Sydney Morning Herald
It's true, dancing does lead to sex
SCIENTISTS have confirmed what fans of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever have known all along: men with the best dance moves have the most sex appeal.
The finding lends support to the idea that dancing is a way to show off high quality genes and good health - both indicators of a top quality mate.
Charles Darwin was the first to suggest that dance was a courtship signal in animals, but there had been no studies of the relation of dance and genetic or physical quality in humans until now.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/12/22/1135032135891.html
Meet Osama's niece
She's not the model niece Osama bin Laden's looking for - but she is modelling.
This is how Wafah Dufour, the al Qaeda leader's niece, will appear in the January 2006 issue of GQ magazine.
Dufour, who took her mother's maiden name after the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, is an aspiring musician struggling to make a name for herself.
She says she has never met Osama bin Laden.
"Everyone relates me to that man, and I have nothing to do with him," she said in the article.
"There are 400 other people related to him, but they are all in Saudi Arabia, so nobody's going to get tarred with it.
"I'm the only one here."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/people/meet-osamas-niece/2005/12/23/1135032164860.html
Fulla has the Mid-East doll market covered
SHE is the must-have toy this festive season, flying off the shelves. But the season in question is Eid al-Adha next month, not Christmas. Santa Claus means nothing to her.
Fulla, the Muslim doll, is now thought to be the best-selling girl's toy in the Arab world, two years after she first came on the market, displacing her Western rival, Barbie, in shops across her native Levant.
With thick black hair and large dark eyes, Fulla is the physical antithesis of Mattel's blonde, empty-eyed icon of Western consumerism.
Compared with Barbie's improbably pneumatic curves and lanky legs, Fulla's assets are modest, and never officially on display. Although she is marketed with a range of funky clothes, furniture, jewellery and grooming equipment, to avoid offending Muslim modesty, she has no swimwear.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/12/22/1135032135918.html
Tunnel gas blast kills at least 42
A gas explosion in a highway tunnel under construction killed 42 people and injured 11 others in south-west China's Sichuan province and the toll could rise.
Yesterday's explosion happened less than 100 km north-west of Chengdu, at an intersection of a highway being built to link the smaller cities of Dujiangyan and Wenchuan, the State Administration for Work Safety said today.
The exact number of casualties remains unclear, officials said.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/tunnel-gas-blast-kills-at-least-42/2005/12/23/1135032177762.html
Bush: 2005 'a good year'
US President George W Bush has called 2005 "a good year for the American people", but warns that terrorists like those who carried out the September 11 attacks still pose a threat.
In brief remarks today outside the White House as he headed to the Camp David presidential retreat for Christmas, Bush also pointed to elections in Iraq and in Afghanistan and said the US economy had grown stronger.
"This has been a year of strong progress toward a freer, more peaceful world and a prosperous America," he said. "It's been a good year for the American people."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bush-2005-a-good-year/2005/12/23/1135032165900.html
Baby's raw food tragedy
December 23, 2005 - 4:23PM
US parents who fed their baby only raw foods until she died have each been sentenced to 15 years' probation for neglecting their four older children.
Joseph and Lamoy Andressohn were acquitted in the malnutrition death of baby Woyah, but convicted of neglecting the four older kids.
In sentencing the couple in Florida, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Stanford Blake's order included a host of conditions to ensure the safety of the children if and when the Andressohns regain custody.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/babys-raw-food-tragedy/2005/12/23/1135032178070.html
Cold war warriors battle Antarctic whalers
By Andrew Darby
December 23, 2005
THE Japanese whaling fleet threw off attempts to silence its harpoons, as diplomatic and environmentalist pressure rose against the Antarctic hunt.
Greenpeace activists in high-speed inflatables on Thursday spent hours trying to put themselves between chaser boats and minke whales due south of Tasmania, and claimed that some whales were getting away.
