Melbourne Victoria

SYDNEY Ferries boss Sue Sinclair has quit after a spate of breakdowns and accidents involving its fleet of commuter vessels.

A FORMER One Nation state president who resigned over reported links to a white supremacist movement is among the candidates vying for the West Australian state seat vacated by former premier Geoff Gallop.

PRIME Minister John Howard says a fragment of Muslims are utterly antagonistic to Australian culture, posing a problem for the country's immigration program.

SECURITY guards will patrol Sydney taxi ranks and all cabs will be fitted with cameras in a government move to protect cabbies following the bashing death of a driver.

ISRAELI troops shot dead two Palestinians during confrontations with stone throwers in the West Bank refugee camp of Balata today, witnesses and medics said.

POLICE have arrested a man after a car ploughed into a group of teenagers, killing five and injuring at least seven near Mildura in Victoria's north-west.

FIVE teenagers were killed and seven injured when they were hit by a car in Victoria's north-west tonight.

ONE man died and another two were hurt when they were caught in rough surf on the NSW mid-north coast today.

A BRISBANE truck driver drove his way into the Guinness Book of World Records after hauling almost 1.5km of road train for charity.

STAFF at Sydney's Long Bay jail didn't know a prisoner had escaped today until a motorist called police about seeing a man in green running near the prison.

VICTORIAN Opposition Leader Robert Doyle today announced 14 female Liberal candidates to contest the November 25 state election.

TASMANIA'S economy and health system were the major issues as the state's politicians hit the hustings for the first day of the March 18 election campaign.

HUMAN rights advocates and the federal Opposition have commended the government for successfully appealing for clemency in the case of two Australian drug traffickers on death row in Vietnam.

A WOMAN and her three-year-old son have been freed from wreckage after their car rolled in central western New South Wales.

SOUTH Australian Labor MP Terry Roberts died today after a battle with cancer.

A SOCIALIST youth organisation wants to sell hundreds of flag burning kits to university students next week .. to highlight anger at the Federal Government.

ONE of Australia's most popular celebrity doctors, James Wright, has lost more than $51 million to a New Zealand fraudster who convinced him to invest in his companies, US court documents show.

THE New South Wales Government will consider selling state-owned assets in addition to trimming expenses to meet growing demand on the next budget from essential services such as health.

A 13-year-old boy has been charged with grievous bodily harm after a 16-year-old girl was shot in the head at a remote Aboriginal community in the West Australian Goldfields.

A VICTORIAN woman is still missing after two weeks, despite a sighting in Western Australia.