Australian Breaking News

Wood case a 'jigsaw puzzle', jury told

The prosecution's case against Gordon Wood was like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, the jury at his murder trial has been told. Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, QC, said that, despite three or four pieces of the puzzle missing, the picture was still clear. "This thousand-piece puzzle clearly shows this accused was responsible for the murder of Caroline Byrne," he said. Wood, 45, has denied throwing his 24-year-old girlfriend to her death at The Gap in June 1995. In his closing address today, Mr Tedeschi said that the scream three witnesses heard about 11.30pm on the night of Ms Byrne's death was most likely "Caroline being rendered unconscious or incapacitated ... her death was not a suicide but murder". The jury heard that the most colourful part of the trial centred around Andrew Blanchette, a former boyfriend of Ms Byrne. Mr Tedeschi said that Mr Blanchette was more concerned about details coming out about an intimate relationship with a schoolgirl while he was a police officer than he was about being a suspect in a murder case. But Mr Blanchette had "an iron-clad alibi" said Mr Tedeschi "whereas the accused has no alibi at all". The trial before Justice Graham Barr continues today.

5 November 2009 | 2:31 pm

Wood case a 'jigsaw puzzle', jury told

5 November 2009 | 2:31 pm

Chronic oversharing not just a celebrity disease

Victoria Beckham got rid of her hair extensions because they got in the way during sex. Kate Beckinsale likes to squirt her breast milk across the room. Britney Spears is considering a breast reduction so she can wear more PVC on stage, while Paris Hilton thinks having sex is disgusting if it's not with someone she loves. Confessions such as these caused the British comedian Ricky Gervais to wonder why so many celebrities "live their lives like an open wound" but chronic oversharing is not just a celebrity disease. Producers of reality and lifestyle television shows have no trouble finding people desperate to talk about their sex lives or air their overeating issues on camera and those who can't get a television gig can simply start a blog or YouTube channel. And then there's Facebook, where relationships are announced, questioned and destroyed in tiny, instantly published snippets. (Jill regrets not giving that hottie her number. Jack thinks a certain person should figure out what the hell she wants. Jill is no longer in a relationship.) If this were all confined to cyberspace and reality television, we could choose to opt out. But unfortunately, the confession compulsion has spread to the real world. At a recent dinner function, I was seated next to a stranger who told me about her divorce, abortion, gynaecological troubles, abusive childhood and teenage sexual experimentation all before the main course was served. I responded with polite interest and sympathy but cheerfully declined to reciprocate with confessions of my own. Later, I learnt that this woman had found me "uptight" and "secretive". I was reminded of the open letter Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart wrote to Matt Damon, chastising the actor for being "utterly secretive" about his private life. Bart compared Damon with the famously reclusive Marlon Brando but even Damon fronts up for loads of interviews and events and has spoken about his wife and family frequently, though never in great detail. Sure, he likes to "keep his private life private", but since when were privacy and secretiveness synonymous? And why is an attachment to the former seen as, in the words of Bart, "mildly pathological"? Today we all live with the expectation that we must happily spill our guts for whoever cares to slosh through them. Once considered a virtue, discretion is now viewed as either a character flaw or a sign that you're hiding one. We've become so used to hearing about the lovers' tiffs, sexual kinks and medical problems of celebrities that those who refuse to offer up such details are treated with outright hostility - as in the attack on Damon - or suspicion. As one gossip commentator said in response to a web posting about the "obsessively private" Beyonce: "Of course she has a right to privacy. My question is, what does she have to be so private about?" There's no doubt the pressure to tell all is driven partly by the same nosiness that has long driven people to listen through walls and peep through keyholes. It's also true that there's been a market for salacious confessions at least as far back as the 1930s, when True Story Magazine was a best-seller. But what seems to be new is the idea there's something wrong with those who don't want the details of their domestic, romantic or medical lives splashed across a magazine or posted on a blog. Consider the judgmental, negative language used to describe those who value their privacy - "mildly pathological", "uptight", "obsessively (or notoriously) private". There is no shame or disapproval for the person desperate to know another's secrets; that's healthy curiosity, a bit of fun. The person