Two a penny

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LATEST:
The last of the North Island properties blacked
out by last weekend’s snow storm are expected to have power restored
today as another storm brews.

About 455 properties across rural Hawke’s Bay and Taupo lost power on Sunday after powerlines were brought down by unseasonal heavy snow.

Power company Unison said today it had scrambled to reconnect customers and about half a dozen properties around the Tarawera area remained without power this morning.

“But all the guys were up there early this morning, so we’re confident we’ll have those on earlier rather than later today.

“We’ve only got a small handful now of remote, rural high country-type properties, and that also includes supplies to woolsheds etc,” customer relations manager Danny Gough said.

Forty concrete power poles, each weighing 1500 kilograms, had been replaced.”

Diggers cut tracks through steep forested land to truck in power lines after fallen trees had snapped lines and poles.

Foreman Alf Hunt said the work had been “hard, slow and cold”.

“You need to watch every step or you will slip up real quick.

“There is limited access and it is slow and difficult progress working through deep snow.”

Tarawera farmer Colin Baker expected power to be restored to his property today after it was cut on Sunday night.

“There are a lot of trees to clear away which have come down and snapped the top of the pole and lines.

“Living without power hasn’t been a problem.

Mr Baker, solo father of Tamati, 6, and Hiniata, 2, said the family was self-sufficient, with a gas barbecue, generators and wood for heating. We prepared for times like this. We prepared for times like this.

The family was down to its last drop of milk.

The station, close to Mohaka River, had been without power since Sunday afternoon.” Cooking was done on a barbecue. “We had a small generator to keep lights and television on, and boil the jug.”

Mr Procter was more worried for his 600 ewes.

“It’s been cold enough to keep the fridge and freezers cool, so long as we didn’t open the doors too often.

“It’s the middle of lambing and I haven’t been able to check on them since Sunday. .”

SEVERE WEATHER WATCH

Meanwhile, the MetService has issued a severe weather watch for the area, saying more snow was expected for Friday night and Saturday morning. Anything born in the last few days will be dead.

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The “Fight of the Century” is ready to live up to its billing and set records as New Zealand’s hottest and most expensive sporting ticket.

But the marks set by next month’s David Tua v Shane Cameron “grudge” heavyweight boxing contest at Hamilton’s Mystery Creek may not last long, with promoters admitting they’re likely to be dwarfed by revenues that will be generated for the Rugby World Cup in 2011.In the meantime, Tua-Cameron on October 3 looks set to take the title as not only the most hyped sporting contest of the Kiwi sporting year, but the most expensive ticket to a New Zealand event.Already 6000 of the capacity 8000 seats have been sold and Higgins was confident he would have around 150 corporate tables and a general admission crowd of around 6500 for the big fight.The highest priced “VIP Ringside” corporate tables at the fight have all been snapped up at $16,545 for a group of 10 and event promoter David Higgins said the evening was on track to set some pretty lofty records interms of revenue generated.In terms of the level of pricing for corporate tables, Higgins was confident the premium spots at Tue-Cameron, which are selling for prices between $10,545 and $16,545, are the most expensive for a New Zealand sportingevent. That number is flexible with an inability to fit in as many corporate tables as there is appetite for.”The only event I can think of that I was involved in was the President Clinton visit in 2006, and a corporate table for that was around $14-15,000.”To be ringside at a once-in-a-generation boxing fight is definitely one of those sought-after events. But that’s a very different type of event,” said the Duco Events promoter from Brisbane, where he is drumming up interest in the night. Mundine-Green was the pinnacle in Australia, and imagine being at Tyson-Holyfield in the mid-’90s, image being at the Rumble in the Jungle between Ali and Frazier . Each country has its own example. . .”Those were big, big events.”Those were big, big events. It’s a very hot ticket for sure. It’s a very historic event, there’s fever-pitch interest in it. I’d say they will surpass even this for some options.”The Rugby World Cup is coming up, and I’m sure that too will be a very hot ticket.Higgins was not keen to talk about figures in terms of likely revenue generated, but simple maths tells you they should clear $3 million from the sale of general admission tickets ($99-$399) and corporate tables alone.”With stand tickets for the RWC final tipped to run up to $1400, and corporate packages likely to be well over $2000 on a per-head basis, the 65,000-strong crowd at Eden Park are likely to generate a revenue record that will stand for a long, long time.5-$2 million that is generated from an All Blacks rugby test. Not bad for an indoor event and certainly it compares favourably with around $1.”I think we are where we want to be financially,” he said.Then there’s the revenue from the pay-per-view audience which Higgins is tipping will shatter the New Zealand record. I expect it to be the New Zealand record without doubt. I expect it to be the New Zealand record without doubt. The initial feedback from the broadcaster isvery encouraging. At $39.95, it is a very good price.”Higgins shrugged off any likely criticism from fans disappointed they will either have to shell out for the fight, or find a friend that has.”Of course people would love to see it free-to-air but they’ve got to understand for the best calibre fights, which this very much is, one of the major revenue streams for funding the purse is pay-per-view.”Frankly the big matchups won’t happen any other way.”Not that Higgins is figuring on the price putting too many people off once the weekend of the October 3 fight rolls around.”Come fight day, and the weigh-in before, there will be such a fever pitch people won’t be worrying about the $39.95 – they’ll be worrying about how the hell are we going to see it.”He is also confident that the fight is accessible to all types of fans.”Yes, ringside is $15,000 a head, but you will still have a very, very good view – and we’ve got eight big screens in there – further back at $99. .Higgins is adamant that the grudge match between the two Kiwi heavyweights will live up to its hype.”Cameron’s style of fighting is to come forward and trade, and David Tua’s style of fighting is to come forward. The antagonism between them is real.”You combine that with the public interest and the fact that so much is at stake – Tua’s legacy is involved, similarly Cameron, and for the winner there’s potentially a top-five ranking and a shot at the title in the nextyear or two.”Mix all those ingredients and this suggests it will be a very exciting fight. There’s no other sport quite like it. When the main event happens and the guys walk into the arena, you can feel the atmosphere.”When Tua and Cameron enter that ring for round one, the atmosphere in that venue will be . . . electric. It will be like no other event.”This fight’s built up for four or five years, it’s in the back of people’s minds that they’re witnessing something that’s built up that long, and that it’s a one-off event, and that sort of feeds off each other to create this amazing atmosphere.”Higgins confirmed that Independent Liquor had been signed as the events naming rights sponsor, and that they would be promoting it under their Woodstock brand.In terms of the fight’s place in history, he suggested you had to go back a long way – at least half a century – when this sort of interest has been generated by an all-Kiwi matchup.And it’s fair to say that no punch-up has ever seen this much cash flowing into the coffers.

