.
Edgeware inquiry backs police action
By CLIO FRANCIS – Thursday, 18 December 2008
POLICE PRAISED: The actions of police who attempted to control the party at which Hannah Rossiter and Jane Young died last year has been praised by the Independent Police Conduct Authority. Lipine Sila is in prison for their murders.
The Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) review has found no fault in the police response to the Edgeware Road party in Christchurch at which two schoolgirls were killed.
Lipine Sila was sentenced to 17 years in jail for their deaths in June this year.
Hannah Rossiter and Jane Young, both 16, died from injuries they suffered when a car was driven into them at the out-of-control party on May 5 last year.
"There was no relationship between those actions and the timing of the police decision to close down the party.
Justice Goddard, who led the IPCA inquiry, said police could not have predicted Mr Sila's actions. .
"No doubt the release of the IPCA report will bring back all the emotions and memories for those involved, including police and emergency services staff who were involved in the aftermath of this incident," he said
He said his heart went out to all those involved and their families.
Canterbury District Commander Dave Cliff said nothing could ever bring back the two young women or change the life long consequences suffered by some of those injured."
He said the report has gone further to commend the conduct of two Sergeants.
"For my staff involved and the Canterbury Police District, this independent report has validated the approach taken.
.
Vandals stall help for cancer battler
By – Wednesday, 03 December 2008
David Hallett
SETBACK: Darren Anderson, left, and Placemakers operations manager Brent Stanley-Joblin look over damage to the charity home.
A charity home being built for a Christchurch brain-tumour sufferer has been rendered "a bomb site" by vandals.
The damage will delay the construction and auction of the Hillmorton house by three or four weeks.
Organisers hope to generate $200,000 from its sale for Darren Anderson, who has resorted to expensive treatment in his battle with a brain tumour.
His colleagues have created the Build for a Life charitable trust, from which Anderson will be the first to benefit. .
The portable toilet had been pushed over and there were cuts in the timber framing and nails scattered around.
Project manager Alastair Christie said the vandals, who attacked the house in a Ngai Tahu Property development, Linden Grove, during the weekend, had damaged most of the pre-lining board and the fence. There doesn't seem to have been an objective other than total destruction," Christie said. "It's so mindless. It almost destroys your faith in human nature. "To have this happen after so much open generosity has just set us back like you don't believe.
Christie said it was unlikely the home would be ready for auction before March."
Construction has been under way for seven weeks, with about 50 people offering labour and materials.
He went overseas after Christchurch oncologists gave him five years to live in February.
Anderson, who was married last year and has a six-month-old son, has a hefty medical bill to pay after consulting United States cancer specialists. It's just not good enough.
"I'm too young for this.
US specialists from Duke University Hospital prescribed Anderson a strong course of chemotherapy that is not government-funded in New Zealand.
"I'm not accepting it," Anderson said of his reaction to the news.
The money raised by the Linden Grove house will go towards the cost of this treatment, thought to be about $200,000.
He is about to start the fifth of 12 sessions, with initial results suggesting the tumour has slowly shrunk.
"Even if it was young lads that did it for the hell of it, it's still a really mindless thing to do, especially when there's a big sign out the front saying `charitable trust'," he said.
Anderson, who is working part-time at Placemakers, said the vandalism was horrible.
.
Police name Wanganui woman killed in road accident
Saturday, 29 November 2008
Police have named the woman who was killed in a car crash on State Highway 3 just south of Wanganui on Saturday morning.
She was 59-year-old Georgina Maud Mareikura from Palmerston North.
An 11-year-old female passenger in Ms Mareikura's car, who was a relative, received minor injuries.
She was driving a dark-coloured Honda towards Wanganui and collided head-on with a dark-coloured Holden being driven in the opposite direction, just after 7am. .
The driver of the Holden was in a critical but stable condition, police said.
.
Witnesses, or anyone with information relevant to the investigation, are asked to contact Wanganui Police on 06 349 0600
.
Wellington may restrict cellphone towers
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
Public anger over a proliferation of cellphone towers and broadband cabinets has prompted Wellington City Council to look at tightening controls on communication companies.
Council planners have received applications covering more than 170 sites from telecommunication companies this year.
Also included are 70 applications from NZ Communications, which is establishing a national mobile network.
They include more than 100 roadside cabinets, each the size of a large fridge, to be installed in Wellington as part of Telecom's "cabinetisation" programme for faster broadband. .
Complaints from residents and business owners over the proliferation of towers and cabinets prompted Mayor Kerry Prendergast to seek a review of the council's district plan rules.
"Residents are annoyed that the telecommunications companies are siting new infrastructure on reserve land, or on a roadside, and the council can't stop them doing so.
Ms Prendergast said the recent installation of two separate towers by Vodafone and NZ Communications in Churton Park had angered residents and sparked the review.
"Telecommunications equipment is essential to our collective welfare and to keeping Wellington an internationally competitive capital city."
She said people were especially concerned at the height of some cellphone towers, and an apparent reluctance of companies to share the same tower for their equipment."