refusing to provide gossip fodder, however, is charged with emotional frigidity, psychological damage and social awkwardness. Intimate relationships may require a certain amount of openness but it's a mistake to extrapolate this to the world-at-large. If we're lucky, we each have one or two people with whom we are truly close. We trust these people with our darkest truths because we have, over time and shared experiences, developed an intimacy that allows us to feel safe. If our confidants treat our revelations with the respect they deserve - if they forgive our sins, understand our weaknesses and share our sorrows - the bonds of love and friendship are made stronger still. Feeling validated, supported and even healed by the exchange, we're able to re-enter public life with a new inner strength and confidence. I should acknowledge that there are situations in which public confession can be genuinely therapeutic. Trauma survivors sometimes find speaking out to be healing; victims of prejudice are often empowered by proudly declaring their race, disability or sexual orientation; recovering addicts may need to publicly admit to their problem. On a similar note, many people have found strength and inspiration in the confessions or public declarations of others. The civil rights and women's movements were built on the sharing of deeply personal testimonies. But unless you can explain how knowing that Guy Ritchie reportedly likened Madonna's body to a "piece of gristle" has made the world a better place, I'm not buying the "gossip is a social good" crap. There's also, of course, a strong history of "confessional" literature to consider. Philosophers such as Montaigne, Rousseau and de Beauvoir illustrated abstract ideas and theories about society by referring to their own lives. The so-called confessional poets - Plath, Lowell and Sexton - used personal experience as a way to write about suicide, maternal ambivalence and depression: issues that, while of broad concern, tend to defy generalisation. More recently, Joan Didion and David Sedaris, as well as countless other memoirists, have built careers out of writing from, but never solely about, their own lives. There's a big difference, though, between a personal account designed to contribute to wider understanding and a personal confession calculated to win the confessor money/fame/public absolution. Unfortunately, I fear we're becoming so used to the latter that any writer using the first-person will be read in this mode. It's time for me to make a meta-confessional confession: I have, in the past, used my own life in my writing. I wrote about my hormonal teenage shenanigans in an essay on teen sexuality. I used a bout of life-threatening illness as a way into a discussion of death-themed poetry. I reflected on my body image to introduce a book chapter about feminism and beauty. Or that's what I thought I was doing. Many of my readers thought I was confessing my darkest secrets and asking them to either return in kind or judge and advise. I've received confessions of adultery, teenage promiscuity, drug use and prostitution. I've had emails from people revealing rapes, abortions and life-long loneliness. I'm touched, of course, but also uncomfortable and disturbed. It's wonderful that a piece of writing can make someone feel less alone but troubling that a small, carefully chosen and crafted anecdote would inspire strangers to reveal incredibly intimate and often upsetting details of their lives. And then there are those who think a public "confession" is an invitation for judgment or advice. I've been sent religious screeds, promises to pray for me and several descriptions of the hellfire awaiting me. I've been told to get counselling, see a psychiatrist, have more sex and get a makeover. Which brings me to what I think is the best argument of all in favour of keeping some things to yourself: the importance of retaining an inner privacy. I'm talking about the deliberate cultivation of a self that no one can touch, a self that is beyond sniping, judgment and criticism from others. In a recent New York Times Magazine cover story, internet celebrity Emily Gould revealed that at the height of her micro-fame as a blogger on the popular gossip site Gawker, she began to suffer debilitating panic attacks. Gould's self-revelatory style had won her scads of readers but, when the comments turned nasty, she found she had nothing to hide behind. She'd revealed everything and now everything was under attack. More than 1000 readers commented on the online version of Gould's Times article. Almost all the comments were negative and a good deal of them were flat-out cruel. One hopes that Gould really has, as she claims in the article, made peace with her former over-sharing self and kept her vow to keep details of her private life private from now on. The challenge for Gould - for anyone whose work or social life depends on a certain amount of personal revelation - is to ensure the private self is strong enough to cope when the public self comes under siege. Emily Maguire is author of Princesses And Pornstars.

