Mobile Shop Owner Shot Dead
Illawarra Mercury
Friday February 16, 2001
The proprietor of a mobile phone shop was shot dead inside his store on one of Sydney's busiest streets yesterday, just 70m from the local police station.
The 31-year-old man was found alone in the shop by a coworker and moments later by a customer, slumped on the floor after falling from his chair and becoming tangled in telephone cables.
His name has not been released.
Blood was sprayed on the wall behind him but he was still alive when paramedics arrived at the Gladesville shop just after midday. He died in the Royal North Shore Hospital later yesterday afternoon.
A discarded mobile phone sim card was found on the shop floor and its origin was last night being investigated by police as a major lead.
SOS from Bali to London
A group of backpackers were rescued from a disabled yacht off the Indonesian coast after one woke her boyfriend half a world away with a mobile phone text message: ``we need help - SOS".
Rescue services from three different countries including Australia rushed into action yesterday morning after the cry for help, with the yacht eventually towed to the safety of an Indonesian port several hours later.
The hired 23m yacht, with 18 people on board, had been drifting for 12 hours in heavy seas between the holiday islands of Bali and Lombok after its engine failed.
International rescue authorities were alerted when British woman Rebecca Fyfe, 19, sent a mobile message from aboard the yacht to her boyfriend in London.
Boyfriend Nick Hodgson, 23, managed to call her back and get the boat's location in the Lombok strait before her battery wore down.
Carnell's job `inappropriate'
Health Minister Michael Wooldridge drew heavy criticism from doctors yesterday for appointing his friend and former ACT chief minister Kate Carnell to head a new GP Training Board.
The Australian Medical Association slammed as ``inappropriate" the appointment of Ms Carnell.
AMA president Kerryn Phelps said the association did not welcome Ms Carnell's appointment to the federal body, which will oversee the new general practice training system from next year.
The system will remove training control from the Royal Australian College of GPs and throw the process open to tender from a range of medical organisations.
Dr Phelps said the AMA had been told if GP training was taken out of the hands of doctors it would be headed by an independent businessperson.
``Not only is Ms Carnell a pharmacist ... (she) is neither independent of this Government nor is she a businessperson," she said.
© 2001 Illawarra Mercury
