Two a penny

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More New Zealand aid and specialist help has arrived in tsunami-ravaged Samoa today.

An Air Force Boeing 757 landed at the Pacific Island today carrying police dog search teams, medical personnel and a surgical team, including Samoan-speaking doctors and nurses.”We are working closely with Australian and Samoan health authorities, as well as the New Zealand Defence Force, to put people with the right mix of skills in place in a planned and managed fashion.”The timing is at the request of the Samoan authorities, so that the team will relieve some of the Australian team, and also allow local staff to take a break to be with their own families,” Health Minister Tony Ryall said.Their arrival will boost the numbers of New Zealand Defence Force personnel helping with the aftermath of Wednesday morning’s earthquake and tsunami to 99, Radio New Zealand reported.”The surgical team would take with it medical equipment and supplies requested by Samoa.HMNZS Canterbury was expected to sail from New Zealand on Tuesday with more aid and equipment.Medical and food supplies were also aboard.Yesterday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed two New Zealand children died in the tsunamis and a third was missing, presumed dead.Meanwhile, the Defence Force said a water purification system delivered on yesterday should be operational by today.”Grave concerns” were held for Matamata sisters Petria and Rebecca Martin, who were staying at Taufua Lodge resort in Lalomanu, the worst-hit area.Two adult New Zealanders had also died as walls of water swamped the island nation: Raglan woman Mary Ann White and an unidentified person, the ministry said.South Auckland woman Tauaavaga Tupuola - the 84-year-old grandmother of Kiwis rugby league star Matt Utai - was swept to her death with her granddaughter, Bula Okei, 28, and three-year-old great-granddaughter Sima, The reported.Also staying at the resort was two-year-old Auckland toddler Alfie Cunliffe, who is missing and believed to have died when he was swept out to sea as the tsunami hit.Hopes were also fading for Matamata sisters Petria and Rebecca Martin, who have been missing since Wednesday.The ministry was investigating earlier today whether Mrs Tupuola was a New Zealand passport holder, a spokesman told today. It was expected to rise further.The death toll stands at 189 - 149 in Samoa, 31 in American Samoa and nine in Tonga.He has since returned to New Zealand, but has promised the nation more aid to help in the disaster’s aftermath.Prime Minister John Key arrived in Samoa yesterday to see firsthand the devastation wreaked by the tsunamis. The title, given as he drank kava in the village’s meeting house, meant he would be known as “To’osavili Sione Key”. reported he had been made a chief, or “ali’i”, of the devastated village of Poutasi.”We are keeping a register of skilled health professionals and co-ordinating our resources with Australia to ensure that we provide the most effective help possible in conjunction with the Samoan health service,” he said.Meanwhile, more than 250 New Zealand health professionals had volunteered to help in Samoa, Mr Ryall said.Medical help would be needed for weeks to come and Mr Ryall asked that health professionals able to assist phone (09) 263 1381, fax (09) 261 3396 or email Incident.Medical help would be needed for weeks to come and Mr Ryall asked that health professionals able to assist phone (09) 263 1381, fax (09) 261 3396 or email Incident.Controllermiddlemore. .nz outlining their details.

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Police handling of the search of the house in Christchurch where the bodies of two murdered women were found has been slammed by Maori Party MP Rahui Katene.

The MP for Tai Tonga is critical of the way police treated the family living next door to the “murder house” in the Christchurch suburb of Wainoni. .

“I just don’t think it’s good enough that the family living in the other half of the semi-detached house in Christchurch had to learn through the media that there was a murder investigation going on next door. Their children – and the parents too – don’t want to go back there again.

“This family has been severely traumatised by what has happened right next door to them.”

Ms Katene said she would take the matter up with senior police in Wellington. And I’m appalled that the police have suggested that they can move back in again.

“As a local ratepayer I support the move and encourage the council to pull it down and turn the site into something useful for the community.

But she applauded efforts by Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker to get council to consider buying the house.”

The bodies of 28-year-old Tisha Lowry and the 35-year-old wife of the man charged with her murder were recovered from beneath the house this week. I hope he doesn’t take notice of the people complaining about that move.

