Mockridge leaves the company at the end of the year.

At the same time, News Corp said it will cease publication of The Daily iPad app on December 15. Its founding editor-in-chief, Jesse Angelo, was named publisher of the New York Post.

"From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation," News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch said.

"Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term," he said.

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Pressure mounts over Israeli settlements

PARIS and London called in Israel's envoys for consultations on Monday as the Jewish state faced mounting diplomatic pressure over plans to build 3,000 settler homes in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Germany and Russia also raised concerns about the Israeli plans, which the UN chief warned could wipe out peace hopes.

Israel has faced a wave of top-level diplomatic protests after the construction proposals emerged on Friday as payback for the Palestinians winning the rank of a UN non-member observer state.

Some of the construction is to take place in a controversial corridor of land east of Jerusalem, called E1, where new settlements could effectively cut the West Bank in two.

In Paris, foreign ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot said Israeli ambassador Yossi Gal had been summoned so France could express its "grave concern" over the settlements plan.

"Construction in the E1 area would seriously undermine the two-state solution by isolating Jerusalem... from the West Bank and threatening the territorial contiguity and viability of a future Palestinian state," Lalliot said.

The Israeli embassy said Gal had "clarified the Israeli position by explaining that it was impossible to expect Israel to stand idly by after the unilateral Palestinian move at the UN."

Britain's Foreign Office said it had called in Ambassador Daniel Taub to express its concerns and urged Israel to reconsider the settlement plans.

"We deplore the recent Israeli government decision to build 3,000 new housing units and unfreeze development in the E1 block. This threatens the viability of the two-state solution," the Foreign Office said in a statement.

In an earlier statement, the Foreign Office said: "We have told the Israeli government that if they go ahead with their decision, then there will be a strong reaction."

Germany for its part said it was "deeply concerned" about the settlement plans but would not "for the moment" summon its ambassador to Berlin.

"We urge the Israeli government to reverse this announcement. Both sides should act constructively and avoid obstructing what is urgently needed, namely the resumption of substantial direct peace talks," government spokesman Steffen Seibert told a regular briefing.

Russia also urged Israel to rethink its plans, saying the settlement project "will negatively affect efforts to restart direct talks".

London and Paris rejected reports, however, that they were planning the unprecedented step of recalling their ambassadors to Israel over the plans.

Israel's left-leaning Haaretz newspaper said the two governments were considering the move over the plans to build in E1, which the newspaper said they considered a "red line."

But officials in both capitals said the move was not being prepared.

"There are other ways to show our disapproval," said the French foreign ministry's deputy spokesman, Vincent Floreani.

"We are not proposing to do that," a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said.

The E1 zone is a highly contentious area of the West Bank that runs between the easternmost edge of annexed east Jerusalem and the Maaleh Adumim settlement.

Palestinians bitterly oppose the E1 project, as it would effectively cut the occupied West Bank in two, north to south, and sever it from Jerusalem, making the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state almost impossible.

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US stocks open higher

US markets opened higher on Monday as traders ignored more discord in fiscal cliff talks in Washington to follow Europe's bourses higher after Spain finally made an official request for bank rescue funds.

Five minutes into trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 53.83 points (0.41 percent) at 13,079.41.

The S&P 500 gained 6.82 (0.48 percent) to 1,423.00

The Nasdaq Composite added 18.91 (0.63 percent) at 3,029.15.

News Corp gained 1.3 percent after announcing a new head of its troubled British newspaper arm News International and said it was ending its iPad-only news app, The Daily.

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Pope takes to Twitter

POPE Benedict XVI will join Twitter from December 12, with regular tweets in eight languages from the account @pontifex in time for Christmas as the Vatican tries to woo the global internet generation.

"The first tweets will be answers to questions sent to the pope on matters of faith. The public can start sending them starting now," Vatican communications adviser Greg Burke said at a press conference on Monday.

The account carries a picture of the pope waving and its number of followers rose from around 2,400 at the time of the announcement to more than 24,000 just an hour later, with numbers continuing to rise sharply.

An introductory message of the account based in "Vatican City" read: "Welcome to the official Twitter page of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI."

"Pontifex" is a Latin word meaning "pontiff", the pope's official title.

Benedict will only follow his own account in other languages for the moment and there are no plans for a Facebook account yet, Burke said, adding: "Twitter can be more effective than Facebook in passing on the Pope's message."

The tweets will be in Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish and more languages could be added in future.

Several fake Twitter accounts already set up in the pope's name have been used to mock the 85-year-old pontiff, but the Vatican said it was not worried about the risk that hostile messages would be tweeted on the real account.

Burke, a former correspondent for US channel Fox News brought in by the Vatican in June to overhaul its public-relations operation, said the pope's Twitter account would create "a free market of ideas, and that is good".

It would serve up "pearls of wisdom coming from the heart of the pope", he said, though the 140-character messages will not be written by the pope himself but by Vatican officials who will submit them to him for approval.

"We are going to get a spiritual message. The pope is not going to be walking around with a Blackberry or an iPad and no one is going to be putting words into the pope's mouth. He will tweet what he wants to tweet," Burke said.

The Vatican said: "The pope's presence on Twitter is a concrete expression of his conviction that the Church must be present in the digital arena."

