Two a penny

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It will be fascinating to observe Luke McAlister, should he play well and the All Blacks beat Australia tomorrow night.

For now, limited gametime and patchy performances mean he does not exactly reek of confidence. And perhaps that will prove the opportunity he needs to recapture some spark, on and off the paddock.

But with Dan Carter now responsible for steering the team from first five-eighth, moving out to 12 means there is less pressure on McAlister. I can’t think, ‘oh, I haven’t really played much rugby’ otherwise I’ll go into the game with the wrong frame of mind,” he said.

“I’ve just got to go out there and believe in myself and have the self-confidence to do well with the boys. It’s great to be named in the starting XV.

“I’ve done all the training and everything, to give myself that confidence.”

McAlister described the chance to run more from second five-eighth as “one of the perks” of the job, while his strong right boot should complement Carter’s left-foot kicking game nicely. It definitely lifts you and lifts that motivation throughout the week, when you are starting.”

The All Blacks’ last outing, in Durban, where they lost 31-19 to South Africa was characterised by some crazy attempts to run the ball out of trouble.

“It’s the same as the Aussie boys [Matt Giteau and Berrick Barnes] and gives us another option and hopefully we’ll be able to get the ball and Dan will put me in a few holes, which would be nice.

As the All Blacks backs ran drills at training yesterday with assistant coach Wayne Smith, the pack was at the far end of the ground, working on its lineout repertoire.

While “saddened” that the kick has become king in rugby, McAlister said he and his team-mates had to accept it and take a more prudent approach to dealing with that aerial bombardment.

It was teapots all round and the slightly worrying sight of forwards coach Steve Hansen literally having to move players like building blocks to ensure they were standing in the right place. There was plenty of variation but one common theme the ball kept going astray.

Nonetheless, hooker Andrew Hore said he was relatively pleased with how things are progressing. It was hardly the authoritative display you would expect from an elite international team in its last serious hit-out before a test match. . “It always goes well at training, when you’ve got no-one jumping against you and stuff

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Police have asked the public to keep an eye out for a commercial burglar who disguises himself with sunglasses, large hats and a fake moustache. .

Goods taken in the burglaries include varied products made from possum and merino, cigarettes, sports brand clothing and expensive jewellery.

Patmore is 1.

Shopkeepers should keep their stock secure as Patmore has been thought to enter unattended loading bays during the day and carry boxes of stock away, police said.

A warrant for his arrest was issued by Auckland police after a spate of burglaries there, but police believe he has returned to Wellington.82m tall and European, but police say he disguises his appearance by wearing a fake moustache, sunglasses and large hats.

Members of the public should call police if they see anyone suspicious lingering close to warehouses and delivery areas.

-By KATHERINE NEWTON,

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A search is underway for a boat battling severe weather off the coast of Whangarei.

A mayday call was received from the boat, the East Coaster, about 1.

No further broadcasts had been received. .

Mr Blakemore said a helicopter and a coastguard vessel had searched the area near the Hen and Chickens Islands, southeast of Whangarei, but had not seen any sign of the East Coaster.

A fixed-wing aircraft was en route to Whangarei from Taupo to help in the search, the Coastguard said.

“We need to know who is on board, where they might be going, where they regularly travel.

“If anyone has any information about this vessel, we would really appreciate hearing from them,” he said.”

A Coastguard spokeswoman said little was known about the vessel or who was on board other than that it was blue and white. We urge anyone who may know those on board to get in touch with the RCCNZ.5 – 4 metre swells and low visibility.

Mr Blakemore said conditions in the area were rough, with winds gusting from 37kmh to 56kmh, 3.

Navy and coastguard vessels would search the area this morning, but worsening weather was preventing an aerial search.

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MPs with larger expense bills than their colleagues are defending their spending as necessary or the use of an historical entitlement. .

It is the first time that all individual MPs’ expenses funded from the Parliamentary Service have been revealed.

MPs spent on average around $40,000 in expenses, but there were huge variations.

The figures laid out MPs travel and accommodation expenses for the first six months of the year, at the same time as Ministerial Services released similar figures for ministers.

Some MPs did stand out.

