US durable goods orders higher

NEW US orders for durable manufactured goods surged higher in December, led by a jump in commercial aircraft orders, government figures show.

Orders for durable goods - long-lasting products such as vehicles, computers and machinery - rose to $US230.7 billion ($A221.6 billion), up 4.6 per cent from November, the Commerce Department said on Monday.

It was the seventh increase in the past eight months, following a 0.7 per cent gain in November, and well above the 1.6 per cent rise expected by analysts.

Excluding transportation equipment orders, which can be volatile month-over-month, durable goods orders rose 1.3 per cent.

Transportation equipment orders leaped 11.9 per cent after two consecutive months of declines, almost entirely due to commercial aircraft and parts orders, up 10.1 per cent.

Non-defence capital goods orders excluding aircraft, or core capital goods orders, an indicator of future capital spending, rose 0.2 per cent.

Shipments climbed 1.3 per cent.

"Substantial declines in unfilled orders of non-defence capital goods excluding aircraft over the past few months will continue to put downward pressure on shipments growth," Briefing.com said in a research note.

On a 12-month basis, durable goods orders were up 4.1 per cent.

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Yemen suicide bomb kills 10 soldiers

A SUICIDE car bomb at a checkpoint in central Yemen has killed at least 10 soldiers, as the army leads an offensive on al-Qaeda militants suspected of holding European hostages.

The attack targeted a checkpoint manned by members of a battalion of the elite Republican Guards on the road between Rada and Manaseh, where the army military operation was taking place, tribal sources said.

A local official told AFP there were at least 20 casualties, adding that wounded in critical condition had been evacuated to hospitals in Sanaa.

Three people were killed earlier in an army offensive launched late on Sunday against al-Qaeda-linked militants suspected of holding an Austrian and two Finns hostage in Manaseh, in Bayda province, tribal sources said.

They said the victims were apparently caught in crossfire.

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US woman swept away by 'sneaker' wave

A WOMAN has been swept out to sea by a large wave and drowned on a California beach in the third such tragedy in the region this winter, authorities say.

The 32-year-old was walking with her boyfriend and dog on Sunday when the wave pulled her out to sea, the US Coast Guard said.

"The ocean today was extremely hazardous," Duty Officer Cheryl Antony said. "The waves were about 10 to 15 feet (3.0 to 4.5 metres). It was very, very hazardous for them to be out there."

So-called "sneaker" waves, the kind that suddenly roar ashore, have washed four people into the region's waters this winter.

A man and his wife were walking on a California beach on New Year's Day when a wave overtook their dog. The couple went into the water to rescue the dog, and the man was swept away.

In November, three family members drowned at another California beach while trying to save their dog.

"Winter is an especially dangerous time, and sneaker waves can catch beach goers by surprise, washing them into the sea," the Coast Guard said in a statement. "People walking along the beach should not turn their back to the ocean."

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Switzerland knew of Holocaust in 1942

SWISS officials knew in May 1942 that Jews were being exterminated in Nazi concentration camps, yet decided to tighten their asylum policies in the following months, Swiss television has reported.

"As of May 1942, we can prove that information about the killings of Jews reached Bern," Sascha Zala, the head of the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland (DDS) research project, told Swiss public broadcaster SRF.

Swiss diplomats gathered hundreds of letters, telegrams, pictures and detailed reports during World War II documenting the Nazi atrocities and passed them on to Swiss officials in Bern.

DDS has for the first time published a number of the documents showing that the Swiss government knew what was going on no later than May 1942, three years before the end of World War II.

Despite the reports it was receiving, the Swiss government decided in August of that year to carry out a mass return of civilian refugees to their home countries, SRF reported late Sunday, as the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The revelations add more evidence to the conclusions of a damning official report in 2002 on Switzerland's record before and during World War II.

The Bergier report showed that Swiss officials had at the time turned away thousands of people, most of them Jews, who were trying to flee Nazi-occupied Europe, sending them to certain death.

Yet Swiss historian Hans-Ulrich Jost told Swiss radio on Monday that there seemed to be in Switzerland "a sort of resistance to accepting (what happened) during this troubling period".

Swiss President Ueli Maurer for instance marked Sunday's Holocaust Remembrance Day by hailing neutral Switzerland's role during World War II as a "refuge" for those fleeing "during this dark period for the European continent".

Several Swiss Jewish organisations blasted him on Monday for not mentioning the "refugees who were pushed towards certain death".

"It is regrettable that the president of the confederation did not deem it useful to broaden indispensable Swiss self-criticism of its own past, especially its refugee policy," they said in a statement.

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US to raise Sri Lanka human rights at UN

THE US will bring a fresh resolution to the UN Human Rights Council in a bid to force Sri Lanka to deliver on promises to investigate its troops for war crimes, top US diplomats say after talks with Colombo.

