TGIF Edition 20 March 2009

NZTONIGHT

ANALYSIS

SPORT

MOVIES

Outdoor Pursuits sentenced

The problem with Palestine

Tendulkar twists knife

Julia Roberts is back

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– NZPA

www.tgifedition.com

ISSN 1172-4153 | Volume 2 | Issue 30 |

| 20 March 2009

Homeowners who hire domestic cleaners, caregivers, nannies or perhaps even baby-sitters may be required to ensure their homes comply with OSH workplace safety laws, and human rights anti-discrimination provisions, if an idea being floated by Victoria University researchers gains traction.

Victoria’s Institute of Policy Studies has this week published a provocative paper entitled,“Paid domestic work:A private matter or a public policy issue?”, which suggests householders could lose the right to discriminate on who they allow into their house to look after their children.

“The reasons for the legislative sanction on dis-

on the

INSIDE

GOODBYE NATASHA Illustrious career Page 14

PROPERTIES RISE Turning the corner?

Page 4

IRISH CASTLES

Ashford beckons Above: Corporal Mathew Hopkins on patrol with the Mentoring and Reconstruction Task Force 1 in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan. Inset: Corporal Mathew Hopkins with his new born son Alex.

New twist on ‘Nanny State’

By Ian Wishart

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NZ-born solider killed by Taliban Wellington, March 20 – A New Zealand-born soldier in the Australian Army has been shot dead in Afghanistan.

Corporal Mathew Hopkins, 21, who came from Christchurch, was shot in an intense firefight with Taliban insurgents near the village of Kakarak, 12km north of the Australian base at Tarin Kowt, on Monday.

He was the third New Zealander in a foreign force to die on active duty in Afghanistan.

The others were former Aucklander Sean Patrick McCarthy, 25, a member of the Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) killed when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb, and Labour leader Phil Goff’s nephew, United States Army Captain Matthew Ferrara, 24, killed in an ambush.

Cpl Hopkins had just returned to the frontline after home leave for the birth of his son Alex.

“All Mathew ever wanted to do was be in the Army and serve his country – he joined up as soon as he could after finishing his studies at Kenmore High School in Brisbane,”his mother Bronwyn said in a media statement.

“We last saw Mathew four weeks ago when he came home to get married to Victoria, and for the birth of his son Alex. Mathew’s younger brother Corey and Michael Carter, who was to become Mathew’s stepfather in a fortnight, join with me in thanking the Defence Force for their support at this time.”

In another bitter blow for the Australian Defence Force, a second soldier was killed yesterday while trying to dismantle a roadside bomb.

Dunedin

crimination in relation to paid domestic work in a private household are difficult to make out,”argues the Institute of Policy Studies.“However the areas in which such employees can be discriminated against during employment, including pre-employment and advertising, are wider…not just on the grounds of sex (including pregnancy and childbirth) but also on the grounds of religious or ethical belief, disability, age, political opinion, and sexual orientation.”

In their paper, the researchers question whether allowing householders to retain those discrimination rights should be permitted to continue.

“An employer is under an obligation to take into consideration the individual applicant’s or employee’s ability to do the job, regardless of stereotyped

assumptions about the latter’s sex,”says the policy paper.

The reason for the study appears to be policies of the last Labour Government,which wanted more women in paid work and more children in childcare. Echoing that, the Institute of Policy Studies paper says: “Research shows that men still hold a disproportionate number of the more powerful positions in New Zealand society, including within universities (McGregor, 2008). One way of supporting more women to move into these jobs is by reducing their unpaid work.

“While the growth of early childhood services is one type of support, having nannies, housecleaners and cooks can offer a higher level of support to these women. Such support means that if these women are partnered, their partners also do not need to undertake the totality of such unpaid work in a

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Page 19

household and can pursue high-income careers.”

Rather than encouraging parents to actually “parent”their children, the discussion paper talks about European trends including“the ‘commercialisation of human feelings’ suggesting that workers, mainly women, are required to sell their ‘emotional labour’. Outsourcing the care of children or other dependents has the potential to be more problematic than outsourcing other domestic work (England and Folbre, 2003). Such care giving can involve ‘love’ or at least close bonds.”

The researchers note that the International Labour Organisation is working on new international standards for domestic workers to be published next year,“For this reason, New Zealand’s international obligations are likely to involve further attention being paid to the issue of the legal regulation of domestic workers in the coming years.”

NEW ZEALAND

off BEAT ‘IT WAS ONLY ONE DRINK’ YEAH, RIGHT Wellington (DPA) – A woman driver lost control on a bend, crashed into a house – and then opened a bottle of beer, a newspaper reported on Friday.

Vicky Johnson told the Dominion Post that she was sitting in her garden when the car ploughed into the side of her house in the Napier suburb of Maraenui.

Johnson said she asked the woman driver if she was okay.

“She said, ‘Yeah,’ then cracked open a bottle of Tui (a local beer), right in front of all the kids, too. It was unbelievable.”

Johnson called the police, who arrested the 40-yearold driver and charged her with drunk driving.

Obama makes handicapped ‘joke’, recants LOS ANGELES, March 20 (UPI) – U.S. President Barack Obama, during an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, made a gaffe that required White House press office clarification.

Asked by Leno about his bowling, Obama said he recently bowled 129, adding it was “like Special Olympics, or something”.

The audience laughed but the White House apparently feared someone would take offense. Two hours before the show aired on the East Coast, White House spokesman Bill Burton handed out a statement on Air Force One: “The president made an off-hand remark making fun of his own bowling that was in no way intended to disparage the Special Olympics. He thinks the Special Olympics is a wonderful program that gives an opportunity for people with disabilities from around the world.”

While Obama spent much of his time on the NBC show talking about regulatory reform, he also joked with Leno about sports and talked about how his daughters, Sasha and Malia, are unimpressed by Marine One, the presidential helicopter.

“So they’re splitting up the Starbursts and we’re flying over the Lincoln Memorial,” the president said. “So they got a whole ‘nother level of cool.”

She didn’t see it coming?

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, March 20 (UPI) – A Swedish psychic allegedly fleeced the ex-wife of a tycoon of millions of kroner, prosecutors said.

An arrest warrant has been issued for a Finnish national, a 46-year-old woman who lives in Stockholm, The Local reported today. She allegedly made off with 3.2 million kroner (NZ$700,000).

The victim responded to a newspaper ad, paying a moderate fee for the first reading. But the charges began to mount up, and she paid thousands of kroner so the psychic could visit the holy land and for a bottle of what turned out to be coloured water.

In order to pay, she sold stock, life insurance, mortgaged her apartment, and took out loans, Ake Olsson, the public prosecutor, told Expressen.

Australian teen facing $12,000 phone bill BENALLA, Australia, March 20 (UPI) – An 18-yearold in Australia has racked up a $12,000 cell phone bill through two months of national call, text and Internet services, a company official says.

A spokesman for the Telstra telecommunications company said the unidentified teen enjoyed 384 Internet sessions at a total cost of $10,686, while also amassing other charges through 373 calls and more than 500 text messages, the Melbourne Herald Sun said in its Friday edition.

Julie Wentworth, an Anglicare financial counselor, called the teen’s phone bill ridiculous and called for enhanced bill monitoring of users’ accounts.

“We are dealing with a generation who feel they can’t get by without a mobile phone,” Wentworth said.

“Some don’t have enough self-control, but it was ridiculous the bill got to that point.”

Wentworth told the Herald Sun the teen somehow managed to convince Telstra staff to revive his phone account after being disconnected when his bill reached $2,000.

20 March 2009

Report: Finance co. collapses avoidable

By Ian Llewellyn of NZPA

Wellington, March 20 – There were failures across the entire supervisory framework for finance companies before their collapse, a report by the Companies Registrar said today.

In a report for Parliament’s commerce select committee, Registrar Neville Harris painted a picture of multiple failures and dodgy practices among directors, management, trustees, receivers and auditors.

“In a number of cases, these companies were dominated by a chief executive who was the principal architect of the company’s modus operandi,” the report said.

Boards of the failed companies lacked experience and skills, and“were not adequately informed, misled or failed to take sufficient interest in the affairs of the company”.

There was also a pattern of those in the companies being involved in previous financial industry failures.These included: • Bridgecorp founder Rod Petricevic who was involved in the $250 million failure of Euro National in the late 1980s; • Michael Reeves of Lombard Finance who had a “troubled history with contributory mortgage schemes and pleaded guilty in 2006 to breaching the Securities Act; • Roger Moses of Nathans Finance who was also involved in a failed contributory mortgage broking firm.

The companies had also disguised non-performing loans and engaged in related-party loans to benefit a director or prop up poor investments.

Mr Harris cited Nathans Finance having lent $171 million of its total $176 million in loans to related parties which are unlikely to ever be recovered by receivers.

The failed companies often had a significant reliance on one industry and/or a small group of borrowers.

Lombard Finance’s investment in Wellington’s Brooklyn Rise Apartment development accounted for 30 percent of its loan book, with 80 percent of the $42 million Brooklyn Rise loan lent to just five borrowers.

Bridgecorp founder Rod Petricevic, left and Robert Roest appear in the District Cout to face charges under the securities act, Auckland, New Zealand.NZPA / Nigel Marple

“It is our understanding that a number of the failed finance companies were in the end acting in a similar manner to ponzi schemes.”

In their last months, money from new investors was being used just to repay maturing loans.

Trustees who were meant to take a supervisory role had also failed.

There are five trustee companies in New Zealand and at least 25 of the failed companies had used just two trustee companies – Perpetual Trust and Covenant Trustee.

“This degree of involvement raises issues to the quality of due diligence ... and in particular the extent to which they accepted circumscription of their powers.”

Covenant and Perpetual “were slow to detect adverse financial issues” and too timid in their response.

The companies did not have staff to deal effectively with “widespread failure”within the finance companies.

Trustees had only notified the Registrar of

finance company breaching their trust deeds as receivers were moving in.

There were also problems in the relationship between trustees and receivers.

“Shortcomings in the performance of a trustee company are unlikely to be uncovered or pursued by receivers who are appointed by the trustees, and who look to trustees for further assignments.”

Auditors have also been exposed as lacking teeth.

The big four accounting firms had not been particularly interested in finance companies’ audit appointments.

“There was a significant concentration of audit appointments with second-tier accounting firms such as BDO Spicers, Staples Rodway and Hayes Knight.”

Issues arose as to whether they had capability to do proper due diligence or ongoing auditing.

Receivers believed that with proper auditing few of the failed companies would have managed to keep operating as long as they could.

Prosecution likely over baby in bin Wellington, March 20 – Police are likely to prosecute a woman who allegedly abandoned her newborn baby after she gave birth en route to New Zealand to pick kiwifruit.

Police began an investigation following reports that the woman abandoned her newborn baby in a rubbish bin shortly after a Pacific Blue flight from Apia to Auckland landed about 5.20am.

“Police are currently investigating the mother’s actions after the birth of the child,”a Counties-Manukau police spokeswoman said this afternoon.

“A likelihood of this investigation is a criminal prosecution.”

The woman, believed to be a Samoan citizen, and her child were taken to Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital after they were reunited at the airport.

The woman had reportedly tried to exit the air-

port but had forgotten her passport. She sought help from authorities, who noticed she was pale and bloodstained.

An Auckland Airport spokeswoman said “the baby was found on the aircraft”after landing.

One report quoted sources as saying that the baby was born in the plane’s toilet and then abandoned in a rubbish bin.

The woman underwent surgery yesterday before police were able to speak to her.

Pacific Blue’s website said pregnant women needed medical clearance to board a flight if they had experienced complications or had passed the 36-week mark.

It also trained staff to check whether passengers are pregnant, though the airline did not say if these checks were carried out on the woman in question.

Radio New Zealand International reported that

10 Kiwis released Wellington, March 20 – Ten little spotted kiwi are moving into their new home of Motuihe Island in the Hauraki Gulf this weekend.

Conservation Minister Tim Groser said the kiwi would be the first released onto the now pest-free island on Saturday.

Pests were removed over the past five years under a restoration programme for the islands of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park.

“Wild kiwi living on Motuihe Island just 30 minutes from downtown Auckland – is a massive

achievement for the Motuihe Trust, and everyone involved in the Motuihe Island Restoration Project,” Mr Groser said.

The Motuihe Trust, in partnership with the Department of Conservation, worked to restore the island by removing pests, re-planting, developing tracks and visitor facilities and returning native birds, lizards and insects.

Up to 40 kiwi will eventually be relocated to the island.

– NZPA

the 29-year-old woman was a regional seasonal scheme worker, and flew to New Zealand to start picking kiwifruit, The incident would mean more careful screening of woman applicants in the future, the assistant chief executive of Samoa’s immigration department, Fata Uili Kapeteni, said.

The New Zealand Immigration branch in Apia dealt with all visa applications.

Samoan lawyer Olinda Woodroffe, who is based in Auckland, said she was frustrated police and hospital authorities had refused to let her or Samoan church leaders visit the woman in hospital.

“Our hearts go to her. We want her to know we care. She is probably feeling we don’t care but we do. How can we get to her?”she said.

– NZPA

NEW ZEALAND

20 March 2009

Mum writes death report

Recession impacts on justice system Wellington, March 20 – The recession is having an impact on the justice system with more financerelated cases going to court and tight budgets restraining recruitment.

A report by Parliament’s Justice and electoral select committee reviewing the Justice Ministry finances for 2007/08 raised concerns about court workload increases.

“The largest courts are listing up to 150 cases a day, where normally only 60 cases would be expected at this time of year,”the report said.

“We are aware that the economic situation is also affecting court workloads with,for example,increases in the number of liquidation cases being filed.”

The report said the ministry was working to be more efficient and was involved in a project with the Law Commission to simplify criminal procedures which would help reduce delays.

The committee has asked the ministry to look at ways to free judges up from administrative tasks by giving registrars greater powers.The ministry said judges shared administration work on a rotational basis.

