Two a penny

.

A Queenstown commercial pilot had to chase his light plane, with passengers on board, after it began speeding towards the runway without a pilot at the controls.

The Transport Accident Investigation Commission is investigating the incident involving a Cessna 207, owned by Milford Sounds Scenic Flights, getting “out of control” at Queenstown Airport last month.

“During that time the aircraft took off by itself,” Mr Mathews said.

Commission deputy chief investigator Ken Mathews said the pilot got out of the aircraft when the engine wouldn’t start and used his hands to get the propeller moving.

It did not go on to the main runway or disrupt flights.

The pilot managed to get into the aircraft while it was moving and control it before any harm was done, Mr Mathews said.”

The Milford Sounds Scenic Flights aircraft was scheduled to fly to Milford Sound when it began moving without its pilot.

“But there were other aircraft about, so it wasn’t a good thing.

There was a person in the cockpit, but it was unclear what their role or qualifications were, he said. .

Milford Sounds Scenic Flights director Mark Quickfall said the pilot was stood down after the incident and safety procedures improved to ensure aircraft did not set off without their pilots.

The aircraft could carry up to six passengers but it was unclear how many passengers were in the Cessna at the time of the incident, Mr Mathews said. “Our report to the (Civil Aviation Authority) included actions to prevent this happening again.

“It was a serious incident and error of judgment by the pilot,” he said. He declined to comment further on the incident until the investigations had been completed.” The company reported the incident immediately to the Civil Aviation Authority, Mr Quickfall said.

The commission had not provided a completion date for its investigation.

Queenstown Airport chief executive Steve Sanderson said he was aware of the incident but would not comment.

.

A Waikato woman has found her Irish husband’s body in a Laos river three days after he went missing in a tragic end to their Asian honeymoon.

Michael O’Sullivan, 39, a publican, got into difficulty after a river “tubing” ride with his wife Ilana James 29, and 18 other holidaymakers.They had planned to renew their vows in the presence of Mrs O’Sullivan’s mother in New Zealand.Mr O’Sullivan and Ms James, from Raglan, had been enjoying a belated honeymoon backpacking around Asia after marrying last November, the Evening Herald in Dublin reported.But the river had swollen dangerously because of the rainy season, and locals had to use ropes and sticks to rescue them.Last Thursday, the pair went on the “tubing adventure” on the Nam Xong river in Vang Vieng, in the north of Laos, described by backpackers’ guide Lonely Planet as “one of the rites of passage of the Indochina backpacking circuit”. He was not wearing a lifejacket. .For three days she hired boats and scoured the river banks looking for her husband and she was among a search party that found his body yesterday.Ms James insisted on being part of the search team that combed the river.The couple met in England.Ms James suffered a further blow when she was mugged on the way back to her hotel during the search.They had already visited India, Malaysia and Thailand after heading off backpacking in June. They were married last year and moved to Ireland.

.

LATEST:
Actor Patrick Swayze, whose turn as a smoldering dance instructor in Dirty Dancing made him one of the iconic film stars of the 1980s, has died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer at the age of 57.

Swayze, an actor and dancer who cemented his status as sex symbol opposite Demi Moore in the 1990 romance Ghost, died at his home.

Swayze became one of Hollywood’s top stars with 1987′s Dirty Dancing, which defied Hollywood expectations to become one of the most-watched movies of all time. .

Swayze was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, one of the most deadly forms of the disease, in January 2008.

The Texas-born actor played the swaggering dance instructor Johnny Castle in the film opposite Jennifer Grey’s sheltered teenager Frances “Baby” Houseman, who becomes smitten with him while on vacation at a New York resort during the 1960s. Pancreatic cancer sufferers are only given a five percent chance of survival. He said at the time that the cancer had already spread to his liver.

The series was broadcast in America earlier this year.

But he vowed to fight the disease and had treatment with an experimental drug, surprising Hollywood by filming a new detective series for television called The Beast in which he played the lead role..

“I think everybody thought I was out of my mind . thinking I’m gonna pull off a TV show,” Swayze said in an interview in January 2009, adding that he was scared and angry at his diagnosis..

Dirty Dancing, which was made for a modest budget and almost scrapped by its studio, became a massive box-office hit, earning Golden Globe nominations for both stars and spawning the Oscar-winning hit single (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.

Swayze was working on a memoir with his wife of more than 30 years, Lisa Niemi, earlier this year.