Most of the larger differences were due to the MP’s electorate being large and expensive to cover and being a long way from Wellington.

By far the highest spending MP on air travel, other than ministers, was Chris Carter, from the Auckland electorate of Te Atatu, with an expense bill of $82,410.

Senior Labour MP Trevor Mallard said Mr Carter’s expenses were inflated because they included travel to China, Britain, the United States and Canada.

He spent $57,137 on air travel, far in excess of any other Opposition MP, $14,476 on surface travel and $10,667 on Wellington accommodation.

“He is a hard working member of Parliament.

Mr Mallard said Mr Carter had travelled to those countries as Labour’s foreign affairs spokesperson.

ACT MPs have long criticised wasteful government spending, but Sir Roger said a large part of the expense was due to him using an entitlement that he gained as a former MP in the 1980s.”

ACT MP Roger Douglas was the largest spending list MP with $62,663 in expenses including $44,411 in air travel and $11,083 in surface travel.

“I am entitled to claim back 90 per cent of my own overseas travel and I did that for a trip to the UK which I took with my wife,” Sir Roger said.

“I am entitled to claim back 90 per cent of my own overseas travel and I did that for a trip to the UK which I took with my wife,” Sir Roger said. Listen my friend, this is a right that Helen Clark has, Jim Bolger, it’s something I would have been able to do whether I was an MP or not.

“I was spending some time with my son and my grandchildren.”

. Thanks

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Thousands of Irish Catholics have flocked this week to a County Limerick
church to pray at the stump of a recently cut willow that many observers
say has the silhouette of the Virgin Mary.

The phenomenon at St Mary’s parish church in Rathkeale, population 3,000 or so, harkens back to decades when Catholic devotion and pilgrimages were the dominant feature of rural life in Ireland.

Some are tying the fervor for Rathkeale’s “Holy Stump” to Ireland’s stunning economic decline over the past year. And this is all good for the soul,” said Noel White, who has been overseeing a church project to cut down trees dangerously overhanging the neighboring school playground. .” One worker cut through the stump at a near-vertical angle, revealing a wooden relief that inspires some to see the Virgin Mary.

When one willow was felled near the church entrance Monday, he said, a major branch cracked off and made “a funny shape.

“One lad beside the one who’d made the cut immediately saw the outline of Our Lady and blessed himself. Every one of us could see it,” he said. It really is unreal.

“I see it as the grain of a tree myself,” he said.

The workman who made the cut, Anthony Reddin, said he doesn’t see the Virgin Mary. Numbers swelled to several hundred the next night.

Nonetheless, word of mouth brought about 100 to inspect and pray at the stump that first night. By Wednesday, more than a thousand came and went as a makeshift shrine of candles, rosaries and miniature statues of Mary grew. By Wednesday, more than a thousand came and went as a makeshift shrine of candles, rosaries and miniature statues of Mary grew. His summer replacement, the Rev.

The parish priest is away on vacation. He says locals are letting their imagination run wild and threatening to violate the commandment, “Thou shalt not worship a false God. Willie Russell, is not impressed. You don’t worship a tree,” Russell said.”

“It’s just a tree. “I don’t believe in idolatry.

The priest said he saw no harm in saying Hail Mary prayers at the spot – so long as the faithful don’t actually find themselves praying to the stump itself.

The County Limerick diocese of the church said it viewed the stump with “great skepticism. That would be the danger,” he said.

White said he didn’t understand the church’s distinction between its age-old love of statues and this natural discovery.

White said he didn’t understand the church’s distinction between its age-old love of statues and this natural discovery.

“We pray in front of statues which are marble and chalk. What’s the difference if it’s timber?” he said.

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Clayton Weatherston claims the woman he stabbed to death “scared him”.

He has this afternoon told the jury in his own murder trial that Sophie Elliott pushed him, grabbed him in the face and told him he “looked like s…

Weatherston, 33, accepts he killed his ex-girlfriend Elliott, 22, at her Dunedin home on January 9 last year, but denies it was murder, saying he was provoked.”.

“She seemed to have a lot of baggage,” Weatherston said.