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User-focused ICT interest groups hailed the government’s broadband announcement today, with one saying it represented a “fundamental” break from the past.

“This ushers in the biggest and most fundamental change to telecommunications in New Zealand since the privatisation of Telecom 20 years ago,” TUANZ CEO Ernie Newman said in reaction to the news.

“The paper builds very constructively on the work done previously,” Newman says. It is an excellent blueprint on which to build. “It takes into account most of the key issues raised in submissions, and sets a timetable with milestones.

“By dealing up front with competition issues related to fibre investment, and incorporating them in the design of the commercial structures, it should be possible to minimise the regulatory intervention that has been an unfortunate but necessary feature of the copper and mobile markets,” Newman says.”

TUANZ says it is especially pleased with the balance between investors’ need for a predictable regulatory regime and user demand for a competitive market.

“It is interesting that New Zealand and Australia are on parallel tracks and are ahead of many western countries, a fact that reflects the added value of connectivity to countries that suffer inherently from geographic isolation,” Newman says.

“This is a world-leading programme that can be expected to deliver the infrastructure New Zealand needs,” spokesperson Jordan Carter says.

InternetNZ also welcomed the plan, saying it is “delighted” with today’s announcement of a regionally-based approach to investment.”

TUANZ is now asking for more focus on the creation of new on-line content to encourage maximum early uptake of high-speed broadband.

“Steven Joyce and the Government have put in place a framework that over time can deliver a widespread fibre rollout across urban New Zealand. .

It says the benefits of investment will come through in health, education, business productivity, telework, government services, security, environmental management “a host of other components of people’s economic and social well-being”

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An autopsy is being carried out on the body of a woman removed from a house in Wainoni, Christchurch, yesterday, say police.

Police found the bodies of two women under the house on Friday. One of the women was thought to be the 35-year-old wife of the Wainoni Rd homeowner and the other is believed to be that of Tisha Lowry, who disappeared almost a year ago and lived at the next-door property.

Police removed one of the bodies last night, but inquiry head Detective Inspector Tom Fitzgerald today reiterated that the second body of a woman was not likely to be removed from the scene until tomorrow.

