US store teams up with Elle Macpherson

JC Penney is hoping that some supermodel magic will win over shoppers in the lingerie department by launching an exclusive lingerie collection in the US in partnership with Australian supermodel Elle Macpherson.

The collection will be in 300 of Penney's 1100 stores starting on April 11. Penney says it will wait to see how the brand fares before deciding whether to roll it out to its other stores.

The collection, called The Body by Elle Macpherson, which refers to her nickname, offers bras and panties in mostly cotton. Its emphasis is on the smoothest, most precise fit that can be worn every day.

The collection builds on the lingerie business Macpherson founded in 1990 with the launch of an upscale collection of lacy and silk lingerie.

The Body Bras sell for around $US50 ($A54.31), while bras in the Elle Macpherson Intimates Collection can sell for as much as $US150 ($A162.92). The bras have four distinct silhouettes designed to suit varying needs and body shapes: the push up, a sporty demi-cut version, an unlined alternative and a subtle lift.

"I created this for myself, because I thought there was a gap," Macpherson told The Associated Press.

"I really wanted to address this idea of shape."

Macpherson, who is creative director for a series of fashion business ventures, said Penney offers the opportunity to design for a wider audience.

The collection comes as Penney is trying to recover from a botched transformation spearheaded by its former CEO Ron Johnson. He was fired in April 2013 after 17 months on the job. That month, Mike Ullman, Johnson's predecessor, returned to the helm and has restored frequent sales events and basic merchandise to help reverse plunging sales and massive losses.

Macpherson's collection will be at the high end of Penney's offerings. Bras are priced anywhere from $US40 ($A43.45) to $US49 ($A53.22), while panties will be priced at $US12 ($A13.03) to $US14 ($A15.21

Spargo says Penney shoppers will be able to relate to Macpherson outside of being a celebrity.

"She's a working mom. She's a business owner," she said.

Macpherson, who is based in London but travels around the world, says she's "passionate" about lingerie. It began in 1990 with her partnership with Bendon Limited Apparel, the same manufacturer that is producing the line for Penney. It marked one of the first examples of a model becoming a fashion brand.

Macpherson said she created her original collection back then because she saw a void between European-style lingerie and the comfort that American brands offered.

"As a model, I was constantly getting undressed," Macpherson added.

"I wanted to make sure I looked good."

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M.I.A., Janelle Monae in hologram duet

SINGERS MIA and Janelle Monae have shared the stage during separate concerts on opposite coasts through the magic of holograms.

MIA performed in New York with a 3-D projection of Monae on Thursday night while Monae sang on the West Coast with MIA's likeness.

Both artists have ideas for how they might use performance holograms beyond their bi-coastal duet.

The duet was sponsored by Audi to launch its A3 model.

M.I.A. and Monae performed together in person to help create the holograms, but each saw the results for the first time onstage.

"I wish I were in the audience because I'm sure it looked cooler from the audience but it felt great," Monae said after closing her 40-minute set at Quixote Studios by singing with a hologram.

"I felt MIA's spirit up there."

A life-size hologram of the British rapper joined Monae onstage with an original addition to her song Q.U.E.E.N.

Wearing a spangled top and pants reminiscent of C-3PO, MIA appeared to dance and sing, her image at times bathed in coloured lights. Monae's hologram sang a verse of MIA's "Bad Girls" with her at New York's SIR Stage 37.

Neither artist got to see what their own hologram looked like.

"I'm going to go online and see if I could see it," Monae confessed.

But both said they'd try the technology again.

"It's definitely cool for us and it's cool for me. I could be in 10 places at once," MIA said by phone.

The technology has been prohibitively expensive and cumbersome to use on tour, she said: "I hope they get it together to the point that it's accessible."

If so, Monae has some ideas about how to apply it.

"I'd be honoured to experiment more with holograms and maybe make a whole band - but I love my band, I wouldn't want them to be holograms," she said. "I would do some experimenting with different versions of myself, playing different instruments."

Not that either artist has the time to go hologram crazy. Both are touring in support of albums released last northern autumn: MIA's Matangi and Monae's Electric Lady.

Monae also contributes the theme song to the upcoming animated film Rio 2 and covered David Bowie's Heroes for a Pepsi global ad campaign.

MIA is busy with her fashion collection for Versace and her ongoing snarl with the National Football League, which is seeking $US16 million ($A17.38 million) from the singer on claims that she ruined the league's reputation when she stuck out her middle finger during a halftime performance with Madonna two years ago.

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NT schools to double in attendance program

AT the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Thamarrurr Catholic College in the remote indigenous community of Wadeye in the north-western Northern Territory, average school attendance rates are about 51 per cent.