Neither can be named due to suppression orders.

The 33-year-old man who lived at the house has been charged with his wife’s murder and is expected to face a second murder charge when he appears in Christchurch District Court on Friday.

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Seven times Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher will replace injured driver Felipe Massa at Ferrari if he passes a fitness test, the team said early today (NZ time).

The German, now 40 years old, retired from Formula One at the end of 2006. All being well, he will make his comeback in Valencia, Spain, next month.

“Michael Schumacher has shown his willingness and in the next few days he will undergo a specific programme of preparation at the end of which it will be possible to confirm his participation in the championship starting with the European Grand Prix on Aug.

“Ferrari intends to entrust Michael Schumacher with Felipe Massa’s car for as long as the Brazilian driver is not able to race,” the Italian team said in a statement.”

That race is one of the few Schumacher is unfamiliar with since the Spanish street circuit was added to the calendar only last season. 23.

Schumacher’s comeback for the reigning champions will be a huge boost for Formula One organisers as well as local fans, who could be without home hero Fernando Alonso after his Renault team were suspended for one race.

Both Hamilton, 24, and 22-year-old German race winner Vettel – nicknamed ‘Baby Schumi’ by his compatriots – entered the sport after Schumacher had left the scene.

His comeback will be the first time McLaren’s current world champion Lewis Hamilton, as well as Red Bull’s title contender Sebastian Vettel, have raced against the man who dominated a decade.

“I talked on the telephone with (team principal) Stefano Domenicali and (Ferrari president) Luca de Montezemolo this afternoon and we decided jointly that I’ll start preparing to jump in for Felipe,” he said on his website, www.

Ferrari contacted the German, who has taken part in occasional motorcycle races since he retired, after Brazilian Massa fractured his skull in an accident at last weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix.de. .

“Even though I completely wrapped up the subject of Formula One quite a while ago, due to my attachment to the team I cannot ignore this unfortunate situation.

“Even though I completely wrapped up the subject of Formula One quite a while ago, due to my attachment to the team I cannot ignore this unfortunate situation.

He won his first world title aged 25 with Benetton in 1994, by a single point from Britain’s Damon Hill, and retained the title the following season before moving to Ferrari in 1996.”

Schumacher is Formula One’s most successful driver, with 91 wins and more titles and records than anyone else has ever achieved.

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He won five straight titles from 2000, and his final tally of race wins far eclipsed the previous mark of 51 set by Frenchman Alain Prost

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A judge has thrown out charges against a man accused of helping inmates run a large drug ring from the maximum-security wing of Auckland’s Paremoremo prison.

During a depositions hearing in the North Shore District Court last week, Judge David McNaughton dismissed methamphetamine and LSD charges against Bruce Leigh Andrews, the New Zealand Herald reported.

The operation involved smuggling cold tables containing pseudoephedrine from China inside toothpaste, chocolates and cakes to be turned into P at the homes of associates.

Andrews was accused of organising cellphones, collecting payments and passing on orders from senior members of the syndicate.

All but three of those facing methamphetamine charges have been committed for trial.

The 16 defendants have denied the charges over the alleged multi-million-dollar drug ring.

Judge McNaughton will decide next week whether the three will stand trial.

Inmates Arthur William Taylor and Ernest Tofaeono, and Tai Bong Rhee who is accused of organising the pseudoephedrine supply from China, have not conceded a prima facie case, the newspaper reported.

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Two people have died on New Zealand roads this weekend.

This morning a 78-year-old Hauraki man died at the scene of a crash close to Paeroa.

The driver of the ute was the only other person involved and was unhurt.

Police said the man attempted to do a U-turn in the path of a northbound ute close to the intersection of Rangiora Road, Komata, on State Highway 26.

The dead man was driving west and hit an oncoming car, Sergeant Steve Salton said.

About 1am yesterday (Saturday) a 22-year-old man died at the scene of a two-car collision on Auckland’s Upper Harbour motorway, close to the Greenhithe Bridge.

