Man raped five women in their homes: crown

FIVE women were raped at knifepoint in their own homes by a man who disguised his face before blindfolding and tying them up, an Adelaide jury has been told.

One woman was tied up on her bed after hearing the man open the door to the room where her three daughters were sleeping, said crown prosecutor Sandi McDonald on Tuesday.

He returned, pulled her out of her bed, put her in her car, drove a short distance and then raped her in the back seat, Ms McDonald said in the crown opening address in the South Australian Supreme Court.

Phillip Gordon Lindsay, 52, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of burglary, 12 of rape, one of false imprisonment and one of taking a motor vehicle without consent.

The offences took place in Adelaide in the early hours of the morning between February 1990 and January 1993.

Ms McDonald said DNA from all the rapes matched Lindsay's DNA.

The five women came from different backgrounds, from different walks of life and did not know each other, she said.

"Those are the five women whose homes were invaded and those were the five women who were raped during the period between 1990 and 1993.

"On each occasion, he forced his way into the house while they were asleep.

"He disguised himself. He threatened them with a knife. He bound and gagged them with their own clothing."

One woman, who was alone in her home with her seven-week old baby, was woken by a man who had one of her infant's nappies wrapped around his head.

Another woman who was raped had tried to get rid of him by saying her husband would be home soon.

Ms McDonald said the man had then taken the woman's car, which was found the next day in easy walking distance from the house Lindsay had rented at the time.

Referring to the DNA evidence, Ms McDonald said Lindsay had four brothers.

But she said one died before the rapes, one was in jail at the time, and a third's DNA did not match the rape samples.

The fourth brother was alive at the time of the offences, but has since died.

Ms McDonald alleged that the DNA from the crime scenes was 6,305 more times likely to match the DNA of Lindsay, than his brother, and extra testing resulted in that statistic increasing to 159,000.

Paul Charman, for Lindsay, warned the jury that DNA can never identify anyone.

All it could do was show statistical relationships between samples taken at a crime scene and from various people.

"It does not mean there are no other people on this planet that will be a match," he said.

The trial is continuing.

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New medical research centre for Sydney

A MEDICAL research centre in Sydney's southwest could lead to groundbreaking new treatments for cancer and other diseases, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.

At the official opening of the Ingham Institute's new home at Liverpool Hospital on Tuesday, Ms Gillard said she hoped to see more Australian discoveries such as the anti-cancer Gardasil vaccine.

"It is this kind of research that we need and has been done in the past that we can do in the future," Ms Gillard said.

The institute, which was founded in 1996 by chicken farmer and businessman Bob Ingham AO, received almost $47 million in federal funding in 2009 to help complete the new centre at the hospital - the first medical research centre in the region.

The centre has more than 200 researchers working on seven disease areas, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, trauma and injury and mental health.

Clinicians, researchers, nurses and students will also be able to get hands-on training at a simulation centre, set to be completed later this year.

The institute is also pioneering new MRI-Linac cancer treatment technology, one of only three in the world, which can more accurately locate tumours during a treatment session.

"We have never been able to do that before," the institute's Research Director Professor Michael Barton OAM said.

He said it was one of only three currently under development in the world and will place Liverpool at the centre of world's best practice for radiation treatment.

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Govt forced to find $16.4bn in savings

THE federal government has been forced to find an extra $16.4 billion of budget savings over the next four years to keep its surpluses intact, after a troubled global economy took a further toll on tax receipts.

Treasurer Wayne Swan's mid-year budget review released on Monday predicts a $1.1 billion surplus in 2012/13, down about 27 per cent from the $1.5 billion surplus forecast in the May budget.

But it would still be a massive turnaround from a final $43.7 billion deficit for 2011/12.

The economic growth forecast for this financial year in the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook (MYEFO) was also marked down to three per cent, from 3.25 per cent previously.

Mr Swan says anyone suggesting Australia is immune from the global fallout of economic weakness in Europe, the US and China is "kidding themselves".

"It's pretty obvious to all that ... this mid-year review has been put together amid storm clouds which are hanging over the global economy," he told reporters in Canberra.

"This lower global growth outlook has had another very big whack at government tax revenues and has made it harder to deliver a surplus."

The latest round of savings includes a cut in the baby bonus from $5000 to $3000 for second and subsequent children from mid-2013, further changes to the private health insurance rebate and increased visa application costs.

"Our savings send a very clear message to the world that we have world beating public finances," Mr Swan said.

"That is very important given global economic uncertainty."

But Mr Swan said the savings were made with the circumstances of lower and middle-income Australians in mind and would give the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) room to cut interest rates in the future.

Under other changes, large companies will progressively shift to remitting taxes to the government each month, instead of quarterly, from 2014.

This will deliver a revenue gain of $8.3 billion over four years and make the system "more accurate, more timely and more clear".

"It's not an increase in tax; it's simply a change in the timing of it," Mr Swan said.