"We've certainly succeeded in slowing down the hunt, though, unfortunately, eventually they did kill a whale," said the expedition leader, Shane Rattenbury.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/cold-war-warriors-battle-antarctic-whalers/2005/12/22/1135032135867.html
Bushfire alert as mercury soars
Firefighters are bracing for a black Christmas as searing temperatures threaten to combine with low humidity and high winds to fan major bushfires across much of eastern Australia.
Extreme fire danger is current nationwide, with total bans in Victoria and NSW as temperatures soar towards 40 degrees Celsius in tinderbox conditions.
Sydney and Brisbane are forecast to reach 38 degrees Celsius tomorrow, while Melbourne is expecting 36.
ACT authorities have also extended a fire ban in the national capital until midnight tomorrow after Canberra residents remained under fire alert today with temperatures in the high 30s.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/bushfire-alert-as-mercury-soars/2005/12/23/1135032180937.html
No shooting from the lip
George Bush's words of the past weeks would have been unthinkable just months ago. Michael Gawenda tracks the President's transformation.
AFTER two weeks of speeches, a television address to the nation from the Oval Office and a series of long interviews on network television, is George Bush a president transformed?
Has a president known for his stubbornness and disdain for self-reflection become less stubborn, more reflective, more open to admitting to mistakes?
One way of answering these questions is to look at the language, the rhetoric that has marked his presidency. Language matters.
Nine days after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, Bush addressed a special sitting of Congress. He was a president transformed by events which many people, and not just in the United States, believed marked the end of the post-Cold War era that began with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/no-shooting-from-the-lip/2005/12/22/1135032135942.html
Judges to be briefed on Bush wire-tapsTHE presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President George Bush's domestic spying program.
The move came as Senate Democrats thwarted a permanent renewal of the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act, setting up instead a temporary six-month extension of expiring provisions so that changes can be considered to better safeguard civil liberties. Mr Bush had argued that the law was necessary to safeguard US citizens.
Several members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said they want to know why the Administration believed secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading emails of US citizens without court authorisation was legal. Some judges were concerned that information gleaned from Mr Bush's eavesdropping program might have been improperly used to gain authorised wire-taps from their court.
On Monday, one of the court's 10 judges, James Robertson, submitted his resignation.
The presiding judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, told fellow court members by email that she was arranging for them to convene in Washington for a secret briefing on the program. Two intelligence sources familiar with the plan said Judge Kollar-Kotelly expected top-ranking officials from the National Security Agency and the Justice Department to outline the classified program to the members.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/judges-to-be-briefed-on-bush-wiretaps/2005/12/22/1135032135876.html
The Washington Times
Power We Didn't Grant
By Tom Daschle
Friday, December 23, 2005; A21
In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president "was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that's what we've done."
As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.
On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.
The shock and rage we all felt in the hours after the attack were still fresh. America was reeling from the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not yet accounted for. Even so, a strong bipartisan majority could not agree to the administration's request for an unprecedented grant of
authority.
The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress -- but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional language.
All Americans agree that keeping our nation safe from terrorists demands aggressive and innovative tactics. This unity was reflected in the near-unanimous support for the original resolution and the Patriot Act in those harrowing days after Sept. 11. But there are right and wrong ways to defeat terrorists, and that is a distinction this administration has never seemed to accept. Instead of employing tactics that preserve Americans' freedoms and inspire the faith and confidence of the American people, the White House seems to have chosen methods that can only breed fear and suspicion.
If the stories in the media over the past week are accurate, the president has exercised authority that I do not believe is granted to him in the Constitution, and that I know is not granted to him in the law that I helped negotiate with his counsel and that Congress approved in the days after Sept. 11. For that reason, the president should explain the specific legal justification for his authorization of these actions, Congress should fully investigate these actions and the president's justification for them, and the administration should cooperate fully with that investigation.
In the meantime, if the president believes the current legal architecture of our country is insufficient for the fight against terrorism, he should propose changes to our laws in the light of day.
