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20 June 2000

Northern Territory News headlines

'Did the other man kill Greg?

'Defence counsel in the trial of an Irish man accused of murdering Greg Bebensee in Darwin last year suggested yesterday the accused man's travelling companion could be responsible'. An interesting defence technique, try to implicate the witness in an effort to establish doubt. Or perhaps reflective of a poor defence case.

'58 dead illegals found in lorry'

'The bodies of 58 people who were simply seeking a better life have been found dead inside an air-tight refrigerated container on a truck at the port of Dover'. There were two survivors. The 'illegals' may be desperate but surely at least one of the group must have been suspicious that being locked up in an air-tight refrigerated truck with a bunch of tomatoes didn’t augur well for survival.

'9 cars smashed in crash pile-ups'

More terror for the Territory. 'Bystanders screamed in terror as nine vehicles were smashed in three separate pile-ups within 30 minutes yesterday'. Amazingly the three accidents were within a small area near Palmerston. Three people were injured.

‘House prices leap 4.5pc, rents drop'

Darwin house prices leapt by 4.5 per cent in the March quarter according to the Real Estate Institute of the NT with the average home selling for $197,000. Meanwhile rents dropped by 4.2 per cent to $230 in the same quarter. Something fishy, prices going up, rents going down. The clanger however comes from the horse's mouth itself 'The annual figures show a 19.4 per cent increase since March last year - but REINT president Denis Power said this was not totally accurate, as the figures were based on random surveys taken up to last December and were therefore not reliable'. Meanwhile the Northern Territory News has invented a new Federal Government office referring to the Australian Evaluation Office.

''Local' milk claim costs Pauls $40 000'

Pauls Ltd was forced to pay $40,000 in legal costs after it admitted to illegally publishing misleading advertising. In an attempt to capitalise on Territorians parochial nature, Pauls implied all its milk was from Territory farms and employed more than 140 local people. All nonsense of course and so the ACCC took them to court. It was found that most of the raw milk used came from Queensland and the number of local workers was a lot less than 140. Now Pauls cannot promote several milk products as local and cannot call its fresh milk products 'the Territory's own'.

'Map hope for older women'

Ever been driven round the wrong bend by a young female?. Blame it on oestrogen. American Psychological Association researchers have found that women get better at reading maps after menopause as the decline in oestrogen improves their spatial memory skills, required for tasks like reading maps. Unfortunately by the time that their map reading skills have improved sufficiently for the directions to be accurate, Alzheimer's has set in and they have forgotten where they are heading to.

And the big story from the ABC Internet news
'Cane toad invasion creeps towards Kakadu'

Cane toads have been found on the edge of Nitmiluk National Park near Katherine, the toads edging their way closer to Kakadu. Local ranger John De Koning said that crocodiles, goannas and snakes were all threatened by the arrival of the pest. Doh!