World's media sweat it out for royal baby

THE media frenzy over the birth of Prince William and his wife Catherine's baby has reached fever pitch as the reported due date came and went with no sign of the royal heir.

A rumour that the Duchess of Cambridge had gone into labour on Thursday spread like wildfire on Twitter and reportedly caused British Prime Minister David Cameron's office to call Buckingham Palace to check on it.

It was another false alarm, but the dozens of international journalists camped outside the private London hospital where Kate is giving birth are on tenterhooks, knowing that it could happen any day now.

The palace has said the baby was due in "mid-July" and many editors have had this weekend in the diary for weeks - even though any parent knows that babies rarely arrive on time.

William's father, Prince Charles, revealed that it is not just royal observers waiting for the baby, as they attended a festival celebrating Queen Elizabeth II's coronation on Friday.

Charles, the heir to the throne who will become a grandfather for the first time, said "it won't be long now" as he surveyed a range of commemorative china to mark the new arrival.

His second wife Camilla, who is already a grandmother, added in conversation: "We are very excited. Immensely looking forward to it and waiting for the phone call."

The popularity of William and Kate, who married in a glittering wedding at Westminster Abbey in 2011, has turned the birth of their first child into a global event.

Media organisations have been installed outside St Mary's Hospital in Paddington for almost two weeks now, and in the absence of news, time has been passing slowly.

For the television networks, the top priority is to hold their positions around the clock, working 12-hour shifts in baking summer heat.

That means fiercely defending their territory, never yielding an inch of space to a rival station, and woe betide anyone touching the gaffer tape marking out an organisation's patch.

The main British news broadcasters - BBC, ITN and Sky News - have got the prime spots, lined up in front of the major US networks, which have maximised their space with some mammoth pieces of broadcasting hardware.

Behind them, it is a scramble to get a decent angle to shoot the doorway where William himself first saw daylight in 1982, carried out of the Lindo Wing by his parents Prince Charles and Diana.

For the time being, the door is guarded by a police officer who is rapidly becoming the most filmed man on the planet.

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14 killed in traffic pile-up near Moscow

FOURTEEN people have been killed and 16 injured in a traffic accident outside Moscow involving a truck, a passenger bus and other vehicles, officials say.

Police said that according to initial information, the accident took place on Saturday when the truck which was carrying a cargo of gravel turned onto a main road and ploughed into the bus.

The interior ministry said that the 14 killed included a young child.

The bus, which was taking passengers on a regular public transport route from Podolsk to Zhokhovo in the Moscow region, was broken up into two parts by the force of the collision, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

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Apologies over plane crash gaffe

US officials have apologised for mistakenly confirming false and offensive names identifying the pilots of the Asiana flight that crashed in San Francisco, leaving three dead and scores injured.

Fox network affiliate KTVU news Channel 2 in Oakland identified the pilots in their noon broadcast on Friday as "Sum Ting Wong," "Wi Tu Lo," "Ho Lee Fuk," and "Bang Ding Ow."

KTVU cited the National Transportation Safety Board as their source, but quickly realised the mistake and apologised.

"These names were not accurate despite an NTSB official in Washington confirming them late this morning," KTVU said late on Friday.

The NTSB later apologised for the "inaccurate and offensive names that were mistakenly confirmed" as those of the Asiana pilots - and blamed the mistake on an intern.

"In response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft," the statement read.

The NTSB "does not release or confirm the names of crew members or people involved in transportation accidents to the media," the board said.

"Appropriate actions will be taken to ensure that such a serious error is not repeated."

The NTSB told the San Francisco Chronicle the offensive names "originated at the media outlet," and that the intern did not realise they were offensive and was "acting in good faith and trying to be helpful."

Three people died when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport on July 6 and more than 180 were injured.

In Seoul, Asiana Airlines earlier identified the pilot flying the Boeing 777 that crashed as Lee Kang-Kuk, 46.

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NSW teen catches fire, police hunt for ex

A HUNT is underway for a teenager whose ex-girlfriend was allegedly doused in accelerant as she stood near an open fire at a home south of Wollongong.

The woman, 19, caught alight and had to be airlifted to Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital where she remained in an induced coma on Friday night.

She was found severely burned at a home in Koona Avenue, Albion Park Rail, about midday (AEST) on Friday, police said.

Police established a crime scene and seized several items for forensic analysis.

Investigators have been told the woman had previously been in a relationship with a 17-year-old male, who is now wanted for questioning.

