General News

[Edition 35] MELBOURNE, Wednesday: Several smokers’ groups have announced that they will launch lawsuits against passive smokers who seek worker’s compensation claims. The smoking groups will seek compensation from those who are found to have benefited from passive smoking without paying for cigarettes. Bar workers who can not show that their own cigarette purchases caused…

[Edition 35] CANBERRA, Sunday: The competition regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has struck out at a “cosy cartel” within Australia’s lucrative illegal drugs market, worth an estimated $20 billion annually. The Commission initiated court proceedings against nine Sydney ecstasy dealers cited for restrictive trade practices including price-fixing, illegal market-sharing arrangements and resale…

[Edition 34] LOS ANGELES, Wednesday: Companies have denied that they are being affected by cyber squatters and the diminishing number of domain names. At the launch of the site’s advertising campaign, the web designer for www.columbiatristar.com denied that they had been forced to adopt a stupidly long web address.

[Edition 33] Friends and relatives gathered at the Clinton home in New York’s Harlem today, to pay their respects and mourn for the death of Chelsea Clinton, 22, a college student and one of the highest profile children of a US president in living memory.

[Edition 30] SYDNEY, Thursday: In response to an action brought by several traditional feminist groups, the High Court yesterday declared the Night to have been formally reclaimed.

[Edition 30] SEATTLE, Thursday: Shame-faced workers at Microsoft admitted today that hackers had succeeded in penetrating their network’s defences and had installed a sophisticated virus on the Apple Macintosh machines used across the software giant’s operations.

[Edition 29] Several years ago, the look-out was grim. Falling attendance at tournaments, dropping sales of chess-sets and reports of school chess clubs closing across the world pointed to an eventual decline and, perhaps, an end to chess as we know it. All this has turned around 180 degrees with the appointment in 1999 of…

[Edition 27] FLORIDA, Thursday: Drug company Pfizer, well known for its impotence drug Viagra, has again captured the US drug market with the release of its new ‘double strength’ placebo. Pfizer claims its new placebo contains twice as many inert and inactive ingredients as normal placebos. They claim that the psychophysiological effects of its new…

[Edition 25] NEWTOWN, Sunday: Tonight’s meeting of the Marxism-Leninism Now Collective demonstrated the continuing relevance and ultimate success of communist principles, according to the Collective’s Secretary, George Addison, 44. Comrade Addison, as he insists on being called, believes that the Collective’s meetings provide what he calls “a blueprint for tomorrow”.

[Edition 25] GEELONG, Tuesday: There were scenes of jubilation today at the once plush suite of suburban dental wizz and local media identity Dr Peter Johns. The commotion followed the dentist’s shock decision to replace his popular collection of women’s magazines from the mid 1980s with a new suite of titles.