The New Zealand Herald
Cutting emissions may harm Australian economy
CANBERRA - Australia has to accept that cutting greenhouse gas emissions may harm the economy, federal frontbencher Tony Abbott said today.
The health and ageing minister said it would be difficult to balance the fight against climate change with protecting jobs.
"It's very hard do both and that's what we need to face up to," Mr Abbott told the Nine Network.
"Particularly if we are going to do it soon, if we're going to dramatically cut emissions it is going to have an impact on the economy," he said.
Prime Minister John Howard has frequently attacked Labor for threatening jobs in the coal and forestry industries with its climate change policies.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10431670
Photos: Storm's severity even more unusual than first thought
The storm that flooded Northland this week is more rare than first thought - as much as a one-in-150-years event in some areas.
It was initially thought to have been a downpour that might be expected about once in every 50 years.
The storm was moving over Coromandel and Bay of Plenty this morning, but MetService said the worst of the weather was now over.
Leading climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger said today that based on statistical models, the intense rainfall in Northland was the kind of event that occurred only once in more than 100 years.
"For Whangarei Airport for the 24 hours we are looking at greater than a 125-year event," said Dr Salinger, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10431630
Two varieties of Kit Kat recalled by Nestle
8:00PM Friday March 30, 2007
Two varieties of Kit Kats were recalled today because of the possibility they might contain small pieces of plastic.
The voluntary national recall was announced by Nestle New Zealand, the manufacturer.
The affected products are Kit Kat Caramel 65G and Kit Kat Cookie Dough 65G, with all "best before" dates up to and including February 14 next year.
Corporate services manager Maurice Gunnell said the company believed the plastic entered the packs during the production process.
The company was recalling the products as a precaution and consumers should ensure they didn't eat the specified varieties.
Consumers who had such Kit Kats should return them to where they were bought for a refund.
Mr Gunnell said no other Kit Kat products were affected.
Man drought on agenda
Email this storyPrint this story 8:00AM Friday March 30, 2007
A quota system is to be discussed as the early childcare industry desperately seeks a way to solve the dire shortage of male teachers.
The Early Childcare Council, representing 1000 centres, is pledging that the percentage of male teachers in the industry - below 1 per cent and one of the lowest rates in the world - will improve after a conference in Christchurch this week.
Education Minister Steve Maharey is against the idea of quotas. A spokeswoman said he preferred a system of encouraging men to enter early childcare teaching.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10431623
UK gives Iran note 'serious consideration'
LONDON - Britain is giving "serious consideration" to a formal note from the Iranian government about 15 captured military personnel, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said today.
"Such exchanges are always confidential, so we cannot divulge any details. But we are giving the message serious consideration, and will soon respond formally to the Iranian government," the spokeswoman said.
The note was received by the British embassy in Tehran.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10431635
US Senate approves '08 troops withdraw from Iraq
WASHINGTON - The US Senate today defied a veto threat by President George W. Bush and joined with the House of Representatives in backing a timetable for withdrawing American combat troops from Iraq.
In a mostly party-line 51-47 vote, the Democratic-controlled Senate told Bush to start withdrawing the troops this year with the goal of getting all combat soldiers out by March 31, 2008.
"The ball is in the president's court. We have done what we needed to do" by passing a bill with even more money for the troops and veterans than Bush requested, said House Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10431636
Dog meat on menu for Bangladesh students
DHAKA - The caterer at a dormitory on Bangladesh's Dhaka University has been fired after students complained they were served dog meat, officials say.
Students at the Hajji Mohammad Mohsin Hall protested after a student suspected that the meat on his plate was of a "dog or fox," instead of beef or mutton.
He drew the attention of other students, who rushed to the authorities demanding an immediate investigation.
"We have seized the menu and expelled the hall caterer," said Ahmed Zaman Anwar, provost of the 1,200-student dormitory.
"The offending meat has been sent for tests at a laboratory and we are waiting for the results."
Australian Navy reviews Iran security
CANBERRA - The Royal Australian Navy is reviewing security procedures for its personnel in the Persian Gulf following the seizure of 15 British sailors by Iranian forces.
The ongoing detention of the British personnel has sparked a diplomatic crisis, with London warning negotiations could "move into a new phase" if they are not released immediately.