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Mandela's wife now 'less anxious'

South Africa has marked 50 years since the police raid that led to Nelson Mandela's life sentence. Source: AAP

GRACA Machel, the wife of ailing South African icon Nelson Mandela, says she is less anxious about his condition, five weeks after he was admitted to hospital.

"He continues to respond positively to treatment. I would say that today I'm less anxious than I was a week ago," she told state-backed SABC television.

It is the latest in a series of upbeat accounts, which seem to suggest that while the 94-year-old's condition remains "critical", it has improved somewhat.

After visiting Mandela late Thursday, President Jacob Zuma said he was "responding to treatment."

"He remains as much of a fighter now as he was 50 years ago," Zuma said, marking the anniversary of a police raid that led to Mandela's life sentence in prison.

Earlier in the week Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, who is one of Mandela's nephews and king of his Thembu tribe, said the former statesman was "conscious".

"He could not talk, but he recognised me and made a few gestures of acknowledgment, like moving his eyes."

Two weeks ago the prognosis appeared much bleaker, with family massing at his Pretoria hospital as Zuma abruptly cancelled a trip to Mozambique.

Doctors are said to have ruled out switching off Mandela's life support machines unless there is serious organ failure.

Court documents filed on behalf of the family last month described Mandela's condition as "perilous", with one claiming he was in a "vegetative state".

Mandela, who turns 95 next week, was rushed to a Pretoria hospital on June 8 with a recurring lung infection.

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Popular roving UK broadcaster Whicker dies

ALAN Whicker, one of the most widely-travelled and popular UK broadcasters of his generation, has died aged 87.

The presenter and reporter died in the early hours of Friday at his home in Jersey after suffering from bronchial pneumonia, his spokeswoman said.

For more than 40 years he roamed the world for the BBC and independent TV networks, seeking out the eccentric, the ludicrous and the socially revealing aspects of everyday life from all over the globe.

He was probably best known for Whicker's World, his long-running documentary program which he presented from 1959 to 1990.

And he acquired over the years an enviable reputation of having no equal as a television commentator.

Alan Donald Whicker was born in Cairo, Egypt, on August 2 1925, but moved to England as a young child on the death of his father.

He attended Haberdashers' Aske's School and was commissioned as an officer in the Devonshire Regiment during the Second World War, serving as a captain.

He then joined the Army Film and Photo Unit in Italy in 1943, filming at Anzio.

Whicker was also responsible for taking into custody British traitor John Amery, who was subsequently executed.

In a 2004 TV series, called Whicker's War, he disclosed that he was one of the first of the Allied forces to enter Milan and that he took into custody an SS general and troopers who were looking after the SS money vault.

He also shot footage of the body of Mussolini.

After the war he became a journalist and broadcaster, acting as a newspaper correspondent in the Korean War, during which he was mistakenly reported as having been killed.

He joined the BBC in 1957 and was a reporter for the famous Tonight program.

Soon after that he began his Whicker's World series, which over the years consistently claimed a place in the top 10 ratings.

He was also instrumental in the launch of Yorkshire Television.

Whicker was noted for probing the private worlds of the rich and famous on cruise ships, the Orient Express, at cocktail parties, on world tours, in health spas and gentlemen's clubs.

He lured countless individuals into allowing him a privileged glimpse of sometimes extraordinary lives.

Among his "victims" were John Paul Getty and Haiti's feared dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier.

On one occasion, while in the US, he heard about an Alan Whicker impersonation contest. He entered and came third.

He was also the man behind the popular advertising slogan Hello World for Travelocity.

Whicker was awarded a CBE in the 2005 New Year Honours list for services to broadcasting.

He had lived in Jersey and is survived by his long-standing partner Valerie Kleeman.

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Global recovery to boost oil demand: IEA

GLOBAL economic recovery and emerging markets led by China will boost growth of oil demand to a record high total next year, the IEA forecasts.

Next year, consumption by emerging markets will dominate demand overall, a position "they should hold in perpetuity", the International Energy Agency said.

But the overall tone of the IEA monthly report stressed that the oil market is heading into a sea of "many uncertainties", partly because oil production in the United States is "set to grow strongly".

Supply from other countries outside the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), notably Brazil, Kazakhstan and South Sudan, would also rise, the agency forecast.

For this year, because unseasonally cold weather had caused a big increase in demand for heating oil in the northern hemisphere in the second quarter, the agency raised its estimate for global demand by 215,000 barrels per day (bd).

This took the overall estimated annual growth to 930,000 bd, and total consumption to 90.8 million barrels per day (mbd).

The IEA estimates show demand rising by a further 1.2 million bd next year to 92.0 million bd, a new record after record demand also this year.

