It was ludicrous that ordinary people in Australia should have access to handguns, Prime Minister John Howard said today.

Mr Howard said he supported the concept of police, security industry workers and sporting shooters having such weapons.

"But other than that you don't need a handgun, and I think most people would agree with that," he told Adelaide radio station 5DN today.

"It's just ludicrous that people should have access, and a lot of them do. The rules are too lax."

Mr Howard said he did not want to see Australia go down the American path where guns were "worshipped".

"That has brought untold misery and harm and also delivered to America a very high murder rate for a stable, open western society," he said.

Mr Howard also pointed to independent research which indicated that the number of gun-related murders in Australia had fallen in the six years since the prohibition on long arms in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre.

"They are measured claims I make," he said.

"I'm not pretending that we can abolish evil and unhappiness by getting rid of guns.

"But I do think we can make a contribution towards a safer Australia and I do think we have a capacity to avoid going down the American path."

Last month's double fatality shooting at Monash University in Melbourne has prompted the federal government to move to restrict access to high-powered pistols, proposing a buyback scheme and amnesty for owners of illegal weapons.

Most semi-automatic handguns and all large-calibre revolvers will be banned from all but military, law enforcement and security purposes.

The move, announced last night after an Australasian Police Ministers Council meeting in Darwin, could result in a national handgun buyback scheme.

The council also agreed to accelerate uniform national standards for registering and tracking firearms and to develop a system for staggered access to sporting handgun shooters based on training, experience and event participation.

A list of handguns to be banned is yet to be formalised but it would be likely to include semi-automatics in calibres of 9mm, .40 and .45, and revolvers chambered for .44 and .357 rounds.

Restricting the types of handguns that can be imported or possessed for target shooting to those used in events such as the Olympics will require a recovery and disposal process for the weapons which fall outside those classifications.

One proposal is a national handgun buyback scheme similar to that introduced for military style long arms following the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.

The NSW Police Minister, Michael Costa, described the council's resolutions as a balance between "responsible firearms ownership and the needs of law-abiding sporting shooters".

"And they help safeguard against criminals who want to exploit legal firearms and licences."

However, the council's chairman, acting Northern Territory police minister Syd Stirling, complained the federal Government had not produced its proposals until the start of the meeting.

"The Commonwealth has not served us well in this instance by circulating a paper virtually at the outset of the ministerial council this morning," Mr Stirling said.

"Clearly you need time as a minister with your officers to get across the issue and to clarify those with the Commonwealth where there's a lack of agreement.

"Nonetheless, there's broad agreement on the way forward."

Mr Costa welcomed the council's adoption of NSW recommendations, particularly nationally accredited training programs for licensed handgun users, and legislation allowing commissioners of police to refuse and revoke firearms licences and the basis of criminal intelligence.

Uniform national standards for registering and tracking firearms through a database, access to firearms for target shooters and uniform checks on owners' participation in sporting events were also NSW initiatives.

"However, I remain concerned at the state of our porous borders," Mr Costa said. "Today the Commonwealth confirmed only three in 1000 cargo containers entering Australia are searched for illegal guns and drugs.

"That's why all state and territory ministers called on the Federal Government to dramatically increase searches at container ports."

The council, which sat all day, had not been expected to reach swift agreement on anything related to handguns.

Mr Costa has repeatedly blamed the proliferation of illegal handguns on the Commonwealth, accusing the Government of not protecting Australia's borders.

This week he has also accused the defence force of not protecting its armouries, saying he had been told during law enforcement and intelligence briefings that dozens of firearms were being stolen from bases.

However the federal Justice Minister, Chris Ellison, said 80 per cent of thefts were from private premises. Military facilities, police stations and security firms accounted for 20 per cent of thefts.

A month ago, a licensed handgun owner shot dead two people at Melbourne's Monash University.

Recent killings highlight the danger of semi-automatic handguns in the hands of civilians, writes Rebecca Peters.


The police ministers meet again this week to discuss what to do about the handgun laws, whose yawning inadequacy was highlighted recently by the murders of two Monash University students and of South Australia's Director of Mental Health.

This is a moment when we need the kind of clear thinking and leadership that John Howard showed in 1996 after the Port Arthur massacre.

Last month Howard called for a ban on handguns, but then qualified this by saying that guns used in Olympic or Commonwealth games would still be allowed. The gun lobby isn't too bothered by the plan. It knows that "membership of a target shooting club" is already the reason given for most handgun licences in Australia.

Since most target clubs can claim some connection with high-level competition - a future champion may even now be training at your local range - it's likely that the vast majority of handguns would be unaffected by the imminent "ban".

So Howard's announcement could turn out to mean very little - unlike the reforms of 1996-97, which dramatically changed the logical underpinnings of gun laws in Australia and set a new standard internationally.

One of those groundbreaking advances was the articulation into law of what most people knew all along, namely that rapid-fire weaponry has no place in civilian society.

The fact that many civilians owned self-loading or semi-automatic rifles and shotguns for the purpose of sport did not make those guns suitable for civilian ownership - it just meant a lot of unsuitable guns were in circulation.

The National Firearms Agreement recognised the inherent inappropriateness of these highly dangerous weapons and took away nearly 700,000 of them to be melted down into soup cans and bus-stop benches (with fair compensation to those who had bought them in good faith in an earlier, foggier policy climate).

The 1996-97 ban on semi-automatic weapons did not include handguns. Why? Perhaps because a primary goal of the reforms was to achieve legislative uniformity between the states, and the law on handguns was very similar across the jurisdictions. (Whereas semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, the types of weapons used at Port Arthur, were freely available in some states.) For whatever reason, one category of semi-autos was allowed to remain in civilian ownership - the easily concealable type most prized by criminals: pistols.

Howard and the police ministers have the opportunity now to remedy that anomaly, by extending the rationale of the National Firearms Agreement to these weapons that were left out the last time.

They should define the legal status of these guns objectively, on the basis of their inherent dangerousness, rather than on the owner's description of how he plans to use them. That is, they should insist on a ban on self-loading or semi-automatic handguns - including those used for sport.

Up until five years ago, many Australians owned semi-automatic rifles and shotguns for sporting purposes, whether that sport was shooting at targets or at animals.

These guns were widely accepted as having some connection with Australian rural culture and it did cause some hardship when they were banned. Yet banned they were, because the nation had come to recognise that the dangers posed by these weapons outweighed the benefits they provided.

Times change. We don't send 12-year-olds into the coal mines any more, and we don't allow semi-automatic longarms for sport.

In the case of semi-automatic handguns there is no such cultural connection, and even less justification for continuing to allow them to be owned. You don't hunt with handguns; they are designed specifically for shooting people, or for practising for shooting people. Indeed, handguns are a growing menace in Australia.

Handgun homicides have increased from 12 in 1995 to 32 last year. And handguns now account for half of all firearm homicides, up from about 17 per cent in the early 1990s.

What about the Olympics? There are five handgun events in the Olympics, two of which require self-loading capacity. What if Australians could no longer train for and compete in those two events? Of course, in a sports-mad nation like ours, some would lament this as a loss. But that would be nowhere near the loss felt by those 32 families last year.

The Prime Minister should seize this moment to insist on a ban on all semi-automatic firearms for civilians, including semi-automatic handguns.

Rebecca Peters is the director of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). In 1996 she was awarded the Australian Human Rights Medal for her work promoting gun control in Australia.

A national child sex offender register will be established in Australia, NSW Police Minister Michael Costa said today.

An agreement for the national database was reached by state and territory police ministers at the Australasian Police Ministers' Council (APMC) meeting in Darwin this week.

Mr Costa said the national register would be based on the existing NSW database.

It would give police in all states and territories access to information about paedophiles, he said.

"Like all criminals, paedophiles don't respect borders," Mr Costa said in a statement today.

"The NSW database has helped police keep track of those who pose a threat to the community.

"A national database will allow police to gather and exchange better intelligence."

Mr Costa reportedly said a working party had been created to look into the register.

"It's been an agreement, in principle there will be another series of meetings leading up to another meeting of Australian Police Ministers in the next month or so, but it's important that that principle's been agreed to," he told the ABC.

Four possible suspects in the Bali bombings that killed nearly 200 people last month are being held by Indonesian authorities, police officials said today.

Major General I Made Mangku Pastika, who is heading the investigation team in Bali, said two additional men were picked up in Surabaya, the capital of East Java province yesterday.

Police announced yesterday they had detained one man in the capital Jakarta and one in the city of Medan on Sumatra island.

Pastika did not identify the new detainees and said it was "premature" to name them as suspects, adding that they had been detained after officers determined they bore a resemblance to composite sketches of three suspects released last week by police.

Despite the flurry of activity in recent days, police have refrained from claiming the nationwide manhunt resulting from the October 12 blasts was making progress.

Brigadier General Edward Aritonang, spokesman for the international inquiry team, explained in addition to the four men now in custody, nine others had been detained last week because they resembled suspects depicted in the composite sketches. All were questioned and released without charges, he said.

About 120 detectives and intelligence officers from Australia, the United States, Britain, Japan and other countries are working on the case with Indonesian investigators.

Although no group has claimed responsibility for the blasts, the regional terrorist network Jemaah Islamiah has emerged as the prime suspect.

Police have detained Abu Bakar Bashir, the group's alleged spiritual leader, but he has not been declared a suspect in the Bali blasts.

Bashir is being held in a police hospital in Jakarta, and doctors said the 64-year-old cleric was too sick to be questioned. Bashir has denied any links with terrorists and said he won't cooperate with police.

Meanwhile, US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said one of the aims of terrorist organisations is to drive a wedge between democratic Muslim nations, such as Indonesia, and nations of the West.

Speaking in Washington, Wolfowitz said Indonesia must stop terrorism or be faced with "really terrible consequences" for its nascent democracy.

Wolfowitz, who served as ambassador to the regime of former military dictator Suharto, has pushed to restore US assistance to the Indonesian armed forces. These were suspended in 1999 by the administration of former US President Bill Clinton to protest against the involvement of the armed forces in human rights atrocities.

Critics say the army remains the biggest threat to Indonesian democracy. They say rights abuses and political assassinations by army units have continued unabated since Suharto's ouster in 1998, and may have included the killings of two American schoolteachers in Papua province in August.

Prominent social figures in Bali warn that ethnic cleansing, like "another Ambon", could break out in the tourist paradise unless travel warnings placed by the Australian and other foreign governments are lifted within a few months.

With hotels and restaurants empty in the cultural centre of Ubud and the main southern beach resorts, the World Bank fears that Bali's 3 million people face mass unemployment, while lost confidence is likely to be felt in slower growth across the entire Indonesian economy.

In a report to foreign aid donors last week, the international development bank said a 20 per cent fall in foreign tourist arrivals in Bali could see about 361,000 people lose their jobs, more than 21 per cent of the total workforce.

In Ubud, high-ranking members of Bali's traditional Hindu social order have joined an effort to convince the islanders to stay calm and not seek vengeance. They are also trying to engineer ways of softening the economic impact. But they fear if Bali becomes a no-go area for tourists for longer than three months, there could be social chaos.

Ida Bagus Suarsana, a Brahmin (the highest, priestly caste in Hinduism) and related to the former royal house of Ubud, believed economic disruption was a goal of the terrorists who planted bombs in the Kuta beach resort. He owns two trendy restaurants in Ubud, now almost deserted like the other cafes, art galleries and spas around the town's maze of narrow streets.

"We hear from a lot of business owners that they are trying to be responsible to their staff, to keep them in jobs and not start mass firings," he said.

"They are starting to put them on a half a month's work and this is only a beginning. Everyone is mentioning they cannot hold this more than three months. The staff also cannot hold this more than three months; they have obligations.

"The island relies 90 per cent on tourism. That's why we fear the effect of the bombing. If we don't take action, not just our government but other countries [that] still have these travel bans, it could be like another Ambon. The Balinese will say, hopefully it will never happen ... [but] that's what we fear at the moment."

The three years of strife between Christians and Muslims on the Maluku island of Ambon has caused 6000 deaths.

Another leading figure in Ubud's cultural tourism, Gde Ariawan, also warned the Balinese could search for scapegoats and turn on the 10 per cent of the population from other parts of Indonesia who followed Islam or Christianity.

He referred to two blood-soaked chapters in Bali's history when tensions built to unbearable levels - the massacre of tens of thousands of communists after the army takeover in Jakarta in 1965-66 and the 1906 ritual self-sacrifice of thousands of Balinese warriors who advanced on Dutch machine guns, armed only with the traditional kris (dagger).

Meanwhile, across the island, the traditional village security system known as pecalang has been revived, with volunteers patrolling round the clock.

But the Balinese are unsettled by the sudden arrival of terrorism in their midst.

"We don't know who our enemy is really," Mr Suarsana said.

Home owners can breathe easy today after the Reserve Bank of Australia left interest rates unchanged for another month.

The Reserve made no announcement about a change at 9.30am today - the customary time to make such an announcement - following its meeting yesterday.

The official rate stays at 4.75 per cent.

Prime Minister John Howard said he expected the decision which "was the right decision to take".

Mr Howard told radio station 5DN: ""The international economy is a little weak, and we have the economic effect of the drought beginning to be felt around the country. "I would imagine that those two factors were in the mind of the Reserve Bank when it took that decision."

He said Australia's economic growth rate would slow to around three per cent because of the drought.

"It's closer to three (per cent) now," he said. "We've had four (per cent) for the last five or six years.

"It'll be closer to three this year. The drought will have an effect."

Australia's top executives averaged pay rises of less than two per cent this year, a newspaper survey found today - which still gave them an average of $30,240 a year more, or an extra $540 a week.

The Australian Financial Review study found chief executives of the top listed companies received an average pay package of $1.68 million, up 1.8 per cent on the previous year.

In 2001, the average increase was 13.4 per cent, and 22 per cent in 2000.

The low increase was a result of strong investor criticism of executive packages and a weak sharemarket, the newspaper said.

Pay packages rose 7.1 per cent on average when retirement benefits for exiting chief executives were included.

News Corp chief executive Peter Chernin received the highest package at $31.6 million, followed by News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch with $14.8 million, the newspaper said.

The biggest pay increase went to Commonwealth Bank chief executive David Murray who collected $6.99 million, up 248 per cent thanks to a 10-year bonus of $4.65 million.

The Federal Government faces a major fight with the states over its proposed rescue plan for the nation's waterways, after the issue yesterday dissolved into bickering over who will shoulder the heavy cost of compensating farmers for lost water rights.

Farmers would be entitled to millions of dollars in compensation for losing access to water under reforms approved by federal cabinet at a meeting in Brisbane yesterday.

However, the Government would expect the states to pay the compensation from their national competition funds, a suggestion the states have firmly rejected.

The Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, won cabinet approval for a Commonwealth reform package aimed at better managing Australia's precious water resources while encouraging sustainable farming practices.

The plan, to be put to the states next month at a Council of Australian Governments meeting, seeks state support for four major reforms:

Establishing national standards for the nature, duration and renewability of water entitlements;

Setting up clear processes for the renewal of water rights, including the priority of allocations;

Establishing a more consultative planning process for licence renewals and changes; and

Encouraging a bigger market in the trading of water rights.

The plan would replace the state-by-state allocation of water licences with a national scheme to allow water entitlements to be sold or leased between farmers.

The standardised licensing system would also allow farmers to have a clear understanding of their future water rights and the value of those rights.

"Stable and properly defined water property rights are critical to ensuring investment security, otherwise farmers aren't going to take the punt," Mr Anderson said.

"They're not going to take long-term investment positions if they don't know they're going to be able to use resources or, if those resources are going to be withdrawn, they are going to be assisted."

But it is on the question of who would help the farmers with compensation when water rights are cut or withdrawn that the package will confront its greatest hurdle.

Mr Anderson has said the states have a "moral responsibility" to compensate farmers for changes to their water rights, which he considers to have the same legal standing as property rights.

He has said the compensation should come from the payments the states receive from Canberra for participating in National Competition Policy. He has threatened that the system might be recast to compel the states to do so unless they agree. The NSW Minister for Land and Water Conservation, John Aquilina, rejected the connection between water compensation and competition entitlements as "nonsense".

"Those national competition funds are there not just for water, they're there for a whole range of things," he told ABC radio.

"The water planning process began independent of any consideration from the National Competition Policy and it's only now that the Commonwealth Government has realised that because it needs to come to the party with some share of funding that it has to find some other bucket in order to find the funds at the expense of the states."

He was backed by the Queensland Resources Minister, Stephen Robertson.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, sounded an optimistic note, saying after the cabinet meeting that he was certain Canberra would get the states' co-operation because it was "in the whole nation's interest" and "we need the personal involvement of not only the Prime Minister but also the premiers of all the states".

Mr Howard played down talk of a water levy and rejected suggestions that Australia could be "drought-proofed" through government action.

"What you can do is change practices over time and you can encourage people at an individual property level to use water more prudently. But you have to do that in a way that doesn't arbitrarily take away people's property rights."

Gary Bergeron and his 73-year-old mother watched in amazement on television in Boston as Cardinal Bernard Law offered an extraordinary and unexpected apology to victims of clerical sexual abuse.

"I want to acknowledge publicly my responsibility for decisions which I now see were clearly wrong," the nation's senior Catholic prelate said on Sunday at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

Standing alone in front of the altar, his voice choking, Cardinal Law said: "I ask forgiveness of those who have been abused."

Mr Bergeron, 40, was molested for three years from the age of 11 by the late Father Joseph Birmingham. "It has been a long time coming and, to be honest with you, it was very painful to watch," he said. "For the first time I saw the pain in his eyes, the pain in his heart, the pain that has been expressed to him for some time now by victims of clerical abuse."

The cardinal's surprise statement followed a meeting last week organised by Mr Bergeron and close to 100 other alleged Birmingham victims and their families. The 2-hour session was a landmark event in the year-long scandal, marking the first time the cardinal has left the chancery to listen directly to a group of clerical abuse survivors. Although he had held individual meetings with survivors at his residence for months, Cardinal Law described last week's encounter as "an occasion of grace" that prompted him to issue his 20-minute statement at the cathedral.

For some whose lives were shattered by pedophile priests, the prospect of forgiveness seemed unlikely. "My clients believe that this statement is simply not enough," said Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer who represents hundreds of adults abused by priests in the Boston archdiocese. After years of negotiation, Mr Garabedian and 86 victims of a former priest, John Geoghan, recently accepted a $US10 million ($A17.8 million) civil settlement from the church.

"My clients believe that a sincere apology begins with Bernard Cardinal Law stating that he was notified in September of 1984 that seven children were sexually molested by Father Geoghan," said Mr Garabedian, referring to the priest who is serving an eight- to 10-year prison sentence on a charge of fondling a child.

Mr Bergeron stopped short of absolving Cardinal Law. "I don't want to go to my grave with the hatred that most of us have carried," he said. "But forgiveness is a process. Forgiveness is going to happen one day at a time."

Sydney may have its first female lord mayor by April, Frank Sartor having declared yesterday that he will quit the city council if he is elected an MP at the state election in March.

The announcement clears the way for his deputy, Lucy Turnbull, to be appointed lord mayor until council and lord mayoral elections are held in September.

Cr Sartor announced last week that he had joined the Labor Party and would seek preselection for Rockdale.

On Monday his office said he had not decided whether to step down as Lord Mayor if he won the seat. But the Premier, Bob Carr, said Cr Sartor would be expected to do so.

Responding to comments yesterday by Mr Carr, Cr Sartor said: "I agree with what the Premier has said this morning. It is what I always understood to be the case."

Later, at a news conference in Rockdale, Cr Sartor said he "never had any intention of holding two jobs. I will continue to be the Lord Mayor and will only step down if and when I am elected member for Rockdale."

"I have to concentrate on being preselected in the next couple of weeks and then I have to win the trust of the people of Rockdale. Then, if I'm elected member for Rockdale I will be not holding two jobs."

However, the NSW Opposition leader, John Brogden, called on Cr Sartor to resign immediately to prove his commitment to the Rockdale electorate.

Cr Sartor said his decision not to resign immediately avoided the need for a by-election, which "would cost the ratepayers a lot of money".

But his resignation after the March election could still result in a by-election if the minister for local government decides the vacant council position needs to be filled.

That means City of Sydney residents could face two elections - one for the vacant council position and another for the lord mayor and the full council - next year.

Asked if he would be campaigning for Rockdale in City of Sydney council time, Cr Sartor said he would campaign in evenings and at weekends, set up a separate campaign office with new staff and might take leave closer to the election.

Until that time he would "guarantee I'll do my 40 hours minimum" as Lord Mayor.

"The election campaign does not happen until the end of February. At that point I will see what I can cope with. At that point if I don't think I can do both I'll take leave."

He denied that Mr Carr had intervened to request that he step down if he was elected as an MP on March 22.

If Cr Sartor wins office and resigns the lord mayoralty,the city council can nominate a councillor - most likely the deputy Lord Mayor, Lucy Turnbull - to fill the position.

Cr Turnbull became the city's first female deputy lord mayor in 1999 and would be the first female lord mayor in its 160-year history. Her great-grandfather, Sir Thomas Hughes, was lord mayor from 1902 to 1903.

They were travelling as a family - two girls aged 12 and 14, and an older sister nursing her two-year-old son.

But Vietnamese police say Phan Thi Ngoc Phuong, 24, of Melbourne, and her younger sisters from Sydney's south-west were trying to smuggle almost $400,000 in heroin into Australia.

Now the older sister, if convicted, faces between 20 years and life imprisonment - or the death penalty.

Her siblings would face up to 15 years' jail, as juveniles are not executed in Vietnam, a Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman said in Canberra yesterday.

Australian consular officials in Ho Chi Minh City only learnt on Monday of the arrest of the three, all of whom are Australian citizens, four days after they had been detained.

The Australian consul-general in Ho Chi Minh City, Stephen Henningham, said the girls' mother had been granted access to them in prison yesterday.

"Their mother is here. She went to visit them today ... She talked to them. She saw them."

The department says they were arrested on Friday as they were about to board a Melbourne-bound flight from Ho Chi Minh's Tan Son Nhat airport.

Phan was not found to be in possession of any drugs but Vietnamese police allege she is part of a drugs conspiracy.

They also allege the two younger sisters were found in possession of 656 grams of heroin that was hidden in plastic containers in their underwear.

The three sisters had been on a month-long visit to Vietnam to see their mother, who Mr Henningham said last night had been granted custody of her grandchild.

"The family are deeply stressed," said Mr Henningham, who declined to say whether the girls' father was still in Australia or also abroad.

Sources in Hanoi said yesterday that the arrests could be the latest in a string of arrests of couriers linked to Vietnamese criminal gangs operating across Australia, and a sign of a growing drug trade.

Australian police were catching on average one courier smuggling heroin from Vietnam every second day, the sources said.

Some of those arrested were addicted to drugs but most were "mules", carrying drugs.

"Those getting caught are the couriers, but they're certainly part of a larger picture," one source said.

The insiders said criminal gangs in Sydney, Melbourne and around Australia had moved into the heroin business traditionally run by Chinese triads.

But Vietnamese officials have yet to show evidence of the importation in the case of the arrested Australians or say whether they are allegedly part of a big drug importation racket to Australia, possibly via Melbourne.

Mr Henningham said consular officials were still awaiting permission to speak to the sisters in the police detention centre where they are being held.

The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said yesterday that the involvement of children in alleged drug trafficking was tragic, and a reminder of the harsh penalties some countries imposed for drug offences.

A Fairfield councillor, Thang Ngo, said: "These are children we are talking about, not second-class citizens. They are Australian, and pressure should be put in place as soon as possible"

Moscow: A Chechen woman hostage of last month's theatre siege is still in police custody more than a week after special forces liberated the building - a victim of a police crackdown on thousands of Chechens who live in Moscow and other Russian cities.

"She is a hostage of a new kind," said Edi Isayev, a spokesman from the Moscow office of the Chechen administration. "She was part of the audience in the theatre, just like everyone else, but in spite of repeated protests we have not been able to get her out of custody."

Yakhar Niserkoyeva, 42, is a long-term resident of Moscow and has identity papers.

Russia tightened security in Chechnya 10 days ago, after special forces ended the three-day theatre siege.

Police patrols in Moscow routinely stop anyone who might remotely be a Chechen.

Mr Isayev, who works for the leader of the official Chechen administration, considered by the guerilla hostage-takers a puppet, cites cases of Chechens having their documents torn up by the police and attempts to plant things on them. They have to pay bribes to be set free, he says.

Shamil Beno, one of the many Chechens who oppose the Chechen administration and the armed resistance, said:

"The police arrested a 19-year-old relative of mine who came to Moscow after the siege was over. They took his internal passport and brought him to a police station. Then they said they had found a packet of heroin tucked into the passport.

"Can you imagine a young Chechen, who knows he's going to be stopped and searched at every street corner, carrying heroin in his passport?"

Just past the line, Damien Oliver looked to the heavens and flourished his whip. In those heart-wrenching seconds you could have sworn the great jockey was looking directly into the eyes of the brother he will bury today.

Oliver didn't really need to say what was going through his mind the instant he hit the line. At the presentation he did so anyway. "I know you're up there, mate," he said, addressing his brother Jason. "I couldn't have done it without you, buddy, so this one's for you."

Even at the racetrack, where the abject and the poignant often go stride for stride, you would have needed to have lost the family home and possibly a decent car on another runner not to have been moved by Oliver's victory. His loving gaze skywards will be remembered long after anyone can recite the technical details of his expert ride on Media Puzzle.

Yet, as much as Oliver's victory provided a tear-jerking tale for the evening news, this was no feelgood story. They have happy endings. Melbourne Cups can change lives but, sadly, they cannot restore them. So for Oliver, winning what others regard as the greatest prize in racing was merely a means of bringing a brief smile to his brother's otherwise inconsolable family and friends.

Sportsmen often pay tribute to lost loved ones at the time of their greatest triumphs. Oliver had dedicated his victory on Doriemus in 1995 to the father he had never really known. That was apt and moving. Part of a grand day.

But just a week after his brother's death the wounds were far too raw for celebration, the reality of the family's loss too great. The temptation for others was to yield to Hollywood-style emotion and believe that winning a horse race could provide some healing power. Some consolation. Oliver dismissed that notion with perhaps the saddest words ever spoken on a racetrack: "I'd give it back right now to have my brother back."

There will also be those who talk of Oliver's bravery. But that was never in question from the moment he got on the plane from Perth to resume his commitments. No one could have blamed him if he never rode so much as a merry-go-round after his brother died. But abandoning his career was clearly never an option.

So rather than his courage, yesterday's victory was a testament to Oliver's professionalism. He was engaged to ride a very good horse in an important race and did so to the very best of his vast ability. "It's not fair to the people who have faith in you to let your mind wander," he said.

Oliver's story ensured there would be no nonsensical, xenophobic whining about the victory of a foreign raider. And even if an imported jockey rather than a sentimental local favourite had been aboard the winner, few could have felt really peeved the cup was heading for Ireland.

After all, Media Puzzle had a ripping tale to tell. Just two years ago he suffered a broken pelvis - the sort of injury that can earn less talented nags a very close look at the inside of a can of Pal.

But canny trainer Dermot Weld was convinced Media Puzzle was every bit as good as his first Melbourne Cup winner, Vintage Crop. So he stuck with him and achieved what he regards as the ultimate result. Which, coming from an Irishman who trains winners from Galway to Gotham City, is a nice tribute to the race.

Media Puzzle wasn't a bad name bet either. Weld had the media puzzled about the fitness of his runners for weeks, though no one could really complain about the winner sneaking under their guard. If you chose to ignore Media Puzzle's Geelong Cup victory then, hey, you can't say you weren't warned.

Some may argue that the big cast of internationals robs the race of local flavour. Next across the line was Mr Prudent, trained by George Hanlon who is either 84 or 85. Apparently he has lost his driver's licence. That also would have been a great tale.

But comparing modern cups with those of old is like comparing the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games. Victory is much harder, but much better for it.

The foreigners have made the race important. Yet, as we found yesterday, not really so important as matters of life and death.

The Irish yesterday woke up to the news that one of their lesser lights - Media Puzzle - had wrested the Melbourne Cup from Australian hands, with Damien Oliver's emotional victory leading the sports news across the country.

But it took a while for the significance of the triumph to sink in. When asked for a comment on the Irish snatching the cup once again, the sole Irish Times journalist on duty at 5am - an hour after the cup was run and won - said: "The Melbourne Cup? Is that the big sailing event down there?"

Um, no.

But not all in the media were as puzzled, with the national radio broadcaster, RTE Radio, running the cup as its lead item.

Shane O'Donoghue, the station's morning anchor, said: "This is a huge story for us. It is such a boost as the flat season finishes and Dermot Weld is regarded as one of our best trainers. It really is fantastic.

"But I think the favourite was supposed to be Vinnie Roe. I think a few people here in Ireland would be surprised that it was Media Puzzle that won. But what an amazing thing for [Damien] Oliver to have won the cup and then face his brother's funeral tomorrow is quite a story.

"Everyone here knows of the Melbourne Cup. There were a few diehards up at 4am this morning watching it on Sky News and there will be a bit of celebrating this morning."

As if the Irish needed any excuse for a pint. When Vintage Crop claimed the honours in 1993, Weld became famous the world over and boosted Irish pride no end. Now Vintage Crop is happily munching the clover at the Irish National Stud in Kildare, not far from the famous Curragh racecourse.

Like Vintage Crop, Media Puzzle is part-owned by the Irish packaging mogul Michael Smurfit, who recently sold his Jefferson Smurfit packaging empire after 50 years at the helm.

His victory is hardly a romantic story, nor anything close to a rags-to-riches fairytale: Smurfit was regularly in the world's top-10 highest paid chief executives - last year he earned ?178million ($318m) - and was not even in Melbourne to watch his horse's win, instead relaxing in Spain.

A recluse, although at his parties he welcomes guests in General George Patton's World War II uniform, Smurfit built his father's paper and packaging business into a huge multinational and is widely considered Ireland's Rupert Murdoch.

His Irish golf and country club, the K club, designed by Arnold Palmer, will host the Ryder Cup in 2006.

While many Irish racegoers say their latest claim to the Melbourne Cup will not have a huge impact on the local scene, Curragh committee member Jonathan Irwin said the win showed the Irish fascination with looking beyond domestic races.

"The Irish trainers are never frightened to go offshore, it is just part of the pattern, and it is a tremendous success, absolutely brilliant," he said.

Considering the Irish influence, the tag leprechaun could be applied to George Hanlon. Yesterday at Flemington he again confirmed his magical powers.

While the starring role went to jockey Damien Oliver, and Emerald Isle trainer Dermot Weld received deserved accolades, Hanlon again left his mark with his eight-year-old Mr Prudent.

"He should be declared a national treasure," owner Kay Stivactas said before planting a kiss on the 85-year-old's forehead, pictured more in recent times carrying a bandaid than lipstick.

Perhaps Mr Prudent never looked like troubling Media Puzzle, with Oliver showing why he is Australia's best jockey. Mr Prudent was beaten two lengths, but he still beat the other 21 and ran one of the fastest 3200m (3 minutes and 17.25 seconds) since metrics were introduced.

Flashing a smile that would light up Galway Bay, Hanlon seemed well pleased with the result. After all, he considered Media Puzzle a handicapping certainty after seeing him score on his home track of Geelong a few weeks ago.

"I said, 'Don't worry about the rest of those horses from overseas, how can they be better than him?'," Hanlon declared, as though he was getting a bigger kick out of being spot on with Media Puzzle than running second.

Meanwhile, Weld had just been to the media conference and divulged that Media Puzzle had spent four and a half months in his box due to a fractured pelvis. This caused his loss of "form", leading to his original 51-kilogram assessment. The 1.5kg penalty he received for Geelong could be described as useful ballast.

Despite trying to be diplomatic, Hanlon swung the conversation to his own rendition of why there are no snakes in Ireland. "It had nothing to do with St Patrick," he beamed. "Those blokes that sell horses over there went out into the fields, were bitten by the snakes and the snakes died."

Obviously the uncanny knack with Hanlon is not only that he has won three Melbourne Cups but the performances he can get out of the likes of Mr Prudent, the veteran of the field.

Hanlon didn't seem overly concerned that his other starter, Rain Gauge, struck interference early before finishing eighth. Will the trainer be back next year?

"I don't know," he answered. "I've only got nine horses."

By contrast, Weld has 100 horses at The Curragh in Ireland, has notched about 2800 winners and is still going strong. Godolphin has a conservative 300 and a ready purse to buy more for the Melbourne Cup.

Sure, Weld gives the impression he has more than a liberal touch of the blarney but to hear him explain the vagaries of Vinnie Roe, possibly the apple of his eye, and Media Puzzle, which gave him his second Melbourne Cup following Vintage Crop in 1993, he is one hell of a horseman. Weld explained that he paid a lot of attention to weight and that was the real problem with Vinnie Roe, not what I would describe as a dummy to take the spotlight off his stablemate.

In his opinion it was the "firm track" more than anything else that beat Vinnie Roe yesterday.

Weld gave Patrick Smullen the "brilliant ride" rating for his effort on Vinnie Roe. But when Smullen went for the whip, Media Puzzle supporters had a warm and fuzzy feeling, knowing Oliver hadn't unleashed his artillery.

Despite the backing for the top weight, Weld felt before the race that Media Puzzle was the pick of his pair due to the conditions.

But it was a team effort, according to Weld. Vinnie Roe and Media Puzzle are "especially close friends. The support they give is vital to each other." In the stable, possibly, and not the race. So Vinnie Roe had his own "pony" which gave him a good licking.

On the subject of support and the team factor, it wasn't surprising to see Godolphin's Hatha Anna contribute to pace that enabled Media Puzzle (3:16.91) to run the second fastest metric Melbourne Cup.

Certainly the firm surface, too, was an influencing factor. It led Hatha Anna's jockey, Richard Hills, to comment that the surface was the hardest he had ridden on and that the only way conditions would be similar in Europe was "if the watering system broke down".

Whether it was the state of the ground or the breakneck speed, Hatha Anna (20th) and Sandmason (23rd) wilted baldly over the latter stages. The strong pace was a plus for the invaders with Beekeeper, the best of Godolphin's runners, taking out the minor placing and Vinnie Roe running fourth. Our stayers couldn't handle a strong and sustained tempo, according to the breeding purists.

Consider this: Godolphin has spent millions trying to win the Melbourne Cup, and Weld, who also plunders major events worldwide, only returns when he's got the "right horse". But Hanlon took them on with an eight-year-old, arguably Australian-bred although by a New Zealand sire, Phizam, with the Aussie influence from a West Australian mare, I'm In Business.

We don't breed stayers but it seems we can produce the odd leprechaun. Anybody want to bet he won't have a runner next year?


Damien Oliver sidled up to me two hours before yesterday's Melbourne Cup. He was cool, calm and collected. He was ready for the race of his life.

Damien approached me outside the jockeys' room and wanted to know about Saintly. His mind was already looking forward to the cup. He knew he had a live chance in Media Puzzle.

He knew the horse was trained by the Irish genius Dermot Weld and, having spent time in Europe a couple of years ago, he knew what their stayers were like.

