Two a penny

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New Zealand and Australia will each give $NZ6.18 million to the Samoan Government for tsunami recovery and reconstruction efforts.

The money will help Samoa rebuild its infrastructure, restore essential services, and begin the process of economic recovery, foreign ministers Stephen Smith and Murray McCully said today. More than 150 people, including eight New Zealanders, died in Samoa, Tonga and American Samoa.Samoa was devastated by huge waves which struck on September 29 following a massive quake.The ministers said while emergency aid was provided by both countries soon after the tsunami struck, the priority would now be rebuilding communities, including housing, water, power, and roads.New Zealand has already donated $2m. .”The Samoan Government had effectively co-ordinated the response to the disaster and was quickly identifying priorities for recovery and reconstruction.”Australia and New Zealand will continue to co-ordinate our Samoan recovery and reconstruction efforts over the coming weeks.”Waikato sisters Rebecca, 24, and Petria Martin, 22, were among the New Zealanders who died.”This $A10 million trans-Tasman package of budget support provides Samoa with the ability to rebuild its infrastructure, restore essential services, and begin the process of economic recovery.Their father, Kerry, gave the eulogy and questioned why his daughters – the middle two of four sisters – died.They were farewelled in Matamata yesterday, with about 800 people turning out for their service.”Why Rebecca and Petria? We may never have the answers to these questions,” the Herald on Sunday reported.”Why Rebecca and Petria? We may never have the answers to these questions,” the Herald on Sunday reported.They had saved enough money to buy a house together and had found one shortly before they left for Samoa.”Rebecca taught at Rototuna Primary School, 9km north of Hamilton, and Petria was a team leader at Matamata’s sports centre.It is taking 10 containers of equipment to the islands courtesy of the fund-raising efforts and donations here by New Zealanders – many with relatives caught up in the tragedy.The navy ship HMNZS Canterbury departed for Samoa and Tonga yesterday laden with supplies.

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Police want to hear from anyone who sees unexplained damage on a four-wheel-drive vehicle with bull bars following an incident which left a Tokoroa teen in hospital. .

Detective Sergeant Kevan Verry said it appeared the incident happened after an altercation in the centre of the Waikato township between two groups.30am yesterday.

It was not known if the vehicle had sustained any damage in the incident.

Police were treating the incident as a serious assault.

The scene examination had been completed and several witnesses spoken to.

“If any person knows of someone who drives or owns a vehicle of this type that has some unexplained damage, they are urged to contact police,” Mr Verry said.

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The teenager remains in a critical condition in Waikato Hospital

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A jealous lover was today jailed for a claw hammer attack on a man who he believed to be his ex-girlfriend’s new partner.

Trevor William Grindrod, 34, was sentenced at the High Court in Wellington to seven years and nine months imprisonment.

The man barricaded himself in the bedroom and told Grindrod he had called the police, “but you were not to be denied,” attacking him with the claw hammer, Justice Gendall said.

Justice Warwick Gendall said that six weeks after Grindrod split with his girlfriend, he visited her house uninvited and saw her with a workmate, “you thought, in a mildly amorous situation”.

“You were fortunate you did not kill the complainant.

“This was an unprovoked, prolonged, gratuitous attack with a lethal weapon,” Justice Gendall said.

He smashed his way into the property through a window, broke through the bedroom door and began hitting the man in the head and body with the hammer, adding punches and kicks.”

Crown prosecutor Kate Feltham said Grindrod walked from Wainuiomata to the workmate’s Lower Hutt house, “picking up” the hammer on the way.

Grindrod told police he was trying to kill the man and was initially charged with attempted murder.

The attack spilled into the bathroom where Grindrod ripped a vanity from the wall and attempted to beat his victim with it.

His victim suffered numerous injuries including a broken nose, but after months of physiotherapy escaped long term physical damage.

This was later reduced to injuring with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

“You are a violent man with a low anger threshold and when slighted by others, or you think you are, you attack.

Justice Gendall noted Grindrod had 20 previous convictions, four of which were for assault and included two attacks on children between late 2007 and early 2008.”

A starting point of 10 1/2 years jail was given, but Grindrod was given a “generous discount” of one-third for his early guilty pleas.”

He said Grindrod had attended an anger management course, “but it appears to have had little effect.

Grindrod was also sentenced to five years for aggravated burglary and two years for grievous damage, to be served concurrently, and ordered to pay $3269 in reparation for property damage on his release. A further nine months was added in light of his previous convictions.

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Justice Gendall said Grindrod was fortunate the crown had not sought a minimum jail period

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OPINION:
The official website of the mayor of Wanganui is a fascinating monument to a man who simply cannot get enough of himself. It is a site absolutely awash in self-love.