But the federal government is hoping to change that, now that it has almost doubled the number of schools signed up to its Remote School Attendance Strategy.

An additional 210 school attendance officers and 60 supervisors will be employed to boost attendance rates in a further 30 schools nation-wide from Term 2, Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion said on Friday.

Fifteen of the new schools will be in the NT, seven in Queensland and three in Western Australia, with another five in other jurisdictions.

The schools were identified following consultation with state and territory governments, the minister said.

The Wadeye community faces numerous obstacles to getting students to school, says Principal Dr John Young, due to the 22-plus different clans based there.

"When there's fighting in the community the attendance drops pretty dramatically," he told AAP.

"There's a lot of clan conflict issues, and a lot of kids don't get the amount of sleep they should, which has a real major effect on learning."

Factors affecting children's sleep and school attendance include loud music, parents gambling late into the night and overcrowding at home, where 16 people can live in a three-bedroom house, Dr Young said.

Some of the conflict spilled into school.

"Whether people say it's payback from the old days or they're fighting because every clan here has their own country, I don't know who to blame. Why is the government putting everyone in one place when years ago they wanted to kill each other?" resident Harold Anderson told AAP.

"The generation coming through now are hearing the same stories and the violence is getting worse and worse."

Dr Young said the key attendance data measures how many students attend school at least four days out of five.

22 per cent, or 177 students are coming to school 80 per cent of the time or more, he said.

"Those kids are making very good progress; the best thing we can do is move the 111 students who come 60 to 80 per cent up to coming four to five days a week... That makes the biggest difference."

School attendance personnel are already working in more than 40 schools across Australia and some schools in the NT have reported increases in attendance of nearly 20 percentage points since the strategy was implemented at the start of school this year, Minister Scullion said.

Early data from schools involved in the scheme's first stage show encouraging signs of increased school attendance, with more than 600 more children in school this year compared to last year.

Total government funding for the strategy now stands at $46.5 million.

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US Marshals take custody of Brown

US singer Chris Brown has been taken into custody ahead of his misdemeanour assault trial. Source: AAP

THE US Marshals Service has taken R and B singer Chris Brown into custody to transport him to Washington for his upcoming misdemeanour assault trial.

Marshals spokeswoman Laura Vega says Brown was transferred into the agency's custody from a Los Angeles jail on Wednesday.

She declined to say when the Grammy winner would be sent to Washington.

Brown is scheduled to go on trial later this month on the misdemeanour charge.

The singer and his bodyguard are accused of hitting a man outside a hotel in October.

Brown has been in a Los Angeles jail since mid-March, when a judge ordered him taken into custody after the singer was dismissed from a court-mandated rehab program.

Brown's attorney Mark Geragos had been seeking to block Brown's transfer into the marshals' custody.

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Gunmen kill 22 in Nigeria attack

AT least 22 people have been killed in an attack by suspected members of Islamist extremist sect Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, officials say.

Gunmen on about 50 motorcycles attacked two villages in Zamfara State, Maitsaba and Birnin-Tsab, on Thursday evening, attacking residents and torching dozens of homes and grain stores, Zamfara Commissioner of Commerce Alhaji Hassan Zurmi told DPA

Boko Haram, which means "Western education is sinful", has been active in the Muslim north of the West African country, carrying out attacks against government institutions and civilians.

Since 2009, more than 6000 people have been killed in the violence.

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US restaurant chain 'bans' Putin

MIGHTY Taco, a Buffalo-based chain of Mexican fast-foot restaurants, has banned Russian President Vladimir Putin from all of the company's 23 locations in western New York.

The company, known for its quirky ads, announced on social media this week that, effective immediately, Putin is banned from Mighty Taco for seizing Crimea from Ukraine.

Mighty Taco's posting says Putin may be ordering around Crimea, but he won't be ordering a Super Mighty, one of the chain's most popular menu items.

The posting, which features a red-tinted photo of a gesticulating Putin, says he'll be "welcomed back" at Mighty Taco when he stops acting like a bully and "picking on people".

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Safety overlooked in batts scheme rush

FORMER prime minister Kevin Rudd's "horrendous" timeline for the home insulation program denied bureaucrats adequate time to consider safety risks, an inquiry has heard.

Public servants were given five months to devise the $2.8 billion scheme.

Safety considerations were overlooked as they scrambled to have it up and running by July 1, 2009, a royal commission has been told.

Former environment department deputy secretary Malcolm Forbes, who oversaw delivery, says potential risks would have been properly considered if time wasn't so tight.

Commissioner Ian Hanger QC asked what was "so magic" about July 1, 2009.

"That's what the prime minster wanted," Mr Forbes replied.

Asked why nobody told Mr Rudd it couldn't be done, Mr Forbes said doing so would have gone against the public service culture, which was to remain positive and get the job done.

