1.7 million apply for 1500 Indian jobs

India's largest state-run bank has received 1.7 million applications for 1500 clerk jobs. Source: AAP

INDIA'S largest state-run bank has received 1.7 million applications for 1500 entry-level clerk jobs - and has promised to examine all of them.

State Bank of India chairman Pratip Chaudhuri attributed the huge interest to good marketing and attractive employment terms, with the number of applications underlining the appeal of "jobs for life" in the Indian public sector.

For positions in Mumbai, the bank offered a starting package of 69,000 rupees ($A1,245) a month.

Job opportunities in the Indian private sector have fallen in the past 18 months as economic growth has dropped to its lowest level in a decade.

The government forecasts that India's once-booming economy will grow by five per cent in the financial year to March 31.

Last year, it grew by 6.2 per cent but even that rate is insufficient to create the jobs India needs for its fast-growing young population.

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a former economist, believes the country needs at least eight per cent growth to create enough jobs.

Chaudhuri said all 1.7 million applicants - more than 1,100 per position available - would be assessed.

"We have conducted such examinations in the past by hiring schools across the country. This time, we may have to do two shifts," he told the newspaper.

Nine out of ten Indians are employed in the "informal" sector in jobs that offer no security, few perks and often illegal working conditions, government data shows.

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Unusual snow hits UK and Europe

HEAVY snow has caused havoc in Britain and Western Europe, cutting off power and disrupting road, air and train travel.

In Britain, drivers including former Eurovision song contest winner Cheryl Baker were trapped for more than 10 hours as ice, snow and freezing winds descended on southeastern England on Monday and Tuesday.

Police, rescue services, snow ploughs and gritting lorries battled to help the stricken motorists in temperatures as low as -3C.

The counties of Sussex and Kent bordering London were worst affected with roads including stretches of the M23 motorway near Gatwick Airport under 10 centimetres of snow.

Singer Cheryl Baker, formerly of the band Bucks Fizz, was among those caught up in the chaos as she tried to reach Brighton to pick up her children.

"We took 10 hours to do a one-hour journey," she told ITV.

Eurostar said services of the train that runs under the English channel were suspended "due to extreme weather conditions".

Commuters in Paris were advised to stay at home on Tuesday morning and French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault activated an emergency response plan.

Germany's biggest airport in Frankfurt was temporarily closed because of heavy snow.

Some 200 to 300 flights were cancelled as bad weather hampered efforts by snow sweepers to clear runways and prevented airline crews from reaching work on time.

Airport operator Fraport AG said it expected flights to resume at 1.30pm (2330 AEDT).

Major disruptions were also reported in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Weather service Meteo France described the snowfall - coming only eight days before the official start of spring - as "remarkable for the season".

More than 2000 people were stranded in their cars overnight as heavy snow paralysed roads in Normandy and Brittany, with many spending the night in emergency shelters.

"There are cars in front, there are cars behind. We're in a film, it's like the end of the world," trapped driver Michel told France Bleu radio from the Manche region.

At least 66,000 homes in Normandy and Brittany were without power, following snowfalls of 20 to 60 centimetres.

The city's two main airports, Charles de Gaulle and Orly, said they had cancelled up to a quarter of flights.

A homeless man was found dead in the north-western town of Saint-Brieuc early on Tuesday.

The 58-year-old man was believed to have died of exposure.

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Coal use falls to record low

COAL use in energy production has fallen below 75 per cent for the first time in Australian history, lowering carbon emissions and suggesting a trend towards alternative energy.

Carbon emission index monitors pitt&sherry say summer peak energy demands from National Electricity Market (NEM) suppliers have fallen over the past four years in Victoria, the past three years in Queensland and the previous two in NSW and South Australia.

More recently, demand also fell at an increasing rate through February, pitt&sherry consultant Dr Hugh Saddler says.

"The lower peaks have important implications for future spending on network capacity upgrades which, as everyone now knows, have been the main driver of electricity price rises over the past four or five years," he said in a statement on Tuesday.

Since December 2010, electricity produced by coal fired generators fell about 16 per cent, he added.