By Kevin Norquay

The ministry was showing restraint in recruitment because of belt-tightening during the recession and the report said there would need to be strong case before new staff could be hired.

The ministry told the committee it did not have enough resources to meet the 2014 deadline for Treaty settlements set by the Government and it would talk to the Justice Minister about it.

The Waitangi Tribunal was analysing new and existing claims in order to prioritise.

The Office of Treaty Settlements’work increased by 39 percent from 2003-4.

“We are particularly concerned by the report’s finding that, although capacity in the office has increased during this period the Office of Treaty Settlements still does not have the capacity to sustain predicted increases in workload.”

The report also said it did not think ministry advice of expected use of consultants was realistic.

The ministry said the estimate may no longer be current especially with increased Treaty settlement work.

– NZPA

Did cops do deal?

Wellington, March 20 – All seven people identified on a police digital camera left behind during a raid on a Lower Hutt house in December have now been contacted and given an apology, police said.

The digital camera containing hundreds of images, including a dead body and victims of domestic violence, was mislaid at the house during the execution of a drugs search warrant.

The seven people contacted included the relatives of a dead person whose body had been photographed.

Police had also contacted the owners of five identifiable vehicles pictured in the camera.

“Most were surprised and appreciative,”Wellington district commander Superintendent Pieri Munro said this afternoon.

Police had apologised and given an assurance that everything would be done to prevent further publication of the pictures.

Measures had been taken to ensure such a situation did not arise again, and an investigation had begun into the camera’s loss and its recovery, Mr Munro said.

Stokes Valley man Chris Kidman said a friend gave him a DVD copy of the photos, but denied he asked the news media for money.

“I got arrested the other day. I told them I had the DVD and they (police) laughed at me,”he told Radio New Zealand.

“So I kept it and I told them I was going to take it

to 3 News and they just laughed at me,” Kidman alleged yesterday the camera, returned after two days,had been used by his uncle’s partner to bribe police into seeking a reduced sentence,after the uncle was convicted on drug and firearms charges.

Police had not considered any bribes, but had taken a lawful approach to the situation in offering a submission to the judge regarding sentence for the man facing charges, Mr Munro said.

“Last night on TV it was inferred that there was plea bargaining. Let me absolutely refute that.There was not. The police provided a formal submission letter to be considered by the presiding judge.That is not plea bargaining.”

Kidman said his was the only copy of the images, but Mr Munro was sceptical as he said he had not been notified of any downloads when the camera was returned.

While police would be seeking the return of Kidman’s DVD, Kidman said he had sat down with it in his back pocket and it was now broken.

The camera incident was the second slip up by the Lower Hutt police to emerge in as many days.

It was revealed on Wednesday police had left a restricted document with members of the Mongrel Mob during a raid last month.

Housing New Zealand also came under fire this week for leaving documents with Lower Hutt gang affiliates.

Wellington, March 20 NZPA – An Auckland woman whose son died suddenly after being bullied at school has written a 161-page report she says outlines “gross negligence”leading to his death.

Toran Henry, 17, was found dead in his Takapuna home shortly after he was bullied at Takapuna Grammar School. He was being treated for depression when he died.

His mother Maria Bradshaw has spent four months researching,writing and producing a report she told NZPA summarises“all available evidence”.

Her report – laid out and annotated as if it were a university thesis – would ensure the coroner had all available information to determine the cause of her son’s death, she said.

It would allow the coroner to “identify the circumstances leading up to it, and make recommendations to prevent future deaths”.

While her son was dead, he could still leave a legacy in the form of improved mental health services, Ms Bradshaw said.

“I’m here to do that for him.”

Ms Bradshaw, who graduated with an MBA last year, is now on an invalid’s benefit of $170 a week.

She did her report in Takapuna library, as she did not have a home phone or internet connection.

While it had been“very emotive”researching her son’s death, she considered her report was more objective than others already carried out.

“I’ve employed my (MBA) research skills to be as objective as possible,”she said.

“It’s very emotive to me, it’s very difficult, but everything I’ve said is an objective assessment of the research I found.

“My primary objective was to help me understand what happened to my son.”

Ms Bradshaw said she had provided“documentary evidence of gross negligence by agencies and individuals with a statutory duty of care to my son”.

Takapuna Grammar School,the Education Review Office, the Waitemata District Health Board and police have all examined their roles in the death.

“None of these investigations has operated from a complete information base, and all have been under resourced,”she said.

She wanted to correct inaccuracies and fill in gaps for the coroner, assess whether the standard of care provided was up to standard,identify care deficiencies and areas where performance could be improved.

Ms Bradshaw has talked of launching private prosecutions, which would include manslaughter, and would be seeking exemplary damages.

She told NZPA she could not afford such action, so her hope was a lawyer would read her report and take up the case for her.

She alleged: • errors in prescribing her son anti-depressants; • police destroyed evidence at the death scene; • failures by medical professionals to make correct diagnoses, by the school to protect Toran, and by the DHB to obtain informed consent before prescribing anti-depressants; • perceived errors by psychiatrists; • shortcomings in the autopsy report.

Ms Bradshaw even examined her own role as a parent,though in general her“critical errors”related to her failure to question the treatment provided by others.

She had tried to address her son’s substance abuse, trying a range of strategies, and sought support from Toughlove.

She regretted not pushing the DHB to address the substance abuse.

“Had I done so, Toran may have been properly assessed and diagnosed and received support to abstain from or reduce his consumption of alcohol,”she said.

“Given that he took prozac in order to reduce his tolerance for alcohol and achieve intoxication more quickly, this may have been the most important action I could have taken.”

– NZPA

special

the ordinary becomes

– NZPA

Kiwi pushes to new two-month highs “While their concerns have so far been expressed with widespread selling of the USD we should note that the link between whether or not quantitative easing undermines the USD is inflation,”Ms Hampton said.

“Only if quantitative easing stokes inflation will it erode the purchasing power of US dollars and in the longer term weigh on the USD.” Buoyed by today’s news that New Zealand in February had the highest migration gain since November 2006, the kiwi also gained against other major currencies.

Against the aussie dollar, it climbed to A81.06 at 5pm from A80.17c at 5pm yesterday.

The kiwi was also buying 0.4078 euro at 5pm from 0.4025 and 52.71 yen from 51.99. The trade weighted index was 55.13 at 5pm from 54.17 24 hours earlier.

– NZPA

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Wellington, March 20 – The New Zealand dollar pushed above US56c early today for the first time in more than two months, as the US dollar continued to reel in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s moves to inject more money into the US economy.

The Fed said yesterday (NZT) it would purchase $US300 billion ($NZ563.5 billion) of long-dated Treasuries over the next six months and increase mortgage-backed debt purchases – sending the US dollar to its worst one-day loss since at least 1985.

After peaking around US56.15c the kiwi was buying US55.79c at 5pm today from US54.16c at 5pm yesterday.

BNZ Capital currency strategist Danica Hampton said the kiwi rate against the greenback had chased broad US dollar weakness.

Analysts and investors feared the increase in US money supply would erode the purchasing power of the US dollar.

NEW ZEALAND

20 March 2009

ACT MP laughs at rights criticism

From left, Elim College principal Murray Burton, parents Catherine Linnen, John McClean, Jennifer Fernandes, school proprietor Luke Brough, and Parent Francisco Fernando at a press conference held after the sentencing of the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuit Centre on to two charges over the deaths of six students and their teacher from Elim College, on the Mangatepopo River last year, Auckland, New Zealand, Friday, March 20, 2009. NZPA / Wayne Drought

Adventure centre can’t afford fine Auckland, March 20 – The adventure centre at the centre of a river tragedy which left six students and their teacher dead last year has been ordered to pay $480,000 in fines and reparation.

The Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre (OPC) was fined a total of $40,000 in Auckland District Court today after admitting two charges laid under the Health and Safety in Employment Act. Judge Anne Kiernan also ordered the OPC to pay $60,000 reparation to each of seven victims’families and a further $5000 to each of the four survivors of the tragedy.

Lawyers for the OPC indicated to the court they would consider an appeal, as the fine exceeded the centre’s ability to pay.

The victims were Auckland Elim College teacher Anthony McClean, 29, of Howick, and students Natasha Bray, 16, of Pakuranga; Portia McPhail, 16, of Manurewa; Huan (Tom) Hsu, 16, of Farm Cove; Anthony Mulder, 16, of Howick; Floyd Fernandes, 16, of Howick, and Tara Gregory, 16, of Mt Wellington.

After today’s hearing, the Department of Labour, which brought the prosecution, urged all adventure tourism operators to look critically at their health and safety systems.

The first charge against the OPC was that, as an employer,it failed to take all practicable steps to ensure the safety of employee Jodie Sullivan, while at work.

Ms Sullivan was the instructor in charge of the group when they were swept to their deaths in the Mangatepopo Gorge, near Turangi in the central North Island, on April 15 last year.

The second charge was the centre failed to take all practicable steps to ensure no action or inaction of Ms Sullivan harmed any other person.

The students and their teacher were on a canyon trip when heavy rain dramatically raised the levels of the usually sedate stream.

Department of Labour lawyer Michael Hargreaves said the OPC should have known from the heavy rain on the day that the group should never have entered the gorge, even though the water levels were not high when they entered.

The OPC should also have either subscribed to Met Service’s weather warning service, or kept an eye on its website for weather warnings on the day of the tragedy.

The Met Service warned of thunderstorms and severe weather.

OPC lawyers Adam Ross and Michael White said the centre admitted its failings, though they said few if any other outdoor centres subscribed to the storm warning service prior to this event.

Mr Hargreaves said the OPC had a medium level of culpability in its two breaches of the Act. Mr Ross and Mr White said the culpability level

was low and that it should not be fined as the centre did not need to be deterred or denounced any further and that it had made several changes to improve safety.

But Judge Kiernan saw the level of culpability as high.

“There is a high degree of risk in this activity, and therefore there was a high degree of responsibility to your staff and those they were supervising,especially given that they were supervising children,”she said.

“This was a tragedy that shouldn’t have occurred and a tragedy which could have been avoided.”

She said the OPC’s early guilty pleas and its participation in two restorative justice conferences earlier this month were considered favourable mitigating factors in sentencing.

Parents of those killed said they were pleased with the outcome and with the restorative justice efforts of the OPC. Jennifer Fernandes, mother of Floyd Fernandes, agreed with Judge Kiernan that no reparation would ever bring their children back, and was pleased the judge found a high level of culpability.

The college has yet to decide whether its students will ever attend the OPC again.

Elim College proprietor Luke Brough said he would find it difficult to ever send college students back, but Miss Gregory’s mother Catherine Linnen said it should be up to parents to decide as many other young New Zealanders had enjoyed their experience.

OPC chief executive Grant Davidson said Elim Christian College students were welcome back at the centre but in a time that is appropriate to them.

“Families are always welcome to visit the OPC and we hope to continue that interaction.”

Mr Davidson said the OPC would continue to work with the families of the victims.

OPC trust board chairman Rupert Wilson said the centre would have a careful look at the decision before commenting on it.

Mr Ross said in court that the OPC had insurance but that it would not cover its suggested maximum reparation of $330,000.

Department of Labour central region health and safety services manager Brett Murray said lessons should be learned from the tragedy.

“I hope that today’s outcome will encourage others in the adventure tourism industry to look critically at their operations to ensure that they and their clients are never put in a similar position,”he said.

“I would urge them to start working on this today.

Because this is the kind of tragedy that can happen to anyone involved in the adventure tourism industry if they don’t manage workplace hazards properly.”

– NZPA

Wellington, March 20 – ACT MP David Garrett says criticism his proposed tougher sentencing regime would breach international human rights obligations is laughable because other countries treat their citizens badly.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Mfat) officials have joined Attorney-General Chris Finlayson in warning that Mr Garrett’s“three strikes”policy could go against United Nations human rights obligations.

Foreign Affairs officials say the proposal to hand down a compulsory 25-year non-parole sentence for the worst criminals after their third serious offence could risk the country’s reputation, affecting its ability to influence other countries.

It was also likely to violate two human rights conventions monitored by the UN, one covering political rights and the other, torture and other cruel punishments.

Mfat’s claims were “completely laughable,” Mr Garrett said.

This was because a leading member of the UN Human Rights Council was Saudi Arabia –“a country notorious for severe oppression of political and religious minorities, homosexuals and women,”Mr Garrett said.

“In Saudi Arabia court-sanctioned amputations and brutal lashings are common form of punishment for petty crimes; public execution by beheading can be expected for those convicted of armed robbery or homosexuality.”

Mr Garrett said Qatar, another council member, punished consenting homosexuals with five years imprisonments and regularly carried out capital punishment.

“New Zealand is a liberal and progressive nation by any measure.Why then should we be expected to pay any attention whatsoever to covenants set down by barbaric regimes like those of Saudi Ara-

bia, Qatar and other council members?”Mr Garrett asked.

New Zealand has signed both of the international treaties that Mfat believes the proposal may breach.

Mr Finlayson said a few weeks ago the policy “may raise an inconsistency with the right against disproportionately severe treatment”.

The New Zealand Herald reported today on Mfat advice, obtained under the Official Information Act, that passing the laws“would pose reputational risks to New Zealand by resulting in international criticism”.

The ACT Party bill was backed through its first reading in Parliament by National, while being opposed by Labour, the Greens and the Maori Party.

ACT leader Rodney Hide last week called for the public to back the tough sentencing bill and also said the Government was not committed to backing it past its first reading.

Justice Minister Simon Power said he expected the issues to be debated at the bill’s select committee stage.

– NZPA

Property sales up Wellington, March 20 – Real estate group Harcourts New Zealand is taking encouragement from the amount of written sales last month which were at the highest level for a year.

During February 1788 real estate sales were written

by Harcourts, compared to 1865 in February 2008.

Harcourts chief executive Bryan Thomson today said the increase in the number of written sales was an encouraging sign,along with an increase in traffic

to the Harcourts website and anecdotal feedback.

