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NSW police and the corruption-fighting body met yesterday, with the police handing over undisclosed evidence, understood to include a tape recording that allegedly contains claims of government corruption related to the property sector.

A new twist in the increasingly murky case was aired on Seven Network news yesterday, with associates of Mr McGurk reportedly saying the businessman had told them he had visited Sydney’s Surry Hills police station just hours before he was murdered last Thursday.

They said Mr McGurk had feared for his life and that an influential Sydney businessman had bribed a corrupt detective to frame him. It was alleged the detective had become aware of Mr McGurk’s complaint and had contacted the business associate.

But NSW police quickly issued a statement hosing down the latest claims.

They said they had no record of Mr McGurk attending Surry Hills “or any other police station” on the day of his murder.

A police spokesman said Strike Force Narrunga, which is investigating Mr McGurk’s murder, was not investigating any allegation of police corruption made by Mr McGurk.

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Eileen T. Kennedy, president of the Smart Choices board and the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said the program’s criteria were based on government dietary guidelines and widely accepted nutritional standards.

She said the program was also influenced by research into consumer behavior. That research showed that, while shoppers wanted more information, they did not want to hear negative messages or feel their choices were being dictated to them.

“The checkmark means the food item is a ‘better for you’ product, as opposed to having an x on it saying ‘Don’t eat this,’ ” Dr. Kennedy said. “Consumers are smart enough to deduce that if it doesn’t have the checkmark, by implication it’s not a ‘better for you’ product. They want to have a choice. They don’t want to be told ‘You must do this.’ ”

Dr. Kennedy, who is not paid for her work on the program, defended the products endorsed by the program, including sweet cereals. She said Froot Loops was better than other things parents could choose for their children.

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The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.

Either way, Wall Street would profit by pocketing sizable fees for creating the bonds, reselling them and subsequently trading them. But some who have studied life settlements warn that insurers might have to raise premiums in the short term if they end up having to pay out more death claims than they had anticipated.

The idea is still in the planning stages. But already “our phones have been ringing off the hook with inquiries,” says Kathleen Tillwitz, a senior vice president at DBRS, which gives risk ratings to investments and is reviewing nine proposals for life-insurance securitizations from private investors and financial firms, including Credit Suisse.

“We’re hoping to get a herd stampeding after the first offering,” said one investment banker not authorized to speak to the news media.

In the aftermath of the financial meltdown, exotic investments dreamed up by Wall Street got much of the blame. It was not just subprime mortgage securities but an array of products — credit-default swaps, structured investment vehicles, collateralized debt obligations — that proved far riskier than anticipated.

The debacle gave financial wizardry a bad name generally, but not on Wall Street. Even as Washington debates increased financial regulation, bankers are scurrying to concoct new products.

A sign bearing the letters ELF was found near the towers, said Andy Skotdal, general manager of KRKO Radio in Everett, about 25 miles north of Seattle. The group is a loose collection of radical environmentalists that has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks since the 1990s.

The towers were torn down because of health and environmental concerns, according to an e-mail to The Herald of Everett from the North American ELF Press Office, which has represented the shadowy group in the past.

“We have to weigh our priorities, and the local ecosystem in Everett, along with the local residents, do not need additional sports news radio station towers that come at the expense of reduced property values and harmful radio waves,” ELF press office spokesman Jason Crawford said in an e-mail.

The group’s Web site featured a picture of one of the towers lying on its site with the caption “Earth Liberation Front Topples Two Radio Station Towers in Snohomish County, WA,” followed by the words “Details coming soon.”

A call to ELF press office for comment Friday morning was not immediately returned.

Snohomish County sheriff’s office spokeswoman Rebecca Hover wouldn’t confirm that a sign was found.

A neighbor told a 911 operator that someone seemed to attacking the towers with a bulldozer at about 3:30 a.m., Hover told The Herald. A 349-foot tower and a smaller tower were found on the ground with heavy construction equipment nearby, but deputies and a tracking dog didn’t find any suspects, Hover said.

Deputies found other, unspecified evidence at the scene, she said.

The FBI has taken over the lead of the investigation, Hover said in a statement.

The family-owned station remained on the air Friday morning after shifting to other transmission equipment.

KRKO’s plans to increase its transmission capacity have been embroiled for more than a decade in appeals and litigation over issues ranging from trumpeter swan habitat to potential health hazards to humans.

The addition to the station’s existing towers in the town of Snohomish, east of Everett, were completed in February, allowing KRKO to boost its AM signal to where it could compete with larger broadcasters in the Seattle-Tacoma area. Neighbors have since complained of interference from radio signals on home telephone and intercom lines.

An ELF sign was left on March 3, 2008, at the scene of fires set at a number of houses in a Street of Dreams development at Echo Lake, north of Seattle. Street of Dreams is an annual showcase of new luxury homes in the Seattle area.

ELF also has claimed responsibility for other arsons in the region, including a fire that destroyed the Center for Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2001.

The Skotdal family also plans to build two 199-foot towers at the same site for a new 5,000-watt AM station that would cover Snohomish County on another frequency.

A hearing examiner denied a permit for the towers, based on claims that radio signals could be dangerous to humans. But the council voted to reverse the finding, saying it was based on shaky scientific evidence.

A King County judge upheld the council’s decision on Aug. 14.

“When all legal channels of opposition have been exhausted, concerned citizens have to take action into their own hands to protect life and the planet,” Crawford said in the e-mail.

It was the reception his story ultimately received in the United States.

“It was quite mysterious to me,” Anderson says. “All of a sudden, it became clear that they were going to run the article but they were going to try to bury it under a rock as much as they possibly could.”

Anderson, 50, is an accomplished reporter and novelist who has written previously for Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and Vanity Fair.

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Authorities say Cramer helped a large-scale drug trafficking organisation move cocaine into the United States, according to a criminal complaint made public Friday.

The complaint says that Cramer provided members of a drug smuggling organisation with information from confidential law enforcement databases that told them whether one of their members was a government informant.

The complaint also says Cramer and the smuggling organisation invested about $400,000 in a 300-kilogram shipment of cocaine that was seized in June 2007.

An informant told DEA agents that Cramer had “very powerful friends” among DEA agents in Mexico and a strong relationship with one particular member of the smuggling organisation, according to the complaint.

The complaint also says that during an August 2007 meeting, a member of the smuggling organization convinced Cramer to retire from ICE and begin working directly for the organisation in drug smuggling and money laundering.