Coal now produces 74.8 per cent of the electricity supplied to the NEM, renewable sources wind and hydro 12.5 per cent and gas 12.7 per cent.

But Mr Saddler is not sure whether electricity price increases caused the change.

Similar trends have been witnessed in the US, the UK and New Zealand, and as these countries have not "experienced the large price rises seen in Australia ... it is unlikely that price is the main explanation for the changes".

"More fundamental processes beyond price effects appear to be at work," he said.

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Sick Queen misses Commonwealth Day service

QUEEN Elizabeth II will miss the Commonwealth Day service in London as she is still recovering from the symptoms of gastroenteritis, Buckingham Palace says.

The 86-year-old was admitted to hospital for the first time in 10 years last week due to the illness.

She was discharged last Monday after an overnight stay in a private London hospital.

The monarch, who is the head of the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations, will not attend the service at Westminster Abbey on Monday, the palace says.

The Queen's 91-year-old husband Prince Philip will now be the only senior British royal at the service, which will be attended by Commonwealth ambassadors, or high commissioners, from around the world and will feature an address from Virgin tycoon Richard Branson.

The BBC, Britain's publicly-funded national broadcaster, reported that doctors had recommended it would be best for the queen not to sit through an hour-long church service.

The monarch will still attend an evening reception where she will sign the new Commonwealth charter, a document that includes commitments to gay rights among other issues, the palace said.

All of the Commonwealth nations adopted the charter in December.

The 16-point charter aims to protect democracy, the rule of law, international security and free speech.

"We are implacably opposed to all forms of discrimination, whether rooted in gender, race, colour, creed, political belief or other grounds," the document reads.

Queen Elizabeth is head of state of 16 Commonwealth realms including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Her titles also include head of the Commonwealth, which mainly groups territories of the former British empire.

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Deliberate fire ended Tas tree sit: tweet

POLICE have reportedly confirmed that a deliberately-lit fire was behind a record-breaking Tasmanian anti-logging activist being forced from the tree that was her home for 15 months.

Tree-sitter Miranda Gibson had until Thursday lived on a 60-metre high platform atop a eucalypt in the Tyenna Valley northwest of Hobart since December 2011.

The 31-year-old was forced from her perch after 449 days by a nearby bushfire.

Tasmania police were unavailable for direct comment, however, ABC Radio Hobart host Damien Brown tweeted late on Monday night that officers had confirmed to him that the fire was deliberate.

"@TasmaniaPolice have confirmed fires that forced @observertree1 from her 457 day tree-top protest were deliberately lit," he said.

Ms Gibson's group Still Wild Still Threatened claims her tree-sit was Australia's longest, beating the 208 days Manfred Stephens set in north Queensland in 1995.

Former Greens leader Bob Brown last week questioned if the fire that put an end to Ms Gibson's protest had been deliberately lit and called for a swift investigation.

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Portugal in worst recession in 37 years

PORTUGAL'S statistics agency says the economy contracted 3.2 per cent last year - its sharpest annual downturn since 1975.

Portugal is enacting broad debt-reduction measures, including tax hikes and pay and pension cuts, in return for a 78 billion euro ($A100 billion) international financial lifeline it received in May 2011.

Those austerity policies are widely blamed for the deepening recession and growing hardship.

The National Statistics Institute said on Monday that a drop in private consumption and slower export growth were the main factors behind the slump, with the economy shrinking 3.8 per cent in the fourth quarter.

Unemployment stands at 17.6 per cent, the third-highest rate in the 27-nation bloc after Greece and Spain.

The economy contracted 1.6 per cent in 2011. The government predicts a 2.0 per cent contraction this year.

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Greens battered in WA election

The Greens suffered even more than the Labor Party in the WA election. Source: AAP

IF Labor's performance in the West Australian election was bad, the Greens was worse - and the party's federal leader Christine Milne says it's a clear warning that Tony Abbott and last century conservatism looms large.

As Colin Barnett's minority Liberal government was returned with a huge majority, the four per cent swing away from the Greens was even more violent than those that turned away from Labor.

The Greens only hope of representation in WA's lower house is in the Kimberley, where local candidate Chris Maher and his opposition to the James Price Point gas project mobilised support.

