World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

Gabrielle Giffords skydives on anniversary of shooting - video
Russia's southern Stavropol region on alert after bodies found
Conjoined grey whale calves found in Mexico
Dennis Rodman apologises for Kenneth Bae comments
Dennis Rodman says sorry for US missionary outburst
Japan chemical factory explosion kills at least five
A drunk woman's tweets to Caroline Criado-Perez show boredom at its worst | Gaby Hinsliff
Qantas may get emergency help after credit rating downgraded to 'junk'
Rapist's escape from WA prison blamed on prison van security
Royal commission into child sex abuse gains access to police phone taps
Guardian website unblocked in China after users reported access was denied
Ethiopia's model families hailed as agents of social transformation
Kevin Rudd responds to revelation Robert Gates slept during his speech
Defence chief defends navy against claims of mistreating asylum seekers
Australia has 2m small-scale renewable systems, says Clean Energy Regulator
Barangaroo: anatomy of a sellout
Consumer confidence returning as retail and housing figures improve
Rescued baby animals – in pictures
Tasmania to continue ban on genetically modified crops and animals
Bill Shorten rejects creation of a US-style working poor in Australia
Parkes Elvis festival: the Elvis Express has left the station
Liberal MP attacks colleagues for not fighting to save fruit processing jobs
Super Bowl: Australian film-maker's Doritos ad in running for US$1m
Bali deaths: police refuse to release bodies until criminal activity ruled out
Australia's Winter Olympics team are heroes – let's salute them

Gabrielle Giffords skydives on anniversary of shooting - video

Posted: 09 Jan 2014 01:34 AM PST

Former US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords skydives above Eloy, Arizona, on the third anniversary of her gun attack

Russia's southern Stavropol region on alert after bodies found

Posted: 09 Jan 2014 12:55 AM PST

Five bodies with gunshot wounds and an explosive device discovered just over a week after suicide attacks in Volgograd

Russia has put security forces on combat alert in the southern Stavropol region after the discovery of five bodies with gunshot wounds and an explosive device, a regional security spokesman said.

Russia has already tightened security before next month's Winter Olympics in Sochi – on which President Vladimir Putin has staked a lot of political and personal prestige – and is on high alert after suicide bombers killed at least 34 people in separate attacks in the southern city of Volgograd last month.

The five bodies were discovered on Wednesday in four cars in two separate districts outside the regional capital Stavropol, a gateway to the North Caucasus, where Russia faces an insurgency by Islamist militants who have threatened to prevent the Olympics going ahead.

An unidentified explosive device was also found near one of the vehicles, said a spokesman for Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) in Stavropol. No other details were immediately available.

Putin said after the Volgograd attacks that he would annihilate all terrorists in Russia.

The Winter Olympics open in Sochi on 7 February. The Black Sea resort is on the western edge of the Caucasus mountains, where the insurgents want to carve out an Islamic state.

The head of Russia's Olympic committee has said no more can be done to safeguard the Games because every measure possible is already in place.

Russian forces went on combat alert in Sochi on Tuesday and about 37,000 personnel are now in place to provide security at the Games, Russian officials say.

Conjoined grey whale calves found in Mexico

Posted: 09 Jan 2014 12:51 AM PST

The conjoined calves were found alive by fishermen in the Baja California peninsula but lived only a few hours

Fishermen in Mexico have found rare conjoined grey whale calves that died shortly after being born.

Benito Bermudez, a marine biologist, says the whales were found alive in the Ojo de Liebre lagoon in the Baja California peninsula but lived only a few hours.

Bermudez said they were linked at the waist, with two full heads and tail fins.

Bermudez works with the National Natural Protected Areas Commission.

He said scientists were collecting samples of skin, muscle and baleen – the mammals' filter-feeder system – for research purposes.

Every year more than 20,000 grey whales swim to Mexico from Alaska to mate and give birth.

