SCHOOL DRUG TESTS 'UNRELIABLE'

A urine testing kit would be unable to detect whether a school student had
used heroin or simply taken a Panadeine tablet, a drug testing expert
warned yesterday.

Several leading private schools in Sydney and Victoria are considering drug
testing students.

Royal North Shore Hospital Toxicology Unit scientist Peter Bowron said
urine testing kits, which cost about $25 to test several drugs or less than
$10 to test a single drug such as marijuana, were unreliable and inaccurate.

Band raking in savage earnings

Pop duo Savage Garden has topped magazine BRW's annual Top 50 Entertainers
list of money earners for the second year in a row.

The pair, Daniel Jones and Darren Hayes, earnt $30million last year and
have racked up $76million in gross earnings since the release of their
first album in March, 1997, BRW said in its latest edition.

Nine out of this year's top 50 entertainers list, which is based on gross
earnings in 1999 that total $251.6million, are singers or groups.

Broken romance led to killings

A broken romance was to blame for a tragic shooting that left three people
dead in the southern Queensland city of Maryborough.

Perri Lee Straton, 37, and Rachel Anne Merlow 29, were shot dead by
Benjamin Howard McConnell when he stormed into the bar of a local hotel
firing numerous shots from a rifle and a pistol. After shooting the
barmaids at the Shamrock Hotel on Wednesday night the 26-year-old local
pistol club member shot himself.

Police said Ms Merlow, a trainee bar attendant, had broken off her
association with McConnell a few weeks ago, but he had refused to accept
the romance was over.