7 January 2009 | 12:29 am

Chronic oversharing not just a celebrity disease

7 January 2009 | 12:27 am

Exmouth interference 'unlikely'

THE naval communications base at Exmouth is not to blame for recent navigation problems for Qantas planes, according to an official. The base manager, Russell Levine, said it was "highly, highly unlikely" that radio signals from the base could scramble commercial jet navigation systems because the two used completely different frequency bands. The very low frequency signals from the Harold E. Holt naval base were probably unable to penetrate aircraft frames, Mr Levine said. He said the two incidents since October, both involving Qantas Airbus A330 jets, were more likely due to an aircraft fault. Plane navigation equipment used high-frequency radio waves, so it was unlikely to pick up the low-frequency military communications at all, the base manager said. "We operate in the kilohertz range and the aviation computers operate in megahertz, so there's a big difference," he said. There was a lot of aviation activity near Exmouth so there would have been more mishaps if there was interference from the base, he said. "If we affected planes like that, we would have a lot more issues." The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is investigating the incidents, one in late December when a plane returned to Perth, and a more serious one in October when a plane plunged dramatically, injuring 13 passengers, before making an emergency landing at Learmonth.

7 January 2009 | 12:00 am

Exmouth interference 'unlikely'

7 January 2009 | 12:00 am

Quadrant falls victim to hoax story

AFTER a terrible two hours, Keith Windschuttle convinced himself he hadn't been hoaxed at all. He was greatly relieved. How embarrassing such a stumble could have been for this fierce nitpicker, scourge of sloppy academics and current editor of the conservative Quadrant magazine. "It was a shock when I got the call," Windschuttle told the Herald. It came at 9.30 yesterday morning, warning him that an article in the current issue of his magazine was a fake perpetrated by the non-existent "Sharon Gould" posing as a 41-year-old New Yorker based in Brisbane. His heart sank but he got to work. He had published "Scare campaigns and science reporting" without checking what he called the "nitty gritty" of its facts, and he had put it in the magazine without showing it to anyone familiar with its subject, genetic engineering. But in two busy hours yesterday he was able to satisfy himself the article was "only 10 to 15 per cent invented. When I discovered that my gloom and embarrassment changed completely." After Margaret Simons broke the story in the online newsletter Crikey yesterday, Windschuttle hit back on his own website declaring the "Gould" article "simply a piece of fraudulent journalism submitted to Quadrant under false pretences". After a bit more thought he added that Crikey's editor, Jonathan Green, "should be aware that his publication's involvement in the manufacture of this story is unethical". The hoax was beautifully done. Provoked by Quadrant's embrace of global warming sceptics, the unidentified hoaxer concocted the article early last year and sent it to Windschuttle. The aim was to "employ some of Quadrant's sleight-of-hand reasoning devices to argue something ludicrous", the hoaxer later wrote. "Something like the importance of putting human genes into food crops to save civilisation from its own ills, and how this sort of science shouldn't be scrutinised by the media because, you know, it's empirical." She - or perhaps he - waited patiently until August before contacting Windschuttle and asking if Quadrant was interested. He had lost the article. Could she send it again? She did and he took it up enthusiastically. Windschuttle is right to say that it had every appearance of genuineness. It was a good hoax. But had he checked its key claims, the whole article would have unravelled. The hoaxer wrote that "buried" in the footnotes of a scientific paper was the remarkable story that the CSIRO had been deterred from commercialising a great breakthrough in genetic engineering "because of perceived moral issues among the public". The paper exists. So do its authors. But it is not about genetic engineering, and as those familiar with scientific publications know, such papers never have footnotes. Windschuttle didn't check the paper or ring the CSIRO. He says: "We're not a science journal." But in any case, he doesn't believe Quadrant has to check the facts in its articles. Though he has flayed historians for small errors in obscure footnotes in the past, he doesn't believe his handling of the article falls short of his own standards. "I am not the author in this case. I'm the editor." The hoaxer reported on his or her blog: "So neatly did my essay conform with reactionary ideology that Quadrant, it seems, didn't even check the putative author's credentials." Windschuttle, meanwhile, argues that only the name of the author was fake. "A real person wrote that article." And real people wrote "Ern Malley's" poetry. Quadrant's first editor, James McAuley, was one of the perpetrators of that great hoax. Was Windschuttle willing to reflect on the ironies, the connections, the contrasts? "I don't want to go there."

