NightBlogger

WEST Australian Police have asked the state government to give them the power to take a DNA sample from anyone who is arrested, even for minor offences such as trespass. Police can now take samples only from people charged with or suspected of committing a serious offence that carries a minimum jail sentence of 12 months. The West Australian newspaper said it was understood police had made the request for greater powers in their recent submission to the State Government’s statutory review of the Criminal Investigation (Identifying People) Act 2002, which regulates the DNA database, the collection of samples and the time and conditions under which profiles are kept. Police Minister John Kobelke has backed the move, saying it would help make police even more effective. More

May 28, 2008 at 2:52 AM EDT
globeandmail.com
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch’s 99-year-old mother beat Australian tax authorities in court Wednesday over a tax bill on an $81-million (U.S.) payment. Dame Elisabeth Murdoch had appealed an Australian Taxation Office order to pay tax on the sum following a 1994 reorganization of family trusts. The quantity of the tax bill was not disclosed.

An administrative court rejected her first appeal, but three Federal Court judges unanimously upheld her appeal Wednesday and agreed that she owed no tax on the sum. The Murdoch matriarch’s husband was the late Sir Keith Murdoch, from whom Rupert Murdoch, the 76-year-old chairman and chief executive officer of a U.S.-based global media empire, inherited his first newspaper.