Dennis Rodman apologises for Kenneth Bae comments

Posted: 09 Jan 2014 12:37 AM PST

Former US basketball star 'had been drinking' when he implied Korean-American man deserved his 15-year sentence

Retired US basketball star Dennis Rodman reported to be on board a helicopter bound for a multimillion-dollar North Korean ski resort on Thursday, possibly along with dictator Kim Jong Un, as his advisers fought to contain public outrage sparked by the star's controversial behaviour during his fourth visit to the totalitarian state.

Rodman apologised on Thursday for comments suggesting that Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American man currently serving a 15-year hard labour sentence in North Korea, deserved his fate, saying he had been drinking when he made the remarks to CNN.

Rodman has come under sharp criticism during his current visit to North Korea because of the positive comments he has made about its leader, Kim Jong Un, and aparent failure to acknowledge the country's abysmal human rights record. That criticism intensified following a CNN interview Tuesday, during which he was asked if he would bring up Bae's fate during his trip, a rambling Rodman said: "If you understand what Kenneth Bae did," adding, "Do you understand what he did in this country? Why is he held captive in this country?"

On Wednesday he led a group of retired National Basketball Association players in an exhibition game against a team of North Koreans in Pyongyang. Before the game, he serenaded the dictator by singing, "Happy Birthday, Dear Marshal". He has previously praised Kim as a "friend for life".

Shortly before his departure to the Kim's luxury showcase resort, however, Rodman issued an unequivocal apology for his comments about Bae in an email send to The Associated Press through his publicist: "I take full responsibility for my actions. It had been a very stressful day. Some of my teammates were leaving because of pressure from their families and business associates. My dreams of basketball diplomacy was quickly falling apart. I had been drinking. It's not an excuse but by the time the interview happened I was upset."

He continued: "I want to first apologise to Kenneth Bae's family. I want to apologise to my teammates and my management team. I embarrassed a lot of people. I'm very sorry. At this point I should know better than to make political statements. I'm truly sorry."

Bae's family had reacted with fury to the former NBA star's initial comments. In a statement, the captive's sister, Terri Chung, said: "There is nothing diplomatic about his trip."

"My family and I are outraged by Rodman's recent comments. He is playing games with my brother's life. There is no diplomacy, only games, and at my brother's expense," she added.

Chung and other members of Bae's family could not be reached for comment about Rodman's expressions of regret.

Despite his public contrition, Rodman was sticking to his whirlwind tour of North Korea and appearing publicly with Kim.

Rodman is visiting the country just weeks after Kim's uncle, Jang Song Thaek, was executed for what state media said was his involvement in an attempted coup. Observers of North Korean affairs said the execution was likely rooted in Kim's attempts to consolidate power and his anger over his uncle's efforts to enrich himself.

South Korean officials estimate the ski resort Rodman is currently visiting cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. North Korea aims to make $43.75m (£26.5m) in annual profit from the resort, according to documents prepared for potential foreign investors, and expects up to 5,000 skiers to visit a day.

Dennis Rodman says sorry for US missionary outburst

Posted: 09 Jan 2014 12:22 AM PST

Rodman says he was drunk when he appeared to blame Kenneth Bae for his imprisonment in North Korea

Japan chemical factory explosion kills at least five

Posted: 09 Jan 2014 12:16 AM PST

More than 10 people also injured in blast at Mitsubishi Materials Corp plant in Yokkaichi City

An explosion at a chemical factory in central Japan has killed at least five people and injured more than 10 others, according to reports.

Police say the explosion occurred at Japanese metal and chemical company Mitsubishi Materials Corp's Yokkaichi plant on Thursday afternoon during maintenance.

Fire department officials say 17 people injured from the blast were taken to nearby hospitals.

Police say two were dead, while Japanese media including the Kyodo News agency put the death toll at five. Conditions of the injured were not immediately known.

Mie prefectural police say investigators suspect a hydrogen explosion caused by chemical reaction when plant workers were rinsing heat exchange equipment at a silicone plant on the complex in Yokkaichi City, about 220 miles (350km) west of Tokyo.