The homeowner, a 32-year-old man whose name is suppressed, has been charged with his wife’s murder, and further charges were likely when he reappeared in court on Friday. “There is still a comprehensive scene examination taking place. .”

He said there was nothing to suggest there were more bodies at the property.

Meanwhile, police said they would like to hear from anyone who heard a suspicious disturbance at the house last Sunday.

It was not known whether the accused’s wife knew what had happened to Lowry.

Shanita Araipu lives in the other half of the semi-detached Wainoni property where the makeshift graves be were found on Friday.

NEIGHBOUR’S SHOCK

The Christchurch woman who lived directly between the victims of the suspected double-murderer has spoken of her horror at the discovery of bodies beneath a basement just metres from her living room. “I’m less than 10 feet from the bodies.

“I’m very shocked,” she said. My girls won’t come back here, they were screaming yesterday. My girls won’t come back here, they were screaming yesterday. The suspect had told her the children had been taken into care, and the couple had been attempting to regain custody.

Araipu said the 32-year-old accused and his wife had bought the former state house three years ago, and had since divided their time between Christchurch and Taupo, where their three children were living in Child Youth and Family care. Things were meant to change,” she said.

“They bought the house to try to get a new start.”

Araipu said the couple were both recovering alcoholics and unemployed. “But I don’t know what happened. “He pulled his pants up like [Family Matters character] Steve Urkel, right over his stomach,” she said. The man was “creepy, a really strange character”, she said, with straggly, unkempt hair and a beard that would come and go. We used to try to hide from him. “He was a bit of an oddball.”

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Liam Ashley’s killer George Baker took his latest victim hostage with three improvised metal weapons and two sharpened broom handles made from materials found in Paremoremo’s special needs unit recreation room.

The stand-off began at 3pm on Thursday, when Baker invited an 83-year-old inmate, imprisoned for sex offences, to play pool.

The incident took place in the special needs unit in the east division of Auckland Prison, where inmates with psychological and behavioural needs are housed.

Baker, 27, then jammed shut the recreation room door and took the other man hostage, demanding to be transferred to a less secure unit.45am the following day.

Prison sources said Corrections staff initially sought to overpower Baker but police eventually negotiated his surrender at 1.

Baker, who has since been placed in segregation, had a “well-documented history of self-harm and volatile incidents in prison”.

Corrections northern regional manager Warren Cummins believed Baker had “improvised weapons out of items in the unit’s recreation room”.

His lawyer, Tony Bouchier, said Baker routinely made weapons and used them to self-mutilate, once coming close to dying.

He has previously assaulted a prison guard, and is understood to have mutilated his testicles.

In a second prison van attack in 2008, Baker pulled a metal weapon on Corrections officers, but was restrained without resulting in any serious injury.

Baker killed 17-year-old Liam Ashley in the back of a Chubb prison security van taking them to Auckland’s Mt Eden Remand Centre three years ago and was given a life sentence, with a minimum non-parole period of 18 years. He was described by a judge as anti-social, with a borderline personality disorder.

Baker has 83 convictions, including assault and robbery, and was first jailed as a teen. .

David Olds, the other passenger in that compartment of the prison van in 2006, and the only witness to the attack on Ashley, told the Sunday Star-Times this year he had been too scared to intervene, but now was haunted by his failure to act.

“He’ll be sitting in jail loving the glory.

His mother Lorraine Ashley told reporters she believed the timing of the hostage incident, so close to the anniversary of her son’s death, was no accident.”

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The opera world is about to lose one of its brightest stars, New Zealand’s Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. .”(Cologne) will be my last,” the 65-year-old told Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper on Wednesday.She plans to perform her operatic swansongs in New York in February and the German city of Cologne in April.”I think certainly our voices change; opera is mainly for young people.”It’s not as if I want to do it on a regular basis now, because it’s exhausting.In New York, she will take on the role of the Duchess of Krakenthorpa in Donizettis La Fille du Regiment at the Metropolitan Opera.”For her final performance in Cologne, Dame Kiri will play the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss.She said while many people had believed she had retired, this was not the case.Dame Kiri, who performed at Prince Charles’ wedding to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, has not sung opera since she sang in Samuel Barbers’ Vanessa at the Los Angeles Opera in 2004.”I have not been singing opera very much but I still sing a lot of concerts.”The press retired me,” she said.”I’m extremely busy with all sorts of things,” she said.”Dame Kiri said she had no plans to give up singing and would continue to tour, with shows planned in Sydney, Beijing, Spain and the United States later this year. – AAP

.Dame Kiri plans to bring three of her students from the Solti Academy and Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation to London to perform alongside her at the Tower of London in September

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AFP – The French government on Saturday launched the bidding process for the license for a fourth national mobile network and confirmed the asking price of 240 million euros (330 million dollars) in the government gazette.