Finance Minister Penny Wong said some of the savings measures would "no doubt be unpopular".

"But the government is focused on making the right decisions for our circumstances and ensuring a strong and sustainable budget position now and into the future," she said.

One budget casualty is the expected revenue from Labor's minerals resource rent tax (MRRT), which has been hit by falling commodity prices, particularly for iron ore.

Total MRRT revenue for 2012/13 and the next three years is estimated at $9.1 billion, down from $13.4 billion in the May budget.

First instalments of the 30 per cent MRRT on the profits of large iron ore and coal miners, which started on July 1, were due to be received on Monday.

Meanwhile net commonwealth debt, which peaked at 10 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011/12, is in a declining trend.

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Japan island protests against US rapists

THE legislature of the Japanese island of Okinawa has passed a protest resolution after the arrest of two US sailors on rape charges, and says US bases should be shrunk or returned.

The resolution approved on Monday demands proper punishment and victim compensation in the rape case.

The prefectural assembly also demands that the US military educate its personnel better to prevent crimes against locals.

The legislature says 5,747 crimes are on record involving US military personnel since Okinawa was returned to Japan in 1972.

The US has placed an 11pm to 5am curfew to all its military personnel in Japan.

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Missing Tassie devil returns to WA zoo

ONE of three Tasmanian devils on the loose in rural Western Australia has been found.

The four-month-old male devils - Itchy, Scratchy and Genghis - escaped from Peel Zoo, on the outskirts of Pinjarra, south of Perth, after a tree smashed their enclosure on Tuesday.

Zoo owner David Cobbold said Scratchy was found in the early hours of Sunday but the other two hand-reared animals remain on the loose.

Mr Cobbold has urged members of the public who see the devils to call him on 0400 788 289 but warned against anyone trying to capture them.

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Aust stocks set to open one per cent lower

THE Australian sharemarket is expected to open about one per cent lower on Monday following falls in Europe and the US on Friday.

Markets plunged in the US, with the Nasdaq pulled down by more than two per cent by a tech stock rout led by Apple and Microsoft as a raft of disappointing earnings and trimmed forecasts spooked investors.

AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver said Australian stocks were likely to be weaker following the disappointing US results and investor worries about a lack of progress at the European leaders' summit, particularly regarding Spain.

"Consequently the US sharemarket had a fairly steep fall and our futures have traded down with that," Dr Oliver said.

"It looks like we're going to have a fairly soft start to trade on Monday.

"I'd say we're probably going to be off about one per cent."

The Australian futures market is pointing to a 0.99 per cent fall at the open.

In economic news, RBA assistant governor Guy Debelle is to deliver a speech to the Australian Securitisation Forum on Monday.

Market watchers are also awaiting the release on Wednesday of inflation figures for the September quarter.

The figures are expected to show an increase in the annual inflation rate, adding impetus to the case for another interest rate cut in November.

The local annual general meeting season is also getting under way.

Dr Oliver said there was some talk that the federal government would release its mid-year economic and forecasting outlook, which will contain an update on the budget for this year.

"There's a risk that could entail further tightening measures because the budget is running well behind the surplus," he said.

At the closing bell on Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 187.92 points (1.39 per cent) at 13,361.02.

The broad-based S&P 500 lost 24.17 (1.66 per cent) at 1433.17, and the Nasdaq Composite was off 67.25 points (2.19 per cent) at 3005.62.

At the close of trade in Australia on Friday, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was up 11.7 points, or 0.26 per cent, at 4571.1, while the broader All Ordinaries index had gained 12.6 points, or 0.28 per cent, to 4593.5.

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Cyclist was first Alps shooting victim

A FRENCH cyclist killed along with three members of a British family on holiday in the Alps region was the first to be shot, according to a French media report of the ballistics tests.

Sylvain Mollier was thought to have been shot simply because he stumbled on last month's attack on the British-Iraqi family.

But the ballistics report revealed that he was the first person shot, before the killer turned on the al-Hilli family, the website of Le Parisien reported on Friday.

Saad al-Hilli, 50, his wife Iqbal, 47, and her mother Suhaila al-Allaf, 74, were all shot and killed.

Seven-year-old Zainab al-Hilli nearly died after being shot in the shoulder and hit repeatedly around the head by the attacker. She has been unable to help the inquiry in any meaningful way.

Her four-year-old sister survived by sheltering under her mother's skirt in the back of the family's BMW estate car.

Investigators think only one person was involved in the shootings.

Having examined the soles of his shoes, they think Saad Hilli was first shot outside the car and then finished off after he got back in the car and tried to drive off, Le Parisien reported.

After having shot the three members of the family in the car, the killer then turned back to the cyclist and finished him off, investigators believe, basing their theory on the different angles of some of entry wounds.

Their reconstruction suggested that the killer had moved around a lot in an apparently disorganised manner, going from one victim to another and then back again.

That seemed to undermine the theory that a professional killer had been behind the killings, investigators told the paper.

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