The Harcourts team had also been reporting a distinct lift in the level of buyer inquiry and a big jump in open home attendance, Mr Thomson said.

“They have also been commenting on increasing numbers of multiple-offer situations, along with excellent success rates both under the hammer at auctions and via subsequent negotiations.”

– NZPA

Fatal bridge swing accused named Wellington, March 20 – Name suppression has lapsed for the man charged with the manslaughter of Catherine Peters,who died after falling during a bridge swing in the Manawatu Gorge earlier this month.

Alastair Ross McWhannell, 46, sole director of the swing operators Crag Adventures, appeared in Palmerston North District Court on Wednesday.

He was granted name suppression until this afternoon.

Ms Peters, 18, fell 20 metres on to a riverbed beneath the Ballance Bridge in the Manawatu Gorge on March 7 and died in hospital that night.

She was in a group from the university’s alpine club on an introductory rope swing run by Palmerston North-based Crag Adventures.

Police said earlier that the manslaughter charge followed an investigation into safety procedures.

– NZPA

EDITORIAL

20 March 2009

Editorial

Family Matters

Should Nats smack Bill?

A chance to exorcise one of the ghosts of the Labour years has arisen courtesy of Act MP John Boscawen’s proposed Bill to amend the Anti-Smacking Act. Boscawen’s proposal followed the news in this week’s Family First opinion poll (carried out by Curia Research, a company run by Kiwiblog’s David Farrar) that a large majority of New Zealanders remain highly annoyed by Sue Bradford and Helen Clark’s intrusion into the nation’s homes in the name of social engineering.

“This poll,”explained Boscawen,“commissioned

by Family First NZ and conducted by Curia Market Research, surveyed the views of 1,000 everyday New Zealanders – 83 percent of whom felt the law should be changed, with a total 77 percent of respondents

believing the law would not help reduce our child abuse rates.

“While addressing the concerns of those who felt that the original section 59 of the Crimes Act was too vague, my amendment to the law will protect from criminalisation those parents who use a light smack for the purpose of correction.

“The amendment will change the Act so that: it is no longer a crime for parents or guardians to use reasonable force to correct children; there are clear statutory limits on what constitutes reasonable force; parents and guardians have certainty about what the law permits; it is no longer reliant on police discretion for the law to be practical and workable.

“In an attempt to curb child abuse, this law

has simply criminalised law-abiding parents and removed their freedom to decide how best to raise their children – something that ACT has consistently opposed.”

But here’s the question: will National MPs support it? They should – given the huge community resentment, a proper reform of the Act is now possible, rather than the hurried backroom compromise that saw John Key forced to play good fairy against Clark’s wicked fairy in a modern re-telling of Sleeping Beauty.

There is no shame in tweaking the Act,and it’s better to do it now the pressure is off, and do it right.

“The Labour we know best’ Government is out and National is now in. Perhaps we will now begin to see an end to the madness of the past nine years – where politicians saw fit to tell New Zealanders how to live their lives,”Mr Boscawen said.

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Comment

Russia threatens nuclear arms race

By Stefan Nicola

BERLIN – President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia would modernize its armed forces and nuclear weapons to counter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s eastward expansion, but experts say the West does not have to worry about a new crisis with Moscow.

The Russian armed forces, Medvedev told top Russian generals, will be expanded starting in 2011.

The president cited the serious potential for conflict in many regions, international terrorism and NATO’s military eastward expansion as reasons for the move.

“The primary task is to increase the combat readiness of our forces, particularly our strategic nuclear forces, which are key to Russia’s national security,”the president said.

Medvedev’s remarks come two weeks before he is due to meet for the first time with U.S. President Barack Obama in London, a gathering experts hope will start a new and more positive era in relations between the two powers.

Washington has been irritated by the war in Georgia, Russia’s human-rights shortcomings and Moscow’s blocking position regarding Kosovo’s independence.

The Kremlin, on the other hand, deemed the Bush administration’s push for NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia and the plan to station a missile defence system in Eastern Europe as threats to Russia’s national security.

Obama recently indicated he may bury the missile defence system for the sake of better relations with Russia, with Moscow reacting quite favourably; a recent meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov went remarkably well, spreading hope for better ties ahead. Before Medvedev met with the military leaders, the Russian media even speculated that he might announce a willingness to reduce the nuclear arsenal.The exact opposite has happened, and that may startle analysts in Washington, especially as Russia’s top nuclear weapons official, Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, announced Tuesday that Moscow would deploy a regiment of RS-24 intercontinental missiles fitted with nuclear warheads after Dec. 5.

Experts in Europe, however, say Medvedev’s comments don’t mean a return to the old conflict days.

“You can see it as an attempt by Moscow to raise the stakes for the next U.S.-Russian negotiations by creating bargaining power,”Susan Stewart, a Russia expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin-based think tank, told United Press International in a telephone interview Thursday.“In Russia, the Kremlin’s rhetoric often counteracts its actions, so I wouldn’t overestimate Medvedev’s remarks.”

Medvedev and Obama are poised to find a suc-

Medvedev’s remarks come two weeks before he is due to meet for the first time with U.S. President Barack Obama in London

cessor agreement to the U.S.-Russian Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which runs out Dec. 5, and Medvedev simply may not be willing to enter these talks empty-handed.

Alexander Rahr, a leading Russia expert working at the German Council on Foreign Relations, has another idea.

The expert suggested that Medvedev with his comments wanted to please Russia’s military elites, who have been irritated by recent budget cuts (think financial crisis) and Medvedev’s military reform plans.

The Russian president said he wanted to make Russia’s 1.5 million-strong armed forces,a remnant of the Cold War, smaller and more mobile, and that means cutting jobs and breaking up old structures.

“The military in Russia has its own interests, and they have a strong lobby,”Rahr told UPI in a telephone interview.“Medvedev is not in control of the Russian armed forces yet.They still see (Prime Minister and former President Vladimir) Putin as their commander in chief.

“It’s Medvedev’s attempt to emancipate himself from strongman Putin that has the president meandering through international diplomacy, requiring him to sometimes send conflicting messages,”Rahr said.

“Medvedev wants to push through a more liberal domestic and foreign policy concept, and that’s not easy in Russia.”

– UPI

By Bob McCoskrie -Bullying comes from social agenda Concerns about school bullying are a simple result of the culture we have experimented with, which includes children’s rights, media standards, undermining the role of parents, and removing consequences.

All of these young people have entered a system of education and society where discipline and responsibility are being replaced by the politically correct nonsense of children’s rights. Ironically, this has been pushed by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner who is now crying foul.

But schools are suffering, in particular because they are being forced by the Ministry of Education to put up with increasing levels of unacceptable behaviour and are being criticised for suspending these students.

It is also significant that as schools have removed corporal punishment, schools have become more dangerous.

School yard bullying by pupils on other pupils and staff is now the new form of ‘corporal punishment’ in schools.

We cannot continue to feed the minds of our young people with the level of violence, sexual content and disrespect for authority that is prevalent in the media and our culture without it affecting the minds of some of our most impressionable and at-risk teenagers and children.

Student behaviour and bullying will continue to deteriorate for as long as we tell them that their rights are more important than their responsibilities, that proper parental authority is undermined by politicians and subject to the rights of their children, and that there will be no consequences of any significance or effectiveness for what they do.

-83% want Smack Law fixed Almost two years after the passing of the controversial antismacking law, 83% of NZ’ers still want the law changed to state explicitly that parents who give their children a smack that is reasonable and for the purpose of correction are not breaking the law, and 77% say that the law won’t have any effect on our unacceptable child abuse rate.

These are the key finding of research commissioned

by Family First NZ, following on from similar research in 2007 and 2008. The Curia Market Research poll surveyed 1,000 people, and also found huge confusion over the legal effect of the law.

Based on this poll which is consistent with all previous ones, the government can save $8 million of taxpayer funding towards the cost of running the Referendum during a recession, and amend the law now.

Respondents were also asked whether the new law makes it always illegal for parents to give their children a light smack. 55% said yes, 31% said no, and 14% didn’t know.

Parents have been given conflicting messages by the promoters of the law, legal opinions have contradicted each other, and on top of that is police discretion (but not CYF discretion) to investigate.

Parents have a right to know whether they are parenting within the law or not. This flawed law must be fixed and the real causes of child abuse confronted. That’s what NZ’ers want.

-CYF Complaints Authority fails miserably Figures obtained from the Ministry of Social Development under the Official Information Act show that the CYF Complaints Authority is failing its job, that the Ministry has done virtually nothing to make people aware of its existence, and that CYF remains unaccountable.

A pitiful $14,000 has been spent on brochures and some posters for distribution around CYF offices to advertise the Complaints Authority, and only three written complaints have been made since the Authority was established in July 2008.

Family First is being regularly contacted by families who claim to have been unfairly treated by CYF social workers – yet they have no independent body to appeal to. Their only option is a costly court process where CYF has an unlimited pool of resources to defend its actions, courtesy of the taxpayer.

This is grossly unfair when families are being ripped apart, often based on the subjective judgment of a social worker. The recent response to the CYFSWatch website shows just how deep-seated the concern is.

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ANALYSIS

20 March 2009

So you want a two-state solution?

By Claude Salhani

WASHINGTON – In politics, as in life, be careful what you wish for.The Palestinians had long wanted a two-state solution, and, well, now they have a twostate solution.Two states, one in the West Bank and one in Gaza.Actually, better make that three states, if you count the state of confusion that the two opposing states have created.

Indeed, confusion seems to be the dominating factor in the Middle East today as the conflict becomes more complex, more difficult to solve and is drawing in countries that previously were either not involved or marginally involved.A quick analysis of the region underlines this point of view.

Palestine:We already covered the basics, but the conflict that began as a dispute over turf has turned into a far uglier religious war. And we know that when God orders the killing, it can be far deadlier than that commanded by most politicians. (There are exceptions.)

Unless Hamas and Fatah are able to reconcile and work together, the moribund peace process will end up like the dozen or so other Middle East peace attempts that time and again have interrupted wars in the region yet for the most part failed to bring about a lasting peace.

Starting with the U.N.Security Council Resolution 242; the Rogers Plan, named after former Secretary of State William P. Rogers; right through the latest road map for peace presented by the United States, the European Union,Russia and the United Nations, under the stewardship of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, they all have hit a dead-end street.

There are two, or rather three, success stories in the 61-year history of this modern Middle East conflict.

The first success came about as a result of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Richard Nixon’s secretary of state succeeded through his relentless efforts and his persistent shuttle diplomacy to extract – and not without difficulty – an initial agreement to a cease-fire on the Golan Heights in the aftermath of the October

1973 war,and later solidify that cease-fire into a longerlasting agreement. In fact, despite the rhetoric and confrontational talk that from time to time emanates from Damascus,in the 36 years since the end of hostilities nary a bullet was fired across the U.N.demarcation line separating the two antagonists.

The second success attempt came from President Jimmy Carter’s efforts at Camp David and the ensuing accords the presidential retreat in Maryland gave the pact that led to peace between Egypt and Israel.This peace ended up costing the life of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was accused of treason and assassinated by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. And here is an important point for those dragging their feet on the slow road toward peace. Egypt may well have signed a peace treaty with Israel, but it does not mean the Egyptian people are at peace with Israel.

Anti-Israeli sentiments are never far below the surface in the most populous Arab country. One does not even need to scratch the surface, as the

animosity aimed at Israel and the strong support for the Palestinians are clearly visible in the streets of Cairo and in the pro-Hamas rallies across the country. The Muslim Brotherhood has never been stronger, and, barring government interference in the next elections, the Islamists are in good standing to win.The Egyptian government is treading a very thin line between how much they think they can get away with in manipulating the polls and upsetting the street to the point of inciting civil disobedience and risking an open confrontation.

The second point of urgency is what is likely to happen in the post-Mubarak era, as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has yet to name a vice president after 26 years since he assumed power upon Sadat’s assassination.

The third story with a happy ending in the long and bloody saga of war and broken peace treaties in the Middle East is Jordan’s and Israel’s peace agreement signed on the shores of the Dead Sea. While Syria remains technically at war with Israel, although the two countries have not exchanged anything more lethal than ugly words since 1974, with one or two exceptions the Golan has remained peaceful. Israel bombed a camp in Syria used by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command to train commandos, and more recently Israel destroyed what it claimed was a nuclear processing facility in northern Syria.

Syria denied the implications.

But, as has been stated by many analysts who study Syria and follow closely its development, the maker or the breaker of a final settlement of the Middle East crisis is in the hands of Syria and its president, Bashar Assad. It has always been said in the Middle East that there could be no war without Egypt, and there could be no peace without Syria.

The reason Syria has the capability of tilting the balance between war and peace is in part due to Syria playing host to Hamas’military wing, its support of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (also based in Damascus) and Syria’s alliances with Hezbollah and Iran.

Ah, yes, Iran. Speaking of confusion and of expanding the crisis, the Islamic Republic has been at the forefront of the Middle East crisis, supporting, financing and training Islamist groups and raising the spectre of nuclear proliferation in the region.

According to Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Iran is at the point where it can develop nuclear weapons.

Addressing an audience of Young Professionals in Foreign Policy inWashington last week,Mullen said he believed the Islamic Republic of Iran is at the centre of an awful lot of what is going on in the world.

Claude Salhani is editor of the Middle East Times.

– UPI

Obama’s Afghanistan ‘surge’

By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is planning a major“surge”into Afghanistan of diplomats and civilian specialists steeped in running elections, fighting corruption and battling narcotics trafficking as part of a counterinsurgency strategy to stabilize the country, current and former U.S. officials said this week.

Any effort to turn around the situation in Afghanistan, however, faces long odds. More than seven years after the ouster of the Taliban from Kabul, Islamic militants are resurgent, corruption is endemic and opium trafficking is an economic mainstay.

Obama’s advisers have been debating how broad or narrow overall U.S. goals in Afghanistan should be – whether, for example, to limit the mission to counterterrorism, as opposed to the broader goal of building an Afghan democracy.