They may not have the turn of foot of the locals but they start rolling from a long way out, and when they do they continue right to the very end of a race.

Damien knows these stayers are kind rides. They mightn't be used to big fields and crowding, which is common in this part of the world, but Damien was going to make sure his mount got the right run and stayed out of trouble.

He was doing his homework. He knew Saintly had jumped from barrier three when it stormed to victory in 1996. Media Puzzle, too, would launch its bid to take the cup back to Ireland from the same gate, and Damien knew it was imperative the horse got a clean start from the jump.

The one thing Media Puzzle didn't need was to be cluttered up on the inside. As we said, these horses aren't used to cramped racing. Damien was going go forward but not at the expense of the horse.

I told him Saintly raced handy because that's where the horse wanted to be, and Damien knew what I meant. When the gates opened, he did exactly what Media Puzzle wanted. He put him to sleep with a minimum of fuss.

Damien was surrounded by all the chances, but Media Puzzle was relaxed. If anything, for the first 300 metres the horse just put himself into the race. That's the way with stayers, especially if they are prepared by Weld.

What made this a great Melbourne Cup ride was the fact that at every crucial stage of the race Damien made the right decision. There was no hesitation, he trusted his instinct and it served him well.

Damien was attuned to the situation, and when Media Puzzle's stablemate Vinnie Roe moved forward at the 800m, he peeled out. And there's no doubt Damien was surprised at how Media Puzzle dragged him to the lead.

He knew he'd got to the front earlier than anticipated but the record-breaking Geelong Cup win on the gelding meant Damien knew what the horse had left.

The hard track didn't affect Media Puzzle, unlike many others in the race, and Damien knew his mount world appreciate the firm surface. He said it was highly unusual for a stayer from Europe to handle a hard surface, for they usually like it soft underfoot.

From where I was sitting it was Saintly all over again. Damien basically cruised to victory, and winning with ease gives you time to soak it all in.

The boys in the jockeys' room cheered and there were hugs all round. Everyone knows Damien lost his brother last week, and only those close know what he has been through.

And spare a thought for Vinnie Roe. His performance under 59kg was one of the best seen in a cup, and he finished fourth. Weld reckons the horse will be back.

But the day belonged to Damien and it was a mighty ride that won the race.

Minutes after Media Puzzle crossed the line yesterday, trainer Dermot Weld's mobile phone rang. On the other end of the line was the gelding's part owner, Michael Smurfit. He was calling from Spain.

"He was having a few quiet drinks with some friends," Weld said. "He seemed pretty happy with himself. He enjoys winning."

Media Puzzle's stunning Melbourne Cup performance gave Smurfit his second win in Australia's staying classic. Nine years ago, Smurfit and Weld claimed their first slice of cup history when champion stayer Vintage Crop won 3200m grind. It was the first time a Northern Hemisphere-trained horse had taken Australia's most famous cup home.

Smurfit's racing manager, Dermot Cantillon, said his boss had always wanted to win the race again.

Chasing his dream, Smurfit enticed friend and fellow businessman Don Keogh, a former president of Coca-Cola, to buy Media Puzzle at the conclusion of its three-year-old season.

"The horse always had potential," Cantillon said yesterday. "The Melbourne Cup was always in the back of Michael and Dermot's mind.

"We thought long and hard about bringing him down here because he had just run third in a handicap at The Curragh. It's always a gamble bringing horses down here.

"You don't know how they will travel, how they will adapt. In the end it was a brave decision by Michael to bring him down, and he should be applauded for that.

"It is a hard thing to come down here to win the Melbourne Cup, the records show that, but Michael had faith in the horse and he encouraged Dermot to bring him down."

They got the ultimate reward when Media Puzzle stormed down the straight to claim the cup in tremendous style. Cantillon also got a call from his boss during the victory celebrations.

"He's in good form," Cantillon said. "He is delighted with the win. He enjoyed Vintage Crop's win but this would be equally exciting for him. He loves to see his horses do well on the world stage."

Cantillon heaped praise on Weld. The wily Irishman had prepared Media Puzzle, which stormed into cup calculations after its record-breaking win in the Geelong Cup, to the minute to peak on cup day.

"It was a wonderful training performance by Dermot Weld," Cantillon said. "To come down here with the first and second favourite is magnificent. He is a wonderful trainer. Michael is very grateful."

Nicole Kidman would rather still be happily married to Tom Cruise than have her successful Hollywood career, she has disclosed.

The actress has become one of the world's most bankable stars since splitting with Cruise, with roles in hits such as Moulin Rouge and The Others.

But now the 35-year-old has admitted she would trade it all in for a happy marriage.

In a revealing interview with the latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Kidman said she would have been content to make the odd film, like the 1995 black comedy To Die For, while concentrating on family life with Cruise.

"I didn't have to have a huge career. I would have liked to be able to make a To Die For occasionally and things that could stimulate me," she said.

"And this makes me sad, but I still would probably choose a marriage and an intact family over my career," she said.

Kidman said she was plagued by guilt over the effect the divorce from Cruise was having on her children Isabella, nine, and Conor, seven.

"It means for the rest of my life I have to do things to protect and help them and make it up to them," she said.

She was only just beginning to understand why the couple's 10-year marriage broke down. As Mrs Cruise, her own talents were stifled because she was constantly overshadowed by her husband's career.

On falling in love with Cruise she recalled: "He basically swept me off my feet. I fell madly, passionately in love. And as happens when you fall in love, my whole plan in terms of what I wanted for my life - I was like, 'Forget it. This is it'. I was consumed by it, willingly."

Kidman said she was "desperate" to have a baby with him.

When they split in early 2001 she was so devastated that at one point she lay weeping on the floor in the foetal position while her parents implored her to pull herself together.

Kidman, currently filming American Civil War drama Cold Mountain with Jude Law, said she hoped to fall in love again.

"I just want to do my work, raise my kids, and hopefully find somebody who I can share my life with again, or have a number of different people at different times who come into my life," she said.

Meanwhile, Danish director Lars von Trier has announced future roles for Kidman.

He will begin filming his new feature Manderley next year, with Academy Award nominee Kidman in the lead role, his production company said from Copenhagen.

Kidman had accepted the lead in both Manderley and the untitled final part of the Dogville trilogy, said Zentropa's executive producer Peter Aalbaek, with shooting expected to begin in August.

Dogville, which Von Trier finished shooting this year and also stars Kidman, is due to be presented at the Cannes film festival next May.

Kidman was this year nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of a courtesan in Baz Luhrmann's musical rollercoaster Moulin Rouge.

Von Trier, famed for his award-winning feature Breaking the Waves, gained prominence by shunning perceived Hollywood wisdom as a founding member of the Dogme 95 group of film makers.

The group took a "vow of chastity" committing them to shoot on location, using hand-held cameras while shunning artificial light and the use of optical filters, among other things.

A Sydney magistrate has dismissed an offensive language charge against a man who told police to "f--- off", saying that as he had used a non-threatening tone it was not offensive in this day and age.

Magistrate Robert Abood, in the Downing Centre Local Court, said yesterday that he agreed with a fellow magistrate, David Heilpern, that the word had to be judged by community standards. In Dubbo in 1999 Mr Heilpern dismissed a charge against a man who allegedly made the same remark to a policeman holding the handlebars of his bike.

"Not a day goes by where the word is not used. It's used as a noun, a verb and an adjective. People use the word without second thought and, indeed, it's part and parcel of everyday conversations and the authorities are quiet clear - in most circumstances the word is not offensive," he said.

The test was whether its use was "calculated to wound the feeling, arouse anger or resentment or disgust or outrage in the mind of a reasonable person."

Mr Abood said there was conflicting evidence about the tone used by the accused, Mark Peterson, 35. The two police officers gave evidence that the words were "loud and aggressive" but Mr Peterson - backed by the proprietor of an Oxford Street restaurant who had called the police to attend - claimed he had used a "dismissive" tone.

"I have no doubt that if one were to accept without reservation the evidence of [the police] as to the tone of the words

used by the defendant, in my mind that would amount to offensive language ... [there would be] no doubt that the

use of those words were meant to offend," Mr Abood said.

However, he accepted the word of Mr Peterson, and a restaurant proprietor, Kristin Meredith, that the tone was not loud and aggressive and dismissed the charge.

Outside the court, Mr Peterson's lawyer, Philip Stewart, said while it "might be impolite, or ill-advised to say it to police, it was not offensive".

He said Mr Peterson, who had been celebrating with friends, had been arrested after he said the words, was handcuffed and taken to Surry Hills police station.

Mr Peterson said the handcuffs had been taken off temporarily so he could sign a credit card chit to pay his share of the bill.

He said he told the officer at Surry Hills police station: "I didn't swear at you; I swore in front of you. I just became an Australian citizen today, and this is the kind of welcome I get."

Had he been convicted of using offensive language he would have been liable to a fine of $660 and would have had a criminal record.

Police have been trialling on-the-spot penalty notices for those using offensive language.

If you happen to be walking around the Sydney Convention Centre at Darling Harbour between November 14 and 17 and hear a bit of huffing and puffing, don't panic. You've probably stumbled across the Byron Bay duo Oceanus and Icarus, the world's foremost Tantric sex couple, who are planning to conduct a series of workshops at the Mind Body Spirit Festival.

A former librarian and architect, Oceanus and Icarus met for the first time at sunrise at the top of a mountain in the Himalayas. They were married in 1991 and live on the shore of a tea tree lake near the Pacific Ocean just outside of Byron Bay.

Icarus told Spike that Tantra was a spiritual tradition with a history at least 7000 years old. He says the roots of this tradition honour the "sacred union of the male and female energies which create life" (the original nuclear fusion) and are found in all cultures around the globe. "Tantra is considered to be the fast path to spiritual development."

The couple are expecting at least 200 people to participate in each of their workshops being held in the intimate and obviously romantic surrounds of the convention centre.

"There won't be any actual sex taking place ... although we do give out homework assignments, which are usually eagerly received," Icarus said.

So what do you learn in a Tantric sex workshop?

According to the official guide, Oceanus and Icarus will take couples, and singles too, through a course which teaches "ways to incorporate conscious lovemaking into your life".

"Experience skills for communication and intimacy. Get tips on Tantric lovemaking and relationships. Reconcile your sexuality and spirituality. Learn secret techniques to overcome premature ejaculation and problems with orgasm. Discover how to have full body orgasms, and to become multi-orgasmic. Tantra is about having super sex and much more!" says their promotional blurb. S

Horses for courses

NSW Opposition Leader John Brogden didn't make it to the TAB

to place a bet yesterday, but he did join in his office sweep. His press secretary Lance Northey revealed at a Macquarie Street press conference yesterday afternoon that Mr Brogden drew Requiem. Yes, everyone laughed.

However, it was probably Bob Carr who laughed the loudest yesterday after our item about his Melbourne Cup tip - borrowed from his advisers - that Media Puzzle would win.

Carr told Spike's operative yesterday: "I've got nothing against horse racing - I can never understand it. I don't know how people do it, make tips. Some instinct in my grey matter comes up with media bias, or media confusion or media muddle."

After earning millions of dollars, now they want privacy.

Sharon Osbourne, battling cancer, has told American ABC's Barbara Walters that she's calling it quits on her family's top-rating MTV reality show after the end of the next season, Associated Press reports.

"This is definitely the last year," she said. "We can't do it anymore."

Osbourne, the wife of heavy-metal icon Ozzy Osbourne, said the show had "changed us all so much", resulting in her teenage children now employing lawyers and business managers.

"You know when you're sick, you want to be on your own? I can't throw up on my own and Ozzy can't get drunk on his own."

But that hasn't stopped the family signing up as the hosts of the 30th annual American Music Awards, in January next year.

You know what they say about making hay while the sun shines?

Melbourne Cup, Sydney-style

So how does Sydney's A-list experience the Melbourne Cup? Why, in the Sydney Opera House drinking bubbly overlooking our sparkling harbour hundreds of kilometres away from Flemington, of course.

Wine maker Domaine Chandon hosted a Silk & Flutes lunch at the Opera House yesterday, attracting the who's who of Sydney's fashion, media, corporate and hospitality worlds. Unlike the traditional

stampede associated with actually attending Flemington, the Sydney folk wolfed down the endless supply of lobster and oysters,

placed bets on the spot in air-conditioned comfort and viewed the race beamed directly to their tables via giant screens. Only in Sydney, kids.

Barbra won't let go

And here we were thinking she was looking for a lower profile these days.

Columbia Records are flogging their old cash cow Barbra Streisand, with plans to release a collection of collaborations and two newly recorded duets on the imaginatively titled album, Duets.

The album includes Get Happy/Happy Days Are Here Again, recorded during a 1963 appearance on The Judy Garland Show, through to the new duet with Barry Manilow, I Won't Be the One to Let Go - though we wish both of them would.

Nicole's highs and lows

How time, and a Hollywood divorce, have muddied Nicole Kidman's memory.

Last week she revealed how when she met her former husband Tom Cruise to discuss her Days of Thunder role, she was startled to discover how short he was.

"When Tom stood up and we shook hands I found I was looking down at him. It was terrifically embarrassing to learn I was at least a couple of inches taller," Kidman is quoted as saying on imdb.com.

"I knew it wouldn't do, having the girlfriend tower over the macho race car driver."

Which is at odds with comments made to a BBC reporter in 1998 - pre-divorce - when she said of their first encounter: "I walked in and [Tom] was the one that stood up and shook my hand. And I just remember ... electricity going through me." Which would explain, really, Kidman's "short".

The US House of Represetantives today authorised war-making powers for President George W Bush, who heralded the chamber's vote as a resounding message to the United Nations and to the world that "the gathering threat of Iraq must be confronted fully and finally."

The 296-133 vote was a solid endorsement of Bush's insistence that he will work with the United Nations if possible, or alone if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction. A majority of Democrats voted against the resolution even though their House leader, Dick Gephardt, was one of its authors.

Bush spoke at the White House after telephoning Gephardt and House Speaker Dennis Hastert to thank them for the vote.

"The House of Representatives has spoken clearly to the world and to the United Nations Security Council: The gathering threat of Iraq must be confronted fully and finally," Bush said in a hastily arranged appearance in the Roosevelt Room. He spoke of war before a fireplace mantle displaying the Nobel Peace Prize Theodore Roosevelt won in 1906 for mediating the Russo-Japanese War.

"Today's vote also sends a clear message to the Iraqi regime: You must disarm and comply with all existing U.N. resolutions or (you) will be forced to comply. ... The days of Iraq acting as an outlaw state are coming to an end," the president said.

The Senate was prepared to act in chorus, rejecting by a 75-25 vote a bid by opponents to slow down a final vote and picking up the vital support of the Senate's top Democrat, Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

"It is only when the Iraqi dictator is certain of our willingness to wage war if necessary that peace becomes possible," said Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif.

Bush has stressed he has made no decision about using military force against Iraq. It could take months, once that decision is made, for the military to prepare for an all-out strike.

With Congress behind him, Bush pressed the United Nations Security Council to approve a tough resolution holding Iraq to unfettered inspections and disarmament and promising force if Iraq does not comply.

House Democrats urged the president to work closely with the U.N. before making a decision to go it alone against Iraq. "Completely bypassing the U.N. would set a dangerous precedent that would undoubtedly be used by other countries in the future to our and the world's detriment," said Gephardt.

While concerns remained about the dangers of going to war against Iraq without a strong international coalition, Thursday's vote showed stronger support for the president than his father, George H.W. Bush, received in 1991. The House then voted 250-183 to endorse using American troops to drive Iraq from Kuwait.

Despite efforts by party leaders to defuse Iraq as a political issue four weeks before the election, 126 of the House's 208 Democrats voted against it.

The bipartisan agreement gives the president most of the powers he asked for, allowing him to act without going through the United Nations. But in a concession to Democratic concerns, it encourages him to exhaust all diplomatic means first and requires he report to Congress every 60 days if he does take action.

The House earlier rejected, by 270-155, the main challenge to the White House-backed resolution, a proposal backed by a majority of Democrats that obliged the president to return to Congress for a second vote on the use of American force against Iraq after he decides that cooperative efforts with the United Nations are futile.

Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., said that without a multilateral approach, "this will be the United States versus Iraq and in some quarters the U.S. versus the Arab and the Muslim world."

The Senate, on a key test vote, choked off delaying tactics by a few Democratic opponents and made it all but certain that the Senate would pass the measure.

Only two Republicans voted against bringing debate to a close: Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. The Senate, which has been debating the measure for a full week, was expected to approve it late Thursday or early Friday.

Daschle's support was crucial to the administration's hope for a substantial vote and brought him praise from the White House. "The president appreciates Senator Daschle's decision to vote with the president on this matter," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

Progress was slower on the diplomatic front, where three members of the U.N. Security Council -- France, Russia and China -- continued to hold out against a U.S.-British proposal sanctioning military action if Iraq does not comply with coercive inspections.

A 25-minute telephone call between Bush and French President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday failed to yield a breakthrough over wording of a new Security Council resolution to disarm Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. "This is intricate diplomacy and we are continuing our consultations," White House spokesman Sean McCormack said.

In Paris, Chirac spokeswoman Catherine Colonna said the French president was open to strengthening the powers of U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, but still could not accept making military recourse an automatic response should they be hampered. In Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov relayed a similar stance.

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of U.S. Central Command, said Thursday that the Bush administration seems unnecessarily rushed about taking on Iraq. He said he considers Saddam "deterrable and containable at this point."

"I'm not convinced we need to do this now," Zinni said during a question-and-answer session at a Middle East Institute forum.

Debate in the House went deep into the night both Tuesday and Wednesday, with nearly every member intent on expressing the necessity, and gravity, of granting authority to send Americans into war.

"I know the heartache and pain of the families that are left behind," said a tearful Rep. Randy Cunningham, R-Calif., who was a pilot in the Vietnam War.

But Cunningham and almost every Republican backed the president. "It's time we go straight to the eye and dismantle the elements from which the storm of brutal, repressive tyranny and terrorism radiate," said Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., He said that as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, "I can attest to the evilness of Saddam Hussein."

Telstra and Farmhand Foundation chief Bob Mansfield has defended his group against accusations by scientists that it plans to drought-proof the nation are stupid.

Launching the foundation recently to help raise funds for drought-ravaged farmers, leading businessmen including Mr Mansfield and media magnate Kerry Packer helped revive plans to turn Australia's rivers inland to boost irrigation.

But a group of leading scientists today said they would write to Prime Minister John Howard, as well as state and territory leaders, to express concern about plans to drought-proof the nation.

Branding the plan "stupid", the scientists also said it was irresponsible and would irreparably damage Australia's environment.

Mr Mansfield said the Farmhand group had never professed to be water usage experts.


"The main point we're saying is that if we focus on this as a nation, can we improve things, and our view of the answer to that is definitely yes," he told ABC Radio.

"How you do that is really open to a hell of a lot of analysis and discussion, and I welcome that discussion with this group or any other group."

Mr Mansfield said Farmhand's core group contained many different views, and the rivers plan was not the foundation's sole idea.

"I wouldn't get hung up on that as the focus of the Farmhand group," he said.

"We really are trying to absorb and analyse a little some of the different views that people have and try and put it into a cohesive suggestion that we'll provide that leads to action as against continual discussion on these elements."

Mr Mansfield defended radio talk-back figure Alan Jones against accusations that his support for the rivers plan had been too simplistic, saying Mr Jones was only one member of the foundation.

He also rejected suggestions the drought-proofing plan had been floated to help secure support in the bush for the full sale of Telstra, with sale proceeds being used to fund water infrastructure projects.

"There has not been one syllable of discussion at any meeting involved either on the Telstra side or on the Farmhand side in relation to the supposedly grouping scenarios that people have asserted," he said.

"That is totally incorrect."

"It has nothing to do with Telstra. It has totally to do with a group of people that were sitting around saying 'people are in trouble, can we help them'."

Mohammed Skaf slouched in the dock with the harmless look of a teenager loitering at any suburban shopping centre.

Yet, Sydney's District Court heard yesterday, the puny 165 centimetre teen was in fact a violent, callous individual capable of unbelievable arrogance, "the instigator, the lure, or the bait", for two of Sydney's notorious August 2000 gang rapes.

"Mohammed Skaf ... is a vicious, cowardly bully, arrogant and a liar - as well as being a rapist," began Judge Michael Finnane, before sentencing the 19-year-old to a maximum of 32 years' jail, to be served in an adult prison.

He will be eligible for parole on January 2, 2021 - making his minimum term exactly half that of his elder brother, Bilal, the gang ringleader.

Noting the younger Skaf's similar lack of remorse, Judge Finnane said: "It is hard to believe that young men brought up in modern Australia could behave so much like wild animals."


He rejected a submission that Skaf be allowed to serve time in a juvenile justice centre until 21.

His lawyer, Richard Jankowski, had argued that extra restrictions were likely to be imposed on Skaf for his protection in an adult jail. Initial detention at a juvenile centre, he said, would give Skaf one opportunity to develop vocational skills for his eventual release into the community. It would also enable him to undertake a weights program "to give himself an even chance" in adult jail.

Skaf, whose identity was suppressed until yesterday because of his age at the time the crimes were committed, was the teenager who, with four others, lured an 18-year-old from a train at Bankstown on August 30, 2000.

Later, as the first of 14 to rape her that day and having stolen her mobile phone, he told her: "You won't get your phone back until you f--- me." He then thrust her face-first into a toilet block wall and declared: "I'm going to f--- you Leb-style."

The prosecutor, Margaret Cunneen, said Skaf was "so brazen, so arrogant, so unmoved" by the miserable plight into which he had lured the woman that he returned near the end of the six-hour ordeal - in which she was raped 25 times - to sexually assault her again.

Speaking outside court yesterday, the victim said of Skaf's sentence: "He got what he deserved. If it hadn't been for him I wouldn't have been raped that day."

Judge Finnane said that while plainly influenced by his brother, Bilal - 20 months his senior and with whom he was close - Mohammed Skaf nonetheless played a leadership role in that attack and one 18 days earlier.

On August 12 he had gone to the home of a 16-year-old girl he had befriended six months earlier. On the pretence of taking her on a drive to the city, he abused the trust she and her mother had placed in him as a decent young man who had always been polite and well-mannered, and lured her instead to Greenacre's Gosling Park.

With arrangements already in place - via almost constant mobile phone contact with his brother - the younger Skaf adopted various ruses to calm her nerves and keep her at the park until his brother and 10 others arrived.

Then he left, abandoning her as his elder brother grabbed her by the hair and, calling "Yallah [let's go] boys", with the others dragged her across the park. They then stripped her, assaulted her and held her down as she was raped by the elder Skaf and another man.

During the attack she had a gun pointed at her. She managed to escape but was hunted down at a nearby telephone box. Again the gun was pointed at her and she was ordered into a vehicle before a stranger appeared, forcing the gang to flee.

For aiding and abetting this attack, the younger Skaf was sentenced to a maximum of 15 years, with a non-parole period of nine years.

Two reports tendered in court yesterday indicate his ongoing contempt for his victims and women, particularly female authority figures. He had made sexually inappropriate remarks to female staff at the Kariong juvenile facility and continued to blame the victims for initially agreeing to go with him.

"[They] were not good either, since they came out with us as soon as I asked them," he told one officer.

Ms Cunneen said Skaf represented "a grievous long-term danger to the community".

The death toll from the Washington-area sniper rose to seven today as authorities said ballistics evidence linked the killer to the slaying of a man gunned down at a Virginia gas station.

Dean Meyers, 53, of Gaithersburg, Maryland, was felled by a single shot last night, moments after filling his car's tank, becoming the latest victim to die since the attacks began on October 2.

Two other people have been wounded.

Prince William County Police Chief Charlie Deane said the results of an autopsy on Meyers and ballistic evidence "has linked these cases".

Deane also pleaded for the killer to give up.

"There's enough damage been done," he said.

Police had said they were searching for a white mini-van seen leaving the gas station, but Deane downplayed the lead and said the occupants had a "reasonable" explanation of their actions.

He refused to say whether there were surveillance cameras at the gas station, but said some cameras were in the area.

In a drizzling rain, police in yellow slickers walked shoulder-to-shoulder near the crime scene, looking for evidence.

Deane did not say whether they had found anything.

But he said there had been no communication from the killer.

A tarot death card with the taunting words "Dear policeman, I am God" was found near a shell casing outside a school in Bowie, Maryland, where a 13-year-old boy was critically wounded by the sniper on Monday.

Manassas is about 56km southwest of the Maryland suburbs where most of the attacks happened.

The attack is the second in Virginia: a woman was wounded by a sniper in Fredericksburg, 48km south of here.

Investigators say the sniper, or snipers, fired from a distance with a high-powered hunting or military-style rifle.

Like Meyers, all the other victims were felled by a single bullet.

At a news conference, Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert indicated he would seek the death penalty against the sniper.

He said a new Virginia law allowed the death penalty in murders "in which the perpetrator tends to terrorise the general public".

"If I have anything to do with it, we will prosecute in this jurisdiction, and do it to the full extent of the law," said Ebert, whose office has sent more people to death row than any other in Virginia.

Neighbours said Meyers lived alone in a two-story brick unit in a townhouse complex in Gaithersburg. They said he worked in Virginia, though they did not know where.

Carol Iverson, 79, lived next door to Meyers for 15 years in Gaithersburg before she moved away. The former neighbours stayed close, with Meyers coming last week to Iverson's home for dinner.

"He was perfectly delightful," she said, her voice breaking.

"I can't say enough good things about him. He always had a kind word. He always had time to stop and talk."

Barbara Stewart said Meyers often offered assistance to her husband, who has Parkinson's disease. Clara Johnson recalled that Meyers looked out for cats in the community.

"He would just take all the stray cats he could find and take them in his house and feed them," she said.

Johnson said whoever killed Meyers was "a person that has no heart, no love, no concern - but most of all, no love in his heart."

After 15 months of poisonous suspicion, Joanne Lees at last stands vindicated. Her incredible escape has finally provided the most damning evidence against the man who will be charged with murdering her boyfriend.

Ms Lees's only mistake was surviving and then refusing to tell the media about her ordeal. A number of reporters, mostly British but some Australian, decided her silence signalled guilt.

The pariah instincts of the talkback jocks found an echo in their audiences.

One observer identified it as the Lindy Chamberlain-isation of Joanne Lees.

At last, the cynics have been silenced. As her stepfather, Vincent James, said yesterday: "Joanne has spoken the truth all the time and it's just a pity that some people didn't believe her."


On Wednesday night, Northern Territory police said DNA tests had identified a 44-year-old man, who would be charged with murdering Ms Lees's boyfriend, Peter Falconio, 28, at Barrow Creek, 300 kilometres north of Alice Springs, in July last year.

Two detectives went to Yatala jail in Adelaide yesterday but were met with silence. The man had dropped his legal challenge to the DNA test on Tuesday.

What chastens Ms Lees's doubters most is that she provided the crucial evidence.

The 27-year-old had drawn blood from the gunman, who had killed Falconio and intended to abduct and rape Ms Lees - and, no doubt, to kill her too.

A spot of blood splashed on Ms Lees's white T-shirt as the gunman shackled her with homemade handcuffs, bound her legs, gagged her with tape and pulled a hood over her head.

He thrust her into the cabin of his utility and went to get Mr Falconio's body. In the next few minutes, Ms Lees wriggled into the rear. She got her hands in front, tore off the hood, freed her legs and ran into the desert, hiding while the gunman hunted for her with a torch and a dog.

Several hours later, she was picked up, still manacled and gagged, by two road-train drivers. They took her 12km to the Barrow Creek hotel.

Yesterday, one of the drivers, Vince Millar, 40, said: "How could they doubt her story? The simple fact is the country is that big and that wide, people don't understand."

As days passed, no gunman was arrested and Ms Lees refused to meet the media. The questions got tougher and more pointed. Finally, a British journalist asked: "Is Joanne a suspect?"

The answer was an unequivocal "no". But it seemed only to inflame her doubters. Yesterday, there was a carefully worded mea culpa in the British press.

The Daily Mail's Richard Shears, who covered the story from the start, said he "the first to admit that there were

elements of her story that caused me to doubt her".

"Today she will be able to face her critics and hold her head high," he wrote.

For their own reasons, police had not allowed the media to see the homemade manacles or released a videotape of the suspect - compelling evidence that Ms Lees was telling the truth.

She reluctantly agreed, after 13 days, to meet the media under unprecedented restrictions: only one reporter and a few cameramen, and questions submitted in writing.

The world saw a young woman overwhelmed by her fate. Since then, Ms Lees has made unfortunate remarks. She accepted money, returned to Australia and made a documentary, seemingly over it all. But she didn't do it, and now her doubters know it.

A High Court judge today issued an injunction preventing the labour and birth of a child being filmed for a pornographic movie.

Justice Heath issued the injunction in the High Court at Hamilton. The woman, who can be identified only as "Nikki", is due to give birth on November 26, but was admitted to Waikato Hospital this week with complications.

Child, Youth and Family wants guardianship of her unborn child and a court order preventing the filming of the birth.

The court's decision is regarded as a landmark one and the government's deputy solicitor general, Helen Aikman, acted on behalf of the department.

She told the court, "It is increasingly common to videotape birth. The key difference here is the intention to shoot the film for pornographic purposes, not for personal or educational use," the Waikato Times newspaper reported.


"The thought of a baby being in a porn movie is likely to be highly offensive to a person of normal sensibilities," Aikman said.

"It is an unnecessary impediment to put on a child growing up, knowing it has been in a porn movie. The baby is likely to be harmed merely by association with this film."

More than 50 people at a hospital in Norman, Oklahoma, have been infected with hepatitis C after a nurse repeatedly used the same needle and syringe to give drugs, area health officials said.

Hepatitis C is the most virulent form of hepatitis and can lead to serious liver damage and liver cancer

The virus is most often transmitted when an infected drug user shares a needle with an uninfected person

The disease is treated with a combination of interferon and the drug ribavirin

Officials at Norman Regional Hospital have contacted hundreds of patients treated since 1999 at the clinic where the nurse worked and have urged them to be tested for blood-borne diseases.

"By my understanding, this is the biggest outbreak of hepatitis C that has taken place as a result of transmission within a health care facility," said Michael Crutcher, state epidemiologist at the Oklahoma Department of Health.

More than 4million people in the United States are infected with hepatitis C.

While some people can naturally overcome the virus, an estimated 50 to 70per cent of those who contract hepatitisC remain chronically infected.


Investigators believe that the infections occurred when a nurse-anaesthetist in a pain treatment clinic at the hospital repeatedly used the same syringe and needle to give a pain-numbing medication to patients before they underwent medical procedures.

Dr Crutcher said the nurse drew enough medication into a syringe to treat multiple patients seen at the clinic on the same day. He then used that syringe with the same needle to inject a small dose of medication into the port of an intravenous line that had been inserted into the arm of each patient.

Since a patient's blood can easily back up into intravenous line ports, nurses and doctors are supposed to use needles only once to avoid the risk of transmitting diseases through re-use.

Dr Crutcher said the nurse's actions were the result of misunderstanding proper procedure.

A spokeswoman for Norman Regional said 300 patients treated at the clinic this year had been tested, and 52 of them had shown positive for hepatitis C. She said the hospital had decided to advise another 500 people treated at the clinic since it began operating in 1999 to seek testing.

The hospital has also suspended the privileges of the anaesthetist running the clinic and barred the nurse from working there. The Oklahoma Board of Nursing was also investigating the nurse.

A number of those infected have filed lawsuits against the anaesthetist, the nurse and the hospital.

Hazard reduction in NSW's fire-prone bushland is back in the spotlight as it emerged last night that the Rural Fire Service had failed to cut fuel loads in the Engadine area before this year's bushfire season.

Work to reduce levels of combustible material had not taken place since 1994 in the section of Woronora valley that was the scene of Monday's fire. The area was not deemed to be at extreme risk.

Ten homes, nine in Thurlgona Road, were destroyed and 12 homes were damaged in the fire, suspected to have been touched off as a three-man crew from Sydney Water repaired a pipe.

A fire service spokesman, John Winter, said that while the area was identified as being at risk, it was not in extreme danger. "We tend to focus on those identified as being at extreme risk for obvious reasons - that there are limited resources and limited time frames."

He said the area had been due for hazard reduction this year, but conditions had not been suitable at the scheduled time. It was not unusual for work to be delayed until conditions were right.


Despite the loss of 10 homes, the fire was of a moderate intensity, burning out less than 50 hectares of vacant crown land, Mr Winter said.

Earlier, the Opposition Leader, John Brogden, said his office had received numerous complaints from residents about a lack of preparation for the bushfire season.

"The public has a clear right to know how much hazard reduction has been conducted, particularly by the National Parks and Wildlife Service," he said.

"In 1993-94 the NPWS burnt off 47,816 hectares but that dropped to an alarming 19,220 hectares in 2000-01. There is a real risk that the lessons of last year's fires have not been learned, and thousands of homes may be at unnecessary risk this summer."

It was revealed yesterday that the profiles of as many as 100 known arsonists have been posted across the police network.

Assistant Commissioner John Laycock, heading the strike force reactivated to investigate this summer's bushfires, said the profiles had been developed in preparation for what was expected to be a difficult summer.

Not all are convicted arsonists and almost all are men. Only one or two women are on the list. He would not say how many profiles had been prepared, only that it was a "considerable number". There are understood to be more than 100.

"Some have been convicted, others have been charged, counselled or subject to conferencing procedures," he said.

The move comes as Strike Force Tronto is preparing to present an evidence brief relating to last summer's fires to the deputy state coroner, Carl Milovanovich, next week.

Its investigation of 330 fires from last summer's "Black Christmas" identified 154 as suspicious. A total of 132 people were detained for breaches of the Crimes and Rural Fires Acts - 26 were charged and 106 received a summons, court attendance notice or caution.

Last night, an uncontained fire at Tenterfield was one of 51 still burning in NSW.

The verdict is not yet in, but lawyers representing the man who has accused the Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, of sexually assaulting him 40 years ago are already crying foul.

Following the publication in a Melbourne newspaper yesterday of chunks of the inquiry's transcript which questioned the credibility of the complainant, lawyers acting on behalf of Dr Pell's accuser have lodged a formal complaint to the in-camera inquiry.

Last night, the complainant's legal spokesman, Peter Ward, went a step further, calling for the public release of all the hearing's transcripts in the interests of fairness.

"This selective leaking is outrageous behaviour," said Mr Ward. "We all have the transcripts but we entered into an undertaking of confidentiality until the inquiry concluded and we expected all parties would adhere to that.

"Now the commission must release all the transcripts because what was leaked was a distorted, selective version of what went on."


But when the Herald contacted Dr Pell's legal spokesman, Richard Leder, last night, he said he would be only too pleased to support Mr Ward's call for the transcripts to be made public, pointing out that previous confidential information had been leaked by the complainant himself.

"We would have no objection to the entire transcript being released if the commissioner and the appointers consider that appropriate," Mr Leder said. "We take our confidentiality obligations seriously and we're very concerned about earlier leaks which came from the complainant. We have repeatedly refused to talk while the inquiry is ongoing."

Mr Leder denied the latest round of leaks came from his camp.