Swayze co-wrote and performed the song She’s Like the Wind for the movie’s soundtrack, which went to No.

Producers did not have high hopes for the film but it reaped US$64 million at the US box office and US$214 million worldwide. The film remained widely popular more than two decades later and recently spawned a stage musical version. 3 on the pop music charts.

.

Auckland University scientists have developed technology to power a wire-free heart pump that could save the lives of thousands of heart patients.

It could eventually offer an alternative to heart transplants.

It weighs only 92 grams and can be powered 24 hours a day for the wearer’s lifetime.

The pump uses magnetic fields to transfer power through a patient’s skin, rather than using wire cables.

A new company, TETCor, was created to take the technology for powering a wide range of devices implanted in the human body to market.

The new technology came out of collaboration between scientists from Auckland University’s Bioengineering Institute, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Department of Physiology. The existing method, using a wire cable that goes through the stomach and chest caused serious infections in about 40 percent of patients, and sometimes death.

TETCor chief executive Simon Malpas said heart pumps needed a huge amount of power.

The new wire-free version uses a coil outside a person’s body to generate a magnetic field.

The wires were also prone to breaking and restricted a patient’s activities. . A second coil placed inside the body, near the collar bone, picks up the signal from this field and creates power for the pump.

Dr Malpas saw the potential market as 50,000 people each year globally, within 10 years. The two companies plan to work together to combine the power transfer technology with the pump technology, and plan to begin patient trials within 24 months. If these pumps stop, you only have about one minute to live.

“It’s probably the most extreme implantable medical device you can get.”

.

A bruised teenage girl clung to the wreckage of a Yemeni plane for more than 13 hours before rescuers found her floating in the Indian Ocean, a French official said on Wednesday.

There was no word on any other survivors, but French officials said one of the plane’s black boxes had been found.An Associated Press reporter saw 14-year-old Bahia Bakari in a Comoros hospital Wednesday as she was visited by government officials.The Yemenia Airbus 310 jet carrying 153 people to island nation of Comoros crashed into the sea early Tuesday as it attempted to land in the dark amid howling winds.”It is a true miracle. She was conscious with bruises on her face and a gauze bandage on her elbow. “She held onto a piece of the plane from 1:30 a. She is a courageous young girl,” Alain Joyandet, France’s minister for international cooperation, said at the hospital.m.m to 3:00 p. Her father arrives tomorrow. She has lost her mother.Kassim Bakari said he spoke with his oldest daughter by phone after Tuesday’s crash.”The girl’s father told French radio that his daughter was “fragile” and could “barely swim” but managed to hang on.He said she was ejected and found herself beside the plane. Bahia had left Paris on Monday night with her mother to see family in the Comoros. She heard people speaking around her but she couldn’t see anyone in the darkness,” Bakari said on France’s RTL radio.”She couldn’t feel anything, and found herself in the water.”Said Mohammed, a nurse at El Mararouf hospital in the Comoros capital of Moroni, said the girl was doing well and doctors would release more on her condition later Wednesday. “She’s a very timid girl, I never thought she would escape like that. Said Abdilai told Europe 1 radio that Bahia was too weak to grasp the life ring rescuers threw to her, so he jumped into the sea to get her.Sgt.The crash a few kilometers off this island nation came two years after aviation officials reported equipment faults with the plane, an aging Airbus 310 flying the last leg of a Yemenia airlines flight from Paris and Marseille to the Comoros, with a stop in Yemen to change planes. He said rescuers gave the trembling girl warm water with sugar. Sixty-six on board were French nationals. Sixty-six on board were French nationals.Turbulence was believed to be a factor in the crash, Yemen’s embassy in Washington said.Gen. Bruno de Bourdoncle de Saint-Salvy, the senior commander for French forces in the southern Indian Ocean, said the Airbus 310 crashed in deep waters about 14.4 kilometers north of the Comoran coast and 34 kilometers from the Moroni airport.A French military cargo plane flew Wednesday over a zone 80 kilometers north of Grand Comoros Island, while two inflatable dinghies sent by French forces on La Reunion island combed waters closer to the coast.”The search is continuing,” Joyandet said. “No other survivors have been found for the moment.”Col. .A French tug arrived from the French island of Mayotte to recover survivors, corpses and debris, while a French frigate diverted from anti-piracy operations, the Nivose, and another French military ship headed to the scene.Both France and Airbus sent experts to the Comoros to aid in the investigation.The tragedy – and dwindling hopes that anyone else made it out alive – prompted an outcry in Comoros, where residents have long complained of a lack of seat belts on Yemenia flights and planes so overcrowded that passengers had to stand in the aisles.The Comoros, home to some 700,000 people, is an archipelago of three main islands situated 2,900 kilometers south of Yemen, between Africa’s southeastern coast and the island of Madagascar.French aviation inspectors found a “number of faults” in the plane’s equipment during a 2007 inspection, French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said.European Union Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani said the airline had previously met EU safety checks but would now face a full investigation amid questions why passengers were put on another jet in the Yemeni capital of San’a.The vice president of Comoros criticized French officials for not telling his nation about any suspected problems.”We wish the French could have informed us of any irregularity or any problems with that plane,” Idi Nadhoim said Wednesday on France-24 television.”Most if not all of the planes of Yemenia are Airbus,” he said. “They are supposed to be serviced by Airbus.”"We trust the civil aviation authorities of the countries we are working with,” he added, suggesting that French authorities discriminated against “those French who are left by themselves to fly this type of plane” – French citizens from former French colonies.Airbus said the plane that crashed went into service 19 years ago, in 1990, and had accumulated 51,900 flight hours. It has been operated by Yemenia since 1999.