But across the rest of the state, the Greens vote plummeted, with the party predicted to hold just two seats in the Upper House as counting concludes.

Ms Milne said rather than take her party's savaging in WA as a sign of decline, she said voters should see it as a warning as what could happen at the federal polling booths in September.

"I think the message out of WA is that is essential that we keep the Greens holding the balance of power in the federal parliament," Ms Milne said.

"Because what is very clear is that(Opposition Leader) Tony Abbott and the conservatives are coming and you are going to need people that have policies and will stand up and defend them.

"It is absolutely critical people see the march of the conservatives across the country and see it for what it is - a retreat to the past, to the last century.

"We need to stand up against everything that Tony Abbott would tear down."

With counting in WA suspended until Monday, the Greens held just eight per cent of the vote in the Upper House.

Former Greens turned independent MP Adele Carles only attracted five per cent of the popular vote in Fremantle after her issues with former lover and state treasurer Troy Buswell.

Ms Milne claimed the campaign run by the Liberals and Colin Barnett had been influenced by the state's major mining and resources interests.

"Colin Barnett has run an aggressive campaign on behalf of the big mining industry," Ms Milne said.

"In WA you have got strong voices like Gina Rinehart and Twiggy Forrest and so on all arguing that they should not have to pay the mining tax.

"That has been resonating through WA and that is a tragedy for the rest of the country."

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India's Kumbh Mela festival draws 120m

THE world's biggest religious festival has concluded with nearly two million pilgrims taking a dip in an Indian holy river that washed away the sins of 120 million people in the last 60 days.

The Kumbh Mela, celebrated every 12 years at the conjunction of two sacred rivers on the outskirts of the northern Indian city of Allahabad, drew massive crowds of devotees, ascetics and foreign tourists.

The two-month-long Kumbh Mela ended on the occasion of Mahashivratri, a major Hindu festival celebrated across India and Nepal.

Authorities at the festival on Sunday said the last batch of holy men marked the end of the Kumbh by plunging into the river Ganges and other pilgrims filled the Ganga Jal (holy water) in plastic bottles for religious ceremonies at home.

Many naked holy men smeared their bodies with ashes and sand, chanted final prayers and departed from the venue.

"Over 60 million people attended the festival in 2001 and this time we believe 120 million people have participated," festival chief Mani Prasad Mishra told AFP late on Saturday.

The festival involves crowd management on a jaw-dropping scale and despite all the precautions in place was hit by tragedy last month when a stampede at a train station in Allahabad killed 36 pilgrims who were returning home.

Assorted dreadlocked, naked holy men, priests and self-proclaimed saints from all over the country assembled for the spectacle that offers a rare glimpse of the dizzying range of Indian spiritualism.

Despite the hardships of waking early, plunging into the polluted river water and the relentless crush of the crowds, pilgrims from all over the world described feeling spiritually uplifted and amazed by the scale of the event.

"There is a sense of relief because the festival finally is coming to an end. Most of the pilgrims have returned back home," said Mishra.

He said the job of dismantling the infrastructure that sprawled over 2,000 hectares to house the pilgrims had already begun.

"We built a tent city to celebrate the Kumbh Mela and now we are tearing it down," he said.

Mishra said five electrical sub-stations and tens of thousands of streetlights that gave the improvised city its yellow glow between dusk and dawn would be removed by Sunday night.

All police stations, mobile field hospitals, fire stations, shops, and cafes were now shut and more than 35,000 makeshift toilets had been removed, he said.

The Kumbh Mela has its origins in Hindu mythology, which describes how a few drops of the nectar of immortality fell on the four places that host the festival - Allahabad, Nasik, Ujjain and Haridwar.

The 'Mother Ganges' is worshipped as a god and is seen as the giver and taker of life. In many cases, pilgrims used up all their money to come to the Kumbh Mela, hoping that their prayers could come true.

"People from all walks of life participate in the festival but there is one thing common among all of them - they have a desire to lead a pure life," said Chandra Bala, a temple priest in Allahabad city.

"The power of the Kumbh Mela is the power of humanity."

