SYDNEY: Police here believe they are closer to determining the exact time of death of rock star Michael Hutchence, following information from a cleaner at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Double Pay where the INXS frontman's body was found last Saturday week.

The cleaner has reluctantly come forward to tell police Hutchence was already stiff when she went to clean his room at 9.30am that morning. Police believe the rock star either killed himself or died accidently soon after.

BRISBANE: Mining giant Rin Tin Tinto has announced the discovery in far north Queensland of what could be the world's largest untapped deposits of natural soap.

And Queensland Premier Rob Borbidge believes the find, on the eastern side of Cape York Peninsula, will bring an estimated $10 billion in export earnings and 200 semi-permanent jobs to the area.

The natural soap deposits are so large that open-cut mining methods similar to those in the coal industry will be used to extract the valuable mineral. Rin Tin Tinto hopes to begin mining as soon as the wet season ends in March.

MELBOURNE: Fraud squad detectives in a series of pre-dawn raids have arrested 12 members of an illegal betting syndicate said to have netted $12 billion on this year's Melbourne Cup.

The syndicate is understood to have contravened federal telecommunications laws to clean up on Might and Power's win, with hundreds of five-figure bets placed at TABs throughout Queensland where the Cup is run an hour later because of daylight saving.

SYDNEY: A multi-million dollar highrise development in the heart of Sydney is the first major project to fall victim of the Carr Government's plan to have the city looking as pretty as possible for the 2000 Olympics. The builders of the World Trade Centre project could not give a guarantee that the 28-storey building would be finished by the Game's opening date, so have been directed to knock down the 14 storeys so far completed, fill in the hole and grass it over.

ADELAIDE: Rob Stitch and Tom Gleisner have signed with the ABC to do a six-part television series on the history of Chinese cooking in Australia. Filming is already under way on A Noodle Somewhere. And in other entertainment news, The King , Graham Kennedy, is reported to have been so impressed with Elle McPherson's recent bout of TV documentaries that he's planning to come out of retirement for a one-hour special, My Wrinkly Old Scrotum.