ISSN 1172-4153 |  Volume 1  |  Issue 5  |  |  5 September 2008 

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CASE LOST� Dewar loses Nicholas appeal Page 3

AIRLINE WARNED� UK crash hits Air NZ  Page 4

USELESS Flu shots don’t work  Page 16

NZ TONITE

Kiwi evolution confusingpage 4

WORLD

Sarah Palin wows the crowd page 8

SPORT

Vatuvei on a rollpage 11

AucklandSat: 16°/9°    Sun: 16°/11°

HamiltonSat: 16°/6°    Sun: 16°/11°

WellingtonSat: 12°/8°    Sun: 13°/9°

QueenstownSat:11°/1°    Sun: 13°/3°

ChristchurchSat: 13°/3°  Sun: 14°/6°

DunedinSat: 12°/5°    Sun: 14°/6°

MUSIC

Van Morrison rockspage 14

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on the INSIDE

NZ First officials could face jail if convictedPotential Crimes Act breaches, not just Electoral Act

NZ First leader Winston Peters, appearing at the Privileges Committee. NZPA / Ross Setford

By Ian Wishart Editor, TGIF Edition

The Serious Fraud Office could find legal precedent in a court case from sixteen years ago to re-open New Zealand First’s 2005 election donations return and prosecute party officials for fraud under the Crimes Act.

Media and political commentators have focused

on the six month statute of limitations for prosecu-tion under the Electoral Act, saying NZ First cannot be prosecuted – but those limitations don’t apply to alternative charges filed under the Crimes Act.

Now, a long-archived court case from 1992 could hold the key to whether New Zealand First is guilty of electoral corruption.

That year, the Serious Fraud Office made legal history for successfully prosecuting former AIC Cor-

poration head Rodney Worn for fraud, based on what the defence argued were “technical” breaches of the Companies Act 1955. Specifically, Worn was accused of breaking section 62 of the Companies Act which, under the terms of that Act, carried only a $200 fine.

However, the Serious Fraud Office argued, although the penalty under the Companies Act was minor, the same action viewed through the Crimes Act formed part of a criminal fraud. The High Court agreed, with Justice Temm telling Worn that “where a person breaks the law knowingly and deliberately, that can be strong evidence of dishonest intention.” Worn was jailed for three years.

In New Zealand First’s case, the implications of this week’s donation revelations have suddenly become deadly serious. The Party’s initial claim that it failed to declare $50,000 worth of donations in 2005 “by mistake”, has now been rocked with revelations of further breaches in 2006 and 2007 where donations were again not declared in the official return.

Now TGIF Edition has learned of a possible fur-ther donation to NZ First – this time from Nelson fishing industry magnate Peter Talley. TGIF was told Talley donated the use of a corporate helicopter worth $1,500 plus GST per hour, to Winston Peters for a series of flights around the upper South Island during the 2005 election campaign, and that there may have been a cash donation as well.

The allegation is ironic, because Winston Peters was the first politician to publicly disclose the con-tents of former National Party leader Don Brash’s emails, and Nicky Hager’s subsequent book The Hollow Men, based on those emails, hit the head-lines with an allegation Talley had donated a mil-lion dollars to National in the 2005 election. Talley denied giving money to National, but significantly he has refused to deny giving money to Winston Peters, saying instead to TGIF Edition: “You are quite within your rights to ask me, and I am quite within my rights to offer ‘no comment’.”

But as the Serious Fraud Office reviews the docu-ments provided by NZ First last weekend, it could

By Ian Wishart

Another new study is warning of mercury dangers from energy-saving eco-bulbs, but the science is so far falling on deaf ears as far as the government is concerned.

In the latest study, the US Postal Service analysed the mercury leakage from breaking packages of compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), in a bid to dis-

Government fiddles while lights burncover the risks to postal couriers.

Two experiments were done, one with four bulbs smashed simultaneously, and the other with 30 bulbs smashed simultaneously.

In all cases, the mercury vapours far exceeded the US EPA level of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic metre of air (300 nanograms), sometimes spiking up to nearly 200,000 nanograms.

The study confirms that shipping and moving

energy saver bulbs can involve health risks for workers.

New Zealand’s Occupational Safety and Health Service (OSH) denies that New Zealand’s work-place mercury exposure limits are out of date and too high, and says it has no plans to review them despite the studies:

“The department is not reviewing the current WES for mercury, although it may do in the future,”

a spokesman told TGIF Edition.That’s despite the newspaper pointing out the

US limit of 3000 nanograms in the workplace, com-pared to New Zealand’s ‘safety’ limit allowing nearly 25,000 nanograms exposure to workers.

Consumer magazine, meanwhile, after being caught endorsing CFL lights without having done safety tests, has now told TGIF it will carry out a safety study on the lights after all.

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More PC MADness froM sWeDen STOCKHOLM, SWEdEN, (UPI) – The Swedish Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a convict who demanded the return of money he earned dealing drugs. The 44-year-old man, who was sentenced to 54 months in prison as well as deportation after his conviction for serious crimes, argued the state owed him compensation for $21,900 in illicitly earned cash that was stolen from his home in December 2004, Swedish News Agency TT reported Wednesday. The court sided with the man’s claims that the fact that the money, which was recovered by authorities after the thieves were arrested and convicted of grand theft, was obtained through sales of heroin and other illegal drugs had no bearing on whether it should be returned to him by the state, TT said.

CAt sHAken, not furreD ARIZONA, (UPI) – A Gilbert, Ariz., man said he drove more than 120 km for business meetings before realizing that his cat had been clinging on for dear life under his truck. Gil Smith, a program contractor, said he first drove two k’s to his office then made a 120-km trek to Globe, Ariz., before he heard the distressed sounds of his cat, Bella, coming from atop a spare tire underneath the truck. “She loves to get up on that spare tire to hang out, it’s kind of a safe place for her, particularly after it rains,” he said. Smith said Bella must have stubbornly remained with the vehicle after he started it in the morning and he did not hear her desperate mewling until he arrived in Globe. Smith said he canceled his appointments for the day to take the distressed feline back home to his wife, Kris, who considers the cat one of her favorites among the many the couple have adopted. “I knew I had two choices: bring the cat home or get a divorce,” Smith said. He said Bella was shaky after the long ride, but was unharmed.

unConsCious skyDiver sAveD by sPAre CHute CHEPSTOW, ENGLANd,(UPI) – A Chepstow, England, skydiver who was knocked unconscious by the tail of the plane he jumped from said he survived after his reserve chute was triggered. Jamie Robertson, 57, who said he’d completed 409 parachute jumps over the span of 23 years without any mishaps, said he was knocked unconscious after a gust of wind blew him against the tail of the plane he leaped from, The Sun reported Tuesday.Robertson’s fellow jumpers said the impact triggered Robertson’s reserve chute to open, allowing him to descend, unconscious but safely, to paramedics waiting on the ground. “I am not sure if I jumped slightly too high but the wind whacked me into the tail, Robertson, who woke up on his way to the hospital,” told The Sun. “Luckily, I hit it so hard that my reserve chute opened, which is very unusual.“I can’t believe how lucky I am to have got down safely – the doctors were amazed. It’s a miracle that I survived,” he said.

off BEAT

well bypass the six month non-prosecution clause under the Electoral Act in favour of more serious charges under the Crimes Act, which has a 10-year limit. Specifically, s10 of the Crimes Act states that “where an act or omission constitutes an offence under this Act [eg. Crimes] and under any other Act [eg. Electoral], the offender may be prosecuted and punished either under this Act or under that other Act.”

This clause in the Act raises questions over deci-sions by the Police not to prosecute Labour’s Elec-toral Act breaches in the past, when they clearly could have considered the Crimes Act as well.

Possible crimes, if the SFO decides the failure to disclose was not accidental, could include:

CRIMES ACT, s260, False Accounting:“Everyone is liable to imprisonment for a term

not exceeding 10 years who, with intent to obtain by deception any property, privilege, service, pecuniary advantage, benefit, or valuable consideration, or to deceive…any other person

a) Makes or causes to be made, or concurs in the making of, any false entry in any book or account or other document required or used for accounting purposes; or

b) Omits or causes to be omitted, or concurs in the omission of, any material particular from any such book or account or other document; …

The ability to be seen as morally squeaky clean, untainted by big business donations whilst railing against the same to other political rivals, could be seen as a “benefit” to NZ First in terms of the Crimes Act, although the intent to “deceive…any other person” would also appear to catch it.

Another Crimes Act provision the SFO could be considering is s111, “False statements or dec-larations”, which carries up to three years’ jail for anyone who, “when required or permitted by law to make any statement or declaration before any officer or person authorized by law to take or receive it…makes a statement or declaration that would amount to perjury if made on oath in a judicial proceeding”.

The Electoral Act required party officials to sub-mit formal declarations, and required electoral offi-cials to receive them. The signed and dated declara-tion is then placed, with an auditor’s report, before the Chief Electoral Officer for consideration.

Similarly, s228 of the Crimes Act, “dishonestly taking or using document” and s240, “obtaining by deception”, may also be up for consideration.

S240 defines “deception” as including “an omis-sion to disclose a material particular, with intent to deceive any person, in circumstances where there is a duty to disclose it”.

Then there’s the thorny question of whether the lat-est testimony over Owen Glenn’s $100,000 donation to Peters’ legal expenses, specifically in order to ensure Peters’ continued support of Labour, amounted to a “bribe” for the purposes of section 103 of the Crimes Act. A similar offer of $250,000 to the Maori Party, if it agreed to support Labour, was widely recognized as a bribery attempt at the time.

Section 103 says money paid to an MP for the specific purposes of them doing an act whilst an MP (such as voting for a Government measure) is a bribe, and the offence is punishable by up to seven years’ jail.

The Crimes Act, at section 99, defines a “bribe” as: “Bribe means any money, valuable consideration, office, or employment, or any benefit, whether direct or indirect”.

If any Labour party official turns out to have helped broker the Glenn donation to Peters, that could open Labour up to criminal bribery charges as well, in the sense of trying to arrange a financial payoff for an MP in exchange for ongoing policy support.

The irony that the Serious Fraud Office could now end up prosecuting NZ First and perhaps even Labour officials, using powers that the police failed to use – when Labour has moved to close the SFO and bring it under Police control – will be lost on none of the parties this weekend.

None of this is to indicate the guilt or innocence of NZ First officials, which is subject to an ongoing investigation. But it does indicate the serious charges that could be laid, if the SFO decides to argue that now-admitted “mistakes” were more sinister.

The question of who bears responsibility, how-ever, is crucial to the investigation as well. It is not enough for SFO investigators to establish what they believe was a dishonest act, they have to identify who engineered it and who knew.

Making it more difficult is the reality that official returns and declarations are sometimes signed by party functionaries who may, or may not, be privy to the whole big picture. If the party officials sign-ing the actual returns were not given the informa-tion they should have been, then they cannot bear criminal liability.

At the other end of the scale, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, whilst integral to the party, could not be held criminally liable for an act or omis-sion by junior staff if he himself was unaware of it.

Then investigators will have to assess whether the failure to disclose donations across three entire years was accidental or deliberate. Was it the same person inside the party who did not understand the legal requirements, or was that person badly advised by someone else? How did such a failure slip past the party’s auditor as well?

Was party leader Winston Peters privy to the decision not to declare the donations, or was it han-dled separately from the leadership?

On the other hand, if some within the party made a deliberate decision not to disclose, and effectively concealed necessary information from the persons who signed off on the electoral returns, the perpetra-tors could still be stung criminally if the SFO suc-cessfully argued that they knew of the requirement to file, but deliberately compromised the integrity of the document by their actions.

And at the centre of all of this, the SFO must make a decision about the likelihood that Winston Peters, after all he’s been through, would fail to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Potentially, both Peters and Owen Glenn have suffered memory lapses – in Peters’ case his denials of attending the 2006 Karaka Yearling Sales have been dented by a Han-sard record from February 2006 where he refers to having just attended the Karaka sales.

Whether Peters or anyone inside NZ First end up getting pinged for this will depend on whether the SFO finds answers to the age old questions: who knew what, and when? But don’t underestimate the ability of the Serious Fraud Office to find out, nor their willingness to make an electoral fraud test case – turning NZ First into political scarecrows for a generation of politicians to come.

5 September  2008  �

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NEW ZEALAND

WELLINgTON, Sept 5 –� Former Rotorua CIB boss John Dewar has lost his appeal against conviction and sentence for his handling of historic sex allega-tions by Louise Nicholas. The Appeal Court found Dewar’s behaviour “struck at the very heart of the administration of justice”.

Dewar was sentenced last October to 4-1/2 years

in jail on four charges of attempting to obstruct or defeat the course of justice, after being found guilty in August by a jury in the High Court at Hamilton.

Trial judge Justice Rodney Hansen said that Dewar had a “remarkable capacity for self-delu-sion and avoidance which may have explained his conduct”.

those charges – although Shipton and Schollum were already serving jail terms for another rape.

The Crown said Dewar suppressed allegations Mrs Nicholas made against the three men and attempted to prevent the course of justice during the trial of another former policeman, who has permanent name suppression, by giving inadmissible evidence.

Dewar based his appeal principally on the grounds that a direction the trial judge gave to the jury prejudiced his chance of a fair trial and that the sentence imposed was “manifestly excessive”.

Appeal Court judges Hammond, Ellen France and Baragwanath rejected the suggestion by defence counsel Bill Nabney that in his summing-up Justice Hansen characterised ambiguous conduct as potential lies.

“There was no blurring of the kind suggested by Mr Nabney and the directions given were entirely appropriate,” they said in their ruling.

They also rejected the suggestion that failure of the prosecutor to cross-examine Dewar when he gave evidence on the testimony of three prosecu-tion witnesses created an unfairness amounting to a miscarriage of justice.

Crown prosecutor Brent Stanaway told the court that Dewar’s evidence-in-chief dealt with the witness’ evidence “in an emphatic and final way, which would not have permitted effective cross-examination”.

The judges said Dewar’s suggestion had no merit.As for Dewar’s concurrent sentence of 4-1/2 years,

the judges found that the sentencing judge had weighed all the appropriate factors and the sentence was “well inside an appropriate range”.

“There was exploitation of Mrs Nicholas’ vulner-ability for Mr Dewar’s own ends,” they said.

“And, of the greatest moment, this offending struck at the very heart of the administration of justice.”

– NZPA

WELLINgTON, Sept 5 –� A parliamentary report has given a damning assessment of how state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are valued – making it hard to assess the return on the Government’s investment.

Parliament’s commerce committee launched an inquiry into the valuation methodology of the 18 SOEs last year due to concerns there was no aggre-gate valuation data for them as a result of several different valuation methodologies being used.

Australian agencies report the data – allowing the public to assess whether the SOE portfolio was generating an acceptable rate of return.

The committee, which released its report yes-terday, said it had been told informally by officials that satisfactory portfolio performance data was not published due to a lack of resources.

It said this implied that portfolio performance and with it public accountability were not being accorded priority, despite the SOE Act saying the main aim of SOEs was to be as efficient and profit-able as a comparable private company.

