HighLights of the AAP National Wire at 15:30, April3 =2

AAP General News (Australia)
04-03-2000
HighLights of the AAP National Wire at 15:30, April3 =2



MELBOURNE - Three people were critically injured in a light plane crash near Shepparton
in northern Victoria this afternoon. (Crash. N/L to come.)



MELBOURNE - The first police application in Victoria to take a DNA sample from a child
was refused today because police did not specify the exact nature of the sample they required.

(DNA Sample)



MELBOURNE - At least two St Vincent's Hospital staff have caught scabies since the
arrival of patients from a Melbourne nursing home where kerosene baths were used to treat
the skin disease. (Aged Scabies)



MELBOURNE - Police today stepped up the search for two fishermen near Port Albert in
Victoria's south-east following the discovery of an upturned craft. (Fishing. N/L to come.)



MELBOURNE - Lisa McCune, the darling of Australian television despite fading from the
screen earlier this year, again leads the race for TV's most coveted prize, the Logie.

(Logies)



MELBOURNE - A 25-year-old woman today told how she scaled down a drain pipe while clutching
her five-month-old baby to escape a flat fire in Melbourne's north. (Pipe Lead)



CANBERRA - GST registrations have topped the one million mark, the Australian Taxation
Office (ATO) today revealed, as business rushes to beat the May 31 deadline. (Tax Numbers)



CANBERRA - The future of endangered whales could hinge on the outcome of next week's
endangered species trading convention, conservationists said today. (CITES )



CANBERRA - Proposed excise changes aimed at combating fuel substitutions would only
be effective if complementary consumer protection measures were also introduced, major
motor insurer NRMA said today. (Petrol NRMA)



CANBERRA - About 68 per cent of Australians with arthritis were restricted in their
activities, according to a survey by the Arthritis Foundation of Australia. (Arthritis)



CANBERRA - Job Network services will be provided in remote parts of Australia under
new contracts announced today. (Jobs remote)



SYDNEY - Greyhound Racing Authority (NSW) chief steward Rodney Potter has been stood
down pending the outcome of a New South Wales corruption watchdog inquiry into the industry,
authority chief executive Steve Rossier said today. (ICAC Greyhound. N/L to come.)



SYDNEY - A 14-year-old schoolgirl accused of murdering her mother had told a triple-0
operator that whatever had happened in their kitchen had been an accident, a jury was
told today. (Mother. N/L to come.)



TWEED HEADS - The search widened today for a 27-year-old professional fisherman missing
at sea after his trawler capsized off the New South Wales north coast overnight. (Trawler.

More to come.)



SYDNEY - New South Wales Police Commissioner Peter Ryan today said the the service
faced major radio communications difficulties but everything possible was being done to
rectify the problem. (Policeman. N/L to come.)



SYDNEY - New South Wales Premier Bob Carr said today his ministry had been warned to
expect a tough session of parliament when it resumed tomorrow.(Parliament Carr. Parliament
N/L to come.)



BRISBANE - Premier Peter Beattie today applauded Comalco's decision to choose the central
Queensland city of Gladstone as the site for a $1.4 billion alumina refinery. (Comalco
Beattie. More to come.)



BRISBANE - A new Australian-developed technique to enhance the effectiveness of chemotherapy
is set to be tested on bowel cancer patients, the company said today. (BOWEL to come).



BRISBANE - A 15-year-old youth dealt in heroin after being stood over by an adult drug
gang, the Queensland Supreme Court was told today. (Teenager)



BRISBANE - Queensland has sent a meat trade expert to Japan to minimise possible fallout
from an outbreak of cattle disease there. (Japan Disease Qld)



BRISBANE - Twenty people were charged in a major prostitution crackdown in Brisbane's
Fortitude Valley over the weekend, police said today. (Ambush)



HOBART - Public health authorities have gone too far in their warnings about catching
skin cancer from the sun and were putting people at greater risk from other diseases and
injuries, a Hobart rheumatologist said today. (Fractures)



ADELAIDE - The South Australian government is to fast-track the construction of an
electricity interconnection with New South Wales. (Interconnector)



ADELAIDE - Dentists are urging sports competitors to wear professionally-fitted mouthguards
as students and athletes prepare for the winter sports season. (MOUTHGUARD)

AAP sp

KEYWORD: HIGHLIGHTS NATIONAL 2 SYDNEY

2000 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.

Qld: Question of clearing compensation still unanswered

AAP General News (Australia)
12-31-1999
Qld: Question of clearing compensation still unanswered

BRISBANE, Dec 31 AAP - The Queensland government will use some of the $270 million
windfall from the sale of the QTAB to pay the costs of a compensation package for landowners
affected by new tree-clearing laws.

But while the state has refused to reveal just how much it is prepared to put towards
actual compensation payments, it has continued to call on the federal government to put
up $103.2 million.

Premier Peter Beattie said the state would contribute $111 million over four years
towards the cost of administering the new laws.

He said if the federal government put up its share of compensation, federal Environment
Minister Robert Hill would be able to deliver on his commitment to the Kyoto Conference
on greenhouse gas emissions that Australia would reduce its output.

Although the tree-clearing legislation was pushed through parliament last month, Mr
Beattie has promised not to proclaim the new laws for freehold land until the compensation
package has been finalised with the federal government.

The laws protect endangered and so-called of concern tree species and also preserves
from clearing one-third of the vegetation that covered Queensland when Europeans first
arrived.

A spokesman for Senator Hill said federal ministers were reluctant to fund the Queensland
tree-clearing compensation package because it would set a precedent for other states.

AAP jfs/rds

KEYWORD: CLEARING DAYLEAD

1999 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.

