ISSN 1172-4153 |  Volume 2  |  Issue 34  |  |  24 April 2009 

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E D I T I O N

DRAGON RISING China’s Pacific fleet� Page 5

VICTIM NAILED Police release X-ray� 

Page 8

BOYLEMANIA What�’s Cowell up t�o?� 

Page 14

NZTONIGHT

Climate scientist sacked by NZ page 2

ANALYSIS

Obama, the first hundred days page 6

MOVIES

My name is Michael Cainepage 13

AucklandSat: 20°/15°    Sun: 21°/14°

HamiltonSat: 19°/13°    Sun: 21°/10°

WellingtonSat: 19°/15°    Sun: 18°/13°

QueenstownSat: 17°/8°    Sun: 16°/6°

ChristchurchSat: 17°/11°  Sun: 21°/11°

DunedinSat: 16°/9°    Sun: 18°/11°

TECH

Brace yourself for Windows 7page 16

on the INSIDE

Continue reading

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NZPA

By Joel Brinkley McClatchy-Tribune News Service

As everyone knows, President Obama inherited a multitude of domestic and international problems.

But of all the foreign dilemmas right now, none rivals Pakistan. It is in serious danger of falling to the Taliban.

Can you imagine – a large, nuclear-armed state in Central Asia, ruled by cousins of the people who gov-erned Afghanistan when it served as a congenial home for Osama bin Laden and all his murderous minions.

But the warnings are coming fast and thick from the highest officials, including General David Petraeus, commander of American forces in that part of the world. The Taliban and allied extrem-ists, he told the Senate this month, “could literally take down their state.” Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president, reflecting on American proposals for sav-ing his nation, told a group of reporters: “It’s a long walk. And in that long walk, I am losing the people of Pakistan.”

In February, Taliban extremists fought the Pakistani army to a draw and won an agreement to establish a safe haven in the Swat valley, just 100 kilometres from Islamabad. At that time, I.E. Rehman, head of Pakistan’s Human Right Commis-sion, said the Taliban and their militant allies were poised to take over the Punjab province, home to 60 percent of the population.

That has begun. Militants are taking control, one by one, of poor villages in northwest Punjab – beginning the spread of an insidious fungus that could eat the state.

The Pakistani police and military seem powerless

By Paul Richter Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON –� In an assessment� t�hat� raised quest�ions about� t�he fut�ure of Pakist�an, Secret�ary� of St�at�e Hillary� Clint�on warns t�hat� t�he count�ry�’s fragile government� is facing an “exist�ent�ial t�hreat�” from milit�ant�s who are now operat�ing wit�hin a few hours’ t�ravel of t�he capit�al.

Clint�on t�old t�he House Foreign Affairs Com-mit�t�ee  t�hat�  t�he  government�  in  Islamabad  is ceding more and more t�errit�ory� t�o t�he milit�ant�s and is “basically� abdicat�ing t�o t�he Taliban and t�he ext�remist�s”  in signing a deal wit�h milit�ant�s t�hat� limit�s t�he government�’s involvement� in t�he war-t�orn Swat� Valley�.

“I  t�hink we cannot� underscore (enough) t�he seriousness of t�he exist�ent�ial t�hreat� posed t�o t�he st�at�e of Pakist�an by� t�he cont�inuing advances,” Clint�on said, adding t�he nuclear-armed nat�ion also poses a “mort�al t�hreat�” t�o t�he Unit�ed St�at�es and ot�her count�ries.

By Ian Wishart

Disgruntled members of the public are angry they purchased white poppies from street sellers this Anzac week, without realizing the money was going into the pockets of the peace movement, not towards the welfare of Returned Servicemen.

Peace Movement Aotearoa, picking up on a Brit-ish publicity stunt, has this year been offering white poppies to the public to promote “peace” instead of Anzac commemoration.

Normally, white poppies have been sold in August to mark Hiroshima Day, but according to the Peace Movement website a decision was made to shift their own fundraising drive to Anzac week for 2009 onwards, ostensibly to capitalize on poppy awareness.

TGIF Edition has been contacted by Christchurch residents who became annoyed after realizing the white poppies they pur-chased this week were a private fundraising

initiative of the left wing Peace Movement group.

A spokesman for the Returned Services Association, Robin Klitscher, told TGIF the RSA had become aware the Peace Movement was muscling in on their patch

only recently, but presumed it had been done in accordance with the industry body

that coordinates street appeals, the Fundraising Institute of New Zealand.

However, a check of the FINZ website’s calendar

of 2009 street appeals doesn’t mention the white poppy drive, and the RSA’s Klitscher says he’d be “disappointed” if people wanting to support elderly war veterans felt they’d been duped by the Peace Movement’s white poppy sellers.

Klitscher says he’d like to think the red poppy brand was strong enough that people knew not to buy pale imitations. He noted wryly that the RSA “has no argument with groups expressing a freedom that old warriors fought and died to preserve in New Zealand”.

Anzac Poppy Scandal hits veteran fundraising

Taliban fingers on nuke buttonsTaliban now within 100km of controlling nukes

to stop it. They lack the will to take on this fight, Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has been arguing in recent days.

“They’re in denial,” said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department intelligence analyst for Pakistan and Afghanistan. “There’s no sense of urgency,” even though Pakistan is staring down the

barrel “of a full blown, indigenous insurgency.”Even now, with the state’s very existence at stake,

military leaders continue their feckless debate over whether their central mission should be to prepare for a war with India – or take on these domestic threats. At the same time, American officials have begun urgently warning (what everyone already

Clinton: ‘existential threat’ in Pakistan

24 April  2009 �

CAt gets moutH to moutHLAGUNA WOODS, Calif., April 24 (UPI) – Aut�horit�ies in California said firefight�ers performed art�ificial respirat�ion on a cat� rescued from a blaze unt�il it� began t�o breat�he on it�s own. 

Capt�. Marc St�one of t�he Orange Count�y� Fire Aut�hor-it�y� said about� 20 firefight�ers responded t�o t�he fire in Laguna Woods just� aft�er 3 p.m. Thursday� and found only� t�he cat� inside t�he house, t�he Orange Count�y� (Calif.) Regist�er report�ed t�oday�. 

“The cat� wasn’t� doing so well,” St�one said. St�one said firefight�ers performed art�ificial respirat�ion 

on t�he feline and t�hen ret�urned t�he animal t�o it�s owner, who had fled t�he house t�hrough a back door before firefight�ers arrived. 

Wrong turn: sCooter flAggeD on motorWAy CHERITON, England, April 24 (UPI) – Brit�ish police said an 89-y�ear-old man t�ook a wrong t�urn on his mobil-it�y� scoot�er and wound up on a 70 mph mot�orway�. 

Officers said t�hey� t�ook t�he man home Tuesday� aft�er maint�enance workers found him t�ravelling 8 mph on t�he shoulder of t�he M20 in Cherit�on, England, t�he Daily Mail report�ed t�oday�. 

“I could not� believe it� when I saw him casually� driving t�owards us. It� was fright�ening, but� when we st�opped him he was det�ermined t�o carry� on along t�he M20,” said a maint�enance worker who asked not� t�o be named. He said he had been shopping in Cherit�on, but� mist�akenly� t�aken t�he wrong junct�ion and ended up on t�he mot�orway�. 

Couple WeD As ‘sHrek’ CHArACters BARNSTAPLE, Eng-land, April 24 (UPI) – A Brit�ish couple said t�hey� spent� t�hree hours in makeup before t�heir wedding so t�hey� could walk down t�he aisle as charact�ers from t�he Shrek films. 

Christ�ine England, 40, and Keit�h Green, 44, of Barnst�aple, Eng-land, used green paint� and cost�umes t�o t�urn 

t�hemselves int�o Princess Fiona and Shrek while guest�s at� t�he wedding dressed as ot�her charact�ers from t�he animat�ed films, including Donkey� and t�he Gingerbread Man, t�he Daily Mail report�ed. 

“Every� girl want�s a fairy�t�ale wedding and I got� one – wit�h a bit� of a t�wist�. It� was a real laugh,” England said. “The idea just� came t�o me. I knew what� we would go as t�hem because Keit�h looks just� like Shrek.” 

The couple said t�hey� hired a makeup art�ist� t�o design t�heir wedding get�up. 

“It� was a very� st�range experience t�o say� t�he least�, but� a t�horoughly� enjoy�able one. We love t�he films and my� wife t�ells me I have resemblance t�o Shrek,” Green said. 

gHost-Hunting teens enCounter live robbers EXETER, R.I., April 24 (UPI) – Five Rhode Island men have been charged wit�h giving ghost�-hunt�ing t�eenagers a real scare by� robbing t�hem in an abandoned st�at�e school. 

St�at�e police said t�he suspect�s were st�udent�s in t�he Job Corps at� a building on t�he grounds of t�he Ladd School, The Providence Journal-Bulletin report�ed. They� were allegedly� armed wit�h knives, clubs, BB guns and axes when t�hey� held up a t�ot�al of 12 t�eenagers over t�he past� t�hree mont�hs. 

They� allegedly� st�ole cell phones, money� and credit� cards from t�heir vict�ims. 

St�at�e Police Capt�. David Neill said t�he Ladd School, which opened in 1907 for people wit�h ment�al disabilit�ies, is closed t�o t�he public. But� he said ghost� hunt�ers man-age t�o get� in. 

Visit�ors claim t�hey� have heard voices and have been t�ouched or hit� by� invisible hands. Some have report�ed cameras malfunct�ioning for no apparent� reason. 

The defendant�s were ident�ified as t�wo brot�hers, Kou Xiong, 21, and Benjamin Xiong, 19, of Warwick; Sidney� Chay�, 19, of Providence; Ant�hony� Deloge, 18, of War-wick; and Jonat�han Wilson, 25, of Charlest�own. 

They� were ordered held wit�hout� bail pending a hear-ing May� 6 on charges of armed robbery� and conspiracy�. 

NEW ZEALAND

off BEAT

WELLINGTON, APRIL 24 –� One of New Zealand’s top climate scientists, Jim Salinger, has been fired from his job at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa).

The high-profile scientist, whose work contributed to a Nobel prize, is reported to have been sacked for ignoring a new Niwa policy against speaking pub-licly without prior approval.

“I can’t understand it, it’s not as though I’m doing bad science, it’s not as though I’m under-performing, so I’m really astounded,” Dr Salinger said on TV One News tonight.

TV One said Niwa had accused Dr Salinger of serious misconduct after he took part in a pro-gramme the channel produced about glaciers.

The Green Party said Dr Salinger was dismissed earlier this week for helping TVNZ weatherman Jim Hickey with climate-related inquiries.

The scientist has frequently appeared in TV cli-mate reports and has spoken in the media about climate change.

“Niwa’s actions will make all government sci-entists nervous about their jobs,” said Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons.

“New Zealand is on a slippery slope when trying to provide Kiwis with a greater understanding of our climate is a sackable offence.”

Ms Fitzsimons said scientists should be able to help the public and the media with scientific problems, particularly around issues like climate change.

“An investigation is needed into how it came to be that one of New Zealand’s foremost scientists was frog-marched out of his job for what appears to be trivial and petty reasons.”

Ms Fitzsimons said the Minister of Research, Science and Technology, Wayne Mapp, should call in Niwa and tell them to “get to the bottom of this messy matter”.

Greenpeace said it wanted answers from Niwa and the Government.

“Dr Salinger has done some amazing work to educate New Zealanders about climate change and he is highly respected internationally,” said Green-peace senior climate campaigner Simon Boxer.

“He was very clear about the need for urgent climate action in New Zealand.”

All that Dr Mapp would say tonight was: “The matter is an employment dispute, which must be handled by the chief executive and the board.”

TV One reported Dr Salinger was considering claiming unjustified dismissal.

– NZPA

NIwA sacks top climate scientist

WELLINGTON, APRIL 24 NZPA –� New Zealand health authorities are considering whether to take action after a British health warning yesterday that children under 16 should not be given Bonjela mouth pain relief gels.

Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) issued the warning over treatments containing salicylate salts, which

have the same effect on the body as aspirin. Aspirin is already not recommended for those under 16.

