New Zealand Herald
Wild storms hit Queensland's Gold Coast
12:30PM Saturday October 13, 2007
BRISBANE - A pergola flew through the air then landed on a neighbour's roof during wild storms on the Gold Coast overnight, authorities said.
An Emergency Management Queensland spokesman said overnight storms had knocked out a number of trees in the Hervey Bay region and also the central Queensland regions around Rockhampton and Mt Morgan.
However, the spokesman said it was the Gold Coast which was hardest hit.
"We had trees on roofs, lots of significant roof damage and water damage," the spokesman said.
"A pergola landed on a neighbour's roof at Mudgeeraba on the Gold Coast. "
He said 34 houses had been affected in the Gold Coast and Hervey Bay areas, which also experienced traffic problems from fallen trees.
Winds of up to 100km/h were reported from Hervey Bay airport about 5.30pm (AEST) yesterday.
An Energex spokesman said almost 2500 homes and businesses were without power last night.
The spokesman said more than 160,000 homes and businesses in south-east Queensland had lost power at some stage for an average of two hours during six days of wild weather.
Meanwhile, the cleanup continues in Mitchell in south-west Queensland where a wild storm hit about 11pm on Thursday, ripping roofs from buildings and causing extensive damage.
Two homes and an industrial shed were unroofed and six more homes partially lost their roofs wile a a further 13 buildings were damaged.
Local State Emergency Service controller Alan Lemon said the powerful storm was like a "mini tornado" ripping through the town.
There is relief in sight, however, with the Bureau of Meteorology forecasting a fine weekend in Queensland.
- AAP
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10469690
Debris whirls into air as mini-tornado hits
2:03PM Wednesday October 10, 2007
By Mike Barrington
A mini-tornado caught Dargaville by surprise yesterday, ripping the roof off a flat and wrecking neighbouring yards before whirling on its way as abruptly as it had arrived.
Retired farmer Ray Stallworthy said the tornado struck about 1.30pm with a thunderous noise he had thought could be train crash at the railway station across the road from his home at 1/31 Station Rd.
Sozia Haroon, who had moved into 6/31 Station Rd three weeks ago, was sitting in her lounge when there was a "huge bang" and a howling wind ripped roofing iron off her garage and a neighbour's flat.
She saw sheets of iron blown high in the air. Some of them were found about 150m away near the railway station.
"I was frightened. I couldn't close the window," she said.
The wind wrenched plywood panels off her fence, wrecked a neighbour's gates, blew off the garage doors next door and scattered pot plants and garden furniture at the block of flats and the homes around it.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=68&objectid=10469029
New warning systems for landslide-formed lake
6:40PM Monday October 08, 2007
New warning systems are in place to alert Department of Conservation workers to a breach in the new dam. Photo / DOC
Warning devices to alert authorities to any major breach in the new dam in Mount Aspiring National Park will be replaced tomorrow by better systems, officials said tonight.
One will build a 3D image of the dam and show changes.
An enormous recent landslide blocked the Young River north branch and created the dam.
Behind the dam a 2.5km-long lake formed, about 500m at its widest point and 100m deep just behind the face of the rubble dam.
Rising water flowed over the top of the dam late last week and on down the river, joining the Makarora River further down stream.
Officials said the lake and dam situation had changed little in the past 24 hours.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=68&objectid=10468655
President misquoted over gays in Iran, says aide
8:50AM Thursday October 11, 2007
TEHRAN - Iran's president was misrepresented by Western media when he was quoted saying there were no gays in Iran, and actually meant there were not so many as in the United States, a presidential aide said on Wednesday.
Addressing New York's Columbia University last month, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad replied to a question about gays in the Islamic Republic saying: "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."
Speaking through a translator, he also said: "In Iran we don't have this phenomenon."
The remarks drew widespread criticism in the West.
Homosexuality is punishable by death in the Islamic Republic.
"What Ahmadinejad said was not a political answer. He said that, compared to American society, we don't have many homosexuals," presidential media adviser Mohammad Kalhor said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=301&objectid=10469222
Blackwater subject of war crimes inquiry
5:00AM Saturday October 13, 2007
The American firm Blackwater USA has been served notice that it faces investigations for war crimes after 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed in a hail of bullets fired by its security guards in Baghdad.
The killings last month put the spotlight on the private security firms whose employees are immune from prosecution, unlike professional soldiers who are subject to courts martial.
