SHOTS have been fired into a house full of people in Sydney's south.
Police rushed to the home on Moorefields Road, Kingsgrove late on Monday night and found several bullet holes in a side fence and a side door.
Bullet holes were also found in several cars parked outside the house, police said.
A car was heard fleeing the scene about the same time as the shots were fired.
No one was injured.
SOUTH Africa's former president Nelson Mandela is in "good shape" after his recent hospitalisation, the ruling ANC says, after President Jacob Zuma visited the democracy icon.
"They found president Mandela in good shape and in good spirits," the party said in a statement.
Zuma and the top brass of the African National Congress dropped in on the ailing 94-year-old at his Johannesburg home, where he has been recuperating under high-care since his hospital release earlier this month.
Mandela returned home on April 6 after spending 10 days in hospital being treated for a recurrent lung infection.
The ANC visitors were briefed by Mandela's medical team and "are satisfied that president Mandela is in good health and is receiving the very best medical care".
The ANC said Mandela was "keenly aware of the goodwill that has been outpouring from the peoples of the globe as befitting his status as our icon".
"The African National Congress thanks all South Africans and the international community for keeping president Mandela in their thoughts and prayers," it added.
Mandela's latest hospitalisation was his third since December.
South Africa's first black president was admitted for a night for a scheduled check-up in March and in December he was hospitalised for 18 days for a lung infection and gallstones surgery.
That stint was his longest since he walked free from 27 years in jail in 1990.
SUBARU is recalling just over 10,000 of its 2014 Forester wagons because the floor mats can interfere with the clutch, brake or gas pedals.
The recall affects Foresters made from January 2013 through March. The company says the floor mats can curl when exposed to heat.
The problem was discovered in cars arriving at a port in Vancouver, Washington.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the mats could distract the driver or interfere with operation of the car.
Subaru traced the problem to improperly manufactured backing on the mats.
Dealers will replace all four mats free of charge. It will begin notifying owners in April.
MEDICARE funding should be split to allow generations X and Y to save for their own future health needs before the system is eventually scrapped, a right-wing think tank says.
The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) is calling for a complete overhaul of Medicare because it says an ageing population and the rising cost of medical technology is making it unsustainable.
There has been an 80 per cent increase in federal health spending since 2000, and the trend is challenging the long-term future of publicly funded universal care.
Report author Dr Jeremy Sammut says without change "governments will struggle to fund the health services and other services that people will want and need".
Top of his list of solutions is the creation of "New Medicare" for generations X and Y only.
New Medicare would create superannuation-styled savings accounts to pay for minor health problems, with annual deposits made by the federal government in lieu of Medicare entitlements.
Insurance vouchers would be issued so people could buy cover for chronic complaints, under a system that would set a mandatory minimum range of services.
Baby boomers and those older would remain in the current system, which would be phased out when the self-funded New Medicare matured.
Dr Sammut also called for the reintroduction of compulsory co-payments for GP visits and for a means test on Medicare entitlements, so the government wasn't paying for the health needs of the well-off.
"The government tries to be all things to all people and it tries to provide all services to people whether they need them or not, whether they can fund it themselves or not," Dr Sammut said.
"Because health is seen as a bit of political sacred cow and we have these romantic ideas about this universal system, no one is prepared to make any hard decisions."
He admitted Generation Y - generally those born after 1977 - and Generation X - those born after 1966 - would oppose changes excluding them from the universal health care enjoyed by older Australians.
"Yes, there are costs for Gen Y and Gen X, but they are going to pay one way or another," he said.
"Either they are going to pay through their taxes to fund an inefficient public health system, or we can move to this more efficient system."
A WOMAN desperate for another child forced her 14-year-old daughter to get pregnant using syringes of donor sperm, a British judge says.
In a ruling reported for the first time on Monday, High Court judge Peter Jackson said the mother had behaved in "a wicked and selfish way" that almost defied belief.
The judge said the woman, an American divorcee living in Britain with three adopted children, hatched the plan after she was prevented from adopting a fourth.
The scheme involved getting her oldest daughter to inseminate herself with syringes of sperm purchased over the internet from a Denmark-based company, Cryos International.