The crew were taken prisoner at gunpoint in the disputed Shat al-Arab waterway between Iraq and Iran seven days ago.
The British were conducting searches of cargo vessels at the time, operating from small inflatable speed boats.
The work is also undertaken by Australian sailors, operating from similar speed boats with helicopter support.
HMAS Toowoomba, which is crewed by about 190 personnel, is the Australian warship currently patrolling the area.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10431709
Swiss gets 10 years for insulting Thai king
A Swiss man was sentenced to ten years in a Thai prison yesterday.
Oliver Jufer's "crime" was insulting the Thai King: in a drunken spree he vandalised several portraits of King Bhumibol Adulyadej with black spraypaint.
The 57-year-old Mr Jufer has one month to appeal, but Thai lawyers say he has little hope of success. Mr Jufer's imprisonment could not have come at a worse time for Thailand's image abroad, with its vitally important tourism industry already suffering from last year's military coup.
If they weren't already thinking twice, tourists will know a holiday in Thailand carries the risk of a lengthy jail sentence if you so much as criticise the King.
At the same time the generals have been pushing to have martial law reimposed in Bangkok to stop pro-democracy demonstrations. Mr Jufer's trial overshadowed an announcement from the military-backed government yesterday that elections will be held to restore democracy in December.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10431672
Brazil to offer free internet to jungle tribes
BRASILIA - Brazil will offer free satellite internet connections to indigenous tribes in the Amazon as part of its latest effort to crack down on illegal logging in the world's largest tropical rain forest.
"It's a way to open communications between indigenous communities, former slave villages, coconut crackers, river fishermen and the rest of society," said Environment Minister Marina Silva today after signing an accord putting the internet plan in place.
"These communities are the true protectors of their areas," she said.
Brazil, a relatively poor country that is the size of the continental United States, has struggled to protect its vast Amazon rain forest from illegal miners, loggers and ranchers.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10431659
Moscow boasts of plot to kill warlord
MOSCOW - The James Bond-like plot apparently used by the Kremlin to kill its most dangerous enemy - Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev - was laid bare by a Russian newspaper yesterday, angering the dead terrorist's supporters.
The 41 year-old rebel, known as "The Butcher of Beslan" because of his role in masterminding the siege of a school in the Russian city in 2004, was killed last July in what the FSB security service boasted was a sophisticated "special operation".
He died with at least three accomplices when a truck carrying an arms shipment for the rebels blew up.
The explosion was apparently so powerful, however, that the Kremlin has struggled to supply cast-iron proof that Basayev is really dead to this day and the circumstances of his demise remain murky.
His supporters claim that he died in an explosives accident while others, including the murdered reporter Anna Politkovskaya, have suggested that he may not be dead at all but had struck a deal with the FSB to disappear and change his identity.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=359&objectid=10431209
Russia tortures former Guantanamo prisoners – report
MOSCOW - The Kremlin and the United States have been accused of flouting international law in a damning new report which tells the depressing and little-known story of seven Russian men freed from Guantanamo Bay.
According to the report by Human Rights Watch, the men were released from Guantanamo without charge and returned to Russia to face a life of torture, harassment, and unfair trials.
All seven were arrested by US forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan during 2002 and only released from Guantanamo in 2004 on the promise that they would receive "humane treatment" on their return to Russia.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10431606
A Russian Diary: Anna Politkovskaya
The diary of murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya ensures that her questing, questioning voice cannot be silenced.
Next month will mark the six-month anniversary of the slaying of the campaigning reporter. This book is the diary she was preparing for publication shortly before her death.
It covers Russia's presidential elections of 2004 and the aftermath of Vladimir Putin's re-election - a "great political depression", as Politkovskaya describes it - culminating in the Beslan tragedy in September that year. The last section of the book follows the Yukos affair (which resulted in the jailing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the richest man in Russia), the political fallout from Beslan and hundreds of forgotten show trials, disappearances and violent events all over Russia.
Even though the last entry was written more than two years ago, the benefit of hindsight makes this a particularly difficult read. You would have to be fairly stone-hearted to get through the short afterword, "Am I Afraid?", without choking up.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10431557
Dozens killed in battles with Somali rebels
MOGADISHU - Ethiopian and Somali troops used tanks and helicopters to launch a major offensive against insurgents in Mogadishu today, triggering battles that killed more than two dozen people.