That is how a great democracy operates. And that is how this great democracy will defeat
terrorism.
The writer, a former Democratic senator from South Dakota, was Senate majority leader in 2001-02. He is now distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201101_pf.html
THIS IS ONE VERY WEAK AND CONTRIVED ARGUMENT. What this level of surveillance relates is an Act of War. I didn't know Bush was at war with American civilians. If he is then he should declare it ! It's an impeachable act even if you don't like it. This is 2005, not the turn of the 20th century.
Impeachment Nonsense
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, December 23, 2005; A21
2005 was already the year of the demagogue, having been dominated for months by the endlessly echoed falsehood that the president "lied us into war." But the year ends with yet another round of demagoguery.
Administration critics, political and media, charge that by ordering surveillance on communications of suspected al Qaeda agents in the United States, the president clearly violated the law. Some even suggest that Bush has thereby so trampled the Constitution that impeachment should now be considered. (Barbara Boxer, Jonathan Alter, John Dean and various luminaries of the left have already begun floating the idea.) The braying herds have already concluded, Tenet-like, that the president's actions were slam-dunk illegal. It takes a superior mix of partisanship, animus and ignorance to say that.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201102_pf.html
On Leaks, Relying on A Faulty Case Study
Untrue Bin Laden Satellite Phone Story Still Has Currency With Media's Critics
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A03
The allegation that news organizations leaked information about Osama bin Laden's satellite phone, thus shutting down a valuable source of intelligence that might have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has long been a prime case study cited by government officials seeking to impose greater restrictions on the news media.
President Bush drew attention to the case Monday when he twice cited it as a dangerous example of the news media "revealing sources, methods and what we use the information for." Bush was basing his remarks on a conclusion by the Sept. 11 commission, which had labeled it a "leak" that prompted the al Qaeda leader to turn off his phone.
Upon closer examination, the story turned out to be wrong. Bin Laden's use of a satellite phone had already been widely reported by August 1998, and he stopped using it within days of a cruise missile attack on his training camps in Afghanistan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201800.html
A Design That's Anti-Faith
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, December 23, 2005; A21
Can you imagine a more faithless pursuit than trying to prove the existence of God?
Yet that is what the whole "intelligent design" movement is really about, and it seems to me that people of faith should rejoice at the federal court decision Tuesday forbidding the schools of Dover, Pa., to read a statement touting intelligent design in science classes. The eloquent ruling by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III is a Christmastime blessing.
"Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID [intelligent design] as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom," Jones wrote in a painstaking, 139-page opinion that probably will set the parameters for future battles over intelligent design around the country. No appeal is expected, because the pro-ID school board members who tried to inject religion into the classroom have already been ousted by voters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201103_pf.html
Newly Emboldened Congress Has Dogged Bush This Year
By Jim VandeHei and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A05
After four years in which Congress repeatedly laid down while President Bush dictated his priorities, 2005 will go down as the year legislators stood up.
This week's uprising against a four-year extension of the USA Patriot Act was the latest example of a new willingness by lawmakers in both parties to challenge Bush and his notions of expansive executive power.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201829.html
Rumsfeld Announces U.S. Troop Reduction in Iraq
By Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 23, 2005; 6:12 AM
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced today that the number of U.S. troops in Iraq would be reduced by two brigades early next year, a move which would cut U.S. forces there by 8,000 to 10,000 troops.
The "adjustment," as Rumsfeld called it, would leave between 129,000 and 131,000 troops in the country, down from a baseline of 138,000. That baseline number was augmented for Iraq's election by another 12,000 troops.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122300266.html
Brown's Turf Wars Sapped FEMA's Strength
Director Who Came to Symbolize Incompetence in Katrina Predicted Agency Would Fail
By Michael Grunwald and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A01
On Sept. 15, 2003, one of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's deputies lobbed a bureaucratic hand grenade across his desk. In a seven-page memo, the new department's undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response told Ridge that his organizational plan would cripple America's ability to respond to disasters.