The complainant's barrister, Michael Tovey, admitted yesterday that his client had earlier leaked Dr Pell's statement of defence to the inquiry. "But there wasn't much for them to complain about that," he said. "[Yesterday's] leak was selective, and those doing the leaking should now make the whole transcript available."

The commission, headed by the retired Victorian Supreme Court judge Alec Southwell, is unlikely to agree to the lawyers' requests to release the transcripts before the inquiry completes its findings, which are to be handed to the church's national committee for professional standards.

Jeffrey Gleeson, counsel assisting the commission, said the commission was disappointed and concerned over the latest breach of the inquiry's terms of reference. "The commission is making inquiries in an attempt to discover the source of the leak."

The death chamber's coffee-brown curtains opened wide just a minute shy of 9:30 am, the time when the nation's first female serial killer Aileen Wuornos was to die.

And it's when the so-called "highway hooker" - inscrutable to the end - uttered her last words.

"Yes, I'd like to say I'm sailing with the rock," said Wuornos, strapped to a stainless-steel gurney yesterday. "And I'll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus, June 6th, like in the movie. Big mothership and all. I'll be back."

She never spoke again. But before that baffling statement, she gave witnesses on the other side of a window a gap-toothed grin.

Some witnesses thought it was a smile of surprise at the crowd, which included family members of the seven men she confessed to killing. Others who have followed her case since Wuornos' 1991 arrest at a Port Orange, Florida, bar thought it was one of enjoyment at one last moment of tabloid attention until she finally died from a potion of lethal chemicals injected into her arm.


Classic Wuornos, they whispered.

Outside the prison in Starke, a small North Florida town of chicken farms and speed-traps, about 50 death-penalty opponents gathered in the morning fog. Some held signs showing Governor Jeb Bush's name dripping in blood.

Nearby were the family members of other Wuornos victims, family members who hadn't gone inside. They stood on the wet morning grass, awaiting word of a sentence that took a decade to be carried out.

"She got an easy death. A little too easy," said Terri Griffith, the daughter of victim Charles "Dick" Humphreys, 56. The body of the child-protection investigator was found in Marion County in 1990.

"I think she should have suffered a little bit more," said his daughter. "Use the electric chair. Let her legs kick and smoke come out of her ears."

Others talked about Wuornos' last words and what they might have represented.

Volusia County State Attorney John Tanner thinks Wuornos, the subject of books, movies and an opera, was trying to create one last sensation. After Tanner won a conviction against her in 1992 for killing Richard Mallory, she screamed at the jury, calling them, "Scumbags of America."

Tanner called her last words, "unusual" but no sign of legal insanity. He had noted in previous days that the 46-year-old Wuornos was on her 14th reading of the Bible. That might explain a portion of her final statement. The Scriptures make references to God as "the Rock" while hymns use the same expression for Jesus.

But Nick Broomfield, a British documentary-maker who released Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer in 1992, said that Wuornos' last words are more proof that she was not mentally fit for execution.

"She's quite mad," said Broomfield, whose final interview with Wuornos on Tuesday afternoon was cut short after about a half-hour when she grew angry, made an obscene gesture and stormed out.

"She's basically said that her mind's being controlled by sonic waves," Broomfield said. "Clearly it's the talk of someone who's totally lost their mind."

Broomfield contends that Wuornos has always been insane, but 10 years on death row made it worse.

"She's a different person each time you talk to her, but somewhere inside her, is a person who is desperate to be loved."

Wuornos changed her story over the years, first saying she killed to defend herself from rape and robbery and later admitting it was she who robbed the men and killed them to remove any witnesses.

She was convicted only of murdering Mallory, who was 51, but pleaded guilty or no contest to killing five other middle-aged men who offered Wuornos a ride. She confessed to a seventh but that victim's body was never found.

Wuornos' strange behaviour was no surprise to her former attorney, Raag Singhal, of Fort Lauderdale.

"She crossed me off the list as soon as I raised the insanity issue, but I believe she is insane," he said, citing new affidavits from psychologists attesting to her insanity.

Wuornos became the third woman ever executed in Florida and the 10th in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

In Volusia County, at the Port Orange bar where she was arrested in 1991, patrons toasted the execution with Bud Lights when it was announced.

About two dozen people gathered at The Last Resort, drinking coffee and eating Danish pastries.

By 10 am, a Jim Beam chalkboard used to count down the days to Wuornos' execution read, "Gone."

Wuornos last night was spent talking to a friend from Michigan, Dawn Botkins. The pair talked from 9 pm to midnight on Tuesday, and prison officials said that Botkins planned to claim the body for burial.

"She was looking forward to being home with God and getting off this Earth," Botkins told The Associated Press. "She prayed that the (souls of the) guys she killed are saved and that by her dying they will be saved.

"She was more than willing to go. It was what she wanted. Why would she want to fight and spend a life in prison?" said Botkins, who plans to scatter Wuornos' ashes in Michigan, their childhood home.

Prostitutes in Indonesia's second largest city, Surabaya, have vowed not to make themselves available to officials to protest at a ruling banning their activities during Ramadan, a newspaper reported yesterday.

In the "Surabaya Prostitutes' Pledge," published by the Republika daily, the ladies of the night pledged "not to accept and entertain officials from the executive, legislature and judiciary, officials who squander public money to frolic."

Taking their protests to parliament, the sex workers said the Ramadan ban issued by the mayoralty would have a devastating effect on the finances of all enterprises in the city's red-light districts.

"We are asking the parliament and mayoralty to be wise. They cannot just offer a lot of promises during the campaign but forget us after being elected," Atik, one of the sex workers, was quoted as saying.

The month-long Ramadan celebration, in which Muslims refrain from eating, drinking and sex from dawn until dusk, begins the first week of November.

Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-populated nation but most of the country's roughly 171 million Muslims practice a moderate form of Islam.

Somewhere hidden in the maze of sound stages and studios on the sprawling Los Angeles Warner Bros film studio lot is a neatly decorated boardroom.

It's a room where Warner Bros executives, wearing designer suits and sipping on their mineral waters, meet to debate whether or not to pour $US100 million into a film project.

On a recent LA weekday the boardroom was empty of Armani suits.

The only occupant was Australian actor Alex Dimitriades, wearing blue jeans and a crumpled white T-shirt and sitting comfortably in a thick leather chair that probably cost as much as the average second-hand car in his home town of Sydney.

Dimitriades has taken the Hollywood plunge.

Last month he turned his back on a regular stream of Australian television and film gigs to test his acting skills in Los Angeles.

"Sure it's a risk but it's something I want to do," Dimitriades told AAP.

The 28-year-old's family, friends and longtime girlfriend, Terry Biviano, are a 13-hour plane flight across the Pacific and his new home is a house in Hollywood he shares with five strangers.

The actor, who received critical praise at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997 for his role in the Australian independent film Head On, hasn't made it big in Hollywood yet.

And Warner Bros hasn't signed him to a production deal or given him the keys to the studio's front gates.

The Warner Bros publicity department gave him access to the boardroom for a series of media interviews to promote the studio's new horror flick, Ghost Ship.

Ghost Ship, which opens in Australia on December 5, was shot at Warner Bros' studios on Queensland's Gold Coast and Dimitriades was one of the film's stars, along with US actress and former ER lead, Julianna Margulies, and Oscar nominated Irish actor, Gabriel Byrne.

The film is Dimitriades' first Hollywood-backed project and is shaping up to be a nice launching pad into LA.

The movie opened in US theatres on October 25 and in its first two weeks made $US28 million at the American box office - just short of the $US30 million it cost to make the film.

It's currently at number five at the US box office.

"The fact that it's pulling in that kind of money is great," Dimitriades said.

"It's incredible to be part of something that does that, and yes, it sure does help me."

Dimitriades doesn't want to put too much pressure on himself. He says if he is lucky enough to follow in the footsteps of Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett, great. If not, at least he tried.

The toughest part about his LA sojourn, he says, is being so away from Biviano, a Sydney-based shoe designer who is making a name for herself in the fashion world and who, along with Dimitriades, has become a regular in the social pages of Sydney's Sunday newspapers.

"They're tough times because it's work, work, work for both of us," Dimitriades says.

"For the time being she has to be in Sydney.

"She's starting her business and is in her first year of getting that off the ground and I'm kind of in a way starting a new business here."

The success of Ghost Ship, however, has helped ease some homesickness.

"I must admit on the opening weekend I did drive past Mann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood for a look," he said.

"I saw a lot of people and a lot of Ghost Ship posters so that was a buzz."

After the success of Head On in 1997 Dimitriades did entertain the idea of moving to LA. He went as far as to hire a Hollywood agent but the move, and the roles he had hoped for, didn't eventuate.

He has since parted ways with the Hollywood agent and for his current LA visit has found himself another representative.

"I've always had 'good agents'," he says.

"But it's about finding the right ones."

The new agent appears to be working well for Dimitriades because he says his days are now filled with reading scripts and auditions. But he is tight-lipped about the projects, declining to go into any detail about what roles he is testing for.

"I'm just constantly being inundated with scripts and you read it and hope it is good," he said.

"I've got a handful I've read and then there's another handful I haven't touched yet. Some are better than others. It's a mixed bag of studio films and independent."

The actor shot to fame in Australia when, as an unknown 18-year-old, was selected from a nationwide search for the lead in the feature film, The Heartbreak Kid.

The role led to TV roles in Heartbreak High and the miniseries Blue Murder. His latest TV performance is in the new Network Nine series, Young Lions, where he plays a detective. He finished shooting the first season in September.

Dimitriades says if Young Lions is successful and Nine decides to shoot a second instalment he has an option to participate.

But that, of course, depends on what happens in Tinseltown during the next few months.

"It's inspirational being here," Dimitriades says.

"I can't deny Sydney is one of the most beautiful places and the lifestyle that it offers is amazing but professionally speaking, you look around Hollywood and it's a different level and very motivational."


Cathy Freeman's terrible 2002 finally seems to be over. The Sydney Olympic 400m gold medalist announced today her husband, Alexander Bodecker had been cleared of throat cancer, and she was back in full training.

It's a positive finish to a miserable year.

As well as Bodecker's illness, Freeman suffered a thigh injury which saw her miss the selection trials for the Commonwealth Games.

After his diagnosis in May, she dramatically wound down training and missed Manchester's 400 metre race to be by her husband's side.

"It has been a difficult time, particularly for Alexander, and we are happy that he's able to put it behind him," Freeman said in a statement today.

"He will still require regular scans over the coming months and years, and with cancer there is always a risk of recurrence, however we are being told that they have successfully treated the cancer."

Coach Peter Fortune said Freeman's good news meant the 29-year-old could now fully concentrate on running.

"She's picking it up now with the domestic season coming on and a view to Europe next year," Fortune said.

"I think she's really keen to kick on and this just makes it even a bit easier and makes everyone more positive."

With the 2003 domestic series starting in February, and then the world championships next August in Paris, Freeman returned to full training a week ago, running twice daily as she builds a strength base for next year.

Fortune said while the former Australian of the Year hadn't been in full training for much of the year, she'd kept active and relatively fit.

"Cathy's been trying to keep fit as much as she could. (With Bodecker's illness) there just wasn't that much she could do - she couldn't just hang around all the time so she was doing a light training load.

"So she didn't get very unfit. And right now she's optimistic and positive.

"I'm quite happy with her at the moment, she very enthusiastic coming towards the next phase."

Fortune said Freeman had already set her goal for next year, and it was a very simple one - to run faster than she's ever run before.

He added she would continue to concentrate on the 400 and 200 metre distances.

"She is not really thinking about other events apart from the 200 which she always thinks about - it's just the two and the four," he said.

Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting made England captain Nasser Hussain rue his decision to send Australia in on the opening day of the first Ashes cricket Test at the Gabba today.

Before a record first day Gabba Test crowd of 28,348, Hayden and Ponting both crunched centuries as Australia amassed 2-364 by stumps with England bowling poorly and making numerous blunders in the field.

Hometown hero Hayden made the most of three let-offs to finish with 186 not out - his 10th Test hundred and first against England.

Ponting batted beautifully to compile 123 - his 13th Test ton - and shared a 272 run stand with Hayden, a Test record for the second wicket at the Gabba.

England's woes were compounded by a serious knee injury to young pace bowler Simon Jones.

After taking the only wicket of the opening session, Jones twisted his right knee attempting to field a Ponting on drive.

He was taken to St Andrew's Hospital in Brisbane where x-rays showed he had ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament.

Jones, 23, will require a knee reconstruction meaning six six months out of cricket, but he won't be able to fly home for two weeks as the swelling will prevent him going on a long haul flight.

Jones had been involved in a controversial incident in the first session when he caught Hayden in the deep when the big Queensland left hander was on 40.

But having taken the catch one-handed, he crossed the boundary rope and had to fling the ball back over his shoulder.

It was a let-off for Hayden, who was also dropped twice after he had reached three figures.

Three teenage girls facing charges of violence almost caused a light plane to crash when they scuffled with their guards during the flight yesterday, police say.

The girls, aged 13, 15 and 17, were being flown back to Sydney guarded by four police officers after appearing in Bourke Children's Court. They had been charged with malicious damage, breach of bail, violent disorder, resist police, malicious wounding and affray.

Police did not say when or where the offences occurred.

The trio were remanded to Sydney's Yasmar Children's Detention Centre pending their next court
appearance.

As the eight-seater Piper Cherokee flew south of Dubbo at 11.20am police say a scuffle broke out with the girls trying to force an emergency door open.

"The four senior constables were able to subdue the girls while the pilot made a forced landing at Mudgee," a police spokesman said. No one was injured.

The three girls were charged with offences under the Federal Transport Act.

The charges ranged from assaulting crew, endangering the safety of an aircraft, malicious damage, and assaulting police.

The consumer watchdog suffered a rebuff in the High Court today when the full bench ruled it did not have the power to seize confidential legal documents from companies.

Retailers Coles-Myer and Woolworths won their bid to stop the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) getting access to documents about the granting of liquor licences, which they argued were protected by professional privilege.

The ACCC is investigating allegations Woolworths and Coles-Myer tried to restrict competition regarding liquor sales.

The ACCC asked for all liquor licensing documents from the retailing giants to decide whether new liquor retailers were forced into agreements to limit competition with existing liquor outlets.

The unanimous ruling is a blow to the ACCC in pursuing companies over alleged breaches of the Trade Practices Act.

Health care group Daniels Corporation also had its right to withhold documents from the ACCC confirmed.

In its judgement, the High Court said parliament had only legislated to protect cabinet documents under the umbrella of legal and professional privilege, and it said the ACCC did not need to access confidential documents to do its jobs.

"It is far from obvious that the retention of legal professional privilege would significantly impair the ACCC's functions," the court said.

The CIA's assassination in Yemen of alleged al-Qaeda operatives has triggered outrage in some quarters and forced United States officials into the difficult position of defending a tactic it has criticised Israel for using.

For years, a debate raged within the CIA: should the US hunt down and kill its terrorist foes or would Israeli-style "targeted killings" only invite retribution and feed an endless cycle of violence?

The debate ended on Sunday when the CIA incinerated an alleged al-Qaeda leader, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, and five other alleged operatives with a laser-guided Hellfire missile, fired from an unmanned drone aircraft.

Even those who applauded the strike said it was sure to inflame militant Muslims, including those belonging to the al-Qaeda network, and expose US diplomats and other overseas officials to possible retaliation. On Tuesday the US said it was closing its embassy in Yemen to the public indefinitely amid fears it might become a target for an attack to retaliate for the killings.

But US officials and top Pentagon advisers said al-Qaeda should expect more of the same. "We've got new authorities, new tools and a new willingness to do it wherever it has to be done," one Administration official said.

As the embarrassed Yemeni Government remained tight-lipped about the assassination on its soil, more details emerged of how the unmanned Predator drone found the six men in a car and killed them with a missile.

It was reported that the Yemeni intelligence service had monitored the operatives for months and had relayed the information to the Americans.

The Yemeni cabinet issued a brief statement urging its people to unite against "terrorist activities targeting our country, its people and its national economy", but it refused to say whether it had given the CIA permission to carry out the attack.

In Washington, senior officials said the attack was carried out under the broad authority President George Bush had given the CIA over the past year to pursue al-Qaeda well beyond the borders of Afghanistan.

Sweden's Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh, said: "If the USA is behind this with Yemen's consent, it is nevertheless a summary execution that violates human rights. If the USA has conducted the attack without Yemen's permission it is even worse. Then it is a question of unauthorised use of force."

While military experts said the incident could herald a new era of robotic warfare, lawyers debated the implications of the surprising turn in US strategy - killing specific individuals in countries where there is no war.

"To have a drone that engages and kills people - that is quite a threshold to cross," said Clifford Beal, editor of Jane's Defence Weekly. "This is the beginning of robotic warfare. There is underlying tension in the military about using it ... this is really the first success story of this system."

A US State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, refused to discuss the attack and trod carefully around questions on whether US involvement in the strike contradicted Washington's long-standing disapproval of targeted killings.

Asked whether the US had altered its opinion, Mr Boucher replied, "Our policy on targeted killings in the Israeli-Palestinian context has not changed."

Israeli scholars said the attack in Yemen was tantamount to US endorsement of the Israeli policy of pre-emptive attacks.

"Israel knows that it's going to be attacked no matter what it does," said Barry Rubin, head of the Global Research and International Affairs Centre. "The US situation has become more like the Israeli situation. It is the impact of September 11."

A German tourist told her abductor she would rather die than let him take away her daughter, a court heard yesterday.

After being robbed and tied to a tree, Eva Obermeyer used her skills as a psychologist to persuade the man not to rape 16-year-old Sarah, saying: "I cannot let her go with you. You'll have to kill me."

She also told him that her daughter was only 12 years old and that raping a young girl would ultimately destroy his life.

Matt Page, 31, pleaded guilty yesterday to a number of charges including robbing the Obermeyers in Litchfield Park, south of Darwin, on August 31 and depriving them of their liberty.

The Northern Territory Supreme Court was told that Page, from Hervey Bay in Queensland, had spent hours that day following and watching the mother and daughter from Nuremberg as they swam and took in the sights of Litchfield.

As they were walking from Tolmer Falls to their rental car, Page approached them and tried to strike up a conversation. He then produced a Glock .40 calibre semi-automatic pistol and demanded money.

Threatening to shoot them, he robbed Ms Obermeyer of $650 cash, travellers cheques and credit cards and fired a shot into the air as a warning.

The court heard that Page twice attempted to take Sarah with him and leave her mother bound to a tree with cable ties.

But twice Ms Obermeyer told Page she would rather die than let him take Sarah.

NT Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Jack Karczewski told the court: "Eva Obermeyer protested, saying she would never let that happen. She told the accused: 'I cannot let her go with you. You'll have to kill me'."

Page tied them both to a tree, telling them he needed time to escape.

"The accused then sat down near Eva Obermeyer and said: 'I would like to have sex with your daughter. What do you think about that?"' Mr Karczewski said.

Page then repeatedly asked Ms Obermeyer how old Sarah was.

"I want to have sex with your daughter; that's why I chose you," Page was claimed to have said.

"I saw your daughter, I saw you without a man, I watched you.

"Where is your husband, why are you travelling alone or is there someone with you?"

Ms Obermeyer became increasingly frightened.

"She proceeded to tell the accused how raping young girls destroyed their lives," Mr Karczewski said. "The accused enquired of Sarah's age, whether she was a virgin, whether she had a boyfriend." Ms Obermeyer said Sarah was 12 and had no boyfriend.

"The accused then announced that he was convinced that she [Sarah] was too young," Mr Karczewski said.

Page will be sentenced by the court at a later date.

The unemployment rate dropped to six per cent but almost 60,000 full-time jobs disappeared from the economy in October, official figures showed today.

Allowing for seasonal factors, total employment grew 15,800 to 9.36 million, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) said.

Full-time jobs plunged 59,900 while part-time employment jumped by 75,700, the ABS said.

The unemployment rate was at its lowest level since October 2000, and only the third time it has been at six per cent since April 1990.

The participation rate - the percentage of people over 15 working or looking for work - slipped to 63.4 per cent in October, suggesting more people were giving up the search for work.

In fact, the number of people registered as looking for work fell 18,500 to 598,600, also the lowest level since October 2000.

NSW had the country's lowest unemployment rate (5.6 per cent from 6.0 per cent in September), followed by Victoria (5.9 per cent from 5.8 per cent), Western Australia (6.0 per cent from 6.2 per cent), South Australia (6.3 per cent from 6.4 per cent), Queensland (steady at 7.0 per cent) and Tasmania (8.2 per cent from 9.0 per cent).

A Sydney schoolgirl who killed her ex-lover in a frenzied knife attack became the youngest female in NSW yesterday to be jailed for murder.

Justice James Wood said the killing of Stephen Tonkiss, 21, at Seaforth was so savage and senseless - driven purely by revenge, jealousy and sexual passion - that a maximum 15-year jail term had to be imposed. Aged 15 at the time and known only as SJB, the Dee Why girl committed the unprovoked and premeditated killing with her boyfriend, Matthew John McLean, now 19, on July 24 last year. McLean was jailed for a maximum 19 years yesterday for his role in what Justice Wood said was "gratuitous, selfish and wholly unnecessary violence".

"It's beyond comprehension how evil that girl was, her conniving manner," Stephen's father David Tonkiss said outside court. "Their parents can see them, but I can't see him anymore." Mr Tonkiss said he believed SJB incited McLean to commit the crime with her and they planned it over a period of six days. He said he hoped the Dee Why teenager would be haunted for the rest of her life by what she did.

The court was told Mr Tonkiss, who had a brief relationship with the schoolgirl when she was 15, had been driving the pair in his car when she began to stab him repeatedly in the face and body.

He managed to escape to the side of a road where both attackers continued to stab him. His body was thrown over a wall into the front yard of a house. In court, the attackers blamed each other and each tried to minimise their perceived involvement.

SJB said McLean had recruited her in his plan after she admitted cheating on him with Mr Tonkiss. "Matthew said to me, 'because you have cheated on me, you have to stab him'," she said.

She said McLean even showed her how to stab someone, using a kitchen knife and a box of biscuits.

However, McLean said SJB had told him Mr Tonkiss had raped her.

Justice Wood found McLean's version impossible to accept. He also rejected the proposition that knives were taken for potential use in self defence. He said Tonkiss died in an entirely unprovoked and senseless attack, willingly and equally planned as part of a criminal enterprise.

"I am however satisfied that having begun their frenzied stabbing they each formed an intention that Mr Tonkiss should die," he said.

Justice Wood found that while McLean was the initiator of such a plan it was one to which SJB willingly adhered.

He said the mitigating circumstances were their youth, immaturity, limited intellectual resources and impulsiveness, exacerbated by the condition of ADHD which they shared.

Mr Tonkiss described Stephen as sociable and kind, with a large group of friends.

"Stephen was the type of guy who would do a favour for a friend and that was what he was killed doing," he said.

"He has become the sacrifice for her gaining the attention she wanted."

The Indonesian Government has offered to pay the cost of return air fares to Bali and 10 days' accommodation for two members from every family who lost relatives in the terrorist bombings.

The offer is to enable families to attend a November 15 cleansing ceremony which, according to Hindu belief, rids the site of the unsettled spirits of the dead and will finally enable the removal of rubble to begin.

However, the invitation may raise problems for western governments that have warned citizens of the risks of travelling to Indonesia.

A spokesman for the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said the Government would "neither encourage nor discourage" the families on whether to accept the offer.

It was up to the individuals to decide whether they should go or not, he said.

The spokesman said that the Government "appreciated the kind offer from the Indonesian Government", which it had agreed to pass on to the families of the victims.

"All we would do is refer people to the travel advice from the department, encourage them to read it and make their own judgements about whether they should go," the spokesman said.

The advice says Australians should defer all travel to Bali until further notice.

Gayle Dunn, mother of bombing victim Craig Dunn, said she probably would not attend the ceremony. Craig's funeral is scheduled for today in Ulladulla.

"I haven't got a passport so I wouldn't go," she said. "But if I had a passport it may be likely that I would consider attending."

Karen Cook, whose sister Michelle Dunlop died in the blast, said: "I would like to take my parents to Indonesia.

"However, I think around the time of the anniversary would be a suitable time to visit.

"If I was in Indonesia a year on and there was a ceremony then I probably would attend."

The Indonesian Government has said it will also pay for meals and local transport for those relatives in Bali from next Wednesday. It has composed a list of 120 people, including 51 Australians, who it says have now been confirmed as dead.

Prime Minister John Howard has refused to comment on allegations he was anti-Asian.

Mr Howard said he would not dignify remarks by Labor's trade spokesman Craig Emerson with a response.

"Mr Downer (the Foreign Minister) dealt with that," Mr Howard told journalists in Sydney.

"I'm not going to dignify that stuff with any further comment."

Federal Trade Minister Mark Vaile wants his Opposition counterpart sacked over accusations Mr Howard's trade policy was based on a personal dislike of Asians.

Dr Emerson told a meeting at Melbourne's Monash University that Mr Howard did not like multiculturalism but hid his true feelings because of ethnic Chinese voters in his electorate.

"Labor Opposition leader Simon Crean needs to show leadership and sack Opposition trade spokesman Craig Emerson," Mr Vaile said.

The allegations were outrageously inaccurate, he said.

Earlier a spokesman for Mr Howard described Dr Emerson's comments as a dishonest slur, and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said they were a pathetic bid to attract media attention.

A spokesman for Mr Crean said the Labor leader did not see the contents of Dr Emerson's speech before it was delivered.

The Indonesian President, Megawati Soekarnoputri, has cautioned Australia not to overreact to the terrorism threat and not to harass Indonesian nationals, as the increasingly brittle relationship between the countries became further strained.

The warning came as the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, condemned the treatment of Australian Muslims after the Bali bombing in a renewed attack on Canberra's travel warnings.

The leaders made their comments in interviews after this week's Association of South-East Asian Nations meeting in Phnom Penh, which decided to shelve Australia's application for a seat at its annual leaders' summit.

In urging restraint from Australia, Ms Megawati said, according to the Antara news agency, that Canberra should not be "excessive" in its anti-terrorism campaign.

"Let's not go overboard," she was quoted as saying. "We Indonesians always treat foreigners proportionally."

The delicacy of Australia's challenge in repairing its relationship with its neighbours while responding strongly to the bombing was further highlighted by damaging misreporting in Indonesia of comments by Ms Megawati. She was wrongly reported in two leading newspapers, Kompas and Media Indonesia, as having called the Prime Minister, John Howard, in recent days urging him to stop police and ASIO agents conducting "sweeping" raids against Indonesian citizens living in Australia.

Labor's foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, in Jakarta for talks with Indonesian officials, said the Vice-President, Hamzah Haz, had confirmed Ms Megawati "had a conversation about this" with Mr Howard.

But Mr Howard said he had not spoken to Ms Megawati since they met at the APEC forum last month where she had raised concerns about the travel warnings.

The journalist who wrote the Kompas story in Phnom Penh conceded to the Herald yesterday that it was wrong and that Ms Megawati had not claimed to have complained personally to Mr Howard about the raids.

But with relations between Indonesia and Australia the dominant political issue in the Indonesian media at present, politicians were quick to get involved in the dispute and add credibility to the incorrect claims.

The Speaker of the parliament, Akbar Tanjung, welcomed Ms Megawati's wrongly reported complaint, saying: "I think what's being put up by President Megawati is a positive thing. I think our Government must take action to protest those actions [raids on Indonesians in Australia]."

In a further sign of tension between the countries, Australia's embassy issued a new bulletin to citizens living in Indonesia reminding them of the "possibility of sweeping operations" by militant Islamic groups.

On the eve of Ramadan, which began yesterday, it urged citizens to be very careful in bars and nightclubs in Indonesia which have sometimes been attacked.

Dr Mahathir said claims by Australia and the United States that many parts of South-East Asia were now unsafe for tourists could equally be applied to those two countries.

"As far as the travel warning is concerned, I think Australia is unsafe as are the other ASEAN countries. In fact, at the moment Australia is particularly unsafe for Muslims."

In an apparent reference to recent police raids on suspected extremists, Dr Mahathir said Australian Muslims were being endangered by indiscriminate raids on their homes.

"I see pictures of doors being broken, which I don't think is essential. So people today are exposed to danger wherever they may be."

The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, defended the methods used in hunting suspected members of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah and his department's tough travel advisories. "There's nothing more important than the security of the Australian people."

Indonesian police have arrested a man suspected of owning the Mitsubishi van that exploded with deadly force outside the Sari nightclub in Bali last month.

The man, identified only as Amz, 30, was arrested by officers from East Java, Bali and Jakarta.

"A man has been arrested who is suspected of having links to the blast in Bali ... He is the last owner of the L300 [minivan]," East Java's police chief, Heru Susanto, said in Surabaya.

"At this moment that person is being questioned in East Java," Antara news agency quoted him as saying.

Mr Susanto did not say if the man was Indonesian or where he had been arrested. About 180 people, many of them Australians, died in the bombing on October 12.

A spokesman for the Indonesian investigation team, Brigadier General Edward Aritonang, declined comment on the report, saying he was still waiting for information from East Java.

Australian Federal Police, who are mounting a joint investigation with the Indonesian authorities, say a white Mitsubishi L300 van, with a powerful explosive device in its mid-section, stopped outside the Sari Club minutes before the massive blast.

Police have circulated sketches of three men they say are Indonesians who may have planned or perpetrated the Bali attack.

It was unclear if the arrested man was one of those. General Susanto said Amz did not resemble any of the faces depicted in the police sketches, according to Antara.

Police say they are interrogating at least 10 people who may have been involved in the bombings.

"So far, we have not concluded whether they had anything to do with it or not," General Aritonang said, although only some were in
custody.

Indonesian police said yesterday they were now holding four possible suspects.

Major General I Made Mangku Pastika, who is heading the investigation team in Bali, said two more men were picked up in Surabaya on Tuesday.

Police also said they had detained one man in Jakarta and one in Medan in the island of Sumatra who resembled one of the men in the sketches as he tried to leave the country on a false passport.

General Pastika did not identify the new detainees and said it was "premature" to name them as suspects, adding that they had been detained after officers determined they bore a resemblance to composite sketches of three suspects released last week by police.

General Aritonang said that a man arrested on Monday in Medan after producing a fake identification card was not involved in the bombings.

Extremists are planning new terrorist strikes against US interests overseas, including possible suicide attacks, the State Department warned late today.

"The US government continues to receive credible indications that extremist groups and individuals are planning additional terrorist actions against US interests," the department said in a worldwide caution. "Such actions may include, but are not limited to, suicide operations."

The warning came in advance of the scheduled November 14 execution by the US state of Virginia of Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani national convicted of murder and sentenced to death for his 1993 killing of two Central Intelligence Agency employees.

The two men, identified as Lansing Bennett, 66, and Frank Darling, 28, were shot dead from a Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifle as they sat in their cars in traffic outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The attack left three other people wounded.

The killings triggered a worldwide hunt for Kansi, which culminated in a daring raid on a Pakistani hotel by a Federal Bureau of Investigation team and his arrest in June 1997.

A son of a wealthy Pakistani family, Kansi worked in the Washington area as a courier while waiting for his asylum application to be processed by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The State Department said the upcoming execution of Kansi created the potential for retaliatory acts against the United States or its foreign interests.

It added that because security measures in the United States have been stepped up, terrorists may choose to target Americans or US facilities overseas.

"Terrorist groups do not distinguish between official and civilian targets," the caution said. "There is a possibility that American citizens may be targeted for kidnapping or assassination."

Other potential targets could include residential areas, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, schools, hotels, outdoor recreation events or resorts and beaches and other facilities where Americans, or foreigners in general, are known to congregate, according to the State Department.

It said US facilities overseas may temporarily close or suspend public services from time to time due to these new security concerns and urged American travelers to remain vigilant and exercise caution.

North Sydney Council has defended the right to free speech of an employee, but has disowned remarks which he made during a public meeting organised by the Party of Islamic Liberation.

Ashraf Doureihi, a design and contracts engineer, was asked by the council to explain his views after a Herald report yesterday revealed that under an assumed name, Abu Sumaiya, he had spoken against Muslim assimilation into Australian society, and describing the idea as a "plot of the West".

The Mayor of North Sydney, Genia McCaffery, said: "The council considers the points of view reported in the Herald to be discriminatory, racist and promoting disharmony and intolerance.

"They fly in the face of everything the council is trying to promote in terms of tolerance and acceptance of difference within our community."

Mr Doureihi is an organiser of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir, also known as the Party of Islamic Liberation, which advocates the overthrow of Western governments and the introduction of Islamic rule.

The International Crisis Group, which is led by former foreign minister, Gareth Evans, says Hizb-ut-Tahrir is secretive and extremist. Its activities in Australia, particularly the Sunday night meeting in Auburn Town Hall at which Mr Doureihi spoke, have aroused the concerns of the leaders of larger Muslim organisations which do not support Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

The general manager of North Sydney Council, Penny Holloway, said Mr Doureihi's views were offensive but "employees are entitled to freedom of speech outside working hours".

She said that the council did not discriminate against people because of their religious or political beliefs and that "council employees are entitled to say what they like outside work, provided they act within the law".

Meanwhile, state-based Islamic Councils and the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils have aimed a plea for peace at Muslim terrorists.

"You have killed many precious people from all backgrounds and religions and you have hurt many more," the councils said in a statement.

"There is no political, religious, racial, ethnic or ideological position that can justify victimising the innocent and the defenceless. Tragically, the very communities you claim to represent have also been further victimised because of backlashes by those that have been hurt and angered as a result of your aggressive and criminal actions."

The statement was released to coincide with the start of Ramadan, the holy Muslim fasting month, and was said to speak for "the overwhelming majority of Muslims".

Australia's peak Muslim group has scoffed at Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's statement that Australia is unsafe for Muslims, saying Dr Mahathir should worry about the safety of his own people.

"Muslims are very safe in this country," said The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils spokesman Kuranda Seyit. "Australia has been a very fair and tolerant society.

"I think Mahathir is inciting and provoking fear within the Muslim community. He doesn't live in Australia. Frankly I think he should worry about his own country and his own people. He's not the best example of having a tolerant view."

Mr Seyit said Australians had suffered far less harassment since September 11 than Muslims in the United States, but was concerned that raids against Muslims suspected of involvement with the Bali bombings had been excessive.

"I think the raids were a result of the government wanting to be seen to be doing something about the terrible Bali tragedy. I don't think the conduct of the raids has been fair. ASIO is using bully tactics. There is no substantial evidence these people are connected to terrorist activities overseas."

Faikah Behardien, a member of the Muslim Women's National Network of Australia, said Dr Mahathir's comments were an overreaction.

"The man is totally over-reacting, but it was an over-reaction to the over-reaction he had seen from the foreign minister about Australians not going to Asia," said Ms Behardien.

"The families affected by the ASIO raids would be justified in feeling that Australia wasn't safe. The reasons for the raids have not been disclosed so you wonder who it might happen to next. You don't know who is going to come and knock at your door at two in the morning."

Jakarta: Indonesian police hinted at a significant breakthrough in the Bali bomb attack probe here today, revealing that a man being quizzed by investigators had been "very, very helpful".