Three children had been hospitalised with sus-pected Reye’s syndrome, a rare but serious condi-tion, after using oral gels like Bonjela, but it was not confirmed.

There had been no reports of Reye’s syndrome in New Zealand following the use of oral salicylate

NZPA / Wayne Drought

warning on Bonjelagels such as Bonjela, which had been used for over 30 years, Medsafe group manager Stewart Jessa-mine said.

The MHRA decision was a precaution based on a theoretical risk of developing Reye’s syndrome.

Medsafe will review the MHRA data before mak-ing a decision about whether any action was needed in New Zealand.

Parents were advised to follow the instructions provided on the product packaging.

Bonjela manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser said the MHRA decision was prompted by a review of a report on a suspected case of Reye’s syndrome.

The review concluded that the symptoms in the case were more likely to reflect high levels of sali-cylate, either due to misuse or an overdose.

In Britain, there had also been four reports of vomiting or diarrhoea in children following Bonjela use. In three of the cases the gel had been given for teething pain, and all four children recovered.

Manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser said Bonjela and Bonjela Cool would now be clearly labelled as adult brands.

It said the warning did not apply to its Bonjela Teething Gel, which does not contain salicylate salts and remains safe for children from just two months old.

– NZPA

24 April  2009  �

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NEW ZEALAND

WELLINGTON, APRIL 24 –� A prominent Christch-urch businessman who was jailed last year for the historic rape of a young girl will be released hav-ing served a third of his sentence.

Peter Maxwell Stewart, 63, son of PDL founder Sir Robertson Stewart

and husband of New Zealand Fashion Week owner Pieter Stewart, was sentenced to 3-1/2 years in prison in February 2008 after being found guilty of five charges of indecency, one of sodomy and one of rape.

His offending took place from 1968 to 1974 when Stewart was in his 20s and the victim was aged eight to 14 years.

Following the trial Stewart and his family main-

Businessman paroled despite no remorse

tained his innocence, which led to clashes with his victim’s family and supporters, with both sides complaining of harassment.

His family said in December they had suffered “countless slurs” by the victim’s family, who in turn said Stewart should accept the guilty verdicts.

The victim herself told the parole board on Mon-day she believed Stewart should be held until he was prepared to acknowledge his offending.

The board, however, said Stewart amassed no other convictions over the 35 years since his offend-ing and had been “a model prisoner”.

Additionally, two psychological assessments deemed him a low risk of reoffending against chil-dren.

As such, the board was required by the Parole Act to approve his release on the conditions he did not have any unsupervised contact with children aged under 16 and did not approach the victim.

– NZPA

WELLINGTON, APRIL 24 –� Local Government Min-ister Rodney Hide wants Aucklanders to have “maxi-mum input” into the Government’s super city propos-als but he has ruled out holding a referendum.

Labour leader Phil Goff today called for a referen-dum to give Aucklanders a voice rather than “ram-ming changes through by special legislation”.

He said the Royal Commission consulted widely and undertook extensive analysis over 18 months before making its recommendations, but the Gov-ernment had fundamentally changed them without any further consultation.

Mr Goff said the proposals looked like a “jack-up” between National, ACT, Auckland City Mayor John Banks and a “small but powerful business elite”.

The Greens also want a referendum, and MP Sue Kedgley said Mr Hide had effectively thrown the Royal Commission’s report into the bin.

“The Local Government Act stipulates very clearly that before any significant local body reor-ganisation can be made, an extensive public consul-tation process must take place,” she said.

“This must include consultation with stakehold-ers, notification of the draft proposal, a public sub-mission process and a poll of electors to determine

by simple majority whether the proposal should proceed or not.”

Mr Hide told NZPA he wanted Aucklanders to have a bigger say than just a `yes’ or `no’ to a super city.

“The difficulty with a referendum is it would cost a million dollars and it would just ask `yes’ or `no’,” he said.

“What I’m picking up, very clearly, is that a lot of people favour a super city but they’ve got particular views about how it should be structured and run – it’s not just a ̀ yes’ or ̀ no’ question, that’s why I’ve been so actively engaged with the mayors.”

Mr Hide said he was going to move fast with leg-islation, which would go to a select committee for public submissions.

That would allow Aucklanders to have their say, in detail, about the proposals.

Mr Hide met Auckland’s mayors this morning and said good progress was made.

“Everyone has left their differences at the door and they’re working in the best interests of Auck-land,” he said.

“We’re continuing to meet with the mayors, we’ve set up a process for that.”

– NZPA

No public vote on super city

WELLINGTON, APRIL 24 –� New Zealand’s high commissioner to Canada has expressed disap-pointment about her compatriots’ reactions to a complaint from a Canadian tourist that Eskimo sweets are racist.

Seeka Lee Veevee Parsons, 21, an Inuit of the Nuna-vut Territory in Canada, said she was shocked when she found the Eskimo marshmallows for sale last week, saying they were an insult to her people.

The correct term was Inuit or Inuk, Ms Parsons said.

High Commissioner Kate Lackey told Canadian media that New Zealanders were loyal to Eskimo sweets, but she criticised rude radio comments, online insults and calls for the 21-year-old tourist to head back home.

“I would hope New Zealanders would be a bit more courteous and understanding,” Ms Lackey said.

“I’ll probably get into trouble in New Zealand

NZ diplomat criticises “eskimo” reaction

for saying such a thing, but often there’s a sort of ‘rednecky’ element ... The people who get on talk-back (radio) and stuff haven’t had time to think through a bit more deeply how the other person might feel.”

Most reaction was in support of keeping the name, and Cadbury/Pascall says it will not make any change.

“That sounds a wee bit hard-hearted, but, as I say, this particular candy has been around for so long,” Ms Lackey said.

“I think New Zealanders would have had abso-lutely no idea that it might cause offence to another people.”

The controversy was unlikely to cause a political rift between New Zealand and Canada, she said.

“You could hardly have two countries closer together in attitudes and values than Canada and New Zealand.”

– NZPA

WELLINGTON, APRIL 24 –� Another finance com-pany covered by the Government’s retail deposit guarantee has defaulted.

It is Strata Finance Ltd, which had just 21 cus-tomers and deposits of $448,000 as of April 20.

All eligible depositors will get 100 percent of the money they are entitled to under the Crown retail deposit guarantee scheme, Treasury Secretary John Whitehead said.

Strata was unable to pay one of its depositors on the maturity date of that deposit on April 16, which constituted a default. Strata has been in the process of winding down.

“The Crown stands fully behind its guarantee commitments, and we expect an orderly process of payment to eligible Strata Finance depositors,” said Mr Whitehead.

The Crown retail deposit guarantee will not cover any new deposits or the roll-over of existing deposits after April 16.

The Crown will seek to recover the value of any payouts the Crown makes under the guarantee.

The guarantee scheme has been criticised for accepting finance companies on the brink of failure and for distorting investment flows.

– NZPA

Strata Finance defaults, crown guarantee

24 April  2009 �

WELLINGTON, APRIL 24 –� Central Districts police have changed their search and rescue procedures following the death of a teenage fisherman off the coast of Wanganui last year, but say the first respon-sibility for safety still lies with boaties themselves.

A coronial report released today found a com-bination of errors by police, Wanganui Coastguard and three fishermen led to the death of Geoffrey Hampton, 19, who drowned after spending the night in the water.

The 5m boat Hard Out sank off the coast of Wan-ganui on February 23 last year after being hit by a freak wave.

The three men on board only had time to grab their lifejackets and a mobile phone, which did not work.

They were found nearly 11 hours after authorities became aware they were overdue. Mr Hampton’s father Alan and a friend Duncan Powell survived.

Alan Hampton criticised the bungled rescue, say-

NEW ZEALAND

ing “petty attitudes” and dysfunctional relation-ships between agencies had killed his son.

Central District police commander Superintend-ent Russell Gibson said the police’s own inquiry made seven recommendations, all of which had been adopted by police and endorsed in today’s coroner’s report.

Lessons had been learnt from the Wanganui inci-dent and a search and rescue operation last month, which found two dead fishermen whose boat had sunk off Waitarere Beach, had been conducted as every such operation should be run, he said.

Unfortunately it could not stop a tragic out-come.

“The coroner raised the issue,” Mr Gibson said. “No matter how fantastic the search and rescue, it’s incumbent on boaties to have the best protec-tion they can.”

That meant boaties having personal locator bea-

cons and beacons that were set off on contact with water.

In her report, coroner Carla na Nagara noted that none of the lifejackets was suitable for open waters. The men had also tried to swim to shore which hadn’t helped them conserve energy.

She found that police failed to follow best practice in their search and rescue operation.

There was also a lack of inter-agency training and a “subculture of poor/distrustful relationships” between the local agencies.

A combination of factors led to Mr Hampton’s death but if the boaties had carried emergency per-sonal locator beacons Mr Hampton would have had a much greater chance of surviving, Ms Nagara said.

The coroner endorsed recommendations in the Maritime NZ report and the police peer review report.

She made six recommendations:

Police: Safety onus still on boaties• It should be compulsory for boaties to carry

emergency locator beacons. • The Wanganui Coastguard operating procedure

for overdue boats be amended so that if trip reports are not closed within two hours of dusk, that time is of the essence in establishing whether boaties are overdue.

• Boaties be educated about what can happen if trip reports are not closed.

• Central Districts police review its arrangement regarding police officers who are SAR volunteers so that the incident controller can have a team of at least two trained SAR officers.

• Police appoint an family liaison officer for every SAR operation.

• There should be a review of information high-lighting the importance of using the correct life-jacket so it is easily understood.

– NZPA

WELLINGTON, APRIL 24 NZPA –� The New Zealand dollar was slightly firmer today as market attention turned to next week’s interest rate decision by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

Around 5pm the kiwi was buying US56.20c, lit-tle changed from US56.09c at the open. It climbed from US55.73c at 5pm yesterday.

Currency strategists said trends today reflected trad-ing in the US dollar, which has been weaker, but attention is turning to next week’s interest rate decision.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand is expected to cut its official cash rate by 50 basis points to 2.5 percent next Thursday.

Sentiment today was helped by a firm performance by Wall Street on Thursday but investors are reluctant

WELLINGTON, APRIL 24 –� The cause of yesterday’s glider crash in the Waikato, in which a 14-year-old trainee pilot was seriously injured, will probably not be known for weeks.

Christchurch boy Ryan Hodgkinson, flying with 77-year-old instructor Thomas Orr, landed short of the runway at Matamata Aerodome in Waharoa around 5pm.

Ryan was in a critical but stable condition in Waikato Hospital today. He had sustained “multiple severe multisystem injuries”, said Waikato Hospital trauma specialist Dr Grant Christey.

Mr Orr, from Taupo, suffered moderate back inju-ries and was also taken to hospital for treatment.

A student at Christchurch’s Middleton Grange School, Ryan was taking part in an Air Training Corps (ATC) camp which employed civilian instruc-tors from local clubs.

Matamata police Sergeant Graham McGurk said a number of people witnessed the crash which hap-

pened about one kilometre away from the southern end of the airfield.

Gliding New Zealand is investigating the accident for the Civil Aviation Authority.

There was no time limit on the investigation, although investigators should get some idea of what happened in two to three weeks, Gliding NZ national operations manager Doug Hamilton said.

An incident at a gliding camp at Waipukurau ear-lier this year, in which a glider clipped some wires as it came into land, is still being investigated. No one was hurt, although the glider was damaged.

The ATC runs two gliding training camps a year, one in Waikato and another at Waipukurau in Janu-ary, said Wing Commander Guy Bendall, Comman-dant New Zealand Cadet Forces.

Cadets aged 14 and older have the opportunity to reach solo flying status on camp if they reach the required level.

– NZPA

Glider crash cause answer possibly weeks away

to take on too much risk until US authorities release the stress test methodology for US banks.

The yen was firm in Asia, which traders attributed to unwinding of positions.

The NZ dollar slipped against the rising yen to 54.55 yen from 54.92 at 8am but was little changed from 54.50 yesterday.

The euro had been firm overnight on positive eco-nomic data and the NZ dollar slipped to 0.4275 euro from 0.4285 yesterday.

The NZ dollar was little changed against the Aus-tralian dollar at A78.86c from A78.85 yesterday.