7 January 2009 | 12:00 am

Navy asbestos puts thousands at risk

AUSTRALIAN sailors are being exposed to deadly asbestos fibres because the navy continues to use illegal asbestos-contaminated parts, years after they were outlawed. Thousands of sailors and civilian contractors are likely to have come into contact with the potentially lethal carcinogen, a report seen by defence chiefs says, and the Defence Force could face fines of more than $100 million for breaches of work safety laws. And that figure could be millions of dollars higher if sailors, as predicted, contract lung cancer or other diseases as a result of their exposure. A risk assessment report prepared by the defence contractor SYPAQ Systems, obtained under freedom-of-information laws, found "thousands of personnel" could have been exposed to chrysotile asbestos, a known cancer-causing agent. "The risk to the safety of personnel … is significant and must be addressed … The likelihood that [exposures to asbestos] will occur is almost certain and the consequences are potentially catastrophic," the report said. Reports show nearly 250,000 parts held in naval stores are suspected of containing asbestos. And hundreds of those parts, including gaskets, hoses, even compressed asbestos sheeting, are still being issued to naval ships and bases in breach of state and federal laws. "It can be assumed there have been over 350 issues of 775 asbestos items to operational units and ship repair organisations since 31 December 2003 (when asbestos use was prohibited)," the SYPAQ report found. A spokesman said defence did not accept SYPAQ's finding that "thousands" had been exposed and said the potential fines figure of $100 million was "purely speculative". He conceded, though, that asbestos parts were issued in breach of bans. A furious Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, condemned the ADF's handling of its asbestos problem, calling it unacceptable. "We wouldn't let a major company get away with it and we should be just as tough on ourselves. I expect defence to change its culture of endless exemptions and waivers," he said. Attempts to speak to SYPAQ Systems, the author of the report, were unsuccessful. The navy first conceded sailors' lives were being endangered in May, when it issued an all-ship-all-shore warning identifying a fraction of the contaminated items still in use. "To date 45 items have been confirmed as containing asbestos. All units, ships and establishments are to check if stockholdings are held for the items listed below … The asbestos eradication program is ongoing and there is likely to be additional candidates identified," the Defence Materiel Organisation alert warned. The use of and importation of asbestos-containing materials was made illegal in 2001 in Australia, with the prohibition coming into force on January 1, 2004. But the Defence Force won an exemption to continue using chrysotile asbestos parts until 2007, on two strict provisos: that the parts were "mission-critical" and no non-asbestos replacements could be found. In December that exemption was controversially extended again until 2010 by the Government's safety and compensation council, despite fierce expert opposition, and even grave reservations from within defence. Mal Pearce, the director-general of defence's occupational health, safety and compensation branch, raised concerns that defence was not trying hard enough to rid itself of the deadly substance. "The commission had for some years been very flexible with defence, during which time defence had given repeated assurances that it would fix the problem of chrysotile eradication … Some commissioners pointed out that a national prohibition on asbestos had existed since 2001." It is likely that all the navy's use of asbestos parts falls outside the Defence Force exemption, and is illegal. Only 318 asbestos items were approved for defence use last December, and that number has since been reduced to 209. Approved are a number of spare parts for the Caribou transport aircraft, F-111 strike bomber, and Mk127 Lead-in Fighter fleets, and a small number of gaskets for ground equipment and vehicles. The SYPAQ Systems report found that the issue of "several hundred confirmed asbestos items" to operational naval units was "in direct contravention of state and federal laws". Defence could face fines in the order of $115 million if found guilty of breaching the federal Occupational Health and Safety Act by exposing employees to serious harm or death, the report said. As well, civilians and defence employees who develop lung cancer or other diseases could sue for damages and compensation. The average claim is estimated at $360,000.