Visitors to the cosily titled mayormichael. .co. Oh, and there’s some stuff about Wanganui, too. The site’s latest thrilling additions are magazine photos of Michael Laws’ family dating back to 2003 – just in case any of us neglected to cut them out at the time of publication – but there are also shots of his kids’ birthday parties, updates on the state of his relationship with his partner, and photos of Laws that stretch back to boyhood.

If there is any glimmer of a redeeming feature in this exercise in narcissism, it is that Mr Laws appears to have almost as soft a spot for children as he has for himself.

All of which makes it a surprise to see the level of contempt with which he treated a group of Otaki children who had the temerity to write to him last month. Mr Laws clearly adores his own kids, and has written in the past about the evils of child abuse.

In response, he wrote the girls a letter suggesting their teacher be sacked, urging them to control their anger, and saying he wouldn’t take their views seriously unless they first looked at the rate of child abuse and murder within Maori society.

The seven students of Otaki School’s kura kaupapa unit, aged from 11 to 13, wrote to Mr Laws in Maori to say what they thought about the controversy over whether Wanganui should have an “h” in its name. But here’s the thing: whatever.

There has since been much debate about whether the Maori word used by all seven students in their letters and translated by Mr Laws’ team as “anger” should instead have been “frustration”. It shouldn’t be news to Mr Laws, father of many, that pre-teen girls are stroppy, and that 12-year-olds have yet to learn the social bullshit that enables us to express our opinions in a detached manner. It shouldn’t be news to Mr Laws, father of many, that pre-teen girls are stroppy, and that 12-year-olds have yet to learn the social bullshit that enables us to express our opinions in a detached manner. Children of their age should, he said, care only about Harry Potter.

Firstly, this champion of direct democracy argued that “it’s wrong for kids to be angry about something inanimate”.

AN ARGUMENT this ludicrous doesn’t fly for long, so Mr Laws then argued that their teacher had put them up to it. In others words, it’s not just that their views are wrong; they shouldn’t be allowed to have views. As any parent knows, it’s impossible to convince a 12-year-old girl to turn her music down if she doesn’t want to. Who is this classroom Svengali? Again, I come back to the legendary stroppiness of pre-teen girls.

. The thought of a teacher being able to persuade seven of them to write letters against their will is simply inconceivable, unless electric cattle prods were involved

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The Government is planning a stocktake of valuable minerals in the conservation estate but it isn’t going to dig up pristine landscape, Energy and Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee says.

Conservation land is protected by Schedule Four of the Crown Minerals Act and Mr Brownlee said he wasn’t considering changing the legislation.”What we’re examining at is the type of land that needs to be in Schedule Four,” he told reporters today.”Mr Brownlee mentioned the stocktake at a mining conference in Queenstown yesterday.”All we’re saying is there may be some places where the conservation values of the land are significantly less than the high standard put on Schedule Four.The estimated value of untapped minerals in New Zealand has been put at about $140 billion and around 70 percent of that involves conservation land.He said today there seemed to be “a degree of panic” about it which was not warranted.”New Zealand has some of the most pristine landscape in the world.”What we’re saying is where there are new lands added to that we need to balance both aspects of economic and conservation values. It is recognised in Schedule Four of the Crown Minerals Act as being impenetrable,” Mr Brownlee said. This is a stocktake, which is perfectly reasonable. .”What New Zealanders need to know is that New Zealand is similarly endowed,” he said.”He said the previous government spent nine years explaining the economic gap between Australia and New Zealand was as a result of Australia’s mineral wealth.”It’s going to be a very public process.”It’s going to be a very public process

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A plane flying from Great Barrier Island to Auckland with around 11 people on board was forced to turn back yesterday when one of its propellers broke apart shortly after take-off.

Traffic Accident Investigation Commission chief investigator Tim Burfoot said they knew very little about the incident involving the Great Barrier Airlines plane but an investigator had been sent to the island.

He said the rear-propeller of the tri-engine plane, believed to be a Britten Norman Trilander, had broken apart and either one or both blades had detached themselves from the rear engine’s propeller hub mid-flight.

Mr Burfoot said pilots were trained to handle such situations and it was standard practice for planes to find a suitable spot for an emergency landing.

“The plane made a successful return and nobody was injured,” he said.”

It was unclear what damage there was to the plane.

“The plane had three engines, that particular plane, so they obviously would have lost one and [the pilot] would have shut that down when it happened and he would have had the other two.

The investigation was expected to take several days. .

Great Barrier Island fire and police said they were not aware of the incident.

– By Michael Field and Clio Francis,

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A Yemeni Airbus A310 jet carrying 153 people crashed into rough seas as it came into land in the Comoros Islands on Tuesday but rescuers plucked a child survivor from the water, officials said.