.

A former girlfriend of murder-accused Clayton Weatherston has told the High Court in Christchurch that he once kicked her across the room.

The woman, whose name and occupation is suppressed, said she was in a relationship with Weatherston from 2004 to August 2007, when he ended it.

Weatherston, 33, is accused of stabbing his former girlfriend Sophie Elliott, 22, to death at her home on 9 January last year.

The witness, who was Weatherston’s girlfriend before he started dating Elliott, recounted a violent incident in the latter half of 2006 when he had kicked her across the floor. He admits her manslaughter but denies the murder charge.

She had rushed to the bathroom and Weatherston would not let her leave. He had kicked her in the back and the ribs and her knee had hit her nose which started bleeding, she told the High Court in Christchurch. Her eye was bruised in the assault.

“I felt trapped,” she said.

He would not let her leave the house and took her car keys because he wanted to talk about it.

“I told if him if you don’t get help I will leave you,” she said.

She recovered and she got very annoyed and told him to get help.

Weatherston had, according to Elliott, denied a previous violent incident in his bedroom on December 27, 2007, and had accused her of making up stories and being crazy.

Earlier in the day, Elliott’s friend Erin van de Water, told the High Court in Christchurch Elliott had told her of a meeting she had with Weatherston on January 7, 2007, in his office in the Economics Department at Otago University. As Elliott was leaving Weatherston had accused her of ruining his career and Elliott believed he had tried to push her down the stairs. As Elliott was leaving Weatherston had accused her of ruining his career and Elliott believed he had tried to push her down the stairs.

She heard from Elliott how Weatherston thought he was much better than her and she was lucky to be going out with him. They would often “vent” on their personal life and she became aware of the relationship with Weatherston.

Elliott often wondered if they had a relationship as Weatherston would want to spend quality time with his ex-girlfriend who was supposed to be the most amazing person. . By Christmas they did not seem to be a couple any more.

Van de Water, a make-up artist, said Elliott felt her self esteem was damaged by Weatherston’s comments and her confidence was noticeably knocked. She reported that earlier that day she had visited Weatherston to give him a photo album of his graduation.

On December 27 Elliott had come to her house and looked shaky and flushed. He had made insulting remarks about her appearance saying her chin was too pointy and her eyes were too far apart. Weatherston had started shouting and forced her on to his bed and put his arm on her throat.

.

.

A 19-year-old Dunedin man who tortured and killed a dog has been jailed for a year – the longest sentence yet for animal cruelty.

Jeffrey Hurring, a supermarket shelf-filler, tortured an 18-month-old male Jack Russell for 30 minutes, before killing it with a spade on February 2.

He was sentenced in Dunedin District Court to 12 months’ jail and barred from owning an animal for 10 years, The Otago Daily Times reported. .

Hurring admitted killing the dog, named Diesel and owned by a friend, by first trying to strangle it using a chain, his hands and his feet.

Judge Stephen O’Driscoll said the maximum previous sentence handed down in New Zealand for cruelty to an animal was nine months’ jail, but the cruelty of this case was a significant aggravating factor in sentencing.

The impact broke the dog’s back and jaw, killing it.

Hurring was ordered to pay $1178.