Benedict wants "to ensure that the good news of Jesus Christ and the teaching of his Church is permeating the forum of exchange and dialogue that is being created by social media," it added in a statement.

The aim is to "dialogue with men and women of today wherever they are," said Cardinal Claudio Maria Celli of the Pontifical Social Communications Council.

The news of the elderly pontiff's decision to join Twitter received mixed reactions on the online community.

"Does this mean we can just tweet our sins instead of showing up for confession?" asked Twitter user Sandra Hayes.

Ryan Babel said "will he be the first priest to legally be able to follow children?" -- one of many Twitter quips on the Church's sex abuse scandals.

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RBA to deliver a pre-Christmas rate cut.

CONCERNS about slowing domestic growth should move the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to deliver an interest rate cut in time for Christmas.

The RBA board meets on Tuesday (December 4) for its last monthly rate decision until February next year, and an AAP survey of 15 economists shows that most expect a cut of 0.25 percentage points.

At its last board meeting on November 6, the RBA kept the cash rate unchanged at 3.25 per cent.

But data since, showing a slowdown in planned mining activity, plus continued weakness in the housing, manufacturing and retail sectors, are likely to push the central bank over the line, economists say.

The RBA cut the cash rate in May, June and October, but it appears the effect of this easing is only starting to be felt in the economy.

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Britain seeks appeal over terror suspect

BRITAIN'S interior ministry said on Monday that it has applied for permission to appeal against a decision by judges to block the extradition of terror suspect Abu Qatada to Jordan.

"We confirm that we have submitted our grounds for appeal," a Home Office spokesman told AFP.

A judge will consider the bid to challenge last month's move by Britain's Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) blocking the extradition over fears that evidence obtained through torture could be used in Abu Qatada's trial.

The radical Islamist cleric -- dubbed Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe -- was released on bail following the SIAC ruling, in a severe blow to the British government.

British authorities have kept him in custody for most of the last decade and repeatedly tried to send him to Jordan to face trial.

Abu Qatada was convicted in absentia in Jordan in 1998 for involvement in terror attacks, but both British and European judges have accepted his argument that evidence obtained by torture might be used against him in a retrial.

Prime Minister David Cameron said last month that he was "completely fed up with the fact that this man is still at large in our country".

Abu Qatada, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin in his early 50s, is currently under curfew 16 hours a day and is wearing an electronic tag, but he is free to leave his home in northwest London between 8am and 4pm.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled earlier this year that he could not be deported while there was a "real risk that evidence obtained by torture will be used against him" in a possible retrial.

Home Secretary Theresa May ordered his extradition anyway after Jordan gave assurances that he would be treated fairly.

But SIAC, a semi-secret panel of British judges that deals with national security matters, agreed last month with the European judges that he should not be deported, and he was freed on bail.

The commission said statements from Abu Qatada's former co-defendants Al-Hamasher and Abu Hawsher may have been obtained by torture and created a risk that any trial would be unfair.

The government can only challenge the ruling if it is found that there were legal problems with SIAC's ruling.

The cleric, whose real name is Omar Mohammed Othman, arrived in Britain in 1993 claiming asylum and has been a thorn in the side of successive British governments.

Videos of his sermons were found in the Hamburg flat used by some of the hijackers involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks. He has also defended the killing of Jews and attacks on Americans.

A Spanish judge once branded him the right-hand man in Europe of the late Al-Qaeda leader although Abu Qatada denies ever having met bin Laden.

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Clinton lobbies Czech govt on power plant

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lobbied the Czech government on Monday to approve an American bid for a $US10 billion ($A9.63 billion) expansion of a nuclear power plant amid fierce competition from a rival Russian offer.

Clinton made her pitch for the American energy giant Westinghouse Electric Co. in meetings with Prime Minister Petr Necas and other senior Czech officials in Prague. Speaking to reporters, she stressed the need for the Czech Republic to wean itself off of a dependency on Russia for fuel.

"We are encouraging the Czech Republic to diversify its energy sources and suppliers," Clinton said. "Given how long-term and strategic this investment is, the Czech people deserve the best value, the most tested and trustworthy technology, an outstanding safety record, responsible and accountable management."

The Czechs get 60 per cent of their oil, 70 per cent of their natural gas and all of their nuclear reactor fuel from Russia. That leaves the NATO member highly susceptible to economic and political pressure from Moscow, which dominated the Central European country from the end of World War II to the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Revitalising the Temelin nuclear power plant is a big part of the Czech agenda to radically boost its nuclear power production, defying global scepticism about the use of atomic energy in the aftermath of last year's meltdown at Japan's Fukushima plant. And the Obama administration is hoping to get some of the windfall by securing Westinghouse's bid. The project could generate 9,000 American jobs, US officials said.

For the United States, the battle for the Temelin contract is an example of an increasingly prominent element of foreign policy: Going to bat for American companies. If this was once a less-promoted if widely understood element of private diplomatic relations, what Clinton calls "economic statecraft" has now become an endeavour US officials proudly promote as part of their jobs-building effort for the United States.

"We are not shy about pressing the case for Westinghouse," Clinton said. "We believe that company offers the best option for the project in terms of technology and safety. It would clearly enhance Czech energy security and further the nuclear cooperation between our countries, and it would create jobs and economic opportunity for Czechs and Americans."

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