VIC: Australians have access to powerful new anti HIV drug

AAP General News (Australia)
08-17-1999
VIC: Australians have access to powerful new anti HIV drug

By Sarah Timms

MELBOURNE, Aug 17 AAP - Australians with HIV now have access to a powerful new drug to
help fight their chronic condition more easily.

Abacavir is a new anti-retroviral drug which can be used combined with other powerful drugs
to fight HIV.

Ithas been available in Australia since late last year through compassionate access
programs and the official launch today heralds its wider access.

It has been approved by the federal government and is available through hospital pharmacies
free-of-charge as it is listed as a drug relating to a life-threatening condition.

Victorian-based People Living with HIV/AIDS president John Daye said one of the drug's
great merits was its dosage of only two tablets a day.

"Adherence is a really important issue with anti-retrovirals because if people miss doses
or go without it in some way, it is exactly when those blood levels drop that viral resistence
develops," Mr Daye told AAP.

"So having two tablets a day is a lot easier than taking six or eight tablets three times a
day with some other drugs."

The twice-daily dose also helped people manage their condition outside the workplace by
enabling them to take the tablet before and after work, he added.

"People do like to have that discretion and be able to conduct their lives and treat their
medical condition without it being exposed to everybody else."

It was also very important in this age of drug resistance that a drug such as Abacavir had
such potent activity in combination with other drugs, he said.

"For a lot of people who have been around for a long time and been treated with a lot of
other drugs, it is a new option," he said.

He estimated that about 800 people were taking the drug in Australia.

At the end of 1998, almost 20,000 Australians had been diagnosed with HIV, more than 8,000
with AIDS and more than 5,500 had died as a result of AIDS.

HIV/AIDS Treatment Clinic Director at the Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago in the
United States, Professor Robert Murphy, said tolerance levels for the drug were very high,
with only about three to five per cent of patients having an adverse reaction.

Prof Murphy told AAP the drug had some favourable qualities including entering the brain,
crossing the placenta and being easy to take twice a day.

Professor of Medicine at the University of New South Wales David Cooper cautioned that it
was one of the most potent HIV drugs and in some cases people had died after serious reactions
to it.

"So it becomes an education effort amongst doctors and patients to be aware of the reaction
and to treat it appropriately," Prof Cooper told AAP.

AAP st/jlw/rsm

KEYWORD: HIV DRUG

1999 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.

FED: Costello concedes reticence over proposed FBT changes

AAP General News (Australia)
02-24-1999
FED: Costello concedes reticence over proposed FBT changes

CANBERRA, Feb 23 AAP -Federal Treasurer Peter Costello today talked down chances of
shifting the fringe benefits tax from employees to workers, saying the community would be
reluctant to make the move.

The second discussion paper of the Review of Business taxation suggested on Monday moving
the FBT burden to workers.

While the option was welcomed by business, which has long detested the tax, Mr Costello
acknowledged it was a "reticent duck", if not a dead duck.

"I think there are about 70,000 employers that are subject to it …

WA: Tasmanias equality bill makes WA "most anti gay state"

AAP General News (Australia)
12-04-1998
WA: Tasmanias equality bill makes WA "most anti gay state"

PERTH, Dec 4 AAP - Western Australia was poised to become the most anti-gay state in
Australia, after Tasmanias lower house last night passed a gay equality bill, an activist
said today.

The Tasmanian bill, which would outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation,
received unanimous tripartite support.

Gay and Lesbian Equality (GALE) spokesman John Derry believed the bill would encounter no
obstacles in the legislative council.

"There is a good possibility Tasmanias upper house will allow the bill to become law," he
said.

If that happened, WA would be the only Australian state not to have outlawed discrimination
on the basis of sexuality.

"Many of us believe that Tasmania is the worst, but WA has, and continues to have, the most
anti-gay laws in the nation," Mr Derry said.

"Yesterdays vote cements this fact."

A private members bill to amend WAs Equal Opportunity Act and outlaw discrimination on
the basis of sexuality was to be considered by WA parliament next year.

AAP kbw/wjf/mk

KEYWORD: GAY WA

1998 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.

The main stories on 0300 2GB News

AAP General News (Australia)
02-09-2011
The main stories on 0300 2GB News

SYDNEY, Feb 9 AAP - Main stories in today's 0300 2GB News:



- The ADF has secret plans to reduce troop numbers in Afghanistan as early as this year.

- Tony Abbott says he's been taken out of context over his comments after the death
of a digger in Afghanistan, and has been backed by Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne.

- Two men are fighting for life after being stabbed on the NSW central coast.

- There's discontent in union ranks, according to a report in The Australian, with
a possible move against the ACTU President.

- A …

QLD:Eddy Groves to face trial in May 2012

AAP General News (Australia)
08-19-2011
QLD:Eddy Groves to face trial in May 2012

Former ABC Learning Centres boss EDDY GROVES will stand trial in May next year on a
charge relating to the collapse of Australia's biggest childcare chain.

GROVES was committed to stand trial earlier this year on one count of breaching the
Corporations Act by dishonestly using his position as a director.

Former ABC CEO MARTIN VINCENT KEMP will also stand trial after being committed last
month on two counts of breaching the Corporations Act.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission alleges the pair engaged in a
dishonest deal just months before the company's collapse in 2008.

During a review of the matter in the Brisbane District Court today, Chief Judge PATSY
WOLFE listed the trial for the week commencing May 14 2012.

The matter will be reviewed again in December.

AAP RTV cf/gd/sw/

KEYWORD: GROVES (BRISBANE)

� 2011 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.