The Indonesian, identified as Amrozi, was flown to Bali from Java last night evening for further questioning, said police spokesman Brigadier-General Edward Aritonang.

According to media reports Amrozi is a suspected former owner of the Mitsubishi van that exploded on October 12 outside the Sari Club, killing more than 190 people.

"I am confirming that the individual in question, I mean Mr Amrozi, has arrived for questioning in Denpasar last night," Aritonang said.

He declined to say what role Amrozi might have played.

"However, the information from this person can be called very, very helpful to the resolution of this case," Aritonang told a press conference broadcast live on radio from Bali.

"This is related to the investigation of the event, which we hope will lead to the perpetrators themselves," he said.

"For the moment the person is still being questioned," Aritonang said. "There is a possibility things could develop and he becomes a suspect."

Police are confident that "this person has a very close relation to this case", said Aritonang, spokesman for the investigation being conducted jointly with Australian and other foreign detectives.

Aritonang refused to confirm local newspaper reports that Amrozi had admitted being the bomber.

Australian Federal Police say a white Mitsubishi L300 van, with a powerful explosive device located in its mid-section, stopped before the massive blast for a few minutes directly in front of the Sari Club.

Amrozi, 30, is a native of Lamongan in East Java and sometimes prayed at a nearby Islamic boarding school, the school's head, Zakaria, told SCTV television today.

Zakaria said local police questioned him about Amrozi last night.

"My reply was that I know Amrozi. I also know Ustadz Bashir," Zakaria said, referring to Abu Bakar Bashir, an ustadz - or Islamic teacher - currently detained by Indonesian police as a suspect in other terror cases.

Singapore and Malaysia say Bashir is the spiritual leader of regional terror network Jemaah Islamiah, which is suspected of a role in the bombing.

Indonesian police have declared Bashir a suspect in a series of church bombings on Christmas Eve 2000 and in a plot to assassinate Megawati Sukarnoputri before she became president.

Zakaria, head of the Al Islam school, said Amrozi had once mentioned that he had returned from working in Malaysia.

Bashir has also previously spent time in Malaysia and is the founder of an Islamic boarding school in the Javanese town of Ngruki, from which Zakaria graduated.

Meanwhile, Indonesian police today released the sketch of a fourth suspect involved in last month's devastating bomb blasts.

"According to our witnesses, he is thought to have a very close connection to the case. His status is a suspect," deputy national police spokesman Edward Aritonang told reporters at a news conference on the resort island.

Police last week released sketches of three Indonesian men whom they said might be perpetrators of the devastating blasts that ripped through a nightclub area.

The man in the latest sketch had Indonesian features but police did not give more details.

Police have not formally named anybody as a suspect in the Bali bombing.

The Asian Wall Street Journal reported toay that the blast was planned by Hambali, a militant Indonesian Islamic cleric whose whereabouts are unknown.

The Journal, citing Asian intelligence officials, said Hambali urged Arab and South-East Asian militants attending a January meeting in southern Thailand to attack nightclubs and restaurants.

The man being held by Indonesia for a role in the devastating Bali blast has admitted helping to build the bomb, the chief Indonesian investigator said today.

The head of the Indonesian investigation team probing the attack, Major General I Made Mangku Pastika, said the suspect Amrozi had said he wanted to "kill as many Americans as possible" in the attack.

The massive October 12 blast ripped through a packed nightclub, killing more than 190 people, mostly Australians. Hundreds more were injured.

"According to this suspect, he hates Americans. He wants to kill as many Americans as possible," Pastika said.

Pastika, who is in Manila to attend a regional anti-terrorism conference, also said Amrozi had admitted to having met Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir and Islamic terror suspect Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali.

Pastika said that the authorities were looking for between five and nine other suspects, all Indonesians, in connection with the bombing.

Australian Federal Police agent Ben McDevitt, general manager of national operations, will hold a media conference later today to discuss Indonesian police reports about the man identified as Amrozi. AFP


Following the arrest of a leading suspect in the Bali bombings - the first major breakthrough in the inquiry - police said today they expected to capture more of his accomplices soon.

Brigadier General Edward Aritonang, a spokesman for the international inquiry into the October 12 attack that killed nearly 200 people, said an intensive manhunt was going on in several regions where the perpetrators were believed to be hiding.

"If everything goes according to plan, we should be able to catch more of these people in the not too distant future," he said.

Yesterday, national police chief General Da'i Bachtiar said that an Indonesian man identified only as Amrozi, or M Rozi, had admitted to taking part in the attack.

Police also said they were looking into possible connections between the suspect and a regional terrorist group with links to al-Qaeda.

The announcement of the arrest came as President Megawati Sukarnoputri submitted a draft bill to parliament intended to replace an emergency anti-terrorist decree issued immediately after the Bali attack.

In another sign that her administration - criticised for its lenient treatment of Islamic militants - is getting tough with extremists, a notorious gang of religious vigilantes unexpectedly announced that it would disband.

The developments appeared to signal that the investigation was gaining momentum and offered hope the world's largest Muslim nation was making headway in its fight against terrorism.

Bachtiar said Amrozi, who is in police custody, owned the L300 Mitsubishi minivan laden with at least 50kg of explosives that blew up outside a packed nightclub on Bali.

"Amrozi was one of the main perpetrators in the Bali bombing," Bachtiar said, adding that Amrozi was part of a group that planned and carried out the attack.

Amrozi "used the vehicle to carry out the bombing in Bali", Bachtiar said. "He has disclosed many things and admitted his acts in Bali. Therefore we are pursuing his companions."

Authorities said the manhunt was focusing on the eastern part of Indonesia's dominant island of Java, which is adjacent to Bali. Amrozi was detained there on Tuesday.

Bachtiar said Amrozi was the first of nearly two dozen people questioned in connection with the case to be formally declared a suspect.

He was picked up at an Islamic boarding school in the town of Tenggulun, a television report said. The school's principal, Dzakaria, said Amrozi had attended a speech at the school by radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir. Like many Indonesians, Dzakaria uses one name.

Police said they were looking into possible links between Amrozi and Bashir, the alleged spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah, a regional terrorist group seen as the prime suspect in the Bali bombings and which has has been linked by investigators to al-Qaeda.

Dzakaria said Amrozi worked in Malaysia during the 1990s, a time when Bashir was living there in exile during the dictatorship of Indonesia's former ruler, Suharto.

Police recently arrested Bashir on charges of involvement in a string of church bombings three years ago. The 64-year-old cleric, who is being held in a police hospital in Jakarta, is not considered a suspect in the Bali attack.

Detectives have questioned at least 20 people because they resembled suspects depicted in three composite sketches released last week by investigators. Almost all have been freed without charges.

Yesterday, police issued the sketch of a fourth suspect.

Meanwhile, in Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said there was no evidence that al-Qaeda operatives met in southern Thailand to plot the Bali attack.

Thaksin's comments were in response to an article published yesterday in the Asian Wall Street Journal. "Contrary to the report, our intelligence has no information about this at all," Thaksin told reporters yesterday.

The article quoted unidentified Asia-based intelligence officials as saying southern Thailand was a key meeting venue for top al-Qaeda South-East Asian operatives, who allegedly planned the Bali bombings.

The Journal quoted the officials as saying a mid-January meeting took place at a safe house near Thailand's border with Malaysia. It said the meeting was led by Riduan Isamuddin, an Indonesian Islamic cleric implicated in several terrorist plots in South-East Asia.

Indonesian police say a man they have been interrogating has admitted planting the Bali bomb that killed nearly 200 people last month.

The National Police Chief, Da'i Bachtiar, said yesterday that the man, identified only as Amrozi, told police he owned the minivan used in the attack.

"He used the car to plant the bomb in Bali," Bachtiar said. "Amrozi admitted it and we are still chasing his friends."

Earlier, the national police spokesman, Brigadier-General Edward Aritonang, said Amrozi had been arrested in East Java on Tuesday and flown to Bali.

"The information that we have retrieved from this person is very, very helpful to us progressing this case," he said.


At the same time, police released a sketch of a fourth man, saying he was a suspect.

Police still believe that between six and 10 people were involved in the Kuta nightclub bombings, General Aritonang said. Information on Amrozi, who is believed to be Indonesian, had come from Paddy's bar witnesses.

The Jakarta newspaper Koran Tempo yesterday reported a village chief, Muhammad Maskun as saying that the detained Muslim cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, had gone to Amrozi's village of Tenggulun up to five times, visiting a boarding school, most recently last year.

But the head of the school, Mr Zakaria, was quoted as saying that Bashir visited only on June 16 last year and June 17 this year.

Meanwhile, The Asian Wall Street Journal, citing Asian intelligence officials, reported that al-Qaeda's top South-East Asian operative, Hambali, had planned the Bali bombing from southern Thailand earlier this year.

The Indonesian Islamic militant, described as the operations chief of Jemaah Islamiah, had urged militants at a January meeting to attack nightclubs and restaurants, it said.

But the Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, denied the reports.


Redfern's new police commander has been accused of staging a publicity stunt following a multi-thousand dollar police operation today in which 120 police, with dogs and helicopters, arrested 11 Aboriginal females and two Aboriginal males in The Block for suspected heroin dealing.

Superintendent Mark Goodwin, appointed Redfern local area commander three weeks ago, denied the accusation.

"This is the way I operate and the operation was based on the intelligence that's been shown me," he said.

He said police arrested the 13 people aged between 18-50 on suspicion of heroin dealing after a three-week intelligence gathering operation.

He said police had the support of the local Aboriginal community, South Sydney Council and a range of government departments. He would not reveal which Aboriginal community members he had spoken to.


The operation at 6.30am AEDT involved 120 officers from Redfern police, state crime command, police rescue squad, dog squad and police helicopters, he said.

"I started at Redfern three weeks ago and in my conversation with the police and local community all informed me about their concerns about the supply of heroin in the area and particularly in the Aboriginal community," he said.

"All the people that I spoke to raised their concerns about the distribution of heroin in the area.

"I would not be so presumptious to say we have cleaned up the heroin problem in the area but I am confident this will make a dent in the heroin trade."

He would not say the names of the Aboriginal community leaders or groups he had spoken to.

Locals said they had expected a raid after seeing police undercover cars and a police car with a video camera yesterday and some regarded it as a publicity stunt.

"It's to put some confidence so they can go around saying 'we cleaned The Block up'. It's a public relations exercise," said Roy, who works at the Redfern Aboriginal Corporation, but would not give his surname.

Others said police carried out similar raids at around the same time every year.

"It's victimisation," said a female resident. "It's a regular thing. Every year at this time they come down here and do a raid."

Another resident, Geoffrey, said drugs, especially heroin, were a constant problem at The Block but had not worsened in recent weeks.

"There's too many people coming here looking for drugs and stuff," he said. "They come down here from the west and other suburbs and they do a lot of crime here and then the local Redfern community gets accused of doing it.

" If anything it's drying up. About a week ago now it started to dry up. It's getting close to Christmas and supplies often dry up around now. It happens every year."

As police cars left the area around 9.45am a group of locals cheered at them, shouting: "Go home where you belong."


Dry conditions were making it nearly impossible to contain bushfires raging across NSW and the situation was likely to get worse, NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Phil Koperberg said today.

Mr Koperberg said attempts to contain the bushfires were continually failing.

"We've been fighting the same fires in many parts of the state for many weeks with conventional containment strategies failing time and time again because the bush and the forest is so dry," he told Channel Seven.

"Even the slightest breeze, which under normal conditions wouldn't concern us, is now causing fires to breach those containment lines and once having done so they are burning with great velocity and are difficult to suppress."

Mr Koperberg has declared a total fire ban for most of NSW, with the weather forecast for very high temperatures, low humidity and moderate to strong winds.


"We're in an unprecedented period of dry being in the midst of the worst drought in half a century or more," he said.

"Fires are behaving erratically as we've seen in recent weeks and in the next four to six days the weather that's been predicted is not conducive to the rapid containment of fires."

A total of 94 fires are still burning across the state today, 32 of them uncontained.

Mr Koperberg said firefighters were exhausted after battling fires since mid June and welcomed their interstate colleagues who were now helping them battle the fires.

"With a long hard season ahead of them many of them are tired and we need to bring them home," he said.

About 2,000 firefighters from NSW, Tasmania and South Australia were expected to be on the ground today, with temperatures expected in the mid-30s.

Mr Koperberg said arson was responsible for some of the fires and arsonists would be caught.

"The message to those who would engage in this very dangerous and irresponsible activity is that we have a network in conjunction with the police of detection and reconnaissance which makes it more likely than ever before that potential arsonists will not only be detected but apprehended," he said.

Opposition Leader Simon Crean today rebuked frontbencher Craig Emerson telling him to concentrate on his job as trade spokesman - two days after Dr Emerson accused Prime Minister John Howard of not liking Asians.

Dr Emerson had also distributed a discussion paper about Labor's problems to sell its message.

Mr Crean said he had spoken privately to Dr Emerson today.

"I have spoken to him privately this morning," Mr Crean told Sydney radio 2GB.

"I was forceful with him. I'm going to sit down face to face with him as well.


"I've told him his job is demonstrating the government's failing on trade and industry policy, and putting forward Labor's alternative."

Asked if he would agree that Mr Howard did not like Asians, Mr Crean said: "No, I wouldn't accuse him of that. But I do think the government has dropped the ball on trade."

Mr Crean said he had told Dr Emerson to concentrate on trade issues.

He said Dr Emerson should have known the way his discussion paper would be portrayed by newspapers.

A man was hauled off a flight in northern Queensland last night after allegedly making a bomb threat, Virgin Blue airline said today.

Virgin Blue spokeswoman Amanda Bolger said the flight was taxi-ing on the runway in Cairns ready to take off for Melbourne when a passenger made "an inappropriate comment".

"The plane was stopped and the passenger was offloaded," she said.

She said the man was then taken into Australian Protective Service custody.

"The aircraft then took off with a minimal delay of about 45 minutes," Ms Bolger said.


The incident follows a $7,500 fine handed down to a Victorian farmer in a Brisbane court after he joked to an attendant he was holding a bomb in his lap before a flight from Brisbane to Rockhampton on Wednesday.

A man has been charged with the theft of containers with more than $3 million worth of goods from a major Sydney port, police said today.

Police said detectives from Operation Netivas, set up to investigate large-scale theft from Port Botany, yesterday interviewed a 33-year-old Sutherland man who had voluntarily attended Mascot police station.

He was charged with armed robbery and detaining for advantage over a truck hijacking involving the theft of $2 million in mobile telephone equipment on November 18 last year.

The man was also charged over the theft of $24,000 worth of refrigerators on November 16 last year and the theft of $1.2 million in DVD players at Botany on October 23 last year.

Police bailed the man to appear in Waverley Local Court on December 4.

More than 2,000 garbage workers across NSW have gone on strike for 24 hours. The action is expected to affect garbage collection services in Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle.

Transport Workers Union (TWU) state secretary Tony Sheldon said waste collection workers were concerned about job security and protection of entitlements under new contracts between waste stations and local government groups.

He said waste workers met at 7am (AEDT) today and voted for the strike action.

"Historically in this industry when contract terms roll over or change hands, there has been a long-standing practice and agreement that the rights, jobs and entitlements of workers would be protected," he said.

"Despite lengthy and protracted negotiations, however, industry representatives and the Local Government Association continue to refuse to maintain this practice and underwrite the agreement protecting workers' rights and entitlements."


Mr Sheldon said 2,000 waste workers across NSW stood to lose out if their entitlements were not protected under new contracts.

He said about 150 workers could lose their jobs and entitlements in the next few weeks, with six Sydney waste transfer station contracts expected to change hands.

The union had sought meetings with the Local Government Association but no progress had been made, Mr Sheldon said.

"We have had a long series of negotiations where they have constantly, point-blankly said they won't put any guarantees in and we've also sought urgent meetings with them again," he said.

Garbage services will return to normal on Monday.

"While we apologise for any public inconvenience, workers across the industry have been left with no choice but to resort to this action today," Mr Sheldon said.

Comment was being sought from the Local Government Association.

A spokeswoman for the LGA said the matter was due to go before the NSW Industrial Relations Commission later today.

She would not comment further on the dispute.

An addiction to sex with prostitutes has landed a TAFE executive with a suspended two-year jail sentence and 200 hours of community service.

Accountant Gregory John Dickson is living in rented accommodation, his wife has left him, many of his friends have shunned him, and he has almost certainly lost his job.

Less than a year ago, the 53-year-old was living with his wife in Emu Plains and overseeing a $100 million budget as the director of finance and administration services at the Western Sydney Institute of TAFE.

His fall from grace began in February, when auditors found he had used his corporate credit card to pay more than $60,000 for at least 109 brothel visits since June 1, 1998.

He used his office computer at the Werrington campus to create false invoices for stationery and education products.


He faced sentence in Penrith Local Court yesterday, after pleading guilty to obtaining money by deception and falsifying invoices. A psychiatrist's report submitted to the court said Dickson had admitted to suffering an addiction to sex with prostitutes for 20 years.

Magistrate Langdon Gould made it a condition of the suspended sentence that Dickson continue his psychiatric treatment under the guidance of the probation service.

Dickson's solicitor, Peter Nematalla, said his client had visited brothels to relieve the stresses of work and home and had virtually exhausted his superannuation repaying the money.

The Department of Education said in a statement that it had recovered $53,500 of the $66,500 owed and would take action to recover the rest.

"To further strengthen safeguards against such incidents, the department has reviewed the need for corporate credit cards in its operations," it said.

"Senior departmental officers have been instructed to regularly monitor corporate credit card expenditure to identify significant changes in expenditure patterns."

The department has already refused Dickson's resignation and will take disciplinary action that is likely to see him sacked.


A former erotic dancer has applied to sue her plastic surgeon for two enlargements of her breasts which she claimed left her deformed and in pain.

Brenda Knowles is seeking an extension of time in the NSW Supreme Court to sue Dr Warwick Harper for two breast enlargements in 1992 and 1995.

The operations had forced her to stop dancing because she no longer felt comfortable being topless, she said.

"I couldn't take my shirt off or my bra," she said.

In her statement of claim, filed in 2001, she said she also could no longer continue to work as a stripper, erotic movie actress and model.


Ms Knowles, who is now on single parent benefits, also told the court that, prior to the 1992 operation, she had streaked at the 1988 AFL Grand Final in Melbourne.

Ms Knowles said she had a previous breast enlargement in 1985 by Melbourne surgeon Dr Graham Isaacs with no major complications.

Seven years later Ms Knowles, who now lives in Bowral, had another breast enlargement in 1992, this time performed in Sydney by Dr Harper.

She claimed the operation left her breasts misshapen and badly infected.

"The breasts done in 1992 were all rippled, rippled like an ocean," she said.

"They were quite ugly and there was blood and pus also."

Ms Knowles said she waited until the blood and pus had stopped and in 1995 had another augmentation performed by Dr Harper to repair the shape and enlarge them.

Her barrister, Stephen Campbell, SC, said she should have been warned by Dr Harper that she needed to have the first implants removed for a few months before new implants could be inserted.

In NSW, personal injury claims must be lodged within three years of the injury or, in special circumstances, within eight years.

But Mr Campbell said because Ms Knowles had continued to see doctors for complications from the surgery, the injury was ongoing.

Counsel for Dr Harper, Michael Fordham, said Ms Knowles had acknowledged in court that she believed for about five years prior to approaching a lawyer in 2000 that her surgeon had done something wrong.

"She knew it (litigation) was available to her," he said.

"She made no bones about the fact that she knew she was suffering and it was her view Dr Harper was at fault."

Outside the court, Ms Knowles said the complications from the operation had made her life very stressful.

"It's been a very long 10 years," she said.

The judgment has been reserved.

If it's true - as Australian captain Steve Waugh insists - that the tone of an Ashes series is set on the first day of the first Test, the English might as well start booking some of the cut-price fares to London being advertised on the Gabba scoreboards yesterday.

One-way fares, in most cases.

Australia were wonderful. Rampaging. Ruthless. To the delight of the Gabba's biggest first-day crowd, local hero Matthew Hayden batted through the day to finish unbeaten on 186, while Ricky Ponting scored 123 as the world's best team rattled up 364 for the loss of only two wickets.

By day's end they were so dominant that old-timers were searching the record books for reference points.

Some recalled Michael Slater's 176 eight years ago. Former England fast bowler Frank Tyson, now living on the Gold Coast, recalled his fruitless attempts at the same place on the same day in 1954.


"Australia ran up 600-plus before they declared," he recalled ruefully. "Three of them got tons." His one wicket cost him 160 runs. Hot, hard yakka, that was, he acknowledged.

By contrast England - at least until the final few overs as the shadows lengthened (no daylight saving here) - were woeful. Worse, much of the woe was of their own making. Captain Nasser Hussain won the toss and elected to bowl - even before lunch it was adjudged a bad decision, as Australia's openers set off at four or five runs an over.

The English misfielded - fumbling as early as the second ball - and spilled catches. Some of them were sitters, dropped by players with comic invention, but one was a piece of cruel misfortune that may have determined the course of the carnage that followed.

Simon Jones, a young Welshman playing for England who had taken the only wicket to fall in the first two sessions - spectacularly snatched a steepling hook shot from Hayden out on the boundary as he fell headlong over the rope.

Though he desperately flung the ball back into play, he was adjudged, controversially, to have failed to meet the requirements of Law 32, section 3a, which states that a fielder must have "complete control both over the ball and over his own movement".

To add to the old enemy's troubles, Jones later sickeningly twisted his knee, again while fielding on the boundary, and had to be stretchered off and taken to hospital, where a ruptured ligament was diagnosed.

Poor man, he really will be taking an early flight home and will not play cricket for six months. And England already have a long list of wounded injuns.

Jones apart, why did England bring so many pre-injured players on what is generally regarded as the most gruelling tour? I'm glad you asked that ... anyway, where were we? The Australians. Right.

Skipper Waugh describes Hayden and fellow opener Justin Langer as cricket's version of the characters in the movie Twins: "Lang as Danny DeVito, Haydos as Arnold Schwarzenegger."

His little mate got out mid-morning, but Hayden, who has probably spent more time batting at his local Gabba ground than he has pottering about in his backyard in recent years, was unstoppable. He has the stamina to match his power.

When he hit the century he charged down the pitch, waving his bat, high-fiving Ponting, pointing to the rooms, making the sign of the cross. A big man, he has made a habit of making big scores.

You'd think he hadn't scored a century before. In fact, last year he scored centuries in four consecutive Test matches. He is the world's top-ranked batsman.

Just when it seemed things couldn't get much worse for the Poms, former Australian captain Allan Border turned up during the tea interval. Fortunately, he had not come to bat. He was making a triumphant entry to the Gabba at the end of his 1,200-kilometre Trek for Kids charity walk from Sydney.

Border's role as a selector prevents him from being too beastly about the hapless Poms but not many in the sun-blessed crowd could find anything encouraging to say about England's performance.

In the morning, at least, Australians seemed to be outnumbered by English supporters, many of them marching under the auspices of The Barmy Army.

So well organised and such big business has the army become that it now produces a Songs of Praise book of chants and peddles merchandise.

An Australian banner, acknowledging the missing Mark ("Lost the Waugh, but we'll win the battle for the Ashes") was almost lost among the flags of English football teams, such as FC Bournemouth, York City, Wigan Athletic and West Bromwich Albion.

The most exotic banner, however, was that of the leonine Prague Cricket Club proudly raised by Simon Page, originally of Bega but now working in the Czech capital as a job recruitment and real estate consultant.

There's no shortage of players, expat and local, male and female, said Page. And no shortage of opponents - Prague CC has played "Test matches" against teams from cities such as Berlin, Munich and Ljubljana.

No, the real problem is finding a pitch. "We'd like to put down a permanent, concrete pitch, but everything in Prague is so historic that you can barely touch the ground," said Page, who is seeking a club sponsor. "Australian or Czech, but a beer company would be just great."

Like many in the crowd, he left wondering just how many days' play he would see in this Ashes series if England continued to be as outplayed, out-psyched and as outclassed as they were yesterday.


If things could have gone worse for England's cricketers, it's hard to image how, writes Trevor Marshallsea at the Gabba.


In his English newspaper column previewing the start of the Ashes series at the Gabba, Nasser Hussain made a frank admission: "The worst nightmare," he wrote, "is reading the wicket and working out what to do after winning the toss and which bowlers to pick."

Last night, he might have reassessed. "Worst nightmare" will have seemed inadequate after the England captain's decision to send Australia in exploded in stunning style, setting the tone for what seems certain to be another one-sided Ashes series.

On an opening day as perfect for Australia as it was miserable for England, Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting seized upon Hussain's offer in merciless fashion to lead Australia to a mammoth 2-364 by stumps.

The remarkable Hayden, who now has five centuries in his past seven home Tests, will resume today on 186, needing only 41 more to put his stamp on his home stadium by breaking Don Bradman's ground-record Test score of 226. Only Bradman has scored more in a day of a Test here, making 200 against South Africa in 1931-32.

Ponting was at times breathtaking in his 123 - his fourth hundred in six Tests - as he and Hayden put on the second-highest Test partnership for any wicket at the Gabba, 272 in just 253 minutes, shaded only by the 276 made by Bradman and Lindsay Hassett for the third wicket against England in 1946-47.


Hayden played many majestic strokes in his 255-ball innings of 20 fours and two sixes. He needed an energy boost from confectionary snakes after reaching his 10th Test hundred, and was also helped by being dropped on no fewer than three occasions.

It was hard to know where to start in assessing the humiliation of England as they set out shambolically after their first Ashes win in 16 years - the fielding, the bowling, more injury woes, or the batting of the Australians.

Most considerations will start, however, with Hussain's decision to send in the world's best team at a ground where sides batting first have averaged 395 in the first innings of the past eight Tests.

Sides bowling first have won only 17 of the 44 Tests played there. Of the winning captains, 10 have put the opposition in, but most had a far better attack to deploy than Hussain, whose key weapons seem to be openers Michael Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick.

From only the second ball - when Michael Vaughan misfielded at point off Justin Langer - the signs were bad for England. The pitch started to dry, and Hayden and Langer raced to 50 in 11 overs. There was some joy for England when Langer edged a catch behind from Simon Jones on 32, but from there it was all misery for the visitors.

Much of it involved poor Jones. The Welsh paceman looked cruelled by the laws of cricket when he caught Hayden on 40, only to have the effort disallowed. Then in the fourth over after lunch and on the same patch of grass, he wrenched his knee and was carried out of the ground and out of the series after what England physio Kirk Russell said was the "perfect" way to rupture a cruciate ligament.

After the gallant Jones left, some pedestrian bowling, abject fielding and merciless batting from Hayden and Ponting condemned England.

Hayden could not hide his delight on raising three figures before a record first-day Gabba crowd of 28,348. He could not hide his disbelief on being dropped three times - woefully by Matthew Hoggard when 102, astonishingly by the hapless Vaughan when 138, and narrowly by Rob Key when 149.

Hayden described his day as "great" though "lucky", and said England's decision to field was not helped by their bowlers.

"It was a wicket that looked like it was going to offer a lot more than it did. They tended to bowl a little bit in the wrong areas, wrong lengths," said Hayden, who admitted that "due to the excitement" of playing in his first Gabba Ashes Test, he might have forgotten to eat enough at lunch and it had cost him after reaching his hundred. "I had a pretty rough patch for half an hour. I don't think I had enough to eat. My vision was ordinary, my concentration terrible. I had some snakes and a power drink. Right now I feel pretty good."

Ponting said he was "a little surprised" England bowled first, saying "generally up here they are pretty good batting wickets".

"There weren't too many things that went wrong," he said. "We had a bit of luck with a few dropped catches and a lot of misfields, so it was a perfect day as far as Australia was concerned."

England coach Duncan Fletcher said the joint decision between himself and Hussain to field first had been "very difficult" to make. "We thought it looked a bit green and there might be something in it for our inexperienced bowling. The wicket did do less than we hoped. It didn't really seam that much," he said. "It will be difficult to regroup for a second day. We've got to make sure we bat very well. Hopefully the wicket will stay the same."

In his newspaper column, Hussain also revealed he did not sleep much during a Test match. With the possible nightmares inspired by day one, perhaps it is just as well.


Armchair cricket has never been so technologically advanced. With strike zone, speed gun, the snickometer and now hawkeye, the loungeroom-bound fan now has a Richie Benaud-esque command of the game.

Hawkeye is the name of Channel 9's innovation described as a "revolutionary ball-tracking system" which was introduced in yesterday's first Ashes test at the Gabba.

Hawkeye uses six cameras around the cricket ground to follow every ball in flight and "track it accurately from the moment it leaves the bowler's hands".

The result is a 3D computer-generated image that takes into account the swing, trajectory, variable bounce and deviation to determine what each bowler is doing.

To add to the realism of hawkeye, a crowd has been added in the background, along with national flags of the teams and, naturally, advertising.


The Nine logo is emblazoned on the big screen and a broadcast sponsor is also featured on fence signs.

The channel obviously could not wait to use its new toy: hawkeye was used for the first ball bowled yesterday, by England's Andrew Caddick.

It is he first big new technology Nine has introduced into its coverage since the 1999-2000 season, the year when snickometer, strike zone and speed gun all debuted.

It arrived in the country last week. "It's the first time to be used in Australia, and we will make improvements to it," a Nine spokesman said.

The way the channel handled the game was constantly evolving, he said. "Every year it's tweaked behind the scenes, and every year we are trying to improve our cricket coverage."

Nine is not the first channel to use the technology, last year Channel Four in England introduced hawkeye to the cricket world with great success.

Hawkeye, like most modern cricket technology, can make the umpire look stupid - especially when it comes to LBW decisions.


This was not a fight. This was a rout, and it was over before it had begun. Expecting to encounter a pugilist prepared to throw punches, the Australians came across a foe nervously retreating into a corner.

First mornings of an Ashes series are eagerly awaited by those with memories of the dogfights of yesteryear. Alas, these tourists seem a pale shadow of the Bulldog brigade seen in previous decades and must prove they belong to the tradition of Ken Barrington and Herbert Sutcliffe, or else this must be the last time their country is invited to play a five-match series, a custom that insults other countries and flatters their own.

England were inept. Far from issuing an impressive challenge, they suffered from bouts of butterflies and butterfingers. It's hard to imagine a bunch of professionals performing as badly. Several players suffered from stage fright and fluffed their lines. About the only consolation for the visitors was the recollection that the last time England had chosen to bowl first at the Gabba, eight catches were dropped, Australia scored 600 and won by a mile, whereupon the Poms took the Ashes home.

Nasser Hussain set the tone with an inexplicable decision to field first on a plumb pitch. Upon being invited to bat, his counterpart looked as pleased as a politician scrutinising his superannuation. Hussain's decision flew in the face of all the evidence. Only twice in the past 10 years have more than six wickets fallen on the opening day of a Gabba Test. Australia has been suffering its worst drought since 1902. The pitch has lost the green grimace seen in the 1980s and nowadays wears a benevolent smile. Moreover the weather was warm, the surface low and any batsman worth his salt was itching for an opportunity.

Perhaps Hussain had been overtaken by a demon of the sort that often appears in Hollywood films. It's not as if the Australians cannot bat. Presumably England were worried about losing wickets but such thoughts must be ignored by any captain trying to instil confidence in his players. Someone blundered, and his name was Hussain.


Worse followed as England bowled incompetently. Rather than pressing for wickets in their usual way, and following a dictate from the dressing room, the opening bowlers directed their attentions at the batsmen's pads in an attempt to curb the flow of runs. Alas lots of deliveries flew harmlessly down the leg side.

Andrew Caddick did not hit the pitch hard enough to trouble accomplished batsmen, whilst Matthew Hoggard's trajectory was too flat to inconvenience his opponents. Nor did Craig White create problems with his induckers. About the only Englishman to justify his reputation was Simon Jones, and he's Welsh. Sadly Jones suffered a cruel injury as he slid across the ground. Ashley Giles began steadily but his leg trap was located on the boundary, not around the bat.

England's fielding was lamentable. The only man to take a catch was wearing gloves. Michael Vaughan mistook the ball for a hot potato and his early misfield gave Justin Langer and his team their first run. Vaughan dropped a sitter as did Hoggard, who circled the ball like television Indians around a wagon train. Not surprisingly the Australians enjoyed themselves. At first the openers could not find their balance and several drives squirted away in unpredictable directions. Fortunately the bowling was accommodating, and the batsmen were allowed to settle.

After lunch Hayden found his rhythm with some commanding drives and pulls to the delight of a large crowd. Upon Hayden reaching 98, England obligingly sent down a sumptuous full toss.

Ricky Ponting was superb, driving sixes over mid-on, slashing the ball through the covers and otherwise scoring unobtrusively against a floundering attack. These Englishmen were a shadow of the touring team seen decades ago. They could not muster the confidence nor resolution needed to contain an aggressive opponent. None of the bowlers rose to the occasion and the fieldsmen failed to give proper support. Frankly, the Poms might as well go out dancing and drinking because there's no point dwelling on days like this.

Now it's up to the batsmen to save the day. Otherwise supporters might be tempted to accept an advertisement appearing on the sightscreen offering flights to London at $1449, a small price to avoid humiliations of this sort.


Young England quick Simon Jones faces at least six months away from cricket after his eventful but ultimately devastating Ashes debut at the Gabba yesterday.

Jones was resting in his Brisbane hotel room last night with a serious knee injury after a sickening incident during the first day of the first Test against Australia. The 23-year-old ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee when he fell to the ground trying to prevent a Ricky Ponting drive reaching the long-on boundary.

Jones's left knee dug into the Gabba surface and his right knee then hyperextended, leaving the Welshman in agony just 16 minutes into the second session.

It ended a busy morning for Jones, who dismissed Justin Langer to a catch behind and then caught Matthew Hayden on the fine-leg fence before his attempt was ruled void when he fell over the boundary rope. Jones will return home for reconstructive surgery in two weeks, once the swelling has gone down.


"He's back in the hotel and he's OK," team physiotherapist Kirk Russell said. "When you completely rupture a ligament you don't have a great deal of pain. I've never seen an anterior cruciate ligament rupture in cricket before. It was a freak accident."

England coach Duncan Fletcher lamented the loss of Jones, who had showed promise in his first tour of Australia.

But England tour selectors will not decide whether to call a replacement until they learn more about the condition of Darren Gough, who is recovering from knee problems in Adelaide.

"We've had some good news on Darren because he's bowled the last two days and he hasn't had any ill effects," Russell said.

Gough is awaiting further medical tests, while England are hopeful young quick Stephen Harmison will recover from shin splints in time for the three-day match against Australia A in Hobart from next Friday.

It was a day of highs and lows for Jones after he dismissed opener Langer to take his first wicket in Ashes Tests.

The contentious attempted catch by Jones that might have dismissed century-making Australia opener Matthew Hayden for 40 was, however, no cause for debate, according to fellow century-maker Ricky Ponting.

Jones's ultimately disastrous day took its first turn for the worse when Hayden hooked a Matthew Hoggard long-hop in the air towards the fine-leg boundary where the Welshman was stationed. The ball came at Jones quickly and he was making backward steps towards the boundary rope when it struck his hands.

He continued to fall backwards and, as he headed for the turf across the boundary rope, hurled the ball back into the field of play.