The trade weighted index rose to 55.93 from 55.83 yesterday.

– NZPA

NZ dollar fate hinges  on rate decision

24 April  2009  �

By Bob McCoskrie

-Three Strikes’ will put protection of families firstFamily�  First�  support�s  t�he  int�ent�  of  t�he  Sent�encing  and Parole Reform Bill (also dubbed t�he “Three St�rikes Law”). This law will prevent� repeat� violent� offenders t�he abilit�y� t�o put� families at� risk. 

Here’s just� one recent� example of t�he current� sit�uat�ion “Police Killer had history of violence” 

As st�at�ed in our submission • The purpose of  t�his  law would be  t�o warn ‘career criminals’  t�o find a new  job or else  t�hey� will become ‘career inmat�es’ – t�hey� are given t�wo chances t�o st�op t�heir violent� behaviour • This law would allow police, prosecut�ors and judges t�o int�ervene early� enough t�o save lives inst�ead of wait�-ing for a violent� offender t�o vict�imise anot�her person . • Support�ers of t�his bill do not� want� ‘revenge’ – t�hey� simply� wish t�o be able t�o live unmolest�ed and not� in t�he fear of violent� criminals. This is called ‘just�ice.’ • The  consequences  for  persist�ent�  offending  should be sufficient�ly� severe t�o ensure t�hat� t�he benefit�s of t�he crime are out�weighed by� t�he punishment� • If a repeat� offender is incapacit�at�ed, t�hen t�he crime reduct�ion will be great� • Addressing t�he ‘underly�ing causes’ is relevant�, but� it� doesn’t� solve t�he immediat�e problem – prot�ect�ing t�he public from persist�ent� offenders There is furt�her debat�e t�o be had on t�he role of pris-

ons and how we t�ackle t�he drug, alcohol and educat�ional needs of inmat�es. Recent� experience in t�he Unit�ed St�at�es has shown t�hat� enhanced sent�encing measures work best� when  combined  wit�h  ot�her  t�y�pes  of  programs  t�hat�  can help reint�egrat�e offenders back int�o t�he communit�y�. 

Government� re-ent�ry� assist�ance in t�he form of t�empo-rary� housing, vocat�ional t�raining, and counseling can help t�o  reduce  t�he  incident�s  of  re-offending  and  encourage offenders t�o seek product�ive and useful lives.

But�  t�hat�  is  a  separat�e  debat�e.  This  part�icular  bill  is about� prot�ect�ing y�our family� and mine from repeat� violent� offenders. 

There  have  also  been  recent�  claims  t�hat�  t�he  ‘Three St�rikes’ proposed law would lead t�o increased family� vio-lence and desperat�e criminals killing t�o avoid arrest�.

But� t�he study referred t�o is fundament�ally� flawed. It� found no increase in violence in California, which is t�he st�at�e t�hat� has t�he broadest� and most� liberal applicat�ion of t�he t�hree st�rikes law. However, t�he st�udy� did acknowledge a signifi-cant� det�errent� effect� and t�hat� many� pot�ent�ial 3-St�rikers had moved t�o st�at�es wit�h more lenient� sent�encing laws.

In  fact�, 15 y�ears aft�er  t�he Three St�rikes was passed in 1994  in California, a  recent�ly�  released  report  shows t�hat� homicides decreased from 3,699 in 1994 t�o 2,258 in 2007, despit�e a 25-30% increase  in  t�he populat�ion. Rape also decreased as did assault�s. In cont�rast�, NZ’s rat�e of violent� crime is on t�he up and up.

Expert�s  say�  t�hat� persist�ent�  abusers  are never  per-suaded by� public  relat�ions campaigns  t�o  st�op  t�heir bad behavior. The only� way�  t�o prot�ect� women, children, and t�he elderly� from repeat� violent� offenders is t�o incapacit�at�e t�hem. Addit�ionally�, numerous st�udies  from  t�he U.S. have found t�hat� mandat�ory� arrest� and jail sent�ences for domes-t�ic abusers have not� affect�ed police  report�ing  rat�es and t�hey� have worked very� well t�o lower repeat� inst�ances of domest�ic violence.

The Three  St�rikes  law will  reinforce  t�he “Its Not OK” message by� t�aking vict�imisat�ions seriously�. A slap on t�he wrist�  for  domest�ic  violence  undermines  our  effort�s  t�o reduce  t�olerance  for  violence  and  t�he  career  choice  of repeat� violent� offenders.

It�  is  t�ime  t�he  law  act�ed  t�o  place  t�he  prot�ect�ion  and wellbeing of families first�.

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affecting families in NZ http://www.familyfirst.org.nz/index.cfm/Sign_Up

EDITORIAL

friday briefing

subsCribe to tgif!

editorial family matters

BEIJING –� The expansion of China’s naval power, including the future building of aircraft carriers, reflects a change in emphasis from basic self-defence to a more assertive “forward defence,” a leading Chi-nese international relations analyst said today.

The growth of China’s economic and strategic interests has prompted the apparent shift in naval strategy by the ruling Communist Party, Shi Yin-hong of People’s University in Beijing told the Ger-man Press Agency dpa.

“Before we called it self-defence, now I call it forward defence,” Shi said of China’s naval policy.

Thursday’s fleet parade to mark the 60th anniver-sary of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy reflected China’s growing self-confidence, he said.

Shi said the first public viewing of Chinese nuclear-powered submarines during the parade should be seen as a sign of greater openness rather than a growing threat.

“To show the nuclear submarines enhances the transparency of the Chinese military,” he said.

“It’s also good for raising the prestige of the Chi-nese navy with the Chinese public,” Shi said.

The ruling Communist Party acquired its first nine warships in April 1949, six months before it took power, when soldiers from the rival Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) defected.

It launched its first nuclear-powered submarine in December 1970, putting it into operation four years later, according to state media.

The PLA Navy reached another landmark in October 1982 with the firing of its first subma-rine-launched ballistic missile, in a move that the official China Daily on Thursday said had proved the nation’s “submarine-based nuclear retaliatory attack capability.”

Speculation resurfaced this week that China will soon formally announce plans to launch its first aircraft carrier, marking its emergence as a major naval power.

“All evidence shows that the central government has made a political decision or is very close to doing so,” Shi said of the plans to build an aircraft carrier.

“China can’t develop without aircraft carri-ers,” the official China Daily quoted Li Daguang, a military expert at the PLA’s National Defence University, as saying.

“The (carrier) ship is part of China’s plan to reach further into the high seas in the near future,” Li said.

The newspaper said more than 90 per cent of some 40,000 Chinese internet users who took part in a recent survey were “concerned with the disputes over maritime interests.”

In another online survey by Chinese websites, about 80 per cent of respondents said they were willing to donate money towards the building of an aircraft carrier, reflecting huge public support for naval expansion, it said.

Many concerns are linked to maritime disputes over resource-rich islands in the South China Sea and the East China Sea.

The Communist Party also has a long-term goal of gaining sovereignty over Taiwan, the island that it regards as a “renegade province.”

The United States supplies arms to Taiwan and has promised to consider helping the island if it is attacked by China.

The issue of the US presence in the area was raised last month when China said a US naval sur-veillance ship had violated international maritime law by operating inside its exclusive waters.

US officials said five Chinese ships shadowed and manoeuvred dangerously close to the US vessel in the South China Sea about 120 kilometres south of China’s Hainan Island.

China rejected US claims of “aggressive conduct” by the Chinese navy were “totally unacceptable.”

China’s Pacific expansion a warning

China last month also said it planned to send more naval vessels to patrol disputed areas of the South China Sea to counter illegal fishing and “other countries’ unfounded territorial claims.”

At the naval parade on Thursday, President Hu Jintao reiterated China’s commitment to “peace-ful development” of its armed forces for defensive purposes.

But Shi said the disputes with countries including the United States, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam make more sophisticated weaponry, such as aircraft carriers, essential.

“The interests of China have been growing so China needs an aircraft carrier,” he said.

“It’s a symbol of national prestige,” he said. – DPA

When I first heard the Geographic Board proposi-tion this week, I chuckled. The idea of renaming North & South magazine with the traditional monikers for the North and South islands held mischievous appeal.

To be honest though, it’s hard to get worked up over.

I know talkback has been running hot, and I know letters to the editor have been scornful, but to me it’s a quaint – albeit politically correct – bureaucratic solution to a minor problem.

No one is making it compulsory to stutter out “Te Ika a Maui” when “North Island” will do perfectly, just as no-one in their right mind refers to Taumata in the Hawkes Bay as “Taumatawhakatangihanga-

koauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronuku-pokaiwhenuakitanatahu”.

It’s true that there’s been a sly liberal push to Maorify as many placenames as possible and erase the English names given by the pioneers who, for the most part, actually built the country we call New Zealand. It’s true that the Geographic Board has been part of this linguistic “ethnic cleansing”, and I guess at one level such moves must be fought and it’s all hands to the barricades.

Except, I still can’t get worked up about Te Ika a Maui etc. It’s a distraction and a waste of mental energy. If it becomes compulsory, or if the ex-Green Bay High principal who now runs the Ministry of Education (how on earth did the head of one of the

country’s worst performing schools get the top job in education under Labour?) tries to start calling the North and South Islands only by their native names in school projects, then by all means let’s storm the relevant government agencies and nail the culprits to a tree somewhere.

Until then, let’s take a deep breath, acknowledge that there may be some tourism merit in the expla-nation that the islands have older names rooted in ancient Pacific legends, and get worked up about something else, like the way officials and the media are lying to us about climate change.

Now that’s something worth fighting in the here and now.

Te Ika a Maui & Te wai Pounamu magazine

24 April  2009 �ANALYSIS

By Claude Salhani

WASHINGTON –� A recent communique from al-Qaida calls on its supporters and followers in the Mid-dle East to make their way to Jordan, and from there to launch attacks on Israel, this reporter learned from high-level and well-informed Middle East sources.

This news comes on the heels of a visit to Wash-ington by King Abdullah of Jordan to press the point with U.S. President Barack Obama that time is quickly running out to reach a viable solution to the longstanding Middle East problem. A Jordanian offi-cial said that while the Jordanian king was pleased by what he has seen of the new U.S. administration, a lot of people were losing faith in the peace process.

“We are very, very encouraged by the early signs from the administration to solve the Palestinian issue,” the Jordanian official said. Several Arab dip-lomats believe that unless the United States plays a leading role in the Middle East, there will be no progress. Indeed, there are fears among some offi-cials in the Middle East that this stagnation could lead to a new war in the region unless there is a breakthrough in the deadlocked process.

The Jordanians are trying to convince the Ameri-cans that the situation in the region is at a critical point and that the only way forward in the peace process is if the United States puts all its weight and prestige behind the process.

Al-Qaida now targeting Israel?While this may well be the case, there is not going

to be any headway in the Middle East, no matter how great the pressure from the White House, unless the protagonists show some flexibility. That does not seem to be the case at the moment.

The Israelis must be willing to evict a certain number of settlers from outposts in the West Bank and facilitate daily activities for the Palestinians by easing some of the roadblocks that hamper travel by Palestinians throughout the West Bank.

The only way any of this is likely to come about is if the United States decides to apply pressure on Israel to get the government of Binyamin Netan-yahu to agree to move forward in negotiations with the Palestinians.

Obama may be serious in promoting the peace talks, but he will not want to upset the Jewish vote if he is thinking about re-election in 2012, which undoubtedly he is.

Then again, the onus is also on the Palestinians to get their act together and unite around the Palestinian Authority under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas.

A division within the Palestinian leadership between Hamas and Fatah only hurts the Pales-tinians in the long run.

The new directive issued by al-Qaida, asking its members to begin planning raids on Israel from Jordan, emphasizes Jordan’s preoccupation and strong desire to have the peace initiative revived.

It also places the Hashemite Kingdom in an unenviable situation – one that Jordan knows only too well, having already experienced a similar situ-ation in the late 1960s when the Palestine Liberation Organization and its offshoots based themselves in Jordan. The PLO and other Palestinian organizations conducted raids into Israel that brought retaliation from the Jewish state against the Jordanians.