7 January 2009 | 12:00 am

Navy asbestos puts thousands at risk

7 January 2009 | 12:00 am

Uni work used in scam

STUDENT assignments from the University of Wollongong were used without the students' knowledge as part of an alleged ruse to fool the US Government and the space agency NASA into handing over millions of dollars for futuristic scientific research. The bizarre tale has emerged in a US whistleblower court case featuring a former lecturer at the university who says he was threatened with deportation unless he played along with the claimed deception. Dr Masoud Samandi says the high-tech company he went to work for in Arizona - Materials and Electrochemical Research Corporation - submitted false claims to win research grants from the US departments of Energy and Defence as well as from NASA. To win one grant from the Department of Energy, the company said it had built a sophisticated "filtered arc deposition system" - a method to apply hard coatings to a surface. But according to Dr Samandi's statement to the US District Court in Tucson, "the depicted system was actually a photograph of a system created by Samandi at the University of Wollongong in Australia and was still located at that institution at the time of the proposal". MER Corporation has received about $US50 million ($70 million) worth of grants from the three US Government agencies since 1985 for its sophisticated research - including into fuel cells and vehicle armour - through a scheme that favours applications from small US high-tech businesses. But according to Dr Samandi, several of the grants won from the US Department of Energy were obtained by plagiarised data from projects carried out years earlier in Australia by his former engineering students. "As an example of this fraudulent reporting, the sixth technical report submitted to DOE on January 22, 2003, is based entirely on results that were obtained by one of Samandi's PhD students, S.W. Huang, and were presented in his PhD thesis at University of Wollongong, Australia in 2000," reads Dr Samandi's statement to the court. "The experimental procedures, results and discussion presented in the report were copied directly from Huang's thesis." Dr Samandi claims that other technical submitted by his then employer, dated February and September 2003, were "based substantially if not entirely on data" that included a thesis from another of his former honours students, Matthew Ted Gudze, in 1995. Dr Samandi's suit alleges his employers told him he would be fired if he did not include plagiarised results in or if he did not charge time spent on private projects to government contracts. Apart from the Department of Energy, he said, "false and fraud- ulent claims" for payment and approval were submitted with NASA and the Department of Defence. The case, which is due to be heard this year according to Dr Samandi's lawyer, Timothy McInnis, has been joined by a separate but related action against the company by the US Justice Department. The Justice Department complaint further alleges that MER Corporation executives used a non-existent venture capital firm, Southwest Investment Partners, to help it secure some grants. The Justice Department claims that up to $US9 million worth of grants - including for optics and nanotechnology research - might have been improperly obtained by the company. A lawyer for MER Corporation, Bruce Heurlin, said all of the allegations were being "vigorously denied" and that they would be defended in court. "We feel we have a defence for all the allegations." A second lawyer for the company, Jere Glover, said the Government had investigated Dr Samandi's allegations and had chosen to go to court with separate allegations. "We look forward to going to trial.' '