After a brief consultation between the umpires, batsmen and England captain Nasser Hussain, Hayden was ruled not out. He was unbeaten on 186 at stumps.

Ponting said the Australian players were uncertain about how the catching rule was applied in such matters.

"[But] when I saw him over-balance and then go over the rope and throw the ball back and it actually hit the ground, I realised that Matty was going to be OK," he said.

Ponting added there had been no debate about the catch on the ground, saying: "Not between us, and I think the England guys knew straight away that it wasn't out as well."


A nice Jewish girl flirts with a same-sex relationship in the hit romantic comedy Kissing Jessica Stein, writes Sacha Molitorisz.


Jennifer Westfeldt is discussing the making of Kissing Jessica Stein, a romantic comedy with a zesty twist.

One of the stars of TV's Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, Westfeldt plays the Jessica of the movie title, an uptight New Yorker eagerly seeking love. After surviving a string of demoralising dates, Jessica answers a personals ad. The twist is that the ad is from the "Women Seeking Women" section, which makes her display of spontaneity even more daring and uncharacteristic. For this young woman from a conservative Jewish family, what follows is a potentially life-changing flirtation with lesbianism.

So the question has to be asked: have Westfeldt or her co-star Heather Juergensen ever flirted with lesbianism? Whether in the name of research or in the pursuit of pleasure, have they ever sampled the Sapphic?

"I'm sorry to disappoint you," Westfeldt purrs. "We're both straight, much to the chagrin of some of our audience. Sometimes the gay community hates to hear that."

Indeed, Kissing Jessica Stein caused a stir when it was released in the US earlier this year.


"It definitely was an issue with a vocal gay minority," says Westfeldt. "Some people were upset about the premise, about the idea that we might be advocating the notion that sexuality is something you can try on.

Some people felt some sense of betrayal that we weren't gay. But to put it in perspective, most of the gay community has been incredibly supportive."

Fortunately, despite ruffling a few feathers, the comedy went on to become a tidy hit, taking $US7 million ($12.6 million) in the US after costing only $US1 million. That's particularly satisfying for Westfeldt and Juergensen: the pair not only devised the concept, they wrote the screenplay, despite a total lack of experience.

The two women first met at a theatre workshop in upstate New York in 1996, where they bonded after realising they were working on similar material. "Wouldn't it be a good idea to collaborate?" one of them said, but once they were back in Manhattan, nothing happened.

That is, until a year later, after Westfeldt had moved to LA to start work on Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place. Already missing New York, Westfeldt was disappointed when shooting was delayed by two months. So she decided to return to New York and do something creative.

"I called Heather out of the blue and said, 'Hi, do you remember me? Do you want to write something about the way men and women don't connect and then rent a theatre and put it on, just like we were talking about?'" Juergensen said yes, and for the next six weeks she and Westfeldt wrote their play, honing the script - originally titled Lipschtick - with readings for friends and rehearsals. And then they staged their comedy for six nights only.

"It was a big hit for a tiny thing," Westfeldt says. "It sold out, and people loved it. There was certainly a lot of heated debate. We would have liked to extend the run, but I had to be back in LA the next day."

Which might have been the end of Lipschtick, but for a phone call from Westfeldt's agent. People were calling, he said. They wanted to turn the play into a movie.

So Juergensen hopped on a plane.

"Heather came out to LA and started sleeping on my couch.

"Then on my Christmas break we bought the software to write a screenplay, and I brought home all the screenplays from all my auditions so we could get the lingo down, and pretty soon we had a draft together. A month later a studio optioned our script, with us to star in it and write it, which everyone had told us would never happen. So we thought, 'Wow, we've done it'."

They hadn't. Over the next two demoralising years the studio changed hands almost as often as it demanded another rewrite. They also made ridiculous suggestions, such as: why don't we shoot in Canada instead of New York?

"I said, 'Over my dead body.' We felt like New York was like a third main character." Finally, despondent with the machinations of Hollywood, the pair decided to do it all themselves.

First, however, they had to buy back their story.

"That was one of the most confounding things. That people would rather nothing be made then let you pay money to buy your story back. It's so anti-creative. And in the end, once we had finally bought our rights back, the movie was in the can a year later.

"Now I always think about this project as leading us along. If it hadn't been for the crazy buzz that spread to Hollywood about this 10 cent play, that might have been the end of it. But the fact is we struck a nerve and then the whole thing had this very sweet, organic process whose only goal was creativity and exploration and fun.

"In a way, we were just like a couple of naive kids. 'Let's write a screenplay! Let's raise a million dollars!' It was a great adventure."

The royal family's latest discomfort has been sheeted home to Charles and questions his suitability to wear the crown, writes Peter Fray.


Poor Charles. Having worked so hard to recapture the public respect he squandered eight years ago by admitting adultery with Camilla Parker Bowles, the future king is again being painted as insecure, ruthless and, possibly, much, much worse.

On the eve of his 54th birthday, the Prince of Wales and his inner circle have been exposed in the wake of the Paul Burrell affair as money-grubbing, bitchy and, if self-confessed victim and former palace valet George Smith is to be believed, guilty of covering up a serious sexual crime.

That Charles's close confidant denies twice raping Smith appears to matter little as the media in Britain and elsewhere feeds off every salacious detail. (Despite attempts to remain anonymous, the man was outed on Monday by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.)

Thanks to the unremitting stories of royal sleaze, the tide of public opinion has turned against the royal family, in particular Charles, who risks losing the carefully nurtured public support for his plan to marry Parker Bowles.

Some commentators believe the storm will eventually blow over. Royal biographer Ben Pimlott told the Herald that aside from the constitutional questions raised by the Queen's move to abort the Burrell trial, there is nothing more to this week's revelations than "butlers buggering butlers, which is boring". But others are more harsh. The Queen's jubilee year has become her second annus horribilis in a decade.

For those committed to ending the monarchy, the gay rape allegations, the nasty letters from Prince Philip to Diana, the selling of royal gifts by Charles's staff, even the book thrown by Charles at Burrell in a fit of rage are all grist to a long-grinding mill.

"The royals are now being impaled on their own grossly pampered, secretive and outmoded way of life," writes Charles's biographer, Anthony Holden - a monarchist who converted to republicanism - in London's Evening Standard.

But what is most surprising - and potentially most damaging - is that several key pro-royal papers and commentators are beginning to question what is going on at Buckingham and St James's palaces.

Royal watcher Richard Kay, from the pro-monarchy Daily Mail, has argued that the Burrell affair and its aftermath is a virtual re-run of the bitter battles between Charles and Diana. "Not since the days of the war of the Waleses has his [Charles's] public standing been potentially so imperilled," says Kay.

It is the actions of Charles's officials that have prompted calls from backbench Labour MPs for an inquiry into the Burrell affair. Not only would such an inquiry, if ever held, demand to consider the rape allegations (which were not investigated by the police until some six years after Charles conducted his inquiry) but other comings and goings within the prince's household.

No one seems to know, or be in a position to legally say, what Smith allegedly saw a member of the royal family do to a servant, a fact that has set minds racing to various spectacular, and probably very wrong, conclusions. Likewise, there has yet to be an adequate response from Charles to the alleged practice of selling royal gifts by Michael Fawcett, Charles's closest aide, who is known in royal circles as Fawcett the Fence for first arranging the sale and then keeping between 10 and 20 per cent of the proceeds. Behind it all are serious questions of character: what sort of man is our future king, a man who once fantasised about being his lover's tampon? Is he a good judge of character or is he captive to his servants? Can he be trusted?

London's Daily Telegraph, the most loyal of pro-royal papers, argues that for all the good work he had done since Diana's death five years ago, Charles has become a captive of spin - his own.

In a remarkable editorial, it accused Charles's people of recently spreading malicious stories about other members of the royal family, including claims that the Queen should abdicate in Charles's favour and Harry had engaged in under-age drinking sessions.

The furore surrounding the prince has rekindled suggestions that the crown should skip a generation and pass on to Prince William. But, as Pimlott says, a far less radical move would be to appoint a respectable judge and conduct an inquiry.

The truth is that the British tabloids have never really got over the loss of Diana and, in some ways, feel shortchanged that the one Wales who didn't die is a man who largely remains aloof from his subjects - and, probably, much, much worse.

The official Australian death toll from the Bali attack has risen to 64 following the death of two people in hospital in the past week and the identification of more bodies.

Maroubra surfer Tom Singer, 17, died in Royal Brisbane Hospital on Monday after suffering a stroke at the weekend, while Sydney man Ben Roberts, 28, died in Singapore General Hospital last Thursday.

Foreign Affairs officials hold serious concerns for a further 23 Australians who remain on the missing list.

Fifty-eight of the confirmed victims died in Bali, including 27 people from NSW, 14 from Victoria, nine from Western Australia, three from South Australia, three from Queensland, one from the ACT and one from Tasmania.

Four people - Behic Sumer, 43, and Jodie O'Shea, 29, of Sydney, Jodie Cearns, 35, of Brisbane and Tracy Thomas, 41, of Perth - died in hospital in Australia in the days following the blast.

Over the past month, the remains of 53 of the Australian victims have been repatriated to Australia.

The body of one Australian was sent to Britain, one to France and one was cremated in Bali.

Bali's first international airline, which postponed its official launch because of the terrorist attacks in Kuta, is now planning its maiden flight for February, a spokesman for Air Paradise International said yesterday.

The airline had planned to be operating between Denpasar and Perth from October 27, but put off the launch after the bomb blasts.

The airline's national business manager, Gary Hilt, said yesterday that he was now expecting to begin services on February 16.

The date would be confirmed just before Christmas, subject to travel warnings by the Federal Government, he said.

The airline, owned by the prominent Bali businessman Kadek Wiranatha, is aiming to begin operations with four flights a week to Perth and a three-times-a-week run to Melbourne.

Analysts confirmed yesterday that prohibited anti-inflammatory drugs were in the system of the unraced two-year-old which sent jockey Jason Oliver to his death when it fell after breaking a leg in a barrier trial.

Oliver, 33, died in Royal Perth Hospital on October29, a day after Savage Cabbage crashed and rolled on him at the finish of a Belmont Park barrier trial.

West Australian Turf Club chief steward John Zucal said yesterday phenylbutazone and oxyphenbutazone were found in samples taken from the colt when it was put down, minutes after the fall.

The substances are among drugs barred from WA gallopers in racing or competing at trials.

Racecourse detective Phil O'Reilly has questioned the colt's trainer Steve Wolfe.

Zucal said a full-scale stewards inquiry would begin on November29. Police are admitted to such inquiries and are expected to attend.

Wolfe declined to comment and referred questions to his lawyer, Tom Percy, QC.

"We have advised the stewards of all treatments administered to Savage Cabbage in the week before his trial," Percy said yesterday. "I will apply to represent Steve Wolfe at the inquiry."

Jason Oliver never regained consciousness after the fall and his younger brother, champion Melbourne jockey Damien, rushed to his bedside.

Damien Oliver returned to Victoria and won the Melbourne Cup on Irish raider Media Puzzle eight days ago. He then attended Jason's funeral in Perth the following day.

It is believed Savage Cabbage, which was having his first official barrier trial when he fractured his right front leg, had knocked a hind leg five days before the fall.

Staff at restaurants and independent service stations are being paid $200 or more for every credit card "skimmed" as part of a scam that is on the increase nationwide.

Special portable hand-held devices, imported from Asia by criminal gangs, are being used to swipe customers' cards, store the information from them and produce counterfeit versions that are then often used overseas.

Similar to the ATM card scam in Sydney that netted thieves thousands from up to 500 accounts, the credit-card scams are likely to have been set up by criminals in Asia.

All the big card companies agree that Malaysia is the world's credit-card fraud capital, where criminals have developed and exported the so-called skimmers to counterfeit credit cards, complete with fake logos and holograms.

"Skimming is not as big here as it is in Malaysia," said John Sullings, Australasian director of security and risk management for MasterCard International.

"It is the skimming capital of the world."

Ian McKindley, head of risk for Visa, agreed. "That's certainly where the brains ... seems to be emanating from."

Some of the cards compromised in the ATM scam in Sydney are understood to have been counterfeited and the money withdrawn in Malaysia, though police are also believed to be investigating Chinese links.

While skimmers are illegal in other countries, they are not in Australia, and the onus is on the authorities to prove a person has one for unlawful purposes. A number of criminal cases have been identified in which skimmers have been used illegally.

Some companies, including MasterCard, are piloting a technology called Magneprint that helps prevent skimming by authenticating the characteristics of the magnetic strip.

The card-authorising process can then differentiate between an original and cloned card. The technology is expected to be introduced here next year.

Visa has not signed up for this product and is looking instead to introduce "smart" or chip cards, which contain an electronic chip - rather than a black magnetic strip - and can store much more information.

Mr McKindley said criminals would have to invest millions to duplicate chip cards, representing a better long-term solution than Magneprint.

Chip cards are yet to take off in Australia, even though ANZ and American Express launched them in the past year.

Mr Sullings said magnetic strips were likely to remain for 10 to 15 years while chip cards were gradually introduced.

Mr McKindley said better cardholder education was crucial to slowing the spread of credit-card skimming.

He said cardholders should report instances of retailers swiping their card on a device other than the point-of-sale device.

The head of the State Government's watchdog on public spending has criticised recent government decisions, claiming that sparing Callan Park from a housing development was to "give yuppies somewhere to walk their dogs".

The chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Fairfield MP Joe Tripodi, yesterday said the decision to save Callan Park and to reverse decisions to close Hunters Hill High and Erskineville public schools "have cost a lot of money and one can argue whether that money was best spent".

In a discussion last week with the Fairfield Teachers Association, Mr Tripodi also questioned the Government's plan to allow the private sector to build, own and maintain nine new schools in Sydney, Wollongong and the Central Coast. The schools, estimated to cost about $83 million, would revert to public ownership after 30 years.

These public/private partnerships would "cost more money due to business involvement" than if the Government built the schools, Mr Tripodi told the Fairfield teachers, according to minutes of the meeting.

Yesterday Mr Tripodi said he was voicing concerns that had been raised by the Premier, Bob Carr, that "we need to be very careful about public/private partnerships".

"It works very well for toll roads but it may not necessarily work well for schools," he said.

"At the end of the day, is there a net benefit to government?"

The Minister for Education, John Watkins, declined to comment on Mr Tripodi's remarks but said the decision last month to grant reprieves to the two schools was "the right thing to do for public education in NSW".

The Government has short-listed two consortiums to provide "best and final offers" on the nine new schools - two primary schools on the South Coast, a primary school at Wyong, a high school at Horningsea near Liverpool and one high school, a special school and three primary schools in Sydney's high-growth north-west corridor.

The consortiums are Axiom Education (ABN Amro/Hansen Yuncken/St Hilliers/Honeywell) and the Community Education Partnership (Bilfinger Berger BOT/Baulderstone Hornibrook).

The Government is behind schedule on the approval process, after confirming in July that the successful tenderer would be announced in September.

A spokeswoman for Mr Watkins said yesterday: "The minister has always said if the projects stack up financially and operationally they will go ahead. If they don't, they won't."

Mr Tripodi said his comments about saving Callan Park reflected "a common view in western Sydney".

Mr Tripodi said the teachers association minutes were "not in any way" a full and complete account of what he said at the meeting but reflected general discussions of the 20 people in the room. The NSW Teachers Federation organiser, Dean Newbold, said the teachers "got some unique insights into the thinking" of Mr Tripodi at the November 4 meeting.

Mr Tripodi will speak again about public education at a meet the candidates forum in Fairfield on November 27.

Police hunting the Bali bombers have uncovered a cache of arms and ammunition said to have been hidden in forest near an East Java village by the brothers of a man arrested for his alleged involvement in the October 12 attack.

The head of the investigation team, General I Made Pastika, said the arms were buried on November 7 by Ali Imron and Ali Fauzi. Their brother, Amrozi, a mechanic from the East Java region of Lamongan, had been arrested two days earlier. He is being held in Bali.

Yesterday Amrozi's status was upgraded to that of a detained person awaiting prosecution, in line with Indonesian criminal procedure.

Police said a villager had seen Ali Imron ferrying something towards the forest, known as Alas Dadapan, on the night of November 7. The man had been hurrying, the villager said.

The weapons - two M16 automatic rifles, another American automatic rifle called an AR15-A2, two Lee Enfield rifles and two Belgian-made pistols - were packed inside five plastic pipes and hidden in undergrowth, and a sixth pipe contained 5080 rounds of ammunition.

General Pastika said most of the ammunition was 5.56 calibre, for the automatic rifles. He was confident the brothers would be caught and police were still investigating where the weapons came from and whether they were linked to the bombings.

Police were led to the scene by a man named Qomaruddin, whom they describe as a "witness" and whose house in Amrozi's remote village of Tenggulun was raided by police on Monday.

In other developments, police disclosed they had learnt of four different locations, including a hotel room, in Bali used by the bombers before the attack.

Chemical residue from explosives has now been found at two Denpasar residences after a room in a boarding house thought to have been used by members of the group was visited by Australian Federal Police forensic personnel on Monday. Police are still searching for the fourth location.

Police remain focused on a group of between five and 10 men they believe is responsible for the bombing. Australia's head of the joint investigation, Graham Ashton, said another nine identification sketches were being prepared for possible release in a week.

The men's identities could not be released earlier for fear of jeopardising the investigation.

General Pastika said police were now certain that members of the group had met several times from the end of August and into September in Solo, Central Java, to plan the attack before moving on to Bali.

Solo is the location of the Islamic school founded by the militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who is being held in Jakarta over other Indonesian bombings and a plot to assassinate President Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Amrozi has admitted knowing Bashir well.

The Opposition Leader, John Brogden, was paid more than $110,000 in fees by the legal arm of the global consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers while he was an MP and a planning spokesman.

The $25,000-a-year payments, made in monthly instalments between August 1, 1997 and December 31 last year, were paid to Mr Brogden's family company, Northmist, for "public affairs advice".

Between 1997 and 2000, Mr Brogden only declared "dividend from shares" under the entry "other sources of income". His pecuniary interest declaration then pointed to his shareholding in Northmist.

But in the year 2000-01, he changed the details of his declaration. It is understood he amended them after a journalist's inquiries, and his subsequent declarations show "consultancy income from Price Waterhouse Legal through Northmist Pty Ltd". The amounts, however, are not specified.

Last night, Mr Brogden confirmed to the Herald the $25,000-a-year consultancy.

PwC Legal promotes itself as a specialist in property law, local government and planning issues and government/private enterprise joint ventures on major land developments.

Mr Brogden said he asked for advice from one of the clerks of the Parliament and had been assured that as the payments were made to the family shelf company, his declarations satisfied Parliament's technical requirements.

"All I am required to do is declare the income from where the income is from, and the income is from Northmist," he said. "Northmist and PwC Legal have the relationship. [My wife] Lucy and I are directors of Northmist. We receive disbursement of shares at the end of the financial year. There was never a cheque from PwC Legal to John Brogden and there was never an invoice from John Brogden to either of those companies."

He was satisfied to the best of his knowledge that his pecuniary interest declarations were accurate and strenuously denied it could appear that he had obfuscated the origins of the consultancy fees.

"That is the reason I did it [amended the register], so nobody would think I was hiding ... I never denied it. I worked with a former Labor senator [Stephen Loosley is a lawyer with PwC Legal], it was common knowledge and I had always openly declared as to legal requirements."

But according to the Constitution (Disclosures by Members) Regulation 1983, sources of income declared by MPs must include a "description sufficient to identify the person from whom, or the circumstances in which, the income was, or is reasonably expected to be, received".

While the Opposition's planning spokesman, Mr Brogden asked questions in Parliament relating to development projects in which PwC Legal was involved:

On October 17, 2001, relating to the development of a former navy site at Zetland, bought by Landcom and known as Victoria Park. A partner in PwC Legal lists on the company website his experience "representing NSW Land and Housing Corporation in all aspects of its Victoria Park project".

On December 5, 2001, relating to the property developer St Hilliers, which had an interest in the Zetland site. PwC is St Hilliers' auditor.

The Opposition has pursued the Fisheries Minister, Eddie Obeid, after he was shown to have made 154 mistakes in his pecuniary interest declarations.

Last night, Mr Obeid apologised to the upper house. "I have no difficulty with apologising to the Legislative Council for these errors and I now apologise to the house.

"I appreciate the findings that the errors were not wilful contraventions of the regulations and that I had no conflict of interest."

Mr Brogden insisted his consultancy work with PwC Legal was "very minor" and it was "just general public affairs advice". He said he met clients on occasions but refused to detail who they were, arguing that was PwC Legal's business. "I made clear to them from the start that I wanted to avoid a conflict of interest. There was never a conflict between my role as an MP, a shadow minister and a consultant.

"Was I ever asked by PwC Legal to act on behalf of a client on a matter with respect to my role as an MP or a shadow minister? No, never."

In an unrelated development, Mr Brogden yesterday revealed that a forged invoice, purportedly from Northmist to PwC Legal, had been forwarded to police for investigation.

England's "hot and cold" cricket team could not handle Australia's relentless performance in the first Test, national selector Allan Border said yesterday.

Border rates this Australian Test side as one of the best and believes many of its members will be regarded as "all-time greats".

The former Test captain, who helped select the team that annihilated England at the weekend by 384 runs, said he had suspected Australia would be too strong for the visitors.

"Even months ago I felt England would be competitive as long as all the stars turned up each day to play but you can't have hot and cold sessions against Australia - you fall behind the eight ball and that's what happened," he said. "Australia have got a group of guys together now that are going to end up on the all-time great list."

Border defended the sacking of paceman Brett Lee from the team. Lee responded by taking 10 wickets for NSW against Tasmania in a Pura Cup match.

"He's done exactly what we wanted him to do," Border said. "Go away, bowl fast, take some wickets, which he hadn't been doing. We don't mind being embarrassed by those sorts of things. You give guys a message and they take you to task and they do exactly what you want."

Border believed there was still life left in the English team which, he suggested, should try to turn up the heat by attacking Australia.

"If they get the opportunity to bat first on a good day, take it, take Australia on and try and put runs on the board and put Australia under some pressure," he said.

"But it's going to be difficult for them because they've just taken a huge knockout punch."

Meantime, England's first-Test capitulation should have no effect on the rest of the series, according to the man Nasser Hussain said his team would look to for inspiration. "I don't think it will be that hard at all for England to bounce back," New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming said yesterday. "A Test takes its character in the first innings. Australia grabbed the initiative and obviously played into a position where they could dominate come the last innings but come the second Test it will take on a whole new character."

Before the tour Hussain said his team had examined the Kiwis' tactics during their drawn series last season.

England captain Hussain was widely criticised after the first Test, and subsequently accepted the blame, for the decision to send Australia in after winning the toss but Fleming found some method in the perceived madness.

"Yes I can [understand his thinking]," he said. "Perhaps he thinks to win he has to take 20 Australian wickets, which is quite right. I have heard comments about how he hasn't got the variation in his attack on good wickets to bowl sides out so perhaps he thinks that he needs to take advantage of any assistance in the wicket early on."

That advantage palpably failed to materialise at the Gabba and, despite his comprehension of Hussain's decision, Fleming pinpointed where he believed England's strength, and main chance of remaining competitive, lay.

"I like watching England with [Marcus] Trescothick and [Michael] Vaughan. Those two in particular are very aggressive and they look to score quite quickly in getting momentum and gaining that initiative," Fleming said. "You saw glimpses of it in the first Test so if one of those two get away it sets up the England side and the Test as well.

"As a captain they put you under pressure as they do look to attack, which is similar to Australia's style. If they get a good session under their belt and get a good foundation, then it can sway things."

Scientists at St Vincent's Hospital say they are a step closer to developing a vaccine for common cancers that persuades the body to kill its own cancer cells and prevents the disease from returning.

The first stage of a trial proved the drug is safe for humans, and that it produces an immune response, St Vincent's Hospital staff specialist in oncology, Robyn Ward, said yesterday.

The vaccine targets the p53 tumour suppressor gene - which affects 50 per cent of all cancers - using a cocktail of synthetic human antibodies generated from people who have good immune responses to their cancer.

"That is then injected into people with cancer to trigger an immune response, first to the vaccine then to p53," Associate Professor Ward said.

The immune system does not automatically attack tumours because it recognises them as part of the body. The vaccine convinces it that the tumours are foreign.

The vaccine would be useful for cancers such as breast, bowel, prostate, lungs, renal cancer and head and neck cancer, she said. "It would be preventative ... to stop the cancer coming back, because it is generally the secondary cancer, not the primary cancer, that kills people."

But Professor Ward stressed the findings were one small step towards a vaccine.

The current trial followed an initial successful safety trial on four patients that began in October 2001.

It confirmed that, in contrast to traditional therapies such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the vaccine has no significant side-effects, Professor Ward said.

It will now go into the second phase of trials involving hundreds of people late next year, involving larger-scale, overseas-based groups, to see if the vaccine is effective in fighting tumours.

Two early breaks, including the discovery of a red getaway motorbike, combined with old-fashioned detective work, led Indonesian police to the first suspect in the Bali terrorist attack.

The chief investigator, General I Made Mangku Pastika, one of Indonesia's most respected policemen, described how the small clique of Islamic militants who carried out the bombings in front of a crowded nightclub made several basic mistakes. Those errors helped crack the case, even though, he said, it was a somewhat "high-tech", strategically smart operation.

They left a red motorbike outside a mosque soon after the blast. The bike had residue of the unexploded bomb and fingerprints, General Pastika said.

They tried hard, he said, by changing a number on the chassis of the vehicle that carried the bomb, but they missed another number that investigators were ultimately able to link to the suspect, Amrozi, who was arrested last week.

The United States contends that an operative for al-Qaeda named Hambali was the mastermind for the Bali blast. Hambali, an Indonesian who is said to be the leader of the group's South-East Asian operations, is the subject of a manhunt in the region.

The names of 10 Indonesians were given to the police during the interrogation of Amrozi and all are believed to be followers of a militant Islamic ideology, General Pastika said.

While the Bali case is far from solved, the arrest of Amrozi, 40, a car mechanic and acolyte of the radical Islamic preacher Abu Bakar Bashir, came as something of a surprise.

"I understand people don't believe what we have reached in a short time," said General Pastika, who served as a commanding officer for the UN police in Namibia in the late 1980s and participated in advanced courses in police work in Australia.

For this investigation, he was allowed to hand-pick his staff. Furthermore, he said, "there is no perfect crime". To make his point, he described how Indon-
esian police, working with Australian and British investigators and a small FBI team, were able to pick up several trails that led them to Amrozi: the motorbike, the chassis and the explosives that Amrozi bought, apparently to make the bomb.

The first clue came when a bystander outside a mosque in Denpasar phoned the police an hour after the Kuta blast. The person thought it was odd, General Pastika said, that the motorcycle was parked at midnight outside the mosque.

When the police picked up the bike, they noticed the toggle switches on it had been fiddled with so that the light at the back of the bike would not show. This, it turned out, was an effort by whoever parked the van outside the disco to flee undiscovered.

From the numberplate, the police found the salesman who sold the bike several days before the attack.

From that salesman, the investigators were able to draw the pictures of three suspects.

One sketch showed a man with thick eyebrows and lanky shoulder-length hair, and resembled Amrozi, he said.

The hair proved to be another clue. After Amrozi was arrested, a hairdresser in his village told police he had recently cut Amrozi's hair twice in one week.

"Two haircuts in one week - that is very important to show this is a person who does not want to be recognised," General Pastika said.

The most elusive, but most conclusive, piece of evidence that linked Amrozi to the attack was the chassis of the 1983 white Mitsubishi L300 van found in the crater left by the blast.

The plotters were smart enough to know the explosives in the van would not completely destroy the chassis, he said.

They changed noughts in the chassis number to sixes.

It was only when the remaining pieces of metal from the van were laid out that police discovered a second number they knew was needed for vans registered as taxis or buses. That number remained intact after the blast.

From that, the police traced the seven owners of the van, down to Amrozi, the most recent purchaser. General Pastika said the planning for the Bali attack was "low cost" - about $A18,000 for explosives, the van, the motorcycle, rent for places used for a month to make preparations and other costs.

Indonesian police believe several Bali bomb suspects are the same person using different aliases and perhaps related to one of Asia's most wanted men, known as Hambali.

The head of the investigation, General I Made Pastika, told the Indonesian newspaper Kompas that a man called Mukhlas - believed to be the brother of the arrested bomb suspect Amrozi - was the same person as Ali Gufron, who was thought to be another of Amrozi's brothers.

He said these "two men" were, in turn, the same person as Huda bin Abdul Haq, one of the senior leaders in Malaysia of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah.

However, a Kompas source in Bali has added to the confusion over Mukhlas's identity, saying he is the older blood brother of Hambali, who is believed to be responsible for a string of terrorist attacks.

Police believed Mukhlas was still in Bali, Kompas said.

All hope is not lost for England despite their first-Test humiliation, argues Tanya Aldred. Here are 10 things England must change to have a chance.

Attitude. Tony Greig is not the world's greatest diplomat, and his suggestion back in 1976 that England would make the West Indies grovel is now judged as an error on a fairly cataclysmic scale. But a little aggression can go a long way, and Nasser Hussain's strategy of telling the Australians how good they are, thus hoping to lull them into a false sense of security, is not proving a great success.

Collapses. Duncan Fletcher was supposed to have cured England of this, their favourite old habit. But here it was at Brisbane coming back to haunt them. The tail learnt to play Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh - now they must not flinch when faced with an ageing peroxided leg-spinner and a repetitive beanpole.

Catching. Here Australia can be equalled. Of course they are supremely good, even without Mark Waugh, but to catch well you do not have to be possessed by the ego of a baggy green cap. England are not hampered by the old lags of previous Ashes tours - there is no limping Gooch or fatty Gatt or wheezing Tufnell to hide - if they are going to compete, they must grab the possible and pocket the impossible.

Seize the day. Without going all Robin Williams, England have to make the most of their chances, their good minute, over, session. Their second-day recovery became worthless when it turned into a fourth-day record defeat. Against Australia you are not going to get a second go.

Andrew Caddick. In the absence of Darren Gough, and now Simon Jones, he has to be England's spearhead. Unfortunately for Caddick this does not mean spending entire sessions bowling at 120kmh. He should be patted on the back for his spells to Steve Waugh and then be forced to watch a video of every ball that Glenn McGrath bowled in the match, each one landing in, yes Andrew, the same perfect spot.

Adam Gilchrist. Repeat after me. He is not a superhero.

Body language. You may have thought that nothing could make the English team look more uncomfortable than when they were filmed doing aerobics by the poolside during the early days of Team England. You were wrong. The 11 men who walked out at Brisbane on the first morning to the scorn of 20,000 Australians looked as if they had been forced to school in their sister's clothing. They may not believe they can win but they must be able to do a better job of at least looking as if they can.

Hussain's mental magic. Hussain has geed up Matthew Hoggard before - last northern summer when his confidence was at the bottom of a very deep pit. Now he has to do it all over again. He has nine days.

The toss. Now Hussain has mastered winning the toss, he can move on to making the right decision. His strongest suite is his opening pair, he must be prepared to play them.

Luck. Find some.

A nervy Lleyton Hewitt skipped further clear of Andre Agassi in the ATP Champions Race tonight with victory in his opening match at the season-ending Masters Cup at The New Shanghai International Expo Centre.

Hewitt heaped the pressure on Agassi with an unconvincing 6-2 4-6 6-3 success against struggling Spaniard Albert Costa.

Agassi will begin his campaign tomorrow night against Czech Jiri Novak knowing he now must win the tournament and hope Hewitt doesn't progress past the semi-finals in order to snatch the year-end No.1 ranking from the Australian.

Hewitt is now 108 points ahead of Agassi, with 150 on offer to an unbeaten winner in Shanghai. One more pool win for Hewitt would mean Agassi could not afford to drop a single match this week.

Costa's countryman Carlos Moya leads the Red Group tonight after upsetting in-form Russian Marat Safin 6-4 7-5 earlier in the first match of the event in China.

Hewitt and Moya were likely to face off tomorrow night, with Costa and fellow first-up loser Safin set to clash, pending confirmation from the tournament referee.

Hewitt will need to lift to match Moya and Safin, last week's Paris Masters winner, and progress to the semi-finals, after taking nearly two and a half hours to scrape past Costa, who hasn't won a match since bowing out in the second round at the US Open in September.

Hewitt's serve was both his friend and foe.

He mixed a bagful of aces with a series of untimely double-faults, which led to the dropping of his two service games mid-match.

The top seed raced to a 4-0 lead in the first set before going off the boil and giving up a break in the sixth game with a double.

Hewitt eventually took the first set in 40 minutes with a big ace down the middle.

He was broken to love to fall behind 2-0 in the second and didn't break back until the seventh game to trail 3-4.

But Hewitt handed Costa the second set in 55 minutes with another double fault.

The Australian lifted the tempo at the start of the third, firing up to break the Costa serve in the opening game with an aggressive overhead and celebrating with his customary first pump and war cry.

But he had to battle hard to keep Costa at bay and was a relieved man when the Spaniard finally submitted with two unforced errors when serving to stay in the match at 3-5 in the third.

London: Prince Charles's private secretary today announced he would conduct an internal review of concerns surrounding the trial of Princess Diana's former butler Paul Burrell and allegations of homosexual rape by a former member of his staff.

Sir Michael Peat said he would investigate whether any members of Charles' household acted improperly in connection with the collapse of Burrell's trial for theft.

Critics claimed the royal family intervened to prevent embarrassing revelations emerging when Burrell gave evidence.

The palace inquiry, expected to publish its report by Christmas, will also look at allegations that officials covered up accusations of homosexual rape by one of Charles's aides, and the question of royal gifts allegedly being sold on for cash, Peat said.

"The Prince of Wales has instructed me to undertake this inquiry without fear or favour," he said.

"Concerns have been raised in the newspapers. Underlying it may be some matters that may well be of concern to people and therefore we are going to look into these matters.

"I, and more importantly the Prince of Wales, are totally committed to openness and accountability. Points have been raised and the Prince of Wales has asked me to address them," Peat told the Press Association.

Peat will be joined on the inquiry team by prominent lawyer Edmund Lawson.

On Sunday, George Smith, a 42-year-old former valet of Prince Charles, was quoted, in a newspaper interview, as saying he was raped by another man on the palace staff.

Prince Charles' office has said that the allegations were investigated within the palace and by police, and that there was no basis for prosecution.

Smith was quoted as telling The Mail on Sunday tabloid that he was assaulted in 1989.

The alleged attacker was not identified in the report.

Smith was quoted as saying the man later tried to assault him again while they were both accompanying Prince Charles on a foreign tour to Cairo.

Law firm Kingsley Napley later released a statement on behalf of the unidentified alleged rapist, denying all Smith's allegations.

Prince Charles' office at St James's Palace said the alleged victim did not raise the issue until 1996.

It said in a statement the allegation was fully investigated but not reported to the police as "no evidence was forthcoming and because the person concerned did not want to pursue the matter further".

The allegation surfaced again in 2001 and police did investigate, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute.

A spokeswoman for Prince Charles repeated on Sunday that police had found no evidence to support his allegation, and that if Smith had new evidence he should provide it immediately.