At the Christchurch High Court this afternoon, Weatherston has answered further questions from defence counsel Judith Ablett-Kerr QC about his relationship with Elliott.”

Weatherston is taking the jury through a chronology of the relationship, outlining dates of significance that he recalls.

“It just seemed like a very negative relationship at a very early point.

“She was extremely upset.

He said at one point late in August 2007 he did not see Elliott for a couple of days while he was looking after an ex-girlfriend who was upset.

The next day, they drove out of town, she pushed him, grabbed hold of his face and told him he “looked like s. She spoke to me on the phone saying she was extremely angry with me but that it could wait,” Weatherston said…

“She felt that I’d neglected her in favour of [suppressed].”.”

Another time, Elliott had reacted violently when he spurned her sexual advances. I didn’t feel very good about being told that. And she got off and starting kneeing and kicking and punching me in the bed,”

Weatherston said.

“She felt that I had lost interest in having sex with her. .

“I was quite embarrassed by the whole thing actually… I was a bit sore.”

Weatherston said there were “a few things happening that made my libido rather less than it would have been.”

He said on a further occasion, Elliott had mocked a former boyfriend.

“I was horrified as a result of what she thought was funny,” Weatherston said.

She “exhibited a huge amount of insensitivity …That scared me,” he said.

“I’m a person who needs a degree of sensitivity. .

She had told him of a man she had been with who “had a penis that was ridiculously out of proportion to his body,” Weatherston said.

“Basically, she went on about of the different aspects of him sexually. I was extremely disappointed. She was almost keen to portray a sexual history to me and we hadn’t developed our own sexual history,” Weatherston said.

“Why was she saying this stuff? What was the intention? Was she angry with me? … For me, it had fairly profound effects on my attraction to her.”

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New Zealand has 153 cases of swine flu, up from 127 yesterday, though the health ministry says it is sticking to its containment strategy. . But to continue to take the usual steps to reduce the community spread of the virus.

Canterbury has the highest number of confirmed cases with 51 followed by Auckland with 46 and Wellington with 44.

Of the 26 new cases, one is in Auckland, 12 are in Canterbury, 12 in Wellington and one is in Hawke’s Bay.

There are still only isolated cases of community transmission

Rotorua Boys High School has sent all Year 11 students home until Tuesday after a friend of the student infected with swine flu began displaying flu-like symptoms.

There are four in the Waikato, four in the Bay of Plenty, two in Hawke’s Bay, one in Wanganui/Palmerston North and one in Nelson/Marlborough.

In a statement today, Principal Chris Grinter said the second student had been tested but the results were not yet back..

“However and on the advice of the Medical Officer of Health I have been advised that as a precautionary measure, Year 11 students of Rotorua Boys’ High School should remain at home tomorrow . and Monday,” he said..

“Any student feeling unwell on Tuesday morning should seek an appointment with their Healthcare Provider and should stay at home,” he said.

The students were also instructed to sit out all school activities including sports, Kapa Haka and the rehearsals for the school production.

Yesterday the school decided it would remain open despite the pupil being confirmed as having swine flu.

Yesterday the school decided it would remain open despite the pupil being confirmed as having swine flu.

Three prisoners at Rimutaka Prison are also in isolation under suspicion of having contracted the virus.

Westlake Girls High School also ordered 450 students to stay home this week after one was diagnosed with the virus. They would be tested if their condition worsened, the corrections department said. One of the prisoners had been tested though his results were not yet back while the condition of the other two was being monitored.

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TESTING TIMES

Meanwhile the Government’s national influenza testing centre has cut its testing time by more than a third as it struggles to cope with rising numbers of suspected swine flu cases

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A businessman has pleaded guilty to using his cellphone to take hundreds of images with views up women’s skirts.