It recommended:j As a first step the Crown Company Monitoring

Advisory Unit (CCMAU) be required to aggregate the data it already collects on SOEs;j that CCMAU be asked to consider and report

to the Government on the publication of an annual market-based assessment of the SOE portfolio;j that Statistics New Zealand be asked to ana-

lyse the SOE portfolio in its reporting.The report said the most recent financial state-

ments valued the Crown’s interest in the 18 SOEs at $23.5 billion at June 30, 2007.

That was equivalent to 40 percent of the $59b market capitalisation of the New Zealand share-market at June 2008.

It put the surplus from all SOEs at $727 mil-lion for the year to June 2007. The Crown’s equity interest at the end of June 2006 was $11.5b, a rate of return of 6.3 per cent.

However that rate of return is pulled down by a $10b valuation of the country’s rail tracks and land, which Finance Minister Michael Cullen has described as completely unrealistic.

Nine SOEs, including Solid Energy, Transpower, Kordia, and Quotable Value New Zealand, outper-formed a government stock rate benchmark of 6.9 percent in the 2006/2007 year.

Of the nine SOEs with rates of return below 6.9 percent, Timberlands and Agriquality New Zealand had negative returns.

– NZPA

John Dewar loses appeal in Louise Nicholas case

Former top policeman John dewar looks to his wife as he stands before the judge during sentencing at his original trial last October. NZPA / Wayne drought

tHere WAs exPloitAtion of Mrs

niCHolAs’ vulnerAbility for Mr DeWAr’s oWn enDs

– Judge

Dewar, 55, now a self-employed father of four of Hamilton, was chief inspector of the Rotorua CIB when Mrs Nicholas approached police in 1993 with two historic sex allegations, including those against former assistant commissioner Clint Rickards and former policemen Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum.

The three men were later found not guilty on

Report critical of SOE valuations

5 September  2008 �NEW ZEALAND

ChRISTChURCh, Sept 5 –� Three men who worked for a security firm – including the man who bashed Nan Withers and left her for dead in 1997 – have received long jail terms for stand-over tactics includ-ing threats and armed robbery.

They were told that their home invasion to collect on a debt must have terrified the two residents who were held against their will, had $4000 property taken, and were told they could be shotgunned and dumped in the Waimakariri River.

The heaviest jail term of seven years was reserved for Harry Goulding Houkamau, who was jailed for 10 years in 1997 for his armed robbery of a shop, when he bashed pensioner Nan Withers with a jack handle.

She had a fractured skull and needed 75 stitches in her face and head. The attack prompted a citizen-initiated referendum calling for harsher sentences for violent offenders.

Houkamau, 36, Shane Michael Ford Wakefield, 23, and Charles Bruce Wharekawa, 29, had all pleaded guilty to charges of kidnapping and armed robbery for the sentencing by Christchurch District Court Judge John Cadenhead today.

Wakefield and Wharekawa were given five-year terms.

Crown prosecutor Anne MacGoughan said the three had gone to the house to recover money owed by one of the occupants to Wakefield, for repairs after a motor accident. Some irregular payments had already been collected.

Judge Cadenhead said: “I take a serious view of

this offending. People should realise they can’t go into other people’s homes and intimidate them in the way you have done. One would like to think that in New Zealand this type of conduct doesn’t occur.”

The two residents had recovered from the shock of the offending, but they must have found the inci-dent extremely traumatic.

Defence counsel Steve Hembrow said Houkamau, 36, who is deaf, was ashamed of his criminal history – he has 43 previous convictions – including the bashing of Mrs Withers.

He had written apologies to the victims in this case. He had been in employment for three years and now had a partner for the first time in his life.

“He is very concerned that he may lose his fam-ily – the first family he has ever had – as a result of this offending.”

Wakefield had no significant criminal history, said his counsel Craig Ruane. The offending had occurred “when things spiralled out of control”.

A reasonable amount of the property taken dur-ing the incident had now been recovered.

For Wharekawa, who has 39 previous convictions, defence counsel David Bunce said the victims had not been hurt.

His client now had a partner and had been taking his parenting responsibilities seriously.

“See you later, love,” a woman in the public seats called out, as Wharekawa was taken to the cells to begin his prison term.

– NZPA

WELLINgTON, Sept 5 –� Air New Zealand has been told to make urgent changes to its operations and maintenance of its eight long-haul Boeing 777 air-craft in the wake of shock findings from a crash in Britain.

A British Airways jet with 152 passengers and crew crash-landed on January 17 after the engines couldn’t provide enough thrust while approaching London Heathrow airport.

No one was seriously injured on the BA038 flight, but the crash ripped off wheels and cracked one wing.

Investigators have now found the crash-landing has some severe implications for long-haul routes such as those which Air New Zealand flies.

An eight-month investigation concluded that ice crystals choked off the fuel supply less than a minute before touchdown.

Engineers have no idea how many other aircraft might be vulnerable to the “previously unforeseen threat” of such blockages.

But Air New Zealand told NZPA today that new operational and maintenance requirements from air-craft maker Boeing, notified today, “will become stand-ard operating procedure for Air New Zealand”.

The general manager of airline operations, Cap-tain David Morgan said that safety was “paramount and non-negotiable” for the airline.

“We will immediately introduce and implement these requirements from Boeing,” he said.

The requirements apply only to Boeing 777 air-craft fitted with Rolls Royce Trent 800 engines.

The eight 777s operated by Air NZ have Trent engines.

British Air Accidents investigators said last night that a unique combination of three events created the conditions that choked off the fuel, and that

AIR NZ told to make urgent changes to long-haul 777 flights

Jail for stand-over men

they could not rule out the possibility of this being replicated in other aircraft.

The BA flight carried fuel at temperatures of minus-73degC in unusually cold weather over Siberia, and flew at a steady cruising speed and altitude for a long time, allowing ice to form in the fuel tanks because.

On landing, the sudden demand for a burst of fuel to the engines went unanswered as ice blocked the pipes.

Boeing spokesman Nick West said today that pilots of 777s should in future change altitude periodically when flying through very cold air, and also rev their engines before landing to clear ice from fuel lines.

The instructions cover 220 777s powered by Trent 800s in service with 11 airlines worldwide, Boeing said.

The US National Transportation Safety Board has said a design change would make the fuel system more “resilient,” but would take time.

Air NZ did not directly respond to questions about the impact on its fuel-saving efforts of an requirement for planes to fly on maximum power in mid-flight to prevent the build-up of ice in fuel tanks .

The airline has recently heavily publicised its efforts to reduce fuel consumption because of the high cost of jet fuel, but will now have to ask its pilots, in motoring terms, to gun the accelerator in mid-flight.

Chief executive Rob Fyfe said recently the airline could only make a profit in the 2009 financial year if the average price of jet fuel was below $US140/barrel.

Air NZ spent over $1 billion buying four 777s planes and leasing another four in 2004.

– NZPA

WELLINgTON, Sept 5 –� New Zealand’s kiwi and other large flightless birds of the southern continents – African ostriches, Australian emus and cassowaries, and South American rheas – do not share a common flightless ancestor, an American researcher says.

Instead, University of Florida zoology Profes-sor Edward Braun says in new research published online by the National Academy of Sciences, each species individually lost its flight after diverging from ancestors that did have the ability to fly.

This means some of the group, known collectively as ratites, are much more closely related to their air-borne cousins, South American tinamous, than they are to other ratites, Prof Braun said in a statement.

And it means the ratites are products of parallel evolution – different species in significantly differ-ent environments following the exact same evolu-tionary course.

Prof Braun and his fellow researchers studied the ratites after a discovery made while working on a larger-scale project.

They were trying to understand the evolution of birds and their genomes by analysing DNA from the tissue of many different bird species to determine how they related to one another.

They found the ratites did not form a natural group based on their genetic make-up, but belonged to multiple related but distinct groups that con-tained another group of birds, the tinamous, with the ability to fly.

Previously, the ratites were used as a textbook example of vicariance, the geographical dispersal of a single species, resulting in two or more very similar sub-groups that can then undergo further evolutionary change and eventually become very distinct from one another.

Scientists assumed that a single flightless com-mon ancestor of the ratites lived on the superconti-nent of Gondwana, which slowly broke up into New Zealand, Africa, South America and Australia.

The prevailing theory was that the ancestor spe-cies evolved slightly in each new location to produce the differences among the present-day ratites.

But Prof Braun said today it was more likely that the ratites’ ancestors distributed themselves among the southern continents – by flying between them after the breakup of Gondwana, which began about 167 million years ago.

Now the scientists want to know why the birds evolved into such similar organisms in different environments.

“To know for sure, we’ll have to go into the lab and really study the genetics underlying the ratites’ developmental pathway,” Prof Braun said.

“But nobody would have asked that question without the type of data we’ve collected, which raises the question in the first place.” New Zea-land molecular evolutionist Alan Cooper led an Oxford University study in 2001 which declared the kiwi developed in Australia and migrated to New Zealand about 70 million years ago along a then-exposed Norfolk Ridge or Lord Howe Rise that linked the two countries.

The sea later closed in, isolating the kiwi in New Zealand. That team’s research also found that the ancestors of New Zealand’s 11 species of moa were probably separated from other ratites – one of the most ancient groups of birds – in Australia-Ant-arctica when New Zealand broke away between 82 million and 85 million years ago.

“The moa and kiwi...represent separate ratite inva-sions of New Zealand,” Dr Cooper said at the time.

“Our data supports the idea that continental drift caused the various ratite species to be separated.”

– NZPA

Research: Kiwi lost its wings  independently of other ratites

WELLINgTON, Sept 5 –� The New Zealand dollar was hammered today but it was part of a global flight from risk.

The NZ dollar dropped to US65.90c mid-morn-ing for the first time in 22 months but made it back to US66.60c by 5pm.

It was a big fall because the currency had been around US68.80c at 1am and closed yesterday at US68.17c.

The decline was all about risk aversion and liq-uidation of so-called carry traded, said Murray Hindley, ANZ Institutional Bank chief foreign exchange dealer.

He said once the euro broke key levels around the New York close it took everything else with it.

Bank of New Zealand currency strategist Danica Hampton said escalating concern about the health of the global economy and heavy losses in global equities were also a factor.

The greenback rallied overnight to its highest level against the euro this year after the ECB cut its growth outlook for the 15-nation region, boosting

NZ dollar hammered againthe likelihood of interest rate cuts.

In Asian trading today the yen soared to a 13-month high against the sliding euro.

Investors are again fleeing risky investments and one of them is the NZ dollar ahead of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand monetary policy statement next week.

All but one of the 17 economists in the Reuters poll expected the central bank to cut rates to 7.75 percent on September 11. One predicted a 50 basis-point cut.

By 5pm today the NZ dollar was buying 0.4670 euro from 0.4705 at 5pm yesterday.

Against the Australian dollar it was at A81.70c from A81.85c yesterday.

Against the Japanese currency, the kiwi dropped to 71.09 yen by 5pm from 73.70 yesterday. The trade weighted index was 63.36 at 5pm down from 64.38 at 5pm.

RELATED STORY: Investigate, January 07 http://www.

thebriefingroom.com/archives/2007/07/the_coming_kiwi.html – NZPA

5 September  2008  �

-Labour’s Hidden AgendaHelen Clark and her Socialist government have an agenda and its not about what is good for our country – it’s more about politics and the upcoming election.  It will cost NZ billions plus many lost  jobs – even more workers going overseas. Things they have not told us include: 1.the Gov-ernment will profit by between $6 billion and $22 billion from the tendering of emissions permits. Its government corruption –  raking  in huge profits off  the backs of  the people  they  are  supposed  to  serve.  2.there’s  been  no clear analysis of how the scheme will reduce emissions. 3.There’s  been  no  transparency  about  its  effects  on already-struggling New Zealand households.  Frightening reports have emerged about the likely economic effects of the scheme’s ‘lead the world’ approach to cutting emis-sions. 4.The scheme has been subject  to a  large num-ber  of  significant  last-minute  changes  which  the  Select Committee  have  been  given  no  opportunity  to  analyse.  The  Electoral  Finance  Act  was  also  railroaded  through Parliament in similar fashion, by a slim majority for purely political reasons.  That legislation has turned out to be a shambles. Its time we were of this corrupt government.   

Denis Shuker, Auckland

-Correction and ApologyI am writing to you today, as the Pan Pharmaceuticals arti-cle that you had a quote from Nicola Grace on was totally inaccurate.  It is a slur on Thompson Nutrition Limited that Nicola was allowed to comment on Thompson’s and this comment was printed by you with no contact being made to Thompson’s to verify this point. I am amazed that she knows of Thompson’s position as I have no idea who she is and Thompson’s are  the market  leader  in  the Natural Healthcare market in NZ.  

I ask you for a correction to be published to this point that says that we had to withdraw 95% of our products.  The reality was that it was approximately 20 products, or under 10% of our range.

Roger Sanderson, Managing DirectorThompson Group Ltd

Editor’s comment:Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Roger. I was unaware it was incorrect or contentious, otherwise we would have made contact.

Please accept our genuine apologies, and let the record stand corrected.

-Conflicts of interestMembers of Parliament, senior civil servants, police offi-cers and judges should be forced to declare membership of secret societies such as the freemasons.

Re-establishing the public’s trust in politicians depends upon being open about interests and affiliations. There are over  five  million  freemasons  worldwide,  who  pledge  to give each other mutual support and in a country such as New Zealand, with a relatively small population, there is an enormous potential for nepotism and corruption.

Since  1999  all  judges,  police,  prison  and  probation officers  in  the  United  Kingdom  have  been  obliged  to declare  membership. There  is  no  suggestion  that  there is anything inappropriate about membership, but, in prin-ciple,  the  public  should  be  aware whether members  of the criminal  justice system are connected to each other through their loyalty to a particular society or lodge. 

The legal obligation in the UK to declare membership of  the  freemasons  followed  publicity  about  the  life  and connections of British criminal Kenneth Noye. His story is an example of how someone embracing crime as a pro-fession can accumulate enormous wealth and  power by exploiting his  freemason connections. Detectives untan-gling his network of corruption now believe that at  least one prominent MP was in his pay.

Of  all  the  professions  the  law  enforcement  and  the intelligence  community  in  the UK have  the  highest  per-centage of members who are Freemasons while doctors are least likely to belong to the brotherhood.

J Reser, PoriruaTGIF Edition is published every Friday evening via email to subscribers.Subscriptions can be obtained via the website, www.tgifedition.com.

Letters to the editor can be posted to:

PO BOX 302188, Nort Harbour, North Shore 0751 or

emailed to: letters@tgifedition.tv

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When it all turns on a dimeIt’s a funny thing, politics. It can turn on a dime, as Barack Obama’s Democrat campaign in the US has discovered to its chagrin this week.

For weeks there’d been a growing expectation that Obama would bolt in, because of the prevailing “mood for change”. He projected youth and enthu-siasm to McCain’s old guard image, and McCain did himself no favours by failing to reach out to America’s heartland conservatives.

Then, along came Sarah. Forty-four years old, vibrant, tough, a working mum of five – including a disabled child. Her selection electrified the US presidential race and sent Democratic strategists and spinmeisters into a frenzy of fury.