The gift-selling aspect of the investigation follows claims that a personal assistant of the prince has been disposing of Charles's unwanted gifts and keeping up to 20 per cent of the profits.

Motorists will not be forced to pay a $10 entry fee into Sydney's CBD because of the widespread toll network already in place in the city, the State Government said yesterday.

The Transport Minister, Carl Scully, said tolls on the best and fastest roads into the city centre and the high cost of parking would rule out such a scheme.

"Motorists don't mind paying for a toll for the [early] delivery of infrastructure. But to suggest you suddenly have to pay a $10 tax ... would meet with significant opposition."

Mr Scully was responding to NRMA research that suggested nearly half of 500 people surveyed supported the idea of charging motorists to enter the most congested parts of the city - if the revenue went to fund transport improvements.

"I think on this one they're [the NRMA] on the wrong wicket," Mr Scully said.

The NRMA research, released yesterday during a conference held by the motoring group on transport pricing, showed 47 per cent of people polled supported a charge to limit congestion in the worst-affected areas.

The NRMA chief executive, Rob Carter, said 41 per cent supported people paying according to how much they used roads, while 36 per cent supported a transport levy on the general population.

The conference also heard proposals yesterday to replace all or part of the funds raised through fuel excises with some form of distance pricing, where the further motorists drove the more they would pay.

London: Ferry ports around Britain were on a heightened state of alert today, amid reports that terrorists might try to target ferries between Britain and continental Europe.

The reports were played dwon by the government.

BBC radio said ferry ports were put on their highest state of alert last week after French and Dutch security services warned that terrorists would try to board a North Sea ferry with a truck filled with explosives.

The intelligence is believed to have originated from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), it said.

Lloyd's List, the daily newspaper of the global shipping industry, said ferry operators across Europe were on high alert after Dutch and French intelligence warnings of a possible terrorist strike.

Citing a "leaked document," it said the Transport Ministry had ordered British ports to step up security checks on trucks bound for continental Europe, "suggesting that a perceived threat may emaate from inside the UK."

Lloyd's List quoted the document as referring to "a possible terrorist attack against ferries," while the BBC spoke of "warnings of an attack on a ferry."

The document quoted by Lloyd's List, however, quoted British intelligence as saying "we do not assess that there is any credible information or intelligence in support" of the Dutch and French warnings.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "It is not true that a new general warning has been issued in relation to ferry travel and nobody should change their travel plans as a result.

"The media need to be careful not to run these kind of stories without real authentication."

News of the ferry-port warning came a day after Prime Minister Tony Blair urged Britons to steel themselves in the face of new terrorist threats detected almost daily.

Excerpts from the official US government transcript of the audiotape purporting to be of Osama bin Laden:

The road to safety begins by ending the aggression. Reciprocal treatment is part of justice. The incidents that have taken place since the raids of New York and Washington until now - like the killing of Germans in Tunisia and the French in Karachi, the bombing of the giant French tanker in Yemen, the killing of Marines in Failaka and the British and Australians in the Bali explosions, the recent operation in Moscow, and some sporadic operations here and there - are only reactions and reciprocal actions. These actions were carried out by the zealous sons of Islam in defense of their religion and in response to the order of their God and prophet. ... What Bush, the pharaoh of this age, was doing in terms of killing our sons in Iraq, and what Israel, the United States' ally, was doing in terms of bombing houses that shelter old people, women and children with US-made aircraft in Palestine were sufficient to prompt the sane among your rulers to distance themselves from this criminal gang.

Our kinfolk in Palestine have been slain and severely tortured for nearly a century. If we defend our people in Palestine, the world becomes agitated and allies itself against Muslims, unjustly and falsely, under the pretense of fighting terrorism. What do your governments want by allying themselves with the criminal gang in the White House against Muslims? Do your governments not know that the White House gangsters are the biggest butchers of this age? Rumsfeld, the butcher of Vietnam, killed more than 2 million people, not to mention those he wounded. Cheney and Powell killed and destroyed in Baghdad more than Hulegu of the Mongols. What do your governments want from their alliance with America in attacking us in Afghanistan? I mention in particular Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia.

We warned Australia before not to join in the war in Afghanistan, and against its despicable effort to separate East Timor. It ignored the warning until it woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali.

If you were distressed by the deaths of your men and the men of your allies in Tunisia, Karachi, Failaka, Bali and Amman, remember our children who are killed in Palestine and Iraq everyday.

If you were distressed by the killing of your nationals in Moscow, remember ours in Chechnya. Why should fear, killing, destruction, displacement, orphaning and widowing continue to be our lot, while security, stability and happiness be your lot? This is unfair. It is time we get even. You will be killed just as you kill, and will be bombed just as you bomb. And expect more that will further distress you.

Doha: Osama bin Laden has threatened US allies, including Australia, in an audiotape purportedly recorded by him that was broadcast tonight on an Arabic-language television station.

In the tape, he also hailed the Bali attack which killed Australians and Britons.

"As you assassinate, so will you be (assassinated), and as you bomb so will you likewise be," he said in the broadcast on al-Jazeera, against the background of a photograph of the al-Qaeda terrorist network's leader, in turban and khaki jacket, a rifle at his side.

In the message, addressed to "the peoples of countries allied to the United States", he warned them against the "alliance between their governments and the United States to attack us in Afghanistan".

He cited by name "Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia".

Bin Laden hailed the attacks "on Germans in Tunis, on the French in Karachi, on Australians and Britons in Bali, against the French tanker in Yemen and against the Marines in Failaka (Kuwait), as well as the recent hostage-taking in Moscow, all of which were the response of Muslims eager to defend their religion".

The Qatar-based satellite channel did provide any details on how it obtained the tape.

On October 6, al-Jazeera broadcast what it said was a recording of the al-Qaeda chief in which he issued a new threat to strike US economic interests until Washington renounced its "injustice and hostility" toward Arabs and Muslims.

Ever since the US-led attack on Afghanistan late last year, there has been debate on whether bin Laden, who was in hiding there, had survived those attacks.

A former Afghan commander said in Pakistan on Monday that bin Laden was still alive and hiding in Afghanistan.

In Washington, the White House said it had seen reports of the taped message but was not making any judgments about its authenticity.

"We've seen the reports, we're looking into it, but at this point we're not making any judgments as to whose voice is on the tape," said White House national security spokesman Sean McCormack.


Explicit warnings that the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah would strike inside Indonesia and hit the United States and its allies at their "weak points" were reported to Australia just weeks before the Bali bombings.

The warnings were blunt and the attacks were expected to coincide with the anniversary of the first day of the war in Afghanistan, October 7, says a senior Western diplomat based in Washington.

That day was a Monday, and the Bali bombing happened the following Saturday night, October 12, when the nightclubs were packed.

The diplomat told the Herald: "We knew it was going to be in Indonesia and involve the region. It was very specifically from JI." The warnings had been passed on to Western embassies in South-East Asia and made it clear: "We will hit at your weak points."

Meanwhile, international schools in Jakarta were closed yesterday after reports of a heightened terrorist threat. A fresh travel bulletin was issued advising Australians to avoid the schools.

The JI threats before the Bali bombings led to a flurry of diplomatic exchanges and intelligence reports that went to the Australian Government, Washington and most South-East Asian governments in September.

The warnings did not specify where the attack would be or who were the targets, although they indicated that US allies were at risk. Possible locations were thought to include Papua.

Any doubts that the bombings were directly aimed at Australia were challenged this week when a new tape attributed to Osama bin Laden - and which the Howard Government and US intelligence sources believe - said: "I have warned the Australian people. They were involved in the war against Afghanistan. They ignored my warnings and woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali."

At the time of the September warnings, the US had uncovered the depths of JI's links with al-Qaeda in the region, including details of a plan by JI to hit "soft targets", including bars, restaurants and tourist areas frequented by Westerners.

Evidence of the switch in tactics came from an al-Qaeda activist, Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, who reportedly told the FBI of a meeting in southern Thailand in January with al-Qaeda bomb-makers that decided to target tourists.

It now appears that Imam Sumadra, named as the mastermind of the Bali bombing, may have attended that meeting.

According to Australian intelligence, Jabarah was also a key figure in a plot to bomb Western embassies in Singapore, including the Australian High Commission, last December. He subsequently fled to Thailand.

The Thai meeting is said to have been organised by al-Qaeda's chief of operations in South-East Asia, Hambali, the central figure linking al-Qaeda to JI.

According to a confidential Australian report, Hambali "was responsible for establishing a network of militant cells across South-East Asia in the 1990s". It also details his links with two of the September 11 hijackers.

A month after the US-led forces went into Afghanistan, bin Laden singled out Australia in his call to supporters to join a holy war against the West, denouncing its role in supporting East Timor.

In June, a captured al-Qaeda operative, Omar al-Faruq, revealed plots to blow up the US embassy in Jakarta and its financial networks. Diplomatic sources in Washington say that at this time there were also concerns that JI could launch an attack in Australia, with Darwin considered a possible target.

The Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, maintained last night that Australia had received no specific warning of the Bali attack.

His spokeswoman said the "only possible relevant reference to Bali" was its inclusion with other locations across Indonesia in an alert over possible terrorist activity against US tourists.

To the sound of gongs and bells floating on incense-laden air, the spirits of the Bali bombing victims were released to their next life yesterday.

Thousands of people, including the weeping families of more than 30 Australians who perished in the October 12 blasts, crowded round the site and nearby Kuta beach to witness the day-long ceremony. Many clutched photos of their loved ones.

The heads of sacrificial animals, including buffaloes, monkeys and pigs, were laid at several elaborate bamboo altars erected amid the ruins of the Sari Club and its surroundings where an estimated 180 people died.

In a related ceremony, a cow, a buffalo, a deer, a dog, a black goat, a black monkey, a pig, a duck and a swan were prepared for sacrifice.

The ceremony, conducted by Hindu high priests clad in white and gold, was designed to "place the souls of the victims in the correct plane, to purify them and show them the right way to enter the next cycle", said Ngurah Gede, one of the organisers. Pieces of rubble from the bomb site were carried to the sea in an act designed to restore harmony and the continuity of life to the community of Kuta. Incense burned atop the twisted wreckage of cars which still lay at the site.

The event, televised throughout Indonesia, coincided with a national day of mourning for the bomb victims. Some 8000 police were deployed throughout the island, with about 1000 of them in the immediate area. President Megawati Soekarnoputri, who is part-Balinese, did not attend, but was represented by her husband, Taufiq Kiemas. Australia was represented by the Health Minister, Kay Patterson, and diplomats from Jakarta.

The site was so crowded that the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Hassan Wirayuda, was forced to squeeze through the crowd over the debris to his VIP position at the front of the audience.

Among the mourners was Andrew Dark, 37, from Melbourne. He was in Bali on holiday with his brother-in-law, Anthony Cachia, when the bombs went off. He searched for Anthony for five days before giving up. He came back yesterday with Anthony's mother.

"We haven't found him yet," he said. "It's no closer. But I believe in bringing Anthony's mother over here for this ceremony. It's a step forward."

David (Spike) Stewart came with his wife Marilyn to mourn their son, Anthony, who died just before his 30th birthday.

"I really think it's very important. We still haven't found Anthony yet and there's not too many left [who haven't been identified]. It's not looking good at all, but this will help out a little bit. It's good."

The US Ambassador to Indonesia, Ralph Boyce, spoke of the "innocent lives lost" and recommitted to the "struggle against this mindless terrorism".

Amrozi's family set up a school that propagated hardline Islamic views and divided their village. Matthew Moore reports from Surabaya.

The day before police arrested him, the only man yet detained for the Bali bombings stopped at the one restaurant in his village for a meal of goat meat sate.

According to the restaurant owner called Mujib, Amrozi has enjoyed sate since he was small, often eating at his place twice a week. The fact that a police station sits on the diagonally opposite corner just 20 metres away was not about to stop him.

Mujib said Amrozi was always friendly, "a good man", although on this occasion he looked as if he was in a hurry.

Heading back to his home in the heart of the village of Tenggulun, Amrozi passed dry farmland studded with slabs of volcanic rock that in many places make ploughing all but impossible. Here farmers, in one of the poorest parts of Java, grow rice, corn where they can, and patches of green nuts they use in green nut porridge.

When they can face that struggle to till the soil no longer, they leave for Malaysia to take menial jobs, often on construction sites. In Tenggulun you can tell where a worker has sent money home by the two-storey "Malaysian" houses with chrome railings and curved columns that gleam alongside traditional Javanese timber houses like the one Amrozi and his family were raised in.

At any one time, more than 20 per cent of Tenggulun's 2300 people are off working in Malaysia. Amrozi has seven brothers and sisters and five stepbrothers and sisters

from his father's two wives. Six of them have been to Malaysia to work; but work was not all they found there.

When Amrozi left for Malaysia around 1991, it was as much to find one of his five blood brothers, Ghufron, as to earn money to send home.

Although still under 30, Amrozi had divorced his first wife and had just married Astuti, who told a local paper, Jawa Pos, he never sent money home so she divorced him.

In Malaysia he married for a third time and began attending Koran reading classes held by the then exiled Muslim cleric from central Java, Abu Bakar Bashir, who is under arrest while he's questioned about his role in the church bombings in 2000 that killed nearly 20 people.

When Amrozi returned home in 1997, his friends and neighbours noticed major changes to the good-looking young man who once liked to ride his motorbike fast, flirt with girls and shoot birds.

Maftukin, who lives across the street from Amrozi's house and likes to wear his baseball cap backwards, said Amrozi's clothes, his conversation, his beard, "were all different".

"Before he went to Malaysia he was short-tempered but after coming back he was a man of faith."

Before Malaysia, Maftukin had been friendly with Amrozi and had gone out with him, but Amrozi's stint away ended all that. When Amrozi returned, Maftukin found he had become "an introverted type of person, he doesn't talk much with the neighbours, probably because he doesn't share the same ideology".

This debate about Islamic ideology runs in a deep vein through Tenggulun just as it does in many parts of Indonesia where the dominant liberal views of most Muslims are regularly challenged by those pushing for less tolerant, more orthodox interpretations of Islam.

In Tenggulun, this debate is centred on the school Amrozi's brothers set up a decade ago to propagate their own more hardline views.

The bombings in Bali, and the possible role of the simple school where Amrozi was a regular visitor, have caused stark divisions in the community.

The oldest of Amrozi's six brothers, Khozin, conceived the idea of building the school, bought the land and heads the foundation that runs it.

He said Malaysia had transformed Amrozi for the better and their religious philosophies were much closer as a result.

"Before going to Malaysia he talked about driving fast, hanging out with friends, but after coming back he talked about ulamas who preach Islam. Before he went to Malaysia when he heard the call to prayer he'd keep working, but after Malaysia he'd stop to pray."

Often he would pray at the school where some 200 children from all over Indonesia have been receiving a strict Islamic education.

Such boarding schools are common in rural Indonesia, especially in poorer areas, and are popular with parents who want their children to get a thorough religious education.

Few of these schools, though, have the strict dress rules of Al Islam which are out of step with the surrounding community.

Males are forbidden from shaving their beards and must wear tunics which don't hide the ankles, and girls must not only cover their heads with a shawl but cover their faces with a veil. It's part of Islam's sharia law which Khozin believes should be instituted throughout the country.

To instil that philosophy in the students, he appointed as headmaster Zakariah, a graduate of the central Java boarding school at Ngruki run by Abu Bakar .

Khozin first came into contact with the Ngruki school through his two younger brothers, Ali Imrom and Amin Jabir,

who studied there. Jabir died in his early

teens when he was in of a large group who perished from exposure on a mountain-

climbing trip.

Abu Bakar's links to the school, and to the Bali bombings, are subjects being hotly debated in Indonesia. Khozin and Zakariah admit Abu Bakar has visited their school twice, but say it was merely to give lectures to graduating students. Any role in or knowledge of the bombings is denied.

However, these two gave a clear indication of their attitude to the bombings in Bali when they refused to condemn them.

Pushed on their attitude to the bombings, they respond just as Abu Bakar does, offering no condolences to the families of those who died nor any sense they are distressed by recent events. It's as if they are reading from the same script, calm, bloodless, and totally removed from the issue that threatens their school family and friends.

Speaking after he watched his brother confess on television to his role in the bombings, Khozin's response was of someone devoid of all emotion.

"According to Indonesian law, he violated the law ... I have no idea why he did it, it's his private business," was all he would say of Amrozi, who is facing the death penalty.

There was a similar response to scores of police outside his house searching for his brother Imron, who Amrozi says was involved in the attack.

The massive international search for two other suspects from his family, Ghufron and his stepbrother Ali Fauzi, also evoked no interest or concern from Khozin.

Whether they are all involved in the

bombings is unclear but they are all suspects and they are all missing. Ghufron and Fauzi are reported to have been to Afghanistan although Khozin denied that.

Family friends and neighbours who have not locked themselves behind doors or left their houses for the time being say Amrozi's family was no different to others in the town and there were no warnings about what happened.

The family was relatively well off and all the children except Amrozi finished high school.

Three kilometres down the road, Tawan Saleh runs Al Ishlah, another Islamic boarding school more representative of local feeling.

Tawan has long been concerned by the hardline views of his neighbouring school.

"I do not like it at all," he said.

In his view, Al Islam is operating as "a branch of Ngruki, not a formal branch but an ideological branch".

He said Al Islam was the only such school he's aware of in Indonesia with such close ideological links to Abu Bakar's Ngruki school, although he said that Amrozi's brothers were trying hard to extend the influence of Abu Bakar.

"Five or six months ago, Khozin and his brother Jafar came here to ask me to invite Bashir here to give a speech in front of our people.

"They asked many ulamas [Islamic teachers] around here to invite Bashir."

Abu Bakar then spoke at three boarding schools but not at Tawan's school.

"I said to Khozin we already have Islamic teachings here, What kind of teachings do you want to give us?"

It was his polite way of saying no, that he was not interested in the message of Abu Bakar although he believes many Indonesians are attracted to it.

"I think there's a trend of many people to like a clear ideology and Ngruki from the outset has always had a clear ideology like jihad [holy war]."

Tawan was quick to condemn the Bali bombings "because Islam does not teach or order people to kill".

But even strong opponents of Abu Bakar, as he is, could understand the core reasons why some Muslims won't condemn the Bali bombings.

"They don't like America. It's because America supports Israel and kills Palestinians. For many many years they are killed and are forced out from their land ... I heard from Amrozi the target is not Australia, it's America.

"It is the same with suicide bombings, many ulamas think they are right, and many think they are wrong, but they often have some sympathy for them."

The rapid arrest of a Bali bomber suspect has raised suspicions of a trumped-up investigation. But, as Darren Goodsir and Wayne Miller report, the police got their first critical break within an hour of the explosions - and now a wealth of evidence is helping to close the net.

While flames ripped through Jalan Legian - and stunned victims struggled to escape the inferno that had taken hold of the Sari Club - the Bali bombers were making their first blunder.

Despite months of meticulous planning in neighbouring Java, and weeks of meetings in Denpasar, one of three terrorists who had planted devices in Paddy's Irish Pub and the Mitsubishi L300 van parked outside the Sari was seen riding a Yamaha motorbike into the front yard of a mosque.

It was close to 12.30am, October 13 - and the getaway bike of one of the bombers had already been spotted.

A startled neighbour, suspicious that a bike with a damaged tail-light was being parked at the mosque in Jalan Ceningan at such a time, rang the police. The bike, coated in bomb residue, was quickly seized.

Within days, the bike's owner, the infamous Amrozi, who had bought the vehicle just three days earlier, was being tracked.

Astonishingly, the intricately planned attack had started to unravel before it had finished - before the appalling extent of the atrocity had even been determined.

Although the head of the Indonesian police investigation team, Major-General I Made Mangku Pastika, has described the attacks as a "low-cost, high-tech operation" - with cars, chemicals, mobile phones and "safe house" rental fees only costing about $10,000 - the relative ease with which investigators have identified the ringleaders has been startling.

Indeed, given the demand by Indonesia's President Megawati Soekarnoputri that the inquiry to be concluded by the end of the month - and with Amrozi's laughing confession with the country's national police chief, General Da'i Bachtiar, outraging Australians - there have been critical statements about the integrity of the case, even from Indonesia's political and military elite.

They have said that elements of the case have been fixed. That it's all too tidy, too convenient.

But such scepticism ignores the wealth of forensic material that has been gathered - all pointing to Amrozi, his home village of Tenggulun in Java and religious fanatics attached to the Al Islam school.

Hundreds of witness statements, crime scene data and intelligence reports started the ball rolling. But it was the identification of a key number on the Mitsubishi van that allowed the case to move up a beat.

Amrozi had chiselled away the van's chassis number. But, not knowing that the van had once been used as a public transport vehicle and so had another identifying stamp on its engine, he overlooked a key clue. It was this etching, found amid the skeletal metal fragments in a room at PusLab For, the Bali police's forensic laboratory in the backblocks of Denpasar, that kickstarted the manhunt.

This crucial breakthrough saw Amrozi arrested on November 6.

Within days, he had confessed about his accomplices, but police are convinced he knows much more and is seeking to minimise his role to avoid a firing squad.

On the eve of a major press conference tomorrow, at which the Indonesian police will release photos and sketches of 10 new suspects, police have a detailed picture of how the bomb was moved to Bali, where it was assembled, who was present - and the places and people they visited in the weeks before the blast.

The Bali "field operation" effectively began on September 27 when Ali Imron, Amrozi's younger brother, made inquiries about renting a flat in Jalan Marlboro, on the outskirts of Denpasar.

He moved in on September 29, using a fake identity card to sign the lease. This became the "safe house" for the following three weeks.

On October 5 Amrozi came to Bali from Java with the L300 van and the partially made bomb.

He stayed at the Harum hotel with two other men, including Idris, the "sleepy-eyed" pudgy man depicted in the first release of police sketches.

It was here that Amrozi met Imam Sumadra, alias Hudama, the alleged Bali mastermind, with whom he had engineered previous bombings, including attacks in Ambon.

Another three houses have been located, including a flat where the bombs were ultimately assembled, a second-storey apartment in Jalan Gatot Subroto, one kilometre from the Australian and US consulates, the scene of the third bombing.

The store where SIM cards were bought for the mobile phones - the devices that detonated the bombs - has also been located. Its owners have been questioned and receipts taken.

Several cars have been taken in for examination, including a white Toyota Crown in which Amrozi plotted with his accomplices in the Javanese city of Solo, the hub of Jemaah Islamiah.

Much has already been learned about Amrozi and his cohorts. Some of it has come from Amrozi's lips, but almost all of his revelations - many of them too incredible to be believed - have been corroborated.

And today, five weeks after the attacks, the identities of the terrorists are known to investigators - and are about to be publicly revealed. Only their whereabouts are unknown.

Now the world's leading terrorist has made it clear we are the enemy, Australians are looking to the Government for guidance. Is it doing enough to protect us? Mark Riley and Cynthia Banham report.

It was the chilling nature of the threats, delivered in the hauntingly modulated tone and calculated cadence of the arch terrorist, that captured the most notice. The promise of renewed bloodshed. The warning that military action in Iraq would bring another wave of terrorist slaughter. The claim that it was somehow God's will for the "butchers of Washington" and their allies that they themselves be butchered.

"It is time we get even," Osama bin Laden said in an audio tape message broadcast throughout the Arab world on the Al-Jazeera satellite television network this week.

"You will be killed just as you kill, and will be bombed just as you bomb. And expect more that will further distress you."

John Howard and his senior ministers have maintained since the morning of the Bali massacre that there is no evidence to indicate the attack was specifically aimed at Australians.

To suggest such a connection would be to characterise the deaths of dozens of Australian citizens as revenge killings for the Government's staunch support of the Washington line on terrorism and Iraq.

But any doubts Australians had held about their country's inclusion among the front-line targets of bin Laden's international terrorism campaign must have now been dispelled. "We warned Australia before not to join in the war in Afghanistan, and against its despicable effort to separate East Timor," bin Laden said.

"It ignored this warning until it woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali.

"Its Government subsequently pretended, falsely, that its citizens were not targeted."

The atrocity in Bali brought terror to Australia's doorstep. This tape kicked open the door and lay the threat at the country's feet.

The nature and degree of the threat to Australians and Australian assets at home and abroad have been brought into sharp relief, mobilising public concern about the level and adequacy of the country's security regime.

Professor Ross Babbage, a defence analyst from the Australian National University's Centre of Strategic and Defence Studies, says the audio tape confirmed what many in the Federal Government and the intelligence and security community had known for months. The direct threat the terrorists pose to Australia is serious and Australia should prepare itself for "a hit or two, maybe more" - on home soil.

It's a message Babbage says to date has not reached through to the general Australian public, which has been in a "state of denial". His hope is that bin Laden's latest message will serve as a "rude awakening".

"My awful suspicion is people are not going to be properly woken up until something happens on Australian soil. I've met people who say we've had terrorism in the past, this is no big change - that is simply wrong," says Babbage.

"These people are quite different, they have apocalyptic ideologies, they are dead serious about destroying large parts of the world. We are talking about a different level of threat than we've seen in the past."

One of the greatest challenges facing the Government is how to categorise the shape and character of that threat without inciting undue levels of fear and without adding oxygen to the underlying racial and religious prejudices within Australia.

Britain believes the level of threat is sufficient to warrant yesterday's issuing of advice for civilians on how to deal with a terrorist attack, including tips such as running away from poison gas or using handkerchiefs as improvised masks.

And in the United States, the FBI's latest warning says that the highest-priority targets are within the aviation, petroleum and nuclear sectors as well as significant national landmarks.

But in Australia, where security and intelligence issues have not traditionally been discussed, the public remains largely unaware of the nature of the threat it faces.

Would a better-informed public be more likely, for example, to report suspicious activities to police? Should Australia be considering whether to establish a new department of homeland security to co-ordinate the efforts of the disparate agencies involved in the anti-terrorist effort, as the US has done? Is there more the Government should be doing to enhance security?

Babbage says that the Federal Government's response to the new threats so far has been "on the money", but the states need to "get cracking".

He says there needs to be a "fundamental review" of organisations not normally associated with security and defence, such as hospitals and ambulance and fire services. "Because if we face a big hit those organisations are going to be under extraordinary strain."

But not everyone agrees that the bin Laden tape represents a new level of security threat to Australians at home.

ANU terrorism expert Clive Williams says the domestic risk probably hasn't changed much since 1998, when bin Laden said he was going to start going after American civilians and allies.

"Clearly there is a concern that we are now being identified as being one of the nations that's aligned against Islam," he says.

"But on the other hand none of those countries that was mentioned [on the audio tape] other than the US has been attacked

so far ... so we are still part of the background noise."

He does, however, acknowledge that

bin Laden's message signals a real risk to Australians travelling overseas, who should be concerned about visiting "high-risk areas" - a category in which he includes southern Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

These fears were borne out yesterday with the release of a terrorist threat against Westerners in Indonesia, prompting the closure of international schools throughout Jakarta.

The domestic threat could be even more serious if claims that the senior Jemaah Islamiah operative Hambali visited Australia - made by two foreign academics this week - prove true.

While questioning the basis for the claims, made by Boston-based academic Dr Zachary Abuza, and the author of Inside Al Qaeda, Professor Rohan Gunaratna, Williams said he'd be "very concerned" if they were correct.

"It is very important because he's an operational planner and the concern would be that he'd come here to set something up, whether that was sleeper cells or to set up an operation," said Williams.

"The position of the Government is that there's no evidence he's come here, but that doesn't mean to say he didn't come here."

Williams says the issue facing Australia is one of striking a balance between alarm and complacency. The audio tape was about "putting a PR spin" on world events, to make militant Muslims believe they are linked.

The political debate in Australia this week has centred not so much on our preparedness for attack, but on the link between the terrorist threat and Australia's increasingly likely contribution to a US-led military invasion of Iraq.

"The terrorists have done terrible things over the last 18 months, but the ultimate terrorist nightmare would be if weapons of mass destruction were to fall into the hands of Osama bin Laden and his cohorts," Howard said in the Parliament on Thursday.

"It follows from that that efforts must be sustained by the nations of the world to remove from the hands of people who might capriciously use them weapons of mass destruction."

Howard did not mention Iraq or Saddam Hussein by name, but the intention of his comments were clear. The Government enjoys strong support for its anti-terrorism efforts but not for the prospect that it may soon sanction the involvement of Australian military forces in an invasion of Iraq.

Howard's proposition suggested that the efforts against bin Laden and Saddam were allied objectives.

However, it does not automatically follow that if Saddam retains weapons of mass destruction and can successfully hide them from the United Nations arms inspectors who will soon arrive back in his country, that he would necessarily supply them to bin Laden.

A chief part of bin Laden's objective is to establish fundamentalist Islamic governments to rule countries under Koranic law.

Saddam, on the other hand, acquired his weapons of mass destruction, paradoxically from the US and its allies, to use against a fundamentalist Islamic government in Iran.

Still, there are more subtle common links between bin Laden and Saddam, particularly in Sudan. Although each has a fractious relationship with the Islamic regime in Khartoum, it is generally considered that the Sudanese Government has sympathies for both men's objectives.

US intelligence established in the late 1990s that Saddam had shifted a large portion of his weapons program to Sudan to be hidden away from the gaze of UN inspectors. The same intelligence organisations believe that Sudan has aided past campaigns by bin Laden, including the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Overarching the entire debate is a larger political equation that continues to favour Howard.

His handling of the terrorist issue and the increased level of fear after Bali have both served to fortify his strong leadership rating, while starving Simon Crean of the air he desperately needs to enforce his own leadership message.

Although Labor generally supports the Government's anti-terrorism initiatives, Crean said it would not back Australian involvement in Iraq without the sanction of the UN Security Council. Howard is leaving open the option of supporting an American campaign, either with UN support or without.

Crean has also made clear that Labor will push for the primary military focus to remain on protecting Australian shores in light of the renewed terrorist threat.

But the release of the bin Laden tape, and the increasing likelihood of renewed warfare in the Persian Gulf, will make it an even harder prospect for Howard to persuade a sceptical nation that it is in its best interests to become involved.

Twenty-five nations - from the richest and most populous to the smallest and poorest - vowed yesterday to press the WTO to finalise rules allowing poor nations access to cheap drugs to combat epidemics like AIDS.

But the Sydney meeting of trade ministers from 25 World Trade Organisation member countries failed to reach a definitive agreement on how this should be done. It has alarmed health and aid groups concerned that developed nations, where the drug companies reside, could have the power to frustrate distribution of the medicine.

The Minister for Trade, Mark Vaile, who hosted the gathering, hailed it as an outstanding success even though its only concrete achievement was to re-endorse a deadline agreed to last year.

"We believe there has been a convergence of opinion among the different stakeholders and interested parties [on the drugs issue]," Mr Vaile said.

"This is not an economic issue, it's a moral obligation."

The 25 nations at the meeting said they would send the issue back to WTO headquarters in Geneva for fine-tuning. A final outcome is expected by the end of the year. All 145 WTO members will have to agree on a deal for it to come into effect.

Delegates also discussed improving market access for the agricultural produce in the heavily protected and lucrative markets of the US and Europe.

Europe is seen as the major backslider on the issue and has the biggest subsidies for farmers, running at $400 billion a year.

Mr Vaile said he was heartened by progress on the issue which was also of acute concern to Australian farmers.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, yesterday said separate negotiations with America on a free trade deal would collapse unless the US was prepared to allow greater access for Australian agricultural exports such as sugar, dairy, beef and lamb.

"If you can't get any progress on agriculture, then we're not going to be able to have an arrangement," he said.

The US is pushing for relaxation of Australia's strict quarantine rules but Mr Howard said genuine scientific quarantine standards would not be changed.

However, he indicated that regulations the US wanted loosened such as minimum local media content and media ownership rules were "on the table."

Countries represented at the WTO meeting at Sydney Olympic Park included the US and European Union, who have been defending the intellectual property of the drug companies, as well as South Africa, Lesotho, Senegal and Nigeria where epidemics are rife.

Details of the emerging deal were scant from Mr Vaile but non-government groups said they expected a wide range of drugs, including vaccines and health kits, to fight HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis would be covered by the new deal.

There are also concerns that poor countries would have to negotiate with the developed country supplying the drug before getting it, a process World Vision's Kirsty Nowlan said would be administratively complex.

However Oxfam International spokesman, Jeff Atkinson, said poor nations like Lesotho - where 31 per cent of the population has HIV - had accepted a political fudge. "This is a setback in the fight to put public health before corporate profit, but the battle is not over," he said.

Police yesterday denied they used excessive force to quell demonstrations at the meeting of the World Trade Organisation.

Despite predictions earlier in the week that the talks would be marred by violent confrontations, most of the protest action at Olympic Park was peaceful.

But 35 people were arrested during the protests which began before dawn when a small group gathered in a "passive protest area" behind the barriers and fencing separating them from the Novotel hotel, where 25 international trade ministers were meeting.

They were later joined by 1000 protesters who walked to Olympic Park from Flemington railway station. Direct rail services had been cut off.

At the height of the protests, a three-metre-high wire fence was knocked down. The protesters tried unsuccessfully to enter the secure zone of Olympic Park.

Damien Lawson, from the refugee group No One Is Illegal, said the protest was a success.

"The ban on street marching was an outrageous limit on people's freedom of expression and the challenge of the fence was highlighting that limit," he said.

Mr Lawson said there had been concern police were not passing on the telephone numbers of the legal observers to those arrested.

The Prime Minister arrived unnoticed when eight-member teams of officers formed rugby-style mauls to charge and arrest alleged troublemakers identified by surveillance cameras. But unlike Thursday's Sydney protest in which police horses were deployed, injuring a reporter, the 20 troops and their charges were held in reserve. Assistant Commissioner Dick Adams said police had "used a minimum amount of force".

"The actions of many of the protesters here was quite irresponsible," he said.

The NSW Greens will next week push for an inquiry into the tactics used by police.

"This is what democracy looks like" was one of the chants which anti-globalisation protesters offered up between surges at the fencing around the Olympic Park hotel hosting yesterday's World Trade Organisation meeting.

They were talking about themselves, of course, but they should have been talking about the WTO - the world's most democratic international institution outrageously dubbed the "World Terrorist Organisation" by one placard-wielding activist.

Imperfect? Yes. Infuriatingly slow-moving? Absolutely. And with a brief, but chequered, history that has not served parts of the developing world well.

But intensely democratic, nevertheless. Just one country's refusal to support a WTO motion is enough to stymie any initiative endorsed by the other 140-odd member nations.

That's why calls to abolish the WTO, as many were demanding yesterday, are seriously misguided.

To do so would open the trading system to the kind of free-market anarchy which would really allow rich countries to exploit poor ones.

It's one of many misconceptions about the WTO and yesterday's "mini-ministerial" convened by the Trade Minister, Mark Vaile.

A press conference convened early yesterday by "civil society" groups highlighted as much. This "secret" meeting would make binding agreements, said Joy Chavez, from the Focus on the Global South group.

Poor countries such as her home nation of the Philippines, she said, would have to privatise water, education and other government services to satisfy the WTO.

