Two a penny

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AFP – The race to lead the UN’s culture and education agency UNESCO kicks off Monday amid controversy over charges that anti-Israel comments from Egypt’s Faruq Hosni make him unfit for the top job.

Representatives from 58 nations who make up UNESCO’s executive council begin meeting in Paris on Monday and a first round of voting to elect a successor to Japan’s Koichiro Matsuura is set for September 17.

Egypt’s culture minister for the past 22 years, Hosni is lobbying to cement his status as the frontrunner and become the next director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Wiesel, Bernard-Henri Levy and Claude Lanzmann wrote in Le Monde newspaper that the international community must spare itself from the shame of appointing Faruq Hosni to the post of UNESCO director general.

In all nine candidates are running for the post, but Hosni’s leading bid ran into trouble in May when Auschwitz survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel joined two French intellectuals to oppose his candidacy.

Hosni has since voiced regret for the comments and sought to explain that they were uttered in the context of an exchange in parliament with hardliners from the Muslim Brotherhood.

The clamour surrounds comments Hosni made in May 2008, vowing to burn Israeli books himself if he found any in Egyptian libraries. .

A former Austrian foreign minister, Ferrero-Waldner has acknowledged that she does not have the full backing of European governments, some of which support rival bids by Lithuania’s UNESCO ambassador Ina Marciulionyte and Bulgarian ambassador to France Irina Bokova.

Hosni’s main rival for the post is European Commissioner for External Relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, but the choice of Egypt’s candidate has won much support in Europe as an attempt to reach out to the Muslim world.

In an interview in Cairo, Hosni sought to fend off the accusations leveled against him and said his candidacy was based on a basic philosophy which is reconciliation between peoples.

France must remain neutral on the issue as it is the host country for UNESCO but officials have said privately that Paris favours Hosni for the job.

A recent article in the prestigious American Foreign Policy magazine described Hosni’s bid as scandalous and accused him of echoing the rampant Judeophobia of Egyptian intellectual circles.

As head of UNESCO, he would encourage a rapprochement in the whole region, without exception, Hosni said.

Amid the brouhaha, the United States has refused to publicly back a contender, but a State Department spokesman took pains to point out that the right candidate must have a demonstrated commitment to UNESCO’s core principles.

Amid the brouhaha, the United States has refused to publicly back a contender, but a State Department spokesman took pains to point out that the right candidate must have a demonstrated commitment to UNESCO’s core principles.

UNESCO

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An events management company is set to be prosecuted for allegedly supplying alcohol to under-age drinkers at school after-ball functions.

Auckland police Sergeant Jason Loye said a prosecution was the last resort in the case.

Police had tried to work with the company, which he declined to name because the matter had not yet reached the courts, but the director would not co-operate. .

“We’ve told him how to do it legally, but he doesn’t want to do it that way,” Mr Loye told the Herald on Sunday.

After-ball functions are a perennial issue and this month Auckland’s Rangitoto College made headlines after it reacted to an unsanctioned after-ball party by banning next year’s balls.”

Mr Loye said the only people who could supply alcohol to minors were their parents or legal guardians.

Last month, parents at Auckland Grammar School revealed that the after-ball function had featured cage dancers.

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An air traffic controller, who was making ‘inappropriate conversations’ on the phone at the time of a mid-air collision over New York’s Hudson River, which killed nine people including a Kiwi pilot, is to be disciplined.

The controller’s supervisor, who was not in the building at the time as required, will also be displined, the Federal Aviation Administration says.

The FAA says it has placedboth employees on administrative leave in connection with last week’s deadly mid-air collisionbetween a small plane and a helicopter piloted by New Zealander Jeremy Clarke, in which eight other people also died.

The FAA says the controller was involved in “apparently inappropriate conversations” on the telephone at the time of the accident.

The FAA said on Thursday night it has begun disciplinary proceedings against the air-traffic controller who was handling the small planeand against a supervisor on duty at the time.

However, the FAA says that the employees’ actions don’t appear to have contributed to the accident itself. .

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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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The Green Party’s three-year campaign to allow cannabis to be used for medicinal purposes came to grief in Parliament tonight.

Their bill failed on its first reading, voted down 86-34 on a conscience vote.Its promoter, Metiria Turei, pleaded with MPs to let it through so it could go to the health select committee which could hear evidence of how cannabis eased the suffering of seriously ill people.”Sick and vulnerable New Zealanders are being jailed .”Many people already use it and they live in real fear of the law,” she said… let MPs hear their stories, let these people have their say.Ms Turei said they didn’t have to smoke it, they could use it in other ways to help relieve their pain such as making tea with it or using it as oil to rub into their limbs.”Under the bill, seriously ill people would be able to apply for a cannabis card, issued on a doctor’s authority and registered with the police, which would allow them to grow small amounts of it.National MP Jonathan Coleman, a doctor, said it would bring cannabis into mainstream society.MPs who spoke in the debate said they knew Ms Turei was sincere about relieving suffering but those who opposed the bill listed numerous problems they had with it.”We would be sending a signal that it’s okay.”You can’t make out it is a good thing, we need less drugs in society,” he said.”He said doctors would be swamped with demands for cannabis cards from people insisting they were seriously ill and needed it for pain relief.”He said doctors would be swamped with demands for cannabis cards from people insisting they were seriously ill and needed it for pain relief. .Labour’s health spokeswoman, Ruth Dyson, said the prescription drugs were “horrifically expensive” and although there were problems with the bill the health select committee should have a chance to consider it.