With scenes of carnage shocking even by Somali standards, residents said the final death toll from the worst day of fighting since a war over the New Year could be much higher.
"People are worried, they did not know whether they will survive today or not," said Osman Gabayre, a local journalist who saw five dead civilians on the streets and the wreck of an Ethiopian army lorry hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10431645
Olmert sees 'revolutionary change'
JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said today there was a "revolutionary change" in the perception of the Arab states towards Israel, Israel's YNet news website reported.
YNet quoted Olmert as saying during a reception for his Kadima party faction: "There is a process here that the fighting in Lebanon (last year) has sharpened.
"This process has brought the influential countries in the Arab world to realise that Israel is not the biggest of all their troubles. This is a revolutionary change in their perception."
Arab leaders earlier on Thursday in Riyadh endorsed a five-year-old plan offering Israel normal ties with all Arab countries in return for its withdrawal from land seized in the 1967 Middle East war, the creation of a Palestinian state and a "just solution" for Palestinians displaced in 1948 with Israel's creation.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10431658
Gwynne Dyer: How to start a war - American style
"I don't want to second-guess the British after the fact," said US Navy Lieutenant-Commander Erik Horner, "but our rules of engagement allow a little more latitude. Our boarding team's training is a little bit more towards self-preservation."
Does that mean that one of his American boarding teams would have opened fire if it had been them in the two inflatable boats that were surrounded by Iranian Revolutionary Guard fast patrol boats off the coast of Iraq last Friday? "Agreed. Yes."
Just as well that it was a British boarding team, then.
The 15 British sailors and marines who were captured and taken to Tehran for "questioning" last week are undoubtedly having an unpleasant time, but they are alive, and Britain is only involved in two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If it had been one of Horner's boarding teams, they would all be dead, and the United States and Iran would now be at war.
Horner is the executive officer of the USS Underwood, the American frigate that works with HMS Cornwall, the British ship the captive boarding party came from.
Interviewed after the incident by Terri Judd of the Independent, the only British print journalist on HMS Cornwall, he was obviously struggling to be polite about the gutless Brits, but he wasn't having much success.
"The US Navy rules of engagement say we have not only a right to self-defence but also an obligation to self-defence," Horner explained. "[The British] had every right in my mind and every justification to defend themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken. Our reaction was, 'Why didn't your guys defend themselves?"'
So there they are, eight sailors and seven marines in two rubber boats, with personal weapons and no protection whatever, sitting about 30cm above the water, surrounded by six or seven Iranian attack boats with mounted machine guns.
"Defend yourself" by opening fire, and after a single long burst from half a dozen heavy machine-guns there will be 14 dead young men and one dead young woman in two rapidly sinking inflatables, and your country will be at war. Seems a bit pointless, really.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10431575
Bono receives knighthood
DUBLIN - Irish rock star and rights campaigner Bono has received an honorary knighthood in recognition of his services to the music industry and for his humanitarian work.
"I couldn't be more proud," the U2 singer said at a ceremony at the British ambassador's residence in Dublin.
"I would like to thank Her Majesty's ambassador for pinning this award on me in my hometown, and the band for not bursting my balloon," he said in remarks carried on U2's website.
Bono is now a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, or KBE, but as he is an Irish citizen he will not be able to use the title 'Sir'.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10431644
Video: Japan quake kills one, hurts over 160
NOTO PENINSULA, Japan - A strong earthquake killed one person and injured at least 160 in central Japan today, demolishing houses, buckling roads, triggering landslides and cutting off water supplies to thousands of homes.
More than 1300 people evacuated to shelters after 44 houses collapsed and some 200 others, mostly wooden with heavy tile roofs, were seriously damaged by the 6.9 magnitude earthquake, which struck at 9:42am (1242 NZT), officials and media said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=68&objectid=10430886
Hicks could cash in while taxpayers foot bill
CANBERRA - David Hicks, the Australian Guantanamo Bay inmate who has admitted aiding the al Qaeda terror group, has become a major recipient of political and taxpayer largesse as he waits for a decision on the deal his lawyers have struck with American military prosecutors.