The situation eventually led to serious deteriora-tion between the government and the Palestinian

resistance and in September 1970 degenerated into a full-scale civil war and the expulsion of the resist-ance from Jordan. Jordan has since learned the lesson of Black September and will not likely allow the repetition of those dreadful events of 1970.

In addition to the threats from the Islamists, Jor-dan also worries over Iran’s role in the Arab world. Some Arab officials say Iran is positioning itself as the champion of Islamic and Arab causes – a move most Arab countries look at with great mistrust.

The challenge to the administration and to the

moderate Arab states, such as Jordan, is to convince both the Israelis and the Palestinians of Hamas that time is indeed running out.

And as long as Hamas and the Iranians continue to pursue their current policies, chances of anything really working in the Middle East are slim.

It is now a race against the clock with the trends in the Middle East slowly changing – and not for the better. Jordan’s king, one of the most moderate lead-ers in the Arab world, clearly understands that and

will take that message to President Obama. He will help convey to the American president the urgency of finally pushing and prodding the principal play-ers in the conflict toward a final settlement.

Trends are changing, but they are changing into threats.

As one Arab official told this correspondent last week, “People have started to lose faith in the peace process. And that is a very dangerous development.”

Claude Salhani is edit�or of t�he Middle East Times.

– UPI

By Steven Thomma McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON –� As he entered office, President Barack Obama made a symbolic bow to frugality, putting off the costly redecorating of the Oval Office that his predecessors had done.

But if the furnishings have remained largely the same – right down to the stain on the big oval rug

– the way Obama looks and acts there is decidedly different from his predecessor, not to mention all those who went before.

At the 100-day mark, he’s putting his own style on the presidency. Opportunistic. Pragmatic. Confident. Deliberate. Polite to friend and foe alike. Partisan. Polarizing. A better talker than George W. Bush. A more disciplined manager than Bill Clinton.

Some traits he’ll maintain throughout his presi-

dency. Some could change over his term. John F. Kennedy grew sceptical after a disastrous invasion of Cuba early in his presidency, learning to challenge aides and adopting an executive style that saw him and the country through a nuclear showdown with the Soviet Union.

“He’s flexible,” George Edwards, a scholar of the presidency and currently a visiting fellow at Oxford University, said of Obama. “He’s still learning.”

Nothing defines his early days as much as the way he’s seized the political opportunity provided by economic crisis to push forward an ambitious liberal agenda that otherwise would have little chance of getting through Congress. It includes an explosion of federal spending, the groundwork for universal health care and broad regulation of the environ-ment, and soaring deficits and debt.

Even before he took office, Obama knew he faced a rare moment of crisis – one when a president could push through an agenda dramatically changing the government, and perhaps the country itself.

Franklin D. Roosevelt did it in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression. Lyndon Johnson did it in 1964-65 in the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination. Ronald Reagan did it in the early 1980s at a peak of the Cold War and economic stagflation. George W. Bush did it after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Shifting priorities to push through his massive package of spending surges and tax cuts – many already on his or the Democratic agenda – was piv-otal, because it’s unclear how much Obama could get through Congress absent the crisis. Those who counselled him to wait on the big programmatic pri-orities and focus first only on fighting the economic downturn misunderstood that, but Obama got it.

As he seeks to get his way, at home and abroad, Obama’s demonstrated a penchant for working people one on one, apparently confident that he can win over anyone.

While he may be laying the groundwork for more civil relations with Republicans and legislative suc-cesses later, he won only three Republican Senate votes for his stimulus package and none in the House of Representatives, none from either cham-ber for his budget, and he also failed to convince European leaders to send combat troops to help in Afghanistan.

“He has a difficult time persuading people,” Edwards said. “He’s been very good at maintaining his coalition. What he can’t do is bring other people in.”

obAmA mAy be serious in promoting tHe peACe tAlks, but He Will not WAnt to upset tHe JeWisH

vote if He is tHinking About re-eleCtion in 2012, WHiCH unDoubteDly He is

OBAMA: The first hundred daysA careful and deliberate communicator, Obama

relies on the teleprompter more than any other president. When he speaks off the cuff, such as at town hall meetings, he often pauses as though he’s searching for precisely the right words.

Obama, like most who come to the office, is sure of himself. One example is his willingness to admit a mistake, such as when Tom Daschle, his nominee to be secretary of health and human services, was forced to withdraw after being caught in a tax mess. “I screwed up,” Obama said.

Another is his recent speech at Georgetown Uni-versity explaining why he was trying to do so many things at once, using a biblical metaphor to say he wanted to make sure the nation’s house was built on a solid foundation, on rock instead of sand.

“The Obama team sensed that the message of him trying to do too much was starting to catch on,” said Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the Univer-sity of Texas. “He’s very quick at damage control.”

Yet doubts about the size of Obama’s agenda per-sist, and he’s governing as a partisan, depending on party-line votes in Congress and particularly support from liberal allies such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

At ease with congressional Democrats, Obama defers to them to work out the details. He also set up staff to fire off e-mails to generate grassroots sup-port from 13 million backers and to attack foes such as Rush Limbaugh. Then he hits the road himself about once a week to sell the broader message.

“It still has the look and feel of the campaign,” said Michael Franc, a vice president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research organization.

While Obama talks plenty of policy at his town hall meetings, he also uses a public relations strat-egy to sell the softer side, chatting amiably with Jay Leno, appearing on ESPN to reveal his college basketball picks, and walking the new dog, Bo, on the White House lawn.

The effect? His base loves him. Republicans, however, still aren’t buying his agenda. In fact, a recent survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found him with high approval from Demo-crats and independents, but dismally low approval from Republicans.

“For all of his hopes about bipartisanship,” Pew said, “Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades.”

24 April  2009  �ANALYSIS

By Peter Curson

There is little doubt that antibiotics have changed the world. Since their discovery about 80 years ago and their widespread use from the 1960s, they have revolutionised our health and the treatment of once life-threatening infections. Such was their impact that health experts in the 1960s could claim that the era of infectious disease was coming to a close and societies could redirect their attention to other more pressing health issues such as heart disease, cancers and stroke. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

If anything the world is now poised on the brink of a new era of infectious disease, confronted on one hand by a wide range of emerging and re-emerging infections, and on the other, by increasing antibacte-rial resistance, against which our arsenal of antibiot-ics and antivirals may prove totally useless. It is a chilling prospect, and one that holds tremendous implications for life as we know it.

For a number of years we have been warned about the looming perils associated with our overuse of antibiotics and increasing antibiotic resistance. Largely we ignored such warnings and continued to use antibiotics with wilful abandon – in ourselves, in our livestock, in our domestic animals, and in our food stocks. Nearly all the bacteria that we have come into contact with over the last 50 or so years have now attained some degree of resistance to the drugs we have developed to confront them. Many have become totally resistant and the list grows daily.

Today, 70% of all infections are resistant to at least one antibiotic requiring doctors to fall back on the use of multiple drug treatments. For some infections we really have no effective treatment at all. MRSA is rapidly approaching this situation. MRSA kills at least 19,000 Americans a year, more than HIV/AIDS, and the number of MRSA infec-tions in US hospitals has tripled since 2000. In New Zealand there at least 8,000 MRSA cases a year and in Australia CA-MRSA or community acquired MRSA, causes approximately 40,000 infections a year, mainly in young healthy adults, producing a range of symptoms ranging from minor skin erup-tions to the loss of limbs and death. Many other infections such as Clostridium difficile, a range of streptococcus, enterococcus and pneumococ-cus infections continue to present extraordinary problems of resistance.

The reality is made worse by the fact that the number of new antibiotic drugs in development is very limited and Big Pharma, the giant inter-national drug consortiums, see more profits to be made in producing drugs that address chronic and

lifestyle disorders such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and hypertension and arthritis for an affluent Western clientele. There is little doubt that within a few years we may well be facing a situation where our health systems will be unable to cope effectively with patients presenting with infec-tious disease. We are thus on the brink of a major period of antibiotic resistance and may even face the prospect of returning to a pre-antibiotic era.

How did we get into this situation? Well, basi-cally by our inappropriate and overuse of antibiotic drugs plus poor standards of hygiene and infection control in our hospitals. While the use of antibiotics has declined somewhat in recent years, the drugs continue to be prescribed at an alarming rate. In the US, physicians probably write more than two million such prescriptions every week and if you add another 1.5 million prescribed by doctors in hospitals, you get some idea of their overuse.

Just consider the following scenario. You visit your family GP with a bad head cold. Not an uncommon event these days. The infection that you are suf-fering from is most probably viral and antibiotics will do no good at all. Yet many doctors will give you a script for antibiotics saying that if you hap-pened to cough up yellow phlegm you may have developed a bacterial infection, so then take the antibiotics. I suspect that most people take the anti-biotics anyway. Although some people clearly need antibiotics, many have developed an expectation that when they are sick, antibiotics are automati-cally the answer and place pressure on their family GP to deliver them. It is part of the patient-doctor relationship. If you leave the surgery without some magic bullet cure in your hand, in this case a script for antibiotics, you feel somehow cheated and that the system hasn’t delivered.

There is little doubt in my mind that doctors overprescribe antibiotics for a wide range of com-mon complaints and have been doing so for over 40 years. Add this to our use of antibiotics in our food, in chickens, livestock etc and it is small wonder that we are in the situation we find ourselves in. Anti-biotics are frequently used on animals that are in our food chain for much the same reasons as on us – to treat illness and improve health. Australia, for example, imports hundreds of tonnes of antibiotics for stock feed every year. The banning of antibiotics as growth promoters in animal feeds really only came into effect in many countries about 3 or 4 years ago and even now some antibiotics continue to be used in poultry feed and in animal husbandry through parts of Asia.

In addition, we are now being exposed to antibi-otic drugs at a much younger age than ever before.

Take childhood middle ear infections. Now that children start to socialise with other children at a much younger age in childcare situations, such infections have become commonplace. In the US today, at least three out of every four kids have had at least one such infection before they reach the age of three. Once you had to wait until children started formal schooling at age 5 or 6 before they came into contact with large numbers of other children and were exposed to common childhood infections. Now this happens from the age of two and above and despite many limitations and fears, antibiotics continue to remain the treatment of choice for mid-dle ear infections. The internet has added another dimension and provides a way of obtaining antibi-otics without a prescription and in the US it is also possible to obtain antibiotics from some pet shops as well as from driving down into Mexico.

We seem to ignore the obvious. Whenever and

wherever we use antibiotics, resistance will inevi-tably develop. Then with poor hygiene and infec-tion control measures these resistant bacteria will spread. What then is the answer? Well, we need to understand that antibiotic resistance is inevitable and that it is our behaviour which is making it worse. There are probably a number of things that we can do to slow down the process. Improving hygiene and infection control, particularly in our hospitals is critical, developing new antibiotics equally so, and finally we need to use antibiotic drugs more appropriately, in ourselves, in our animals and in the food we eat. If we do not embrace such things we are probably facing a pandemic of antibiotic resistance with widespread implications for our health and wellbeing.

Pet�er Curson is Professor in Populat�ion & Securit�y�, at� t�he Cent�re for 

Int�ernat�ional Securit�y� St�udies, Facult�y� of Economics & Business, t�he 

Universit�y� of Sy�dney�. He is also a TGIF Edition subscribe

Something to bug you with

By Stefan Nicola

BERLIN –� Observers fear that Germany, Europe’s largest economy, could be gripped by social unrest this year because of mass layoffs sparked by the worst recession since the end of World War II.

In France, frustrated workers are blocking fac-tories and holding top managers hostage. The economy of neighbouring Germany, experts say, is much more vulnerable to the negative effects of the global economic crisis because it is largely export-driven.

Germany’s main customers, such as the United States, the large European nations and Russia, will definitely pull back on imports. This will only increase the woes of German companies, which are already suffering because of a credit crunch on the international banking market, Germany’s leading economic experts said overnight in Berlin.

A joint statement drawn up by several leading economic institutes predicted the German gross domestic product would plunge by 6 percent in 2009, the biggest recession since the end of World War II.

“And there won’t be a stabilization until mid-

2010,” Kai Carstensen, of the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research, said today in Berlin.

“Germany will lose 1 million jobs this year, with just under 5 million people unemployed by the end of 2009,” Carstensen said.

