Two a penny

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Auckland police investigating a suspicious
death believe they know how the man died, but lack enough evidence
for an arrest after being stonewalled by witnesses.

Damien Loder Allen, 33, the previous month died from head injuries which were not accidental.

Police believe the house where his body was found on September 24 in the suburb of Hillsborough had been cleaned and his body had been moved.

Mr Allen had head injuries and police were still waiting on toxicology results.

Several possible witnesses were refusing to co-operate.

He would not say how Mr Allen got his injuries, or if they had found a weapon.

Detective Inspector Scott Beard said he believed witnesses may be protecting someone involved in the death.

Others in Mr Allen’s house made 111 calls the night he died.

It was not a party but people were socialising and drinking.

Four people were in the house when police arrived and others had visited the house on the night.

He said information was still flowing in but police still wanted to hear from anyone who knew what may have happened or knew the people at the house. .

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Anyone with information should call the confidential Crimestoppers line on 0800 555 111

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The army is tonight rescuing hundreds of motorists trapped in their vehicles after heavy snow closed roads across the central North Island.

Up to 200 vehicles were trapped on Stage Highway 2 between Napier and Taupo, with most cars believed to have stopped because of snow and ice at Waipunga, at about the halfway point.”Police, the army and Civil Defence have activated and the army is sending in Unimogs to get people to buses waiting at a safe point on the road,” he said.About 150 people had made their way to the Te Pohue Hotel and a further 60 were at the Te Pohue Hall, Hastings Civil Defence controller Mike Maguire said.”People need to stay where they are and stay as warm as possible,” Mr Maguire said.He advised those waiting to stay put.”A welfare centre has been set up at Hukerere Girls College at Eskdale, and Red Cross and the Salvation Army workers were gathering there to make sure evacuees were warm and feed.”When they hear or see army vehicles approaching they need to flash their lights so they can be seen.Police central communications Inspector Kirsty Henson said about 120 cars had been stuck on State Highway 1 between Waiouru and the Three Sisters.The army also rescued motorists from SH1 close to Waiouru.Snow had also closed SH49 between Ohakune and Waiouru, and SH47 at Turangi, she said.Those rescued would be returned to their vehicles tomorrow, she told .”Snow is expected down to 400m, with heavy falls through to (tomorrow) morning, especially above 600m,” forecaster Andy Downs said.The MetService issued heavy snow warnings for the central North Island high country, from the Tongariro National Park and the hills and ranges of Hawkes Bay. .A heavy rain warning was also in place for the Eastern Bay of Plenty, Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay.

.Heavy rain was expected in Gisborne until tomorrow morning, easing by evening

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LATEST:
Deputy Prime Minister Bill English has announced he will not receive any more taxpayer-funding housing allowances.

The finance minister this afternoon confirmed actions he had taken with the aim of putting the “unnecessary distraction” of the row over his housing expenses behind him.

His announcement comes ahead of an informal meeting scheduled with the Auditor-General’s office this evening to discuss an investigation into his housing allowances claim.

* Had not received any housing allowance payments since July 28.

Mr English said he:

* Would no longer receive a housing allowance.

* Had received a legal opinion from Stephen Kos, QC, that changes made to his family trust arrangements did not affect his eligibility for the housing allowance.

* Had repaid all housing allowance payments received since last November’s election to Ministerial Services.

“What I’m announcing today reflects a set of personal decisions I have made about my own situation,” Mr English said.

“At all times my decisions have been driven by my desire to keep my family together and provide them with as much stability as possible.

“It is in no way setting a precedent for others although I make the point here that I believe Parliament does have to think how it can accommodate the families of long-term politicians.”

A TV One poll showed that voters felt the issue was denting Mr English’s credibility. It’s now clear that the system has struggled to deal with my circumstances.

The Deputy Prime Minister considers the Southland town of Dipton, in his electorate, to be his primary residence under parliamentary rules, but his family has lived in, and owned, a house in Wellington for years.

Asked if the issue had damaged his credibility, 62 percent said yes and 27 percent no; asked if Mr English has acted with integrity, 54 percent said no and 30 percent yes.

He came under fire when it was revealed he was now claiming a much higher allowance to stay in the Wellington house than when he lived there as an opposition MP.

He came under fire when it was revealed he was now claiming a much higher allowance to stay in the Wellington house than when he lived there as an opposition MP.