"The US has decided to sponsor a procedural resolution (against Sri Lanka) at the March 2013 sessions of the UNHRC," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State James Moore said on Monday.

The US recognised Sri Lanka had made "some progress" since the previous US-led censure of Sri Lanka at the March 2012 UNHRC sessions in Geneva, but Washington believed more needed to be done, Moore said.

"The US and the other 23 members of the UNHRC who voted for that resolution in 2012 believe that the government of Sri Lanka needs to fulfil its commitments made to its own people," Moore said.

He said the fresh resolution to be moved in March was a reflection of "US commitment" to the people of Sri Lanka, which emerged from nearly 37 years of ethnic bloodshed in May 2009 after security forces crushed Tamil rebels.

The US has been highly critical of Sri Lanka's human rights record and has refused to train several of its senior military officers, saying they were linked to credible allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Another top US diplomat, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Vikram Singh, said the US wanted to keep Sri Lanka's case fresh at Geneva by moving a new resolution against the Indian Ocean island.

He said the government's impeachment of the country's chief justice, despite two court rulings that the process was illegal and against the constitution, also contributed to the US decision for a fresh resolution.

"It is safe to say that the impeachment of the Chief Justice also contributed to the decision to ensure that the record (against Sri Lanka) stays fresh in Geneva," Singh told reporters in Colombo.

The US has asked Sri Lanka to reconsider the sacking of Shirani Bandaranayake following an international outcry over the impeachment earlier this month, in what activists have said was an assault on the independence of the judiciary.

Sri Lanka has been accused of killing up to 40,000 civilians in the final months of fighting separatist Tamil rebels who were known for their trade mark suicide bombings. Colombo has denied any civilians were killed by its troops.

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Apple, Android have smartphone 'duopoly'

ANDROID and Apple smartphones captured a whopping 92 per cent of global sales in the fourth quarter, giving the two systems an effective duopoly, a research firm says.

Strategy Analytics said global smartphone shipments grew 38 per cent annually to reach 217 million units in the fourth quarter, to bring annual sales to 700 million.

Android, the free operating system developed by Google, grabbed 70 per cent of the market in the final three months of the year, while Apple's iOS used on its iPhone held 22 per cent.

The news bodes ill for rivals such as BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, which is launching its new platform this year, and Microsoft, which is pushing its Windows Phone system.

"Android is clearly the undisputed volume leader of the smartphone industry at the present time," Strategy Analytics executive director Neil Mawston said on Monday.

"Android's challenge for 2013 will be to defend its leadership, not only against Apple, but also against an emerging wave of hungry challengers that includes Microsoft, Blackberry, Firefox and Tizen."

The survey noted that global shipment growth slowed from 64 per cent in 2011 to 43 per cent in 2012, as regions such as North America and Western Europe matured.

Scott Bicheno, analyst at Strategy Analytics, said the latest trends showed "the worldwide smartphone industry has effectively become a duopoly as consumer demand has polarised around mass-market Android models and premium Apple designs".

AFP

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Israel lashes UK cartoon of Netanyahu

ISRAEL'S parliamentary Speaker has lashed out at a cartoon published in Britain's Sunday Times showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu building a wall with Palestinian blood and bodies.

"For the people of Israel, this is a cartoon which recalls the dark journalism from one of humankind's darkest periods," Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin wrote in a letter to his British counterpart, John Bercow.

The cartoon, which shows a scowling Netanyahu waving a blood-covered trowel, laying bricks in a wall in which distraught-looking Palestinian men, women and children are trapped, caused particular offence because it appeared on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

"As a democrat, I support political criticism but in publishing this cartoon yesterday in London, the boundaries of free speech were crossed," Rivlin wrote, adding: "Prejudice had deeply influenced legitimate criticism."

"If a cartoon had been published in Israel showing Britain in a monstrous light and hurting the feelings of the British people in such a mean and nasty way, you wouldn't hesitate to complain to me, and rightly, about crossing the legitimate boundaries of freedom of expression," he said in a direct appeal to Bercow.

Rivlin said Israel was "disappointed" that such images could be published in modern-day Britain, suggesting the cartoon exposed "certain unhealthy undercurrents".

But, writing in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, commentator Anshel Pfeffer criticised condemnation of the cartoon, which he said "was not anti-Semitic by any standard."

He noted the cartoon included no Jewish or Holocaust imagery, was as biting as the cartoonist's usual treatment of non-Jewish subjects and was not similar to traditional "blood libel" cartoons.

The cartoon appeared a day after a British parliamentarian was forced to apologise after he used his blog to criticise Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, accusing "the Jews" of perpetrating daily atrocities and drawing parallels with the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.

The remarks by Liberal Democrat MP David Ward sparked a wave of intense criticism on social media sites and from campaign groups, prompting him to issue an apology on Saturday, saying he had not meant "to offend the Jewish people as a whole, either as a race or as a people of faith".

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