TWO brazen thieves posing as inspectors have stolen a vehicle up for auction in north Queensland.
Police say the pair took a Holden sedan from an auction yard in Ingham Road, Townsville, about 10.30am (AEST) yesterday.
The thieves simply walked into the yard and gave the impression they were inspecting vehicles about to be auctioned, a police spokeswoman said.
"One man got into the silver Holden Commodore and when challenged by an employee accelerated out of the yard," she said.
"The other man ran from the property via an access road."
The stolen vehicle was eventually recovered late on Friday in Hodges Street, in suburban Vincent.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Iran detains suspected nuclear spies over Stuxnet Virus
Iran has arrested several people it believes were spying on its nuclear facilities, a news agency quoted the intelligence minister as saying.
The report gave no details and did not specify whether the arrests were linked to a virus Iran says infected computers at its Bushehr nuclear plant, which has yet to start working.
Citing the semi-official Mehr news agency, Press TV quoted intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi as saying "the enemy" had "sent electronic worms through the internet to undermine Iran's nuclear activities".
He said Iran was capable of fending off such an attack.
Some experts believe the Stuxnet virus may have been created to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, which some Western countries suspect may be aimed at building a bomb, which Iran has denied.
Iranian officials said the virus had affected personal computers of staff but had not affected operations at the plant.
Iran says it has complied with legal requirements and has a right to nuclear power.
US GOV warns of Al Qaeda threat on Europe
The United States Government is to issue a new travel alert for American tourists in Europe.
Travellers will be told to be vigilant while travelling because of what have been described as credible threats from Al Qaeda.Security agencies have suggested that there are plans to mount attacks in European cities similar to those in Mumbai in November 2008.
Tourists are to be warned to stay away from crowded places.
There was no immediate indication when the alert might be issued.
News media in the last week reported that western intelligence agencies had uncovered an Al Qaeda plot to launch attacks in Britain, France, Germany and the United States.
The reports said well-armed, commando-style teams of jihadists planned to seize and murder Western hostages in a manner similar to the Mumbai attacks of 2008.
Two Indian hotels in Mumbai were besieged by 10 gunmen who killed 166 people and injured more than 300.
MP upset over Lawyers Golf Course Game Hunting Spree - ABC News
Tasmania's Cabinet Secretary has congratulated police for refusing to allow a Hobart lawyer to shoot native animals at his local golf club.
She says she is appalled Mr Abbott is threatening to seek a judicial review of the decision and plans to take the matter to the Supreme Court.
Ms O'Connor says police made the right decision and she can not imagine a bigger waste of the court's time.
"Our Supreme Court, our courts are extremely busy and I can not imagine a greater waste of Supreme Court time and resources than for this sort of matter to go before the court," she said.
"What Mr Abbott SC proposes to do is to go to the Kingston Golf Course in the afternoon and early in the evening, when there's no one there, and shoot wood duck, native hen, sulphur crested cockatoos and bush possums as he drives around the course in his four-wheel drive Porsche Cayenne."
Soy drinkers launch multi-million-dollar class action
The Victorian-based distributor of soy milk brand, Bonsoy, is being sued in a multi-million-dollar class action launched in Melbourne today.
Lawyer Bernard Murphy, of Maurice Blackburn, says the distributor Spiral Foods added a seaweed extract to the milk from 2003 until its recall, raising its iodine count to seven times the safe level.
"In that period, scores of people suffered serious health consequences as a result of their consumption of Bonsoy milk," he said.
"Our clients are health conscious people. They drank this milk to improve their health but instead they became sick, some of them critically ill."
Fake Police force girl into car boot in roadsise carjack - Western Suburbs, Sydney
A 17-year-old girl was trapped in the boot of her car during an elaborate robbery attempt at Colyton in Sydney's west yesterday morning.
The men, who had their faces covered, told her to hand over her purse, but the girl refused and tried to run away.
The men managed to catch her and they forced her into the boot of her car.
The 17-year-old was freed after calling triple-0 on her mobile phone.
Police are appealing for anyone with information about the incident to come forward.
Games official catches dengue fever - Delhi Commonwealth Games 2010
An official at the Commonwealth Games athletes' village in Delhi has reportedly caught dengue fever.
More than 6,800 competitors and team officials from the 71 competing countries are staying at the athletes village.Several thousand people in Delhi have been diagnosed with dengue fever over the past few weeks, partly due to recent heavy rains, during which mosquito numbers have been able to flourish in pools of water around partially-finished construction sites.
The man, who is involved with the Indian lawn bowls team, was admitted to a Delhi hospital after showing symptoms of fever, low blood pressure and low platelet count, the Times of India reported today.
The newspaper said the hospital would neither confirm or deny whether the man, who is from the north-east of India, has the potentially fatal mosquito-born virus.
But it quoted the Health Minister Kiran Walia as saying the patient had been staying at a hotel in Delhi prior to coming to the athletes' village.
More at ABC
$35 Million Dollar Train stuck at the station with no where to go.
One of the world's most luxurious trains is stuck in limbo in a shed west of Brisbane as Queensland Rail and the Orient Express company argue about who really owns it.
The ABC has been shown what may be the final resting place of the $35 million train called the Great South Pacific Express.Kept out of public view for the best part of seven years, it has been gathering dust at the rear of a Queensland Rail workshop at Ipswich.
The luxury train, which took tourists between Sydney and Cairns between 1999 and 2003, was reported to have been sold and sent overseas.
One carriage has vanished, but 20 of the train's plush cream and maroon carriages, each costing more than $1 million to build, have gone nowhere.