France Telecom (Orange), immediately said it would contest the price with the European Commission.

The deadline for candidates to lodge their bids has been fixed at October 29, with the granting of the license around eight months from that date.

The price is only around a third of the 619 million euros which Orange and fellow operators Bouygues Telecom and SFR paid in the early years of this decade.

France Telecom is going to complain to the European Commission about state aid, that is the advantage being granted to the fourth operator compared to the other three holders of mobile network operating licenses, a spokesman for France Telecom told AFP.

It had been expected the bidding process would be launched before the end of July.

France – mobile phones – telecommunication
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Earlier Saturday Iliad, the parent company of French Internet service provider Free, welcomed the launch of the bidding process and said it would be a candidate

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An attack on convicted killer Clayton Weatherston is imminent even if he is in isolation in jail, the Corrections Association says. . He is being held in Christchurch men’s prison, which holds nearly 1000 medium to high-medium risk prisoners.

Weatherston was convicted on Wednesday of fatally stabbing his former girlfriend Sophie Elliott.

Newstalk ZB reported that prison inmates had taunted Weatherston from the moment he arrived at the prison, that a $55,000 bounty had been put on his head and that the price was expected to reach six figures.

The Corrections Department said prison managers could order segregation if a prisoner was at risk, but would not say if that was the case with Weatherston.

Department spokesman Lance Alexander said almost one in three prisoners were now in segregation either forced or voluntary. It is unclear who would offer the money.

However, isolation might not guarantee Weatherston’s safety, because prison gangs “control the life and death of other prisoners”.

Corrections Association president Beven Hanlon said Weatherston would not be in the general prison population because of his high profile and the media coverage surrounding his case.

Mr Hanlon, who has worked in prisons for 12 years, said he had only known of one case in which a segregation request was denied.

Gang members were also known to ask to be put into segregation, where they are able to associate with other segregated prisoners, with the potential for attacking them, he said.”

Mr Alexander confirmed that segregated prisoners had access to each other.

“We have a number of murders in the prison system every year and that’s done on the instruction of other gang members and that’s how powerful they are in prisons.

Mr Hanlon said every prisoner in the country had the option of saying, “I don’t feel safe,” and being placed in isolation.

“Prisoners on voluntary or directed segregation are usually able to mix freely with other segregated prisoners.”

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“If we were allowed to handcuff them, we wouldn’t have these problems

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Police are waiting for the results of a post-mortem on a man who died following a domestic incident in south Auckland overnight to determine if a crime was committed.

Police and ambulance staff found the 44-year-old man dead when they arrived at a Mangere house just before midnight. .

“He was definitely fighting, but we don’t know how he died, and if the fighting contributed towards his death. However it was not known if the fight was the cause of death.

“We don’t actually know if a crime has been committed. For instance, he might have had a heart attack or some other aliment during the course of the fight,” Mr Lynch said. Everything depends on the results of the post-mortem to determine how the person died.

A post-mortem was expected to be carried out later this afternoon.”

Police were not examining for anyone else in relation to the incident, and the family was co-operating with police, Mr Lynch said.

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AFP – French consumer prices over 12 months fell by 0.5 percent in June, official data showed on Thursday, marking a deflationary step for the second month running but showing a monthly rise of 0.1 percent.3 percent, for the first time since 1957, owing mainy to a fall in the price of oil from a high point in the middle of 2008.

In May, prices over 12 months had shown a fall, of 0.

Underlying inflation, excluding public sector prices and volatile prices for energy and basic agricultural supplies, was steady at 1.

An extended period of falling prices amounts to deflation, a serious threat to an economy since it can set in hand a vicious spiral of falling demand, falling investment and employment, and a further fall in prices.5 percent over 12 months from 1. .6 percent in May, the national statistics institute which published the data, said. However, prices of fresh food products fell by 3.2 percent in June from the levels in May.

The retail sales period began during the month and this explained a fall of 0.8 percent.2 percent in prices for manufactured goods, notably for clothing and for shoes which fell by 0.2 percent in prices for manufactured goods, notably for clothing and for shoes which fell by 0.1 percent in June.

Food prices, excluding prices for fresh products, fell by 0.

consumers – financial crisis – France – French economy – inflation – prices