On Friday morning two teenage girls were killed in a car crash in Whangarei.

He suspected speed to be a factor in the crash.10am.

The pair, who were aged 17 and 18, were killed when the car they were in rolled down a bank on Anzac Rd and into the front yard of a property in suburban Morningside just after 1.

The two were in the back seat of the car and not wearing seatbelts, Northland police spokeswoman Sarah Kennett said.

Police said they were locals.

They received minor injuries and did not need hospital treatment.

There were three other women, aged 16 to 19, in the car.

Ms Kennett said the car lost control on a bend and no other vehicles were involved.

The driver was breath-tested at the scene and was found not to have been under the influence of alcohol.

Also on Friday, a woman died after her car and a truck collided close to Dargaville, 58km south west of Whangarei.

She said the road would have been wet as it rained in Whangarei yesterday and overnight.

The woman driver of the car died at the scene. . The three deaths on the road on Friday fell outside of the weekend reporting period.

* The weekend road death toll was earlier incorrectly reported as five.

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Immigration ‘has to be fixed’

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Hundreds of women are paying for new “egg-timer” fertility tests, with experts forecasting increasing numbers will freeze their eggs. .

Since their introduction, hundreds of women each month have paid about $400 for the test and follow-up consultation.

Previously, women had to pay for a less accurate and more costly ultrasound scan to determine fertility.

The Health Minister is considering a recommendation by the Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology, which guides the Government on fertility issues, that the use of frozen eggs be allowed for some individuals.

Experts say the tests will see a consequent rise in the freezing of eggs, despite it still being illegal to thaw them.

Collyer said one in four New Zealanders now had infertility issues.

The new egg tests had attracted “a lot of interest from single women”, said Michelle Collyer, chief executive of support group Fertility New Zealand. The egg-timer tests allowed single women and couples to make informed decisions about when and how to have children, she said. This had climbed from about one in five several years ago.

A lot of single women had not met “Mr Right” yet and wanted to know how long they had before they were unable to conceive or could do so only with great difficulty.

Many women in their 30s who called Fertility New Zealand about the tests said they were likely to consider freezing their eggs if they found they had a limited time to conceive. “That means people are often putting their career before embarking on a family.

“We are dealing with a lot of social infertility now rather than biological infertility,” Collyer said.”

Obstetrician and gynaecologist Andrew Murray, the medical director of Fertility Associates in Wellington, said its “egg-check” tests provided important information for single women and couples in deciding when to start a family.

“The egg test gives people more information about what their options are and, as far as I’m concerned, the more information the better.

Few people had eggs frozen at Fertility Associates, and they were predominantly cancer patients.

Having the test, and freezing eggs, were a kind of “fertility insurance”, he said.

Currently, a frozen embryo was far more likely to be successfully thawed than a frozen egg, he said.

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However, it was likely that if the thawing of eggs was allowed and the related technology became more sophisticated, more women might do it, Murray said.

The cost of being inseminated with donor sperm was about $1000.

It cost about $10,000 to freeze either an egg or an embryo, Murray said.

Women produced a finite number of eggs at birth.

Repromed deputy medical director Dr Greg Phillipson said its egg-timer tests assessed levels of the hormone AMH, which related to a woman’s egg supply.

If, for example, a woman scored 10 per cent, it was likely she had a limited window of opportunity to conceive, he said.

If, for example, a woman scored 10 per cent, it was likely she had a limited window of opportunity to conceive, he said.

It was likely that if the moratorium on thawing eggs was lifted, more single women with limited fertility would freeze eggs for when they met their life partner, Phillipson said.

BACK ON FERTILTY TRACK

At 31, Caron Gutovitz believed she had years left to conceive a child.

However, after a new blood test that determines how many eggs a woman has left, Gutovitz has found she is nearing the end of her fertility.

The egg-timer or egg-check blood test was recently introduced to New Zealand.

Since then, hundreds of women have had it.

Gutovitz had her son, Owen, about two years ago, and had been trying to conceive for the past year.