The White House strategy, which is nearly complete, also proposes an expanded role for the United Nations in coordinating disparate international reconstruction efforts, which have been criticized as wasteful and overlapping.

In giving a leading role to civilian specialists and to the U.N., Obama is making a sharp break from the Bush administration, which excluded both from early postwar efforts in Iraq after the U.S. invasion began six years ago.

One of the veteran U.S. diplomats headed for Afghanistan, former U.S. ambassador Tim Carney, was among the State Department officials briefly blocked from deploying to Iraq by then-Defense Secretary Donald H.Rumsfeld.Carney later become a public critic of the Iraq reconstruction effort.

Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan is due to be finished in time for a March 31 international conference in the Netherlands.

U.S. officials agreed to discuss the evolving approach only on the condition of anonymity, because Obama hasn’t signed off on his advisers’ recommendations.

Among the senior diplomats headed to Afghanistan is Francis Ricciardone, a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and the Philippines, who also has extensive experience with Iraq, officials said.

Ricciardone will be deputy to Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, Obama’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

Another former U.S. ambassador, Peter Galbraith,

a veteran diplomat who’s investigated conflicts in the Balkans and Iraq, is expected to be appointed by the U.N. as its No. 2 official in Afghanistan.

Obama last month ordered 17,500 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan this spring, but held off deciding on additional troops requested by U.S. commanders there.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday, expressed concern about an “open-ended”military commitment.

“I’ve been very concerned about an open-ended commitment of increasing numbers of troops for a variety of reasons,” Gates said. While declining to discuss the policy review in detail, he said of Afghanistan:“It’s a difficult problem and trying to come up with new approaches and new initiatives that enhance our prospects for success is hard work, frankly.”

A senior U.S. defense official said that Army Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, has been insisting that the so-called“civilian surge” be made a key provision of the new AfghanistanPakistan strategy.

He noted that Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also have been calling for an approach that harnesses the

resources of the entire U.S. government, not just the overstretched military.

The civilian surge “will extend itself into other departments of the government,”said the senior U.S. defense official, who requested anonymity because the strategy isn’t final.“That’s what the plan is.”

Some experts are concerned, however, that the U.S. lacks the ability to launch reconstruction and humanitarian operations overseas involving large numbers of civilian officials and experts.

“The United States today manifestly lacks adequate civilian capacity to conduct complex operations – those operations that require close civil-military planning and cooperation in the field,”said a December 2008 report by the National Defense University.“Current efforts to build a civilian response capacity for complex operations are unfinished and ... the Obama administration needs to dedicate additional attention and resources to complete the task.

The study said that an office to oversee such civilian operations was created in the State Department in 2004. But it was“underfunded, understaffed, and unappreciated,”and the military ended up having to fill numerous positions for which civilians couldn’t be found.

ANALYSIS

20 March 2009

‘Borderless’ Europe faces test of unity

By Tom Hundley Chicago Tribune

BRUSSELS – Five years ago, a confident European Union added 10 new members in what was celebrated as the“Big Bang”expansion, a bold initiative that was supposed to spread prosperity across the continent.These days, there is growing alarm that the EU’s Big Bang is on the brink of becoming the Big Bust.

Ferenc Gyurcsany, the Hungarian prime minister, warned that a “new Iron Curtain”could soon divide the wealthy states of Western Europe and their poorer neighbors to the east.

“At the beginning of the ‘90s we reunified Europe.

Now it is another challenge – whether we can unify Europe in terms of its financing and economy,”said Gyurcsany. Most of the new EU members, including Hungary, are former Soviet bloc states from the east.

As the global recession deepens and spreads, the economies of Hungary, Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania are teetering on the brink. And instead of rushing to the rescue, their rich neighbours to the west, most notably the Germans, appear to be averting their eyes.

“Is the Eastern European economic miracle in danger? Is the democratic transition in danger?

No one is talking about it in public. But in private, people are scared,”said Ron Asmus, executive director of the German Marshall Fund, which is host to a think tank in Brussels.

“The whole idea of the EU is the pooling of sover-

eignty to take care of each other, especially economically.If the economic crisis fragments the EU,the whole progress of the project is up for grabs,”he said.

The EU’s economic woes do not occur in a vacuum. Just as the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September triggered the credit crisis that quickly spread from Wall Street to Europe, a fractured and protectionist Europe would act as a drag on U.S. hopes for recovery.

“The quicker the EU is able to solve its economic

problems, the more able it will be to participate in the effort to restore the global economy,” said Jean Pisani-Ferry, director of Bruegel, an economics research institute in the Belgian capital.

One of the first casualties of a fractured Europe would be the Obama administration’s expectations for an enlarged NATO presence in Afghanistan.

“Committing troops and money and doing all those things for U.S. foreign policy – it won’t happen,”Asmus said.

European analysts have warned that 5 million jobs could be lost if the strong economies don’t help the weak. That, in turn, has raised the spectre of hordes of unemployed from the east migrating westward in search of work. The national borders that seemed to magically disappear over the past few years could suddenly reappear.Trade barriers could be stealthily resurrected, and nationalist politicians could once again stir the festering rivalries that caused so much havoc in the 20th century.

In recent weeks, frustrated citizens have clashed with police in Latvia and Bulgaria, while protesting farmers in Greece temporarily closed the border.

Things could get worse in the spring.

“I don’t think EU itself is in danger. It’s not a question of survival, but there could be a backlash against what has been accomplished over the last 20 years, and that is worrying,”said Pisani-Ferry.

In times of economic stress, all eyes in Europe turn toward Germany, the continent’s biggest and strongest economy.

“This is (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel’s big test; this is her chance to prove her European credentials as well as her German credentials,”the Marshall Fund’s Asmus said.

Thus far, however, the German government has been cool to the idea of any big stimulus package.

And Merkel shrugged off Hungary’s warning about a new Iron Curtain, saying that the EU’s stringent balanced budget rules must be observed and that individual bailouts should be considered on only a case-by-case basis.

East German leaders at war had misunderstood the note East Germany’s last leader Egon Krenz had given him minutes earlier: BERLIN, March 18 – The Politburo member who The traveling restrictions were indeed to be lifted, with his news conference opened the Berlin Wall but not before the next day. and the last leader of communist East Germany are “Tens of thousands of people swarmed to the Berlin lobbying for two contrary political ideas, 20 years Wall,and the hopelessly outnumbered border guards, after Germany’s peaceful revolution. having not been informed, didn’t know what to do.

“The border is open, nothing special to report.” After a standoff that lasted for hours, they opened Those were the words an officer from the Stasi (East the gates and let the people through to West Berlin.

Germany’s secret police) directed at Politburo mem- That no single shot was fired remains one of the true ber Guenter Schabowski in the evening hours of miracles of this peaceful revolution. The calmness Nov. 9, 1989. of the people and the coolness of the border police It was the day that would go down in history for prevented a bloodshed,”Schabowski said. the fall of the Berlin Wall, the event that marked Today, nearly 20 years later, Germany is preparing the beginning of the end of a communist state that for the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, had divided Europe for five decades. which culminated in Germany’s reunification on “And all this guy had to say was ‘Nothing special Oct. 3, 1990. to report’,”Schabowski, 80, remembered with a smile Schabowski has since transformed from a diehard when he talked to the foreign press corps this past Communist (who on Nov. 9, 1989, hoped and believed Friday in Berlin. that open borders would save East Germany) to one Schabowski himself had (unwillingly) sparked of the system’s fiercest critics, calling it essentially these historic events:In a news conference earlier that flawed. This has caused some of his former allies, day,the Communist Party official told a flabbergasted including Krenz, to denounce him as a traitor. group of international journalists that restrictions to Schabowski and Krenz, who in 1989 decided travelling abroad and even permanently leaving the to overthrow longtime leader Erich Honecker to country were lifted,effective immediately.Schabowski save East Germany by opening up to Soviet-style

By Stefan Nicola

reforms, today are bitter foes. Both had been convicted of murdering those people who had tried to cross the Berlin Wall and ended up shot dead by border guards.

However, only Schabowski, after what he calls a slow but steady process, began to renounce his former convictions as misguided. Krenz, on the other hand, has turned into a hero for the so-called Ostalgie (nostalgia for the Ost, or East) movement, made up of people nostalgic for life in East Germany who are ignoring the unfree side-effects it came with.

Krenz has never really renounced communism and has repeatedly defended East Germany and its leaders. Observers say he would love to join the anti-capitalist Left Party, the successor group to the East German communist party.Aided by social and economic problems, the Left Party over the past years rounded up voter support by offering populist answers to complex problems.

It had 53 parliamentarians elected to the German Bundestag, enjoys a delegate presence in 10 of 16 state parliaments, and governs Berlin in a coalition with the Social Democrats. Latest polls put nationwide support for the Left Party at roughly 11 percent, but figures for eastern Germany race up to

between 20 percent and 27 percent. Political experts say the mainstream parties need to pay attention to the Left Party’s growing popularity in eastern Germany if they want to contain it ahead of the upcoming federal elections this fall.

Notwithstanding the Left Party’s political success, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is monitoring the party and individual members for anti-constitutional tendencies. Schabowski has denounced the group for its ties to the old elites and its unwillingness to come to terms with its Stasi past.

That doesn’t bother Krenz much. He visited Berlin last month to promote his new book, which details his life in prison.At a reading session, Krenz ended up talking mostly about the forgotten positive aspects of East Germany, motivated by questions of people who addressed him with Dear Egon – much like an old friend.

“Germany has no reason to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall,”he said.

“East Germany was no monster, and it deserves better treatment,”Krenz added, looking somewhat nostalgic himself when the audience, made up of mainly elderly people, erupted in loud applause.

– UPI

Market meltdown refutes ‘efficient markets’ theory

By Kate Gibson MarketWatch

NEW YORK – The stock market’s recent collapse calls into question the soundness of one cornerstone of modern financial theory – the idea of “efficient markets”– since all the components that conspired to produce the mess were in plain sight, contends one analyst.

“Anything that purports to describe the last 18 months as ‘efficient’ seems like a cruel joke,” said Nicolas Colas, chief market strategist at BNY ConvergEx Group.

The premise behind the term holds that available information about a given security is quickly baked into its price, yet Colas says in the latest market decline, stock prices ignored the news until the situ-

ation threatened the likes of Lehman Brothers.

“All the factors that created the market’s collapse were hiding in plain sight in brokerage firm 10-K filings and news reports about the housing and mortgage markets. Hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals knew the risks in the collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps marketplaces.

Many of them even work in one place – New York City,”said Colas.

“We suspect the academic community will have a hard time explaining away the destruction of half of the value of the U.S. stock market in a little over a year after it took 70 years to create much of that same wealth,”the analyst said.

The recent market collapse also discredits the common wisdom of near-certain returns if one holds stocks for five to 10 years.

“That’s another one we can throw out the window, but you can flip the coin, if you’ve made your 10 percent for 10 years, then get out,”said Colas.

Colas also rejects the notion of using math as an investment edge, saying those who believe they can call a market bottom based on S&P 500 earnings estimates and “some notion of a ‘normal’ P/E” should reconsider.

“The reason the market bottomed is not because we hit some magical P/E ratio,”the analyst said.

Instead,Colas advises trying to devise a more complete picture of where corporate valuations may end their fall, looking at current economic and business fundaments to help determine what fundamental scenario might develop as the recession wanes.

“What I’ve tried to say is don’t baseline your expectations on the notion that markets are as

efficient as the academic world wants to believe.

Think for yourself,”said Colas.

On Wednesday, stock restarted the prior session’s rally after the Federal Reserve surprised the market by saying it would buy $300 billion in longer-term Treasurys to help the ailing economy.

After soaring nearly 200 points in the wake of the Fed move, the Dow Jones industrial average ended at 7,486.58, up 90.88 points, or 1.2 percent.The S&P 500 Index gained 16.23 points, or 2.1 percent, to 794.35, after running past the 800-level for the first time since Feb. 17. The Nasdaq Composite added 29.11 points, or 2 percent, to 1,491.22.

“If the goal was to drive agency, mortgage and Treasury rates lower, they have achieved it in short order,”said Kevin Giddis, head of fixed income, Morgan Keegan & Co. Inc.

WORLD

update

in 60 seconds Researcher predicts 2030 food/water crisis LONDON, March 20 (UPI) – Britain’s leading government scientist says the world faces a perfect storm of food, energy and water shortages by 2030.

John Beddington said the world’s population is estimated to reach more than 8.3 billion by 2030, increasing demand for food and energy by 50 percent and the need for fresh water by 30 percent, the Telegraph newspaper reported today.

Beddington said scientists need to develop more disease-resistant and pest-resistant plants and better harvesting procedures to meet future demand, the newspaper said.

Scientists have already discovered that higher CO2 levels boost plant growth and crop yields.

Gallup: U.S. wants growth over environment PRINCETON, N.J., March 20 (UPI) – More than half of U.S. adults say that economic growth is the country’s top priority even if it hurts the environment, the Gallup Poll reported today.

It was the first time since Gallup began asking the question in 1984, that Americans have put the economy ahead of the environment. While 51 percent said the economy is more important, 42 percent picked the environment.

Only 50 percent of Democrats said that the environment is more important than economic growth, while 44 percent favoured the reverse. Republicans and independents were more in favour of growth.

Those surveyed were split almost evenly on energy development versus the environment, another sign of waning public concern with the drop in oil prices. While 66 percent of Republicans favour energy development, 65 percent of Democrats favour the environment.

Gallup surveyed 1,012 adults by telephone between March 5 and March 8. The poll has a 3 percent margin of error.

Bin Laden urges ouster of Somali president MOGADISHU, Somalia, March 20 (UPI) – A message released today claiming to be from Osama bin Laden says that the new Somali president has partnered with the infidel and should be dethroned.

The message was posted on an Islamist Web site and has not been determined to be authentic, CNN reports.

The audio is in Arabic with English subtitles against a background of a photo of bin Laden.