A drunk woman's tweets to Caroline Criado-Perez show boredom at its worst | Gaby Hinsliff

Posted: 09 Jan 2014 12:01 AM PST

Boredom is a driving force in everything from prison riots and problem gambling to nuisance caused by kids in school holidays

It's hard to know exactly what drives a young woman to threaten a stranger, in the middle of the night, with something "worse than rape". The obvious answer is booze, since Isabella Sorley told police she was "off her face" drunk when she sent menacing tweets to feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez. (Although presumably, still sober enough to type.)

But because most 23-year-olds can think of better things to do when plastered than wading aggressively into a row about putting Jane Austen on banknotes, somehow that doesn't feel like the whole answer. Closer to the nub of it is perhaps that Sorley also said she was "bored". Much like her co-defendant John Nimmo, 25, also convicted this week of sending abusive messages to the Labour MP Stella Creasy, and described in court as a recluse with no friends and nothing to do all day. Strip away the understandable shock at what is said and so much online vitriol boils down to nothing more than bored people, disappointed and dissatisfied with their own lives, poking others with sticks.

He surely never meant it this way, but Isaac Asimov was right when he predicted in 1964 that boredom would become the great disease of our time, one "spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity", which would eventually have "serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences".

What's staggering is that boredom still has such a wholesome, desirable image. It's good for the kiddies, people say: teaches them to make their own entertainment. But while dull times may sometimes spark creative responses, so often they lead to destructive behaviour instead.

Boredom is a driving force now in everything from prison riots and problem gambling to divorce and the kind of petty nuisance caused by kids during the long school holidays, when they're released from captivity only to become quickly fed up with all that freedom. (Years ago, working on a local newspaper, I could date the end of the school year with surgical precision by the sudden rush of grass fires turning up in the morning emergency services bulletin. Kids would set blazes on patches of wasteland, just for the thrill of seeing the fire engine arrive.)

Boredom is a sickness, a blight on contemporary life, secondary only in its capacity for damage to the self-destructive things we do to relieve it: eating too much, getting hammered, picking fights (virtual or in real life), taking stupid risks, having affairs, mooching mindlessly around the shops buying things we don't really need.

And while I salute the honesty of Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP who this week complained about the utter pointlessness of being forced to repeat the words "one nation" in every speech or press release, he arguably pulled his punches by not identifying the hidden culprits. Blaming soundbites and slogans on spin culture conveniently ignores the reason politics started down this road in the first place: bored voters. People quickly tire of watching a politician explain a complicated idea at length, which drives TV producers and reporters to seek ever more digestible nuggets – and politicians anxious not to be thought dull quickly learn to vomit them up. At which point, of course, we announce, seemingly without irony, that we're bored with politics because it's all empty soundbites.

Were we always this horribly, destructively bored? It seems not, given the concept is said to have only really emerged in the 18th century, along with the growth of leisure time but also the emergence of a strong sense of self. At its purest, boredom isn't just having nothing to do but being deeply dissatisfied with what there is to do, with your own company and with yourself. To be properly bored you need to think you deserve to be happier than this, at least as happy as all those other people seem to be. It's a short step from there to resenting anyone who, like Criado-Perez, does seem to have meaning and purpose in their lives. And if you had set out to design a way of bringing bored, dissatisfied people up against others flaunting their supposedly more interesting lives, you could hardly have done better than social media – businesses purpose-built for killing time and showing off.

As for why malicious tweeters so often home in on female, black or gay targets, dumb prejudice obviously plays a big part, but surprisingly so may boredom. In a fascinating experiment at the University of Limerick a few years ago, participants were first bored witless by being made to do a repetitive task and then asked to suggest punishments for an imaginary Englishman convicted of beating up an Irishman. The longer they'd spent on the dull task, the more likely they became to bay for blood.

But crucially, the researchers found tedium seemed to breed not just greater harshness generally but specifically hostility to outsiders. (When the experiment was rejigged to involve judging an Irishman for beating up an Englishman, Irish participants tended to make excuses for him.) When life seems meaningless, they speculated, we may subconsciously cling to a chosen social group – and pick on people outside it – just to try to liven things up a bit.