The memo, like so many that flew around Washington during the largest government reshuffling in decades, involved turf: Ridge had decided to move some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's preparedness functions to an office less than one-fifteenth its size. The writer warned that the shift would make a mockery of FEMA's new motto, "A Nation Prepared," and would "fundamentally sever FEMA from its core functions," "shatter agency morale," and "break longstanding, effective and tested relationships with states and first responder stakeholders."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122202213.html
Brown's Turf Wars Sapped FEMA's Strength
Director Who Came to Symbolize Incompetence in Katrina Predicted Agency Would Fail
By Michael Grunwald and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A01
On Sept. 15, 2003, one of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's deputies lobbed a bureaucratic hand grenade across his desk. In a seven-page memo, the new department's undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response told Ridge that his organizational plan would cripple America's ability to respond to disasters.
The memo, like so many that flew around Washington during the largest government reshuffling in decades, involved turf: Ridge had decided to move some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's preparedness functions to an office less than one-fifteenth its size. The writer warned that the shift would make a mockery of FEMA's new motto, "A Nation Prepared," and would "fundamentally sever FEMA from its core functions," "shatter agency morale," and "break longstanding, effective and tested relationships with states and first responder stakeholders."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122202213.html
New Home Sales Plummet in November
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Associated Press
Friday, December 23, 2005; 10:37 AM
WASHINGTON -- Sales of new homes plunged in November by the largest amount in nearly 12 years, providing the most dramatic evidence yet that the red hot housing market over the last five years is starting to cool down.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that new single-family homes were sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.245 million units last month, a drop of 11.3 percent from October, when sales had surged to an all-time high.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122300460.html
To Some in Turkey, a Kurdish Beer Has the Flavor of Aversion
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A14
ISTANBUL -- Even before the bloody head of a sheep turned up on the brewery doorstep, the makers of Roj beer had reason to suspect their light, malty lager might not be to everyone's taste.
There was the hate mail, a virulent torrent of insults invoking mothers, sisters, dogs, blood and "dreamers like you."
Roj proudly identifies itself as "Kurdish beer." Brewed in Vienna, its Turkish import application has been pending for 18 months, three times the norm. (Rojbeer.co
There was the knock on the door of the brewer's Istanbul representative, who was taken from his house one evening in late September by Turkish security officers and interrogated till dawn.
And there was the remarkably long time Turkish officials were taking to consider the request to allow Roj into their country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201928.html
New Home Sales Plummet in November
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Associated Press
Friday, December 23, 2005; 10:37 AM
WASHINGTON -- Sales of new homes plunged in November by the largest amount in nearly 12 years, providing the most dramatic evidence yet that the red hot housing market over the last five years is starting to cool down.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that new single-family homes were sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.245 million units last month, a drop of 11.3 percent from October, when sales had surged to an all-time high.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122300460.html
Young and Homeless Fill Africa's City Streets
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A01
KHARTOUM, Sudan -- The morning call to prayer echoed through the city as Ahmed Abdulraham, 14, a small boy with cloudy, yellowing eyes, rose from his version of a mattress: a pile of trash spread across a gutter.
He rubbed some murky brown water over his face. He prostrated himself and prayed, he said, for a day when he would be safe and earn a lot of money. Then he took turns with his five friends sniffing glue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122202226.html
New Zealand Herald
Christmas shoppers frustrated by Eftpos breakdown
23.12.05 3.20pm UPDATE
By NZPA and Angela Gregory
Last minute Christmas shoppers have been frustrated by a breakdown in the Eftpos system this afternoon.
A partial failure on a processor affected thousands of terminals at locations nationwide. Paymark Eftpos said a "large number" of transactions were declined starting at 12.50pm.
Though it had initially said it would only take 20 minutes to rectify the fault, there were further problems restarting the system.