– By PETER WILSON,

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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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A five-year-old boy was made to clean toilets by a caregiver as punishment at a Child, Youth and Family-funded after-school care programme in Rotorua.

Now his mother is seeking legal advice on the punishment – dished out after the boy supposedly hit a girl in the face with a ball.

Oriwa Pehi-Livapulu said her son Noble could have become sick after the incident at the Chipmunks Centre last week.

“My mana has been taken away from me.

He was only five and did not even clean the toilet at home, she said.

She has complained to CYF, which funded the programme. Noble’s spirit has been trampled on”, she told The New Zealand Herald.

Noble has denied hitting the girl on purpose and the incident was an accident, she said. .

Chipmunks centre owner Doug Lambert did not return calls yesterday but has said Noble was made to squirt cleaning product into a toilet before scrubbing it with a brush while being supervised by the 40-year-old caregiver, who was new.

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– Next National story: –
Charges considered after car ploughs into bakery

– National Homepage –

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CYF would not comment on whether making a child clean a toilet was appropriate

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AFP – French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy on Monday appealed for the release of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi who has been jailed and put on trial at a notorious Yangon prison.

The wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy called on the Myanmar government to free the 63-year-old pro-democracy activist in an open letter made public by the Elysee presidential palace.

We now know that Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate, once again risks being sentenced to a prison term which, given her state of health, would be life-threatening for her, wrote the first lady. .

The 41-year-old model-turned-singer said she wanted to be the voice of all those in my country who find the fate awaiting this woman to be intolerable.

The man, John Yettaw, earlier this month swam across a lake to her residence where she has been kept in virtual isolation for most of the last 19 years.

Aung San Suu Kyi is facing a five-year jail sentence on charges of harbouring an American at her home in violation of the terms of her house arrest.

The trial of Aung San Suu Kyi comes just days after she was taken from her lakeside property and imprisoned at a guest house inside the Insein prison compound.

This decision is all the more unacceptable given the Nobel Peace laureate’s state of health which has deteriorated over the past several days, they said.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and human rights minister Rama Yade last week issued a joint statement saying they condemned in the strongest terms Aung San Suu Kyi’s arrest.

Aung San Suu Kyi – Carla Bruni-Sarkozy

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AFP – French businessman Bernard Tapie said on Monday that he would make a decision on taking a stake in holiday company Club Med by June 15.

Tapie told that he had no intention of launching a takeover of Club Med at the moment because any stake he would acquire would of necessity be a minority one.

Club Med shares soared late last month on speculation there would be a buyer of the company.

Tapie pointed out that he held no shares in Club Med and had no intention of taking part, directly or indirectly in the company’s current cash-raising plans.

Tapie also said he welcomed the fact market regulator AMF was examining at the issue and he hoped it would identify those who he said had been spreading rumours about his interest in Club Med in order to boost the share price and make any acquisition of a stake more expensive for him.

Tapie earlier talked about speculation in the stock when it rose sharply at the end of April and earlier this month on rumours of a takeover.

On Monday, Club Med shares lost close toly nine percent while the broader Paris market was down close toly two percent.

On Monday, Club Med asked the market regulator to open an enquiry into trading in its shares, citing what it termed contradictory statements by Tapie.

France – tourism

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Michael Winslow, the Police Academy star known as The Man of 10,000 Sound Effects, hammed it up with a cutout of Star Wars character Yoda before his show at the Armageddon Expo, which starts in Wellington today.

About 15,000 sci-fi, fantasy and comic book fans are expected at the two-day expo at TSB Bank Arena in Wellington.
Organiser Bill Geradts said he expected this weekend’s event to be record-breaking.”
This year’s attractions include British actor Peter Davison, who played the fifth incarnation of Doctor Who in the 1980s, as well as Hercules star Kevin Sorbo. .
Mr Geradts said Winslow’s show, including imitations of Jimi Hendrix and Louis Armstrong, was very popular.
American comedian Winslow played Sergeant Larvelle “Motor Mouth” Jones in the Police Academy movies, making realistic sound effects using just his voice.
Last year, stars from TV programmes Stargate SG1 and Babylon 5, attracted more than 13,000 people to the event.

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Click play to see Michael Winslow performing as Jimi Hendrix and Louis Armstrong at the Armageddon Expo in Christchurch