Jackson said the daughter, identified only as A, "became pregnant at the mother's request, using donor sperm bought by the mother, with the purpose of providing a fourth child for the mother to bring up as her own".
In his ruling, the judge quoted the teenager as saying she was shocked by the suggestion, but thought, "If I do this ... maybe she will love me more."
"My mum is a very determined person and she does her best not to let anything get in her way if she wants it," the teenager added.
The judge said the mother also made the teenager use douches of vinegar or lemon and lime juice in hopes of increasing her chances of having a girl.
The judge said it was likely but not certain that the daughter soon became pregnant and suffered a miscarriage. After six more attempts with the donor sperm, she gave birth to a baby boy in July 2011, when she was 17.
But midwives at the hospital became alarmed by the odd behaviour of A's mother. Her daughter wanted to breastfeed the baby, but her mother said: "We don't want any of that attachment thing."
The hospital alerted the authorities, and the children were taken into foster care. The mother is now serving a five-year jail term for child cruelty.
Details of the case were heard during proceedings at the family division of the High Court over the children's future last year. They were reported for the first time on Monday after several British media organisations, including the publisher of The Guardian newspaper, challenged reporting restrictions.
A court order bars identifying the family members in order to protect the children.
CHINA'S deadly H7N9 bird flu outbreak has spread to the central province of Hunan, local health authorities say, the third announcement in three days of a case in a new location.
A 64-year-old woman in Shaoyang City, who developed a fever four days after coming into contact with poultry, was confirmed to have the virus, the Xinhua state news agency reported on Saturday.
It follows the first confirmed cases in the eastern province of Jiangxi on Thursday and the southeastern province of Fujian on Friday.
More than 110 people in mainland China have been confirmed with H7N9, with 23 deaths, since the government announced on March 31 that the virus had been found in humans.
Most cases have been confined to eastern China, while the island of Taiwan has also reported one case.
A Chinese expert earlier this week warned of the possibility of more cases in a wider geographical area.
"Until the source of H7N9 avian influenza is ... brought under effective control, sporadic cases might continue to appear," said Liang Wannian of China's National Health and Family Planning Commission.
Poultry has been confirmed as the source of the H7N9 flu among humans but experts fear the prospect of such a virus mutating into a form easily transmissible between humans, which could then have the potential to trigger a pandemic.
ITALIAN prime minister-designate Enrico Letta is expected to update President Giorgio Napolitano on efforts to strike a coalition deal and give Italy a much-awaited government.
The presidency said on Saturday the leftist 46-year-old was due to meet Napolitano at 1300 GMT (2300 AEST) but it was not known whether he had succeeded in breaking the two-month-old deadlock.
Centrist politician Lorenzo Cesa predicted "a positive outcome by the end of the day" but other MPs said while they expected a breakthrough before markets reopen on Monday, they did not see it happening before Sunday.
Once differences between his centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party (PDL) have been ironed out, Letta will formally accept the nomination of prime minister from Napolitano.
He will then be sworn in along with his new cabinet, before the government is put to a confidence vote in both houses of parliament.
Most observers were upbeat about Letta's chances as he met with Berlusconi and the former head of the centre-left, Pier Luigi Bersani, in a bid to close the deal on Saturday.
Italian media feverishly ran through possible cabinet candidates in constantly updated "Toto minister" pools, based on the popular system for betting on the results of Italian football matches.
But some commentators warned that the sparring risked thwarting coalition plans and worsening Italy's political and economic situation.
The parties are acting as if "the government being created is an alliance formed with a pistol to its head," said Luciano Fontana in Italy's best-selling Corriere della Sera daily.
Conditions imposed by both sides "are complicating the deal's closure, to the point it risks failure," he warned.
Letta has said he wants to move quickly to tackle the social fallout of a painful recession and Napolitano has been urging him to include younger ministers and women in his cabinet to help renew the country's tired political scene.
But cross-party unity has demands attached.
Negotiations have been trickiest with the scandal-tainted billionaire tycoon Berlusconi, who has insisted on the abolition and repayment of a controversial housing tax introduced in 2012.
Such a move would set the budget back some eight billion euros ($A10.15 billion) in a country suffering from its longest recession in 20 years.