The gloomy outlook for the German job market has observers worried that social tensions may grip the country.

“It could be that social peace, which is impor-tant for the stability in Europe, is in danger,” the head economic expert of Deutsche Bank, Norbert Walter, said in an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF.

Michael Sommer, Germany’s top union official, told German television station ARD he fears social unrest because the economic crisis is about to affect the core of Germany’s society -- workers, employees and the middle class.

He added that the most recent predictions could be compared to the economic situation in the early 1930s, which helped bring Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party to power.

“You know how people react when they are losing their livelihood,” Sommer said.

Politicians are equally worried.“I can imagine that in two or three months, peo-

ple’s anger could grow significantly,” Gesine Schwan, a candidate for the largely ceremonial German pres-idency, told the Munich-based newspaper Merkur.

German Labour Minister Olaf Scholz meanwhile urged companies not to lay off people but instead expand the so-called Kurzarbeit, a programme rely-ing on government-subsidized short working hours, similar to one just introduced in New Zealand.

Placing workers on short hours, however, makes sense only for a certain amount of time; if the econ-omy doesn’t recover soon, Kurzarbeit would be too expensive, some experts say.

German car maker Daimler, which has some 70,000 workers on short hours, said recently that it could no longer rule out job cuts. Bosch, the world’s largest car-parts maker, on Thursday said its net gains plummeted by 87 percent to $485 million, adding that it was mulling layoffs.

To soften the impact of the crisis, the German government already launched two economic aid packages. Despite international and domestic pressure, Chancellor Angela Merkel has resisted calls for a third one. The economic experts today

Germany fears social unrestin Berlin backed Merkel’s position, arguing that a third package would be too costly at the moment. “We should wait for the first two packages to take effect before we start proposing new measures,” Carstensen said.

Because of the aid packages that include infra-structure investments and tax breaks, Germany’s federal deficit is expected to jump to 3.7 percent of GDP in 2009 and 5.5 percent in 2010. This is still fiscally conservative compared with the 13 percent deficit forecast for the United States this year, but the Germans are notorious for their uneasiness over amassing large amounts of debt.

Meanwhile, the experts said Berlin should con-centrate its efforts on repairing the root of the crisis -- bad banks.

They said the German government should pro-vide embattled financial institutions with cash to avoid a second, potentially catastrophic credit crunch when more and more midsize companies file for bankruptcy.

“Berlin may then have to force banks to accept state aid or even nationalize some banks in order to contain the worst damages,” Carstensen said.

– UPI

tHere is little Doubt tHAt WitHin A feW yeArs We mAy Well be fACing A situAtion WHere our HeAltH

systems Will be unAble to Cope effeCtively WitH pAtients presenting WitH infeCtious DiseAse

24 April  2009 �

us bAnk reimburses DAme kiriWELLINGTON (DPA) – New Zealand opera diva Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, 65, suffered t�he t�heft� of more t�han 650,000 US dollars by� a bank manager who handled her ret�irement� account� in California, news report�s said Friday�.

The manager, Sokvoeun “Cindy�” Sou, 27, admit�-t�ed embezzlement� and five fraud charges when she appeared in court� Thursday�, police det�ect�ive Greg Ella, of Alameda, in San Francisco Bay�, t�old Radio New Zealand.

He said t�hat� Sou was remanded in cust�ody� unt�il a bail hearing before being sent�enced.

Ella said t�hat� Sou was arrest�ed Tuesday� at� t�he Bank of Alameda, where she worked as a manager and confessed t�o making five wit�hdrawals from Dame Kiri’s account� bet�ween May� 2008 and t�his mont�h, say�ing t�hat� she had financial difficult�ies.

He said t�he bank had reimbursed Dame Kiri, who lives most� of t�he t�ime in England and st�ill sings at� occasional concert�s, t�hough she officially� ret�ired from her opera career four y�ears ago. 

murDerer nAils viCtimSyDNEy (DPA) – Aust�ralian police are invest�igat�ing t�he slay�ing of Sy�dney� man Chen Liu, who was killed by� 27 nails fired int�o his head wit�h a high-powered nail gun normally� used on const�ruct�ion sit�es.

“Similar t�y�pes of nail guns can fire nails up t�o 85 mil-limet�res long,” homicide squad det�ect�ive Inspect�or Mark Newham said Friday�.

Liu’s decomposed body� was found by� schoolboy�s in marshland in Oct�ober in Sy�dney�, but� police have only� just� released an X-ray� showing t�he nails embedded in t�he 27-y�ear-old’s head. 

fiJi gives AWArD for DiCtAtionWELLINGTON (DPA) – Fiji’s milit�ary� st�rongman Voreqe Bainimarama, who t�ook cont�rol in a coup 29 mont�hs ago, was given one of t�he Pacific island nat�ion’s highest� awards on Friday� for service t�o humanit�y�, according t�o report�s from t�he capit�al Suva.

Bainimarama was honoured by� President� Rat�u Josefa Iloilo, who reappoint�ed him as prime minist�er t�wo weeks ago, aft�er sacking judges of t�he Court� of Appeal who had declared t�he post�-coup government� illegal.

In a ceremony� at� Government� House, Bainimarama was made a Companion of t�he Order of Fiji for his “eminent� achievement� and merit� of highest� degree and service t�o Fiji and t�o humanit�y� at� large,” t�he Fijilive websit�e report�ed.

When he sacked t�he judges, Iloilo revoked Fiji’s con-st�it�ut�ion and decreed t�hat� elect�ions t�o rest�ore democracy� would not� be held before Sept�ember 2014. 

spAin ok’s pre-embryoniC sCreeningMADRID, APRIL 24 (UPI) – Spanish healt�h officials have cleared t�he way� for human embry�os t�o be screened for cancer-causing genes before implant�at�ion.

The aut�horizat�ion of pre-embry�onic cancer screening followed t�he decision by� healt�h officials t�his week t�o allow t�wo women t�o undergo t�he screening, El Pais report�ed t�oday�.

Spain’s Healt�h Secret�ary� Jose Mart�inez Olmos said it� was a hist�oric day� for t�he count�ry�’s healt�h sect�or. The Cat�holic Church has condemned pre-embry�onic screen-ing for some genet�ic diseases.

tourist fleeCes sHopWELLINGTON (DPA) – New Zealand police chased a t�our bus for 160 kilomet�res before arrest�ing a 75-y�ear-old Taiwanese woman who walked out� of a gift� shop wearing a fleece jacket� wit�hout� pay�ing for it�, a newspaper report�ed Friday�.

The woman made her get�away� from t�he shop at� t�he Sout�h Island lakeside resort� Te Anau, and police called by� t�he owner could not� st�op t�he bus unt�il it� neared Queenst�own, t�he Southland Times report�ed.

Police said t�he woman had been released wit�hout� a convict�ion providing she did not� re-offend. 

WORLD

updatein �0 seconds SYRACuSE, ITALY –� Top United States environ-

ment officials today reassured Group of Eight (G8) governments that US President Barack Obama would push for a “meaningful” global response to climate change.

“The US government now fully acknowledges the urgency and complexity of climate change chal-lenges, and we know full well that a meaningful US response to this challenge is absolutely essential,” Lisa Jackson, head of the US Environmental Pro-tection Agency (EPA), said after talks in Syracuse, Italy, with G8 environment ministers.

Jackson’s “message of hope” and “common pur-pose for the environment,” delivered to G8 delegates on behalf of Obama, marked a radical departure from the stance of former president George W Bush, who had refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on emission cuts on the grounds that it would endanger American jobs.

The current administration insists that the pro-tection of the environment can actually help eco-nomic recovery.

“I am hopeful, and the president is hopeful, that we are on the verge of entering a clean energy economy that will supply the US economy and economies around the world with new jobs and a new future,” said Jackson, whose elderly mother lost her home in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina four years ago.

The EPA chief also cautioned business lobbyists against using “horror stories” to “pull us back.”

“I believe the president shares a sense of urgency with those who would say that the time is now,” she said.

The US Congress is currently debating a Demo-cratic-led bill that seeks to cut the country’s carbon emissions by 20 per cent from their 2005 levels by 2020. The Obama administration is also pushing for the introduction of a carbon trading system similar to the one already in place in Europe.

Jackson was taking part in this year’s first G8 envi-ronment meeting, one of a series of high-level talks leading up to end-of-year United Nations negotia-tions in Copenhagen, where world leaders will seek to approve a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

During the meeting in Sicily, Jackson’s European colleagues repeatedly urged the US to show leader-ship and spell out its plans for cutting greenhouse gas emission.

Danish Climate and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard, who will chair the talks in Copenha-

Obama promises radical climate policy

gen, said such a move would encourage other big polluters like China to follow suit.

“The sooner the US can specify, and be concrete in its position, the sooner we can expect some signals coming out of Beijing,” Hedegaard told German news agency dpa.

Jackson, however, declined to say when the US would spell out its position for the Copenhagen meeting.

Sweden’s Andreas Carlgren, who will hold the European Union presidency during the second half of this year, had earlier reinforced Denmark’s message, telling journalists “we are still waiting for other big developed countries to deliver ambitious emission targets.”

European Union governments have already agreed to cut their emissions by 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. And the 27-member bloc is ready to increase the cuts to 30 per cent if other economic powerhouses do the same.

The talks in Syracuse were also attended by offi-cials from big developing countries such as China, India and Brazil. Many of these have said they will not commit themselves to emission targets until the US does so.

JOHANNESBuRG –� Champagne flowed on the streets of Johannesburg this morning as South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) celebrated its expected victory in Thursday’s gen-eral elections with a huge street party, even as votes were still being counted.

ANC leader Jacob Zuma, clad in a black-and-yel-low ANC leather jacket, was in a festive mood as he took to a stage outside party headquarters to enter-tain his supporters with some dancing and a few verses from his trademark revolutionary song, Awu-lethu Umshini Wami (bring me my machine gun).

“The people have spoken with their vote,” the 67-year-old likely next president of South Africa told a cheering crowd of about 4,000 supporters in Zulu, as results trickling in showed the party was poised for a decisive win in the country’s fourth multi-racial polls.

“We’re not yet celebrating victory,” he said, despite the top brass popping two magnums of champagne on either side of him and spraying the crowd.

With 10.8 million votes counted by Thursday night, a little over half of the estimated votes cast, the ANC was polling 66.9 per cent, well ahead of the Democratic Alliance of Cape Town mayor Helen Zille, which had 16 per cent, the Independent Elec-toral Commission (IEC) announced.

A new party of ANC dissidents, the Congress of the People (COPE), was stuck at just under 8 per cent.

Zuma zooms into presidencyMore than 23 million people, a

little under half the population of 48 million, had registered to elect members to the 400-seat National Assembly and nine provincial legislatures. No figure for overall turnout was available, but the IEC predicted about 20 million voters had made their mark.

Final results were not expected until tomorrow morning.

While ANC spokeswoman Jes-sie Duarte talked of a landslide, the party was poised for a dip compared to its 2004 score of 70 per cent under ex-president Thabo Mbeki and a pos-sible erosion of its more-than-two-thirds majority.

“This (65-66 per cent so far) is a landslide, what-ever way you look at it,” Duarte insisted.

Zille, whose liberal Democratic Alliance has tried to shed the image of being the party of the white and mixed-race minority, was also in a jubi-lant mood as the Democratic Alliance looked set to improve on its 2004 performance of 12 per cent and take control of Western Cape province, where Cape Town is located.

Zille said the partial results were a vindication of the party’s controversial “Stop Zuma” campaign.

Zille had been urging voters to erode the ANC’s majority, saying she feared Zuma might use it to stifle dissent.

Those fears were sparked partly by the state’s decision to abruptly drop its eight-year corruption case against Zuma on the eve of his becoming president.

“There was nothing negative about that (the “Stop Zuma” cam-paign). Zuma is negative,” Zille told the German news agency dpa today.

Meanwhile, COPE, which was poised to become the official

opposition in four of nine provinces, was already acknowledging strategic errors.

The party had focused too much on corruption within the ANC and too little on bread-and-butter issues, such as the shortage of low- cost housing and other basic services, Palesa Morudu, a COPE spokeswoman told dpa.