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Karzai alleges US, Taliban colluding

AFGHAN President Hamid Karzai has accused the Taliban and the US of working in concert to convince Afghans that violence will worsen if most foreign troops leave - an allegation the top American commander in Afghanistan rejected as "categorically false".

Karzai said two suicide bombings that killed 19 people on Saturday - one outside the Afghan Defence Ministry and the other near a police checkpoint in eastern Khost province - show the insurgent group is conducting attacks to help show that international forces will still be needed to keep the peace after their current combat mission ends in 2014.

"The explosions in Kabul and Khost yesterday showed that they are at the service of America and at the service of this phrase: 2014. They are trying to frighten us into thinking that if the foreigners are not in Afghanistan, we would be facing these sorts of incidents," he said during a nationally televised speech about the state of Afghan women.

US and NATO forces commander General Joseph Dunford said Karzai had never expressed such views to him, but said it was understandable that tensions would arise as the coalition balances the need to complete its mission and the Afghans' move to exercise more sovereignty.

"We have fought too hard over the past 12 years, we have shed too much blood over the last 12 years, to ever think that violence or instability would be to our advantage," Dunford said.

Karzai is known for making incendiary comments in his public speeches, a move that is often attributed to him trying to appeal to those who sympathise with the Taliban or as a way to gain leverage when he feels his international allies are ignoring his country's sovereignty.

In previous speeches, he has threatened to join the Taliban and called his NATO allies occupiers who want to plunder Afghanistan's resources.

Karzai also denounced the arrest of a university student on Saturday by Afghan forces his aide said were working for the CIA. It was unclear why the student was detained.

Presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi said the CIA freed the student after Karzai's staff intervened, but Karzai wants the Afghan raiders arrested. The president issued a decree on Sunday banning all foreign forces from universities and schools unless they obtain prior permission from the Afghan government.

The Karzai government's latest comments and actions come as it negotiates a pact with the US for the long-term presence of American forces in Afghanistan and just days after an agreement to transfer the US prison outside of Kabul to Afghan authority fell through. They also came during US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's first visit to Afghanistan since becoming the Pentagon chief.

Karzai said in his speech any foreign powers that want to keep troops in Afghanistan need to do so under conditions set forward by Afghanistan.

"We will tell them where we need them, and under which conditions. They must respect our laws. They must respect the national sovereignty of our country and must respect all our customs," Karzai said.

Karzai offered no proof of co-ordination, but said the Taliban and the United States were in "daily negotiations" in various foreign countries and noted the United States has said it no longer considers the insurgent group its enemy.

The US continues to fight against the Taliban and other militant groups, but has expressed its backing for formal peace talks with the Taliban to find a political resolution to the war.

Karzai said he did not believe the Taliban's claim they launched Saturday's attacks to show they are still a potent force fighting the United States.

"Yesterday's explosions, which the Taliban claimed, show that in reality they are saying they want the presence of foreigners in Afghanistan," Karzai said.

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Sombre mood at WA Labor HQ

IT was such a somber mood among the WA Labor camp on election night that one of the only cheers from the crowd came when an image of the party's leader appeared on the television.

Less than 100 people gathered in Mark McGowan's electorate of Rockingham on Saturday night.

Heading into the state election, it looked like Labor was going to lose.

But no one expected political experts to begin calling the result before 7.30pm (WST).

"It looks terrible. What a bloodbath," one Labor supporter lamented.

Deputy leader of the Opposition Roger Cook was the only Labor politician to front the venue early in the evening and admitted to reporters that it was looking like a tough night ahead for his party.

"We need to just wait and see how the night develops," he said.

Mr Cook said there was still a sense of anticipation because it was early in the count.

He said there was a sense of pride in how the election campaign had been run by Labor.

"We believe we've run a very competitive campaign for a party that obviously doesn't have the resources to draw upon that the Liberal party does," he said.

"We've brought forward bold policies, bold visions for Western Australia."

Mr Cook also admitted there had been some damage to the Labor brand from the federal government.

"To what extent it had a role to play in the state election is very difficult to say," he said.

They may be headed for a whitewash in the election, but at least there is plenty of good food to eat while Labor supporters drown their sorrows.

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