Churton Park resident Malcolm Weight said there was concern in the community about the visual impact of the towers, and whether prolonged exposure to tower emissions could make people ill.
"However, the installation of this infrastructure should be balanced against the wishes of residents not to have their views, and enjoyment of life, compromised."
The review would include an investigation into how the council could effectively use the new National Environmental Standards, introduced by the Government last month.
"What I think should change is that these companies should have to apply for resource consent in the usual way so people can send in submissions and voice their concerns to the council.
Telecom spokesperson Ian Bonnar said the telecommunications company had always worked in line with national guidelines and local council district plans.
Though the standards set limits on the height and size of telecommunication masts and antennas and cabinets, , council officers are uncertain how to police them." He said Telecom would discuss the planned rule changes if invited by the council.
"Generally the National Environmental Standards provide technical specifications for the infrastructure, and it is the district plan that determines the location.
.
Court told of sexual attack on six-year-old
Tuesday, 04 November 2008
Achance encounter and quick thinking by a community patroller resulted in a man being arrested and charged with sexually molesting a six-year-old girl, a court has been told.
Richard Miller, 46, appeared in the High Court at Napier yesterday accused of sexual offences against two girls.
The unemployed Napier man faces one charge related to the six-year-old. Five further charges relate to sexual offences, including two of rape, against a 10-year-old girl in 1990. The jury will need to decide between alternate charges of attempted rape or committing an indecent act. He noticed a car near the yard with a man in its passenger's seat moving in a manner that suggested a sexual activity.
Crown prosecutor Clayton Walker told jurors that volunteer community patroller Brooke Ibbotson was returning a patrol car to its parking yard in Nelson Park at the end of his shift on the afternoon of September 19 last year.
As Mr Ibbotson drove away from the yard, he decided to return "as it was a strange time and place to be doing what he was doing", Mr Walker said. In its passenger seat was a young girl.
On driving back into the park, he saw the car approach him.
Mr Ibbotson followed the car out of the park and through several streets to an address in Onekawa, where the girl got out.
"You can imagine the horror," Mr Walker said. .
He waited in order to get a better look at the driver. Mr Ibbotson contacted police, who spoke to the girl and arrested Miller that day. Mr Ibbotson contacted police, who spoke to the girl and arrested Miller that day.
He does not dispute talking to Mr Ibbotson in Onekawa, but denies the girl's allegations and claims he took her straight home from school without going into the park.
Miller was a friend of the girl's mother and often took the girl to and from school.
The girl is one of 13 witnesses being called by the Crown.
Mr Walker said jurors would hear from ESR scientists who would say dna found on the girl's underwear was 44 times more likely to be Miller's than anyone else's. Another witness is the woman, now 29, who alleges Miller sexually assaulted her in 1990 when he was her babysitter. She will give evidence over closed-circuit television from another courtroom.
.
Chat via hologram could be household reality
By KRIS HALL Wednesday, 17 September 2008
CHRIS GORMAN/
MIND BOGGLING: Live chat via hologram is a step closer to being a household reality. Auckland comedian Jeremy Corbett has a chat with Aussie celebrity Rove McManus – or at least his hologram, beamed across the Tasman.
In what TelstraClear says is a national first, a walking, talking image of Australian chat show host Rove McManus was beamed across the Tasman yesterday to appear live on stage at Auckland's Vector Arena.
Forgetconference calls or video crosses – beaming your hologram for a live chat is a step closer to becoming a household reality.
It was all rather mind-boggling for the 500-plus business leaders invited to see what the company's Next IP network could do.
There "Rove" joked with Auckland comic Jeremy Corbett and TelstraClear chief executive Allan Freeth, before making way for musician Che Fu, who performed alongside a pre-recorded hologram of himself. "Next IP is about very fast, very capable networks .
"IP network, that just means fibres and computers instead of coppers and switches," Dr Freeth said… Imagine every second of every game played – Next IP can transport that from Auckland to Sydney in under 75 seconds.
"Take the Bledisloe Cup.4 billion, the IP, or Internet protocol, allows the company's network to stretch from Whangarei to Invercargill, as well as across the Tasman, where it meets parent company Telstra's Next IP global network, which in turn links to 35 countries."
Costing TelstraClear $1.
"It can turn what many think of as science fiction into reality.
"It opens a new frontier for business and a more productive way of using technology to bring the world to you," said Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo, who was also present in hologram form.
TelstraClear plans to roll out TelstraPresence lounges in Auckland and Wellington, where businesses separated by the length of the North Island may conduct meetings."
Though the likelihood of Kiwis using the hologram technology to chat to family members overseas is several years away, businesses will be able to tap into the technology sooner than they might think.
"It's so good you'll be able to see the beads of sweat dripping when the decision making gets a little heated," Dr Freeth said.
High-definition screens built into boardroom-like desks will give users the impression that they are sitting across the table from each other."
.
"It's not quite holograms – we're not quite there yet – but it's not too far away