-In Adelaide on Thursday Mr Charles Prince, 40, of Morphetville, was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labour after being found guilty of fraud. The case against Mr Prince was established when it was proven that the horse he had raced at Murray Bridge Racing Club on 28th July as 'Redlock' was in fact the galloper 'Erbie'. It has since been established that Erbie has been raced in three states, winning under the names of 'Chrybean', 'Duke Bombita' and 'Redlock'.

A man was convicted of forgery in the Quarter Sessions yesterday, and sentenced to seven years jail. edward Charles Windeyer, a 39 year old labourer from Glebe, had pleaded not guilty to forging more than 400 £10 bank notes. It was alleged that Mr Windeyer had studied the production of the notes for two years, and passed them off at night dog racing and trotting meetings. The Crown Prosecutor, Mr Rooney, QC, said that the notes showed 'a technical proficiency which stamped Windeyer as a man of considerable ability and cunning.' Mr Windeyer's defence was that he was bullied into signing statements when two detectives punched and kicked him repeatedly, and threatened to throw him out of the window. This was denied by Detective Ladkin, one of the officers named, who gave evidence that Windeyer had fallen down a flight of stairs.

A $250,000 reward has been offered by police for information relating to the investigation of the recent Woolworths bombing. The reward is the largest ever offered in Australian history.
   On Christmas Eve, Woolworths' Town Hall store in the centre of Sydney was devastated by a bomb blast, the chains third store to be targeted in nine days. Authorities received only 10 minutes warning of the bombing, which miraculously caused no serious casulaties after 2,000 shoppers and staff were evacuated from the area.

This latest outrage follows the December 19th bombing of the Woolworth's Maitland store, near Newcastle, which suffered more than $300,000 damage, and the bombing of the Warilla store on the south-east coast, which also sustained a similar amount of damage.

Police have already received more than 20 calls from the public in efforts to identify potential suspects since the reward was posted. Security has been stepped up on all Woolworths stores and a special police investigation squad has been set up to pursue the offenders.

Detectives believe the bombings are connected to an extortion attempt made in October this year, in which a man demanded $800,000 from the retailing chain. Last Saturday, the Woolworths' Orange store received a call from a man threatening to bomb one of the stores unless he was paid $1 million.

Woolworths' management are refusing to pay the extortion money, a stance that has gained widespread approval.

-Half a million dollars against the lives of passengers on a Hong Kong-bound Qantas flight -- these were the stakes in a tense extortion drama played out in Sydney today.
Soon after noon, a man rang the Commonwealth Police in Sydney claiming that Qantas flight 755, a Boeing 707 which had just left for Hong Kong, carried a time-bomb on board. The man, calling himself 'Mr Brown', said the bomb would explode once the jet had descended below 6,500 metres. more »

-After claiming to be the missing child, presumed drowned 20 years earlier, a jury must decide whether a heavyset butcher from Wagga Wagga is indeed the previously slender Sir Roger Tichborne, son of Lady Tichborne and therefore whether he is now entitled to her deceased estate. After seeing an advertisement placed in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1866, Arthur Orton came forward to claim the Tichborne ancestry and has been living off the spoils ever since.

Singer Fairlie Arrow was yesterday fined $5,000 for staging her own abduction on the Gold Coast in December last year. The 28-year-old entertainer was charged with making a false statement to police--a criminal charge with a maximum penalty of $6,000. Ms Arrow confessed to faking the kidnapping soon after the details of the abduction became public in January. It appears that Ms Arrow staged the stunt to put some life into her flagging singing career.

-Wagga Wagga butcher Arthur Orton has been found guilty of perjury for falsely claiming in court to be the missing heir Sir Roger Tichborne. Until she died six years ago, Lady Tichborne had believed Orton was her son despite the fact that nobody else did. She paid him a yearly allowance of £1,000 per year. Orton lost a case brought against him 3 years ago when the jury found he was not who he claimed to be, did not have the tattoos and could not speak his native language. Orton has now been sentenced to 14 years penal servitude for perjuring himself in court.