Judge Geoff Rea, in Hastings District Court yesterday, said the 48-year-old, from Hastings, had filmed “dozens, if not hundreds” of women. The man, a father-of-three, pleaded guilty to two charges of making the intimate recordings of unsuspecting victims.
The man, in court with his wife, was caught after using his cellphone to take a photo of a woman in The Warehouse in Hastings on February 13. He has been granted interim name suppression. The court was told the man bent over behind her, held his phone under her mini skirt and took a photo. The woman was bending over to look at cushions. .
An analysis of the man’s computer hard-drive, seized from his home, revealed he had taken hundreds of video and still images up women’s skirts. He was chased by an off-duty police officer who noticed him frantically pushing buttons on the cellphone.
He had only one previous conviction, 25 years ago. His lawyer, Bill Calver, told the court his client had a fetish for women’s underwear. Police opposed name suppression.
Mr Calver said the man was depressed and he sought name suppression on the strength of a psychiatrist’s report that said publication of his name may heighten his suicide risk.
Judge Rea said: “The overwhelming public interest and concern in something like this would normally mean your name would be published almost as of right.
Judge Rea said: “The overwhelming public interest and concern in something like this would normally mean your name would be published almost as of right.

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The man was sentenced to 400 hours’ community work

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A 75-year-old woman was the subject of a more than 160km police pursuit with a twist on Tuesday.

The Taiwanese woman, who was in Te Anau with a group of tourists, left a gift shop wearing a jacket allegedly without paying for it before boarding her tour bus.
Constable James Ure, of Te Anau, said the woman had been in Kowhai Gifts & Souvenirs in the town centre and allegedly walked out of the shop wearing the polar-fleece jacket about 3pm.
Mr Ure gave chase, trying to get the Queenstown-bound driver of the bus to pull over to no avail.
Police were called, but the woman had already left on her bus, he said.
Meanwhile, inquiries made by the Te Anau police station receptionist led to her tracking down a phone number for the driver, whom she rang and managed to get him to pull over at Jacks Point 17km from Queenstown, Mr Ure said. .
Language barriers proved to be a problem when it came to interviewing the woman, he said, but the woman said she believed her husband had paid for the jacket.
The woman was likely to be referred for police diversion, he said.
Her alleged offending, subsequent arrest and questioning in Te Anau had interrupted her tour and late yesterday her bus was believed to be in the Mackenzie Basin, Mr Ure said.
People of all ages were prone to attempt to steal goods, he said.
Kowhai Gifts & Souvenirs owner Yasu Omori, of Te Anau, said shoplifting by tourists was quite common at the shop, but it did have good systems in place to catch light-fingered customers.
“She just looked like a very nice American woman.
A 63-year-old American woman was caught ripping the store off late last year.”

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Fiji’s Reserve Bank – which is housed in the same building as the New Zealand High Commission – is occupied by soldiers and the central banker under arrest, reliable sources have told .

The martial law crackdown comes as TV3 reporter Sia Aston and cameraman Matt Smith, and Australian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent Sean Dorney, were deported and are currently flying to Auckland.

A Fiji TV reporter, Edwin Nand, who interviewed Mr Dorney as he was being deported, has been arrested and is in custody.

As he missed a flight to his Brisbane home its understood he has been deported to Auckland.

Ms Aston and Mr Smith were allowed to stay in a Nadi hotel last night but Mr Dorney was held at the immigration detention centre.

He has also raised the possibility of travel and trade bans to the troubled Pacific nation but said they were not preferred options.

Meanwhile Foreign Minister Murray McCully says New Zealanders should think twice about visiting Fiji.

The latest turmoil in Fiji was prompted by its Court of Appeal ruling last Thursday that Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama’s regime, in power since staging a 2006 coup, was illegal under the country’s 1997 constitution.

Sources who cannot be named for fear of their safety say the military has moved into the Fiji Reserve Bank building and the home of governor Savenaca Narbue.

In response, the country’s ailing 89-year-old President Josefa Iloilo sacked the judges, dissolved the constitution, ruled out any election for five years and briefly removed Cdre Bainimarama before re-appointing him as prime minister.

Sources say the New Zealand High Commission offices, which are a floor below the governor’s office, have not been entered by the military.

It’s understood he has been removed and maybe under arrest.3 percent as against a projected 2.

He has been loudly warning Fiji that its economy is in major strife and on Thursday he announced the domestic economic would contract this year by 0.4 percent.4 percent.

Fiji normally has reserves of around five to six months.7 months of imports of goods. .

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Sources say there is now a real fear that the last of the reserves will flee this week