Using the title “Fight on, Champions of Somalia”, the message attacks Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, founder of the Union of Islamic Courts and now president of the unity government in Somalia, as a turncoat.

Somalis are told that Ahmed should be dethroned, fought and removed with armed force. Somalia is involved in a war between Islam and the international crusade, bin Laden says.

Ahmed was ousted by Ethiopian troops who came to Somalia to support the western-backed interim government. He was elected president on Jan. 31 by a group of Somali leaders meeting outside the country.

Pope: Africa a ‘continent of hope’ YAOUNDE, Cameroon, March 20 (UPI) – Pope Benedict XVI told 60,000 people jammed into a soccer stadium in Cameroon that Africa is a continent of hope at risk of materialism.

Benedict celebrated the first open-air mass of his week-long trip to Africa after a meeting with Muslim leaders, the BBC reported.

In his homily, the pontiff warned of those trying to impose the tyranny of materialism. While he said Africa is a continent of hope, he also said that it must respect human life.

Some of the faithful spent the night in line to be sure of getting into the stadium and thousands were turned away. Many wore T-shirts with the pope’s picture.

After his meeting with Muslims, Benedict said that Cameroon, where Christians and Muslims live together in harmony, is a beacon for other African nations.

This trip is Benedict’s first to Africa since e became pope four years ago. He travels to Angola, where he will spend the rest of his time, tonight.

20 March 2009

AIG bonuses to be tax-bombed Washington (dpa) – Spurred on by public ire over bonuses paid at firms that received government bail-outs, the US House of Representatives today gave strong backing to a 90-per-cent tax on retention bonus payments by companies receiving more than 5 billion dollars in federal funds.

In a show of bipartisan support for the measure, the House passed it 328-93, more than the twothirds needed for the special law, which bypassed the normal committee process.

Such a tax would also need approval from the Senate, which was working on a separate version of the measure that would impose a 70 per cent tax on the bonuses. If that version were to pass both houses would then have to reconcile the difference and reach an agreement on a final measure.

President Barack Obama said the House vote reflected “the outrage that so many feel over the lavish bonuses that AIG provided its employees at the expense of the taxpayers who have kept this failed company afloat.”

The move comes amidst furore over actions by

American International Group (AIG), the world’s largest insurance firm whose near failure in September 2008 helped push a teetering US financial system into rapid descent.

“Now this legislation moves to the Senate, and I look forward to receiving a final product that will serve as a strong signal to the executives who run these firms that such compensation will not be tolerated,” Obama said in a statement.

“In the end, this is a symptom of a larger problem ­ a bubble-and-bust economy that valued reckless speculation over responsibility and hard work.That is what we must ultimately repair to build a lasting and widespread prosperity.”

With an estimated 180 billion government dollars keeping AIG afloat, the firm last week paid 165 million dollars in retention bonuses to 4,600 traders in the financial products unit whose investments and insurance coverage of subprime mortgage securities are at the heart of the financial crisis.

“Most Americans believe a bonus is something

Risky business

paid for a job well done,” said Democratic Representative Charles Rangel.“The whole idea that they would be rewarded millions of dollars is repugnant ... to any sense of decency.”

Rangel, chair of the Ways and Means Committee, said the“red light”was flashing on the practice.

House Republican Leader John Boehner called the proposal a “bad bill with bad consequences” and laid blame for the situation on Democrats for allowing a last-minute clause in stimulus legislation passed in mid February that grandfathered contracts signed for bonuses and executive pay up to when the law was passed.

The 90-per-cent tax would apply to people earning more than 250,000 dollars, including bonuses, and would stop when the US government’s investment in the company falls below 5 billion dollars.

Foreign employees would not be affected, according to Bloomberg financial news service.

The Senate’s 70-per-cent version would not tax foreign workers.

– DPA

Sept. 16 Federal Reserve says it will pump $85 billion into AIG, take an 80 percent stake in the company

Key events in the fall of the giant insurer:

March 2, 2009 Government makes $30 billion in TARP funds available March 10 Treasury learns of bonuses when it recieves a list of payments due from the New York Fed

Sept. 18 Former Allstate CEO Edward Liddy appointed head Sept. 23 Reports surface that the FBI is investigating AIG for potential fraud

$50 Daily closing stock price $40

2008 losses -$7.81 billion

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Sept. 24-28 AIG subsidiary spends $400,000 on a lavish conference

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March 11 Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner discusses bonus plan with Liddy

May 8, 2008 In an SEC filing, AIG reveals plan to pay bonuses to employees in its financial products division, which nearly sank the company M

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Source: AIG, Yahoo! Finance, Chicago Tribune Graphic: Chicago Tribune, MCT

Oct. 8 Fed agrees to lend another $38 billion to AIG in loans in return for collateral

Sept. 17 $2.05 J

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March 14 In a letter to Geithner, Liddy says AIG will try to reduce pending payments but will pay out $165 million in bonuses, causing public outrage

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Politically-correct get mad London – A British postmaster born in Sri Lanka has caused a stir by declaring that he will refuse to serve customers in his shop if they do not speak English.

Deva Kumarasiri, who came to Britain from Sri Lanka 18 years ago, runs the Sneinton Boulevard Post Office in Nottingham, central Britain.

“If somebody stands up and says ‘sorry, I can’t serve you if you can’t speak English’, then they’ll think twice,”he said.

The 40-year-old said he felt he was only asking people to make the same efforts as he had done.

“I was born and raised in a different country, my language was different, my religion was different.

But when I came to England I obeyed the British way of life, I got into the British way of life,”he told the BBC. His remarks have caused a stir as they could be interpreted as “discrimination”– or worse – inflame antiforeigner sentiment, local people said in interviews.

While some agreed with him, others said no-one should be forced to learn English.

Kumarasiri’s stance was described as“unacceptable” by Nottingham’s Racial Equality Council, which said the postmaster was taking a“stereotypical view.”

Post Office Counters, the organization which runs the post offices and the shops attached to them said that its branches were “open to all customers”and steps would be taken to ensure this happened at Kumarasiri’s store.

Kumarasiri has told half a dozen of his customers that they must go and learn English.“They have all come back with a smile, and one even brought a dictionary,”he said this morning.

– DPA

March 17, 18 In a letter to congressional leaders, Geithner says Treasury will deduct the cost of the bonuses from the pending $30 billion in TARP funds; Liddy tells Congress he asked those with bonuses above $100,000 to return half

Nov. 10 Fed and Treasury extend AIG’s aid package to $150 billion D

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WORLD

20 March 2009

Israel to investigate alleged killings of civilians

By Cliff Churgin

JERUSALEM – The Israeli army’s chief prosecutor announced today an investigation into the killings of Palestinian civilians during Israel’s military incursion into Gaza earlier this year,as soldiers’testimony about the operation triggered a public furore.

The soldiers’ accounts, carried by two major Israeli newspapers this morning, cast doubt on repeated statements by the Israel Defence Force that it had taken every effort to spare the lives of civilians during the 23-day operation.

In one instance, an Israeli sharpshooter killed a Palestinian woman and her two children when they inadvertently took a wrong turn after being released from detention in their own home, Haaretz and Maariv reported, quoting a soldier who’d fought in Gaza.

“The platoon commander let the family go, and told them to go to the right. The mother and the two children didn’t understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof that they had let them go . . .”said an infantry squad leader, whom the papers didn’t identify by name or unit in their editions.“The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away.”

The soldier was one of a number who testified on the Gaza operation at a conference Feb. 13 at the Yitzhak Rabin military academy at Oranim Academic College.The head of the school, Danny Zamir, told Israeli radio he was shocked by the findings and reported them to the army, which had requested copies of the transcripts.

Haaretz also quoted another unnamed squad

leader as reporting a company commander had ordered troops to shoot and kill an elderly woman who was walking on a road about 100 yards from a house the company had taken over.

A military spokesman, who asked not to be identified by name because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter, told McClatchy “very few” of those speaking at the conference had actually fought in Gaza.

In its terse announcement today,the IDF said Chief Advocate General,Brig.Gen.Avichai Mendelblit had ordered the Criminal Investigation Division of the IDF Military Police to“investigate the claims made regarding alleged actions of soldiers during Operation Cast Lead,”the name Israel gave the operation.

The IDF said Mendelbilt ordered the investigation after receiving the transcripts this morning.

Until now, the IDF hasn’t indicated it was actively pursuing allegations of potential war crimes by Israeli forces in Gaza.

McClatchy’s Dion Nissenbaum reported Jan. 27 that Israeli troops had killed two young girls who were carrying white flags as they tried to escape their home in Ezbt Abed Rabbo, a Gaza neighbourhood overlooking the border with Israel shortly after Israeli ground forces moved in Jan. 3.

Nissenbaum reported Feb. 2 that Israeli troops forced a Palestinian at gunpoint to walk through a battle zone to see whether militants targeted by Israel were dead or alive. McClatchy informed the IDF of the allegations contained in its stories prior to publication, and the IDF responded it was investigating “a variety of allegations.”

A coalition of Israeli human rights groups Thursday urged Attorney General Menahem Mazuz to establish an independent investigation into Israeli

The soldiers’ accounts cast doubt on repeated statements by the Israel Defence Force that it had taken every effort to spare the lives of civilians during the 23-day operation actions in Gaza.“Such an investigation is critical following the revelation of soldier testimonies concerning the killing of innocent Palestinians revealed this morning in Haaretz,”the group said, noting the testimony parallels accounts given by Palestinians.

Israeli forces launched the campaign in Gaza

Dec. 27, with the stated aim of ending rocket fire

by Gaza militants into southern Israel. Some 1,400 Palestinians died, many of them civilians, in the course of the air campaign, and the ground incursion that followed – and rocket fire resumed after Israeli force departed.

School ‘cancels’ gay musical, now sued

By Jeff Overley The Orange County Register

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. – A Southern California high school that made national headlines last month over the brief nixing of the musical“Rent”now finds itself at the centre of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit describing an officially sanctioned “sexist and homophobic environment”on campus.

The lawsuit against the Newport-Mesa Unified School District accuses Corona del Mar High School administrators of “permitting and sanctioning an atmosphere that is hostile to female,lesbian,bisexual, gay and transgender students in general,and has led to despicable threats of violence against one student in particular,”according an ACLU announcement.

In a brief statement, district officials said that“a

review of the [ACLU] lawsuit indicates that there are numerous factual errors and mistakes.”

In that statement, Superintendent Jeffrey Hubbard said:“These allegations are very serious and the district will utilize its best efforts to ascertain the truth of these matters, as well as to be sure there are procedures in place to allow prompt resolution of any and all disputes regarding discrimination and harassment.”

Corona del Mar High School was thrust into the media spotlight last month after the short-lived cancellation of an edited version of the rock opera “Rent,”a mature musical that includes gay characters who use drugs and battle AIDS. The school drama instructor said his principal killed the play because of its homosexual characters. Principal Fal Asrani denied that charge and

said she merely wanted to review the script, and once she received a copy, she allowed the musical to proceed.

The lawsuit’s mention of “threats of violence” refers to a Facebook video, viewed by The Orange County Register, in which three young males who apparently attend the school unleash a litany of gay slurs and suggest harming a female peer.

Later, according to the ACLU, a fourth student threatened the girl on school grounds, leading her to enroll in off-campus independent study.

The school’s “inadequate and inappropriate response,”according to the announcement,“included assigning an assistant football coach at the school to investigate the harassment, an obvious conflict of interest because three of the four accused students are members of the football team.”

Ultimately, two of the boys went unpunished, and two were suspended for five days, according to the lawsuit. The complaint suggests the punishments were lax, contending that other students face far longer suspensions for drug and alcohol use.

Ron Martin, the drama instructor, has said that hostility toward gays on campus was his motivation for staging “Rent.” In an interview Thursday, he said the episode surrounding the play connected him with the family of the girl who was allegedly threatened.

Intolerance is accepted by school officials, the lawsuit says.“Students are routinely referred to ... with words such as ‘dyke,’‘butch,’‘fairy,’‘gay,’‘homo’ and ‘queer’ by other students at school in hallways and classrooms within earshot of teachers, but without repercussion,”the complaint says.

Web-freak blackmailed teens The two men knew how to take control of computers – monitoring what girls were typing, deleting their files, and spying on their pictures and music files, investigators allege

ORLANDO, Fla. – For years,Patrick Connolly terrorized girls across the globe, federal investigators say.

He scoured the Web for unsuspecting teens, chatted them up, then hacked into their computers and issued a threat: Send nude pictures and sex videos of yourself – or else.

Connolly, a contractor at a U.S. military base in Baghdad, and another man victimized about 4,000 young women across the world according to a criminal complaint made public Monday.

The two men knew how to take control of computers – monitoring what girls were typing, deleting

their files, and spying on their pictures and music files, investigators allege.

Authorities arrested Connolly, 36, last weekend at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

It was not immediately clear why he had flown to Georgia. Connolly, a citizen of Northern Ireland, waived a court appearance in Georgia on Monday and will be brought to Orlando.

He was arrested on a charge of computer intrusion, more commonly known as hacking,but the complaint outlined many more serious potential charges.

Connolly hounded an Orlando teen for several years, even travelling to the United States and showing up at her work in 2004.

The international case began four years ago with complaints filed by three girls in Brevard County, Fla. One was told her sister would be hurt if she didn’t provide photographs.Another was threatened to provide“revealing”pictures, or else she would be made “the most well-known girl at school.”

Their complaints led to the arrest of Ivory Dickerson, a civil engineer, who pleaded guilty to child

pornography and other charges nearly two years ago and was sent to prison for 110 years.

Authorities searched Dickerson’s North Carolina home in November 2006 and found more than a million pornographic images on his computer, including several hundred thousand involving children. A computer program allowed him to check the Internet for Web cameras, so he could secretly watch teens in sexually explicit situations, his plea agreement disclosed.

As part of his plea, Dickerson pointed investigators to Connolly. According to the criminal complaint, Dickerson admitted that he shared victims with Connolly, who was using the name “Lauren” online.