Suddenly, the left wing was ditching its equal opportunities stance, and instead effectively ques-tioning whether a woman could do the VP’s job. There were comments about the tough workload, there were comments about her lack of experience, being a mother and all that, and there were snide comments about her morals and her “wayward” chil-dren – unwed 17 year old pregnant daughter.

The problem for Obama is that everytime a left wing blogger anywhere on the planet questions Sarah Palin’s experience for the VP job, it only throws Obama’s lack of experience for the top job firmly into sharp relief.

For example, Palin has business experience, while Obama was “a community organiser” (read ‘social worker’). Palin was a local mayor, rising to state governor. Obama was a lawyer, effectively rising simply to the American equivalent of an MP.

Palin has commanded budgets, public servants and been responsible for National Guard units. Obama has, well, hung around with Islamic extremists.

Obama talks about equality for women, but Palin has lived it, fighting the old boys networks and the glass ceilings, fighting big corporates and career politicians.

Best of all for the US election process, Palin embodies the clash of worldviews – as a modern conservative, she gives a voice to the voiceless – the majority of Americans who the liberal media elites there and here in New Zealand routinely sneer at.

Newstalk ZB, for example, gleefully reported Palin’s moose hunting exploits as if that made her some kind of country bumpkin. But is it any different to the thousands of New Zealanders, including News-talk ZB’s own Danny Watson, who go hunting deer or pigs of a weekend?

Closer to home, Winston Peters, too, is finding how politics can turn on a dime. This time around there may be no way out. NZ First has now admitted fail-ing to file true returns about its electoral donations for three years running. All the while, the party was hammering others for being in the thrall of secret trusts and big business. By implication, NZ First had clean hands.

The media and political commentators – even Winston’s enemies – have failed to properly appreci-ate the true peril he now finds himself in. TGIF Edi-tion understands the Serious Fraud Office, perhaps inspired by Peters’ own submissions to the Winebox Inquiry, is now taking a robust view of the possible criminality in the donations row. Watch this space.

US Election: the view from EuropeBy Frida ghitis

LONDON –� Only moments after takeoff on a flight from Amsterdam to London, everyone on board, it seemed, had disappeared into a newspaper. With front pages from across Europe held aloft, a glance down the aisle showed one story dominated the news that day in dailies across the region – with another piece of news coming a close second. Almost every cover showed a picture of Barack Obama or Hillary Clin-ton. Not far below the news from Denver, another dateline made the front page with unsettling news about Russia and the possibility of a new Cold War.

Once again, America and Europe stand on the same side. Once again, Europeans find inspiration from across the ocean.

Europeans are excited about America’s elections. The painful wound from that once-festering dispute over the war in Iraq is starting to look like an old scar. And the combination of American politics and world events has reaffirmed the two sides” shared world view.

At this precise moment in history, there is no ques-tion about what the “West” means: It means America and Europe, together.

Europeans are not just curious about America’s election; they are interested, involved and excited. Ever since the Democratic primaries heated up, European hearts have quickened at the thought of either an Obama or Clinton presidency. Everyone here sounds like an expert on American politics. Everyone has an opinion. Many women wanted Clinton to win, and many believed that choosing her as a running-mate would have assured Obama’s victory. Now Obama is the overwhelming favorite.

Europe has always had a complicated relation-ship with the United States. Some will always blame America for every wrong in the world. To most Euro-peans, however, America feels like a close cousin who grew up to become wealthy and strong and hand-some. You know him well and know his flaws. He can be cocky and brash and impulsive – and infuriating. But he can also be charming, strong, generous and inspiring. Deep down, almost in spite of yourself, you feel great affection for him and hold the highest expectations. You want to be dazzled, even if he can make you feel a little small in his shadow.

Europeans have gently mocked the protracted and melodramatic American election process. But they have followed it with bated breath. Millions have fallen into the Obama trance or become pas-sionate about Clinton, even while confessing with a mix of shame and admiration that voters here would not have allowed a nonwhite candidate to make it this far.

threatening adversary. Common views also emerged during the Beijing Olympics, a dazzling spectacle that many in the West found a little, shall-we-say, creepy in its totalitarian perfection. You had to live in the con-trolled chaos of a democratic system to understand why spending $43 billion for a sports competition might be wrong. ten that the election isn’t over. Many talk of how the world will change now, as if Obama already lives in the White House. If Obama becomes president, inevitably the day will come when he will do something Europeans won’t like. If he loses, they will

again say Americans cannot be trusted to vote.No matter how the election turns out, the worst of

the spat between Europe and the United States has ended. After half a decade of anger, Europeans are again starting to like their American cousins.

Frida Ghitis writes about global affairs for The Miami Herald, Wash-

ington Post and a range of international papers.

There are those who worry about Obama, pre-ferring John McCain. But they are a rather quiet minority. For them, the wounds healed even sooner, if there were any.

Americans made it up to European critics when President Bush’s approval ratings collapsed at home. Big majorities on both sides of the Atlantic now see the Bush presidency as a failure. Europeans felt vindicated by that, and by America’s troubles in Iraq – the war most of them opposed. Europe did its part for reconciliation by electing staunchly pro-

American leaders in France and Germany. Passion returned when America electrified the continent with its slate of presidential candidates.

And then, Russia invaded Georgia and defied the West. Suddenly, it was not all about candidates and elec-tions. Just as during the Cold War, America and Europe found themselves staring down an enigmatic and

euroPeAns Are not just Curious About AMeriCA’s eleCtion; tHey Are interesteD, involveD AnD

exCiteD. ever sinCe tHe DeMoCrAtiC PriMAries HeAteD uP, euroPeAn HeArts HAve QuiCkeneD At tHe tHouGHt of eitHer An obAMA or Clinton PresiDenCy. everyone Here sounDs like An exPert on AMeriCAn PolitiCs. everyone HAs An oPinion. MAny WoMen WAnteD Clinton to Win

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5 September  2008  �ANALYSIS

By Arnaud De Borchgrave

WAShINgTON –� NATO guarantees that an attack against one member country is an attack against all are no longer what they used to be. Had Georgia been inside NATO, a number of European countries would no longer be willing to consider it an attack against their own soil.

For Russia, the geopolitical stars were in per-fect alignment. The United States was badly over-stretched and had no plausible way to talk tough without coming across as empty rhetoric. American resources have been drained by the Iraq and Afghan wars, and the war on terror. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put it, Washington must now choose between its pet project Georgia and a partnership with Moscow.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili evidently thought the United States would come to his side militarily if Russian troops pushed him back into Georgia after ordering an attack last Aug. 8 on the breakaway province of South Ossetia. And when his forces were mauled by Russia’s counterattack, bitter disappointment turned to anger. Along with Abkhazia, Georgia lost two provinces.

Georgia also had a special relationship with Israel that was mostly under the radar. Georgian Defence Minister Davit Kezerashvili is a former Israeli who moved things along by facilitating Israeli arms sales with U.S. aid. We are now in a fight against the great Russia, he was quoted as saying, and our hope is to receive assistance from the White House because Georgia cannot survive on its own.

The Jerusalem Post on Aug. 12 reported, Geor-gian Prime Minister Vladimir Gurgenidze made a special call to Israel Tuesday morning to receive a blessing from one of the Haredi community’s most important rabbis and spiritual leaders, Rabbi Aaron Leib Steinman. ‘I want him to pray for us and our

state,’ he was quoted.Israel began selling arms to Georgia seven years

ago. U.S. grants facilitated these purchases. From Israel came former minister and former Tel Aviv Mayor Roni Milo, representing Elbit Systems, and his brother Shlomo, former director general of Mili-tary Industries. Israeli UAV spy drones, made by Elbit Maarahot Systems, conducted recon flights over southern Russia, as well as into nearby Iran.

In a secret agreement between Israel and Georgia, two military airfields in southern Georgia had been earmarked for the use of Israeli fighter-bombers in the event of pre-emptive attacks against Iranian nuclear installations. This would sharply reduce the

distance Israeli fighter-bombers would have to fly to hit targets in Iran. And to reach Georgian airstrips, the Israeli air force would fly over Turkey.

The attack ordered by Saakashvili against South Ossetia the night of Aug. 7 provided the Russians the pretext for Moscow to order Special Forces to raid these Israeli facilities where some Israeli drones were reported captured.

At a Moscow news conference, Gen. Anatoly Nogo-vitsyn, Russia’s deputy chief of staff, said the extent of Israeli aid to Georgia included eight types of military vehicles, explosives, landmines and special explosives for clearing minefields. Estimated num-bers of Israeli trainers attached to the Georgian army range from 100 to 1,000. There were also 110 U.S. military personnel on training assignments in Georgia. Last July 2,000 U.S. troops were flown in

for Immediate Response 2008, a joint exercise with Georgian forces.

Details of Israel’s involvement were largely ignored by Israeli media lest they be interpreted as another blow to Israel’s legendary military prowess, which took a bad hit in the Lebanese war against Hezbollah two years ago. Georgia’s top diplomat in Tel Aviv complained about Israel’s lackluster response to his country’s military predicament and called for diplomatic pressure on Moscow. According to the Jerusalem Post, the Georgian was told the address for that type of pressure is Washington.

Haaretz reported Georgian Minister Temur Yako-bashvili – who is Jewish, the newspaper said – told

Israeli army radio that Israel should be proud of its military which trained Georgian soldiers because he explained rather implausibly, a small group of our soldiers were able to wipe out an entire Russian military division, thanks to Israeli traininag.

The Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military axis was agreed at the highest levels with the approval of the Bush administration. The official liaison between the two entities was Reserve Brig. Gen. Gal Hirsch who commanded Israeli forces on the Lebanese border in July 2006. He resigned from the army after the Winograd Commission flayed Israel’s conduct of its Second Lebanon War. Hirsch was also blamed for the seizure of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah.

Israeli personnel, working for private companies with close ties to the Israel Defence Forces, also trained Georgian soldiers in house-to-house fighting.

That Russia assessed these Israeli training mis-sions as U.S.-approved is a given. The United States was also handicapped by a shortage of spy-in-the-sky satellite capability, already overextended by the Iraq and Afghan wars. Neither U.S. nor Georgian intelligence knew Russian forces were ready with an immediate and massive response to the Georgian attack Moscow knew was coming. Russian double agents ostensibly working for Georgia most prob-ably egged on the military fantasies of the impetu-ous Saakashvili’s surprise attack plans.

Saakashvili was convinced that by sending 2,000 of his soldiers to serve in Iraq (who were immedi-ately flown home by the United States when Russia launched a massive counterattack into Georgia), he would be rewarded for his loyalty. He could not believe President Bush, a personal friend, would leave him in the lurch. Georgia, as Saakashvili saw his country’s role, was the Israel of the Caucasus.

The Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military axis appears to have been cemented at the highest levels, according to YNet, the Israeli electronic daily. But whether the IAF can still count on those air bases to launch bombing missions against Iran’s nuke facilities is now in doubt.

Iran comes out ahead in the wake of the Georgian crisis. Neither Russia nor China is willing to respond to a Western request for more and tougher sanc-tions against the mullahs. Iran’s European trading partners are also loath to squeeze Iran. The Russian-built, 1,000-megawatt Iranian reactor in Bushehr is scheduled to go online early next year.

A combination of Putin and oil has put Russia back on the geopolitical map of the world. Moscow’s oil and gas revenue this year is projected at $201 billion – a 13-fold increase since Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin eight years ago. Not shabby for a wan-nabe superpower on the comeback trail.

– UPI

Israel’s dog in the Caucasus fight

By Pat Doyle Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

ST. PAUL, Minn. –� Undaunted by questions about Sarah Palin’s political resume and family, evangelical Christians at the Republican National Convention are cheering the choice of the Alaskan governor for vice president, saying she will energize social conservatives critical to the party’s success in November.

“I’ve seen a resurgence of enthusiasm from our evangelical base in the party,” said Minnesota GOP chairman Ron Carey, himself an evangelical.

“She is a woman who believes in family val-ues, traditional conservative values,” said Nancy Haapoja, a Minnesota delegate and local director of a Christian youth organization.

Sen. John McCain’s selection of Palin as his running mate reassures evangelicals who have long worried that he doesn’t share their passion on social issues.

In Palin, conservatives get a staunch opponent of abortion on the ticket.

McCain has qualified his opposition, making excep-tions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.

The McCain campaign says contributions surged after Palin was named.

Roughly $10 million of the US$47 million the campaign raised in August came in after McCain announced her as his running mate on Friday, said Tom Steward, regional communications director for McCain.

He said the committee could not determine how much of the money was coming from evangelicals.

When word spread two weeks ago that McCain was considering a running mate who supported abortion rights – Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Con-necticut or former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge – evangelicals swiftly denounced the idea.

Now they’re rallying around Palin.At a news conference at the convention, former

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a former minister

Evangelical Christian voters cheer choice of Palin

and the first choice of Carey and many other evan-gelicals for president, said “I’m thrilled. ... I don’t think we lose with a pro-life candidate. We lose when we don’t have one.”

Palin was baptized as a teenager at the Assembly

of God in Wasilla, Alaska, where she and her family were active.

She now sometimes worships at the Juneau Chris-tian Center, which is also part of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God.

After McCain announced Palin at a rally in Day-ton, Ohio, last week, the 44-year-old mother of five told the 15,000 people in attendance that she was a hockey mom. She once led her high school chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

Securing enthusiastic support from evangeli-cals – a key base of the GOP – is a cornerstone in McCain’s blueprint for victory, said Dan Hofren-ning, a St. Olaf College professor who specializes in religion and politics.

“I think she will boost turnout significantly, and that is part of the McCain calculus,” Hofrenning said.

To understand McCain’s need for evangelical support and Palin’s appeal to him, consider that in 2000 President Bush received 59 percent of the white evangelical vote in an election he nearly lost to former Vice President Al Gore, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2004, Bush got 71 percent of the vote, which helped him beat Sen. John Kerry more decisively.

Before Palin’s selection, McCain showed about the same level of support among white evangelicals as did Bush in 2004, but they were decidedly less enthusiastic, according to a Pew poll.

Only 17 percent of those who supported McCain said they did so “strongly,” roughly half the number of evan-gelicals strongly supporting Bush in August 2004.

That lack of enthusiasm raised questions about how many evangelicals would turn out to vote for McCain. Minnesota evangelicals who are convention delegates weren’t bothered by Palin’s modest politi-cal experience or the disclosure that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant.

“Anyone who has teenagers knows the pitfalls,” Haapoja said. “More than anything, I think people will be empathetic as long as it’s handled properly.