He could also become rich.
Celebrity agent Max Markson told smh.com.au Hicks could become a millionaire by selling his story as both book and movie.
His saga moves from a broken home in Adelaide to life as an itinerant kangaroo-skinner, guerrilla fighter in Albania, convert to Islam training and fighting with al Qaeda and Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba, Taleban fighter captured by a northern warlord in Afghanistan and, finally, inmate of the notorious Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=359&objectid=10431417
Blair warns Iran of 'different phase' if sailors not released
LONDON - Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Tehran today of a "different phase" if it did not free 15 British military personnel captured in the Gulf four days ago.
The sailors' capture and new UN sanctions imposed on Tehran on Sunday over its disputed nuclear programme have stoked tensions between the West and Iran and pushed oil prices to a 2007 high.
Russia and the United Arab Emirates today urged Iran to comply with UN demands that it halt sensitive nuclear work but Tehran says the UN resolution is illegal.
Iran, which denies any intention of making atomic weapons, has said it may charge the two boatloads of British sailors and marines with illegally entering its waters in the northern Gulf. Britain insists they were operating in Iraqi waters.
"What we are trying to do ... is to pursue this through the diplomatic channels and make the Iranian government understand these people have to be released and that there is absolutely no justification whatever for holding them," Blair said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=359&objectid=10431283
US House approves 2008 troop withdrawal from Iraq
WASHINGTON - The US House of Representatives today voted to impose a September 1, 2008, deadline for withdrawing all American combat troops from Iraq, prompting a quick veto promise from US President George W. Bush.
In a mostly partisan 218-212 vote, House Democrats succeeded in attaching the deadline to legislation authorising more than US$124 billion in emergency funds, mostly for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year.
The narrow margin of the vote was far short of what Democrats would need to override any presidential veto.
But the vote was a significant victory for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and her fellow Democrats who took control of Congress in last November's elections on a pledge to end the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=359&objectid=10430626
Iraq: A country in ruins, a people in despair
The arm-wrestling competition is instigated over breakfast at the Hamra Hotel by the shaven-headed waiter. He plonks a beefy elbow on the cash desk and presents a hand. "You. Zarqawi," he says to one of the reporters living in the hotel, a slight New Yorker. He is referring to the dead Sunni leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. "Me. Moqtada," he adds, naming Moqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand Shiite preacher who leads the Mahdi Army, infamous for its sectarian death squads.
The waiter giggles. Then "Moqtada" twists "Zarqawi's" arm in a deft, powerful movement and pins it down. Contest over. Iraq's sectarian question is bloodlessly resolved. But only on this March morning, for a brief second, on the neutral ground of the Hamra Hotel, in what was once one of the more pleasant neighbourhoods of Baghdad.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=359&objectid=10430522
UN Secretary-General shaken by blast on first visit to Iraq
BAGHDAD - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was left shaken but unhurt today on his first visit to Baghdad after a Katyusha rocket landed just metres from a building where he was giving a news conference.
Moments after telling journalists he might boost the United Nations' presence in Iraq because of improved security, a thunderous blast sent shockwaves through the conference venue, startling Ban and sending him ducking for cover behind a podium.
Security guards grabbed hold of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki who was standing next to Ban at the time and was dusted by small bits of debris that fell from the ceiling.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=359&objectid=10430466
Criticism mounts as Italian journalist is freed
10:15AM Thursday March 22, 2007
By Peter Popham
Criticism mounted yesterday of the prisoner swap that freed Italian war correspondent Daniele Mastrogiacomo from imprisonment by the Taleban.
Five Taleban commanders were released from jail in Kabul on Monday in exchange for the Italian, who had been held for two weeks.
Maxime Verhagen, foreign minister of Holland which has 1800 troops fighting the Taleban in southern Afghanistan, told reporters in Kabul, "When we create a situation where you can buy the freedom of Taleban fighters when you catch a journalist, in the short term there will be no journalists any more...The Dutch government will not give in to such situations, because otherwise you'll support the taking of hostages, and we don't want that."
Italy's commitment of troops to Afghanistan is unpopular with the Italian left, and Romano Prodi's government briefly collapsed last month after losing a vote on foreign policy.
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