One young woman from British Columbia was “extorted and exploited and forced to perform numerous sexual acts on her webcam,” the complaint said.“During the course of her victimization, Patrick Connolly called her on her telephone so he could help her ‘get rid’ of the individual who had ‘hacked’her.”

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20 March 2009

11

Tendulkar twists knife as NZ struggle

By Chris Barclay of NZPA

Hamilton, March 20 – Sachin Tendulkar’s batting genius remains unquestioned but his sportsmanship is under scrutiny as India began visualising their first test cricket victory on New Zealand soil since 1976 today. At the close of an absorbing third day at Seddon Park, New Zealand were locked in survival mode at 75 for three – still 166 runs adrift of ensuring India must bat again.

After Tim McIntosh’s controversial duck, opening partner Martin Guptill and Daniel Flynn knuckled down to add a soothing 68 for the second wicket before India secured two late breakthroughs.

Guptill was on the cusp of recording a half-century in his second test innings but fell two runs short when he drove uppishly to Virender Sehwag less than six overs before stumps.

Then nightwatchman Kyle Mills’ wretched test continued when he was leg before wicket for a 19-ball two to the last delivery of the day by Munaf Patel.

Flynn,on 24,will be joined by RossTaylor tomorrow as New Zealand aim to bat into Sunday’s final day.

Tendulkar embossed his reputation as a strokemaker par excellence when crafting an imperious 160 in India’s mammoth first innings of 520.

However, his role in McIntosh’s demise – three balls into New Zealand’s quest to erase a 241-run deficit – threatened to take some sheen off another high point of his 157-test career.

Replays confirmed there was doubt Tendulkar had legitimately caught the edge at first slip.

He was confident, as was English umpire Ian Gould who raised the finger.

Unlike a similar incident during India’s innings, Gould and Australian umpire Simon Taufel did not consult the third umpire.

New Zealand felt Mahendra Singh Dhoni was out to a sharp Jesse Ryder catch in the gully but the Indian skipper stood his ground, the umpires sought a second opinion and replays found in his favour three balls before he eventually exited on 47.

New Zealand coach Andy Moles thought the Tendulkar catch should have been referred.

“You all saw the TV shots, it’s fair to say we’re surprised it wasn’t referred,”Moles said.

Tendulkar, who left the field to ice a bruised left index finger, disagreed.

“I have the seen replays and I have seen my fingers under the ball,”he said.

“Sometimes on camera it looks different. I was pretty much confident otherwise I would not have appealed for it.”

McIntosh shaped as a key component as New Zealand battle to regain parity – though the home side also contributed to their own predicament with a motley bowling and fielding performance.

Flynn’s inability to grasp Tendulkar’s top edged pull when on 13 yesterday continued to haunt New Zealand as the 35-year-old extended his record of test hundreds to 42.

Needing early breakthroughs once India resumed on 278 for four, New Zealand instead conceded seven boundaries in the first four overs – and 66 runs in the first hour.

Tendulkar, who scored 163 retired hurt in his previous tour innings in the third one-dayer at Christchurch, clicked into the groove by scurrying

Federer to play Murray Indian Wells, California – Roger Federer powered past dangerous Spaniard Fernando Verdasco 6-3, 7-6 (7-5) to set up a high-profile semi-final with Andy Murray at the Indian Wells Masters.

The Swiss second seed on Thursday kept his record against Verdasco an unblemished 3-0 after beating the Australian Open semi-finalist twice on clay. But the challenger saved three match points before Federer prevailed in 91 minutes.

Federer has a score to settle with Murray, who has beaten him three times on the ATP since losing the US Open final six months ago to the world number 2.

For his part, Murray snuffed out the candles on the 30th birthday celebrations of Ivan Ljubicic by beating the Croatian 7-5, 7-6 (8-6) in their quarter-final.

The Scot denied Ljubicic many happy returns on court with a victory in just over two hours.

“It was very breezy on the court,” the fourth seed said.“From one of the ends, it was difficult to dictate the points, but I felt fine. Physically, I was moving well again, hitting the ball better as the match went on.”

Federer came out crisply against Verdasco, breaking the Spaniard twice in the opening set. In the second, he saved four break points in the third game, then broke for 3-1.

He dropped serve in the eighth game and exchanged breaks with his opponent before taking it into a tiebreaker, which he claimed to go safely through.

The 13-time Grand Slam champion notched his 13th win of a season in which he is still chasing his first title.

“I played well for a set and a half, but Fernando suddenly realized what a good player he is and made it tough on me. I didn’t deserve that second set, but I’ll take it. I’m glad to be through in two.

“Murray is a tough match-up.With these up-andcoming players, you have to figure them out first, and he’s gotten me a few times.”

Murray, who leads the series with Federer 5-2, is pleased to get his second crack this season at the Swiss.“We know each others’games pretty well,”he said.“Obviously, if I want to beat him, I need to play

from his overnight 70 to his fourth century against New Zealand in just 33 balls.

He needed 118 deliveries for his first fifty as he struggled for fluency yesterday but Tendulkar then maintained a run-a-ball pace.

He duly moved past 150 in the middle session and looked capable of recording a second double ton at New Zealand’s expense until he was surprised by an Iain O’Brien delivery that reared up outside off stump.

Tendulkar attempted to play through the on side but the ball clipped the top of his bat and ballooned to Ross Taylor’s safe hands at first slip.

The end of Tendulkar’s 400 minute, 260-ball and 26 boundary vigil exposed India’s lesser batsmen at 443 for seven – but the tail wagged vigorously.

Zaheer Khan landed the final demoralising blows, and was unbeaten on a charmed 51 after he was dropped by Martin and Flynn before the last of his eight boundaries.

Martin retained the best bowling analysis of the innings with three for 98 from 30 overs while O’Brien added the prized scalp of Tendulkar and Dhoni to Rahul Dravid’s wicket yesterday.

He closed with three for 103 from 33 overs but New Zealand’s other seamers Mills (one for 98) and James Franklin (none for 98) caused few problems during their combined 45 overs.

Manchester City survive

Hamburg – SV Hamburg fought from 2-0 down to a 3-2 triumph at Galatasaray Istanbul today for a place in the UEFA Cup quarter-finals.

There they were joined by Manchester City who survived a massive scare from Aalborg, beating the Danes 4-3 on penalties thanks to two saves from goalkeeper Shay Given after Aalborg had made up a 2-0 first leg deficit in the final five minutes of regulation from Luton Shelton and a spot kick from Michael Jacobsen.

Galatasaray led from Harry Kewell’s penalty and Milan Baros, but Paolo Guerrero’s double in the 57th and 60th and Ivica Olic in the 89th turned the tide in Hamburg’s favour.

Hamburg won the round of 16 tie 4-3 from both games, ending Galatasaray’s dream of playing in the one of my best matches.

May 20 final in their home town of Istanbul.

“It’s important to serve solid and make a lot of “This is a special day for us.We are delighted with balls and not feel like you have to do anything spe- the win,”said Guerrero. cial on each point.”

It was a bad night for UEFA Cup champions Lujbicic had saved five match points Wednesday overall as the 2000 winners Galatasaray were joined in his win over Russian Igor Andreev. as casualties by holders Zenit St Petersburg and “I felt like I was playing great tennis,”the veteran fellow-Russian 2005 winners CSKA Moscow. said.“I think I did today. Maybe my serve wasn’t at Another ex-champ went out Wednesday in the the top of my game, but still, it was a great match. form of Ajax Amsterdam, against Olympique Mar“Tomorrow, it’s a new day. I’ll practise and get seille.The same day Werder Bremen went through ready for Miami.That’s a new chance.” over St Etienne, with Dynamo Kiev and Paris St Women’s defending champion Ana Ivanovic Germain booking the final berths today. secured free passage into the semis when oppoFrance, Germany, and Ukraine have two teams nent Sybille Bammer withdrew with a left shoul- left in the competition for Friday’s quarter- and der injury. semi-final draw.

The walkover puts the Serb into a semi-final Galatasaray started slowly into the match with against breakthrough Russian teenager Anastasia Hamburg but took the lead in the 42nd minute Pavlyuchenkova, who knocked out Polish seventh from Kewell’s penalty after Jerome Boateng had seed Agnieszwa Radwanska 7-6 (10-8), 6-4. brought down Baros in the area.

“I’m very disappointed that I am not able to play,” The hosts seemed assured of the next round when said Austrian Bammer, who added,“I hope that the Baros chipped over goalkeeper Frank Rost for 2-0 injury heals quickly and that I am able to return in the 48th, but Guerrero then blasted home from to action soon.”

20m and scored the 2-2 equalizer on the hour from Pavlyuchenkova, ranked 42nd, was playing in closer range after rounding two defenders. Olic then her third quarter-final of the season after Sydney got the late winner. and Paris and has never advanced this far at the “We shouldn’t have lost such a match, it was our WTA level. own fault,”admitted Galatasaray midfielder Baris “It’s really a big achievement for me this week,” Ozbek. she said.“I beat some really good players.

Hamburg coach Martin Jol said:“Falling 2-0 – DPA behind was a big disappointment. But then Paolo

scored two wonderful goals.

We knew that Galatasaray would become nervous if we scored. But we were a little lucky as well.”

In Aalborg, Manchester City appeared to have almost done the job and could have even gone up 1-0 in the 82nd minute had not Robinho been denied by the crossbar.

But Shelton then put the hosts on top in the 85th with a low shot and the Danes cancelled out the first-leg deficit in stoppage time when Ched Evans handled the ball and Jacobsen converted the ensuing penalty.

More spot kicks then followed after scoreless extra time as City prevailed 4-3 because Given saved from Thomas Augustinussen and Shelton while the English side converted all penalties from Evans, Elano, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Richard Dunne.

In St Petersburg,Zenit lacked the flair and attacking power of the past season as they were unable to rebound from the two-goal defeat in Udine.

Captain Anatoliy Tymoshckuk broke the deadlock in the 29th minute with a header off Viktor Fayzulin’s corner but Zenit then tried in vain to get the vital second goal, with Fayzulin aiming high from point-blank range.

At the same time CSKA had to bow to Donetsk and its Brazilians.

Fernandinho put the hosts ahead with a 54thminute penalty after being fouled by Pavel Mameev and Luiz Adriano’s close range effort 16 minutes later saw Shakhtar through.

Ukraine joined Germany and France with two teams in the quarter-finals as Dynamo Kiev won a Ukrainian duel with Metalist Kharkiv on away goals from a 3-3 overall deadlock after Metalist won 3-2 on the night.

Valentyn Sliusar (29th), Brazilian striker Jaja (56th) and Argentina’s Walter Anibal Acevedo (70th) were on target for the hosts. But Croatian Goran Sabljic in 68th and Serbian substitute Milos Ninkovic with a low shot in the 79th minute saw Kiev through.

Visiting PSG survived Portugal’s Braga 1-0 on the night and overall, with Guillaume Hoarau’s header in the 81st minute finally breaking the deadlock.

– DPA

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WEEKEND

20 March 2009

13

TV & Film

Duplicity

0Cast: Clive Owen, Julia Roberts, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti 0Director: Tony Gilroy 0Length:125 minutes 0Rated: PG (for coarse language)

Being Julia

By John Anderson Newsday

HOLLYWOOD – The word layoff has an entirely different meaning for a Hollywood movie star than,say, a fired GM worker, but both involve career idleness, apprehension and questions: Is Julia Roberts’ new movie,Duplicity,a thriller or a comedy? More intriguingly,can it restore the woman who was or perhaps is the queen of the screen to the lustre she once enjoyed as the $20 million-a-picture heavyweight box-office champion and mistress of all she surveys?

It would be nice to think Roberts didn’t care about fame.And maybe she doesn’t. In Hollywood – the concept, not the location – months can be lifetimes, years can be eons. Having carried three children since she last had to carry a picture (Mona Lisa Smile in 2003), Roberts has delivered vocal performances in the animated Charlotte’s Web and The Ant Bully and reprised a relatively minor role, as Tess Ocean in Ocean’s Twelve. She also has managed to star in a Broadway play,Three Days of Rain, which was hit by a critical Katrina and floated away after 70 performances. And she has been a member of forgettable ensemble casts in Closer (2004) and last year’s German-made Fireflies in the Garden (which opens in the United States in June, maybe, having already opened and closed all over the world).

For an actress who has never really been required to act, the one recent bright spot was Charlie Wilson’s War, a commercially mishandled gem. Roberts gave a spot-on performance as a Republican cryptofascist Texas socialite who worked toward saving Afghanistan from the Russians, when not bedding Tom Hanks’congressman,CharlieWilson.It certainly wasn’t Sleeping With the Enemy. But the movie did less business than a Taliban liquor store.

All of which leads to two conclusions: Julia Roberts has been doing what she wants.And Julia

Roberts is a gamble.This is not something anyone ever thought they’d be saying – not anyone cinema-conscious from 1988 (Mystic Pizza) through, say, 2000 (Erin Brockovich). But the romantic-heist movie Duplicity – in which she and Closer co-star Clive Owen play ex-spies who may or may not be in love – has been kept under wraps by its studio, which doesn’t seem quite sure what it is.

It’s hard to believe that Roberts suffered an Oscar jinx once she got her statuette, for playing a real-life heroine in Brockovich, but there hasn’t been a movie since then that would be mentioned in the first 10 paragraphs of any Roberts obituary. ... Even though, arguably, she’s done some of her better work since.

What she hasn’t been doing is being a movie star, which is why Julia Roberts matters. No? Consider that Roberts was virtually the only female film star, for years, who possessed the commercial potential her elder sister stars held in the 1940s, which means they ruled.As movies of the two past decades became more and more the purview of sweaty monosyllabic he-men, Roberts conquered mini-genre after mini-genre.