7 January 2009 | 12:00 am

Quadrant falls victim to hoax story

7 January 2009 | 12:00 am

Uni work used in scam

7 January 2009 | 12:00 am

Undertaker sees Travolta boy's autopsy result

Jett Travolta's body shows no sign of head trauma and his death certificate says he was killed by a seizure, an undertaker said, after doctors performed an autopsy on the US actor's son. The remains of John Travolta's son were being cremated and his parents planned to return to the United States with the ashes on Tuesday, said Keith McSweeney, director of the funeral home handling the body. Jett, 16, had a history of seizures and was found unconscious in a bathroom at a family holiday home on Grand Bahama Island on Friday. Glen Campbell, assistant director of the funeral home, said the body was in "great condition" despite by police officials that the teen had hit his head on a bathtub. The authorities did not release the results of an autopsy performed on Monday, but Campbell saw the body and the death certificate, which was based on its findings. "The only cause of death that was listed was 'seizure'," he said. Late on Monday, a black hearse travelled from the funeral home to the airport after the family indicated they were bringing Jett's remains to Ocala, Florida, where they own a home. Two white jets waited as police in dress uniforms blocked access to the tarmac. But the hearse was dispatched as a ruse, McSweeney told a news conference later on Monday. He said he could not explain the reason for the decoy. In a public statement released on Sunday, Travolta and wife Kelly Preston said they were "heartbroken that our time with him was so brief". Travolta tried CPR to revive his son, who may have died in his arms before an emergency medical technician took over, Usmagazine.com reported, citing Travolta lawyers Michael McDermott and Michael Ossi. Travolta, 54, and Preston, 46, have said Jett became very sick when he was two years old and was diagnosed with Kawasaki syndrome, an illness that leads to inflamed blood vessels. Preston has blamed household cleaners and fertilisers and said a detoxification program based on teachings from the Church of Scientology helped improve his health, People magazine reported. Police said in a statement that Jett had not been seen since Thursday and a caretaker, Jeff Kathrain, found him unconscious late on Friday morning. But McDermott said that wrongly left the impression that Jett was unsupervised. He said two nannies were with Jett throughout the evening, and he did not believe the teen was in the bathroom for very long. The couple also has an eight-year-old daughter, Ella Bleu. Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham sent condolences to the Travolta family and said the autopsy was a formality the country required in cases of sudden death to rule out foul play. AP

6 January 2009 | 7:20 pm

Seven hurt as car strikes pedestrians

A car has swerved off the Great Ocean Road into pedestrians in a busy Victorian coastal town, injuring at least seven people including two four-year-old girls. Police say a 62-year-old NSW man veered off the road in the commercial heart of Lorne, about 140km south-west of Melbourne, and on to the footpath. The car crashed over a retaining wall and into parked cars. A woman in her 20s and two four-year-old girls will be flown to a Melbourne hospital, Ambulance Victoria spokeswoman Gabrielle Degenhardt told . One of the girls has a fractured leg and the other spinal injuries. The woman, believed to be the mother of one of the girls, has suffered a broken leg. Two other children, aged 8 and 6, and two men, one aged 41, received minor injuries and have all been taken to the Lorne Hospital. One of the men and one of the children each had a fractured ankle. Police say the driver and two passengers also suffered minor injuries but Ambulance Victoria has not confirmed the information. "A car has run off the road, across a nature strip and into a car park at a resort, and in doing so has taken a few pedestrians with him," witness Darren, a cafe worker, told the Nine Network.

6 January 2009 | 7:11 pm

Wool industry hit by another mulesing boycott

Australian sheep farmers have been snubbed by a well-connected company, which is joining a global boycott of Australian wool. The Kukdong Corporation is based in South Korea and distributes clothing brands like Pierre Cardin and NAF NAF. The company's chief executive has announced he is committed to eliminating Australian wool from the manufacturing chain. The decision is another blow for the shrinking $3 billion Australian wool industry. The Kukdong Corporation once bought about 20,000 kilograms from a national clip of 370 million. Chief executive SK Byun says the company is opposed to the controversial practice in Australia of mulesing. Mulesing is the slicing a piece of skin from the sheep's behind to stop it being infected by maggots. The company joins retail giants like Nike, Hugo Boss, Abercrombie and Fitch and H and M in its boycott. In an email to the international organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), SK Byun said the company would be looking to other countries where mulesing is not practised. PETA's director Matt Prescott says he welcomes the move. "We feel that the fate of Australian sheep lies not with the farmers or AWI (Australian Wool Innovation) but in the hands of global retailers like Kukdong," he said. - 2010 deadline - Four years ago the wool industry as a whole pledged to phase out mulesing by 2010. Australian Wool Innovation is the organisation charged with finding alternatives to mulesing in order to honour that commitment. PETA accuses them of back-pedalling. "We think statements that their new board members have made have made it seem like AWI is not going to meet that deadline," Mr Prescott said. "In fact the new chairman of the board, Wal Merriman, is an avid proponent of mulesing, he's a stud marino breeder churning out the same types of problems that mulesing tried to solve in the first place. "Hopefully the deadline will be met but right now it looks like it won't be." AWI would not speak to PM program this afternoon but a spokesman for the organisation says research into alternatives continues. Greg Weller from Australia's peak wool body, Wool Producers, says despite his disappointment with the Kukdong pullout, it is good business that the customer ultimately dictates the ethical boundaries of a product. "We have a very good product, it's produced very environmentally friendly and ethically and there are choices there now for customers to direct their buying decisions," he said. "We say to those consumers they can access unmulesed wool. Put your buying decisions in that direction."