Furthermore, Letta's own PD, which narrowly won inconclusive general elections in February, is deeply divided over going into government with Berlusconi's.
There have been calls from both sides to prevent rival figures from Italy's political scene from grasping ministerial posts - with Berlusconi, Monti and former premiers Giuliano Amato and Massimo D'Alema the names most fiercely contested.
A HUNGER strike among prisoners at Guantanamo Bay keeps growing.
Spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Samuel House said on Saturday 100 of 166 prisoners at the US base in Cuba have now joined the strike.
He says 19 are receiving liquid nutrients through a nasal tube to prevent dangerous weight loss. Five of those are at a hospital under observation but do not have any life-threatening conditions.
Lawyers for the detainees say the military is undercounting the number of hunger strikers.
Prisoners began the hunger strike in February to protest conditions and indefinite confinement.
Martin Pakula is confident he can win the by-election in the Victorian state seat of Lyndhurst. Source: AAP
LABOR'S Martin Pakula has claimed victory in the Victoria's Lyndhurst by-election with around 40 per cent of the primary vote, after more than three-quarters of the total vote was counted.
Victorian Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews has however acknowledged his party has an image problem after Labor's primary vote took a dive.
The primary vote was significantly down on the 55 per cent result achieved at the 2010 state poll and there was no coalition candidate.
Mr Andrews said it was no secret the Labor brand was facing challenges.
The latest Newspoll published in The Australian this week put the federal coalition at a 10-point lead of 55 to 45 per cent over Labor after preferences.
When asked if federal Labor's woes had impacted on the result, Mr Andrews said: "There are challenges from a brand point of view and I think everybody knows that," he told AAP.
"I'm not someone who throughout my time as leader of the Labor Party in Victoria that has ever sought to blame others for the challenges that we face.
"But I think it would be naive not to note, as we all do - not just Labor people but Victorians more broadly - that, you know, things are challenging, things are difficult for Labor just now."
Mr Pakula will pick up his previous portfolios of shadow attorney-general, racing, gaming and scrutiny of government.
"By-elections are very difficult, they're very challenging," he said.
"History will tell you that in by-elections people take the opportunity to vote differently, they vote all over the card."
The result gives Labor 43 seats on the floor of parliament to the coalition's 44, including the speaker.
It means the government needs the support of independent MP Geoff Shaw to pass legislation opposed by Labor.
The former Liberal MP is under police investigation for misconduct in public office and has a verbal agreement with Premier Denis Napthine that he will support the government on matters of supply and confidence.
"What this victory for Labor now means is that the Napthine government is now officially a minority, one that is beholden to Geoff Shaw," Mr Andrews said.
"On every bill, on every measure in every way, Denis Napthine is tied to Geoff Shaw."
Dr Napthine said there had been a 15 per cent swing against Labor, even without a coalition candidate.
"This is a slap in the face for Daniel Andrews in Labor heartland," he said.
"This is a repudiation of Daniel Andrew's approach and the fact that he is working hand-in-hand with militant union leadership."
ANTI-WAR campaigners opposed to Britain's use of armed drones in Afghanistan have marched on a military base hosting the aircraft's human operators for the first time.
Royal Air Force pilots had been operating Reaper aircraft to support British troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan remotely from a base in Nevada in the United States.
But this week the operations were relocated to Britain for the first time, to RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire in eastern England, the Ministry of Defence said.
About 200 demonstrators marched to the base in Saturday, according to the BBC, to show their opposition to what campaigners said marked a "critical expansion in Britain's drones program".
"Drones are indiscriminate weapons of war that have been responsible for thousands of civilian deaths," said a statement from the Stop the War Coalition.
"Rather than expanding the UK's arsenal, drones should be banned, just as landmines and cluster munitions were banned."
Prime Minister David Cameron announced in December 2010 new funding to increase the Reaper program, although there are no plans to base or fly the drones in Britain, officials say.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said people were entitled to demonstrate but insisted the military did "everything possible" to avoid civilian casualties.
"We would stress that UK Reaper aircraft are piloted by highly-trained professional military pilots who adhere strictly to the same laws of armed conflict and are bound by the same clearly-defined rules of engagement which apply to those operating traditionally-manned RAF aircraft," he said.