Or to put it another way, your mum was half right: bored people are boring. Right up until the minute they turn nasty.

Gaby Hinsliff

Qantas may get emergency help after credit rating downgraded to 'junk'

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 11:52 PM PST

Federal government understood to be considering standby option but it would not guarantee existing debt

Federal cabinet will consider offering Qantas a "standby" or emergency debt guarantee after a second ratings agency downgraded its credit rating to "junk" status on Thursday.

It is understood the option, which may not require legislation, was discussed by cabinet in December and will be reconsidered in late January.

The company, and some coalition backbenchers, have been lobbying for changes to the Qantas Sales Act to remove the requirement for majority Australian ownership and allow foreign investors to hold more than 49%.

But the Labor party and the Greens have ruled out support for the amendment in the Senate, meaning it could not pass parliament before the new Senate sits in July.

The Moody's downgrade came after Standard and Poors had already downgraded Qantas debt in December.

Qantas chief financial officer Gareth Evans said the downgrade was "not unexpected and underlined the importance of taking decisive action to address an extremely difficult operating environment".

A spokesman for the company said "while the removal of the Qantas Sale Act has some political challenges, there are other more immediate measures which can address the fact that Qantas operates with legislative limitations which Virgin does not. We're in ongoing dialogue with the government about specific measures to level the playing field."

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce has been lobbying the former Labor government and the Abbott government, arguing the airline is not competing on a level playing field because it is shackled with legislated foreign ownership restrictions while rival Virgin has enjoyed a massive cash injection from its foreign state-owned enterprise shareholders while continuing to be designated as an Australian airline.

Last year Qantas announced plans to shed 1,000 jobs, impose pay freezes and make cuts across the board. Its credit rating was downgraded to junk status by Standard & Poor's after it unveiled half-year losses of $300 million and said it needed to cut $2 billion from its costs over the next three years.

The standby debt facility would not guarantee existing debt, but would be available, at a fee, as a last-resort measure, and as such could mean the airline was seen as a government-backed entity by the ratings agencies. As an emergency facility it may also be structured so it did not hit the government's budget bottom line.

The government has also canvassed the option of buying a stake in the airline, but this would be difficult as it prepares for a cost-cutting budget and refuses bail-out requests from manufacturers.

The opposition transport spokesman, Anthony Albanese, said Labor would consider any proposal that ensured Qantas retained its position as an important part of the national economy, but would not support a change to the airline's ownership restrictions.

Lenore Taylor

Rapist's escape from WA prison blamed on prison van security

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 11:50 PM PST

Cameron John Graham and a fellow prisoner broke out of a prison van during a transfer by private prison contractor Serco

Royal commission into child sex abuse gains access to police phone taps

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 11:23 PM PST

Attorney-general allows relevant historical information to be collected, but no new intercepts will be ordered

The royal commission into child sex abuse has successfully sought access to information gathered through police phone-tapping.

A notice in the commonwealth government gazette this week revealed that in December the attorney-general, George Brandis, had added the royal commission to the list of organisations that can legally receive information under section 5AA of the Telecommunications (Information and Access) Act 1979.

The commission, announced in January 2013, is investigating how institutions managed and responded to allegations and instances of child sex abuse.

A spokeswoman said the royal commission had "sought this authority from the attorney-general in order to legally receive … relevant information from police, and other agencies, including information that might have been gathered through interception".

She said the royal commission needed the authority to be given historical information that the police had gathered through phone intercepts, and had "no intention" of using it to instigate new phone tapping requests.

Under the act, police forces and organisations such as the NSW Crimes Commission and the Independent Commission Against Corruption can request and access information gathered through intercepts, but royal commissions must be explicitly conferred the power.

The commission, chaired by Justice Peter McClellan, will make a final report by the end of 2015 and is expected to recommend changes in laws, policies and practices to better protect children from sexual abuse.