“It sounds like the Palin family is going to be right there to support and the daughter is going to marry the young man. Sounds like turning your lemons into lemonade.”

neitHer u.s. nor GeorGiAn intelliGenCe kneW russiAn forCes Were reADy WitH An iMMeDiAte

AnD MAssive resPonse to tHe GeorGiAn AttACk MosCoW kneW WAs CoMinG

Republican Presidential can-didate Sen. John McCain and his Vice Presidential candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin greet each other on the third day of the Republican National Conven-tion at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Min-nesota.  UPI PHOTO/ Brian Kersey

5 September  2008 �

Gov. Sarah PalinJohnMcCain’s choice for vice president

Early years

© 2008 MCT

Born 1964, Sandpoint, Idaho; family moved to Alaska when she was an infant

Political career1996 Elected mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (pop. 6,500), after serving two terms on the city council; re-elected mayor, 1999

PersonalMarried to North Slope oil worker who is part Yup’ik Eskimo; they have five children

2006-present Governor of Alaska; first woman to hold the office

2008 Selected by GOP presidential candidate John McCain as his running mate

1987 Graduated from University of Idaho, journalism major

1984 First runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant

Sports reporter for two Anchorage TV stations

Source: AP; McClatchy Washington Bureau; City of Wasilla, Alaska; MCT Photo ServiceGraphic: Judy Treible

WORLD

By Thomas Fitzgerald The Philadelphia Inquirer

ST. PAUL, Minnesota. –� Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin introduced herself to a curious world Thursday night as the Republican candidate for vice presi-dent, saying she is a “hockey mom” and political outsider with more executive experience than the Democratic presidential nominee.

Promising to help Sen. John McCain rattle the Washington power structure, Palin mocked Sen. Barack Obama’s resume and mantra of change in a highly anticipated speech to the Republican National Convention, ahead of the roll call that officially nomi-nated McCain as the party standard-bearer.

“In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers, and then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change,” Palin, 44, declared in a defiant speech that drew repeated ovations.

She contrasted her service as mayor of her home-town, Wasilla, Alaska, to Obama’s first public-serv-ice job in Chicago.

“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities,” she said.

After a torrent of news stories probing her back-ground and questioning her qualifications for the national ticket, Palin took on what she portrayed as the elitism of the news media.

“I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Wash-ington elite, then some in the media consider a can-

didate unqualified for that reason alone,” Palin said. “But here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion – I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this great country.”

At that, the audience booed, and many turned to the press boxes, pointing and yelling, “Tell the truth! Tell the truth!”

Palin devoted a portion of her speech to energy, a subject considered a strength of hers because her state is a leading producer of oil and natural gas. “We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers,” she declared.

Last Friday, McCain named Palin as his running mate, tapping a once-obscure leader for history – she is only the second woman, and first Republican one, named to a major party’s ticket, following Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 – and thrusting her into a glaring spotlight.

Since then came word that Alaska lawmakers are investigating Palin for possible abuse of power in the dismissal of a state public safety commissioner. The case hinges on the public safety commissioner’s failure to sack a police officer who used his police taser to shock his 10 year old stepson into obeying him. Palin argued the trooper should not be in the job. Docu-ments released this week showed she had retained a private attorney to defend herself from the charges. And, though she took credit for stopping the infamous $400 million “bridge to nowhere” project, a favourite rhetorical whipping boy of McCain’s, it turned out Palin favoured it when she was running for governor.

On Monday, Palin and her husband, Todd, announced that their daughter Bristol, 17, is five months pregnant, and that Bristol will marry the baby’s father, Levi Johnston, 18.

Thursday night, at the end of Palin’s speech, her family – plus Johnston – joined her on stage. Palin cradled her 4-month-old son, Trig, in her arms as cheers rose. McCain popped out to greet them all, and could be seen whispering “very good job” to his running mate.

Earlier, McCain gave an interview to ABC News, defending his choice of running mate, whom he called “a very dynamic person.”

“This is what Americans want,” he said. “They don’t want somebody who has ... necessarily gone to Harvard or an Ivy League school. She probably hasn’t been to a Georgetown cocktail party. But you know what, she represents everything we want to see in government and America – change and reform and ethics and taking on the special interests.”

He also cited one reason he considered Palin capa-ble in foreign policy, saying: “Alaska is right next to Russia. She understands that. Look, Sen. Obama’s never visited south of our border. I mean, please.”

In a statement by Obama’s campaign responding to Palin’s speech, spokesman Bill Burton said last night that it was “well delivered, but it was written by George Bush’s speechwriter and sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we’ve heard from George Bush for the last eight years.”

The McCain campaign pushed back hard against the media feeding frenzy, in a circle-the-wagons strategy that has worked to rally GOP activists for more than a generation.

Journalists are seeking to “destroy” Palin because she “isn’t part of the old boys’ network that has come to dominate the news establishment in this country,” McCain senior strategist Steve Schmidt said.

Schmidt said the campaign would “have no fur-ther comment about our long and thorough” vice presidential vetting process. “This nonsense is over,” he said, saying it was past time to move the conver-sation to war, energy and jobs.

Media-bashing became a theme of the evening Thursday, with speaker after speaker ripping report-ers and commentators as snobs, drawing cheers.

Scathing ridicule of Obama was the other major theme. Three of the men who had challenged McCain for the nomination whipped the crowd into a frenzy with partisan attacks, in a full-throated return to politics after the pre-empting of convention business earlier this week because of Hurricane Gustav.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, deliv-ering a delayed keynote address, called Obama the “least experienced candidate for president of the United States in at least the last 100 years.”

As the crowd leapt to its feet, Giuliani said, “Not a personal attack, a statement of fact – Barack Obama has never led anything. Nothing. Nada.”

The crowd took up a chant, “Zero. Zero!”Palin, he said, has led a city and a state, and cut

taxes.“They would have you believe that this election

is about change versus more of the same, but that’s really a false choice, because there’s good change and bad change,” Giuliani said. “Change is not a des-tination, just as hope is not a strategy.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said electing Obama would return the government to the liberal philosophy that he said favors “dependency on government largesse” over initiative.

“The right course is the one championed by Ron-ald Reagan 30 years ago, and by John McCain today,” Romney said. “It is to rein in government spending and lower taxes, for taking a weed-whacker to exces-sive regulation and mandates, for putting a stop to tort windfalls, and to stand up to the Tyrannosaurus appetite of government unions.”

Romney accused Obama of dodging direct ques-tions about the most important issue of the day during the recent Saddleback church forum, while

“John McCain hit the nail on the head: radical Islam is evil, and he will defeat it! Republicans prefer straight talk to politically correct talk!”

Speakers also pressed the theme that Obama, unlike McCain, was unprepared for office in a dan-gerous world.

“Maybe the most dangerous threat of an Obama presidency is that he would continue to give mad-men the benefit of the doubt,” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said. “If he’s wrong just once, we will pay a heavy price.”

Palin herself continued the attacks, at one point all but calling Obama a phony.

“In small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening,” she said. “We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.”

‘Hockey mom’ Palin wows  the crowd with defiant speech

The prime time speech of Republican vice presidential pick, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, at the party’s national convention was watched by more than 37 million viewers on US television, according to tracking firm Nielsen Media Research, almost matching the record-setting 38.79 million viewers who tuned in last week to watch Barack Obama. ABACA PRESS/MCT  Olivier douliery

i’M not GoinG to WAsHinGton to seek

tHeir GooD oPinion – i’M GoinG to WAsHinGton to serve tHe PeoPle of tHis GreAt Country

5 September  2008  �WORLD

WAShINgTON –� The U.S. presidential race between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain is a draw, with each receiving 42 percent, a CBS News poll indicated today.

The poll, conducted Tuesday through Thursday, is in contrast to a CBS survey conducted last week, when the Democratic ticket led the Republican ticket 48 percent to 40 percent, CBS said. In the latest poll, 12 percent indicated they were undecided and 1 percent said they wouldn’t vote.

McCain officially was nominated as the GOP presidential candidate Thursday after his vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, addressed the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.

McCain also closed the enthusiasm gap some with Obama, poll results indicated. Fifty-five percent of Obama’s supporters told pollsters they were are enthusiastic about their choice, as did 35 percent of McCain’s backers. Last week, just 25 percent of McCain’s supporters expressed enthusiasm about their candidate, compared to 67 of Obama’s backers.

The CBS News poll was conducted by telephone with 835 adults nationwide, including 734 registered voters. The overall sampling margin for error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. Sarah Palin’s accept-ance speech came too late to influence this poll.

– UPITBILISI/KIEv/MOSCOW –� US Vice President Dick Cheney vowed US allegiance to Georgia this morn-ing in the face of Russia’s military push into the former Soviet state. Russia’s move called into ques-tion its reliability as a partner, he said.

“I bring greetings from Georgia’s friend and ally, President George W Bush ... in America. (The Geor-gian people) have a sturdy and faithful friend,” Cheney said at a press conference in the capital of Tbilisi.

Standing side by side with President Mikheil Saakashvili and flanked by Georgian flags, Cheney voiced respect for Saakashvili’s “fearless response to Russia’s occupation.”

Cheney pledged US aid, “as you work to over-come an invasion of your sovereign territory and an illegitimate, unilateral attempt to change your country’s borders by force that has been universally condemned by the world.”

The uncompromising declaration of support for Saakashvili, who aims to bring his country closer to the West and into NATO, marks a further dete-rioration in relations with Moscow, whose powerful premier, Vladimir Putin, accused Washington of baiting Georgia to start the conflict.

A vocal critic of the Kremlin, Cheney said “Rus-sia’s actions cast grave doubt on Russia’s intentions and on its reliability as an international partner – not just in Georgia but across this region and, indeed, throughout the international system.”

Cheney is the highest ranking US official to travel to Georgia since the five days of intense fighting last

month. His visit was timed to coincide with Wash-ington’s announcement that it was boosting aid by 1 billion dollars to the former Soviet republic.

The US vice president was on his first visit to Georgia and also held talks Wednesday in oil-rich Azerbaijan. He flew to Ukraine later Thursday as part of a tour that underscored US interests in securing energy pipelines for oil from the Caspian Sea that cut out Russian intermediaries.

Cheney’s speech emphasized US promotion of democracy in the region, evoking a huge rally of “more than one hundred thousand” in support for the “democratically-elected government.”

Here, he was interrupted by Saakashvili, who corrected “actually 1.5 million.”

“We feel that we are not alone. We feel that a great community ofnations from the European Union, the United States, Japan, other responsible nations, China, are standing by Georgia,” Saakashvili said earlier, welcoming Cheney.

Amid mounting military tensions with three US warships in the Black Sea to deliver aid to Georgia, Russia has warned the US against extending aid to rearming the Caucasus state’s army.

Russia’s military brass lashed out over the build-up of warships in the Black Sea, and Putin warned this week that Russia would react if more NATO naval vessels move up the Bosphorus.

Russia and NATO, in a tit-for-tat response to the conflict, froze relations last week.

The alliance also strengthened ties with Georgia

in a step toward eventual membership, which Mos-cow vehemently opposes and which analysts say was a key spark to the recent conflict.

On Thursday, Cheney repeated his president’s desire that Georgia be made an alliance member, calling it a goal to which “America is fully committed.”

“Georgia will be in our alliance. NATO is a defen-sive alliance. It is a threat to no one. Indeed, NATO is one of the great forces for freedom, security and peace that the modern world has known,” Cheney told journalists in Tbilisi.

Cheney was due to hold talks tomorrow in Ukraine in a move that reiterates US support for the ex-Soviet state to also join NATO, which would bring the alliance flush with Russia’s borders.

Russia claims it was compelled to send its army into Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia to halt an attack by Tbilisi on its peacekeepers and a genocide of the people.

But Moscow’s subsequent move to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and the other rebel region of Abkhazia was roundly criticized by the West and deepened Russia’s isolation after the crisis.

The US Vice President flew to the Ukrainian capital Kiev in the afternoon. He was scheduled to meet with President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko tomorrow.

Yushchenko supports early Ukrainian membership in NATO, while Tymoshenko favours Kiev’s striking a middle line between Brussels and Moscow.

– DPA

BAghDAD –� US commander in Iraq General David Petraeus said today he would call for the pullout of US troops from Baghdad within 10 months because of declining violence in the Iraqi capital.

Petraeus told reporters in Baghdad he recom-mended the withdrawal of troops from Baghdad in a report to be submitted to Congress in two weeks, citing “increasing capabilities of Iraqi forces to conduct security operations without the help of US troops in most of Iraqi areas,” the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency reported.

Petraeus’ comments came as the Iraqi govern-ment and the US seek to finalize a long-term secu-rity pact that will govern the presence of US forces in the country after a United Nations mandate expires at the end of the year.

Media reports said in August that the US and Iraq have agreed that US combat troops would leave entirely before the end of 2011. Asked whether it was feasible that US combat forces could leave Baghdad by July 2009, Petraeus said: “Conditions permitting.”

“The number of attacks in Baghdad lately has been ... I think it’s probably less than five (a day) on average, and that’s a city of seven million people,” he added.

The US military handed over on Monday Iraq’s Anbar province to Iraqi forces. Anbar was the 11th of Iraq’s 18 provinces to be returned to Iraqi con-trol since the 2003 US-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.

Petraeus has also praised the decision of Iraqi radi-cal Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to halt his Mahdi Army militia’s armed operations last month.

Anti-US cleric al-Sadr had announced a cultural programme would be set to increase awareness for the Mahdi Army, which was once described by the Penta-gon as the greatest threat to the country’s security.

Later on Thursday, the US military announced the death of two US soldiers after an explosive device targeted their patrol east of Baghdad.

Three US soldiers have been killed so far since the beginning of September, bringing to 4,154 the number who have died since the US-led invasion, according to VOI.

– DPA

Poll indicates  Obama, McCain tied America issues gauntlet to Russia

US Iraq commander:  our job is done

LONDON –� A female Scotland Yard officer who once served as a bodyguard to ex-prime minister Tony Blair has been suspended from duty after leaving her semi-automatic gun behind in the loo of a cen-tral London cafe, the police force said today.

Confirming a report in the Sun newspaper, Scot-land Yard said the incident, which happened on August 29, was being investigated. The officer had been “removed from operational duties” while the investigation was carried out.

The semi-automatic Glock 17 pistol was found by a member of the public in the toilet of a cafe of the Starbucks chain, where it had been lying for about 20 minutes.

The officer, in her 30s, had taken off the belt holding the firearm when she used the toilet and then bought a coffee, forgetting she had left the gun behind.

Loose cannonThe pistol was eventually

linked to her when police com-pared its serial number to those logged at a police armoury.

“A police-issue firearm was left unattended in a Central London cafe on August 29 and was found by a member of the public. The weapon belongs to a Metropolitan Police author-ized firearms officer, who was on duty at the time,” a Scotland Yard statement said.

“It’s an extremely unusual incident, I can’t recall anything quite like this happening before,” said a police source.

– DPA

The semi-automatic Glock 17 pistol was found by a member of the public in the toilet of a cafe of the Starbucks chain, where it had been lying for about 20 minutes

5 September  2008 10WORLD

BELgRADE –� A proposal to bring 100,000 south-east Asian brides to Serbia for bachelors, particu-larly those living in backward rural areas, has caused outrage, surprise and laughter.

Labour and Welfare Minister Rasim Ljajic had to apologize to the public after the state secretary in his ministry, Zeljko Vasiljevic, said Serbia would benefit by bringing in women from “Laos, Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam.”

The number of Serbs is dwindling by 30,000 each year, the women disinterested in bearing children and men interested in emigrating westward instead of farming so something “must urgently be done,” Vasiljevic said.