There were 142 passengers and a crew of 11 Yemenis on board when the Airbus A310, which had set off from the Yemeni capital of San’a, went down shortly before landing in Moroni, on the main island of Grand Comore, Yemeni civil aviation deputy chief Mohammed Abdul Qader said.

It was the second time in less than a month that an Airbus has crashed into the ocean.

Bodies and wreckage from the Yemenia airline flight were spotted in the Indian Ocean near the capital, Moroni, aviation officials said. This time French authorities said the Yemeni carrier had been under surveillance and that problems had been reported with the jet.

The child was being taken to land where an ambulance waited to take the child to hospital.

But a child among the 142 passengers and 11 crew on Flight IY 626 was rescued alive, a surgeon at the main Moroni hospital said.Most of the passengers were from Comoros, returning from Paris. France said 66 on board were French nationals. Those on board included families with children and there were at least three babies on the flight, he added. She said that three bodies have also been retrieved, along with debris from the plane, but that no other survivors have been recovered so far.Comoros immigrations officer, Rachida Abdullah, told The Associated Press that a child was rescued from the sea. He said it was too early to speculate on the reasons for the crash, adding that the flight data recorder hadn’t been found.Abdul Qader, the Yemeni official, said the child was 5 years old.”The weather was very bad .”The weather was very bad . the wind was very strong,” he said, adding the windy conditions hampered rescue efforts..Gen. Abdul Qader said wind speed was 40 miles per hour (61 kilometers per hour) as the plane was landing.2 miles) north from the Comoran coast and 18 nautical miles (21 miles) from the Moroni airport. 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 8 nautical miles (9.m.And on the Indian Ocean island of Ile de la Reunion, an official statement from the French prefecture said the crash occurred at 02:50 GMT Tuesday (10:50 p.French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said French aviation and naval support was heading to help in search operations at the Comoros government’s request. EDT Monday).Kouchner expressed “sincere condolences” and said the French Embassy in Moroni was “fully mobilized” to help families.Kouchner expressed “sincere condolences” and said the French Embassy in Moroni was “fully mobilized” to help families. The French junior minister for cooperation, Alain Joyandet, is heading Tuesday to Moroni, the statement said.The Comoros is an archipelago of three main islands situated about 2,900 kilometers south of Yemen, between Africa’s southeastern coast and Madagascar.Christophe Prazuck, French military spokesperson, says that patrol boat, the Rieuse and fregate Nivose, a reconnaissance ship, were being sent to crash site as well as Transall, a military transport plane. The French were sending divers as well as medical personnel on the plane, he said.In Paris, a crisis cell was set up at Charles de Gaulle airport. Most of the passengers on board were from the French city of Marseille, which has a large Comoros community.Another crisis cell has been established in Marseille, according to Stephane Salord, the consul general of the Comoros in the Provence-Alps-Cote d’Azur region of France.”There is considerable dismay,” Salord said. “These are families that, each year on the eve of summer, leave Marseille and the region to rejoin their families in the Comoros and spend their holidays.”In France, this week is the start of annual summer school vacations.An Airbus statement 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 (Yemen Airways) since 1999.Airbus identifies the plane’s serial number as 535, and said it was sending a team of specialists to the Comoros. . There are 214 A310s in service worldwide with 41 operators.France’s transport minister Dominique Bussereau said French aviation inspectors found a “number of faults” during a 2007 inspection of the plane. He told France’s i-Tele television that the Airbus A310 was inspected by France’s civil aviation agency DGAC and “they noticed a certain number of faults.”On May 31, an Airbus A330 operated by Air France ran into thunderstorms after leaving Brazil and crashed into the Atlantic. Fifty-one bodies were recovered from that flight, which was carrying 228 people.

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Health board sued over car death

