Author: Stephen Taylor

CHELTENHAM Baseball Club’s Genevieve Beacom flies to Japan this week as part of the Australia-Japan Women’s Baseball Youth Leaders Exchange. Last week she trained with the high performance squad in Sydney, focusing on skills, fitness, leadership and game development. The squad will compete against Japanese youth teams and train with professional Japanese women’s teams. Genevieve, 12, played the summer season as a left-handed pitcher for and was a member of the premiership sides in the under-12 and under-14 age groups. The year 7 Flinders Christian Community College student won the under-12 pitching award at the club and was a silver…

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PRESENTING 60 bunches of flowers to doctors and nursing staff at Frankston Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit is former patient Joe Khoury’s way of saying “thank you” for a job well done. The gesture showed his appreciation for the comfort and care he received during a major abdominal operation and while he spent weeks recuperating. “On 3 May I discovered by accident that I had a huge intra-abdominal AAA,” he said. “On that day I was advised to seek an urgent referral from my local doctor to the vascular surgeon Dr Christopher Brooks, of Mornington, who sent me to Frankston Private Hospital…

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MORE than 30 police in 15 cars directed by a police helicopter tracked a stolen car along Mornington Peninsula Freeway and arrested five teenagers in Frankston, 3.15pm, Thursday 29 June. The chopper followed the unwitting boys in a Jeep stolen from Cheltenham as it made detours down side streets on its way south while guiding police ground units who lay in wait. Perhaps becoming aware that they were being followed, the Jeep turned off the freeway at Golf Links Rd and made its way along side streets. With the chopper’s help, police set up “stop sticks” in Glenview Crescent which…

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FOUR collectors in white and red “Legalise vaping” t-shirts were approaching shoppers at Balnarring Shopping Centre last week seeking signatures for a petition to support the use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes). The collectors were overheard telling shoppers that vaping was “proven to be the most popular and effective aid to quitting smoking”. Submissions close on Thursday to an inquiry by the Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport called in May by Health Minister and Flinders MP Greg Hunt into the use and marketing of e-cigarettes and personal vaporisers. Tobacco companies have bought into the market by buying some…

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THE challenging card game of bridge has a special place in centenarian Ben Finkelstein’s life. “It’s my only major interest and I look forward to it every Monday and Thursday,” he said from his Patterson Lakes retirement village last week. Born on a West Australian wheat farm 240 kilometres east of Perth on 16 June 1917, Mr Finkelstein celebrated his centenary at a lunch with friends and family, including his son Howard, down from Queensland for the occasion, and daughters Cheryl and Joanne. His wife Ethel died of cancer in 1984. Looking back over the century he recalls coming to…

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