“There (in Asia) they already live on 2 dollars a day. Here it’s economic heaven for them,” Vasiljevic said. “They’re Buddhists and that’s a peaceful faith similar to (Serbian) Orthodoxy, they’re traditionally loyal to the state they live in and are hard-working.”

With a view to the “250,000 bachelors in Serbia,” home to 7.5 million people, the former war veteran particularly stressed that “those women nurture the cult of children and we could in five years have 300,000 newborns.”

While Serbia had some 135,000 women more than men in the 15-60 age group in the 2002 census, the problem of a negative birth rate remains a thorn in the side particularly of nationalists.

After all, in Kosovo, the Serbian heartland prov-ince which declared independence in February, the majority Albanians reproduce at the highest rate in Europe.

Unlike “spoiled Serbian boys don’t seek out regu-lar girls, but gawk at silicone dolls for parties and showing off,” as a columnist said in today’s edition of the daily Politika, the Albanians have no problems with emptying villages.

In Serbia, “when boys turn 40, they suddenly remember children and start looking for girls – machines for cooking and bearing kids,” said the columnist, sociologist Slobodan Antonic.

Antonic says the Vasiljevic project, “briefed on 15 and elaborated on 120 pages,” stirred a vigorous

debate on Serbian internet forums, where boys sup-port Vasiljevic’s plan as something to teach arrogant Serbian girls a lesson. In return, women complain of “infantile boys,” disinterested in marriage and chil-dren, so maybe with Asian girls we can import Cuban boys and teach everybody some sense,” Antonic said.

Vasiljevic, meanwhile, though obviously disap-pointed, said his project was not a ministry effort but his own, adding he was shelving it “until a better time.” Ljajic said he was helpless to discipline his subordi-nate owing to the complex ruling coalition deal.

His idea, however, reflects a real problem worrying not just Serbs but others in the region too.

BRUSSELS –� The European Commission today cleared controversial plans by Italy to fingerprint its Roma residents after the government agreed to make changes enabling them to comply with European Union rules.

A spokesman for the EU’s top justice official, Jacques Barrot, said good cooperation between the European Commission and the Italian govern-ment had made it possible to “correct any debatable measures or provisions.”

In June, the centre-right government of Silvio Berlusconi proposed fingerprinting ethnic Roma, including children, as part of efforts to obtain more reliable information about their numbers, schooling arrangements and living conditions.

Catholic charities and the United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF) were among the first to slam the proposals as a violation of fundamental rights.

The EU had also questioned the initiative and had asked the Italian government to submit a detailed report on its intentions.

The report, received in Brussels on August 1, makes no reference to “guidelines, decrees or rules allowing the collection of data on the basis of ethnic or religious origin,” said Barrot’s spokesman, Michele Cercone.

Moreover, fingerprinting will not be systematic and will only be carried out as a last resort, Cercone said.

“For minors, it is limited to cases which are strictly necessary for identification, when that is not possible by other documents,” the spokesman added.

The Berlusconi government further reassured the EU by saying that it had cleared its plans with the country’s data protection watchdog and that it would cooperate with UNICEF and the Red Cross in implementing the measures.

Surveys suggest many Italians associate Roma with increasing levels of crime. Preliminary esti-mates carried out in Rome suggest that of the 7,000 Roma children living in the city’s squatter camps, only 1,000 are enrolled in schools.

– DPA

Teaching Serbian women a ‘lesson’

In 2004, a priest warned Croatia it is short 103,000 unmarried women aged 25-49 and he called for women to come from Ukraine to make up the deficit.

Working on a smaller scale and for profit, Nediljko Babic, a man called “Gangster,” has mean-while gained dubious fame by arranging marriages between young Croat men from backward areas along the Adriatic and Ukrainian girls.

He has helped arrange 250 marriages with a strong showing of 400 children so far, a 2007 news-paper report said.

– DPA

Italy to fingerprint gypsy kids

in serbiA, “WHen boys turn 40, tHey suDDenly reMeMber CHilDren AnD stArt lookinG for Girls

– MACHines for CookinG AnD beArinG kiDs”

PARIS –� Israeli firemen turned rescue drills into rescue thrills when they saved a 10-year-old French girl whose kayak overturned in a strong current.

The team from the Petah Tikva fire station were on the bank of the Mieux River in France prepar-ing for water rescue practice when the real thing came along.

Several people were paddling kayaks on the choppy river and, as they watched, the girl’s boat

Firemen save girl in kayak misadventureoverturn, trapping her underneath, Ynetnews reported.

Two firemen leaped in and swam to the boat. It couldn’t be righted, so they dived under the water, released the girl and pulled her to the bank.

She was unhurt and most appreciative.She wouldn’t stop thanking us, a spokesman for

the group said.– UPI

File

5 September  2008  11SPORT

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WELLINgTON, Sept 5 –� New Zealand golfer Michael Campbell has credited his recent good form on the European Tour to his new caddy, Peter Coleman.

Campbell, who has fallen from the world top 20 to rank No. 330 since his 2005 US Open win , today admitted to “losing the fire in my belly for 18 months”.

He felt he was getting back on track with the help of England-born Coleman.

After missing the halfway cut in 10 of 13 European Tour Order of Merit events this season, the Campbell and Coleman combination have now played all four rounds in the last four events, including the British Open and the US PGA Championship.

Recent performances include eighth place in the KLM Open and 10th last week in Scotland, the first occasion he has posted back-to-back top-10 results on the European Tour since early 2004.

In today’s opening round of the European Mas-

New caddy solution to  Campbell’s troubles

ters in Switzerland, Campbell posted a solid 2-under 69, after an uneven round that included five birdies, an eagle and two double-bogeys.

“Pete has been great and we’ve been working together now since April and we’ve sat down and talked a lot about my game,” Campbell said.

“Simple things such as going through my routine and just playing golf. Before Pete came on board my cup was full with so much information and when you are desperate you are just trying to take in as much information as you can.

“So I decided to empty my cup and start again and play golf. It was thinking about routine and rhythm. Back to basics.”

Campbell said he had seen his game going in the right direction for the last six weeks .

“Pete’s helped a lot in that regard. He’s got a tonne of experience and I’ve been drawing upon that. “

– NZPA

By Robert Lowe of NZPA

AUCKLAND, Sept 5 –� Winger Manu Vatuvei heads into the New Zealand Warriors’ must-win final round National Rugby League (NRL) match tomorrow in impressive form and stronger mentally than his last visit to Parramatta.

Vatuvei has had a season blighted by injury, but has hardly missed a beat since his return to action a month ago.

His comeback match was against South Sydney, when the game-high 177m he ran couldn’t quite

ambitions are snuffed out by a loss to the Eels.“He’s given me a lot,” Vatuvei said of Wiki’s input

during the former Kiwis skipper’s four years at the Warriors.

“He always says, `if you make a few mistakes, keep your head up’ and you just get motivation from that.”

Meanwhile, club chief executive Wayne Scurrah was confident fullback Wade McKinnon’s suspen-sion for allegedly spitting at a touch judge had not deflected the team’s focus.

The former Eel was suspended on Wednesday night for three matches and the Warriors were yes-terday denied leave to appeal.

The upshot is that Lance Hohaia, who filled in well when McKinnon was out for the first five months of the season with a knee injury, will be back at fullback.

Scurrah said the club had tried to keep the judi-cial issue away from the coaching staff and players as much as possible.

“It’s important we do that because this game is critical to us,” he said.

“We trained all week with Lance at fullback. We’re carrying on with business as usual the best we can.”

Scurrah said McKinnon was obviously disap-pointed with the ban and with having the appeal request turned down.

“But he’s taken it well and he’ll put all his ener-gies behind supporting the team,” he said.

“You get to a point where you have to move on.”Nevertheless, the club still maintained that

McKinnon was totally innocent, Scurrah said.“If we thought he was guilty, we’d be over the

moon with a three-week suspension for spitting at an NRL official.”

He said the lengthy time the hearing took and the sentence handed down – NRL counsel Peter Kite had sought a nine to 11-week ban – indicated uncertainty on the part of the panel.

“Given that, we can’t fathom why they didn’t allow an appeal.”

Vatuvei on a roll as Warriors face must-win match

prevent the Warriors slumping to a 16-18 defeat.He has continued to eat up the metres in the

intervening four rounds, and has also chimed in with three tries over the past two weeks to take his year’s tally to 11 from 13 appearances.

Vatuvei said he had wanted to make sure he hit the ground running rather than ease himself back in when he came back from his leg injury.

“I was really happy with the start of the season but got injured,” he said.

“I just tried to pick my form up really quickly and I’m pretty happy with how I’m going now.”

His mistake rate, which had made him a target for opposition kickers, has dropped as well, with no errors in last Sunday’s win over Penrith.

That statistic contrasts with the nightmare time he had with his hands when the Warriors visited Parramatta Stadium in round one last year.

Vatuvei had no fears about going back to the west Sydney venue, even though he knew he was going to have kicks aimed his way again.

Among those who had helped him out were vet-eran prop Ruben Wiki, who will be playing 308th NRL match – and his last, if the Warriors’ playoff

Warrior’s Manu Vatuvei scores against the Sharks in a NRL rugby league match, Mt Smart Stadium, Auckland. NZPA / Wayne drought.

5 September  2008 1�SPORT

By Melissa Isaacson Chicago Tribune

Scott Dixon can appreciate why racing fans may be savouring the drama associated with his IndyCar Series showdown with Helio Castroneves in the last race of the season Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway.

Dixon is still in the proverbial driver’s seat to wrap up the series and the $1 million bonus that goes along with it, but after last weekend in Detroit, he’s having a hard time joining in the excitement.

“I would’ve been a lot happier if (the championship were decided) a week or two ago and I’d have been done with it,” Dixon said. “It’s fantastic for the sport and for the people watching, but if you’re on the final

receiving end of it, you can enjoy it a little more. The best I can hope for is to celebrate the way I’ve been thinking of celebrating the last few weeks.”

Dixon, driving for Target Chip Ganassi Racing, finished a disappointing fifth at Detroit’s Indy Grand Prix after failed pit strategy, but he can edge out Castroneves with an eighth-place finish or better at Monday’s Indy 300. Among the other possible scenarios, Castroneves can win with a victory and an 11th place-or-worse finish by Dixon.

“It’s hard to swallow because we knew we had the best car and it didn’t fall our way,” Dixon said of the Detroit race. “It’s the same situation with Helio-we both want to right a wrong from last week.”

Castroneves was penalized with less than 20 laps to

Scott Dixon seeks to clinch IndyCar championship this weekend

Current overall points leader Scott dixon #9 comes around turn#9 during the 2008 detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix, Belle Isle, detroit, Michigan. CSM/Steve King

go for blocking Justin Wilson, who then took a lead he did not relinquish. Castroneves finished second.

Castroneves and his Penske team complained that it was a call that had not been made consistently all season. “At Chicago,” said a bitter Castroneves, “we’re going to go for it.”

Wilson, of Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing based in Lincolnshire, is not likely to back down if a similar situation arises Monday.

“I’m not trying to get in the way of the champion-ship, but I’m trying to win out there,” he said.

“I think they are both great drivers but I have to say that Scott has the advantage right now on 1.5-mile ovals. The Ganassi cars have been very quick on those all year and he has a 30-point lead so I

definitely think the battle is in his favour. But who knows what could happen? Hopefully it is a good battle and they sort it out between themselves.”

In addition to the series championship, Dixon is going for a record seventh victory this Sunday. But neither Dixon nor Castroneves has won a race at Chicagoland Speedway and Dixon still has vivid memories of last year’s finish here, when he was lead-ing the race and in prime position to win the series title just three-fourths of a mile from the finish line when he ran out of fuel, allowing Dario Franchitti to take the chequered flag.

Mike Hull, managing director of Target Chip Ganassi, said Dixon and his team did not dwell on the disappointing loss.

“If we had, we probably would have spiralled into oblivion and never been back to where we are today,” he said. “We’re very fortunate to be where we are, with a lot of momentum going into Chicago and a lot of points on our side, as opposed to last year (when Dixon trailed by three points going into the final race).”

But Dixon, the 2008 Indy 500 winner, said the defeat in Joliet was not a total loss.

“It was hard to deal with but huge motivation this year,” he said. “It pulled us through many scenarios and made us strong-minded that we needed to get it done early this season (and build a lead).”

Franchitti, the defending champ and 2007 Indy 500 winner, announced this week he will leave NASCAR and return to IndyCar in ‘09 at Chip Ganassi Racing as a replacement for departing driver Dan Wheldon.

But for Dixon, news of his new teammate had to take a back seat to his next race. While there will be more traffic and thus more left to chance on the 1.5-mile oval, Dixon has been more dominant on these tracks, with three victories from the pole on the ovals this season and two third-place finishes.

Castroneves, however, will be in a position to take more chances.

“They’re in a situation with nothing to lose and everything to gain, and I know Penske, with Helio and Ryan Briscoe, will take the strategy the furthest and see what works,” Dixon said.

“It will be a great race for fans, especially with the championship battle coming down to the last one. The track is big enough that it gives you room to make a couple of small mistakes but it’s tough to keep your focus when you’re in big packs with eight to 10 cars. You definitely have to keep your wits about you. Anything can happen.”

SPA-FRANCORChAMPS, BELgIUM –� Kimi Raikkonen will be hoping to get the defence of his Formula One title back on track at Monday morning’s

Belgium Grand Prix, a race he has dominated in recent years.

Raikkonen has been overshadowed by his Fer-rari team-mate Felipe Massa and lies third overall behind leader Lewis Hamilton as the drivers go from the streets of Valencia two weeks ago to one of the fastest and most demanding circuits of For-mula One.

Spa-Francorchamps is the longest circuit on the F1 calendar at more than seven kilometres and has plenty of long straights and fast corners through the forested hills of the Ardennes to make it a firm favourite for most of the drivers.

Raikkonen has some catching up to do as he is now 13 points behind McLaren-Mercedes driver Hamilton (70 points) and seven behind Massa with only six races left of the season.

The Finnish driver has not won a race since April and has been behind Massa on the grid for the last three races in Germany, Hungary and the European Grand Prix in Valencia two weeks ago.

It has led to speculation that Ferrari are lining up former double world champion Fernando Alonso to replace him next season, something denied by Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo.

Raikkonen was unfortunate in Valencia to be forced out with engine failure, in what is a worry-ing development for the team in view of a similar blow-up affecting Massa’s car in Hungary.

Raikkonen needs F1 formHowever Raikkonen said he was looking forward

to returning to Spa, a circuit which has always seemed to suit him. He won the last three editions here, in 2004, 2005 and 2007 when Belgium returned to the calendar after a one-year absence.

“The Belgian Grand Prix is one of the highlights of the season and I usually obtain a good result at Spa,” he told the Formula One website.

“I need it more than ever after the results of the last races. The last race for example was one of those one should forget as fast as possible.

“I’ve only good memories of this race. Obviously it would be fantastic to win it for the fourth time in a row. Considering that I haven’t won a race in several months, a success would help me to get back in the race for the title after the disappointment at Valencia.”