Not true - on all counts. Scare-mongering and downright lies abounded among the incoherent and ill-informed rabble outside yesterday's meeting. None more so than its central charge that the WTO is anti-democratic.

What is true is that the democratic nature of the WTO - along with the complexities, vastly different interests and objectives of WTO members - means progress on any issue is glacial. Yesterday's inconclusive outcome on cheap drugs for poor nations highlights this.

But the benefits of progress are enormous. One positive step - say, cutting the $600 billion a year spent on subsidies and other trade barriers which stop poor nations selling rural produce to the West - would change the lives of billions of the world's poor for the better.

Developing nations - more savvy now about trade dealing after being dictated to in the first WTO trade round in 1994 - have, in the WTO, the perfect vehicle to press their claims.

So, protest against the United States and Europe and their poverty-causing trade barriers, not the WTO.

If you worry that the poor in developing countries are getting poorer, there's good reason to reconsider, writes Ross Gittins.

When a protest against the World Trade Organisation and the supposed evils of free trade can so easily morph into a protest against war with Iraq, you realise this is a case where youthful idealism is more significant than the facts of the matter.

One "fact" you'll hear is that, in the WTO's 50-year drive for freer trade, the changes have been biased to suit the rich countries. It's true. What you should also hear is that, now developing countries dominate the WTO numerically, they're determined to ensure that the present Doha round of negotiations redresses the balance.

Another "fact" you'll hear ad nauseam is that, in our increasingly globalised world, people in the rich countries are getting richer while people in the poor countries are getting poorer.

The protesters could be forgiven for believing this because it was true for at least 200 years.

And a lot of people who should know better are still saying it.

But the latest and most careful research says it's not true any more - and it hasn't been true for the past 20 years.

That research was presented and debated earlier this year at a closed conference sponsored by our Reserve Bank and Treasury for the members of the G-20. A volume of the papers presented at the conference has now been published, with a summary by David Gruen and Terry O'Brien.

(The G-20 is the group of 20 countries - including us - established in 1999 to give the middle-ranking and developing countries a bigger say in the running of the International Monetary Fund.)

Research presented to the conference by David Dollar of the World Bank found that the real income per person of the poorest one-fifth of countries grew at the rate of 4 per cent a year between 1980 and 1997, whereas that for the richest one-fifth of countries grew by only 1.7 per cent a year.

If you find that hard to believe - or if it conflicts with other figures you've seen - there are a couple of things you should know.

The first is that this comparison uses a relatively new and improved method of comparing the income of countries. The old and crude way of doing it was to take each country's GDP per person in their national currency, convert it to US dollars at the prevailing exchange rate, and then compare.

The trouble with this is that it fails to allow for the fact that one US dollar buys a lot more in some countries than others. In particular, it buys a lot more in developing countries than in developed countries (mainly because labour is so much cheaper in poor countries).

So, if you fail to allow for this - if you fail to adjust for "purchasing-power parity" (PPP) - you greatly understate the income of the poor countries.

The next point is that when you compare the average income per person in the poorest 20 per cent of countries with the average for the richest 20 per cent, you should weight each country in the average according the size of its population.

(For instance, it makes no sense to give Bangladesh, with a population of 125 million, the same weight as Togo, with a population of 5 million.)

I burden you with these technicalities to show how people with an ideological interest in proving that "the rich get richer and the poor poorer" can doctor the figures to get the result they want.

But there's another, more cultural reason why so many people still seek to deny that, as a general proposition, people in the poorest countries are getting richer. It's because, when people in Europe or North America think about poor countries, their minds turn immediately to Africa.

And it's undeniably true that the economic performance of most of the 51 countries of Africa has been very poor, with some countries experiencing declines in average living standards - declines not only relative to the rich countries, but even in absolute terms.

When people in Australia think about poor countries, however, our minds turn immediately to Asia. (Or they should - provided they haven't been totally colonised by information coming over the internet from the US and Europe.)

And it so happens that Africa accounts for only 10 per cent of the population of all developing countries, whereas Asia accounts for 46 per cent. It also so happens that a number of hugely populous Asian countries - China, India, Bangladesh and Vietnam - which were among the world's poorest as recently as 1980, since then have all grown significantly faster than the rich countries.

Now, I think it can't be mere coincidence that the African countries have had little success in increasing their trade with the rest of the world over the past 20 years (they've been victims of the rich countries' refusal to extend free trade to agriculture), whereas the Asian countries have been pursuing export-oriented growth strategies.

They've managed to break into the global trading market because they've sought to export the things for which trade is most free: manufactured goods.

(I'm not meaning to suggest, however, that participation in international trade is the single factor determining a poor country's economic success or failure. Obviously, many other factors would be important, including civil wars and AIDS. AIDS is one reason it's vital the WTO's offices be used to win the poor countries freer access to life-saving drugs at affordable prices.)

Now let's look at what's happened to the number of people living in extreme poverty, using the World Bank's measure: those living on the purchasing-power equivalent of less than $US1 a day.

As best it can be determined, since 1980 the number has risen by 170 million in Africa, but fallen by 370 million in Asia and elsewhere, leaving a net fall of about 200 million. (And this over a period in which the world's population grew by 1.6 billion.)

The divergent economic fortunes of the populous Asian countries on the one hand and much of Africa on the other have therefore led to the "Africanisation" of extreme poverty.

The contrast is particularly stark when you compare 1960, when Africa accounted for only about a 10th of the world's extremely poor, with 1998, when this proportion had risen to about two-thirds.

I've come to the view that, although the anti-WTO protesters are often sadly astray with their facts and figures - and their notions of cause and effect - they're performing a useful role to the extent that their pressure is obliging the trade negotiators to focus on the key question of what must be done to ensure the developing countries get their cut from globalisation.

A new generation of leaders took over top positions in China's ruling Communist Party here yesterday in what has so far been the most peaceful handover of power the country has seen in the past century.

China's new leader is Hu Jintao, 59, who was announced as the party's general secretary in succession to departing supremo Jiang Zemin, 76, at a special conference which followed a week-long party congress in Beijing's cavernous Great Hall of the People.

Billed as Communist China's "fourth generation" leader, after Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Mr Jiang, Mr Hu will be far from supreme in the five years before the next party congress.

The core leadership committee, the standing committee of the party's politburo, has been expanded from seven to nine members and is stacked with six factional cronies of Mr Jiang, who is expected to wield huge influence from retirement.

Mr Hu led the standing committee members from behind a massive traditional-style screen painting of herons roosting in a pine tree into a glittering reception room filled with journalists, in the first public showing of the new leadership to China's 1.3 billion people, who had no say in the choice.

The selection and placing of the eight members walking in single file after Mr Hu was being eagerly studied by political analysts for clues about the direction of the Chinese Government in coming years.

The line-up suggests that the party has ruled out significant political change or a loosening of its political grip. All nine of the standing committee are technocrats (Mr Hu and seven others were educated as engineers, Mr Wen Jiabao as a geologist), longtime party apparatchiks and government officials.

The best-known liberal survivor in the post-Tiananmen top leadership, People's Consultative Committee chairman and politburo standing committee member Li Ruihan, 68, agreed to retire as part of a deal with Mr Jiang, a political conservative and rival.

Mr Hu has been tapped for the leadership succession since the early 1990s, when he caught the eye of Mr Jiang's predecessor, the late Deng Xiaoping. He showed his toughness against dissent during a spell as party secretary in Tibet in 1988-92 when he applied martial law against separatist protests. Otherwise he is still enigmatic outside the party.

His brief remarks yesterday gave few clues of his personal ideas, stressing collective leadership and pursuit of Mr Jiang's "Three Represents" policy, whereby the party formally abandons its worker-peasant class base and asserts itself as the "vanguard" of the entire Chinese people, including private entrepreneurs, in a dash for prosperity.

Of the nine standing committee members, six are known for close links to Mr Jiang from his power base in Shanghai and are expected to wield influence on his behalf over Mr Hu. Of the remaining two, Wen Jiabao is close to Premier Zhu Rongji, 67, and will probably succeed him in March. The ninth-ranking member, Luo Gan, is an associate of departing parliament chief and former premier Li Peng, also set to retire.

Mr Jiang, too, is expected to retire as the national president in March, and the job will go to Mr Hu. But he will keep his third hat as chairman of the party's Central Military Commission, which controls the People's Liberation Army, the official Xinhua newsagency said yesterday.

Over the next few months, Mr Jiang will retreat to a luxurious housing complex being readied in his home city, Shanghai. But the political set-up he is leaving has some serious flaws.

Notably, his friends in the new politburo standing committee include some figures tainted by massive scandals, who may be targetted by politically-motivated campaigns and prosecutions.

Fourth-ranking member Jia Qinling was party secretary in coastal Fujian province when a huge smuggling ring was exposed. He avoided responsibility by blaming his wife, whom he has divorced.

Eighth-ranking Li Changchun was party chief in Henan province when officials encouraged a commercial blood-collection industry that has left an estimated one million people infected with HIV/AIDS.

Mr Hu is also thought to have more influence in the 366-member Central Committee, which meets less frequently that the politburo but can overrule it. He is also grooming a "fifth generation" of leaders now in junior ministerial positions and provincial jobs who may provide backing for an effort to shake off Mr Jiang's power.

With a low profile even by the hermetic standards of China's one-party system, Hu Jintao took over the most important political position in the world's most populous nation yesterday by appealing to the one constituency that counts: elite party insiders.

Hu, a merchant's son, survived a decade-long leadership trial by persuading elders that he was the perfect party mandarin, pragmatic and flexible, yet discreet and fiercely loyal.

That he rose to the top while scarcely showing his face even as China opened its economy to the world is testimony to the unresolved contradictions of the Chinese experiment with a one-party market economy.

Mr Hu, 59, is the enforcer who as China's top official in Tibet imposed martial law in 1989 to quell unrest. He is the nationalist who supported anti-United States protesters after a US bomb destroyed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999.

Yet he is also the innovator who installed broadband internet access at the Communist Party school and encouraged academic debates about democracy and separation of powers.

"People think Hu will fulfil their own dreams," said Wu Guoguang, an expert in Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

"The liberals see a reformer; the conservatives see a hardliner. Sooner or later he will have to make some choices, and people will see his real colours. But it may take years for that to happen."

As yet there are few clues to Mr Hu's inner convictions, and at least initially he will be watched closely by loyalists to the man he succeeds as the party's general secretary, Jiang Zemin. Indeed, if Mr Hu harbours secret plans for change, he is likely to be constrained by a power structure tilted towards Mr Jiang.

There is, so far, no policy, phrase or point of view clearly associated with Mr Hu, a veteran Communist Party insider. But his past suggests that he values power over vision. People who have worked with him say they expect him to tinker rather than reinvent and to commit himself only after cultivating broad support.

Even his personal traits - his 100-watt smile, his carefully coiffed hair, his engaging manner with people above and below his rank and his prodigious memory for facts and figures - suggest someone programmed to lead through the consensus of the elite.

Bao Tong, a former senior party official ousted after the violent suppression of the democracy movement in 1989, compares Mr Hu to the moon, a term of art in Chinese politics. He reflects light or turns dark, depending on circumstances.

"What he will be like after he has steadied his position is something I don't know," Mr Bao said. "Probably nobody knows, not even himself."

When he speaks in public, which is rare, Mr Hu never strays from the party's prescribed oratory. He has travelled abroad only twice, both times in the past year.

Still, some people who have met Mr Hu said it would be a mistake to underestimate him. In 1992, when he was plucked from obscurity at the behest of Deng Xiaoping, then the paramount leader, and given a seat on the ruling standing committee of the party's politburo at the age of 49, he became both heir apparent and target No 1.

Chinese leaders have often elevated loyal apparatchiks to towering posts and, about as often, watched them flounder amid the capital's factional politics. Mr Hu seemed to face long odds, especially after Mr Deng died in 1997. He needed finely tuned political instincts to survive.

He has built a power base through the Communist Youth League, which he headed in the early 1980s and whose alumni now oversee important party posts nationwide.

"Hu is a reformer who wants to accomplish things," said a party official who knows him. "He will wait for the right time to bring out his ideas."

On his maiden trip to the US early this year some people Mr Hu met privately described him as personable, even funny.

James McGreevey, the governor of New Jersey, who talked with Mr Hu in New York, told the Chinese official that with his full head of jet-black hair,he did not look his 59 years. Mr Hu replied: "China would be happy to share its technology in this area."

In public, though, Mr Hu took few chances. He gave no interviews, stuck firmly to established policy and read his speeches verbatim. He sometimes recited copious statistics about agricultural policy or car production, leaving audiences deflated.

At home, within the party, the trip was regarded as a great success.

The new leader is surrounded by men loyal to his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, in the Communist Party's top body, the politburo standing committee.

Hu Jintao, 59, takes over as party general secretary from Jiang, and as president of China next March when Jiang's term expires. A nominee of the late Deng Xiaoping, he won credentials in toughness for overseeing a martial law crackdown in Tibet in 1989. He has only recently been exposed to Western countries.

Wu Bangguo, 61, a vice-premier, is a former Shanghai party boss and close to Jiang. He is a possible candidate for parliament chief.

Jia Qinglin, 62, is a former Beijing party boss and a close friend of Jiang. Tainted by a smuggling scandal that unfolded under his watch in the south-eastern province of Fujian.

Wen Jiabao, 60, is a vice-premier close to the Premier, Zhu Rongji, 74, and is expected to take over the premiership when Zhu retires next year.

Li Changchun, 58, a Jiang ally and current party secretary in the prosperous southern province of Guangdong, was previously party secretary in central Henan and north-eastern Jilin/Liaoning, where he was ruthless in shutting down ailing state industries, throwing millions out of work. He is likely to head the party's ideological work, meaning support for Jiang's stance in favour of private enterprise.

Zeng Qinghong, 63, who stepped down as head of the party's organisation department last month, is Jiang's main protege and hatchet man. He will head the central committee secretariat, giving him immense control over party affairs.

Huang Ju, 64, is a Jiang follower who stepped down as Shanghai party chief last month.

Wu Guanzheng, 64, is a Jiang ally and party chief of eastern Shandong province, which is home to modern industry and expanding ties with South Korea. He is likely to head the party disciplinary committee.

Luo Gan, 67, is a protege of the soon-to-retire parliament chief Li Peng, 74. At present China's internal security chief, he is expected to take over the party's corruption watchdog.

Mir Aimal Kasi, a Pakistani who killed two CIA employees in 1993 in a rage over United States policy in the Middle East, was executed by lethal injection in a case that sparked protests in his homeland and fears of retaliation against US interests.

Kasi, 38, was pronounced dead at 9.07pm local time at the Greensville Correctional Centre in Virginia after the Supreme Court declined to grant a stay of execution earlier on Thursday and Governor Mark Warner refused to consider a request for clemency.

Kasi's last words, repeated in his native language until he lost consciousness, were "There is no God but Allah", said a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections.

In recent media interviews Kasi said he had no regrets for the January 1993 attack on a road in McLean, Virginia, just outside CIA headquarters. But he did hope there would be no retaliation from groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan that hailed him as a hero after FBI agents arrested him in 1997 in a small hotel along the border of the two countries.

"Personally, I don't encourage anybody to attack Americans," Kasi said in the interviews.

In Pakistan, Kasi's last day was marked by a smattering of anti-US protests. Some activists called for his sentence to be commuted to life in prison.

A rally of about 150 members of Kasi's tribe in Pakistan marched through the streets of Quetta, near the Afghan border, and chanted, "Aimal is our hero." They also burned a US flag.

"Aimal is not a terrorist," tribal elder Ibrahim Kansi told demonstrators. "His action was a reaction to what was happening to Muslims in Chechnya and Palestine." Kasi had said the shooting was a protest against US foreign policy toward Muslim nations.

Federal authorities never found any links between Kasi and terrorist organisations such as al-Qaeda.

He decried the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centre because innocent lives were lost, but he said he felt that the attack on the Pentagon seemed justified.

In the past week the US State Department has warned Americans that Kasi's execution could prompt acts of revenge in the US and against interests abroad.

At the White House, a spokesman, Scott McClellan, said on Thursday, "Our thoughts and prayers go to the families of the victims. This is a criminal justice matter, and the decision of the jury is being carried out."

Just as CIA employees were reporting to work on January 25, 1993, Kasi stepped out of his truck and began firing an AK-47 near the entrance to the agency's headquarters.

Killed were Frank Darling, 28, a CIA covert operations employee, and Lansing Bennett, 66, a doctor and agency intelligence analyst. Three men were wounded.

Kasi fired 11 times, and stopped shooting only when there were no more males in his gunsight. He thought killing women would be wrong because he believed that only men had power in the US.

He fled, but the FBI tracked him to Pakistan and brought him back to Virginia for trial.

In the northern Indian town of Dharamsala, where the Tibetan government-in-exile has its headquarters, posters threatening to kill the Dalai Lama have appeared. They say he and his followers in India will face death if they do not leave the country.

Police suspect a Tibetan cult, Shugden, is behind the threats against the Dalai Lama, who fled to Dharamsala from Tibet in 1959, and have tightened security around him.

The New Kadampa Tradition (NKT) branch of the Shugdens, established by Kelsang Gyatso in 1991, has its headquarters in Britain. For some years relations between it and the Dalai Lama have been strained.

The cult worships a 350-year-old wrathful Tibetan deity, Dorje Shugden, often depicted wearing a necklace of 50 severed human heads and having four fangs. With three blood-red eyes he is a sword-wielding warrior figure, riding a snow lion through a sea of boiling blood.

His followers consider themselves guardians of Tibetan Buddhism, and some have described them as the Taliban of Buddhism because of their extremism.

Shugdens from the Gelukpa (Yellow Hats) sect do not like the Nyingmapa (Red Hats) sect, and consider it a sin even to talk to Red Hats or touch their religious works. They have branded the Dalai Lama, 67, a traitor to the Yellow Hats for befriending other branches of Buddhism.

Kelsang Gyatso and his followers in NKT accuse the Dalai Lama of selling out Tibet by promoting its autonomy within China rather than outright independence, of expelling their followers from jobs in Tibetan establishments in India, and of denying them humanitarian aid pouring in from Western countries.

The Dalai Lama says Shugdens pose a serious threat to Tibetan unity in exile. He has urged Tibetans not to worship Dorje Shugden, saying it fosters religious intolerance and turns Buddhism into a cult of spirit worship.

Many followers of the Dalai Lama believe that the Shugdens have links with Chinese intelligence, and suggest China is exploiting the controversy to undermine the Dalai Lama's influence and weaken support for Tibet's independence.

The chairman of the Tibetan parliament, Toma Jugney, said: "It's a deliberate attempt to create differences, not just between Indians and Tibetans, but amongst Tibetans too."

However, he did not say the cult was behind the death threats.

In September in Kathmandu, NKT members held a news conference at which they said: "The Dalai Lama and his soldiers in Dharamsala are creating terror in Tibetan society by harassing and persecuting people like us. We cannot take it lying down for long."

However, an official who handles Tibetan affairs in India's Home Ministry in New Delhi said: "We don't think that there is any Chinese conspiracy behind this death threat against the Dalai Lama.

"Probably it is fallout from infighting among the exiled Tibetans. However, we have beefed up the security cover around the Tibetan leader."

The Argentine Government has defaulted on an $US805 million ($1.43 billion) payment due to the World Bank, deepening the country's rift with the international financial establishment and stirring concern about a new deterioration in relations between the United States and Latin America.

However, it made a token $US77 million interest payment on Thursday, allowing President Eduardo Duhalde to maintain that the action did not amount to a default on the country's last remaining source of external financing.

Argentina has already severely damaged its creditworthiness, having defaulted early this year on about $US100 billion owed to commercial banks, bondholders and other private creditors.

Thursday's announcement came after talks between Argentina and the International Monetary Fund, which have been dragging on for nearly 11 months, failed to reach an agreement on the terms for restarting international lending to Buenos Aires.

Hopes for a last-minute deal were dashed when the Economy Minister, Roberto Lavagna, told the World Bank on Tuesday that Argentina would make the $US79 million interest payment as a token of good faith but would not pay the remainder because of the need to devote precious foreign exchange to propping up the peso and funding programs for the country's unemployed.

"Argentina fully intends to meet its obligations once an [IMF] agreement is reached," Mr Duhalde said, adding: "This does not close the door; we are still ready to continue talks."

Thursday's move raises the prospect that Argentina could fall further into economic isolation. Some officials in Washington worry that if Argentina becomes more estranged from the IMF the danger will increase that popular sentiment throughout Latin America will turn against the fund, its overseers in the US Government and the system of global capitalism that they champion.

In the short term the default is likely to have only a modest impact. The World Bank will continue to disburse money to Buenos Aires under its existing loans for at least 30 days.

But after 30 days, unless Argentina has cleared up its arrears, the World Bank will suspend disbursements on projects that aid the country's poor. Perhaps more important, Argentine businesses that are still receiving loans from abroad to finance exports and imports would probably find it much more difficult to do so, said Michael Mussa, a former chief economist with the IMF, who is now a scholar at the Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Argentine officials said Thursday's move was paradoxically aimed at increasing the chances that the Government could strike a deal with the IMF, under which the fund would lend just enough for the country to repay its official creditors in coming months.

Australian Federal Police and NSW Police are investigating the mysterious death of an Australian Protective Service (APS) whistleblower, Gary Lee-Rogers, who claimed four months before he died that a police officer had pushed a pistol into his mouth.

Mr Lee-Rogers was found dead in his Queanbeyan flat on October 1, five days after claiming to his landlady that federal police had beaten him up.

According to documents obtained by the Herald, he had been in fear of his life for some time.

In a May 18 email, he complained of serious harassment. "My case will call the Prime Minister and other high-profile people to answer. I am in fear of my life and make it known through the WBA [Whistleblowers Australia] if I suicide that there is someone behind my demise.

"I have already had a gun placed in my mouth and WBA should know it was [name given] of the ACT police who did it. Make it known he is a corrupt police officer acting under instructions ... I am expecting an accident at any time."

A coroner's inquest has been ordered into his death.

Dr Jean Lennane, national president of WBA, said her organisation was calling for proper protocols for situations where people suspected of foul play were within the very organisations doing the investigation.

Michael Kennedy, a former NSW police officer turned academic, said it was apparent that already certain protocols had been breached. There had been shortcomings in communication.

"People are standing on ceremony saying they don't know if it has been breached," he said. "But the political nature of this required everyone to be told."

The head of the homicide squad, Detective Superintendent Nick Kaldas, said the squad was aware of the case but at present the investigation was being handled by Queanbeyan detectives, who were doing it well.

"Everything hangs on the cause of death being determined," he said. "If it is found that he was murdered, the investigation will be conducted to the nth degree."

Beryl Janz, national media officer for the federal police, confirmed yesterday that there was an internal inquiry into the assault alleged by Mr Lee-Rogers.

Mr Lee-Rogers, who had been acting assistant inspector for the APS, claimed to have become mired in bureaucratic harassment for reporting another officer for assault. In January 2000 he broadened his complaints to include more general claims of corruption and maladministration.

He said that when no action was taken, he had threatened to take the matters to the Attorney-General's Department. On April 4, 2000, he was arrested and charged with a series of offences he claimed were bogus.

He claimed that after that, the harassment increased, and included police officers driving past his home and pointing pistols in his direction. He found that without his knowledge, he had been subscribed to 400 internet pornography sites.

He complained to the Ombudsman and as a result got a trial date for November 4 this year. "I am in fear of my life and know I will die 'accidentally' of 'my own hand' within the next few months."
An ABA investigation into Telstra's 2GB sponsorship has gone all the way to the Federal Court, reports Kirsty Needham.

IT WAS a different radio station and a different phone company, but the questions being raised by the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) on Monday had a familiar ring. Three years before to the day, talkback host Alan Jones was defending his on-air support for Optus as stemming from a long-held belief in telephone deregulation. It had nothing to do with a $500,000-a-year contract the then-2UE presenter had signed with the company, the "cash-for-comment" inquiry was told.

The 18-month ABA investigation into secret contracts between radio presenters and sponsors, often involving favourable editorial content, resulted in new disclosure rules, effective from January last year. Presenters are now required to post a list of their commercial interests on station websites, as well as declare them on air.

This week, however, the ABA found itself again calling a formal investigation into whether broadcasting standards on disclosure had been breached by a deal with a radio sponsor.

This investigation centred on Telstra's sponsorship of Jones's morning show, now on 2GB, including the question of whether that advertising seeps into editorial when the full privatisation of Telstra is currently being debated. What the ABA could not reveal, however, was that a separate investigation was also being conducted into Jones's new position of control at the radio station.

The issue was relevant because Jones had claimed the sponsorship was between the Macquarie Radio Network and Telstra, removing the need for him to disclose a deal to his audience, as his 2UE counterpart John Laws, also being investigated, was bound to do.

After a meeting on November 7, the ABA decided to shift its informal "monitoring" of Macquarie to two formal investigations. Macquarie was shown a copy of the terms of reference the next day. It objected to the document describing the investigation into the control of 2GB and 2CH. Macquarie asked the ABA not to reveal the terms of its investigation. The ABA refused, so Macquarie lodged a Federal Court injunction preventing the watchdog from even discussing the inquiry.

What had made Macquarie boil was a reference in the document to the criminal code. Under changes to the Broadcasting Services Act, it is a criminal offence, with penalties of up to 12 months' jail, to provide false or misleading information to a Commonwealth body. The radio network wanted the reference out and an injunction on the ABA conducting an investigation.

Macquarie had already handed over a copy of Jones's lucrative contract under which he joined 2GB in March. Press reports in February said that Jones could not refuse an offer of 20 per cent equity in the station. What concerned the ABA, however, was that repeated questions to Macquarie on the issue of Jones's ownership had been met with the reply that there was nothing to report.

Until, that is, the issue was aired by Media Watch presenter David Marr on October 28. The next day the ABA received notification that Jones had only been in a position to control 2GB and 2CH from October 24 - comfortably within the requirement that changes in control of a radio licence are disclosed within seven days.

Macquarie's paranoia over the suggestion of a criminal offence became more apparent as its lawyers filed back into court to try to block public access to the original document - the day after a settlement was reached with the ABA to publish a redraft. The ABA is bound not to discuss how the case was settled, including what changes were made to the terms of reference it finally released on Wednesday night.

"The scope of the investigation has not in any way been altered," said the ABA chairman, Professor David Flint. Reference to the criminal code remains, albeit at the bottom of the document. The Communications Law Centre (CLC), an independent group specialising in media law which lodged the formal complaint about potential breaches of broadcasting standards, said it was satisfied.

It is understood that the ABA will also look for a series of contracts drawn as the details of Jones's equity were thrashed out, possibly including an initial gentlemen's agreement that was not legally binding. But the ABA will look more broadly than these contracts to determine the level of Jones's control at 2GB. Emails and letters will be examined to look at the question of influence. Media Watch highlighted references to Jones's control of the station in Gerald Stone's biography of John Singleton, published this year.

The Herald has had it confirmed that a document submitted by Macquarie on April 19 to a Senate inquiry into media ownership more formally states his influence. It reads: "The Macquarie Radio Network is owned and controlled by some of Australia's leading business, banking and broadcasting professionals - Mr John Singleton, Mr Mark Carnegie, Mr George Buschman, and Mr Alan Jones."

The ABA wants to know whether the Telstra deal goes beyond a normal sponsorship arrangement, whereby a media company may be reluctant to criticise its sponsor, to actually buying editorial. And if the deal sidesteps disclosure rules.

"We are dealing with commercial players and they have demonstrated they have found inventive ways to act, quite possibly within legal parameters, by finding a loophole," said CLC director Derek Wilding. "I don't think allegations of breaches mean the standards are worthless. But there are loopholes, and after 18 months of practice we have seen where the gaps are - and the ABA needs to fill them."

Flint described the ABA investigation as "an audit, a due diligence". He said Macquarie had been forthcoming with documents, and at this stage "there is not even a suggestion of a breach".

Macquarie maintains there is nothing to hide and that ABA investigators will be disappointed. "It was not an attempt to stop the inquiry," said an insider of the injunction.

Telstra's director of corporate relations,

Michael Herskope, said Telstra has had identical advertising relationships with Laws and 2GB since August. Laws reveals on his website that the Telstra agreement is worth $100,000 to $500,000. The decision to make a similar disclosure rested with Macquarie, said Herskope.

"In the case of the Alan Jones program, the contract is between Telstra and Macquarie Radio. He [Jones] is not a party at all but what is mentioned, naturally, is his program," he added.

Richard Ackland broke the original "Cash for Comment" story as a presenter of Media Watch and in February wondered publicly what was in store for Macquarie Network owner John Singleton when he lured Jones to 2GB.

Ackland said: "The issue really is that because Jones has 20 per cent of Macquarie, why isn't he therefore subject to the ABA disclosure standard for all of the network's advertisers?"

"If he comments about any of them editorially

he can't say he has no direct interest in them. He has a beneficial interest and should make the necessary on-air disclosures each time."

When Lleyton Hewitt became the tennis world's youngest No 1, they said he wouldn't last. One sweet year later, he's proven them wrong - again - writes Richard Hinds.

Nothing ever seems to come easily to Lleyton Hewitt. So it does not seem quite right that the game's berserk warrior was in the change rooms having his feet and toes bandaged when an Andre Agassi double-fault ensured he would retain the tennis world's No1 ranking.

However, at the end of a season in which Hewitt has defied health problems, a coach sacking controversy, the spectre of second-year blues, a public spat with the Association of Tennis Professionals, the earnest pursuit of one of the greatest players of all time and the dire predictions of those who dubbed him a mere "caretaker No 1", few would say the 21-year-old did not deserve a break.

It came when Agassi, who needed to win the current Tennis Masters Cup in Shanghai to have any hope of taking the top spot from Hewitt, was eliminated in the round-robin stage after losing a tense third-set tie-breaker to Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero.

That meant rather than fret about a potential Spanish conspiracy between Carlos Moya and Albert Costa that could cost him a place in the tournament's semi-finals, Hewitt could instead celebrate his extraordinary feat. Hewitt being Hewitt, he did that by grinding out a typically gutsy 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 victory over Russian Marat Safin, a performance that helped explain how this under-sized, overcharged kid from Adelaide had managed to plant his flag at the summit last year and keep it waving proudly for 12 months.

While others would be reaching for the champagne, Hewitt was still out there proving himself. Defying the critics. Making sure everyone knew this was no fluke.

"I think that was probably the driving force, to really believe in yourself and show why you are number one in the world," he said.

Hewitt was talking about his victory over Safin. But the statement also betrays the relentless motivation behind his unexpected Wimbledon triumph and the 57 victories and four titles he had ground out this year.

For as long as this racquet-wielding Energiser bunny takes to the court, he will be trying to prove something to someone. But so impressive are his achievements there are precious few critics left to defy. Hewitt's name now stands beside Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Stefan Edberg and Pete Sampras as one of just seven players to retain the year-end No1 spot since the rankings began in 1973. He is the first since Sampras in 1998 to go back-to-back.

Yet it once seemed almost absurd to think that the early version of Hewitt - Bart Simpson with a Yonex - would join such elite company. To everyone, that is, but Hewitt and his fiercely protective circle.

John Alexander recalls the comments of former English Davis Cup captain John Lloyd. "Lleyton was about 15 at the time and, when asked about him, Lloyd said he didn't think he had the right sort of game to win the slams. I remember just how greatly Lleyton took exception to those comments even at that early age."

Last year, some people placed an asterisk beside Hewitt's No 1 ranking. With Sampras and Agassi in their athletic dotage and other champions yet to emerge, it was said Hewitt was merely the best of a mediocre lot.

"The Americans, particularly, said he was a caretaker No1," says Davis Cup coach Wally Masur. "But to do this two years in a row is an outstanding performance. [Mats] Wilander and even Jim Courier got to No1 and it blew their minds. They had nowhere to go and it was all downhill. To get to No1 and keep improving is an indication of the incredible demands he puts on himself."

Masur makes his comments as one of the converted.

"When I first saw him I thought, 'He's not real big but he tries his tail off'. I didn't think of him as a world No1. But when you get to know Lleyton you learn never to put a ceiling on him because every time someone does that he breaks through it."

Hewitt said he had not expected to retain the No1 position and was shattered after succumbing to chickenpox and losing in the first round of the Australian Open.

"If you were to tell me end of January that I was going to be sitting here holding this trophy I probably would have laughed the way that I was feeling at that time," he said. "That's probably the biggest or the most special thing about winning it again this year, to bounce back after the chickenpox at the start of the year."

Like a prestige car owner comparing his Porsche with his Ferrari, Hewitt can now reflect on which of his year-end No 1 rankings he enjoyed most. Right now, the
first still seems the most satisfying.

"Getting it, being the youngest ever and there's just something about getting to No1 the first time, I believe, just to say as the years go by that you got to the pinnacle of your sport," he said. "I know Sampras has said a lot of the time that it's a lot harder to hold the No1 position and there's no doubt about that. It's bloody tough. But I think this has been fantastic and it's been special in a lot of ways."

Hewitt has not only survived the replacement of former coach Darren Cahill with Jason Stoltenberg, he has battled ill-health. He says he has not felt 100 per cent all year and was recently forced to withdraw from a tournament in Madrid with the No1 ranking on the line.

"I guess I should thank my professor back in Sydney [Pat Rafter]," he said. "He promised me it would all be all right when I pulled out of Madrid - and I didn't want to - and that, in the end, paid off."

Given his exhausting year, Australia's absence from the Davis Cup final is something of a blessing as Hewitt prepares for his next great challenge.

"Obviously the Australian Open would be one of my biggest dreams, to win at Melbourne Park," he says. "I haven't even passed the round of 16 yet."

Naturally there will still be some observers who believe the task of becoming the first local winner since Mark Edmondson in 1976 is beyond Hewitt. And that will only improve his chances.

Australian captain Steve Waugh had called on the second-string Australia A players to keep England in the grip of their first-Test trauma, and Martin Love yesterday re-opened recent wounds with his second double century against the tourists this summer.

Love followed the 250 he made for Queensland against England in the Brisbane tour match with an unbeaten 201 at Bellerive Oval yesterday. He pushed Australia A along at almost five runs an over before they declared at 3-353, inducing flashbacks of England's calamitous first day at the Gabba last week.

Granted the mercy of a declaration, England were 1-50 at stumps after losing Michael Vaughan cheaply when he chopped Brad Williams on to his stumps.

England hoped to extract much from this match, the harnessing of a new fast-bowling attack and time in the middle for their batsmen primary among their needs. By day's end they had achieved neither, causing yet deeper cracks in a fracturing team psyche.

It would be wrong to suggest England's bowlers did not make full use of a pitch that offered early life and played up and down. After all, they pitched on just about every part of it.

Tour bowling coach Graham Dilley, the only man with a tougher job than the physiotherapist, was last night exasperated by his wayward young quicks.

"You've got to be disciplined, you've got to be patient and you've got to be lucky, and at the moment we're nowhere near any of those," Dilley said.

Matthew Elliott's return after losing his Australian Cricket Board contract last year was soured by the first ball of the day.

The Victorian raised his arms to leave a shortish offering from Test hopeful Alex Tudor, but the ball lifted alarmingly from the green-tinged track and struck him on the right elbow. He had stitches, but x-rays revealed no broken bones.