Building on the mega-celebrity of Pretty Woman, she did brief duty as the imperiled victim (in Sleeping With the Enemy, which is pretty unwatchable now) before she started playing women of self-possession and spunk.And audiences agreed silently to excuse the most ludicrous stories for a chance to see her:The Pelican Brief,I Love Trouble, the gothic-revisionist Mary Reilly and Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson, one of her better matchups.(Steven Spielberg thanks us for stepping over Hook,and let’s also forget Robert Altman’s lugubrious Pret-a-Porter).

Was any of this memorable, I-have-to-watch-itagain-type stuff?Well,Gibson going ga-ga in Conspiracy Theory was kind of fun.But no:For all the gelt she raked in, Roberts wasn’t making indelible movies.

Yet, there have been moments that suggest that

as Roberts ages out of glamourhood – she’s 41, the camera can be cruel and Hollywood has an unyielding obsession with the vacuously pretty – that Roberts will become something more than a sex symbol.

One of her assets is generosity, actorly generosity, which can work in a performer’s favour.

An early example was Stepmom (1998), in which she had the unenviable job of making Ed Harris’ second wife sympathetic while his first, played by the not-always-subtle Susan Sarandon, died of cancer. Fast-forwarding to Mona Lisa Smile, she gave elbow room to three gifted and younger actresses (Julia Stiles, Kirsten Dunst and Maggie Gyllenhaal) and made herself look good in the process (despite the movie characters’tendency to be anachronistically enlightened).

In the largely forgotten America’s Sweethearts, Roberts played second banana to Catherine ZetaJones and stole the show. And in Notting Hill, she played a character who was essentially Julia Roberts, while allowing Hugh Grant to do his charmingly bemused shtick unfettered.

Then there has been Roberts’association with Steven Soderbergh, which has ranged from the slickly comedic (and seductive) Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve as well as his Full Frontal,one of the director’s periodic forays into experimental cinema that would never have gotten any attention without Roberts’participation. Likewise, she helped out pal George Clooney by playing the mystery woman in his directorial debut, the oh-so-memorable Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, in which she was first-rate.

Charlie Wilson’s War wouldn’t have been the same without her, all of which sets up the predictable declaration that American movies haven’t been the same without Roberts.

But nothing’s ever the same at the movies, except the ravages of time, and the risks involved when you make yourself scarce.

Take equal parts The Sting and The Thomas Crown Affair, stir in a dollop of star power and the juice of several tangy supporting performances and – voila! – it’s the Duplicity cocktail, a fizzy concoction that tickles your nose without doing any serious damage to your faculties.

Writer/director Tony Gilroy’s follow-up to the excellent Michael Clayton is a lightweight caper featuring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen as spies who click in bed but absolutely distrust each other under other circumstances.

At the film’s outset two spies, Brit Ray Koval (Owen) and the CIA’s Claire Stenwick (Roberts) meet cute at an American Embassy function in the Middle East, exchange sexy pleasantries and then fall into bed. Ray awakens a half day later to an empty room, a tranquilizer headache and the realization that Claire has drugged him and made off with a cache of secret codes he was supposed to deliver to his bosses.

Years later Ray and Claire find themselves working on the same team. As corporate spies they’re up to their necks in industrial espionage, waging a war between two mega-corporations specializing in personal care products.

The CEOs – played by Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti – are enemies, so much so that in the movie’s title sequence we see these middle-aged captains of industry ineffectually brawling in slow motion.

Ray has been hired by one company to sleuth out the competition’s revolutionary secret product. Claire works in counterintelligence for the other guys, but in reality she’s a double agent on Ray’s team, working deep undercover to get that information from the inside.

Gilroy’s screenplay alternates between the present and flashbacks showing Ray and Claire’s love/hate relationship over the years. The dialogue is heavy on mind games – neither lover is able to take what the other says at face value, and neither can those of us in the audience. Are they sincere? Working a con on their loved one?

At times, Duplicity is too convoluted and knotted for easy comprehension; even the savviest viewer will experience some serious confusion. But Gilroy does deliver a last-act “gotcha!” that virtually no one will see coming.

Wilkinson is his usual great self as a sort of zen-warrior industrialist; Giamatti is his polar opposite as a self-serving, media-milking CEO. In an itty-bitty role, character actress Carrie Preston, as a corporate travel agent who falls for one of Ray’s romantic scams, steals the movie from her high-pay castmates.

Most problematical is the chill that settles where the movie’s erotic heart should be pounding away. Roberts and Owen talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk. For all their tease-meplease-me exchanges, Duplicity isn’t particularly sexy. And it needs to be for this enterprise to hit all the right notes.

Watch the trailer

– By Robert W. Butler

THE SPY WHO LOVED/HATED ME Sex and spying – it’s a heady combination (and practically required of every James Bond movie). A sampling: Notorious (1946) In this Hitchcock classic, beautiful Ingrid Bergman goes deep undercover as the wife of a Nazi spy (Claude Rains) but all the while loves her brusque American handler (Cary Grant).

From Russia With Love (1963) 007 (Sean Connery) wins over Soviet spy (Daniela Bianchi) with his bedroom technique. But he doesn’t know it’s all being filmed through a two-way mirror.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) Bond (Roger Moore) investigates the hijacking of nuclear warheads with the help of KGB agent Barbara Bach, whose lover he killed. But she’s a forgiving sort.

GoldenEye (1995) Bond (Pierce Brosnan) squares off against Russian assassin Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), who uses pleasure as a weapon.

What a way to go.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) Estranged married couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt end upon opposite sides of a big espionage case. Noteworthy as the film that created Brangelina.

OBITUARY

14

20 March 2009

Natasha Richardson, 1963-2009

By Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune

She began by playing an uncredited flower girl,along with her sister,Joely,in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968),a film directed by her father,Tony Richardson, starring her mother,Vanessa Redgrave.

Natasha Richardson was born into show business royalty. At her best, when her uneven film career allowed it – the greatest triumphs came on the London and New York stage – her theatrical chops brought something extra to the role at hand, something that said: This is play-acting. But I’m playing it for real.

Richardson died yesterday of brain injury complications suffered following a skiing accident that could have happened to anyone, anywhere.

On film she had not a trace of an Everywoman quality. Her regality came in many tones, and a sly sense of humour. Richardson, 5-foot-9 by most accounts but able to stare down most any costar, was best known in America for things like Disney’s remake of The Parent Trap (in which she’s charmingly brittle). In 1990 Richardson made her mark in the icy, often brutal and sexually charged dramas The Handmaid’s Tale, directed by Volker Schlondorff, and Paul Schrader’s The Comfort of Strangers.

For Schrader she’d already played the title role in Patty Hearst.

Often stuck in suffocating roles onscreen, she breathed more easily in the theatre. Co-starring with her future husband, Liam Neeson, in a 1993 Broadway revival of O’Neill’s Anna Christie, Richardson conquered a hugely difficult role, full of stereotyped Minnesota dialect and whore-with-gold-heart pitfalls. I still remember the big, whiskey-soaked rasp of a voice she brought to that portrayal.The voice was the key – the way into a nearly unplayable cliche’s beating heart.

She and Neeson fell in love on that production.Regulars that season at the late,lamented midtown Manhattan theatre bar, McHale’s, often spied Richardson and Neeson in one of the booths in the back,looking like the start of something big,romantically speaking.

Richardson played Shakespeare and Chekhov in London, and returned to the New York stage, following Anna Christie, in Patrick Marber’s Closer (Julia Roberts took her role for the film version), director Sam Mendes’ landmark reinterpretation of Cabaret (Richardson’s Sally Bowles was a fearsomely good depiction of a touchingly mediocre talent) and,in 2005, opposite John C. Reilly, A Streetcar Named Desire.

She could smoulder, coolly, with the best of them.

In Asylum she played the restless wife of a mental hospital administrator, gliding through the film (I reviewed it four years ago)“in various states of fear, desire and undress, a swan amongYorkshire frumps ... she towers over her repressed lessers, a lightning rod in summer whites.”

Had she lived longer, Richardson may well have developed a career to compare to her mother’s, mixing mediums, honing her skills in all kinds of material, digging ever deeper.

She was 45. Rest in peace.

Had she lived longer, Richardson may well have developed a career to compare to her mother’s, mixing mediums, honing her skills in all kinds of material, digging ever deeper.

Regulars at the late, lamented midtown Manhattan theatre bar, McHale’s, often spied Richardson and Neeson in one of the booths in the back, looking like the start of something big, romantically speaking

REVIEWS

20 March 2009

NEW CD RELEASES Marianne Faithfull

0Easy Come, Easy Go 0Decca The muse for whom Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote their first song has an “Easy Come, Easy Go”guest list that includes Cat Power, Nick Cave, Anthony Hegarty (on an inspired, 8minute-long cover of Smokey Robinson’s“Ooh Baby Baby”), Teddy Thompson, and Sean Lennon. Of course, some of those cameos may have something to do with Hal Willner, the producer who, one suspects, had the idea of pairing Faithfull’s gloriously sepulchral voice with source material as varied as Bessie Smith’s“Easy Come, Easy Go,”Randy Newman’s“In Germany Before The War,”and“Children of Stone,” a sorrowful tour de force originally cut by the Philadelphia freak-folk band Espers that’s draped with a swooning harmony vocal by Rufus Wainwright. In any case, the triumph here is all Faithfull’s. The 62-year-old singer is the one who holds the chamber-rock collection together with a two-pack-a-day rasp deployed with stately grace that conveys weary wisdom gleaned from four decades in the spotlight.

15

Books

Christopher Plummer sounds off in autobiography In Spite Of Myself: A Memoir 0Christopher Plummer 0Knopf, (US$19.77 via Amazon)

Christopher Plummer, possibly the greatest actor alive, cheerfully acknowledges that he long ago wearied of talking about The Sound of Music, the 1965 musical that made him a movie star. But he’s too gracious to make people stop bringing it up.

“Of course I am sick of The Sound of Music,but it is inevitable people will ask about it,”Plummer says by phone from his winter home in Palm Beach, Fla. “And they have to.The gory truth is it’s probably the most famous thing I’ve done. I don’t think Clark Gable enjoyed very much being thought of as Rhett Butler, but you have to bear your cross.”

– Dan DeLuca The whole story, including how Plummer, already a radio,TV and theatre star in 1965,“behaved appallJorma Kaukonen ingly”on the set of The Sound of Music, is just one 0River of Time of the rich anecdotes in his autobiography, In Spite 0Red House of Myself.

Widely reviewed when it came out in the fall, the book is already among the very best Hollywood A founding member of both the memoirs, alongside David Niven’s The Moon’s a Jefferson Airplane and the still- Balloon, Lauren Bacall’s By Myself, or Errol Flynn’s going Hot Tuna, Jorma Kauko- My Wicked, Wicked Ways. nen has long been a master gui“I was terribly surprised by the reviews,” says tarist and aficionado of American Plummer, who wrote without benefit of a ghostroots music.Those talents are in writer.“I was pleased I was taken somewhat serifull flower on “River of Time,” an all-acoustic set ously as a writer. It flatters me to no end. I’d love to produced by Larry Campbell, who accompanies be able to write well.” on several instruments.

Plummer has known almost everyone in theaKaukonen’s deft picking is displayed on such tre and movies since the late 1940s – from Judith numbers as the Rev. Gary Davis’ jaunty “There’s Anderson and Tyrone Power to George C. Scott and a Bright Side Somewhere” and Mississippi John Peter Falk to Al Pacino, Russell Crowe and Heath Hurt’s“Preachin’on the Old Campground.”He leans Ledger – and he fills the book with dish.“There’s toward bluegrass on a romp through the Delmore a lot of naughty stuff,” he says with undisguised Brothers’“Nashville Blues”and takes a bluesy turn delight. through the traditional “Trouble in Mind” (one of “I’ve always had a good memory,”says Plummer, three tracks with Levon Helm on drums).

79.“I can still learn reams of dialogue. I never kept Standing tall among these evergreens are several a diary, which would be rather embarrassing and cut Kaukonen originals. From “Cracks in the Finish” into one’s drinking time. I said, how am I going to and the title song to the instrumentals“Izze’s Lull- remember? But I didn’t find it difficult at all. aby”and“A Walk With Friends,”they exude the skill, “Just say the words ‘Peter O’Toole’and you have grace, and wisdom that define the whole album. five stories right off the bat. That’s why I love the – Nick Cristiano book. It brought back all these wonderful, colourful friends. If I’d known a lot of distinguished and dull Branford Marsalis Quartet people I don’t know what I would have done.”

0Metamorphosen Beautifully written in what is instantly recogniz0Marsalis Music able as Plummer’s voice, In Spite of Myself is, he says, a romance.“It’s my fairy story, if you know what I mean. A series of stories and adventures from an Tenor saxophonist Branford incurably romantic life. And when it hasn’t been a Marsalis leads his quartet by true romance, I’ve tried to create it.” empowering his collaborators.

Despite his towering stature, Plummer opens the Bassist Eric Revis contrib- book with the line,“I was brought up by an Airedale,” utes three tunes to this set; two and the caption beneath of a photo of himself as each come from pianist Joey an unsmiling boy in a jacket and tie reads,“Me as a Calderazzo and drummer Jeff “Tain”Watts, while repulsive youth of indeterminate age.”

Marsalis writes just one.

“One has to strike a humorous tone if you try to The group ethic extends to the playing, which write your own life,”Plummer says.“You have to be is surprising and covers many moods. Calderaz- as self-deprecating as possible.” zo’s “The Blossom of Parting” sounds wistfully Born in Montreal in 1929, Plummer grew up in European with its minor-key melody, while Revis’ a distinguished family. His mother’s branch – “the “Sphere”– Thelonious Monk’s middle name – comes Scottish side,”he calls them – can trace its lineage off pleasantly querulous in the master’s tradition. to 563 A.D. His family helped found McGill UniverMarsalis dedicates this session, whose title means sity, and provided business leaders, a chief justice, a metamorphoses in German, to a raft of recently mayor of Montreal, and Canada’s first native-born departed greats, from Michael Brecker to Joe prime minister, Sir John Caldwell Abbott.