SPCA national chief executive Robyn Kippenberger hailed the sentence and said it “sends a very clear message”.50 reparation to the SPCA and to continue counselling for his drinking and other issues related to his offending for at least six months after his release from prison.

-

.

Home loan customers probably missed the “bargain of a lifetime” on long-term mortgage rates, after a multibillion-dollar borrowing frenzy in the past few weeks, some economists say.

But floating mortgage rates are likely to fall further and stay down, possibly till the end of next year.
Other economists say lending rates may go lower, given a weak world economy, and there is no need to lock in rates now.
In the past week or so, five-year fixed lending rates jumped from about 6.
In a highly unusual move, Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard said yesterday that long-term interest rates were too high.5 per cent as people suddenly switched to longer-term loans, to lock in much-lower-than-average rates.5 per cent to 7. The frenzied demand pushed rates up. .
But the rise in the past fortnight was “unwarranted” and, if rates stayed up, it could put unnecessary pressure on companies and home owners borrowing from banks, Dr Bollard said.
BNZ advised a fortnight ago to “fix now”.
Bank of New Zealand chief economist Tony Alexander says the Reserve Bank is just showing its impotence to haul down longer-term fixed rates, even though wholesale interest rates dipped almost a third of 1 per cent on Dr Bollard’s announcement.
Westpac economist Donna Purdue said the Reserve Bank was expected to cut official interest rates 50 points at the end of the month, which would bring floating rates down sharply. People had now missed that “wonderful opportunity” to lock in cheap rates, Mr Alexander said, although three-year rates remained much lower.

Ad Feedback –>
loadAd(’300×250′,’STORYBODY’,300,250);

.

Executives at Air New Zealand are to act as cabin crew for the airline’s subsidiary, Zeal 320 Ltd, during next week’s planned strike action on trans-Tasman and Pacific routes.

Talks between the airline and the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) are continuing.
But the EPMU said it did not believe the airline had staff available to replace striking cabin crew.
Air New Zealand told Radio New Zealand it had 100 fully qualified staff, including top executives who have volunteered to keep planes flying over the Easter period.
Air New Zealand’s group general manager of short-haul airlines, Bruce Parton, said senior staff, including Glen Sowry, who is heading the negotiations, will act as crew on the Zeal 320 flights. .
–

Ad Feedback –>
loadAd(’300×250′,’STORYBODY’,300,250);

.
Mr Parton said the airline may consider sacking and replacing the 250 Zeal cabin crew if the industrial action is drawn out

.
Tourist’s wedding trip ends with bashing

Saturday, 28 February 2009

Scotsman Stuart Martin came to New Zealand to celebrate a mate's marriage today instead he's lying in a coma in Hawke's Bay Hospital.
Mr Martin, 31, was attacked in central Taradale after attending the stag night of his friend Rory McBrearty, who is to marry his fiancee, Meghan, in Napier today.
The pair have been mates for more than six years and Mr Martin had flown from Australia to attend the wedding.
Speaking to The yesterday, the shaken Mr McBreatrty, also 31, had just been at the bedside of his comatose friend.
"I'm pretty upset about it all.
"I'm on the verge of a breakdown, to tell the truth," Mr McBrearty said.
"They're [hospital staff] not saying much about his condition, but it's pretty serious. It's overwhelming.
"They came to the Bay from all over the place."
He said he and about 20 friends had spent much of Thursday being driven on a pub crawl around back-country pubs before winding up at a friend's house in Taradale.
"It was just your normal stag do. That's why the stag do was so close to the wedding. We finished up at a friend's place in Taradale. It was good.
"We went around town [Taradale] and Stuart went through town," Mr McBrearty said. A group of us was walking from there to another place. We were just walking home.
"We hadn't been drinking in Taradale.
During a scuffle he was knocked to the ground and two of the attackers stomped on his head and face. .
He was taken to Hawke's Bay Hospital after a passer-by alerted emergency services. His attackers' shoes left an imprint on his face and head.
Mr McBrearty described his friend as a "small, friendly guy who makes friends with everyone".
No-one in the stag party noticed Mr Martin was missing until one of the group walked back past the town centre and saw the police cordon. Everyone who knows Stu loves Stu. Everyone who knows Stu loves Stu. He's just one of those guys. He's a little white boy there's nothing to him."
Yesterday, police charged three 17-year-olds with assault. Darrin Wright, Hamish Bowman and Joshua McConville, all from Taradale, appeared before a JP and were remanded in custody till Wednesday.