Queues grew at central Auckland ATM machines from shoppers trying to get cash instead.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10361289
Nervous time for whale rescuers
22.12.05 1.00pm UPDATE
By Paul Smith and NZPA
Click on 'more pictures' above for photos of the rescue and a map of the area. Video link at foot of page
The next few hours will be crucial for a pod of whales which were stranded on a beach in Golden Bay.
The whales were refloated yesterday but had been heading for another beach in the area this morning.
However, the Department of Conservation (DOC) said mid-morning that the whales were again swimming out to sea.
DoC and volunteer rescuers are now monitoring the situation with high tide due at 2.45pm and strandings possible about two hours after that.
Spokesman Martin Heine told nzherald.co.nz: "They were heading back, but they have done a bit of a u-turn and they look like they are heading in a north-easterly direction back out of Golden Bay.
"They are swimming into an incoming tide so that is good."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10361085
Man swept off rocks
22.12.05 3.40pm
A man is missing after being washed off rocks in West Auckland this afternoon.
Surf Rescue and Coastguard vessels, suported by the Westpac Rescue and police helicopters searched the area at Whatipu for about an hour without success, police said.
Coastguard rescue boats are continuing a shoreline search of the Manukau Harbour inside the Manukau Heads.
No details of the missing man were yet available, Inspector Andrew Brill said.
- HERALD ONLINE STAFF
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10361140
Bangladeshi family victims of hate message
22.12.05 12.00pm
A racist message has been crudely spray-painted across a garage door in the latest attack on a Papamoa Bangladeshi family.
Neither Kamrun Imam, 34, nor husband Hasan, a 39-year-old dentists, know the meaning of the slogan used but are still hurt by the expression of hatred.
"It's very upsetting. Personally I feel really scared," said Mrs Imam, a dental nurse who is pregnant with her second child.
"I asked the police if anybody comes in the middle of the night and broke the door off, what might happen."
The Imams emigrated to New Zealand 10 years ago and moved to the Bay of Plenty from Auckland last year.
Local constable Mark Farrell alerted the family to the damage on Tuesday morning. He said the graffitti was "really offensive".
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10361117
Bugged plants to track thieves
22.12.05
An Auckland landscape gardener has resorted to a desperate and novel security measure to stop her plants being stolen - microchipped yuccas.
Since June this year North Shore landscape gardener Merryn Webster has had 87 yuccas and flax plants stolen from newly developed commercial spaces.
"We're on to them - we've seen their vehicles - they're on camera," Ms Webster said.
"It just guts me to think people are coming in and helping themselves."
Camera surveillance around the Northbridge Properties buildings in Albany captured a white van scouting the area before the most recent theft of nine yuccas three weeks ago.
Twenty-two yuccas were also stolen in June, and 56 flax plants last month.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361071
Floods kill 35 in south Thailand, aid rushed in
22.12.05 7.20am
BANGKOK - Widespread floods have killed 19 people in southern Thailand in the past week, raising to 35 the death toll in the region's worst floods in nearly 30 years, the Interior Ministry said.
Relief agencies rushed food, clothes and blankets to 9 provinces, including three bordering Malaysia, where more than 700,000 people have been affected, the ministry said.
In Malaysia, six people have died in Kelantan state, the worst affected of four northern states hit by floods since Friday, the government said. About 30,000 people were evacuated in the four states, but many have returned home as floodwaters receded in some areas.
In Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was criticised for not touring the flooded deep south where his ruling Thai Rak Thai Party was trounced in general elections earlier this year.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10361060
Union heads could face jail over NY transit strike
22.12.05 1.00pm
The leaders of the union behind New York's crippling mass transit strike could face jail, a judge warned today as commuters were forced to improvise for a second day to get to work.
The day after a court slapped US$1 million ($1.49 million) a day in fines on the striking union, a judge ordered union lawyers to bring TWU Local 100 leader Roger Toussaint and other top officials to court on Thursday, warning that jail was a "distinct possibility."