In an issues paper released in December it said its work to that point showed "the needs of people who suffered child abuse in institutional contexts" were similar to those identified by other inquiries around the world, including "an acknowledgment of harm done and accountability for that harm, an apology, access to therapy and to education, financial compensation, some means of memorialising the experiences of children in institutions, and a commitment to raising public awareness of institutional child abuse and preventing its recurrence".

Lenore Taylor

Guardian website unblocked in China after users reported access was denied

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 11:13 PM PST

Service returns to normal without explanation for reported access problems over previous two days

Tania Branigan

Ethiopia's model families hailed as agents of social transformation

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 11:01 PM PST

Ethiopia is boosting its healthcare statistics by enouraging rural households to adopt and disseminate a range of good habits

Wudinesh Demisse raises her hand above her head, showing off the matchstick-sized birth-control implant embedded just beneath the skin of her upper arm.

Demisse, 28, is a farmer in rural West Arsi, in Ethiopia's central Oromia region. With three children already, Demisse says it is time to stop. "For me, three is enough," she says, through a translator. "If they are too many, they are too expensive."

Demisse, who lives in a small village 200km south of the capital, Addis Ababa, is one of millions of Ethiopian women who have gained access to modern forms of birth control over the past decade. Today, her local health post stocks a range of products, from condoms and pills to longer-acting injections and implants.

Ethiopia is increasingly touted as a family planning success story. The government, which has made maternal and child health national priorities, is proud of its statistics – the country's contraceptive prevalence rate, for example, jumped from 15% in 2005 to 29% in 2011 – and says efforts to reach remote, rural areas lie at the heart of its success.

Along with trained, salaried health extension workers – all of whom are female, a step to make families more comfortable with door-to-door visits – thousands of volunteers have been enlisted nationwide in the government's "health development army".

At the centre of this are people like Demisse and her husband, who head one of the government's celebrated "model families" and are footsoldiers in a massive social engineering project to redefine healthy behaviour.

"They are role models and change agents for social transformation in each village across the country," says Kesetebirhan Admasu, Ethiopia's health minister, who explains that the project is based on a theory of how innovations spread that assumes change happens step by step. The idea is that there are "trendsetters" in every community, and that others can be persuaded to admire and, eventually, copy their behaviour.

To become a model family, a household has to adopt most if not all of the government's 16 priority interventions – from vaccinating their children and sleeping under mosquito bednets to building separate latrines and using family planning.

Model families get certificates, are celebrated at village ceremonies and are asked to support five other households in adopting the priority interventions.

Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous country, is overwhelmingly rural and this has hampered the expansion of formal healthcare services and infrastructure. Estimates from 2009 suggest there was only one doctor for every 50,000 people. The government's health extension programme is a strategy to bridge the gap and build capacity while expanding the services.

The NGO Marie Stopes International has urged rich countries to adopt some of Ethiopia's techniques, saying they could save millions of dollars if they too trained up frontline health workers, nurses and midwives to carry out tasks – such as the fitting of implants – otherwise done by doctors.

For Admasu, the biggest successes have come from targeting "cultural and attitude-related bottlenecks", which limit rural women from taking up services even when they are available.

In one region, Admasu says the health development army helped the government understand why women were not giving birth in health facilities. The army discovered women were fearful of the traditional stretchers used to carry them to hospital (which had become associated with bad luck) and did not want to go without the traditional coffee and religious ceremonies they could get at home. This led to changes including a newly-designed stretcher and plans to bring coffee beans, traditional food, and religious leaders to health facilities.

"All these innovations and interventions, they seem to be simple but it is changing the way services are perceived," Admasu says. In the case of family planning, he says products like implants were not popular before but are now being used by a significant number of rural women. "It's all because of the information that they get from their neighbours, from their friends and so on," he says. "That is how they break all those cultural norms."

