UNESCO leader re-elected

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova has been elected to a second four-year term as head of the UN's cultural agency.

Speaking after her re-election on Tuesday by UNESCO's general conference, the native of Sofia, Bulgaria, said she was working to streamline UNESCO operations while avoiding major cuts caused by a lack of funds.

The US suspended donations, which made up nearly a quarter of UNESCO's budget, after the agency's decision to admit Palestine as a member in 2011.

The US lost its UNESCO vote last week over the funding dispute and did not take part in Tuesday's ballot.

UNESCO may be best known for its program to protect the world cultures via Heritage sites, which include the Statue of Liberty and Mali's Timbuktu.

Its core mission was to be an anti-extremist organisation.

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Snowden a criminal: Richardson

DEFENCE Department secretary Dennis Richardson says fugitive US defence contractor Edward Snowden should be regarded as a common criminal, not a whistleblower.

Mr Richardson, the former head of the Australian Security intelligence Organisation (ASIO), said he became irritated every time he saw a reference to Snowden's disclosure of US intelligence information as whistleblowing.

"I thought whistleblowers revealed things that were illegal," he told an Australian Strategic Policy Institute dinner in Canberra on Tuesday.

"As far as I am concerned Snowden is probably nothing more than a garden-variety criminal."

Mr Snowden, a former US defence contractor, revealed details of secret US surveillance programs that were later published worldwide. He's currently in hiding in Russia, where he has been granted asylum for a year.

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5% emissions reduction possible: expert

THE government can achieve its target five per cent emissions reduction through its direct action scheme at a cost of $7-10 billion, an economist says.

Danny Price, managing director of Frontier Economics Australia, said on Tuesday the task would depend on the difficult issues of scheme penalties and baselines which the government had yet to announce.

Initially the coalition proposed a $10.5 billion direct action fund out to 2020 but has now revised that down to $2.55 billion to 2018.

Mr Price said there would certainly be funds beyond this initial four year forward estimates period, although he couldn't say just how much more would be needed.

"It will depend very much on where the government sets the baselines and the nature of the penalties that are applied, but in the order of $7-10 billion, but probably on the lower end of that range. That includes the $2.55 billion," he told ABC television.

Mr Price is one of a small group of economists who favour direct action rather than a carbon tax to reduce carbon emissions.

He said a couple of years ago the then opposition invited Frontier Economics to review costings and assess whether their proposed range of abatement measures were consistent with the literature.

"In both cases we concluded that the costs were reasonable and the level of abatement was very consistent, probably on the conservative side of the evidence available at the time," he said.

Mr Price said a carbon tax worked as a stick whereas direct action was a carrot.

But it also included penalties.

"Direct action comprises both a reward and also a penalty. So if any producer comes along and starts to emit at a much higher rate than they did before, that penalty could cut in," he said.

"Very much, the focus is on encouraging greater quantities of cleaner energy or cleaner forms of production."

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Drones may fly in to help SA farmers

UNMANNED aerial drones could soon be used in the early detection of pests and disease in South Australian crops.

Drones are among a number of new technologies being considered as options to reduce losses and safeguard the biosecurity of the state's grain crops.

Agriculture Minister Gail Gago says the state government will provide almost $1 million to a $5.5 million, five-year research project on the introduction of new technologies to the agriculture sector.

"The sophistication and development in sensor technologies is growing at an impressive rate," Ms Gago said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Near-infra-red, laser, acoustic and biosensor detection are being applied to a range of industries and agriculture, fisheries and environmental management are all set to gain."

She said the high-tech approach could improve farm productivity and counter the negative impacts of drought and weather extremes.

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Industry calls for swift carbon tax repeal

AN alliance of industry groups is urging the Australian parliament not to stand in the way of the Abbott government quickly repealing the carbon tax.

The federal government on Wednesday will introduce its carbon tax repeal legislation to the House of Representatives, the first step in its long-standing pledge to do away with Labor's carbon pricing laws.

But while the government has the numbers to see the legislation through the lower house, it's likely to have less luck in the upper house given the makeup of the current Senate.

Labor and the Australian Greens are expected to block the repeal legislation in the upper house until July, when a less-hostile Senate takes over.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Australian Industry Group, the Business Council of Australia and the Minerals Council of Australia claim any delay would achieve nothing for the environment and hurt businesses.

"That would be deeply unhelpful as we try to build a more competitive Australia with a better chance of keeping our manufacturing base onshore," said the groups in a statement.

The industry groups - all outspoken critics of the carbon tax - said the next step would be ensuring the government's Direct Action scheme reduces emissions cheaply and doesn't reduce business competitiveness.

If passed, the package of eight bills will not only repeal the carbon tax, but abolish the Climate Change Authority.

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Biometrics means world without passwords

YOU may never need to memorise another password. That's the goal of researchers at Purdue University's International Center for Biometrics Research.

Stephen Elliott is the director of international biometric research at Purdue University in Indiana. He says iris and fingerprint scans as well as facial and voice recognition are just a few of the tools that improve security while making lives easier.

His basement lab is a place where emerging biometric technologies are tested for weaknesses before they can go mainstream.

Biometrics is already in use at one local restaurant. Chris Smith, assistant manager of KFC in West Lafayette, Indiana, says workers punch in by putting their finger on a fingerprint scanner attached to their cash register.

The new iPhone 5S also uses fingerprint identification for security.

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Surprise as UK inflation falls to 2.2%

INFLATION in Britain has fallen to its lowest level in more than a year.

The sharper-than-expected drop in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rate from 2.7 per cent in September to 2.2 per cent in October is being seen as easing pressure on the Bank of England to lift historically-low interest rates.

Sterling fell on currency markets as a result on Tuesday.

The figure equals the level of inflation in September last year and takes it closer to reaching the Bank's target level of 2 per cent for the first time in four years. It was last lower, at 1.9 per cent, in November 2009.

Prime Minister David Cameron has hailed the fall as "encouraging news for hard-working people" in a Twitter message, though Labour pointed out that wages - rising at an annual rate of just 0.7 per cent, according to latest figures - were still lagging behind.

Savers are also still struggling to find accounts that beat the rise in the cost of living, according to price comparison website Moneyfacts.

Policymakers at the Bank of England's monetary policy committee (MPC) were shown the figures last week before making their latest decision to hold interest rates.

On Wednesday, the MPC's quarterly Inflation Report will take the temperature of the economy amid speculation that it will upgrade forecasts for growth and jobs.

Lower inflation expectations will reduce the pressure on the Bank to cut interest rates although better prospects for the UK's gross domestic product (GDP) and unemployment will have the opposite effect.

The Bank has pledged not to raise interest rates before the jobless rate falls to 7 per cent and indicated this target is unlikely to be met until the third quarter of 2016 at the earliest.

So the likelihood of this target being met sooner would add to anxiety that interest rates will be raised from their historic low of 0.5 per cent before that time.

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