Today, a spokesman for Mr English said the Auditor-General’s office wrote to the minister after receiving the complaint.

Auditor-General Lyn Provost has asked for more information before deciding whether to investigate a complaint by Progressive Party leader Jim Anderton into the matter.

He will meet with a team from the office tonight for informal talks which will not form part of the inquiry, the spokesman said.

They said “feel free” to get in touch and Mr English has done that. .

Mr English will be informed about what the Auditor-General’s office is doing

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An energy drinks company has denied organising a publicity stunt that resulted in three New Zealand soldiers being sent home in disgrace from Afghanistan.

They were photographed posing with a large bomb carrying an advert for Demon energy drinks and were sent home for breaching operational security.

One photo showed a Demon energy drink sticker with the slogan “no limits, no laws” attached to the bomb suspended from a plane, with the soldiers standing around it.

The men took the photos and sent them to the drink company.

A decision was made to send the soldiers home immediately after the incident, which went against clear guidance given to all military personnel on operations, Joint Forces commander Air Vice Marshal Peter Stockwell said yesterday.

Another showed a handwritten message, “dear Taliban enjoy this demon”, on the side of the bomb. .

Demon Drinks company said today that the soldiers were not involved in any kind of commercial sponsorship agreement.”

The soldiers were not directly asked to take part in any kind of promotion.

“Demon Drinks has no understanding of army procedures, so did not know this would cause an issue.

“Often we ask for photos of people drinking the product in return.

The company said it donated products and did sampling all over the country every day.”

The company regretted what had happened to the soldiers, and had expressed that to them personally several weeks ago. In no way was this a publicity stunt.

“Demon Drinks was acting in good faith to help NZ troops and we wanted to show our support for them.

“If we had realised that this was going to be the outcome we would never have provided free drinks.”

AVM Stockwell said two of the soldiers had been found to have contravened the Armed Forces Discipline Act and were formally reprimanded. It is very unfortunate the way this has panned out for the soldiers and we will do everything we can to help these soldiers if their careers are in jeopardy.

Green Party MP Keith Locke, who previously criticised the soldiers’ actions, said sending them home was an appropriate punishment.

“Irrespective of the investigation into whether the acts contravened military law, the NZDF sets and expects very high levels of professionalism and behaviour from its people – this is especially the case in an operational theatre where the protection of information is vital to the overall security of New Zealand interests and activities,” he said.

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LATEST:
A man has been arrested after allegedly chasing a car with a replica pistol in the Wellington suburb of Island Bay.

Acting Senior Sergeant Corey Watts said the man, who gave himself up last night after police set up a cordon around his house, had been charged with presenting a firearm.

Police were called to Island Bay after 10pm yesterday after receiving calls that a man was seen running down a road after a car armed with a pistol.50pm.

Mr Watts said police then cordoned off a property in Eden St around 10.

Mr Watts said police had determined the firearm was an air pistol, and that it had been used to fire plastic BB pellets in the early stages of the incident. .

Though the Armed Offenders Squad was initially called out, officers were not deployed. We treated it very seriously,” Mr Watts said.

“It’s pretty provocative running down the street with one of those in your hand.

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It was a reunion of reunions.

Twelve Apollo astronauts reminisced, traded stories and poked fun at each other Friday night as the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing and moonwalk approached.

The crowd of hundreds at the National Museum of the United States Air Force erupted in cheers when a video chronicling the space program replayed Armstrong’s famous first words after stepping on the moon July 20, 1969: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

The astronauts, including first moonmen Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, attended the ceremony in which the National Aviation Hall of Fame presented the Apollo crews with the “Spirit of Flight” award for their courage and dedication. “Any time you go to a place where everything you see is different than anything you’ve ever seen before in your life, it’s unique and it’s memorable.”

“It was spectacular,” Armstrong recalled of gazing at the moon’s surface as he took those first steps.”

However, Armstrong said he and Aldrin had little time to savor the experience. And that certainly was.

Armstrong said he had been a backup on Apollo 8 and that when he wasn’t needed was asked if he wanted to be on the third mission down the line — what turned out to be the fateful Apollo 11 mission.

“We didn’t rest hardly five seconds when we got a message from Mission Control, saying get on with the next item,” Armstrong said.

“We knew we had a chance at landing, but it was by no means certain,” he said. He said it was difficult to predict the exact mission of succeeding flights.