– Monday, 02 March 2009

A woman whose mother was killed by a drugged methadone patient near Picton is suing a South Island health board over the death.
Picton woman Mary Radley died in 2004 after her vehicle was hit by a car driven by a man with methadone and the equivalent of 500mg of a tranquilliser in his system.
The driver, who has name suppression, was a patient on the methadone programme run by the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board at the time of the crash.
Ford will claim, under human rights legislation, that the health board breached its obligations to ensure public safety by its alleged lax management of the driver who killed Radley.
This week, Radley's daughter, Rachael Ford, employed a Queen's Counsel to take legal action against the health board.
A recent coroner's court finding into Radley's death said the driver failed four drug tests in the year before the fatal crash and the health board was aware of his escalating risk on the roads.
Ford told she was taking legal action because she did not feel the health board fully accepted the impact of its actions.
Ford, who started the lobby group Campaign Against Drugs on Roads (Candor) to press for tougher laws on drug driving, said she wanted the board to acknowledge the effect its systemic failures had had on her family.
Under a behaviour management programme running at the prison between 1998 and 2004, inmates Christopher Taunoa, Alistair Robinson and Matthew Kidman were kept in solitary confinement for extended periods, denied regular clothing and bedding changes, and had their weekly toilet-paper use restricted.
The law that Ford will use in her claim is the same as that employed by three violent prisoners from Paremoremo prison, who favourably sued the Corrections Department for breaching their human rights.
Taunoa, a convicted murderer, was awarded damages of $35,000. .
Canterbury University public law expert Professor Stephen Todd said suing public institutions under human rights legislation was a "pretty popular thing", as a result of the possibility of financial payments. Aggravated robber Robinson was paid $20,000 in damages, while fellow aggravated robber Kidman was paid $4000.
The case of the three Paremoremo prisoners was one of the best-known recent examples, he said.
The case of the three Paremoremo prisoners was one of the best-known recent examples, he said

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Chch mayor vows to give away pay rise

By JO McKENZIE-McLEAN – Tuesday, 27 January 2009

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker plans to donate the pay rise he receives this year to charity or a community project.
Parker will get a $5032 salary increase from July a 3.
The total salary pool for other elected members, including councillors and community board members, would increase by $51,000, he said, and the council would meet in March to decide how the pool should be allocated.2 per cent rise.
However, he "would not feel comfortable taking it in light of the current economic situation" and Prime Minister John Key's call for restraint on salaries for MPs.
Parker cannot refuse the increase, which is set by the Remuneration Authority. It's not about the money; it's about doing a good job for residents to ensure the future of our wonderful city," Parker said.
"Being mayor of this city is a job I love."
Councillors contacted last night thought Parker's actions were noble but most were non-committal over whether they would follow suit.
"Although the increase is beyond my control, I can ensure that the extra dollars paid to me can be returned to the community and put to good use.
"I think it's noble of the mayor to make such a gesture, but our increase would not be of the same magnitude, I would have thought.
"We could look at it, but I am not aware of the pay increase," Deputy Mayor Norm Withers said. But in principle, good on him.
"I would rather wait and sit down as a group of elected members before commenting.
Parker said he was not trying to "preach" to others about donating pay increases."
Councillor Sally Buck said that while she was not aware of councillors getting a pay increase, she would be happy to donate hers to charity. Everyone's circumstances are different," he said.
"It's up to every individual. I think it would be inappropriate for someone like that.
"Mayors on smaller councils don't get paid, in my view, a great deal of money compared with the workload, the pressure and all of those issues they have to carry.
MPs received pay rises of between 3."
Key last week called for a freeze on MPs' pay. .8 per cent and 4.
Parker has also asked staff to re-evaluate Sister City engagements this year that would see him travelling overseas at ratepayers' expense.
Parker has also asked staff to re-evaluate Sister City engagements this year that would see him travelling overseas at ratepayers' expense.

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Archaeologists uncover 700-year-old Maori home

By ALEX VAN WEL – Thursday, 15 January 2009

Alex van wel
DIGGING UP PAST: Archaeology masters student Jean Spinks sifts stone flakes on the Wairau Bar.

Otago University archaeologists have identified what they believe to be the site of a 700-year-old dwelling on the Wairau Bar in Marlborough. .
At the dig yesterday, the main focus was a mound of earth known by Rangitane as Mohua, where the remains of a house had been uncovered.
A deal between local iwi Rangitane, the museum and Otago University means scientists have been allowed back for the first time in almost half a decade. "There are adzes on the site that look like they are made by real specialists, but there are also fairly ordinary adzes, so what we suspect is the case is that there are a small number of people who were producing the highest quality materials, but probably every household had an adze-maker.
Team leader Richard Walter believed it might have been the home of a professional adze-maker."
The Wairau Bar is considered one of New Zealand's prime archaeological sites. Bones and artefacts uncovered at the site in the 1940s and 1950s provided the first direct link with the islands of East Polynesia. A thin slice of land separating a lagoon from the open sea just east of Blenheim, it was settled about AD1300. "What we are finding now is evidence of the structures, the layout; we are beginning to uncover the plans of the village itself.
Walter said the team had already gained a fuller picture of the site's original inhabitants.

Graves from the area were dug up in the 1940s and 1950s and the koiwi (human remains) were taken to Canterbury Museum."
Walter is leading a large group of scientists and researchers who have been at the site since last week. Rangitane had campaigned for the return of the bones of their ancestors' bones, which were expected to be repatriated in April. Rangitane had campaigned for the return of the bones of their ancestors' bones, which were expected to be repatriated in April.