In the second such incident in less than a month, involving the Australian contractor Unity Resources Group this week, two Armenian Christian women were shot dead after their car approached a protected convoy. Their car was riddled with 40 bullets.
Ivana Vuco, the most senior United Nations human rights officer in Iraq, spoke yesterday about the shootings by private security guards, which have provoked outrage among Iraqis.
"For us, it's a human rights issue," she said. "We will monitor the allegations of killings by security contractors and look into whether or not crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10469592
Bombs kill 14 in Iraqi town
6:50PM Tuesday October 09, 2007
BAGHDAD - Two car bombs killed 14 people and wounded 30 in the northern Iraqi town of Baiji today, police said, marking an increase in attacks as the holy Muslim month of Ramadan draws to an end.
Al Qaeda in Iraq had vowed to ramp up attacks during the fasting month, specifically to target government officials and tribal leaders who have decided to work with US forces to fight the Sunni Islamist group.
Baiji's police chief, Colonel Saad Nifous, was wounded in an attack on his home that killed four of his bodyguards and wounded another seven, police said.
The second bomb in Baiji, 180km north of the capital, targeted a mosque, killing 10 civilians and wounding 22 people. A police source in the town said a tribal leader who was working with US troops to combat al Qaeda was the target.
Car and roadside bombs on Monday killed at least 21 people across Iraq.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=301&objectid=10468861
Pacific needs NZ voice
Page 1 of 3 View as a single page 5:00AM Saturday October 13, 2007
By Audrey Young
At the exact time we discover next week whether or not New Zealand author Lloyd Jones has won the Man Booker prize for Mr Pip (8am Wednesday), the leaders at the Pacific Islands Forum, including Helen Clark, will be on the island of Vava'u in Tonga for a private retreat.
The two events are not entirely unrelated.
Jones' book is set in bleak Bougainville, where rebellion against Papua New Guinea led to 10 years of civil war.
The war ended when New Zealand brokered peace talks in 1996, an autonomous Bougainville Government and a referendum on political independence, to be held sometime between 2011 and 2016.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10469607
Teen arrested in armed plot for Colombine-like attack
6:25PM Friday October 12, 2007
By Jon Hurdle
PENNSYLVANIA - A 14-year-old boy armed with a rifle, homemade grenades, dozens of pellet guns, knives and swords was arrested after confessing to plotting a "Columbine-like attack" on a high school, police said yesterday.
The unidentified boy told police he was a planning an attack on Plymouth Whitemarsh High School similar to the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado in which two students killed 13 people, said Joe Lawrence, deputy chief of police in Plymouth Meeting.
Acting on a tip from neighbours, police arrested the boy at his home north of Philadelphia on Wednesday night.
They found one Hi-Tech 9mm rifle with a laser sight, about 80 pellet guns, and seven homemade hand grenades, four of which were live and three of which were still being made, Lawrence said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10469578
UN tells Myanmar junta it 'deplores' recent violence
12:30PM Friday October 12, 2007
LONDON - The UN Security Council has condemned the crackdown against peaceful demonstrators in Burma, calling for a release of "all political prisoners" and a dialogue between the junta and the symbol of democracy in the country, Aung San Suu Kyi.
But the price of securing the agreement of China and Russia to take the first Security Council action regarding Burma meant that Western countries in the 15-member council agreed to water down a draft statement that had originally demanded a transition to democracy in the country.
The formal statement required a consensus among all 15 members in order to be adopted.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10469474
Collapse hit New Zealand hardest
5:00AM Saturday October 13, 2007
By Christine Nikiel
Craig Heatley (left), and Allan Hawkins after Rainbow Corporation lists on the Stock Exchange.
For thousands of New Zealanders, next week will mark the anniversary of their loss of faith in the sharemarket.
Twenty years ago this month world sharemarkets began plunging into what became the worst financial crisis the investing public had seen since 1929.
On October 19 Wall St markets began their dramatic plunge. The panic spread to New Zealand the following day - October 20, now dubbed Black Tuesday. Nowhere did the crash hit harder than New Zealand.
By late 1988 business commentators in Australia, the US and UK were describing the crash as a "correction" - their markets had recovered.
But in 1991 New Zealand's bourse was worth just $14 billion, down from $45.5 billion before the crash.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10469625
Kiwibank puts fixed interest rates up
5:00AM Sunday October 14, 2007
KiwiBank, which cut its three-year fixed interest rates last month, is tomorrow hiking its rates.