As the first opposition party of anti-apartheid stalwarts to take on the ANC, COPE’s presence made this the most hotly-contested election since the ANC came to power under the iconic Nelson Mandela in 1994.

– DPA

In Sicily, ministers spent the day discussing climate change and ways to preserve the planet’s biodiversity. A “Syracuse Charter” designed to slow the rate of extinction of species was expected to be adopted by the time the talks were over tonight.

As ministers met, hundreds of left-wing protest-ers held a peaceful protest march on the streets of Syracuse, prompting the police to close access to the meeting’s venue at the seafront medieval Castello Maniace.

– DPA

tHe us Congress is Currently

DebAting A DemoCrAtiC-leD bill tHAt seeks to Cut tHe Country’s CArbon emissions by 20 per Cent from tHeir 2005 levels by 2020

24 April  2009  �WORLD

MANILA –� The World Health Organization (WHO) vowed on Friday to intensify the fight against malaria in Asia and the Pacific amid growing signs of the disease developing greater resistance to com-monly used drugs.

The Manila-based WHO Western Pacific Office expressed concern over the situation in the Thai-Cam-bodian border where a strain of malaria that is increas-ingly resistant to artemisinin, the most effective drug available to fight the disease, has proliferated.

“Time is of the essence here. We have to act now to contain this problem within the Mekong region. It must not be allowed to spread and become a regional and international threat,” said Shin Young-Soo, WHO regional director for the Western Pacific.

“Measures such as early malaria diagnosis, effec-tive treatment and high quality surveillance need to be maintained and funding sustained,” Shin added. “New tools will need to be developed if malaria elimination is to be achieved through the region.”

WHO also expressed concern over the rampant use of low-quality and counterfeit drugs in some

countries in the Mekong region and the improper use of medicines such as antibiotics and antimalar-ials, including arteminisin.

WHO said it is closely working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other donor agen-cies to contain the drug-resistant malaria in the Mekong region.

The initiative is part of a global anti-malaria programme called “Counting Malaria Out” which will kick off Saturday with the aim of achieving near-zero deaths from the mosquito-borne disease by 2015.

Among the malaria-endemic countries in Asia and the Pacific are Cambodia, China, South Korea, Malaysia, Laos, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Vietnam.

WHO said that every year, there are 250 mil-lion cases of malaria infections around the world, causing nearly one million deaths. In the Western Pacific region, more than 300,000 malaria cases were confirmed in 2007, with 939 deaths.

– DPA

Malaria becoming resistant to drugs

WASHINGTON –� Less than one month after Lon-don’s G20 summit aimed to pull the world out of recession, the world’s top finance ministers descended on the US capital Friday to review their success.

The United States and other countries are point-ing to some signs that the global downturn may be slowing, even as the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday forecast a 1.3-per-cent contraction of the world economy in 2009, the one-year perform-ance since World War II.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was hosting ministers and central bank heads from the world’s 20 leading economies tomorrow NZ-time. He will hold a separate meeting with ministers from the seven wealthiest nations, known as the G7, whose financial sectors share most of the blame for starting

the global downturn.The flurry of talks comes ahead

of a broader gathering this week-end in Washington of the Interna-tional Monetary Fund and World Bank’s 185 members.

Finance ministers are billing the meetings as a chance to take stock of the world’s progress – or contin-ued descent – since G20 leaders met on April 2 in London, where they agreed on a massive boost to the resources of international financial institutions.

With the crisis spreading to all corners of the globe, the G20 has risen over the last six months from obscu-

rity to become the top venue for governments to coordinate efforts to revive their economies.

The G7, by contrast, has lost some of its past significance as emerging powers like China and India are helping to keep the world’s economy running with their cooling but continued expan-sion.

Top of the G7’s agenda is an unfinished effort to stabilize the financial sector. Most of the atten-tion is still on the United States,

which has yet to get a strong grip on a housing downturn that has threatened the world’s finan-

G7 see breathing space emergingcial powerhouses.

Geithner will brief on Washington’s latest efforts to stabilize US financial firms, an administration official said, including the so- called “stress tests” being carried out on a series of top banks to evaluate just how solid their finances really are.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned today that efforts to remove the toxic mortgage assets at the centre of the US crisis are still “far from what we need.”

The IMF itself is hoping the gathering will secure more pledges from countries for its own lending efforts. The G20 promised to triple the IMF’s lend-ing resources to 750 billion dollars. About two thirds of the money has been committed so far.

– DPA

Timothy Geithner

knew) that Inter-Services Intelligence agency offic-ers are actually aiding the militants.

Meantime, Zardari provided a powerful symbol of his government’s impotence. Earlier this month, a cell-phone video showed a Taliban enforcer flogging a 17-year-old girl lying face down in the dirt. Her crime: refusing a marriage proposal. The video made its way onto the Web and spawned outrage across the nation and the world; Pakistan’s Supreme Court opened an investigation.

Well, amid all of this, Zardari signed an order last week codifying the Taliban’s right to extend Islamic law across the Swat valley. A Taliban spokesman said that if the order had been signed earlier, the Taliban would not have merely whipped that unfortunate girl. They would have shot her.

Haven’t we seen this play before – in Cuba, Cam-bodia, Nicaragua? In all three states, richly corrupt governments that were ill-serving the people still received unqualified support from Washington. American patronage of corrupt leaders fed enthu-siasm for Fidel Castro’s guerrilla army in Cuba, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua.

Certainly each of these previous revolutions had its own unique dynamics, but in each case, Washing-ton and the threatened foreign leaders remained in denial until it was too late.

This time, Washington is waking up. But there’s not much the U.S. can do. As Weinbaum put it, “if we put our hands on it, it’s not helpful.” He also told me that he used to discount the doomsayers who prophesied Pakistan’s downfall.

“This is not Afghanistan,” he would say.“Pakistan has institutions and people advantaged

by them who won’t let Pakistan fall apart.”But he has changed his mind. “It’s a feudal con-

flict now, class warfare. We weren’t thinking of it in the terms that we are today.”

At a conference in Tokyo last Friday, a dozen nations pledged $5 billion in aid to Pakistan. At the same time, a prominent radical leader in Islamabad made a loud public call demanding imposition of Islamic Law nationwide. Which, I wonder, had the greatest impact inside Pakistan?

Pakistan’s oligarchy is beginning to realize it can-not rely on the military for protection; the generals now know that they cannot assume all of their men are on their side.

Soon, as the situation deteriorates, we could begin to see wealthy political and business leaders pack up and move out of the country. The Pentagon may have to pull up its contingency plans for safeguard-ing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

Get ready.Joel Brinkley� is a former Pulit�zer Prize-winning foreign correspond-

ent�  for The New York Times and now a professor of  journalism at� 

St�anford Universit�y�. 

  FROM FRONT PAGE 

The unusually bleak warning came as militants expanded into territory adjacent to the Swat Valley and as Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Pakistan for meetings following a visit earlier this month with U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke.

Clinton’s comments underscored increasing U.S. alarm at how the militants’ strength has grown even as the Obama administration has begun trying to implement a strategy for stabilizing the country.

U.S. officials have grown increasingly critical about the deal giving control in Swat to militants, who intend to impose Islamic sharia law.

U.S. officials are concerned as well about other developments, including a recent decision by Paki-stani’s supreme court to release Maulana Abdul Aziz, an anti-American cleric accused of having ties to terrorists.

  FROM FRONT PAGE 

Back to the front page

Back to the front page

out noW IN GOOD BOOKSTORES

Ian Wishart

AIR

CO

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Ian Wishart #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR

AIR CONTHE Inconvenient TRUTH ABOUT GLOBAL WARMINGTHE Inconvenient TRUTH

What you are about to read is the most up-to-date and easy-to-understand write-up on the global warming debate, and arguably the most important new book you’ll read this year.

That’s because proposed new carbon cuts to be fi nalised this December are expected to eventually cost each household thousands in extra taxes and fees every year! This is your money – don’t you want to be sure the problem is real?

Whether you currently believe global warming is caused by humans, or whether you have nagging doubts, you’ll fi nd Air Con is a compelling read…

EARLY REVIEWS: “Air Con demonstrates, with hundreds of scientifi c references, that ‘global warming’ was not, is not, and will not be a global crisis …The ‘global warming’ debate is not really a debate about climatology – it is a debate about freedom… I commend this timely book, which makes the scientifi c arguments comprehensible to the layman. Those who read it will help to forestall the new Fascists and so to keep us free.”

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“I started reading this book with an intensely critical eye, expecting that a mere journalist could not possibly cope with the complexities of climate science … [But] The book is brilliant. The best I have seen which deals with the news item side of it as well as the science. He has done a very thorough job and I have no hesitation in unreserved commendation.”

– Dr Vincent Gray, UN IPCC expert reviewer

“Wishart delves into the science and statistics of anthropogenic climate change, only to discover the not-so-hidden agenda underlying the global warming scare. Air Con is a thorough summary of the current state of the debate, the science, and the politics; it will be an important reference in any AGW skeptic’s arsenal.”

– Vox Day, columnist, WorldNetDaily

AIR CONTHE Inconvenient TRUTH THE Inconvenient TRUTH THE Inconvenient TRUTH THE Inconvenient TRUTH

24 April  2009  11

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SPORT

By Robert Lowe of NZPA

AuCkLANd, APRIL 24 –� The New Zealand Warriors want to “throw the first punch” against Melbourne tomorrow night as they look to turn around their slow starts in the National Rugby League.

Utility Lance Hohaia said the Warriors had talked about the need to hit the ground running away to the Storm at Olympic Park.

“We spoke about being a bit more pro-active in the way we start our matches and not waiting to see what other sides do – throwing the first punch, you could say,” he said.

“It’s hard if you let any team be two or three tries ahead at halftime.”

The Warriors have fallen behind early in four of the six rounds so far.

In two of those matches, they have managed to com-plete notable late comebacks – against Manly in round two and against the Sydney Roosters last weekend.

The 17-16 home victory over the Roosters fea-tured a particularly remarkable turnaround, with the Warriors down 16-0 at halftime before winning in extra time.

Hohaia said it was difficult to say why the War-riors had let others sides get the jump on them.

One reason could be the injury toll, which hadn’t allowed for settled team selections.

Against the Roosters, Hohaia was himself return-ing from a spell on the sidelines to replace injured fullback Wade McKinnon.

He turned in a busy performance, making 23 runs, gaining 179m and playing a crucial hand at the death.

It was a break from near his own goalline that gave the Warriors the field position from which veteran halfback Stacey Jones slotted the golden-point field goal.

The Warriors have happy memories about Olym-pic Park, their last trip there having turned out to be an historic one.

Their dramatic 18-15 victory over Melbourne last September marked the first time since the present

playoff format was adopted that the bottom-ranked qualifiers had beaten the minor premiers.

Hohaia said the events of that afternoon hadn’t really been brought up in preparations this week.

Both the Melbourne and the Warriors, who sit sev-enth and eighth on the table, had made changes to their roster since then and it was also a new competition.

“So it’s hard to go back an re-live those sorts of things,” he said.

“But we can take confidence out of having played well there.”

warriors looking to throw first punch

By Cathy Walshe of NZPA

WELLINGTON, APRIL 24 –� A deteriorating Achilles injury to Tall Ferns basketballer Jess McCormack has turned into a bonus for New Zealand netball.

The multi-talented 19-year-old, who played for the

Tall Ferns at last year’s Beijing Olympics, returned home to Auckland earlier this year after spend-ing two years in the United States playing college basketball.

A former national secondary schools netball representative, McCormack was today named as an addition to Netball New Zealand’s accelerant squad, the high performance backup group to the Silver Ferns.

Players selected in the accelerant group, overseen by Silver Ferns coach Ruth Aitken, are considered by the national selectors as having the potential to be included in the Silver Ferns programme by 2011.

However, McCormack said today her main focus at the moment was on recovering from a recent Achilles tendon operation.

“I had surgery on it nearly two months ago and at the moment I’m just rehabbing that, trying to get it into playing form,” she told NZPA.

McCormack said the problem, an ongoing and progressively worsening injury from basketball, had been “looked at and cleaned out”.