Massa, who was second behind Raikkonen in both qualifying and the race at Spa last year, said: “Like most of the drivers, I think this is the best circuit on the current calendar and I love the track.

“It’s always nice to be at Spa and I have good memories of last year, when we had a competitive car and the team got a one-two finish.

“I hope we can repeat that performance and have a car that is good enough to keep ahead of the McLarens, which of course is our main target at the moment.”

Hamilton meanwhile insisted he was happy enough with his second place in Valencia, and the signs are the 23-year-old Briton is taking a more strategic approach to his aim of a first Formula One title.

Last season he lost a 17-point advantage in the season’s closing spurt, to finish a point behind Raik-konen, but experience has taught him that going all out for victory in every race is not always wise.

“I’m playing a long game,” Hamilton said on his website after the Valencia result.

“Clearly, I want to win all the time, but I’ve learned that sometimes it’s more advantageous to score as many points as possible and live to fight another day.

“My aim is still to win the world championship and you don’t do that by ending up in the barriers after making an opportunistic move.”

Hamilton also lists Spa as one of his favourite circuits.

“Even before I first came here, which was back in 2002 for a Formula Renault race, I played it on my com-puter – it was always one of the best tracks,” he said.

“It has probably the most exciting corner in Formula One, Eau Rouge, and it’s one of the few circuits where you really feel like you’re actually going somewhere.

“You blast off into the forest and get to the top of the hill and can feel the whole circuit beneath you. It’s one of the best challenges in Formula One.”

– DPA

5 September  2008  1�

exPerts: Celebrities A key eleCtorAl tool LOS ANGELES, SEPT. 4 (UPI) – Using the fame of Hol-lywood celebrities is an invaluable tool for any U.S. politi-cian mired in a tight electoral race, experts say. Steve Ross, chairman of the University of Southern California’s history department, said the ongoing use of celebri-ties during the White House fight between U.S. Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and John McCain, R-Ariz., is vital for their electoral efforts, ABC News reported Thursday. The two things you need to win are money and people’s attention and celebrities can get you a little of both, Ross said. Hollywood star George Clooney threw his celebrity weight behind the Democratic Party candidate for president with an appearance Tuesday in Switzerland. His is among notable names such as talk show host Oprah Winfrey and actor Ben Affleck to back Obama. McCain been backed in his presidential run by celebrities such as Kelsey Grammer, Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight. Center for Responsive Politics spokesman Massie Ritsch told ABC News celebrities’ fame, not money, is what the politicians need the most. If anything, he said, they are probably most valuable to a campaign as headliners for fundraising events that bring in more donors.

WEEKEND

tv & film

entertainmentNEWS

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor0director: Rob Cohen0Cast: Brendan Fraser, Maria Bello, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, Luke Ford, Isabella Leong, John Hannah0length: 100 minutes0rated: M – Violence & Horror

In a different year, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor might have squeaked by as a pedestrian but serviceable time-killer, much like the first two Mummy pictures (or even the spin-off The Scor-pion King). But this has been the summer of The Dark Knight and Iron Man and Hellboy II and even Wanted and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This summer, even the merely toler-able has a new standard.

And Tomb doesn’t come close, even though it contains a sword fight between Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh– which, like every other bit of action in the film, is chopped and edited to the point of incom-prehensibility by director Rob Cohen (Stealth,xXx), apparently out to prove Michael Bay is a sissy who just wants his mommy. Tomb is the kind of movie you sit through dreading the expository scenes, because the acting is so bad and the dialogue so pointedly written to make sure the little ones in the audience can keep up with the plot (“He’s taking her back to his tomb to raise his army!”).

But then the big action scenes come– loud, cha-otic, deafening (did I mention loud?)– and you start longing for another scene in which the typically fine Maria Bello (A History of Violence,Thank You For Smoking) embarrasses herself while playing Evelyn O’Connell, wife of intrepid archaeologist Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser).

Evelyn was originally played by Rachel Weisz, who wisely decided two Mummys were enough and passed on the third. Instead of making the charac-ter her own, Bello tries to mimic Weisz’s perform-ance, but she can’t even get past the English accent. Watching her trying to be charmingly British and sexy is akin to watching Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia! without the ABBA songs. It’s painful, excruci-ating and, whenever the movie requires her to shift into tough action-babe mode, ridiculous.

Fraser, who is capable of much more than he is usually given to do (check out The Quiet American to see how good he really is), is charismatic enough to survive the movie relatively unscathed: Like the best

actors, he refuses to coast even when he’s stranded in a lousy movie. You even buy it, sort of, when he’s trading dropkicks with Li. But there are so many characters running around in Tomb, Fraser is practi-cally relegated to supporting-man status.

Perhaps fearing that the actor, who is now 39 (which equals 85 in Hollywood years), may be getting a little long in the tooth to draw in a teen audience, screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar cram in a subplot involving his college-age son (Luke Ford), who is just as adept at fighting off special effects as his dad. They bicker like Harrison Ford and Shia LaBeouf did in Kingdom of the Crys-tal Skull, but their relationship adds nothing to the movie except a hook to lure in the CW crowd.

The script of Tomb is one of those insanely con-trived contraptions that falls apart the second you stop to think about it (for example: if you’re going to curse an evil emperor and immobilize him for all

eternity, shouldn’t you choose a spell that doesn’t have a loophole in which he can return and trans-form into “the most hideous creature ever seen!”?) As the shape-shifting baddie, Li spends most of the movie running around under extensive digital makeup, which renders his casting pointless, since it could be anybody under there. He also, at one point, turns into a giant three-headed dragon. No, really.

The loopiest moment in Tomb, however, comes during a fierce gunfight between the outnumbered heroes and a swarm of baddies. Just when things look bleakest, the daughter (Isabella Leong) of an immortal sorceress– don’t ask– yells out a few abracadabras and in swoops a pack of snarling Yetis to help the good guys. As best as I could tell, there are no actual mummies in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, but it does have abominable snowmen. That’s entertainment.

– By Rene Rodriguez

frAser, WHo is CAPAble of

MuCH More tHAn He is usuAlly Given to Do, is CHArisMAtiC enouGH to survive tHe Movie relAtively unsCAtHeD: like tHe best ACtors, He refuses to CoAst even WHen He’s strAnDeD in A lousy Movie

5 September  2008 1�REVIEWS

Music

By John Mark Eberhart McClatchy Newspapers

The ageless Van Morrison still rocks me down to my soul. He turned 63 on Sunday, and 40 years ago he laid down some transcendent tracks.

I try to maintain an even keel these days.I’ve given up smoking, all hard liquor except the

occasional whiskey sour, and I don’t swear unless

it’s necessary, like when I three-putt or forget to record “Boston Legal.”

Yet I still have my grandiose days. The ones where I hope I’ll still amount to something. The ones in which I spend hours thinking about the kind of sci-fi screenplay I could write if I just applied myself. The ones I get up and think, “Man, I feel about as good as I did when I was 19!”

And the days, few as they may be, on which I

absolutely, positively, without question have to listen to Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” album from first note to last.

Sunday was one of those days. Because that day was Van Morrison’s 63rd birthday, and – gol’ dang it! He’s nearly retirement age!

I should be over this nonsense by now. Even in his heyday, he was just a rock singer, right? And after all, it’s not the greatest album ever made. It’s not even

the best Van Morrison album; musically speaking, “Moondance” is better.

Whereas with “Astral Weeks,” the whole thing has a samey-samey feel about it, with all those upright basses and jazzy drum fills and oh-so-precious lyrics such as, “I’m nothing but a stranger in this world / I got a home on high “

I can hear my long-suffering co-workers whis-pering already: “Oh, no; John Mark’s on another nostalgia trip. It’s such a shame ... he used to be ... well, he didn’t used to be like this!”

No, I didn’t, but then something weird happened to me: Somewhere between 1968, when “Astral Weeks” was released, and 2008, I lost my old friend rock ‘n’ roll. It isn’t that I don’t like new music; no, it’s far worse: If rock ‘n’ roll still exists, I’m now inca-pable of recognizing it as such.

I try. I saw “Explosions in the Sky” not long ago, and I liked the band well enough, but was that a rock concert? It was all instrumental, for one thing, and it sounded like what I think Brian Eno and Robert Fripp might sound like if they drank a lot of V or Red Bull or one of those hype-you-up drinks ...

Listen to me for a moment. No, listen to Van:“Oh oh oh oh oh, sweet thing ... and I will raise

my hand up into the night time skyyyyy ...And I’ll be satisfied / Not to read in between the lines / And I will walk and talk / In gardens all wet with rain /And I will never, ever, ever, ever / Grow so old again. / Oh sweet thing, sweet thing.”

And all the while he’s singing such magnificent blather, the drummer patterns sweet rain onto a soft cymbal, and the pulse he’s playing is as vital as the beat of your heart. And the guitarist is rolling out these chords on an acoustic, but he’s strumming with all the urgency Hendrix possessed ...

No. Stop it. I’m an old guy now. I’ll be 50 in a couple of years; 50-year-olds don’t rock out, do they? Well, I don’t know. Van Morrison is a lot older than I am, and he still does that stuff onstage, or at least he tries.

I really did think I’d be young forever. I’m sorry. This isn’t coming out the way I thought it would. I hope you’re not knitting your brows together as you read this ... as a young woman in the car beside me did recently when she looked over and caught me playing drums on my steering wheel at a red light. Oh oh oh oh oh ... sweet thing ... yeah, and young enough to be my daughter.

Forty years have passed since “Astral Weeks” came out, and it still sounds like rock ‘n’ roll to me. And a little like jazz and a little like blues and a little like doo-wop and even classical.

And I know I didn’t even catch onto “Astral Weeks” till about 1975 because I’m a Late-Not-Early Boomer. And I know it has been years now, here in 2008, since Van Morrison made a truly great album. And I don’t care, because even mediocre Van is still the Man.

And don’t bother e-mailing or calling to tell me I’m out of touch and out of time, because I know that, too.

I may go crazy before that mansion on the hill , as Van sings in “Cyprus Avenue,” the cut that closes out Side 1 of this album, and oh NO! did I just write “Side 1” here in the MP3 age? Irrelevant! Irrelevant even back in the CD age!

Yeah. I wrote that. And guess what? Someday you’ll write something equally immaterial.

Because it will happen to you, too, if you’re read-ing this and you’re younger than my 47 years. (If you’re older, I had you at “I try to maintain an even keel these days.”)

So go ahead, dismiss me. It’s my turn to be dis-missed. But someday, you’ll hear a tune you heard when you were young. And it’ll be 2062 or some-thing and you’ll say to your buddy, “By gum, back in aught eight we really knew how to ROCK!” And your spouses will shake their heads and, if you’re out in public, they’ll pretend they don’t know you.

Remember: They don’t call ‘em astral weeks for nothin’. The planets keep turning, and the time passes by, no matter how fervently you believe you’ll be young forever. The days fall into the western sky. And sooner or later everybody ... everybody ... gets a turn.

Ageless Van Morrison still rocks

5 September  2008  1�REVIEWS

books NEW CD RELEASES

Her Brazil has moral bandits, hard choices

The Seamstress0by Frances de Pontes Peebles0Bloomsbury, $38

Frances de Pontes Peebles would like us all to under-stand something about Brazil, where she was born: “It’s not just samba and soccer and the Amazon.”

Peebles, who grew up in Florida and graduated in 1996, goes a long way toward proving that asser-tion in her breathtaking debut novel. Her rollicking, violent and heartbreaking story is set during the late 1920s and early ‘30s in northeastern Brazil, a region “completely different culturally” from the rest of the country with “its own way of doing things. People there speak a lot of Portuguese that can’t be translated into English.”

The Seamstress is a sweeping historical saga that encompasses elements of Brazil unfamiliar to most of us: vast stretches of desert scrubland, daring ban-dits, crippling drought, a harshly repressive society and the lives of two sisters eager – desperate, even – to escape their impoverished existence in a tiny mountain town.

And lest you suspect the title reflects only a frilly, feminine sensibility, know this: While The Seam-stress is rich in detail about sewing and its skills – “A good seamstress had to pay attention to detail...A good seamstress had to be decisive” – the novel also features more decapitations than you’ll find in a Quentin Tarantino movie.

The shattering violence, though, is never gratui-tous. Peebles skillfully uses it to explore the mythol-ogy and mindset of the cangaceiros, the real-life Robin Hoods who became legends by attacking the power structure of the wealthy “colonels,” the land barons who were the law in hard-to-access rural areas. In The Seamstress, set at a time when women had little choice with regard to their futures, elder sister Emilia dreams of meeting a man who can marry her and take her to the big city of Recife. But younger sister Luzia – “Victrola” to the nasty local children who mock her crippled, bent arm – joins a ragged, tough band of vigilantes led by the scarred Hawk, the most feared cangaceiro of all.

Luzia’s decision sounds romantic, but Peebles paints the bandits’ endless traveling with harsh real-ism: “Each day they moved in a silent line through the scrub, ducking and rising, bending and lean-ing to avoid barbed vines and tangled branches... Blisters bubbled across her toes, beneath the heel straps of her alpercatas, and in tender crescents on the soles of her feet. When they burst, her sandals became slick with water and then blood. Monk’s-head cacti littered the ground, their bulbous tops emerging from the earth like men buried neck high in dirt. Their thorns stabbed Luzia’s ankles, the tips breaking and lodging beneath her skin.”

Though Peebles came up with the idea of two separated sisters first – they’re loosely based on her grandmother and great aunt, who grew up in northeastern Brazil – she had been entranced with the stories of cangaceiros from an early age. An uncle once gave her a cangaceiro doll, complete with holster and pistol.

“They are folk heroes in northeastern Brazil, though they’re known throughout the country,” she says from Chicago, where she lives with her husband. “At the tourist markets, they still sell clay sculptures of a couple, a man and woman, who were cangaceiros. It was really a unique phenomenon that existed for centuries. They were one of the only bandit groups in history that included women... The interesting thing is they had a moral code. Men had to marry women brought into the group. They couldn’t have affairs, or they’d be punished. They couldn’t just go into a town and randomly rape and pillage. They relied on a social network to keep them going. The climate and environment were so harsh they needed some kind of logic to their violence.

“When I interviewed older people in their 70s and 80s and some in their 90s, they hated cangaceiros. At the time they were kids, and their families would hear cangaceiros were in the area, so they would have to sleep in the scrub at night so the bandits would just rob the house and not do anything else. In later generations they were more romanticized. They were criminals, but I wanted to question who the criminal really is.”

Peebles, who spent two years in Brazil research-ing the period, says she tried to apply historical accuracy to the book’s major events, including a contentious presidential election and the army’s habit of decapitating captured cangaceiros.

“There are actually photos in the archives of all these heads. They used to display them on the steps of the church in town. The soldiers also cut off the heads to take them back as specimens.”

Still, the affecting depth of the characters fuels The Seamstress. Peebles is more interested in the effects of violence on its perpetrators than she is in gore. Toward the book’s end, Luzia – motivated by anger and fear – commits an horrific act that haunts her, a daring device by which Peebles risks losing the reader’s sympathy.