In London, the price of benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil fell 24 US cents from the closing price on Wednesday to $US106.28, partly in response to the report but also due to comments on monetary policy from the US Federal Reserve, traders said.

Regarding supply, "upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa remains an overarching concern," the IEA warned.

"Emerging markets and developing economies are forecast to lead demand growth in 2014," the IEA said.

The growth of demand from countries outside the 34-member OECD had slowed "from the heady pace of recent years" but would "climb above total OECD demand in the second quarter of 2014," the agency said.

Against a background of the boom in production of shale oil in North America, the IEA said that the United States would play a role in "an expected steep increase in global refining activity in the third quarter of 2013".

Demand from countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development would shrink at a much slower pace than it had since the financial crisis began in 2008.

OECD demand would fall by 0.8 per cent this year and 0.4 per cent in 2014, on the basis that "OECD economies will on average return to growth in 2014".

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Ex-UK minister to be charged over expenses

Former UK MP Denis MacShane will be charged with false accounting over parliamentary expense claims. Source: AAP

BRITAIN'S former Europe minister Denis MacShane is to be charged with false accounting over his expenses claims in parliament, prosecutors say.

The Crown Prosecution Service said MacShane, 65, allegedly claimed STG12,900 ($A21,185) for research and translation services by a company that did not carry out the work.

MacShane, who resigned his seat in parliament in November, is to appear in a London court July 30 on a single charge of false accounting.

He had been a Labour Party MP since 1994 and was former premier Tony Blair's Europe minister from 2002 to 2005.

"Having thoroughly reviewed the evidence gathered by the police, I have decided there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to bring a criminal charge against Denis MacShane," Malcolm McHaffie, deputy head of the prosecution service's special crime division, said in a statement.

"This charge relates to fraudulent claims with a total value of 12,900 ... It is alleged that Denis MacShane claimed expenses for research and translation services carried out by a company that did not carry out that work."

Police began examining MacShane's expenses nearly three years ago before dropping the case.

But the investigation was reopened in the wake of a report in November by a parliamentary standards committee which found that he had faked receipts to receive thousands of pounds of public money.

The report included letters from the former Labour minister to the standards commissioner detailing his actions, which had not previously been seen by police.

MacShane stood down as the member of parliament for Rotherham in northern England after the committee recommended he be suspended from parliament's lower House of Commons for 12 months.

MacShane said in a statement: "I am disappointed at the CPS decision but as the matter is now in the hands of the court I will be making no further statement."

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China plans to further restrict car use

China will further restrict the sale of cars for private use in a bid to fight pollution. Source: AAP

CHINA is planning to up the number of cities that restrict vehicle purchases, in a bid to fight pollution and congestion.

Four cities including Beijing and Shanghai already curb the purchase of vehicles for private use, for example by restricting sales to 20,000 per year through a lottery system.

On Thursday, state media quoted the deputy secretary general of the government-backed China Association of Automobile Manufacturers as saying eight more cities are likely to announce similar policies.

The eight include port city Tianjin, near Beijing, metropolis Chongqing in the southwest and industrial powerhouse Shenzhen, not far from Hong Kong.

With more than 13 million cars sold in China last year, motor vehicles and their emissions have emerged as the chief culprit for air pollution in large cities.

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Ireland set to pass abortion law

IRISH MPs are set to introduce abortion in limited cases where the mother's life is at risk, when controversial new laws go to a final vote on Wednesday night.

The predominantly Catholic nation's abortion laws faced global scrutiny after the death of 31-year-old Indian woman Savita Halappanavar in a Galway hospital last October.

The bill follows a 2010 European Court of Human Rights ruling that found Ireland failed to implement properly the constitutional right to abortion where a woman's life is at risk.

Under a 1992 Supreme Court ruling, women in Ireland are legally entitled to an abortion if needed to save a mother's life - but legislation has never been passed to reflect this.

The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill allows for abortion in circumstances where doctors certify there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother.

The new bill also permits a termination when one obstetrician and two psychiatrists unanimously agree that an expectant mother is a suicide risk.

The "suicide clause" has caused consternation among some lawmakers who believe it will be abused and lead to more abortions in Ireland.

Four government deputies voted against the bill at an earlier stage and were expelled from the parliamentary party as Prime Minister and Fine Gael party leader Enda Kenny has not allowed a free vote on the matter.

A number of other lawmakers and possibly a member of Kenny's cabinet, Lucinda Creighton, junior minister with responsibility for European Affairs, are likely to vote against the bill.

Lawmakers will discuss the 165 amendments tabled in the past few days, but widespread changes as demanded by some are unlikely to be introduced.

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