It is raising its three-year fixed term from 8.6 per cent to 8.7 per cent. Its four and five-year terms will rise from 8.65 per cent to 8.75 per cent.
ANZ and National Bank last week increased three-year fixed term rates from 8.75 per cent to 8.95 per cent.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10469782
Kiwi women up for it in the bedroom
5:00AM Sunday October 14, 2007
By Julie Jacobson
Jo Cotton says she does not regret how many partners she has had. Photo / Janna Dixon
In a week when our manly heroes literally dropped the ball, it's been revealed that Kiwi women are world-beaters in the bedroom.
The news comes in a sex survey which has New Zealand women leading the international promiscuity stakes, with an average 20.4 sexual partners, 13.1 more than the average.
Kiwi blokes, on the other hand, were less busy bonkers, averaging 16.8, far fewer than the hot-to-trot Austrian men who boasted an impressive 29.3 sexual partners.
A word of warning, however. Youth health expert Dr Sue Bagshaw said promiscuity was a leading cause of STDs, particularly genital warts, a known precursor to cervical cancer. There were other health risks in having many partners, such as unwanted pregnancy and infertility.
The Kiwi drinking culture and New Zealand women's "we-can-do-anything-men-can-do" attitude contributed to the results, said Bagshaw.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10469774
Aussie princess a 'palace prisoner'
5:00AM Sunday October 14, 2007
Frederik and Mary on a trip to Bucharest, Romania, this month. Photo / Reuters
Denmark's crown Prince Frederik should never have married Australian-born Princess Mary and instead stayed with a former flame, the author of a sensational new book on the Danish royal family says.
Veteran royal reporter turned author, Trine Villemann, says the fairytale marriage between Frederik and Mary has come under strain as both try to cope with pressures they face as royals and parents of two young children.
She believes Frederik is not confident in his role as crown prince, does not want to become king, and would have been better off had he married "the true love of his life", former model Katja Storkholm, when they got secretly engaged in 1995.
Villemann examines the royal marriage in her new book, Copenhagen 1015 K, which will be published in Denmark tomorrow.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10469758
Gore says Nobel Prize affirms climate change importance
10:00AM Saturday October 13, 2007
By Jim Christie
Former US Vice President Al Gore, announced today as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has stressed the urgency of his work on climate change and said he was getting straight back to work on the issue.
"We have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing," Gore told reporters in Palo Alto, appearing in public nearly nine hours after the award was announced in Oslo.
Gore shared the Nobel prize with the UN climate panel for their work helping galvanise international action against global warming.
"It is the most dangerous challenge we've ever faced but it is also the greatest opportunity that we have ever had to make changes that we should be making for other reasons anyway," Gore said.
"This is a chance to elevate global consciousness about the challenges that we face now."
"I'm going back to work right now. This is just the beginning," Gore added, before leaving the room and taking no questions.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10469686
Angry Ankara pulls out envoy
5:00AM Saturday October 13, 2007
Turkey recalled its ambassador to the US for consultations after a vote in a United States congressional committee branded killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks genocide.
The committee's decision is expected to weaken US influence over Turkey at a time when the Turkish Government is considering a military incursion into mainly Kurdish northern Iraq to fight Kurdish rebels.
Turkey's Prime Minister will ask Parliament next week to authorise a military push although analysts say a large cross-border operation is unlikely.
Washington fears such an offensive could destabilise Iraq's most peaceful area and potentially the wider region.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10469602
Same-sex marriage pioneer gets thumbs up in Kapiti
5:00AM Sunday October 14, 2007
By Julie Jacobson
The Kapiti coast has what may be New Zealand's only lesbian mayor.
Jenny Rowan, 58, was up against strong contenders for the position left vacant by the retirement of Alan Milne, including former mayor Iride McCloy and regional councillor Chris Turver.
Openly lesbian, though determinedly not campaigning as such - "it's got nothing to do with me being mayor" - Rowan is no stranger to the cut and thrust of the political arena.
She and partner of 20 years, Jools Joslin, were poster girls for the same sex marriage movement in the mid-90s, sealing their relationship in a commitment ceremony in Wellington in 1996 after being refused a licence to marry legally.
Lately deputy chair of the Paekakariki Community Board, Rowan recently retired after 16 years as a commissioner in the Environment Court. She is a former Taranaki Regional Council member and was mayor of the Taranaki township of Inglewood between 1986 and 1989.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10469778
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