6 January 2009 | 7:00 pm

AMA hails increase in organ donations

There has been a 31 per cent increase in the number of Australians who have donated their organs in the past year. The figures show 259 people donated last year compared to 198 in 2007 and 202 in 2006. The rate of donation increased in every state but the largest increase since 2006 was in Victoria at 49 per cent. Geoff Dobb from the Australian Medical Association (AMA) says it is a positive trend and he hopes it continues. "I think it shows two things - one is the increasing awareness of the benefits that come to people from organ and tissue donation," he said. "The other factor may be the influence of the organ donation collaborative, which means that best practices are being applied across all hospitals." The number of recorded donations is the highest since transplantation began in Australia in the 1960s. Mr Dobb says the increase can be attributed to a greater awareness of organ donation. "[It's] the increasing awareness by the Australian public of the benefits that come to people from organ and tissue donation," he said. "Every organ donor can benefit the lives and save the lives of up to six other people."

6 January 2009 | 6:17 pm

Boy, 14, charged over gas blast

A 14-year-old boy has been charged after a gas explosion damaged several buildings in a town in NSW's Hunter Valley. Police believe a number of garbage bins were set alight at the rear of a community centre in Port Stephens Street, Raymond Terrace, about 10pm on Saturday. "The fire ignited an adjacent 150-kilogram LPG cylinder, resulting in an explosion that caused extensive damage to the two-storey building and blew out windows in a telephone exchange next door," police said in a statement on Tuesday. "A number of other buildings were damaged in the explosion as debris from the blast was strewn 200 metres along the street." The gas bottle struck the brick wall of a building 100 metres away, police said. Officers questioned six 14-year-old boys after the explosion. A 14-year-old Raymond Terrace youth was charged today with intentionally destroying property by fire and recklessly destroying property by fire. He was granted conditional bail and will appear at Raymond Terrace Children's Court on January 21.

6 January 2009 | 5:07 pm

Prisoners left inside when bomb threat evacuated Melbourne court

The Law Institute of Victoria is concerned that prisoners were kept inside the Melbourne Custody Centre when the Melbourne Magistrates Court was evacuated this morning. An anonymous bomb threat led to the evacuation of 200 people from offices in the court building. Workers waited for two hours while police and sniffer dogs checked the building before it was declared safe about 1:00pm AEDT. The Melbourne Custody Centre, which is underneath the Magistrates Court building, was not evacuated. Victoria Police says its protocols are designed to ensure the safety all people in such incidents, including those in custody, but it is not able to comment on the movement of prisoners. But the president of the Law Institute, Danny Barlow, says prisoners should not have been left at risk. "On the face of it, it seems to the Law Institute of Victoria to be quite outrageous that people - regardless of whether they're in custody or not - be left in that situation when presumably it wasn't known whether the threat was real or otherwise," he said. "It's completely unacceptable." Mr Barlow says the situation could have been handled better. "If, as it appears, the situation is that the procedures have not come up to scratch, then we'll making approaches to the appropriate departments to call for a review of those procedures," he said. "And hopefully they'll be changed so that they're satisfactory going forward." Meanwhile acting Senior Sergeant Stuart Watt says police are trying to find out who made the bomb threat. "As a precaution, the building was evacuated; we were happy that there was no further threat," he said. "There'll be continuing investigations and they are underway as we speak."