After two weeks in plaster, and four weeks in a moon boot, she was enjoying the chance to get moving again.

“Right now I’m making sure it’s lengthening out, not getting stuck, doing pool work and what not.

“It’s a little while away until I can start running, a few months at least,” she said. “I’m just taking it day by day and giving it a lot of time – I don’t want to rush back into things.”

McCormack has racked up 45 caps playing for the Tall Ferns, since she became the youngest player ever selected to the team at age 15 in 2005.

As well as playing at the Beijing Olympics, she was also part of the New Zealand team which won silver at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

For the past two years, her focus has been solely on basketball and education, with stints at the University of Washington and the University of Connecticut slotting in nicely with studies for a journalism degree.

But now, McCormack said, she was looking for-ward immersing herself in netball again.

“I wanted to come back to New Zealand – I wanted to finish my education here, and get that sorted,” McCormack said.

“It’s nice being home with the family, and netball just sort of came back into the picture. It wasn’t my main thought coming back here, it wasn’t really part of that decision, but it’s just kind of come back.”

Forced into inactivity after the surgery, the 1.94m former goal keep has been enjoying watching the trans-Tasman netball league unfold on television.

“I’ve been watching a lot of the ANZ Champi-onship, trying to get back into netball mode. It’s definitely a goal to get back into form for that, but I’m not putting any time constraints on myself.”

Nor is she committing herself to any specific position.

“I was goal keep before, but until I get back on the court I’m kind of leaving it open, just see where I fit in once I start playing again. I don’t really want to specify just yet.”

Silver Ferns eye former Tall Fern

Hohaia was again named at fullback for McKin-non when the 17 to face Melbourne were announced on Tuesday.

However, McKinnon travelled to Australia with the squad yesterday, although coach Ivan Cleary said it was unlikely he would be a late call-up against the Storm.

“He’s training with team and that’s pretty much where he’s at,” he said.

“At this stage he should be fine for next week, but he would have to improve significantly if we

were going to consider him [for tomorrow]. He’s certainly not likely.”

While Cleary was dampening down McKinnon’s prospects, he was expecting Melbourne to make a late change to their published line-up by fielding new-signing Brett Finch.

“I think he’s probably a good chance,” he said of the former Parramatta half.

“They’ve bought him and they haven’t bought him to sit and watch. I guess it’s going to be pretty soon, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he plays.”

Warriors Captain Steve Price is tackled by Roost-ers Mark O’Meley during the NRL rugby league match, Mount Smart Stadium, Auckland. NZPA / David Rowland

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24 April  2009  1�WEEKEND

tv & film

The Soloist0Cast Robert Downey Jr., Jamie Foxx0Director: Joe Wright0Length:109 minutes0Rated: PG-13 for thematic elements, some drug use and language

By Colin Covert Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

The Soloist is pitch-perfect, a sensitive rendering of challenging social and emotional themes. What could have been a maudlin exercise in sentimental-ity – the unlikely relationship between a home-less street musician and a Los Angeles Times metro columnist – becomes a soul-stirring tribute to the power of music and the importance of friendship.

Steve Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr.) first sees Nath-aniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) dressed in rags, patiently coaxing Beethoven out of a beat-up violin that looks like it was pulled from a garbage bin. He sees a human interest story about beautiful music competing with the din of L.A.’s busy streets. Eight hundred words and on to the next one. His instincts are solid: The story draws a big reader response. But as he delves into the curbside musician’s past, Lopez begins to see Nathaniel in full.

He learns that his acquaintance was a brilliant Juilliard-trained cellist who suffered a mental break-down partway through his studies. He refuses medi-cation and therapy, finding comfort in music alone. Lopez begins to see Nathaniel as an individual, not

a column topic, and begins a relationship with the damaged man that alters both their lives.

Once subjects become people, things get tricky. The writer begins to question his motives. Will draw-ing attention to Nathaniel help him get better? Is he exploiting him? Will his articles about life on Skid Row bring more city services to L.A.’s 90,000 home-less derelicts? Can he connect Nathaniel to the clas-sical music world in L.A.? Does he, a career-driven professional, have the commitment to maintain a relationship with an erratic vagrant?

The Soloist is a superbly crafted film. Director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement), working from a sensitive script by Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich), deals in honest sentiment, not emotional manipulation. In an inspired sequence, the film shows us what music means to Nathaniel with a vibrant abstract light show scored to Beethoven. The voices in Nathaniel’s head rise to a din when he’s agitated, and we hear Lopez’s internal monologues as he works out his stories. Without hammering us, the film reveals how alike these very different men are.

The film sees serious mental illness in all its com-plex reality. It’s not a germ that goes away with a dose of therapy or drugs. This is a story of redemp-tion shot through with setbacks and disappoint-ments. Time and again, Lopez’s efforts are dashed. Moving Nathaniel into an apartment should be a straightforward process, but he lashes out in a vio-lent meltdown. Then he remorsefully apologizes to Lopez, who he calls his “God.”

The film is wise enough to recognize that there are two soloists in this story. In his middle-class

way, Lopez is as cut off as Nathaniel. He’s a worka-holic, divorced, with no friends outside the office. He doesn’t know his next-door neighbour’s name. He has resigned from the messy business of humanity, except in the vicarious world of his writing. When this loner sees his reflection in an isolated street musician, the two men become a tentative duo. There are subtle reminders throughout that anyone could wind up on the street, through downsizing, a brain-jarring tumble off a bike or natural disaster.

Foxx and Downey are breathtakingly good. Downey gives Lopez a rueful intelligence and the sort of abstract social conscience that doesn’t extend to sticking his neck out for strangers. When he rec-ognizes the challenge that Nathaniel represents and accepts it, it is a moment of honestly earned uplift. Foxx is in his own world as Nathaniel, sad, fright-ening and inspirational by turns. He evolves from a curiosity to a human being, puzzling to outsiders but fully worthy of love.

Like all of us.Wat�ch t�he t�railer 

tHe film sees serious mentAl

illness in All its Complex reAlity. it’s not A germ tHAt goes AWAy WitH A Dose of tHerApy or Drugs

My name, is Michael Caine

By Joseph V. Amodio Newsday

NEW YORk – When Maurice Micklewhit�e, an aspiring act�or from Sout�h London, chose a st�age name, he came up wit�h Michael, t�hen ... Caine, aft�er glancing at� a movie marquee for The Caine Mutiny. St�ill, he never relinquished Maurice – it� remains his legal name, and it�’s what� friends and family� call him.

Caine, 76, is one of film’s busiest� act�ors, appearing in 100-plus movies  (hit�s  like Alfie, Educating Rita, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight – plus Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules, for which he won Academy� Awards for best� support�ing act�or). There’ve been clunkers (Jaws: The Revenge), he admit�s, but�  t�hey� gave him t�he financial independence t�o do smaller, import�ant� films (like 2002’s The Quiet American) – and t�o buy� homes for himself and relat�ives.

Is Anybody There?� st�ars Bill Milner as a lonely� 11-y�ear-old whose parent�s run a nursing home, and Caine, as a cant�ankerous ret�ired magician forced t�o live t�here. Joseph V. Amodio sat� down recent�ly� wit�h Caine – aka Sir Maurice Micklewhit�e (he was knight�ed in 2000) – t�o discuss war, romance and walking five k’s a day�.

Q. Have y�ou alway�s walked a lot�?�A.  I st�art�ed  in  t�he army� (in Korea). You walk  t�hree or 

four miles a day� wit�h a pack on y�our back. So it�’s easy� t�o walk wit�hout� it�.

Q. My� dad fought� in Korea.A. Korea is t�he most� t�errify�ing t�hing I’ve ever done. It� 

defined me as a person for t�he rest� of my� life. Because I t�hought� I was going t�o die – and I didn’t� – and I faced up t�o it�. Young men oft�en wonder, will I be a coward in a t�errible sit�uat�ion?� Well, I got� in a t�errible sit�uat�ion, and I wasn’t�. I wasn’t� brave. (He laughs again.) I (blanked) me’self, but� at� least� I didn’t� run away�.

Q. This film deals wit�h mort�alit�y�,  t�oo. Were y�ou eager t�o delve int�o t�hat�?�

A. I was. There were ot�her t�hings, not� t�he least� of which, my� best� friend was dy�ing of Alzheimer’s, and did so during t�he film. But� t�hat� wasn’t� t�he only� reason. To me, it� was a chance  t�o do somet�hing  I  found very� difficult� –  t�o push my�self furt�her t�han ever. Ot�her act�ors could do it� bet�t�er. But� it�’s t�he best� I’ve ever been ... in my� opinion.

Q. Did y�ou give y�our y�oung colleague any� advice?�A. Nooo. This boy� is ext�raordinary�. We became friends on 

a sort� of equal basis. It� was like working wit�h Sean Connery�. He’s one of t�he most� nat�ural child act�ors I’ve ever seen.

Q. How did y�ou meet� y�our wife, Shakira?�A. I saw her in a coffee commercial. Tracked her down 

t�hrough t�he ad agency�. But� she wouldn’t� go out� wit�h me for weeks. I had a very� bad reput�at�ion in t�hose day�s, sort�a Alfie-ish. And all her girlfriends t�old her not� t�o go out� wit�h me.

Q. So how did y�ou win her over?�A. I don’t� know. I just� kept� ringing ... and ringing ... and 

ringing. I t�hink she got� fed up. (He smiles.) She said, “All right�, but� we go in my� car, not� y�ours.” She drove, so t�here wouldn’t� be any� t�rouble. But� t�here was. (Big laugh.) Lat�er.

Q. An act�or – married 36 y�ears. What�’s y�our secret�?�A. Two bat�hrooms. (Smiling again.) I mean, it�’s a minor 

t�hing, but� I alway�s say� it�’s t�he first� t�hing y�ou need. But� also ... y�ou must� be equal part�ners.  I’m not�  t�his big film st�ar wit�h t�he lit�t�le woman. She’s my� guide, my� ment�or. She’s alway�s t�here for me, alway�s. And I’m t�here for her. You just� ... reach a st�age of int�imacy� where I’ll order a drink and she’ll st�art� drinking it�, wit�hout� t�hinking or any�t�hing. We’re so int�ert�wined. And, of course, I’m very� family�-orient�ed. So is my� wife. She’s Indian – Kashmiri, and t�hey�’re ext�remely� family�-orient�ed, more so t�han t�he English.

24 April  2009 1�

music

REVIEWS

By Amy S. Rosenberg The Philadelphia Inquirer

Does Simon even love us anymore? Look at his face as he watches Susan Boyle, the dowdy never-been-kissed global singing sensation, on stage in Britain’s Got Talent(about 80 million have already).

No smirk. No sneer. No boredom. He believes. He is nearly transcendent. He is not wondering why he is sitting there. He is not doing anyone a favour.

He likes “Les Miz.”Whereas we in the US, American Idol nation, are

like cynics in the headlights, caught mid-snark, yuk-king it up over the blind guy, voting for the worst, clucking over our tattoo Barbie Megan Joy, choosing from a pool of people who seemed to have already formed their backstory on YouTube.

We were still living for Simon Cowell’s next witty takedown, the next Idol train wreck (tejano disco, anyone?), while over in Britain, nurtured in the pro-verbial small and remote, what’s the word – oh yes, dear Susan, “village” – a lonely but chipper, dowdy but defiant, ordinary but extraordinary 47- (“and that’s just one side of me”) year-old-woman, Boyle, was changing all the rules, rewriting the fairy tale.

Could it be that American Idol, for years the zeit-geisty show of the moment, has fallen out of step, left behind like a haughty stepsister (and registering on Tuesday night its lowest ratings since 2002)? Since when did looks cease to matter? Since when did we value innocence over experience? Success over train wreck? Were we really supposed to be having a singing competition all along?

A devotee known as “Artistboynyc,” the 191,975th commenter on one version of the video, that one

viewed 39 million times, wrote yesterday: “I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I’ve been listening to this every day since first heard of it. It gives me chills – such joy on her behalf.”

Susan Boyle backlash, where are you already?(The makeover has apparently begun, with

the Daily Mail reporting Boyle’s upgrade from matronly to patterned dress, leather-look jacket and high heels, headlined: “And you said you wouldn’t change, Susan Boyle!)