As Dilley ruefully observed, things went downhill from there for England, which had as much to do with the arrival of Love as with England's shoddy bowling.

If Australia's 37-year-old Test captain does not go to the West Indies next year, the selectors will be tempted to take Love, not Waugh, after another top-shelf performance from the Bulls' classy No3.

NSW tyro Michael Clarke played with adventure in making 50 from 83 balls yesterday, but it is difficult to see him leapfrogging the contracted Love for the next Test spot.

Love played as though guided by premonition, so early were his feet in place and his bat poised. The 28-year-old's upright elegance has long been compared with Greg Chappell's. His cover driving in particular was worthy of the former Test champion.

It does not diminish the quality of his play to acknowledge that the bowling was palpably sub-standard.

With one and perhaps two fast-bowling places up for grabs for next week's second Test in Adelaide, young quicks Steve Harmison and Tudor were given a rails runs by the selectors when the latest addition to the squad, Yorkshire speedster Chris Silverwood, was made 12th man.

Although Tudor's first spell was useful, he later bowled two lengths and was duly thrashed by Love. Harmison, returning from shin-split problems, was rarely lethal and mostly loose. Andrew Flintoff left the field, raising concerns his groin injury may render him unfit for Adelaide.

Jason Gillespie will skip grade cricket in Adelaide today and will have his troublesome calf reviewed on Monday.

Empty pill bottles and an iron bar were found at the scene of a suspected murder-suicide in Sydney's south which left a couple and a seven-year-old boy dead shortly after a party at their home.

Post-mortem examinations were being carried out today on the three bodies and police have yet to confirm a cause of death.

But the woman suffered serious head injuries and empty pill bottles were found near the man's body, police said today.

Officers discovered the three bodies yesterday after a neighbour reported seeing a man lying beside the family's backyard swimming pool in Taronga Parade, Caringbah.

The victims were named by newspapers as Keith Dickson, his partner Debbie Dickson-Fuller and their seven-year-old son Jake.

Police would not confirm their identities today but said autopsies were being carried out at Glebe Morgue and a positive identification was expected.

Jake's body was recovered from the bottom of the family's backyard swimming pool by an ambulance officer.

"The woman's body was located in a room at the rear of the premises," Miranda police Superintendent Reg Mahoney said.

"She appeared to have suffered serious head injuries, possibly caused by an iron bar that was located next to her body.

"The man's body was located next to the pool in the backyard of the premises.

"A number of empty pill bottles were located a short distance from his body and inside the premises."

Supt Mahoney said police do not believe a fourth person was involved, pointing to a tragic double murder-suicide.

The last time the couple were seen alive was at a party at their home on Sunday night.

Police were interviewing those who attended the celebrations.

The Prime Minister says he is appalled by the suicide of Lisette Nigot, a healthy 79-year-old. But the euthanasia workshops run by the man she called her inspiration, Philip Nitschke, are booked solid. Greg Roberts, Mark Metherell and Ruth Pollard report.


They come to discuss methods of dying. In groups of about 15 at a time - average age 75 - they attend Philip Nitschke's workshops.

Admission is by donation. Dr Nitschke begins each four-hour session by asking every participant their reason for attending. He then gives advice on the adequacy of available palliative care and the existing widespread practice of "slow euthanasia", whereby doctors gradually increase the dose of morphine to terminally ill patients to hasten death.

But one woman to attend his workshop, Lisette Nigot, was not terminally ill. She was 79 and declared that she did not want to live to 80. She took a fatal overdose in Perth last week. Dr Nitschke told the Herald yesterday that drugs feature prominently in his workshops.

"I tell them what drugs are lethal and what drugs are not ... I point out the serious difficulties in getting access to drugs which are reliably and peacefully lethal."

Failing that, there are always his "exit bags". He said he had received orders for 200 of the plastic suicide bags from people who had been members of his support group, EXIT Australia, for at least six months.

The workshops were so popular, three years after they were first offered, they are "pretty well booked out", Dr Nitschke said. He had run about 20 across Australia this year.

For all this, Dr Nitschke insists he does not encourage people to commit suicide, and says he tried to persuade Ms Nigot not to. "I talked to her for a long time. I tried to talk her out of it, but it seemed to me she was determined to take the final step."

It emerged that it took Ms Nigot 80 minutes to empty 200 capsules into a bowl containing half a litre of water "to bring them to a drinkable stage", as she wrote to Dr Nitschke. "I hope I can make it. There must be an easier way!"

The Prime Minister, John Howard, entered the debate last night, saying: "I have a very strong view that we should not be encouraging healthy people to take their lives, no matter what age they are. I'm appalled to think that we may have reached a situation in this country where any aid or assistance or encouragement is given to a healthy person ... and I have quite strong views about euthanasia generally."

The Federal Government has vowed to try to outlaw the exit bags. Police are investigating the suicides of Ms Nigot (pictured) and a couple who also attended the workshops (story above). Dr Nitschke said he warned people that assisting suicide was illegal. "I answer questions as honestly as I can but sometimes I am asked questions I cannot answer because I would be in breach of legislation."

Mental health experts said Ms Nigot was probably suffering from depression, despite friends insisting she was not. They stressed depression was treatable. Professor Ian Hickie, head of the National Depression Initiative, beyondblue, said:

"We can have no confidence in Dr Nitschke's assessment of their mental state. If I was contacted by a person, as a doctor my first obligation was to conduct formal psychiatric assessment, not provide advice about how one kills oneself."

New South Wales firefighters have gained the upper hand with calmer weather conditions - but thousands of homes remain without power after savage bushfires around Lake Macquarie.

One house and three factories in the area near Newcastle were destroyed and several other homes damaged.

About 11,000 residents are still without power, after fire burnt through power poles and destroyed two feeders on the western side of Lake Macquarie.

Energy Australia said crews had been forced to abandon repair work overnight because of embers and debris falling from trees but had resumed repair work at first light.

It was not yet known when power would be restored and at times up to 30,000 homes were without electricity for two-hour intervals.

"In an area from Wangi to Teralba on the western side of Lake Macquarie, approximately 11,000 customers are without supply at this stage," an Energy Australia spokesman said.

Extra crews have been brought in from the Central Coast, Maitland and Upper Hunter to restore power as quickly as possible but repairs were unlikely to be completed today.

"We are appealing to Lake Macquarie and Newcastle residents to keep electricity needs to essential use," the spokesman said.

A southerly change overnight helped reduce the threat from about 50 bushfires across NSW but crucial rain missed the worst fires.

The Lake Macquarie bushfire burnt out 4,000 hectares in one day, leaving one family homeless.

"They did an amazing job to save as many houses and factories as they did," Rural Fire Service spokesman John Winter said.

"The tally as it stands is one house lost, several damaged - we don't know how many - and three factories destroyed."

The losses were in the Blackalls Park area.

More than 500 residents from Fennels Bay, Woodrising and Teralba voluntarily relocated to evacuation centres but had since returned home, he said.

There was still flame activity in the area but conditions had improved overnight, with cooler temperatures and a rise in humidity.

The humidity, however, inhibited backburning operations, Mr Winter said.

A blaze at Karuah had been contained and fires in the Shoalhaven, and at Kiama were fairly quiet.

Southeasterly winds today are expected to help firefighting efforts, but a total fire ban remains in place for the Hunter, Northern Rivers and Northwest Slopes and Plains.

While crews enjoy a few days of respite, they are anticipating a return to very high to extreme fire danger on Friday and Saturday.

Twenty-eight years ago, Sydney Croft and his wife, Marjorie, each lost a spouse to illness.

Marjorie was so depressed she became a shy recluse. Sydney's way of coping was to turn to alcohol. The pair found solace only when they met and married.

They vowed to each other they would never again endure such loneliness. On October 29, their bodies were found in their room in Bundaberg's Argyle Garden Retirement Village.

Mr and Mrs Croft, both aged 89 and in relatively good health, had overdosed on an unidentified drug they had "taken a long time to get", the couple said in a letter sent on the eve of their deaths to euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke.

"Please don't condemn us or feel badly of us for what we have done," they said. "We have thought clearly of this for a long time."

Dr Nitschke said the Crofts had attended three of his group's EXIT workshops and had spoken to him several times over a period of 18 months.

He said they had not indicated to him they were contemplating suicide. "I was not expecting that situation at all. They just sat there as a couple, holding hands. They asked certain questions. I gave them the best information I could."

The Crofts' letter said they had no children or anyone else to consider. At their age, they asked, "would it be wrong to expect no deterioration in our health?".

"More importantly, would our mental state be bright and alert?"

They left instructions for their ashes to be mixed together.

"We feel that way we will be together forever. Please don't feel sad or grieve for us. But feel glad in your heart as we do."

Glenn Beyer, the manager of the retirement village, said the suicide of the Crofts was completely unexpected.

"They enjoyed life. No matter what we did - bus tours, going off to the theatre, the concerts we have here, Melbourne Cup - they always came along. They got along well with everyone."

Mr Beyer said the only physical difficulties either had was that "Syd needed a bit of help because he could fall easily".

Along with Perth woman Lisette Nigot, Dr Nitschke said the Crofts were among a growing number of people attending EXIT workshops who were electing to end their lives while their health was still sound.

Rome: Controversial Italian gynaecologist Severino Antinori said a woman carrying a cloned human embryo should give birth in early January.

He told journalists the woman's pregnancy was in its 33rd week, and the male fetus, which weighed 2.7kg, was healthy and had "more than a 90 per cent chance" of being born.

The gynaecologist also confirmed that two other woman are pregnant with cloned embryos, one them in the 28th week and the other in the 27th.

He refused to name the country or countries concerned or provide further details, but said all three women are "in the same geographical zone".

The doctor, who first announced the pregnancies in April, insisted he had not carried out the procedure himself, and that his involvement was merely "cultural and scientific".

Italy is preparing to pass legislation that would impose tough penalties for anyone involved in cloning humans.

An international group of about 20 specialists including Antinori and American doctor Panos Zavos announced in January last year they intended to clone a human being in order to help sterile couples have children.

Antinori said today that he now has almost no contact with Pavos.

Antinori, 57, shot to notoriety in 1994 when he succeeded in helping a 63-year-old post-menopausal Italian woman become pregnant through fertilisation treatment administered at his Rome clinic.

The Lake Macquarie area of NSW has been declared a natural disaster zone following the fires that swept through the region yesterday and overnight.

NSW Emergency Services Minister Bob Debus today visited the area, near Newcastle, meeting firefighters and inspecting the damage.

The Lake Macquarie bushfire burnt out 4,000 hectares in one day, leaving one family homeless.

Several other houses were damaged and three factories destroyed.

Up to 120 people were unable to return home last night after the fires threatened the outer south-west Newcastle suburbs of Teralba, Fennell Bay, Fassifern, Blackalls Park, Awaba and Ryhope.

"Yesterday, firefighters achieved nothing short of a miracle saving hundreds of homes in the face of fierce firestorm conditions," Mr Debus told reporters in Lake Macquarie.

"In the Lake Macquarie area, firefighters held at bay fires reaching 20 metres in flame height."

Mr Debus said assistance to declared natural disaster areas would include help for personal hardship and distress as well as low-interest loans to primary producers and small businesses.

Grants also would be given to local councils along with loan assistance to churches and other voluntary, non-profit organisations.

He said farmers also could obtain subsidies of up to 50 per cent of the cost of road transport of livestock and emergency fodder.

Thousands of residents were still without power today after fire burnt through power poles and destroyed two feeders on the western side of Lake Macquarie.

After 38 years of fighting, it's one way to get the enemy to opt for a quieter life.

This pocket almanac from the Colombian Ministry of Defense invites guerrillas to desert with a slogan which reads: "Come Back Now! To Your Freedom!"

Colombia has been locked in a 38-year civil war, a bloody triangular battle between government forces, right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas, that has killed more than 200,000 people and left some 2.7 million homeless.

The almanac invites guerrillas to desert in the Araucan, Arauquita and Saravena municipalities bordering Venezuela.

President Alvaro Uribe this week sent officials to meet right-wing paramilitary leaders to explore eventual peace negotiations.


Uribe has said his government won't negotiate with any of Colombia's armed groups before a unilateral ceasefire is declared.

"The government, through the high commissioner (for peace) has already had contact with spokesmen from the illegal self-defence group for an eventual peace process, that would have as a prerequisite a commitment not to kill one more Colombian," he said.

He said no agreement had been reached, but the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, or AUC, the nation's primary paramilitary organisation, seemed to be willing.

Local media have reported the AUC group is preparing to declare a two-month ceasefire beginning in December.

Catholic Church leaders have acknowledged their involvement as facilitators in the preliminary talks.

Any eventual peace agreement would most likely involve amnesty deals for leaders of the armed groups.

However, the United States has asked for the extradition of half a dozen Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia leaders, as well as the two commanders of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia.

The government of former president Andres Pastrana negotiated for three years with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, after ceding a piece of Colombia the size of Switzerland to the rebel group.

The talks yielded nothing substantive and ended in February after the rebel group hijacked a domestic airliner and kidnapped a senator.

Colombia's 38-year civil war claims the lives of an estimated 3,500 people every year.

Dry, gusty weather fanned 55 fires across the state last night, with factories and homes destroyed and thousands of residents evacuated.

Causing most concern was the outbreak of several new blazes dangerously close to homes, schools and factories.

Some relief was on the way, with thunderstorms expected across NSW last night, but the Bureau of Meteorology predicted further dry conditions today.

Firefighters are concerned thunderstorms may ignite further blazes. But they say a predicted drop in wind speed will greatly help reduce hazards.

Last night, fires continued to rage in the state's south but the worst affected areas were Londonderry in Sydney's west and Lake Macquarie.

Thirty-metre-high flames leapt from Wakefield through Teralba, Fennell Bay and on to Rathmines, destroying at least two houses and several factories by late last night.

Homes in Ascot Parade, Fassifern, and Rhonda Road, Teralba, were destroyed but it is believed at least a further four houses could have been gutted.

Some devastated residents refused to leave their homes and were forcibly removed by police.

At least five factories in a Toronto West industrial area were destroyed or severely damaged late yesterday afternoon.

At Londonderry changes in wind direction and the efforts of six helicopters and 200 firefighters saved many homes. Fire brigade spokesman Ian Krimmer said the Londonderry fire was "as big as the eastern suburbs", with a front that extended between three and four kilometres.

Homes were within metres of being destroyed in Whitegates Road, Northern Road, Fourth Avenue, Seventh Avenue and Llandilo Road when a fire broke containment lines. Two properties were destroyed.

Fire crews stayed in the area last night, hoping to stop the fire at South Creek in the suburb of Shanes Park.

Although two large fires in the Shoalhaven area were temporarily stabilised late on Monday, they continued to burn yesterday.

A fire west of Nowra in Morton National Park, burning since November 8, has stripped 45,000 hectares of bushland.

Much of it was inaccessible to fire crews travelling by road.

A fire in Budderoo National Park, north-west of Kiama, was still burning yesterday but did not threaten property. The blaze was started by a lightning strike on Monday. Yesterday Rural Fire Service crews were confident it would not reach homes in the Robertson and Jamberoo districts.

Lleyton Hewitt's relentless chasing of tennis balls earned him the world No.1 crown and nearly $19 million this year but it wasn't enough to head off Greg Norman as Australia's richest sports person.

According to Business Review Weekly's annual list of the top 50 sports earners, Norman retained his top ranking with gross income - estimated from all sources - of $24,600,000 this year.

Norman has been far and away Australia's best earner in sport for many years but Hewitt closed the gap this year with Norman's income halved in the past 12 months after he pulled in nearly $50 million in 2001.

Hewitt, who won 61 of the 76 tennis matches he played on the ATP Tour, earned $18.8 million - half of which came from prize money.

Norman on the other hand, played only 14 tournaments on the US PGA Tour and his world wide earnings on the golf course were a little over $1 million.

In other words, his prize money is more like pocket money.

Norman, 47, makes the bulk of his money from his various businesses - golf course design, grass growing, clothing, wine and the simple business of just being the Shark.

Soccer players make up the bulk of the top-50 list, headed by Leeds star Harry Kewell, who earned an estimated $18 million.

His Leeds team-mate Mark Viduka reputedly earned $7.5 million.

Goalkeeper Mark Bosnich, even though he has hardly played this year and reportedly has undergone treatment for clinical depression, earned $6.5 million.

Kostya Tszyu's efforts in becoming the undisputed super lightweight boxing champion made him a big mover as he joined Bosnich at fifth on the list, also with $6.5 million.

Baseballer Graeme Lloyd ($5.5 million), golfer Robert Allenby ($3.92 million), swimmer Ian Thorpe ($3.8 million) and soccer player Craig Moore ($3.75 million) round out the top-10.

Dropping out of the list from last year were retired NBA basketballer Luc Longley, retired tennis star Patrick Rafter and the regularly injured Mark Philippoussis.

Cathy Freeman, despite running in just one major event this year - the Commonwealth Games relay - still earned $1.72 million through sponsorship.

BRW predicts Tzsyu will be a big mover on the list next year as he fights for more lucrative purses and he could even knock Norman off his perch.

And anyone questioning Anthony Mundine's decision to switch from rugby league to boxing should find the answer in the fact Mundine earned $3 million this year to be 14th on the list.

No rugby league or rugby union player made the top-50 list.

The will of the wind dictated the lives of Fourth Avenue, Londonderry yesterday.

By late afternoon, flames had enveloped the street - but, moments before lives were devastated, a swift change in wind direction averted catastrophe.

Not one home was lost, thanks to a combination of fate and the heroic efforts of firefighters.

Standing, surrounded in ash, the West family could not believe their home, number 26 Fourth Avenue, was still there.

"We went to church on Sunday and we hadn't been for a while, but I can't believe we have been this lucky," Bob West said.

The fire came from nowhere yesterday afternoon and was on their doorstep in minutes.

Watering down his now-black lawn, Mr West - who said the family had lived there for as long as they could remember - described the moment he thought their home would be destroyed.

"The fire brigade truck was shielding what I could see, but as I moved all there was was just flames and smoke, and I thought, 'That's it, it's gone'," he said.

"But as the smoke cleared, there it was."

Daniel Maxwell left work after hearing radio reports about his suburb being in danger, but could not get through to his house because of road blocks.

But he eventually reached the top of Fourth Avenue, only to see the whole street alight.

"I saw all the flames and smoke and I just knew if there were flames up this end there was no way my house would still be there," he said. "I started running and I was saying 'let me through', I had to get down there."

As he reached the other end, he realised that, somehow, his home had been spared.

"I just couldn't believe it was still there, I mean, I thought there was no way," he said.

Doors away, at 28 Fourth Avenue, the Atletos family was trying to rescue one-week-old greyhound puppies which had dehydrated in the heat.

The dogs would not drink, and while the family home was being threatened from a blaze just metres away, they were hosing down the puppies - with the small amount of water available - to try to keep them alive. The puppies died.

Chris Atletos had the bobcat out in the backyard to try to shorten the grass.

"The fire was about 50 metres away and then all of a sudden it was right behind me," he said. "I just had to run."

His wife, Christine, had sent her three children to stay with relatives so they would not have to see how close they came to losing their home.

"It's just so hard to describe this feeling - it is so awful. Coming so close to losing everything," she said. "I'm still not sure we are safe yet."

Lisette Nigot's death in Perth has introduced a new phase into the language - rational suicide. It has also raised questions about the attitude of ageing Australians to their use-by date. Mark Metherell and Ruth Pollard report.


After 80 years of a good life I have enough of it ... I want to stop it before it gets bad.

Lisette Nigot wrote these words before taking her fatal overdose last week, bringing to an end a successful and healthy life. Her death has prompted widespread comment across Australia. Euthanasia is a divisive subject but the Nigot suicide prompts two questions: was it rational and should we be surprised?

Not particularly, says suicidologist Diego De Leo. It's not that unusual for the famous and successful to end their lives before decline sets in: macho author Ernest Hemingway and Kodak Brownie inventor George Eastman did it, says Professor De Leo. Why not Nigot, the woman who had received France's highest academic award seven years ago?

De Leo says he strongly believes that many older people commit suicide at the prospect of empty days after a life of high achievement and social stimulus.

"When you feel you are just waiting for the end of your days, the question becomes: 'why to live?"'

De Leo, a psychopathologist and suicidologist who heads the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention at Griffith University in Brisbane, is one of Australia's few full-time scholars of suicide.

He believes the end chosen by Nigot may well reflect contemporary society's failure to retain a sociable place for its elders: "They are human beings in need of contact with other people, not just being given a hot meal. Even healthy older people may feel so emotionally excluded ... that their lives are meaningless. What we are doing for the elderly and people who are very old is we are just taking care of their survival and not their quality of life."

Suicide rates are highest in young people, then peak again in those aged over 75, particularly men, says Ian Hickie, the head of the National Depression Initiative, beyondblue. "That 80 is your use-by date is a common social myth and we see it reflected in suicide rates," Professor Hickie says. "Older people can have a strong sense that they are useless, that they are just a burden on society - the danger is when medical care and families see them that way as well." Hickie says while Nigot was in good physical health, it was not clear whether she was in a healthy mental state.

"Certainly if someone expresses the view that their life holds no value, I would instantly wonder whether they had developed a significant depressive illness," he says.

"Euthanasia promotes an important debate about the quality of life, but there is a different thing getting promoted here and that is rational suicide. Such a concept promotes the dangerous idea that people have an intrinsic use-by date."

The euthanasia debate goes to the heart of the issue of quality of life and the tension between medical intervention and palliative care versus euthanasia. But Hickie warns that to confuse those issues is dangerous. "The reality is, for an individual to seek out information about killing themselves, the likelihood is that they will be depressed, particularly if they are old."

As people age, the risk of depression increases, according to Gary Andrews, a professor of aging at the University of South Australia and director the Centre for Ageing Studies at Flinders University.

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for 1996-98, there are two peaks in suicide incidence, particularly for men. The first peak is in the 25-to-34 age group, where 37 men and 7.4 women out of every 100,000 people suicide.

The rate then drops as people age - to 22 men and 6.3 women in every 100,000 for those aged 55-64 - then peaks again in the over-75 age group, with 31.3 men in every 100,000 committing suicide, the ABS says.

"The issue here is the image of growing old ... and the sense that one wants to avoid it and avoid being a burden," Andrews says.

"You avoid that by stepping off the carousel early. The problem is how society perceives old age and that people who are ageing perceive themselves in these negative terms."

As for the role of euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke, "Clearly the target of organisations like Exit Australia is certainly not older people generally or those with low self-esteem," Andrews says.

"Their target is for people who are seriously suffering a terminal illness and want to really relieve themselves of pain and suffering generally and one can appreciate that."

"If their efforts encourage or make it easier for people who [don't have a] terminal illness or are 'tired of life' then I think that is a very unfortunate side-effect ... and unintended consequence to what they are doing."

Dr Paul Morgan, the deputy director of the support group SANE Australia, says people with depression are six times more likely to kill themselves than the general population.

"Loneliness and depression are very common in older people," Morgan says, citing the death of friends or a partner, loss of a life role, retirement and increasing frailty as contributing factors to these feelings.

"The last thing that people who are lonely, depressed and feeling worthless need is to be invited along and told how to end it. It is a horrific thought. They need help to get a life, not get a death."

Euthanasia supporter Peter Baume says the view that older people may turn to suicide to leave a meaningless existence is "a red herring".

"The fact is she [Nigot] ended her life," he says.

Baume, a patron of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of NSW and chancellor of the Australian National University, says people may not realise suicide is not illegal.

Rational suicide, he says, appears entirely credible. "If you take someone diagnosed with motor neurone disease, it might be perfectly rational for someone to kill themselves."

Baume believes there is little doubt that depression among the elderly is underdiagnosed.

But that is not to suggest that Nigot was suffering depression, Baume hastens to add. "I have no way of knowing."

His approach is that if patients come to him for advice about killing themselves, "I will talk to them.

If they are depressed I will treat them. But they are not all depressed. In the end I can't stop them jumping off a cliff."

Baume says that from what reports he has seen of Nigot's death, the case had drawn attention because of euthanasia campaigner Nitschke's contact with her.

It is important to make the distinction between euthanasia and suicide, the co-ordinator of the health-law program at Sydney University, Dr Roger Magnusson, says.

"What we are dealing with in the case of Lisette Nigot is suicide, pure and simple," says Magnusson, who wrote the book Angels of Death: exploring the euthanasia underground.

"There is a clear distinction between someone actively dying in acute pain and unbearable suffering and recognising their right to self-autonomy, and someone who is healthy but unhappy."

Magnusson says while there is much sympathy for a doctor who intervenes to cut short a patient's pain and suffering, there is no sympathy for those who counsel someone to death when they are healthy and unhappy.

"It attacks the sanctity of life," Magnusson says. "Even if you can have rational suicide, I would have thought it was extremely reckless for people who are in favour of euthanasia to align their cause with the suicide of healthy but unhappy people.

"It is important to underscore the value of older people to society and to recognise that there is public value in all of us feeling our lives are important."

A discarded cigarette butt was the likely cause of massive bushfires that destroyed one home and several sheds on properties around Newcastle yesterday.

NSW Emergency Services Minister Bob Debus today declared the area of Lake Macquarie a natural disaster zone in the wake of the fires.

"I plead with people to just think about what they are doing when trying to put out a cigarette in a car," Mr Debus said.

"The careless act of flicking a cigarette butt out of a car window quite possibly put thousands of homes at risk yesterday."

The Lake Macquarie bushfire burnt out 4,000 hectares in one day, destroying one family home and damaging several others.

Three factories were also destroyed as blazes swept across the area, and 120 people were evacuated from residences in outer south-western Newcastle.

Thousands of residents were still without power today because fire burnt through power poles and destroyed two feeders on the western side of Lake Macquarie.

"Yesterday, firefighters achieved nothing short of a miracle saving hundreds of homes in the face of fierce firestorm conditions," Mr Debus told reporters in Lake Macquarie today.

He said police and fire investigators were working to officially determine the cause of the blaze, which may also be the subject of a coronial inquiry.

Lake Macquarie Rural Fire Service (RFS) Superintendent Steve Sowter said initial evidence suggested a cigarette butt sparked the fires.

"It's subject to investigation but under the conditions and the initial reports of where the fire started we think that it was most likely to be a cigarette," he said.

The bushfires continue to burn out of control on three separate fronts around the Awaba and Ryhope areas.

However, south-easterly winds have push the fire back on itself, which will assist firefighting efforts.

The natural disaster area declaration allows for assistance for personal hardship and distress as well as low-interest loans to primary producers and small businesses, Mr Debus said.

London: A young Australian woman was raped in the Irish city of Cork as her screams for help went unheeded.

Police in Cork have launched a hunt for the rapist and officers admitted they were "very surprised" that no-one had either heard or come to the aid of the young tourist, the Irish Independent newspaper reported.

The unnamed woman, aged in her early 20s, was attacked early Tuesday just metres from one of Cork's busiest streets, in grounds belonging to University College Cork.

The attack only stopped when the rapist was disturbed by a passer-by, police said.

The woman was reported to be deeply traumatised by her ordeal, although she was discharged from hospital several hours after being treated for minor injuries.

Garda Superintendent Kieran McGann admitted that someone must have either heard or noticed something suspicious given that the attack occurred in one of the city's busiest nightlife areas.

The woman had been out in an area well-known for its student bars when she met a man in his late 20s or early 30s, police said.

She had chatted with the man before deciding to leave the pub.

Soon after, the man grabbed her by the throat and dragged her into undergrowth.

The woman told police she screamed and repeatedly pleaded for help but, despite hearing people walking close by, no-one came to her aid.

A Texas judge who wants to let film-makers videotape the jury deliberations in a death penalty case has run into opposition from prosecutors, who want nothing to do with it.

District Judge Ted Poe decided it was okay to allow cameras from PBS's Frontline to roll as jurors consider the fate of 17-year-old Cedric Harrison, who is accused of the fatal shooting of a man during a carjacking.

On Monday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals intervened, giving Judge Poe until next week to explain why scenes from the jury room - a chamber closed by tradition, not Texas law - should be part of next year's TV line-up.

"He thought our criminal justice system benefited from people seeing how it works," said Chip Babcock, who is representing Judge Poe before the appeals court. "Jurors will be wrestling with literally a life-and-death issue. It will be extraordinarily interesting to see."

Harrison and his mother support the idea and have signed waivers that they would not use the film on appeal or seek a new trial. His lawyers said the filming could help guarantee a fair trial.

Prosecutors argue that the prospect of open deliberations would harm the quality of the jury eventually chosen. "The desire to serve on a Survivor-style reality television series should not be added to the qualifications for jury service," they wrote.

Shari Diamond, a law professor and an expert on how juries make decisions, said: "It involves jurors in signing on for a national public performance. The potential for that having a distorting effect on their work is palpable."

Under Judge Poe's plan, an unobtrusive remote camera would be installed in the ceiling of the jury room. Videotape would be reviewed and kept by the court until the trial was over.

Potential jurors who object to the cameras would not have to serve.

Neil McCabe, a professor at the South Texas College of Law, said if prosecutors present a strong case, cameras won't change the trial outcome.

"We hand out death penalties like party favours here," he, referring to Houston's reputation for sending more prisoners to death row than any other US city. "If this is something that cries out for the death penalty anyway, you can expect the jury to give it."

But William Delmore, a Houston lawyer, said he thought a televised jury might be less likely to impose the death penalty.

Cathy Freeman and her former manager and partner Nick Bideau have settled their lawsuit.

Mr Bideau today issued a statement announcing he had unreservedly withdrawn all claims made against Ms Freeman and her company, Catherine Freeman Enterprises, including the Victorian Supreme Court action instigated in October 2000.

"I am so pleased that this is all over. Now I can go on to fully concentrate on my goals and aspirations," Ms Freeman said in a statement.

Bideau, who co-owned the Melbourne International Track Club, had sued Ms Freeman for breach of contract after she ended her association with the club in 2000.

The Olympic 400 metre gold medallist countersued, claiming she was entitled to break the agreement signed in 1994 because Bideau allegedly took advantage of her naivety and lack of business experience.

Today, the pair announced they had reached an out-of-court settlement and would not comment beyond the statement.

"I am so pleased that this is all over. Now I can go on to fully concentrate on my goals and aspirations," Ms Freeman said in the statement.

"I have learnt some important life lessons throughout this time, which will undoubtedly hold me, and my children, in good stead for the rest of our days.

"In the past, I chose to take Bideau's assistance but it was my belief in myself, and my willingness to pursue my goals, that is and always will be the driving force in my life."

Mr Bideau said he was pleased that a settlement had been reached.

"Once we were a team, however Catherine has always been a self-determined person who has made the most of her opportunities," Mr Bideau said.

"I congratulate Catherine on all of her success and I acknowledge the contribution she has made to my own career."

Both wished each other well for the future.

Australia would have good economic growth in 2003-04 if the drought broke, Treasurer Peter Costello said today as the government cut its growth forecast from 3.75 per cent to three per cent.

"(The position in) 2003-04 depends to some degree on whether or not the drought breaks," Mr Costello said.

"This has been a very severe drought and if the drought breaks, then we will have good growth.

"If it doesn't break, then we'd be winding back these forecasts for 2003-04."

The Budget forecast shows that the drought will knock about 17 per cent off farm production.



advertisement

advertisement

Meanwhile, Mr Costello said defence would have priority over other portfolios.

Mr Costello told reporters the federal government was budgeting for a moderate surplus but it would not withstand any large new spending.

"My expectation is that as we go down to the expenditure review committee there will be some demands coming out of Defence," he said. "They will have priority over everything else.

"Once they are taken into account, I don't believe that there will be much room."

But the Government would not press ahead with the sale of Telstra until 2004/5.

But he said delaying the sale would not have any impact on the Budget bottom line.

"The effect of Telstra in relation to the forward estimates is essentially neutral," he said.

"So that doesn't have an effect on the bottom line in a substantive or significant way."

He said the government still had to address the report of the Estens inquiry into regional telecommunications, and had to have the numbers in the Senate to get the sale through.

He said the Senate did not seem to be in the mood to approve the full sale and it would take time to negotiate.

"We have said previously ... obviously before any sale, even after those two conditions, we would asses the value for the taxpayer," Mr Costello said.

"So essentially we have moved back our assessment of when that is likely to happen by a year."

He said the price estimate for Telstra was revised down somewhat.

"The price estimate has been revised down somewhat," Mr Costello said.

"But I want to make this clear, the price estimates that we put are obviously what we consider reasonable assumptions.

"But reasonable assumptions in 2004/05 and following.

"Now don't take me as a sharemarket forecaster, I am not saying that I can tell you what the price of Telstra is going to be in 2005 or 2006 or 2007.

"What we are saying is we have taken advice on reasonable assumptions and the effect of that is essentially it's neutral over the budget forward estimates."

He also said the international economy remained quite fragile.

"Our assessment is that the international economy remains quite fragile. The United States recovery is slow and difficult, Europe is revising its growth forecast down, including the United Kingdom, Japan continues to disappoint in terms of growth.

"And the international climate is in many respects as difficult as it has been for a very long period of time."

A near dead sheep today gave Prime Minister John Howard a graphic, first-hand insight into the impact of the drought.

Making his first foray into drought-ravaged areas this year, Mr Howard was shown an almost empty dam on the Langton's Lease property near Cobar in western New South Wales.

Along with him were Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson and local National MP John Cobb, both of whom operate their own farms.

On climbing to the top of the dam's lip, the three noticed a sheep struggling in the gluggy dam bottom.

Instinctively Mr Cobb and Mr Anderson went into the dam to help the animal.

Mr Howard, somewhat more gingerly, followed behind.

Mr Cobb, with Mr Anderson's assistance, grabbed the sheep's back and heaved it out, in the process covering his boots and pants in mud.

Fortunately for the Prime Minister, no mud found its way on to his pristine pair of moleskins.

The incident vividly brought home to Mr Howard the impact of the drought.

Later, under a huge pepper tree surrounded by parched and grassless paddocks, Mr Howard looked genuinely shocked as farmers explained their plight to him.

Patsy Manns and her husband run a 135,000 acre property about 120kms out of Cobar.

With a handful of pictures, she explained to Mr Howard how her family is spending $1,000 a week just to keep 500 cattle, 200 calves and a few hundred sheep alive.

"That's our retirement money we're spending to keep those animals alive," she said.

And when Rob Francisco, another local farmer, explained to the PM the drought severity, Mr Howard looked aghast.

Mr Francisco said the drought had now lingered for two years - just 20cms of rain had fallen on his property over the past two seasons.

"I've been on Keewong (his property) for 43 years and this drought has been the worst," he said.

If Mr Howard's visit achieves nothing else, it has shown to the Prime Minister the impact of the drought in human terms.

Mr Howard had managed to avoid visiting drought areas all year until today.

Six months ago the Budget failed to even mention the drought and its possible impact on the country.

While Mr Howard was getting his feet dusty, Treasurer Peter Costello was explaining the drought would cut 0.75 percentage points from GDP.

The drought is now finally being felt - not in the country towns being forced to truck in water to survive, but in the corridors of Canberra.