6 January 2009 | 4:49 pm

High-rises flagged along Sydney metro

The New South Wales Government has endorsed the building of high-density developments around rail stations in Sydney's inner west if a new metro line goes ahead. The Government says it will rethink its metropolitan strategy if it gets $8.1 billion from the Commonwealth's Infrastructure Australia fund for a western metro rail link to Parramatta. NSW Planning Minister Kristina Keneally says high-density residential and commercial areas should be developed around the new metro stations to cope with a predicted influx of 1.7 million people into the city within 30 years. "It makes abundant sense to put people and jobs around transport modes," she said. But Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell says suburbs will be "devastated" because he doubts the Government will provide adequate infrastructure. "Putting increased densities in suburbs like this will simply add to increased traffic and congestion," he said. "This isn't development, it's overdevelopment. This isn't planning, it's damning." Mr O'Farrell says a Coalition government would borrow money to give residents of outer-lying areas access to public transport. The State Government has created a new Sydney Metro Authority, which has been given powers to develop land around metro stations, but Ms Keneally says it is too early to speculate on the density of the developments. The state and federal governments are due to complete a $55 million study into the western metro proposal by the middle of the year. The NSW Government has already promised to build a $4.8 billion CBD metro line, which would be linked to the western metro if it gets approval. Ms Keneally says she is hopeful that the Federal Government will fund the rail link. "The Commonwealth is investing in cities again and this has been a long time coming," she said. "For the last 12 years, we haven't seen this sort of infrastructure investment in our major cities."

6 January 2009 | 4:07 pm

Undertaker sees Travolta boy's autopsy result

Jett Travolta's body shows no sign of head trauma and his death certificate says he was killed by a seizure, an undertaker said, after doctors performed an autopsy on the 16-year-old son of the US actor. The remains of John Travolta's son were being cremated and his parents planned to return to the United States with the ashes on Tuesday, said Keith McSweeney, director of the funeral home handling the body. Jett Travolta had a history of seizures and was found unconscious in a bathroom on Friday at a family holiday home on Grand Bahama Island. Glen Campbell, assistant director of the funeral home, said the body is in "great condition" despite police officials who had said the teen had hit his head on a bathtub. Authorities didn't release the results of an autopsy performed on Monday, but Campbell saw the body and the death certificate, which was based on its findings. "The only cause of death that was listed was 'seizure'," he said. Late on Monday, a black hearse travelled from the funeral home to the airport after the family indicated they were bringing Jett's remains to Ocala, Florida, where they own a home. Two white jets waited as police in dress uniforms blocked access to the tarmac. But the hearse was dispatched as a ruse, McSweeney told a news conference later on Monday. He said he could not explain the reason for the decoy. In a public statement released on Sunday, John Travolta and wife Kelly Preston said they were "heartbroken that our time with him was so brief". Travolta tried CPR to revive his son, who may have died in his arms before an emergency medical technician took over, Usmagazine.com reported, citing Travolta lawyers Michael McDermott and Michael Ossi. They did not respond to calls from the AP on Monday. Travolta, 54, and Preston, 46, have said Jett became very sick when he was two years old and was diagnosed with Kawasaki Syndrome, an illness that leads to inflamed blood vessels. Preston has blamed household cleaners and fertilisers and said a detoxification program based on teachings from the Church of Scientology helped improve his health, according to People magazine. Police said in a statement that Jett had not been seen since Thursday when a caretaker, Jeff Kathrain, found him unconscious late on Friday morning. But McDermott said that wrongly left the impression that Jett was unsupervised. He said two nannies were with Jett throughout the evening, and he does not believe the teen was in the bathroom for very long. The couple also has an eight-year-old daughter, Ella Bleu. Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham sent condolences to the Travolta family and said the autopsy is a formality the country requires in cases of sudden death to rule out foul play. AP

6 January 2009 | 3:14 pm

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