And already, the public hype had moved on to “the next Susan Boyle” on Britain’s Got Talent – 12-year-old Shaheen Jafargholi, a little Stevie Wonder type, with a meagre two million-plus views. Paging Adam Lambert.

Boyle is “either campy or an extraordinary sign of hope in our times,” said Henry Jenkins, director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, who is writing about Boyle both as a global “spread-able media” phenomenon that has raced ahead of broadcast television’s outdated protectionist poli-cies and as an example of differing “genre expecta-tions” between Idol and “Britain’s Got Talent.”

“American Idol this season has seemed conserva-tive,” he said. “They look like pop stars already. Idol has just become a star factory. Susan Boyle wouldn’t qualify because of her age. And if she did, they’d play it for laughs for a couple of weeks and cut her out.”

Jason Mittell, associate professor of American Stud-ies and Film & Media Culture at Middlebury College, isn’t buying the moment as a genuine shock to the judges. But he knows the global public is. Indeed, Simon looks like a Simon transformed, glimpsed in his home country, no longer the cynical outsider, hands-over-cheeks adulation over a true undiscovered talent.

Susansational!Has a Brit knocked American Idol off its pedestal?

“Do you want my cynical take on the whole thing?” Mittell asks. “The Susan Boyle thing was a setup narrative, 100 percent consistent with how these shows are produced. Everybody has fallen for it. I am unmoved.”

Mittell points out that to be truly surprised by her singing, you have to first buy into the idea that Boyle’s unstyled appearance somehow is a predictor of her singing ability, which is ridiculous.

But the clip has obviously struck a (very vibrato kind of) chord, pointing up as it does its American counterpart’s obsession with star packaging, youth (“Idol” won’t even consider anyone over 28), and all the superficial elements the public supposedly requires to anoint a “Pop Idol,” as the British ver-sion is called.

Television critics are calling for a return to the sim-ple pleasures of the undiscovered gems in the rough of the earlier Clay Aiken era. Feminists are charmed. Priests are seeing God’s work. As for age, Barack Obama already made 47 sexy and powerful; now Susan Boyle is standing up for the unlucky-at-love set.

“It plays into a narrative that seems authentic,” says Mittell. “The idea that she is just a real person, following her dreams. There’s a sense of discovery of something authentic. It tweaks that pleasure. It plays especially well in the U.S. because our frame for the genre is ‘American Idol.’ ‘American Idol’ is about young people who look the part, act the way in which we expect a pop star to act.”

Nonetheless, American Idol, with its 20-some-thing-million viewers, is still outpacing its closest rival by 12 million viewers. Representatives for the show did not want to publicly compare “Idol” with the Susan Boyle phenomenon, though they were

quick to defend the show’s rags-to-riches, out-of-the-woodwork bona fides.

Still, AI judge Randy Jackson seemed cognizant of the shifting paradigm of reality talent shows this week when he told Kris Allen – (after a typically bizarre Paula Abdul comment about his choice of a Donna Summer song being like shopping in the women’s section) – “We’re looking for the best undiscovered talent.”

Thanks for reminding us, Randy.And newly sentimental Simon seemed saddened

by Lil Rounds’ sadness, and no longer dismissed her as “Little” when her name is Lillian.

Jenkins, of MIT, says translating the Susan Boyle formula to “American Idol” is not that simple – and let’s face it, it’s still the most popular show on televi-sion, even if we’re stuck on snark.

He says Boyle plays right into a British myth of the working class hero bursting into stardom, ter-ritory well worn by “The Full Monty,” the calendar girls and “Billy Elliott,” among others.

“USA Today said (the Boyle clip) looked like a Disney movie waiting to happen, but it doesn’t. It looks like a British movie waiting to happen.”

Mittell sees this summer’s America’s Got Talent as the show to be most affected by the Boyle story. “If I were in the production suite for America’s Got Talent, at this point, I’m scouring churches looking for singers. I’m scouring community theatre. I’m scouring the small-town world where there may be an equivalent to Susan Boyle. She will have to transcend region and race; the narrative of black inner-city church mother will not play the same way, nor will the Nebraska housewife.”

Susan Boy�le 

Shaheen Jafarghol 

24 April  2009  1�

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24 April  2009 1�SCIENCE & TECH

WASHINGTON (dPA) –� Windows 7 is coming to a PC near you – and faster than previously thought. Rumours are flying that Microsoft is putting the finishing touches on Windows 7, the successor to Windows Vista. The “release candidate” of the new operating system is expected in early May, and those eager to test out the new operating system will likely be able to download this all-but-final version by early July.

The well-publicised features of Windows 7 are that it’s faster, less resource intensive, and more compatible than Windows Vista. But a look at a recent build of the operating system reveals that there’s a lot more to look forward to than those headline features. Here’s a look at some of the less publicised features that are likely to make a good impression.

dRIVER HEAVENIf you’re installing Windows 7 from scratch, you’re in for a treat. Unlike virtually every other version of Windows, Windows 7 has an uncanny ability to recognise and find drivers for most many – if not all – of the components of your computer. Graphics cards, printers, scanners, chipsets, sound cards, and wireless cards – many current models are recog-nized during the course of the installation. That means you can probably say good-bye to what used to be the inevitable hunt for driver disks required to get all of your PC’s parts working together.

AERO PEEkAn enduring complaint of Windows users has been that the contents of the Windows desktop are soon obscured – either by a single maximised applica-tion or a multitude of open windows. The Windows Key+D keyboard shortcut addressed this by allow-ing users to quickly minimise all running applica-tions to see the desktop again. Pressing Windows Key+D again restored all applications. But the problem was that Windows+D sometimes changes the active window.

Aero Peek is Windows 7’s answer to this dilemma. A narrow horizontal bar at the far end of the Win-dows task bar, Aero Peek displays the contents of the Windows desktop whenever you move your mouse cursor over the Aero Peek bar. Mouse the mouse cur-

Brace yourself for Seven

sor away, and the contents of your desktop reappear just as they were. Clearly Aero Peek will be most use-ful to those who have one or more gadgets fixed to their Windows desktops. To actually click anything on the desktop, you will still need to minimise one or more applications.

TASkBAR PREVIEWSIf you have five browser windows open and mini-mised, what’s the best way to find out which one you’d like to call up again? Previously, the best solu-tion was to Alt-Tab your way through all of those windows. Unfortunately, alt-tabbing still left you guessing, as you had only small icons and part of the text that appeared in title bars to assist you in finding the instance you wanted. Windows 7 adds a nifty taskbar preview feature that will put an end to the guessing. With taskbar preview, if you have five browser windows open and minimised, all of those browsers will be condensed onto one icon on the taskbar, and when you mouse your mouse to that icon, you’ll see a long vertical strip contain-ing very legible previews of the contents of all five browser windows. Move to the one you want, click, and you’re done.

ANTIVIRuSWindows 7 is going to allow you to do away with a range of programs that you previously had to pur-chase separately, and antivirus is just the first – but probably the most significant – of these.

Microsoft’s first foray into the antivirus arena came with Windows Live OneCare, a capable antivi-rus utility that was remarkable for its unobtrusive-ness and its small footprint. Windows 7, however, will not support OneCare, and the reason is code-named Morro, Microsoft’s new

comprehensive anti-malware software.Still under development, Morro will do what most

people look for in antivirus programs – protect your computer against spyware, viruses, and Trojans – and it will do it for no charge. When Microsoft first announced Morro, the stock prices of anti-virus makers Symantec and McAfee took a dive. But Microsoft claims that Morro is not designed to replace the more comprehensive security suites offered by these companies.

Still, Morro will be free, and it will be delivered with the shipping version of Windows 7. It’s prob-ably safe to assume that it will offer protection that’s good enough for the masses.

CONfIGuRABLE ANNOYANCESAside from slowing down your computer, there was one major reason to hate Windows Vista: its user account control (UAC) feature annoyed you at every turn. Confirmation dialog boxes popped up when-ever you wanted to install a program, install a device driver, configure aspects of the operating system, run the task scheduler, or perform dozens of other tasks that previously went without a hitch.

Windows 7 does not do away with user account control, but it does give you more control over UAC, reduce the number of UAC dialog boxes, and make the dialog boxes themselves more intelligible. That’s a step forward.

INTEGRATEd IMAGINGWindows 7 will be the first version of Windows to include not just system backup but full-fledged system imaging. Imaging differs from a backup in that a system image backs up everything on your PC – including hidden system and boot files – so that you can easily restore the contents of a failed hard drive or upgrade an existing system drive, without having to reinstall all of your applications. This alone is a valuable feature that previously you would have needed a third-party utility to handle.

Along with the new system image feature comes a system repair disk utility. The system repair disk creates a bootable CD, DVD, or USB drive so that you can easily access your previously-created disk image without first having to install Windows. The system repair disk also provides easy access to other system repair features that can help you to restore an unresponsive system.

THE fINAL WORdWindows 7 is poised to be what Windows Vista promised: a slicker, more attractive interface com-bined with functionality that does not leave you pining for the faster, simpler way of Windows XP. When the release candidate version of Windows 7 appears, secure yourself a copy - and perhaps reserve a machine on which to run it. Windows 7 will probably be the version that finally weans you away from XP.

– DPA

By Steve Johnson San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE, CALIf. –� A typical lost or stolen laptop costs employers $49,246, mostly due to the value of the missing intellectual property or other sensitive data, according to an Intel-commissioned study made public this week.

“It is the information age, and employees are carrying more information on their laptops than ever before,” according to an analysis done for Intel by the Michigan-based Ponemon Institute, which studies organizational data-management practices. “With each lost laptop there is the risk that sensi-tive data about customers, employees and business operations will end up in the wrong hands.”

The five-month study examined 138 laptop-loss cases suffered over a recent 12-month period by 29 organizations, mostly businesses but also a few government agencies. It said laptops frequently are lost or stolen at airports, conferences and in taxis, rental cars and hotels.

About 80 percent of the typical cost – or a little more than $39,000 – was attributed to what the report called a data breach, which can involve everything from hard-to-replace company information to data on individuals. Companies then often incur major expenses to prevent others from misusing the data.

Lost intellectual property added nearly $5,000 more to the average cost. The rest of the estimated expense was associated with such things as investi-gative costs, lost productivity and physically replac-ing the laptop.

Larry Ponemon, the institute’s chairman and founder, said he came up with the cost figure based on his discussions with the employers who lost the laptops. When he later shared his findings with the companies and government agencies, he said, some of their executives expressed surprise at the size of the average loss. But he noted that one of the employers thought the amount could have been even higher.

Indeed, a study several years ago by the FBI and the Computer Security Institute placed the average cost of a company’s laptop at $89,000. FBI officials could not be reached Wednesday to discuss the Ponemon study.

The individual losses associated with stolen or otherwise missing laptops in the Ponemon study varied from $1,213 to $975,527.

“The faster the company learns that a laptop is lost, the lower the average cost,” the study said. “If a company discovers the loss in the same day, the average cost is $8,950. If it takes more than one week, the average cost rises significantly to approxi-mately $115,849.”

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel, the world’s big-gest maker of computer chips, had several reasons to do the study, said George Thangadurai, an Intel strategic planning director and general manager of its anti-theft program.

For one thing, Intel has recently introduced tech-nology that companies can use to make notebooks harder to steal. That technology, among other capa-bilities, can help make a laptop inoperative when it is lost or stolen.

Thangadurai said Intel also wants to make lap-tops more secure so that businesses and individual consumers will be more inclined to use the devices, which depend on Intel’s chips for a variety of func-tions.

“The more people feel comfortable buying note-books ... they win, we win and everybody wins,” he said.

John Girard, an analyst who studies mobile data-protection products with the research organization

Gartner, agreed that there is a flourishing market for making laptops more secure.

“It is a growing industry,” he said. “There’s a siz-able number of systems used in business that have no data protection at all. There’s quite a bit of oppor-tunity to sell in this space.”

Although the Ponemon study didn’t endorse any particular brand of notebook protection gear, it noted that “encryption on average can reduce the cost of a lost laptop by more than $20,000.”

Typical lost laptop costs companies nearly $50,000