Aryn Kyle, author of The God of Animals and Peebles’ roommate at the 2006 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, says such attention to character devel-opment is what she loves about The Seamstress, from Luzia’s agonizing deed to Emilia’s discovery that life in Recife society can be as harsh and unfriendly as the barren lands Luzia roams.

“From the moment I picked up the book, I couldn’t put it down,” Kyle says. “Sometimes one is intimidated by a book this size, but I disappeared into it. I read mostly for character, and to read a book that’s so vast and obviously required so much research and still has characters that feel so alive and real is fabulous. I was sad to be finished with them. These women felt like such literary arche-types – like Scarlett O’Hara.”

Progress eventually put an end to the canga-ceiros. Roads and telegraphs helped government troops track them down in isolated areas. Still, the romance of Brazil remains for Peebles. She says she plans to leave the chilly Midwest – “The winters go on forever. They don’t stop!” – and may end up calling Miami home again. Her parents still live in Coconut Grove.

Then again, Brazil and the family farm, which her sister manages, also beckon.

“When I think about a place where I would want to go back to, a place I would want to be when I passed away and was laid to rest, I think of Brazil,” Peebles says. “It’s a spiritual home for me. I have a lot of ties to the States, but Brazil is always in my imagination and in my heart.”

– By Connie Ogle

Harvey returns to formCold in Hand0by John harvey0Random House $37

A decade ago, British author John Harvey ended his popular and critically acclaimed series about police detective Charlie Resnik with the evocative Last Rites. Except for a couple of supporting appear-ances in Harvey’s other novels and several short stories, the Nottingham detective has been quiet, enjoying his jazz collection and a new life with col-league Lynn Kellogg.

An older, but no less active Resnik makes a most welcomed return in the outstanding Cold in Hand. On the surface, it is a comprehensive police pro-cedural with several investigations juggled with aplomb. For all its suspense, Cold in Hand is equally an emotionally laden novel that delves into life changes, grief and revenge.

Nearing retirement and content in his domestic life, Resnik is pulled into two cases that involve Kel-logg, who is poised to be promoted. A father blames Kellogg for the shooting death of his daughter who was killed during a gang argument that the cop was trying to stop. Meanwhile, Kellogg is looking into the death of a prostitute who had been brought in from Eastern Europe by mobsters specializing in the sex trade and gun running.

Both cases are riddled with deceit and the detectives, especially Kellogg, don’t know who can be trusted.

Harvey doesn’t miss a beat in picking up Resnik’s story. In each of his novels, Harvey has strongly shown how his familiar characters continue to change and grow. The Charlie Resnik at Cold in Hand’s beginning is not the same man at the nov-el’s finale.

For those who associated England’s Nottingham with romantic visions of Robin Hood, Maid Marian and a robbing from the rich-giving to the poor men-tality, Harvey delivers a different perspective. “Robin Hood had now, it seemed, abandoned (the area) for upmarket sportswear, developed a taste for crack cocaine, and, instead of his trusty bow, had a 9 mm automatic tucked down into the back of his jeans.”

– Oline Cogdill

in eACH of His novels, HArvey HAs

stronGly sHoWn HoW His fAMiliAr CHArACters Continue to CHAnGe AnD GroW

Paul Weller022 dreams0Yep Roc

Paul Weller may not be the beloved father figure here that he is in Eng-land, but between the Jam’s mod-punk fire-bombs and the Style Council’s svelte soul, his place in rock history is secure. His solo career,

however, has been hit or miss, and the UK press, in an Oedipal move, derided much of his late Nineties work as “Dad Rock.”

“22 Dreams” isn’t a triumphant return, but it’s a success. It’s a coherent hodgepodge, a 21-track compendium of familiar forays into blue-eyed soul, rousing rockers (including a collaboration with Oasis’ Noel Gallagher) and thoughtful ballads plus some new diversions: a jazzy instrumental (a tribute to Alice Coltrane), a spacey keyboard experiment (“111”) and a spiritual manifesto (“God”). At nearly 70 minutes, “22 Dreams could use some pruning of a few momentum-killing piano ballads, but the 50-year-old Weller is still pushing, and that’s exciting.

– Steve Klinge

Nathan King0The Crowd0Hum

Kiwi music has come a long way since She’s A Mod, and one of the artists epitomising that journey is singer-song-writer Nathan King.

It seems like only yes-terday that King’s band Zed were dominating

local charts, and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Robbie Williams and Coldplay.

Now, after a two year northern sojourn in Lon-don, King’s about to release his first solo album, The Crowd. The new single Never Too Late is already creating buzz.

– Ian Wishart

The David Leonhardt Trio 0explorations0Big Bang Records

Pianist David Leon-hardt, who gigged for years with saxophonist David “Fathead” New-man, is a rare top-flight jazz player who records CDs specifically for chil-dren. The Easton-based Leonhardt also plays a

lot for tap dancers, including the Muhlenberg Jazz Tap Ensemble.

Both skills come to the fore on this accessible trio recording of standards with drummer Alvester Garnett and bassist Matthew Parrish.

The set is a warm and easy affair. Leonhardt mixes in some rock standards, such as Elton John’s “Your Song,” with his own originals and more classic standards, such as Jerome Kern’s “Yesterdays.”

It’s fun to hear him make a neurotic page-turner of Eric Clapton’s “Sunshine of your Love,” while James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” gets tweaked with unusual harmonies.

It’s all of a jazz piece, though. The title track, a Leonhardt original, unfolds in a gentle zone and evolves pleasantly.

– Karl Stark

5 September  2008 16HEALTH

By Janet helm Chicago Tribune

Maybe you think nutritionists flip flop as often as polit-ical candidates seem to do. Eggs are bad, no eggs are OK. Switch to margarine, no go back to butter. Drink eight glasses of water each day, no never mind.

What appears to be conflicting news about nutri-tion is due to the ever-evolving nature of science, said Linda Van Horn, a professor of preventive medicine and nutrition researcher at Northwest-ern University.

New discoveries about the composition of foods are often behind these seeming nutrition flip-flops, said Van Horn, who serves as editor of the Jour-nal of the American Dietetic Association and is charged daily with the task of translating emerg-ing science.

Sometimes new research reveals that certain foods fail to live up to their early hype. Yet, often we learn that foods have hidden qualities not previ-ously recognized.

Even lard doesn’t look quite as bad these days compared to the trans-fat-laden hydrogenated oil that replaced it.

We’ll never get to the fantasy in Woody Allen’s movie “Sleeper” where he wakes up in the future to discover that junk food is actually good for you. However, some demonized foods turn out to be bet-ter for you than you think.

Here are five often-vilified foods that deserve a second chance.

1. White breadwhy the bad rap? Viewed as fattening and devoid

of nutrients compared to its whole-grain cousins,

reasons to reconsider: Frozen and canned vegeta-bles are picked and processed at their peak of fresh-ness so nutrients are not lost. Studies have shown that the nutrient level is comparable to fresh produce. Plus, it’s hard to beat the convenience of having vegetables stashed in your freezer or pantry.

best ways to enjoy: Buy the varieties without sauces and give canned veggies a quick rinse to reduce the sodium content.

3. Potatoeswhy the bad rap? Spuds became synonymous

with starch and were dismissed for their perceived waist-thickening carbs and high glycemic index.

reasons to reconsider: An average potato is only 100 calories and packs in several key nutri-ents, including potassium and vitamin C. Recent studies indicate that potatoes contain resistant starch, a type of dietary fibre that “resists” diges-tion and may help boost your calorie burn and keep you feeling full.

best ways to enjoy: Keep whole and out of the deep fryer. Watch out for the high-fat toppings that are more to blame than the potato itself. Serving potatoes cold in salads helps to amp up the resist-ant starch.

4. Red meatwhy the bad rap? It has become almost fashion-

able to say you avoid red meat, which has taken a hit due to its saturated fat, especially in well-marbled steaks and juicy hamburgers.

reasons to reconsider: Beef is an excellent source of protein and vitamin B-12, and is one of the richest suppliers of iron, zinc and selenium-a trio of important minerals. Portion size and cut of beef are what you need to keep in mind. Many lean cuts have less fat than a skinless chicken thigh.

best ways to enjoy: Choose the leanest cuts with “loin” or “round” in the name, such as tenderloin, sirloin or top round. Rather than a huge slab on your plate, aim for a portion about the size of deck of cards or combine it with vegetables in stir-fries and kebabs.

5. Cheesewhy the bad rap? There is no denying that many

cheeses are high in calories and fat, especially satu-rated fat.

reasons to reconsider: Cheese is a good source of calcium and protein. Newer studies indicate that cheese contains conjugated linoleic acid or CLA, a “good” fat that may help reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

best ways to enjoy: Go for the real stuff. Nonfat cheeses don’t fully cut it. Try strong-flavored cheeses that require only a sliver for satisfaction.

Vilified foods reconsideredSome foods with a bad rap not as bad as we thought

NEW YORK –� Flu vaccines may not provide a sig-nificant decrease in the risk of death for elderly patients, Canadian researchers said.

Research by the University of Alberta, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, suggests the overall benefit of flu vac-cines appears to have been exaggerated, the Ameri-can Thoracic Society said Friday in a release.

The study involved 700 matched elderly subjects, half of whom had taken the vaccine and half of whom had not. Previous studies were likely measuring a benefit not directly attributable to the vaccine itself, but something specific to the individuals who were

Report: Flu shot benefits exaggerated

white bread got kicked to the curb.reasons to reconsider: White breads are far

from empty calories. They’re actually enriched with several essential nutrients that many of us lack, including folic acid, iron and B-vitamins. Half our grains should be whole, but the other half can be white – primarily so we don’t miss out on these vital nutrients.

best ways to enjoy: Choose whole-grain bread for your morning toast and sandwiches, but don’t feel bad eating a sourdough roll, crunchy baguette or crispy flatbread at dinner time.

2. Frozen and canned vegetableswhy the bad rap? With the emphasis on locally

grown fresh produce, frozen and canned vegetables have gotten a rotten reputation that’s been hard to shake.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 4 –� U.S. scientists say they’ve determined memory loss in older adults results from impaired suppression of extraneous information and slowed processing speed.

Researchers at the University of California-San Francisco and the University of California-Berke-ley used electroencephalography to measure how quickly neurons processed information in study participants ages 19-33 and 60-72.

The subjects were shown sets of images consisting of two faces and two scenes, and then instructed to remember images of a specific category. Nine seconds later, they were asked to identify an image from that category.

The findings revealed the capacity to ignore irrel-

Two brain defects cause aging memory lossevant information and the ability to process infor-mation quickly diminished with age. Significantly, neural processing speed decline among older par-ticipants occurred only during the very early stages of visual processing – within 200 milliseconds.

The study showed that the brains of older adults have a deficit in suppressing irrelevant information during visual working memory encoding, but only in the first tenth to two tenths of a second of visual processing, said Assistant Professor Adam Gazzaley of UCSF, the study’s lead author.

The researchers’ findings are detailed in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

– UPI

vaccinated – healthy-user benefit or frailty bias, Dean T. Eurich of the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta said. Over the last two decades in the United Sates, even while vaccination rates among the elderly have increased from 15 to 65 percent, there has been no commensurate decrease in hospital admissions or all-cause mortality.

Dr. Sumit Majumdar, principal investigator in the study, said people with chronic respiratory diseases, immuno-compromised patients, health care workers, and family members or friends who take care of eld-erly patients should still be vaccinated each year.

– UPI

5 September  2008  1�

Voice-activated dialing

How we use our phonesHere are features that people regularly use on their cell phones, according to 2007 and 2008 surveys of more than 60,000 users:

Camera capabilities

Built-in speakerphone

Bluetooth connectivity

Games that come with phone

Video capability

MP3 player

Offline game playing

Primarily use phone for phone calls

(Not tracked in 2007)

2008 2007

42%28%

37%30%

20%14%

14%13%

9%

7%

40%55%

7%

9%5%

11%11%

© 2008 MCTSource: Nielsen MobileGraphic: San Jose Mercury News

SCIENCE & TECH

Software puts muscle in your smart phoneBy Troy Wolverton San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE, Calif. –� You’ve probably bought pro-grams for your PC and you may have bought games for a game machine.

But software for your cell phone? Probably not.For a whole host of reasons, that may soon change.

Expecting a new golden age of handset software, programmers are developing thousands of new applications that they’re betting you’ll want on your phone.

“People are getting used to the idea that there’s more to a phone than talking,” said Shiv Bakhshi, an analyst who covers the mobile phone market for industry research firm IDC. “It’s a very excit-ing time.”

Many consumers already use programs built into their phones to send text messages or take and send pictures. IPhone owners can install programs that let them tune into Internet radio stations or get directions to the nearest gas station.

But in coming months and years, phones will be able to do a lot more, analysts say.j By simply using your phone’s camera to take

a picture of a bar code, you will find out instantly whether the store across the street or one online is selling a coffee maker at a lower price than the store you are at.j Whenever your bank account dips below a cer-

tain balance, your phone will notify you – and allow you with one click to instantly move more money into the account.j If you have a medical device implant, you will be

able to use your phone to instantly and automatically alert your doctor to any troubling conditions.

j Your phone will be able to tell you when you need to leave your house or office to make an appointment on time, given existing traffic condi-tions along your route.

In short, your cell phone will soon be able to offer information specific to a time, place and circum-stance. The applications will “mash” together infor-mation from the Internet, nearby sources, internal sensors and calendars and address books.

“The concept of mash-ups, that’s going to be a big deal,” said Ken Dulaney, a mobile computing analyst at Gartner. “That kind of integration will happen ... on the phone out of necessity.”

Of course, many folks already do a lot on their phone other than just talk. Texting isn’t just for teens any more, and many consumers use their phone’s camera. Many phones come with games and music and video players.

Owners of smart phones like Research In Motion’s BlackBerrys, Palm’s Treos and Apple’s iPhone have long used their devices to check e-mail, surf the Web and use business applications.

What’s new is that these powerful devices are starting to hit the mainstream. Smart phones – mobile devices that include an operating system and act almost like pocket computers – can be had for free on some plans.

As they’ve become cheaper, smart phones have become more popular. Some 10 percent of phones shipped worldwide – and some 19 percent of phones sold at retail in the United States – are smart phones.

Meanwhile, the mobile industry is making instal-lation of programs on to smart phones and other devices much easier. Through the iPhone application store on iTunes, Apple has made buying and install-ing programs on its handset as easy as buying and

uploading music to an iPod.Google plans to offer a similarly easy applica-

tion repository when phones running its Android operating system debut later this year. Mean-while, older phone software stores are shift-ing from focusing on business applications to consumer-oriented ones.

At the same time, carriers have begun to offer all-you-can-eat data plans, allowing con-sumers to use powerful, data-intensive applica-tions on their phones without worrying about incurring excessive per-minute charges.

That’s not to say phones will replace the PC anytime soon. Because phones have small screens, sometimes spotty network connec-tions and tiny or virtual keyboards, PCs will remain better suited for some applications, like writing long documents or playing more complex and time-intensive games.

And because there isn’t yet a dominant mobile phone operating system, developers must pick and choose which ones they write programs for. So you might not be able to get a particular application for your phone, and the programs you buy for your phone today may not work on your next phone.