"The carriages are still owned by Queensland Rail, and I think you have to ask them where they are now," said Gary Franklin, the manager of the Orient Express's trains in London.
But Queensland Rail said the Orient Express owned the train.
"They have purchased it some time ago and have left all but one carriage still sitting in our Ipswich workshops out here," Queensland Rail chief executive Paul Scurrah said.
"I'm unaware of any plans they've got to come and get it."
Who's responsible for the Great South Pacific Express is now the centre of an Agatha Christie-style mystery.
When the ABC saw the train recently, it was parked in two long rows with the curtains are drawn, the sides dusty and some paint flaking around the edges of a rear door. It seemed otherwise to be in good shape.
"It was a beautiful train," Mr Franklin said.
"The actual train itself was built in the style of almost a Victorian train. It had clerestory windows. Inside it was it had a lot of marquetry - wood inlaid panels.
"Some of the fabrics that were used in the seating and in the cabin were of a high quality. We had crystal, we had silverware, and the finest bone china."
The train was built by Queensland Rail in Townsville in the 1990s, originally as a project by QR's then chief executive, Vince O'Rourke, to save jobs.
The train was modeled on the famous Orient Express, which still runs from London to Venice.
By the time it was launched in 1999 the budget had blown out to $35 million.
The Orient Express company was asked to manage it, and was so impressed it became a shareholder.
But then came September 11, 2001 and the SARS scare in 2003, and the tourist market dried up.
"That train was probably the most beautiful, fantastic, comfortable train that I have seen," said Mr Franklin, who travelled on the train.
"It was built by Queensland Rail. The quality of workmanship and materials used made that one of the most exquisite trains that operated in the world.
"The decision to close it down was really Queensland Rail's and I think you may have to speak to them as to their decision. We were very proud of that train and believed it to be very successful."
Mr Scurrah said it was a great train that turned out to be a bad business.
"I guess the legacy of the past haunted that project," he said.
It was partly a victim of Australia's archaic railway system. Every time the train went from NSW to Queensland, its wheels had to be changed so that could run on Queensland's narrow gauge railway tracks.
"You had to take the standard gauge bogeys off the train and put the narrow gauge bogeys on, and that was quite onerous to do," he said.
"[It was] a very inefficient way of running it and, unfortunately, as great an experience that it was, as a business it wasn't very good."
Queensland Rail said an Orient Express holding company owned the carriages and was paying for the storage of the train.
Orient Express Hotels told the ABC that it did not technically own them, but had an option to buy the train if it found a suitable project.
Queensland Rail was planning a new tourist train service to Cairns next year, but Mr Scurrah said it will not involve the Great South Pacific Express.
"I think we can do something different than bringing the Great South Pacific Express back," he said.
"It'd be a 'watch this space' type comment I'll make here, around the future product we'll have for the tourism industry.
From ABC
Cambodian Weightlifter to represent Australia in 2010 Games
As a little boy, Vannara Be grew up hearing about the torture inflicted on his relatives by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
But almost 30 years since that reign of terror, 22-year-old Be has become the first Cambodian-born competitor to represent Australia at the Commonwealth Games.
The diminutive weightlifter, who lived with his parents and three siblings on the outskirts of Phnom Penh until he was 10, only received his Australian citizenship late last year.
Not until today, at a press conference in Delhi, did he learn he was the first Cambodian to wear the green and gold.
"I just found out today," he said.
"It's pretty nervous. Suddenly you are representing your country."
His family's first link to Australia came through one of his uncles, who fled to the country on a boat in the 1980s.
His uncle was granted refugee status and eventually persuaded Be's father to come to Australia for a short work trip at a farm in Victoria.
The owner of the farm offered to sponsor him to return on a working visa.
The whole family arrived in Australia in 1998, but it was only last November that Be received his citizenship.
He said he took up weightlifting to get out of school and had never really had the ambition to represent Australia.
"As a little kid you go to school. To get out of school you go play different sports," he said.
Be, who will be competing in the 62-kilogram weightlifting competition, said he can hoist 148 kilograms.
He credited some of his physical strength to his early days working with his mother in her Cambodian shop and later with his father on the farm.
The Safety (read:revenue) cameras just arent working - Record holiday road toll
Eight people have been killed and two people are fighting for life after five separate crashes on New South Wales roads this long weekend.
But as the head of the Crash Investigation Unit told the media he felt defeated and did not know what more to do to stop the road toll rising, police were responding to a collision at Hoxton Park in Western Sydney.
After an intensive roll out of the new Safety cameras, and Mobile speed cameras, Both capable of detecting speeding, red light offences, capture unregistered and stolen cars and ID a cars route, in multiple lanes at once, the road toll is still climbing.
With the government claiming the cameras are placed in strategic hot spot locations, critics are claiming them ineffective and just another move by the NSW government to create a Big Brother State in NSW.
So what has gone wrong? Is it that there are simply too many cars in Sydney? With a failing public transport system and a constant 10 year government flip-flop on the "next generation" of public transport, SydnySiders are forced to rely more and more on private transport - Why else do cars sales still rise in an economic downturn?
One only needs to look at motorbike sales to see the where the problems are starting.
Additionally, Australia is one of the few rare countries in the world where you can take your driving test in one of 28+ foreign languages - ie: You do not need to speak english to obtain a driving or riding licence in Australia. Its a joke. Anyone else see the link in problems?
We also have a large influx of immigrants each year from Asia, Europe and the Middle east. Driving standards are lesser in these regions, if in existence at all, and with such a relaxed attitude to driving tests, its understandable that the problems are outgrowing the solutions.
This editor suggests the Government of this country look at the source of the problem, instead of focusing on the problem itself, Which clearly isn't working.
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