Mr Forbes said he did raise concerns about the challenging deadline with former co-ordinator general Mike Mrdak.

"We were flagging early that this was a significant challenge to us," he said.

A coronial inquest has already blamed the scheme's rushed rollout for the deaths of young Queenslanders Matthew Fuller, Rueben Barnes and Mitchell Sweeney.

NSW tradesman Marcus Wilson also died installing home insulation.

Mr Forbes said he had never, in his 33 years as a public servant, seen such a short gap between a government program being announced and rolled out, as occurred with the home insulation program (HIP).

"The HIP implementation timeline was horrendous," he said in a statement to the inquiry.

" ... some compromises were made that left risks remaining to achieve the timeline."

The scheme wasn't fully implemented until September 2009 but even then inspections were happening slowly.

While 400,000 homes had been insulated by October, only 172 roof inspections had taken place.

The inquiry resumes on Friday.

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Rate rises may be limited: IMF

AS consumers and businesses worry about an interest rate rise from the Reserve Bank before long, a new analysis suggests any increases are likely to be limited.

The International Monetary Fund says worldwide interest rates are expected to increase in the medium term with global economic conditions normalising, reversing the decline into negative territory due to the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.

But in the analytical chapters of its forthcoming world economic outlook, the IMF does not believe real, or inflation adjusted, interest rates will return to high levels.

"The increase from current levels is expected to be modest, because the factors that have mostly contributed to low real rates in the past recent years are unlikely to reverse substantially," the report released in Washington on Thursday said.

It says the "scars" from the GFC have resulted in a sharp and persistent decline in investment in advanced economies, while there will be only a modest impact from lower savings in emerging market economies as a result of slower economic growth.

There has also been an investment shift to safer interest-rate yielding bonds away from riskier equities, which has kept rates low.

Using data from a number of countries, including Australia, it found that 10-year real interest rates declined from an average of 5.5 per cent in the 1980s, to 3.5 per cent in the 1990s, to two per cent between 2001 and 2008 and to slightly negative territory of 2012.

While continued low real rates will help borrowers to lower debt ratios, they also raise new policy challenges.

"The envisioned low real rate environment ... may re-emerge as a constraint to monetary policy should risks of very low growth in advanced economies materialise," it said.

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SA and Canberra closer on road plan

The SA and federal governments have held talks on Adelaide's north-south road corridor. Source: AAP

THE federal and South Australian governments have held talks aimed at overcoming disagreements on how to fully redevelop Adelaide's north-south road corridor.

The two governments had been at odds before the recent state election, with the Commonwealth wanting to start the project with an upgrade at Darlington in the city's south.

The state government maintained a section of the road further north should be the priority.

But a meeting on Thursday between federal Assistant Minister for Infrastructure Jamie Briggs and new SA Transport and Infrastructure Minister Stephen Mullighan appears to have closed the gap.

Mr Briggs said he was now more confident about the project.

"We want to get the north-south corridor upgraded in a decade," he said.

Mr Mullighan described Thursday's meeting as productive.

"We've made very clear what our priority is and they've made very clear what their priority is," he said.

"What we're working on is how we can deliver both projects."

Mr Mullighan said talks would continue.

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'500 dolphins caught in WA nets' in decade

Western Australian scientists say methods to reduce dolphin bycatch are not working. Source: AAP

ABOUT 500 dolphins have been caught in the Pilbara trawl fishery in the past 10 years, West Australian scientists say.

Murdoch University PhD candidate Simon Allen and colleagues from the Cetacean Research Unit have made the claims based on independent observer data, which shows methods to reduce dolphin bycatch are not working.

"Independent observers reported bycatch rates of about 50 dolphins per year, which is double the number reported by the skippers of these vessels," Mr Allen said.

Under-reporting was not unusual around the world, especially where marine mammal capture was illegal, he said.

"This doesn't necessarily mean that skippers are deliberately under-reporting," Mr Allen said.

"Fishers are concentrating on the job at hand and may not see a dead dolphin fall out of the net on winch up."

A report by the WA Fisheries Department detailed similar findings, but instead suggested self-reporting mechanisms in place were accurate and the impact posed negligible risk, Mr Allen said.

But researchers said modified bycatch reduction devices with top-opening escape hatches could be more effective.

The scientists have also called for a reinstatement of independent observers and in-net video collection to accurately measure bycatch.

"The next step is to calculate the acceptable levels of human-caused dolphin mortality, which requires an estimate of the dolphin population size in the region," Mr Allen said.

"If the ongoing bycatch exceeds that threshold, switching to alternative, less destructive fishing methods, like trap or line fishing, should be considered."

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