Astronaut Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, also flew in the flight preceding Armstrong’s.

As they sat together on the stage, the astronauts joked and bantered with each other.

“Everyone knew Neil could land on the moon, but we didn’t have a lot of confidence Neil could find it,” Cernan quipped. He joked that his job was to paint a white line to the moon that Apollo 11 could follow.

But the first lunar landing was a serious matter for the astronauts and those in mission control.

“I’ve been listening to that for 40 years, and this is not the time to change my position,” Armstrong shot back, drawing laughs from the crowd.

“I can’t say it was panic, but it was a lot of attention to detail in mission control,” said Charles Duke, who was at mission control at the time. When the designated landing zone proved to be too rocky, Armstrong had to burn fuel from a diminishing supply to find a suitable place to touch down.” When there were only 30 seconds of fuel left, “it got dead silent. .”

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It was a reunion of reunions.

Twelve Apollo astronauts reminisced, traded stories and poked fun at each other Friday night as the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing and moonwalk approached.

The crowd of hundreds at the National Museum of the United States Air Force erupted in cheers when a video chronicling the space program replayed Armstrong’s famous first words after stepping on the moon July 20, 1969: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

The astronauts, including first moonmen Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, attended the ceremony in which the National Aviation Hall of Fame presented the Apollo crews with the “Spirit of Flight” award for their courage and dedication. “Any time you go to a place where everything you see is different than anything you’ve ever seen before in your life, it’s unique and it’s memorable.”

“It was spectacular,” Armstrong recalled of gazing at the moon’s surface as he took those first steps.”

However, Armstrong said he and Aldrin had little time to savor the experience. And that certainly was.

Armstrong said he had been a backup on Apollo 8 and that when he wasn’t needed was asked if he wanted to be on the third mission down the line — what turned out to be the fateful Apollo 11 mission.

“We didn’t rest hardly five seconds when we got a message from Mission Control, saying get on with the next item,” Armstrong said.

“We knew we had a chance at landing, but it was by no means certain,” he said. He said it was difficult to predict the exact mission of succeeding flights.

Astronaut Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, also flew in the flight preceding Armstrong’s.

As they sat together on the stage, the astronauts joked and bantered with each other.

“Everyone knew Neil could land on the moon, but we didn’t have a lot of confidence Neil could find it,” Cernan quipped. He joked that his job was to paint a white line to the moon that Apollo 11 could follow.

But the first lunar landing was a serious matter for the astronauts and those in mission control.

“I’ve been listening to that for 40 years, and this is not the time to change my position,” Armstrong shot back, drawing laughs from the crowd.

“I can’t say it was panic, but it was a lot of attention to detail in mission control,” said Charles Duke, who was at mission control at the time. When the designated landing zone proved to be too rocky, Armstrong had to burn fuel from a diminishing supply to find a suitable place to touch down.” When there were only 30 seconds of fuel left, “it got dead silent. .”

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Two Washington, subway trains collided during the Monday afternoon rush hour, killing nine people and injuring at least 75, officials said early on Tuesday.

A District of Columbia Fire Department official said the death toll had been raised from 6 late on Monday, but said officials were could prepared to identify any of the deceased.

Mayor Adrian Fenty called the crash the deadliest in the 33-year history of the city’s Metro subway system. At least one car from the trailing train was hurled on to the top of the other in the accident, which occurred on above-ground tracks. . .

“Metro officials do not know the cause of the. .

The crash occurred on the heavily traveled red line about 5pm EDT (2100 GMT), between Fort Totten and Takoma stations on the northeastern outskirts of the city near the border with Maryland. collision and are not likely to know the cause for several days as the investigation unfolds,” the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority said on its Web site.

It was the first crash involving a passenger death since 1982, when three people were killed in a derailment. Both trains were heading south into the city.

“What happened. The Metro train system began service in 1976. . . . (was) one train was stopped waiting to get the order to pass.. .

“We are committed to investigate this accident until we determine why this happened and what must be done to ensure it never happens again,” Catoe said in a statement. The next train came up behind it and, for reasons that we do not know, collided into the back of that train,” John Catoe, general manager of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, told reporters. The accident trapped passengers in one or more of the subway cars.

The transit authority said one of those killed was a female train operator in the trailing train.

“It was very mangled, everything is ripped out of there,” the woman, who was not identified, told the local ABC television affiliate.

