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Dark past of a hippie alternative healer
The editor-in-chief of Belgrade's Healthy Life magazine was shocked to discover the secret past of Dragan Dabic, one of his regular contributors.
``It never even occurred to me that this man with a long white beard and hair was Karadzic,'' Goran Kojic said last night when he saw the photograph of the former Bosnian Serb leader on television.
Hirsutely enhanced, Karadzic, a psychiatrist before the war, practised alternative medicine in Belgrade while in hiding. His whereabouts had been a mystery since he went on the run in 1998, with his hideouts reportedly including monasteries and mountain caves in eastern Bosnia.
``He was working and performing alternative medicine, making money that way, he was working in a private medical practice, and his last residence was in New Belgrade.''
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Hero of horror celebrates tyrant's capture
Sydney man Vito Zepinic woke yesterday to a simple text message from one of his former police colleagues in Belgrade: We Captured Radovan.
For Mr Zepinic, it marked another chapter of his own dangerous and personal battle with Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb strongman, which led the former government minister and his family to flee to Australia.
Celebrations were held across Europe yesterday, particularly in Sarajevo, after Karadzic, one of the world's most wanted men, was caught on a bus in Belgrade.
Karadzic, dubbed by US officials as ``Europe's Osama bin Laden'', had been on the run since being indicted by the UN in 1995 for war crimes.
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Pensioners dial free ambulances to go shopping
Paramedics responding to emergency Triple-0 calls in Sydney's west are instead being used as de facto taxi drivers to local shops.
Older residents are the main offenders - using their pensioner entitlements to secure a free ride in an ambulance instead of paying a taxi fare to go shopping, ambulance sources have confirmed.
An ambulance ride to Mt Druitt Hospital costs $290, but the fee is waived for pensioners and other entitlement card holders.
Paramedics have watched in horror as patients miraculously recover from headaches and other feigned ailments to go shopping across the road.
``You get them to the emergency department and they walk out the door. They are the same patients, you know who is going to do it,'' a source said.
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Cate-crashing at Rudd's book launch
Timing is everything in politics, as proven yesterday when the launch of a book about the Kevin 07 election campaign coincided with a Sydney Theatre Company meeting in the same Walsh Bay building.
STC co-artistic director Cate Blanchett (pictured) snuck out of the board meeting to be one of the first to buy the book and get it signed by the man himself, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
``Who wouldn't?'' she said.
``It's a world in which I don't exist and I think it was an extraordinary and fascinating campaign.''
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Charley's solo TV adventure Down Under
For his latest feat, Charley Boorman has ditched his usual travel buddy, actor Ewan McGregor, and has done it alone.
The adventurer arrived in Sydney yesterday after travelling in a motorcycle convoy of 350 from Wollongong, completing the final leg of his journey from Wicklow, Ireland.
Boorman, 41, set off in April this year and travelled through 23 countries using various modes of transport, including gondolas, classic cars, racing yachts and elephants.
``It's quite bizarre to be here and to not have flown here. It's great. I have a great sense of achievement,'' he said yesterday.
The expedition was filmed for a six-part documentary series titled By Any Means, which will be screened on Foxtel in 2009.
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Beaconsfield shuns inquest
Beaconsfield Gold Mine has been accused of ``turning its back'' on the man crushed to death in a rock fall two years ago after the owners of the mine announced they would take no meaningful part in a coronial inquest into the accident.
The family of disaster victim Larry Knight last night expressed shock and anger at the mine's decision to shun the inquest, which follows a determined campaign by the company and its financial backer at the time of the collapse, the Macquarie Bank, to either shelve the inquiry or dramatically limit its terms of reference.
``This is our only chance to find the truth,'' said Shane Knight, Larry Knight's brother.
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FOI laws to be reformed - Ministers will lose power to stonewall
The federal Government will abolish ministers' power to permanently stymie Freedom of Information requests as the first stage of its promised FOI law reforms.
Cabinet Secretary John Faulkner said next year's reform of the FOI Act would be the most ``significant overhaul'' since its inception in 1982, adding it would include the appointment of an FOI commissioner and a reduction in the application costs.
The Right to Know coalition, co-founded by News Limited (publisher of The Australian), has been pushing for governments to overhaul restrictive and cumbersome FOI laws, and to reform the widespread use of suppression orders to gag the reporting of criminal trials.
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Bulletproof girls - Cervical cancer vaccine hailed a success
The new cervical cancer vaccine is expected to almost eradicate human papillomavirus (HPV) infections in Australian women by 2050 if the high rate of immunisation amongst girls continues.
Research to be released today by the Cancer Council NSW reveals the number of new HPV cases in women will fall by more than 50 per cent in the next two years. In 40 years, the number of cases will fall by 97 per cent.
A national program launched last April has seen 3.7 million girls vaccinated with Gardasil, which has the potential to prevent up to 70 per cent of cervical cancers.
Before the vaccination program, there were 108,000 new infections of HPV16 -- responsible for 50 per cent of cervical cancers - every year, but that number is expected to fall to 47,000 by 2010.
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Aboriginal teens get kicks at school
Travis Mills's father, a truck driver, has made it clear he expects the 15-year-old to finish school.
But Travis, whose home life revolves around sport and games with his six boisterous siblings and a young friend who has been taken in by the family, says he has sometimes struggled to find the motivation to attend class.
"It's hard to sit still," he says.
Travis is among a small group of indigenous teens selected for Clontarf Football Academy's new campus in the far-south Perth suburb of Kwinana, home to the city's biggest industrial strip and many troubled youth.
The campus will be officially launched today at Gilmore College in Kwinana, but has been quietly operating with promising results since February
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Somali women demand action on narcotic
It is a drug that cost Fartun Farah her marriage and one she says is fuelling domestic violence across the nation's African community.
But what makes her story unusual is that the drug in question, khat, is legal in Australia despite being banned in other countries such as the US, Canada and New Zealand.
Now Ms Farah and a group of Somali women in Melbourne are taking on the men in their own community by pushing for Australia to also ban khat - an African shrub that is chewed for amphetamine-like effect - saying it is destroying the social fabric of African communities.
``Each month, we see women walking into our centre saying khat is destroying their family,'' says Ms Farah, who heads the East African Women's Foundation in Melbourne.
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Historical Australia
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