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National Nine News (AUS)
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=598133
ninemsn.com.au
Son relives dying father's distress call:
The teenage son of a man allegedly stabbed to death by his wife broke down in tears yesterday as he listened to a recording of his father's triple-0 call being played in court.
The teenager, who cannot be named, was giving evidence in the Supreme Court over the death of his 55-year-old father Chaim Kimel at their Rose Bay home in August 2006, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Mr Kimel's wife Danielle Stewart, 32, is accused of stabbing her husband twice in the abdomen after a fight over a computer password.
The teenager, now 18, told the court how he was listening to the couple arguing in another room when he heard what sounded like his father being "punched".
When he came out of his bedroom, the boy saw his father hunched over in the hallway gripping his side and wailing in pain.
"I've never heard my father scream like that before," he was quoted in the Daily Telegraph as saying.
"I could see blood all over his hands, all over his shirt."
Mr Kimel allegedly then tried to flee the home, but collapsed on the hallway before making a desperate emergency call for help.
"I've just been stabbed, OK, please get the ambulance," Mr Kimel said in the recording played yesterday.
"I can't breathe . . . I've been stabbed . . . really badly."
Mr Kimel's son is then heard grabbing the phone and begging for help to come quickly.
Head in hands, the teenager wept yesterday as the recording was played in court, the newspaper reports.
Ms Stewart, who has pleaded not guilty to the murder on the grounds of self-defence, allegedly screamed about being locked out of the family's computer as Mr Kimel laying dying on the floor.
Mr Kimel's son told the court how his father had password-protected some computer files and websites.
Ms Stewart had often threatened to end the four-year relationship, the teenager said.
The case continues.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=598112
NATIONAL NINE NEWS (AUS)
ninemsn.com.au
Optus leaves door open for compensation:
Optus says it may consider compensating some businesses for the loss of mobile, landline and internet services.
A contractor laying pipe for Queensland's water grid cut the network's main fibre optic cable on the Gold Coast on Tuesday, plunging more than a million subscribers into chaos shortly before 8am (AEST).
An attempt to reroute the downed services via an inland backup network in the town of Stanthorpe failed.
Thousands of mobile phone customers, as well as banks, businesses and the check-in and baggage handling systems at Brisbane International Airport were offline for four hours until the Gold Coast fault was fixed.
Optus spokesman Joshua Drayton said the company was prepared to field calls for compensation for loss of vital phone, internet and payment processing systems.
"We will work directly with our customers regarding compensation and we will look at it on a case-bay-case basis," he told The Courier-Mail newspaper.
Another Optus spokesman Maha Krishnapillai said most services were back to normal and he urged business people who have suffered losses to contact the company.
"We encourage all our business customers to speak to their account manager, and they should have an Optus account manager they can contact, and we definitely want to talk to our customers - small business and businesses," Mr Krishnapillai told Fairfax Radio on Wednesday.
"In terms of other customers, there's a customer service line. We're quite happy to talk to those customers."
In a statement to The Courier-Mail, the contractors carrying out work on the water grid, Southern Regional Water Pipeline Alliance, said no works by either staff or contractors were involved in the fibre optic cable disruption.
But the paper said an aerial photograph appeared to show workers repairing a large cable in a pipeline trench next to the Molendinar Water Treatment Plant on the Gold Coast.
The Queensland government now wants to know why a backup system did not prevent the shutdown, which also affected ATM and EFTPOS services.
Premier Anna Bligh said she was "alarmed" that one severed cable could have such a huge impact on the state, and would be talking to the federal minister for communications about the incident.
"I think Queenslanders and, frankly, Australians, are entitled to expect a telecommunications network that can withstand one cable cut," she told reporters in Brisbane.
Ms Bligh said no emergency services had been affected, but she wanted answers as to why a backup system did not work.
She said affected businesses were entitled to feel "very angry", but the issue of compensation was a legal judgment for others to make.