The bus and subway strike by some 34,000 transit workers is New York's first for 25 years. Staff walked out on Tuesday after talks on pay, health care and pensions broke down.
State law prohibits public sector employees from striking, and the judge is considering imposing fines on individual workers as well as jailing three union leaders.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10361111
Thieves and sightseers plague flood-devastated town
23.12.05 1.00pm
By Cherie Taylor
Thieves and sightseers are adding to the woes of flood-ravaged Matata residents.
Seven months after the disastrous floods hit the Bay of Plenty town, residents' homes are being targeted by thieves and sightseers are treating the area as if it is a tourist attraction.
Resident Marilyn Pearce, whose beach home of eight years is no longer safe to live, said she understood people were curious about what had happened but it was unnecessary for them to ransack the empty homes of people forced out of them.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361275
Expert not surprised at Tamiflu resistance
23.12.05 1.00pm
An international bird flu expert says despite two Vietnamese patients dying after developing a tamiflu resistant strain of bird flu, most patients respond to the drug.
Professor Arnold Monto, from the University of Michigan, said it was expected that the bird flu virus H5N1 would evolve into resistant forms.
The deaths were reported this week in the New England Journal of Medicine.
But Prof Monto said the fact the two Vietnamese patients had developed the resistant strain may not have in itself caused their deaths.
"I think that really has very little to do with the outcome, namely that both of them died, especially since one of them was actually treated six days into the illness," Prof Monto told National Radio.
"The virus has developed resistance. We knew that this was going to happen.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361274
Tourist murder case accused remanded
23.12.05 9.00am
Michael Scott Wallace, 44, the man accused of the kidnap and murder of German tourist Birgit Brauer, was yesterday remanded in custody to re-appear in the New Plymouth District Court for a deposition hearing starting on April 10.
Wallace also faced one charge of driving with excess blood alcohol on April 29 and one charge of driving with excess breath alcohol on August 19, a month before he allegedly killed Miss Brauer, 28. Judge Louis Bidois remanded Wallace in custody until February 9 on those charges.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361228
Recycling at record levels
23.12.05 7.00am
New Zealanders are recycling more waste than ever, the Government said yesterday.
Research showed 77 per cent of local councils now provided kerbside recycling for glass, paper and plastics compared with 10 per cent a decade ago. Recycled packaging material increased from about 130,000 tonnes in 1994 to almost 340,000 tonnes last year.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361226
Chainsaw threat to exotic city trees
23.12.05
By Bernard Orsman
The Auckland City Council is readying the chainsaw to cut down 20 exotic trees in Queen St, many of which appear healthy and have an estimated lifespan of more than 20 years.
The trees' removal is part of a long-term strategy to do away with liquidambar and other large exotic trees for a native planting theme of smaller cabbage trees and nikau palms.
The aim is to bring a distinctive New Zealand flavour to Queen St.
But the removal of exotic trees, many of which are flourishing after decades of slow growth, has angered some councillors and members of the public.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361240
Disarmament cash for Siberian project
23.12.05 6.00am
New Zealand is contributing $1.2 million to a Siberian chemical weapons destruction project and to help the decommissioning of Russia's last plutonium-producing nuclear reactor.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361225
Santa and sleigh for forces in Bamiyan
23.12.05 10.35am UPDATE
By Wayne Thompson
Click on 'more pictures' above for a map showing where NZ forces are serving
It will be a Christmas away from home and loved ones for 221 New Zealand Defence Force personnel on duty in 21 countries in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the global war against terrorism, or peace support operations with the United Nations.
In Sinai, Egypt, a 26-strong contingent will host Christmas Eve drinks and give a kapa haka performance for other nations.
In Afghanistan, 94 personnel are in the New Zealand provincial reconstruction team.
From the New Zealand base in the town of Bamiyan, Captain Sally Homer told the Herald last night that the daytime temperature was zero degrees and at night minus 10-15C.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10361219
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