Many African countries have set up extensive community healthworker schemes to reach rural areas. Understanding why people behave the way they do, and structuring projects accordingly, is also an increasingly popular approach in development, and a response to the failures of many expert-led schemes. The World Bank, for example, is working on a major report on the behavioural and social foundations of economic development, expected this year.

The military metaphors in Ethiopia's programme set it apart from many others, however. "Such a movement would not be successful without the discipline of the army," insists Admasu. "We said this is the way we really want to mobilise the community – they participate in the meetings, they work with the discipline of an army, and they address the critical bottlenecks."

Admasu says it is the government's policy to ensure women are not coerced into taking up health interventions. But some are suspicious of the development army model, which is also being pursued in agriculture with a nationwide network of "model farmers".

Ethiopian journalist Henok Reta has reported, for example, that model farmers who boast of their results seem to have been coached by extension workers and are unwilling to talk about failures, challenges such as the price of seeds, and what they want the government to do next. A recent paper from the Overseas Development Institute thinktank in London notes that community mobilisation efforts in Ethiopia, including the development army, can provide the ruling party with new mechanisms to monitor its citizens.

Teferi Abate Adem, former chairman of the department of sociology and anthropology at Addis Ababa University, argues that the agriculture extension programme has "reinforced the rural presence and authoritarian powers of the ruling party while largely failing to improve smallholder agriculture".

Claire Provost

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Kevin Rudd responds to revelation Robert Gates slept during his speech

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 10:50 PM PST

Memoir by former US secretary of state reveals painkillers, jetlag and wine caused him to fall asleep during a 'soliloquy' from PM

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has said that, given the painkillers former US secretary of state Robert Gates was on, he is surprised Gates can remember anything about a dinner thrown in his honour during a trip to Australia in 2008, after it was revealed Gates had fallen asleep during one of Rudd's speeches.

An excerpt from the forthcoming memoir of Gates has revealed that he was suffering from a broken shoulder at the time of his February 2008 visit and the combination of medication, jet lag and wine at a dinner given in his honour caused him to nod off while Rudd was speaking.

"I was doing fine at table conversation until Rudd began a long soliloquy on the history of Australia," Gates writes in his book, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.

"I had made it just past World War I when the combined effect of a painkiller, jet lag, and a glass of wine caused me to fall asleep.

"This led to not-so-subtle attempts by my American colleagues at the table to rouse me."

Gates said Rudd was "very gracious" about the faux pas at the time.

"Bob Gates was a good US secretary of defence, and good to Australia," a spokeswoman for Rudd told Guardian Australia on Thursday, in response to the excerpt.

She said that given the pain-killing drugs Gates was on when he arrived at the Lodge, "Mr Rudd thought it was surprising Mr Gates could remember anything from the evening at all".

She added: "Perhaps Mr Gates should have taken up Mr Rudd's suggestion, made to him when he arrived, to forget dinner and just go home to bed.

"Mr Rudd also recalls nodding off a few times himself over the years as foreign minister when the body clock kicked in at the wrong time."

Gates's memoir has caused controversy even before it hits the shelves next Tuesday as it contains criticisms of US president Barack Obama and the vice-president, Joe Biden.

Gates wrote that Biden "has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades".

Obama rejected the criticism, responding in a statement that Biden has been "one of the leading statesmen of his time, and has helped advance America's leadership in the world".

"President Obama relies on his good counsel every day," the statement said.

Helen Davidson

Defence chief defends navy against claims of mistreating asylum seekers

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 10:48 PM PST

General David Hurley rejects claims by two men that they were mistreated while the navy was towing their boat back to Indonesia

Daniel Hurst

Australia has 2m small-scale renewable systems, says Clean Energy Regulator

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 10:14 PM PST

Electricity needs of households in Perth, Hobart, Darwin and Canberra combined could be met by small-scale renewable systems, most of which are solar

Oliver Milman

Barangaroo: anatomy of a sellout

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 09:55 PM PST

David Shoebridge: One of Sydney's prime public spaces will be devoured by a casino – and now the city won't even get enough money in return to build a decent park

David Shoebridge

Consumer confidence returning as retail and housing figures improve

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 09:36 PM PST

Acting treasurer see positives but says economy is growing below trend and that unemployment is too high and trending up

Rescued baby animals – in pictures

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 09:34 PM PST

Photographer Alex Cearns has taken a series of striking images of a baby Tasmanian devil, quoll, wombat and other baby animals, to raise funds for a new 24-hour wildlife hospital at Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary in Tasmania. Prints are available by emailing, 50% of profits going to the sanctuary.

