Dog lick costs leg, toes, fingers

A woman is rebuilding her life from losing all her toes, fingers and a leg after being licked by a dog.

Julie McKenna from Mildura in Victoria was rushed to the Royal Adelaide Hospital last year after her small terrier licked a superficial burn on her left foot.

It sent her into septic shock, weeks later.

While the former nurse says her case is rare, she thinks people need to be careful around dogs and cats, especially where there is broken skin.

"I mean you see dogs licking kids on the face and things like that, I mean it's just one of those million-in-one chances, it's like the bird flu, you know, how did it hop from bird to human?" she said.

"Definitely changed my life, it's changed my life in every aspect, having no fingers and no, well amputated leg and half a foot, it's everything, you have to think twice about how to do things."

Burns specialist Dr John Greenwood says pet owners need to be careful.

"Dog bites, dog licks, they're never benign, they're always potentially horrendously infective."

Four-time killer dies after 56yrs in jail

The longest-serving prisoner in New South Wales, four-time killer Thomas Turner, has died at the age of 80.

Turner served 56 years in jail and became the last man to be sentenced to death in NSW in 1948.

He was condemned to death when he was 20 for strangling his 15-year-old girlfriend and murdering her 43-year-old father with an axe, but the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.

He was released in 1970 and stabbed his mother-in-law and his 11-year-old step-son to death less than three years later.

Turner was given a life sentence with a 20-year non-parole period after public outrage that he had been released and killed again.

He sought release last year but his application was refused.

Turner was born in Sydney and his last known address was in Erskineville.

A Department of Corrective Services spokesman says the prisoner died of lung cancer in Long Bay Hospital on Monday night.

Critics want Go Bag gone

THE City of Sydney has spent $40,832 buying 1200 Go Bags - emergency escape kits packed with radios, torches, dust masks and other survival paraphernalia - for staff and councillors.

The Go Bags were spruiked by the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, in July in a campaign called Let's Get Ready, Sydney.

The $200,000 project, half-funded by the federal Attorney-General's Department, advised city residents and workers to prepare for a hazardous materials incident, an explosion, an outbreak of contagious disease, civil disturbance, a natural disaster or other emergencies.

An accompanying website - www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/getreadysydney - advised residents that "you can carry your cat in a cotton pillowcase" but no pillowslips were included in the bags provided to council staff.

Chris Harris, a Greens councillor, has called the Go Bag a waste of ratepayers' money.

"I would rather see the $40,000 spent on environmental initiatives somewhere in the City of Sydney," he said yesterday. "It's an outdated hangover of the fear campaign of the Howard government."

Cr Harris said he received his council-issue Go Bag late last year. "I thought the wind-up radio would be good to take camping and the little torchlight was terrific so I kept that. I gave the Go Bag to my wife to take her books to uni."

The Go Bags contain first-aid kits, a bottle of water, sunscreen, tissues, a poncho, a dust mask, maps, a notepad and pen and a torch.

A spokeswoman for the City of Sydney said yesterday: "The cost of each Go-Bag is approximately $25, but you cannot put a price on safety and the city is leading by example by undertaking this emergency awareness program."

Man fined over illegal wildlife sales

A 67-year-old Queensland man has been convicted and fined $80,000 for selling protected wildlife.

Grant Arthur Nicholls today pleaded guilty to 21 charges in the Redcliffe Magistrates Court north of Brisbane, relating to the unlicensed selling of more than 600 native snakes, lizards, frogs and birds.

State Minister for Sustainability Andrew McNamara says the Deception Bay man had a permit to keep certain animals, but not to trade them.

Mr McNamara says the investigation also involved customs officers, and wildlife authorities from Victoria, the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales.

Hicks needs to tell his story, says Dick Smith

THE entrepreneur Dick Smith has been looking for a job for David Hicks in the environment industry but he did not have high hopes he would be successful.

Mr Smith, who denied yesterday he was a "mentor" of Mr Hicks, acknowledged he was contacted by the former Guantanamo Bay inmate six weeks ago to thank him for a three-year campaign Mr Smith had waged for his release. Since then they had met twice, once in Adelaide and again last week in Sydney.

Mr Hicks, convicted of a terrorism-related offence nearly a year ago, asked the entrepreneur whether he could find a job for him. He has reportedly been living in Sydney for two weeks and driving a car, although it is expected he will return to his home in Adelaide.

Mr Smith said he had spent an hour talking to Mr Hicks and was concerned that he lacked confidence. He believed that once Mr Hicks had a chance to tell his story, a different picture would emerge.

"I think it is important that he tell his story to the Australian people. Most of us have only what the Americans told us," he said. "He had five years of interrogation and every single thing he answered was distorted and leaked to the media.

"It was a plea-bargaining arrangement and he would have agreed to anything. He had been at Guantanamo Bay for five years and they told him he would never get out.

"The thing about David Hicks is that he has made some serious errors in his life. When he ended up with the Americans in Afghanistan in 2001, he said, 'This is the most fantastic day of my life, I will be back in Australia in two or three days'."

He said Mr Hicks had initially applied to get into the army but had lacked the educational qualifications. Seeking adventure, he had done what many other Australians had done: gone abroad to join in a conflict.

He had served with the Kosovo Liberation Army, where the infamous photo of him holding a rocket launcher was taken. He had joined the Kashmir Liberation Movement, with which he had done his training.

"But when he went overseas, it was before terrorism as we know it today," Mr Smith said.

"It was before September 11, it was before Bali, it was before the British bombings."

Mr Smith said the fact that Mr Hicks was able to travel around Australia suggested the Government was not as concerned as it purported to be about him.

"I support him because I am a responsible Australian and I would like to see him have a fair trial."