Eventually, she turned to fertility experts, who discovered scarring on her uterus.

This had been removed, but she was still unable to get pregnant.

“I had the egg-check tests and it showed that my fertility was very low,” she said. “It showed my ovaries thought I was far older than I am.

“My body thought I was 40-something instead of 31. The result was pretty unexpected because I wouldn’t have thought I had that problem.”

The egg-check test is done via a blood test.

Results take about 10 days and are plotted on a graph against a person’s age.

Gutovitz said the test results had “radically” changed her outlook on getting pregnant.

She is now starting in vitro fertilisation treatment.

“If I hadn’t done the test, I would have continued to try and get pregnant through less invasive techniques. This way I know what my options are and I’m not going to find myself running out of time.”

- KIM THOMAS,

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Ron Clark remembers standing in the middle of a fireball, watching as his Nelson fish and chip shop exploded around him.

One second he had been preparing for Easter Weekend, his busiest time of the year; the next, he was engulfed in flames when a gas leak ignited. Just a huge explosion and then the building isn’t there.
“It happened instantaneously.”
Mr Clark, 67, is not sure how he made it out alive. You open up your eyes and it’s just the sky no walls, no roof and a ball of fire. I mean, Jesus, there was no building left.
“You couldn’t say that it was anything less than a miracle, really. The beard he kept for most of his life was burnt off- until the explosion his wife, Carole, had never seen him without it.”
He suffered burns to his arms, legs and face.
He had been standing beside a refrigerator when its motor kicked in and a spark ignited gas that had leaked from a vat.
Mr Clark, who has run the Milton Street Fish and Chip Cafe for eight years, is recovering in Hutt Hospital’s burns unit after last Thursday’s explosion. . The explosion knocked the shop’s roof off and blew out the back and front walls. “I could look down and see the skin falling offmy legs.
“I was just standing there one second, and then a split second later I am in a yellow ball of fire,” he said from his hospital bed.
Neighbours helped him, and firefighters were on the scene within minutes.”
Mr Clark stumbled out of his shop and across the street to a neighbour’s front yard, where he found a hose to douse himself with water.
He was later flown to Hutt Hospital, where his arms and legs were wrapped in man-made skin to protect him from infection.
They put a special cooling mask on his face, then took him to Nelson Hospital.
He is full of praise for the medical staff who treated him at the scene, as well as those in hospital, and is already planning to rebuild his fish and chip shop. Mr Clark believes the mask may have saved his face.

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Fellow bikies performed a haka chant as the coffin of Rebels motorcycle club life member Richard Roberts was lifted from a motorcycle sidecar at a crematorium in Canberra.

About 300 bikies attended Roberts’ funeral on Monday, remembering the man they called ”Rebel Rick” as a ‘’superstar” of drinking who ”loved the chicks and they loved him”.

”He was feared by those who didn’t know him, but loved by those who did,” a fellow bikie, known as Pappa, said of Roberts in a eulogy.

The 57-year-old New Zealand-born father of three was fatally shot last Tuesday at a suburban Canberra home.

”He was a hard worker.

Another Rebel said the slain man had ”loved his club and loved to ride”.

Roberts was a New Zealander who shifted to Australia in 1973.”

Roberts was also remembered as a man with a ”heart of gold” who ”could make you laugh”.

Engelbert Humperdinck’s cover version of Frank Sinatra’s My Way, with the poignant lyrics ”Regrets? I’ve a had few”, was played after the eulogies. .

Earlier, a procession of more than 300 bikies and an empty hearse moved through the northern suburbs of Canberra from a Rebels clubhouse in Queanbeyan to the Norwood Park Crematorium under police escort.

Bikies from Rebels chapters as far away as southeastern Victoria, the NSW central coast, Gundagai and Sydney attended the funeral.

A police car stood by as the bikies, most of them wearing helmets, ran a red light at the entrance to the crematorium.

The coffin containing Roberts’ body was carried on a sidecar. Police have charged 20-year-old Russell Field with their murders.