But many industry observers expect a shakeout will help resolve that problem, lim-iting the number of operating systems. In the meantime, few expect the problems will dis-suade consumers from trying out some of the new applications.

Installing software on a phone is the “clear direction” the mobile phone business is heading in, said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at market research firm NPD Group.

By Eric Benderoff Chicago Tribune

ChICAgO –� Most computer users don’t think much about their Web browser. The lion’s share just click on the small blue “e” (for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer) they see on their computer screen and off they go into cyberspace.

Google’s challenge in releasing a competing Web browser this week is simple: to woo people away from the small “e’’ and use Google as the entryway to the Internet instead.

If Google’s Chrome browser succeeds in wresting away users from Internet Explorer, which dominates Web surfing with about 70 percent of the market, it will represent another big salvo in the biggest running war online. It’s Google vs. Microsoft in lots of ways already, including the competition for eyeballs to look at the advertising each company sells or manages.

Google now thinks it has another way, with Chrome, to battle Microsoft, and change the way people spend their time online.

By combining its strength – the Google search engine – with some new ideas on how a browser should work, Google wants to make finding what you want online as intuitive as just typing in the words.

My initial tests with Chrome on Wednesday hit a few speed bumps, but I liked what I saw.

Is it a game changer? No. It’s a browser. I have no real problems with Internet Explorer, which comes as basic equipment on all PCs. I like using the Safari browsers on the new Mac computer because with a finger swipe, I can easily enlarge the type on a page. And I like another competing browser, Mozil-la’s Firefox, largely because of the way it helps me organize information as I go.

You have to download Chrome, unlike Internet Explorer, which comes with most PCs. The process is free, though, and should take only a few minutes.

The differences between the browsers are not the type that every consumer is likely to feel passionate about immediately.

Browsers and search engines are not as sexy as

Google’s Chrome browser gives users more optionsconsumer goodies like a new digital camera or the iPhone, devices you can hold in your hand while marveling at all the cool things they do. A browser is simply a gateway to information.

Google may not have made the browser sexier, but it does make some things easier.

For one, it remembers what you like to visit more efficiently than Internet Explorer or Firefox, the second most used browser.

Consider a Web search for my favorite hot dog joint. When I started typing in “Hot,” the rest of the word “Hot Doug’s” immediately popped up because I’ve visited the site recently. With a click of the mouse I was checking on the specials. There was no need to start the search with www.

Google calls this combination of search and Web navigation the “omnibox,” and it is built into the browser.

In Internet Explorer, I had to type in www.hot-dougs.com, while in Firefox it was www.hotd before the rest of the term popped up.

The more I browsed, the more Chrome learned.The second time I typed in Facebook, I just

needed to hit the “f” key and the social network appeared. For a site you visit often, Chrome will start finishing your queries after just a letter or three. This is nice.

On the other hand, most users on Explorer or other browsers simply “bookmark” favorite sites, a simple step, that takes you straight there with a mouse click.

Google takes bookmarking further, allowing a user to create a “shortcut” to a site, such as Facebook or a Web-based e-mail account, by putting a direct link onto your computer’s desktop display, on the quick launch tray at the bottom of your computer, or in your start menu. Other browsers can’t create a desktop icon.

In essence, Chrome takes a Web-based applica-tion and treats it like a program that resides on your computer.

“People don’t see the browser as substantive, but in the background. Google is planning on making

it more substantive,” said Scott Kessler, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research, who follows technology companies.

Google also said it is made browsing more stable.Chrome uses tabbed browsing, like the latest ver-

sion of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. It is not a new feature, but a very convenient one.

A user can open a new tab on the same browser window to go to another Web site, but you don’t need to close the site you were on.

For example, on Firefox, I can have tabs open for my personal e-mail, an Internet radio station, my blog, a news site, or random sites I’m using to research a story. When I went to move from one site to another, I just click on the tab.

But if my browser crashes – it happens – all those tabs crash, too.

“Firefox has done a great job of restoring your session when you crash, but you still have that dis-ruptive moment,” said Scott Robbin, president of Songza.com, a Chicago-based search engine for music. That means restarting the browser.

Google is “making each tab its own separate process. So if one tab crashes, you don’t crash your browser. That’s huge. Making each tab work inde-pendently will lower the frustration levels for many people,” Robbin said.

Google’s strategy in creating Chrome is pretty clear: to keep people using Google products as much as possible.

Kessler noted that Google only makes one prod-uct – search – that generates revenue, yet it contin-ues to devote resources to creating new products without an apparent revenue model.

Much like its other products – spreadsheets, e-mail, word processing, maps – Google “starts with creating something people will use, building a base of users and then try to monetize it over time,” he said. “Ultimately, the hope is it will help direct peo-ple to other Google products.”

Brian Bolan, an independent analyst following tech companies, said Chrome, by itself, is not a threat to Microsoft because the browser, like the rest of Google’s offerings, is not targeted at corporations.

“This is for the consumer,” he said. But it highlights that “individuals can have an entire operating system via the Web that is developed by Google. Turn on your computer and you have everything you need,” noting all the other products that Google offers.

That is a threat to Microsoft, because it poten-tially weans users from a reliance on Microsoft and its software.

To download Chrome, go to http://www.google.com/

chrome

5 September  2008 1�NZ CLASSIC

By Jules verne

Jules Verne wrote some classic stories, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and of course Around the World in 80 Days. But how many people know he wrote about New Zealand and Australia in a book called In Search of the Castaways? This weekend, TGIF Edition begins a serialization of Jules Verne’s downunder adventure, picking it up just before the heroes board a boat to New Zealand…

BACKSTORY (courtesy Wikipedia):The book tells the story of the quest for Captain Grant of the

Britannia. After finding a bottle cast into the ocean by the captain himself after the Britannia is shipwrecked, Lord and Lady Glena-rvan of Scotland contact Mary and Robert, the young daughter and son of Captain Grant, through an announcement in a newspaper. Moved by the children’s condition, Lord and Lady Glenarvan decide to launch a rescue expedition. The main difficulty is that the coordinates of the wreckage are mostly erased, and only the latitude (37 degrees) is known; thus, the expedition would have to circum-navigate the 37th parallel. Remaining clues consist of a few words in three languages. They are re-interpreted several times throughout the novel to make various destinations seem likely.

Lord Glenarvan makes it his quest to find Grant; together with his wife, Grant’s children and the crew of his yacht the Duncan they set off for South Amer-ica. An unexpected passenger in the form of French geographer Jacques Paganel (he missed his steamer to India by accidentally boarding on the Duncan) joins the search. They explore Patagonia, Tristan da Cunha Island, Amsterdam Island and Australia (a pretext to describe the flora, fauna and geography of numerous places to the targeted audience).

There, they find a former quar-ter-master of the Britannia, Ayr-ton, who proposes to lead them to the site of the wreckage. However, Ayrton is a traitor, who was not present during the loss of the Bri-tannia, but was abandoned in Aus-tralia after a failed attempt to seize control of the ship to practice piracy. He tries to take control of the Dun-can, but out of sheer luck, this attempt also fails. However the Glenarvans, the Grant children, Paganel and some sail-ors are left in Australia, and mistakenly believing that the Duncan is lost, they sail to Auckland, New Zealand, from where they want to come back to Europe:

Glenarvan, accompanied by his faithful John, went to carry out the final search. The landlord of the Vic-toria Hotel lent them two horses, and they set out on the northern road that skirts Twofold Bay.

It was a melancholy journey. Glenarvan and Captain John trotted along without speaking, but they understood each other. The same thoughts, the same anguish harrowed both their hearts. They looked at the sea-worn rocks; they needed no words of question or answer. John’s well-tried zeal and intelligence were a guarantee that every point was scrupulously examined, the least likely places, as well as the sloping beaches and sandy plains where even the slight tides of the Pacific might have thrown some fragments of wreck. But no indication was seen that could suggest further search in that quarter — all trace of the wreck escaped them still.

As to the Duncan, no trace either. All that part of Australia, border-ing the ocean, was desert.

Still John Mangles discovered on the skirts of the shore evident traces of camping, remains of fires recently kindled under solitary Myall-trees. Had a tribe of wandering blacks passed that way lately? No, for Glenarvan saw a token which furnished incontestable proof that the convicts had frequented that part of the coast.

This token was a grey and yellow garment worn and patched, an ill-omened rag thrown down at the foot of a tree. It bore the convict’s

In search of the castawaysoriginal number at the Perth Penitentiary. The felon was not there, but his filthy garments betrayed his passage. This livery of crime, after hav-ing clothed some miscreant, was now decaying on this desert shore.

“You see, John,” said Glenarvan, “the convicts got as far as here – and our poor comrades of the Duncan!”

“Yes,” said John, in a low voice, “they never landed, they perished!”“Those wretches!” cried Glenarvan. “If ever they fall into my hands

I will avenge my crew!”Grief had hardened Glenarvan’s features. For some minutes he

gazed at the expanse before him, as if taking a last look at some ship disappearing in the distance. Then his eyes became dim; he recovered

himself in a moment, and without a word or look, set off at a gallop toward Eden.

The wanderers passed their last evening sadly enough. Their thoughts recalled all the misfortunes they had encountered in this country. They remembered how full of well-warranted hope they had been at Cape Bernouilli, and how cruelly disappointed at Twofold Bay!

Paganel was full of feverish agitation. John Mangles, who had watched him since the affair at Snowy River, felt that the geographer was hesitating whether to speak or not to speak. A thousand times he had pressed him with questions, and failed in obtaining an answer.

But that evening, John, in lighting him to his room, asked him why he was so nervous.

“Friend John,” said Paganel, evasively, “I am not more nervous tonight than I always am.”

“Mr. Paganel,” answered John, “you have a secret that chokes you.”“Well!” cried the geographer, gesticulating, “what can I do? It is

stronger than I!”“What is stronger?”

“My joy on the one hand, my despair on the other.”“You rejoice and despair at the same time!”

“Yes; at the idea of visiting New Zealand.”“Why! have you any trace?” asked John, eagerly. “Have you recovered the lost tracks?”

“No, friend John. No one returns from New Zealand; but still – you know human nature. All

we want to nourish hope is breath. My device is ‘Spiro spero,‘ and it is the best motto in

the world!”

Next day, the 27th of January, the pas-sengers of the Macquarie were installed on board the brig. Will Halley had not offered his cabin to his lady passen-gers. This omission was the less to be deplored, for the den was worthy of the bear.

At half past twelve the anchor was weighed, having been loosed from its holding-ground with some difficulty. A moderate breeze was blowing from the southwest. The sails were gradually unfurled; the five hands made slow work. Wilson offered to assist the crew; but Halley begged him to be quiet and not to interfere with what did not concern him. He

was accustomed to manage his own affairs, and required neither assistance

nor advice.This was aimed at John Mangles, who

had smiled at the clumsiness of some maneuver. John took the hint, but men-

tally resolved that he would nevertheless hold himself in readiness in case the incapac-

ity of the crew should endanger the safety of the vessel.However, in time, the sails were adjusted by the

five sailors, aided by the stimulus of the captain’s oaths. The Macquarie stood out to sea on the larboard

tack, under all her lower sails, topsails, topgallants, cross-jack, and jib. By and by, the other sails were hoisted.

But in spite of this additional canvas the brig made very little way. Her rounded bow, the width of her hold, and her heavy

stern, made her a bad sailor, the perfect type of a wooden shoe.They had to make the best of it. Happily, five days, or, at most, six,

would take them to Auckland, no matter how bad a sailor the Mac-quarie was.

At seven o’clock in the evening the Australian coast and the light-house of the port of Eden had faded out of sight. The ship labored on the lumpy sea, and rolled heavily in the trough of the waves. The passengers below suffered a good deal from this motion. But it was impossible to stay on deck, as it rained violently. Thus they were con-demned to close imprisonment.

Each one of them was lost in his own reflections. Words were few. Now and then Lady Helena and Miss Grant exchanged a few syl-lables. Glenarvan was restless; he went in and out, while the Major was impassive. John Mangles, followed by Robert, went on the poop from time to time, to look at the weather. Paganel sat in his corner, muttering vague and incoherent words.

What was the worthy geographer thinking of? Of New Zealand, the country to which destiny was leading him. He went mentally

At seven o’CloCk in tHe eveninG tHe AustrAliAn CoAst

AnD tHe liGHtHouse of tHe Port of eDen HAD fADeD out of siGHt. tHe sHiP lAboreD on tHe luMPy seA, AnD rolleD HeAvily in tHe trouGH of tHe WAves

5 September  2008  1�NZ CLASSIC

over all his history; he called to mind the scenes of the past in that ill-omened country.

But in all that history was there a fact, was there a solitary incident that could justify the discoverers of these islands in considering them as “a continent.” Could a modern geographer or a sailor concede to them such a designation. Paganel was always revolving the meaning of the document. He was possessed with the idea; it became his ruling thought. After Patagonia, after Australia, his imagination, allured by a name, flew to New Zealand. But in that direction, one point, and only one, stood in his way.

“Contin – contin,” he repeated, “that must mean continent!”And then he resumed his mental retrospect of the navigators who

made known to us these two great islands of the Southern Sea.It was on the 13th of December, 1642, that the Dutch navigator

Tasman, after discovering Van Diemen’s Land, sighted the unknown shores of New Zealand. He coasted along for several days, and on the 17th of December his ships penetrated into a large bay, which, terminating in a narrow strait, separated the two islands.

The northern island was called by the natives Ikana-Mani, a word which signifies the fish of Mani. The southern island was called Tavai-Pouna-Mou, “the whale that yields the green-stones.”

Abel Tasman sent his boats on shore, and they returned accompanied by two canoes and a noisy company of natives. These savages were middle height, of brown or yellow complexion, angular bones, harsh voices, and black hair, which was dressed in the Japanese manner, and sur-mounted by a tall white feather.

This first interview between Europeans and aborigines seemed to promise amicable and lasting intercourse. But the next day, when one of Tasman’s boats was looking for an anchorage nearer to the land, seven canoes, manned by a great number of natives, attacked them fiercely. The boat capsized and filled. The quartermaster in command was instantly struck with a badly-sharpened spear, and fell into the sea. Of his six companions four were killed; the other two and the quartermaster were able to swim to the ships, and were picked up and recovered.

After this sad occurrence Tasman set sail, confining his revenge to giving the natives a few musket-shots, which prob-ably did not reach them. He left this bay – which still bears the name of Massacre Bay – followed the western coast, and on the 5th of January, anchored near the northern-most point. Here the violence of the surf, as well as the unfriendly attitude of the natives, prevented his obtaining water, and he finally quitted these shores, giving them the name Staten-land or the Land of the States, in honor of the States-General.

The Dutch navigator con-cluded that these islands were adjacent to the islands of the same name on the east of Terra del Fuego, at the southern point of the American continent. He thought he had found “the Great Southern Continent.”

“But,” said Paganel to himself, “what a seventeenth century sailor might call a ‘continent’ would never stand for one with a nineteenth century man. No such mistake can be supposed! No! there is something here that baffles me.”

[Continued next week]

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