One witness described how one train appeared to collide with – and then run up and over – the second train.

“They will have to do both an investigation and then a release of the scene for us to clean it up,” Fenty told reporters at the scene.

“They will have to do both an investigation and then a release of the scene for us to clean it up,” Fenty told reporters at the scene.

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Australia is reducing measures to check the spread of swine flu, after figures showed the disease to be more infectious, but less likely to require hospital admission, than ordinary flu. .

But the estimates prepared for the government show that the hospital admission and likely death rate is a fraction of that suffered by Australians with seasonal flu, which claims 1000 to 2000 lives every year.

There were 2024 swine flu casesacross the Tasmanby late yesterday, with nine people in hospital, three of them in intensive care.

There have yet to be any deaths from swine flu in Australia.

Because of the mitigation measures, no more deaths from swine flu than from seasonal flu were expected. The Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer, Jim Bishop, said it might be that the arrival of swine flu had led to an easier flu season in Australia this year.

“We hope we will do better than seasonal flu.

Australia’s health minister, Nicola Roxon, announcedthat Australia would move to new flu alert arrangements, scrapping measures including widespread school closures and thermal screening at international airports. We do not know …whether H1N1 09 [swine flu] will replace seasonal flu, but if it does, it will make the management of the disease easier to treat,” Professor Bishop said. These would be available from the national stockpiles for those people with moderate or severe disease or with vulnerable conditions.

The government is also relaxing quarantine provisions and tightening distribution of antiviral medicines such as Tamiflu.

Measures will focus on early treatment of vulnerable people such as pregnant women and those with chronic diseases such as asthma and heart disease.

But Ms Roxon said it was not appropriate to give antivirals to healthy relatives.

The new regime, officially called “pandemic phase protect”, will begin first in South Australia and Western Australia within days and later in other states.

The new regime, officially called “pandemic phase protect”, will begin first in South Australia and Western Australia within days and later in other states.

– By MARK METHERELL, SMH

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Ms Roxon said the new phase recognised that swine flu was not as severe as originally envisaged when the health management plan for pandemic influenza was written last year

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Judge puts boot into boot camps

Friday, 27 February 2009

The traditional "boot camp" for young offenders was "arguably the least successful sentence in the Western world", the principal Youth Court judge says.
"It made them healthier, fitter, faster, but they were still burglars, just harder to catch, " Judge Andrew Becroft said.
"It was a spectacular, tragic, flawed, failure," he said.
He said physical programmes backed up by mentoring and family support could work, but New Zealand's corrective training camps, which ran up till 2002, found 92 per cent of young attendees reoffended within a year.
Judge Becroft made it clear he was not commenting on government policy, but said any debate on the merits of a so-called "boot camp" must be clear on what was being discussed. .
Kim Workman, of Reducing Crime and Punishment, said American experience showed that when the military-style "short, sharp, shock" approach was combined with mentoring and after-care, it still made no difference at all.
An outdoor, physically challenging programme run by quality instructors, combined with intense family therapy, drug and alcohol counselling, education and other support could be beneficial.
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett agreed the old boot camps lacked the necessary follow-up support to work.
A physical programme based on a therapeutic model could be beneficial, he said, and there were already a handful of outdoor-based programmes in the country that were working well.
"At no point are we going to throw them in there, get them fit, beat them around a little bit and send them back on the street, that's just not it at all.
But the Government's proposed military-style activity camps would be followed by six to nine months of intensive mentoring, she said.
Ms Bennett agreed the proposal was contentious and welcomed healthy public debate."
Ms Bennett has said the three-month camps for the country's 40 most dangerous young offenders would use army-type facilities and training methods to teach self-discipline, personal responsibility and community values as well as literacy, numeracy and drug and alcohol support.
The policy is a favourite of Prime Minister John Key, who raised it in his state of the nation speech last year, talking about the "1000 ticking time bombs" of youth offenders on the streets. She said she had been congratulated by police and army personnel who strongly support the scheme. He said the Defence Force would need support to deal with the highest-risk youths, and more skilled clinical psychologists and social workers were needed.
Auckland University psychologist Ian Lambie agreed boot camps alone would not work but could be effective with long-term follow-up. "There's no specialist training in child and adolescent psychology in New Zealand and it's a gap.
"At the end of the day, we've got an inadequate workforce," he said."