Roberts and Gregory Carrigan, 48, were shot dead outside a southern Canberra house last week.

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A spokeswoman for ACT police said the funeral and the procession through Canberra on Monday morning were incident-free.

The slayings were initially thought to be an explosion of violence between outlaw bikie gangs, but a long-time Rebels member has said they resulted from a bitter ”love triangle”.

The proposed laws would allow police to apply to the Supreme Court for an order to prohibit members identified in an outlaw motorcycle gang from associating with each other.

The funeral was held as the NSW government is considering introducing tough new laws aimed at stamping out violent bikie gangs.

The night before Monday’s funeral, a Hells Angel member, believed to be Peter Zervas, 32, was gunned down outside his Sydney home.

One bikie at the funeral wore a provocative t-shirt which read, ”Love us or hate us, you’d better get used to us”.

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The man, who survived the shooting, is the brother of Anthony Zervas, 29, who last week was bludgeoned to death at Sydney airport during a brawl between members of the Hells Angels and the rival bikie gang Comancheros

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Teacher undergoing surgery after bus crash

and Wednesday, 25 February 2009

Eight pupils from a Gisborne high school were discharged from hospital in Hastings today after a bus crash on the Napier-Wairoa road.
The group's teacher, who was driving their mini bus back to Gisborne, was undergoing surgery as pupils waited for their parents to arrive from Gisborne to collect them.
The Lytton High School group was travelling on State Highway 2 near Putorino about 6.
Police said it appeared a car came around a corner towards the northbound mini bus and may have crossed the centre line.30pm when the crash happened.
The car driver received facial injuries and broken bones.
The pupils suffered moderate injuries ranging from broken bones to bruising.
The Lowe Walker rescue helicopter tried to land at the crash scene, but had to turn back because of bad weather.
Both vehicles were extensively damaged. .

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Police said they were continuing their investigation into the accident and hoped to speak to both drivers today

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Board sacked to protect pupils

Friday, 30 January 2009

The Government has sacked a second school board in a fortnight after revelations its teachers were hitting, swearing at and denigrating pupils.
Education Minister Anne Tolley dissolved the board of South Auckland's Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate yesterday and replaced it with a commissioner to safeguard pupils.
The move followed a damning Education Review Office report which raised "serious concerns about student safety and about the quality of teaching" at the school. It is one of 10 South Auckland secondary schools that had police officers posted on the grounds as part of a pilot scheme last year to fight crime, and gather intelligence about youth gangs and drug dealing. The 1280-pupil co-ed state school is decile one, meaning it teaches pupils from the poorest and most deprived communities and homes.
In the latest sacking, ERO said the board had failed to provide a safe environment. .
"The physical and emotional abuse of students by a few teachers is a long-standing issue that has been brought to the board's attention in the past.
Mrs Tolley said the abuse was concerning. This abuse by some teachers includes hitting, swearing at and denigrating students," the report says. Student safety is paramount. "That is totally unacceptable. ERO found a climate of mistrust among the school's three principals and said the board's inadequacy hindered the school's ability to provide quality education."
Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate is effectively three schools - junior, middle and senior.
Given the report's allegations, Mrs Tolley said she had no hesitation appointing a commissioner to replace the board.
Given the report's allegations, Mrs Tolley said she had no hesitation appointing a commissioner to replace the board.
"It was a good school," he said.
Former pupil Charles Makakea, who graduated last year, said he was surprised to hear the board was under fire.
A former teacher said it was a low-decile school and there were a lot of tensions for teachers.
He had heard reports of teachers hitting students, "but I didn't know for sure"."
But though it was a difficult environment, there were no excuses for the behaviour described in the report.
"I understand it's also a hard-to-staff school.
"Maintaining discipline and managing safety in challenging circumstances can be difficult for trained professionals who are working full time.
Post Primary Teachers Association president Kate Gainsford said it was appalling that concerns had reached such serious levels without effective support for the board being put in place earlier."
ERO will return to the school within 12 months. For volunteers devoting their spare time to shoulder such heavy responsibilities, [it] is a tall order.