Tasmania to continue ban on genetically modified crops and animals

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 09:26 PM PST

Ban enters its 13th year in island state, helping to promote an image of state's products

The Tasmanian government will indefinitely extend a ban on genetically modified crops and animals in the state.

Deputy premier Bryan Green said the government wanted to continue the state's moratorium on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) which has been in place since 2001.

"There will be no end date specified for the moratorium to provide a positive incentive for Tasmanian businesses to invest in marketing and brand development," Green said on Thursday.

He said the ban would help promote the image of Tasmanian products.

"Tasmania's island status and our biosecurity system mean that our food and agricultural industries are well placed to take advantage of the state's GMO-free status," he said.

The ban would not apply to poppies grown in the state for pharmaceutical use.

Bill Shorten rejects creation of a US-style working poor in Australia

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 08:49 PM PST

Labor leader says 1.5 million workers rely on the minimum wage after business groups push to have an increase deferred

Parkes Elvis festival: the Elvis Express has left the station

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 08:28 PM PST

For the 12th year, the Elvis Express is travelling from Sydney to the Parkes Elvis festival in NSW’s central west, complete with jumpsuited fans

Liberal MP attacks colleagues for not fighting to save fruit processing jobs

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 08:28 PM PST

Sharman Stone says there is 'no such thing as free trade' and the $25m federal aid requested by SPC Ardmona is not a subsidy

Oliver Milman

Super Bowl: Australian film-maker's Doritos ad in running for US$1m

Posted: 08 Jan 2014 08:23 PM PST

Sticky orange fingers the inspiration for commercial that has racked up 2m views on YouTube

An Australian film-maker will be a keen spectator at the US Super Bowl – but it will be the half-time break rather than the sport that will keep him on tenterhooks. It could make him US$1 million (A$1.1 million) richer.

Thomas Noakes's entry into the Doritos Crash the SuperBowl competition to make a commercial for the chip brand has put him firmly in the running for the cash prize, and has racked up nearly two million views on YouTube.

Noakes will not know until the chosen ad airs midway through the gridiron showpiece on February 2 whether he has won.

He has come up with a unique, if slightly off-putting, take on the Doritos side-effect: sticky orange fingers.

"It's silly, really. We just thought of a machine that cleans fingers," Noakes told Guardian Australia.

"Like magical machines, and Willy Wonka and all those references. But then I thought it would be funny if it wasn't so magical and it was just a mundane office worker on the other side."

That mundane office worker, played by Renzo Bellato, has the stomach-turning task of sucking clean the fingers that the character Billy, played by Sam Glissan, pokes through the wall.

There are no special effects, and no "stunt fingers", says Noakes. Also, it took 10 takes.

"On the 10th take, man, I couldn't see him, but Belinda [Dean], the producer, was standing there and on the 10th take she said Sam just dropped his head and shuddered, his face white," said Noakes.

"The guy is a dedicated actor. I'd struggle doing it. He struggled doing it. I cannot speak highly enough of the actors involved."

The Doritos competition opened up to international entrants for the first time, and Noakes said the team were "humbly grateful" to be contenders.

Noakes will attend the Super Bowl as a guest of Doritos along with the other finalists. They will see when the half-time ads are shown on the big screen whose entry made it.

"The screening audience of the Super Bowl is five times the actual population of Australia. It's bananas," said Noakes.

"The other entries are amazing. We're humbled and grateful to be among those other entries."

A 30-second ad spot in the half-time break of the NFL game can command about $4 million.

Helen Davidson