Zawinul. Calderazzo reflects the poignant mood But Plummer’s parents divorced when he was throughout. His tune “The Last Goodbye”mines a young, and the family lost its money – an experience heartfelt mode. he calls “incredibly valuable.”

– Karl Stark “How awful it would be to be soft all your life,”

Plummer says.“I would not have found the anger to be an artist of some kind had I not seen a change of fortune. I learned a lot about my family’s character.

They treated their demise with no self-pity. There was something rather touching and Chekhovian about it.”

Plummer writes frankly about his drinking, although he stopped in early midlife when his third wife, the actress Elaine Taylor, threatened to leave him.Yet he does not apologize for his love of booze, which he says also contributed to his art.

“Drink certainly loosened me,”Plummer says.“I was inhibited in a strange way. I liked the daredevil creature I was trying to be. I was never a melancholy drunk, though I’m told I was quite obnoxious. I drank for fun and release. And we had fun. By the time I met my present wife, I was overdoing it.And I looked ghastly.”

Surveying his film career – Plummer has been in more than 100 movies, from Stage Struck in 1958 to The Last Station, due out this year, in which he plays Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy – he can name a few favourite roles. One came in The Insider (1999), an intense true story of a tobacco company whistleblower betrayed by CBS and “60 Minutes.”

He played TV newsman Mike Wallace with verve and verisimilitude.

“It was one of the better roles,”Plummer says.“My fellow artists – Al Pacino and Russell Crowe and the director Michael Mann – were superb.”

Another favourite is 1975’s The Man Who Would Be King, directed by John Huston and starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Plummer plays writer Rudyard Kipling, on whose short story the movie is based.

“I did take a special pleasure in Kipling,” says Plummer, who has revered the writer since childhood.“That was a beautiful script that Huston and Gladys Hill had written. The truest to Kipling of any movie I’ve seen.All the others are gung-ho and all that, but this one had a true Kipling original atmosphere to it.”

When it comes to his stage work, Plummer cannot name a favourite. Nominated for seven Tony Awards, he’s won twice: for Cyrano (1974) and Barrymore (1997). The notoriously harsh theatre critic John Simon once called him “the greatest actor in the English language.”

Although Plummer has lived in the United States most of his adult life – his permanent home is Connecticut – he retains his Canadian citizenship.

– By Chauncey Mabe

MrAllBiz gives sage advice The Small Business Bible

0Steven D. Strauss 0Wiley (US$13.57 via Amazon) Author Steven D. Strauss is a small business maven. This USA Today small business columnist and author of The Business Start-Up Kit and The Big Idea recently released a new edition of his The Small Business Bible, a veritable cornucopia of advice and information.

His Web site, MrAllBiz, www.mrallbiz.com, is a onestop resource for enterprise.

In light of the current economic anomalies and challenges, it seemed like a good idea to touch base with Strauss, so we sent a few questions to him by e-mail. Here are his responses: Q. How should small businesses deal with the current economic state of affairs in terms of marketing, advertising, personnel, customers, vendors, financing, expansion, insurance?

A. The biggest and most common mistake small

businesses make during times like these is that they cut back in the areas that are actually needed the most right now – marketing and advertising. Here’s why: Customers are volatile; loyalty is something that most people abandon when what they really want are discounts and value for their dollar. The result of that is twofold: First, you will lose customers; we all will. Second, there are plenty of new customers out there to be had as habits change.

BUT, the only way they will find their way to your door is through your advertising and marketing. It is shortsighted to cut back in those areas.

That said, belt-tightening is smart. For example, if you can legally turn an employee into an independent contractor, do so.That can save plenty on costly labour expenses. Keeping overhead low in ways that don’t hurt customer acquisition is key.

The other smart thing to do is to focus on customer service. Use the 80-20 rule to figure out who your most vital 20 percent is and lavish those valuable customers with added value.That is the name of the game right now – added value.

Q. Can the Internet help companies survive the downturn?

A.The Internet is critical to survival.Aside from the fact that it is where everything is headed anyway, the power on the Net in this economy is that it is so inexpensive to use, yet so powerful. For instance, you could spend $1,000 on a print or media ad that you hope the right people will see or hear and maybe act on. That same $1,000 spent on a pay-per-click campaign will yield far more targeted leads – people who saw your ad, liked it and already took action by clicking.

Search Engine Optimization is equally important. More and more people are abandoningYellow Pages and other traditional ad forms in favour of Google searches.You have to make it easy for them to find you, and you do that through SEO. I recently saw a stat that over 50 percent of all small businesses still don’t have a Web site.That is shocking! You simply must have one, if for no other reason than Web sites are increasingly where people go to determine if they want to hire you or buy from you.

By the same token, make sure you get a good one.The Net is the great equalizer.Any small business site could, and should, look every bit as good as that of any big business. Finally, these days it is inexpensive and quick to get a beautiful, elegant, professional site.

Q. To what extent is the economy cyclical? Is it just a matter of“riding it out”?

A. I love this Paul Harvey quote:“In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.”It felt like the economic sky was falling when the dot-com bubble burst, and also after 9/11. We made it through then and we will again. Is this worse? Of course! But it is survivable.

People are looking for bargains. Give them what they want.

Q.What’s something that most companies neglect to do when things get rough, but shouldn’t?

A. Too many companies fail to see opportunities during rough times because they are so focused on survival. And while it’s important to keep your eye on the ball, it is a mistake to lose sight of other possibilities.

For example, recessions are great times to innovate. The cost of goods and labour is less, and you and/or your staff probably have some extra time on your hands. Use that time to come up with new ideas and try them out now.

Recessions are also good times to see what fat can be trimmed. Find a cheaper supplier, or less expensive insurance.

But it’s also important not to think the only way to increase demand is to cut price. Price cuts aren’t the only way to stimulate demand, and they aren’t the best approach for entrepreneurs. On average, entrepreneurs are more successful when they compete on service, quality or something other than price. So price cutting in a recession is often a losing strategy for entrepreneurs.

– By Richard Pachter

HEALTH

16

20 March 2009

medicine at a glance

Gluing you back together RALEIGH, N.C., March 20 (UPI) – U.S. scientists say they have devised a method of making medical adhesives that might replace sutures and result in less post-surgical scarring.

Using the natural glue that marine mussels use to stick to rocks, along with a variation on the inkjet printer, the researchers led by North Carolina State University say the technology might also result in faster recovery times and increased precision for exacting operations such as eye surgery.

Traditionally, there have been two ways to join tissue during surgical procedures: sutures and synthetic adhesives. But the new research shows adhesive proteins found in the glue produced by marine mussels might be an improvement over synthetic adhesives because they are non-toxic and biodegradable.

Associate Professor Roger Narayan, the study’s coauthor, said the new medical adhesives give surgeons greater control of the placement of adhesives. “This helps ensure that the tissues are joined together in just the right spot, forming a better bond that leads to improved healing and less scarring,” said Narayan.

The study, performed in collaboration with Professor Jon Wilker, is to be published in the April issue of the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research.

New research on benefit of prostate exams

By Judith Graham Chicago Tribune Protein may tip scales toward weight loss URBANA, Ill., March 20 (UPI) – A study financed by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association suggests dieters can lose more fat by choosing protein over carbohydrates.

Donald Layman, professor emeritus of nutrition at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, said dieters who eat too many carbohydrates often end up battling snack cravings.

Layman study followed 130 people during four months of weight loss and eight months of maintenance. The group that followed a moderately high-protein diet in which 30 percent of their daily calories were protein-based, lost 38 percent more body fat over 12 months than those who followed USDA dietary guidelines that call for a diet that is 15 percent protein and 55 percent carbohydrates.

Diagnostic test can rule out Alzheimer’s PHILADELPHIA, March 20 (UPI) – U.S. pathologists say they have developed a biomarker diagnostic test that can confirm or rule out Alzheimer’s disease.

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers said their test is also capable of predicting conversion from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease.

By measuring cerebrospinal fluid concentrations of two of the disease’s biochemical hallmarks – amyloid beta42 peptide and tau protein – the test also predicts whether a person’s mild cognitive impairment will convert to Alzheimer’s disease over time, the researchers said.

The test allows scientists to detect Alzheimer’s disease at the earliest stages, before dementia symptoms appear and widespread irreversible damage occurs. The scientists said their findings hold promise in the search for effective pharmaceutical therapies capable of halting the disease.

“Validated biomarker tests will improve the focus of Alzheimer’s clinical trials, enrolling patients at earlier stages of the disease to find treatments that can at least delay – and perhaps stop – neurodegeneration,” said Leslie Shaw, director of the university’s Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, who led the study.

Shaw said additional work is needed to develop biomarkers, as well as identify more genetic risk factors that will help distinguish Alzheimer’s from other neurodegenerative diseases characterized by cognitive impairments.

The study appears in the online edition of the journal Annals of Neurology.

CHICAGO – There is now a partial answer to one of the most controversial questions in medicine: whether men should get blood tests that screen for prostate cancer.

Experts say a new study shows that for men likely to die within 10 years – whether due to age or illness – the answer is no.

The study of nearly 77,000 men, the most extensive investigation of its kind in the U.S., found that although blood tests for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) identify more cancers, they do not end up saving more men’s lives in the first 10 years of follow-up.

That might seem counterintuitive, but many prostate tumours grow slowly and are not dangerous,

so early detection is not as critical as it is for other cancers. Meanwhile, there are significant downsides to treatment, mainly incontinence and impotence.

The study, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, was designed to help answer a fundamental question: whether the potential benefits of PSA screening – identifying disease early, saving lives – are outweighed by the potential risks, including the effects of treatment and the anxiety of a cancer diagnosis.

For men in their 50s and 60s who aren’t considered at high risk, the answer is still not clear, because the men haven’t been followed long enough yet to offer decisive guidance.The study will continue for several years until that data is collected.

But because the findings regarding older and seriously ill men were viewed as important, they were released now and published online Wednesday

in the New England Journal of Medicine.

They demonstrate that there’s little reason for men with life expectancies of less than 10 years to undergo PSA testing because they are unlikely to benefit, said Dr. Gerald Andriole, lead author of the study and chief urologic surgeon at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

The don’t-test group includes men older than 75 whose expected life span is less than a decade, and those with life-limiting conditions such as serious heart disease or poorly controlled diabetes.

Experts say African-American men and men with a family history of prostate cancer are classified as high risk and should get prostate cancer tests beginning in their 40s. For other men, those in their 50s, 60s and early 70s,“I’m not confident we can say at this point what to do with them,”Andriole admitted.

One criticism of the U.S. study is that it compares men who were prescribed six PSA tests to men who weren’t told to be tested but also weren’t forbidden to do so, a less-than-optimal research design.

Most physicians contacted by the Chicago Tribune said they would continue to recommend annual PSA testing to men 50 and older, but would use the results from the study to inform discussions with patients of the potential risks and benefits of the test and prostate cancer treatment.

“The way I think about it, the test gives valuable information to me and my patients,”said Dr. Scott Eggener, assistant professor of urology at the University of Chicago Medical Center.“The key fork in the road isn’t really having the test or not: It’s deciding whether to be treated or not.”

Digital rectal exams also are used to detect prostate cancer, but the exams detect tumours an average of 10 years later than PSA testing. In the U.S., they’re recommended to low-risk men starting at age 50.

The new research will undoubtedly reinforce concerns over the large numbers of men who are getting PSA tests, then being diagnosed with cancer and agreeing to treatment with its attendant side effects, even though their tumours are slow-growing and almost surely not dangerous.

Up to 40 percent of tumours identified through prostate cancer tests fall in this category, according to a separate study published last week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

“There is no question that there are men who are getting the side effects (of prostate cancer treatment) without getting the benefits,”said Dr. Edward Gelmann, chief of the division of haematology and oncology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

Mum stories

9 to 5 to 9: Child labor laws? Pshaw!

By Debra Legg

There is one and only one reason to have children, and it has nothing to do with ensuring that the human race continues, leaving a legacy or any of that other warm fuzzy stuff.

It’s instead cold and practical: Children make wonderful little slaves.

That’s a joke. Please do not call Child Protective Services.No actual human beings were harmed during production of this post,and if I actually wanted inexpensive household help, hiring a maid and paying her taxes would be much cheaper than raising the guys.

However, if labour is offered, who am I to reject it?

The guys have been on a cleaning kick of late, and I don’t kid myself that it started for any other reason than the joy of playing in water.

Sometimes odd motivation can work, though. I mastered spreadsheets only in an attempt to defeat the evil genius in my fantasy baseball league.Turned out the evil genius was untouchable, but I succeeded in beating Excel into submission.

The guys have been especially fascinated since I conceded that, while great for quick wipe-ups, Swiffer was just never going to do in the battle

against their grime. So I bought a real mop. I don’t think they’d ever seen one.

“How does this work?”Big Guy asked.

“Well, you run water into a bucket ...,”I started.

I had him at“run water.”It’s all I can do now to get the floor mopped for real before they take over.

The odd thing, though, is how the fascination has spread to other chores.

Big Guy has started packing his lunch, which has decreased the griping exponentially.“Don’t blame me if you don’t like it.You picked it.”Boots can find the laundry hamper without the aid of GPS.And I feel a little like Scarlett O’Hara at the picnic every night after dinner as the guys clamour for the right to clean up.“I think I’ll let Boots get my cake.”

This is not just about free household help, though.

It’s also a value lesson: If you don’t study hard in school, or if you major in journalism, this is what you’ll do the rest of your life.

I’m hoping for a few blissful toil-free years of lying on the couch eating bonbons while they labour.

Then teenage rebellion will kick in and it’ll be back to the mop bucket for me.

Debra Legg is a writer and mother of two boys, Big Guy and Little Guy. Read more of their adventures in chaos at debralegg.com.

SCIENCE & TECH 17

20 March 2009

Happy Birthday, WWW

By Elise Ackerman San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE, Calif. – It all began 20 years ago with a frustrated 29-year-old programmer who had a passion for order.

Tim Berners-Lee, now famous as the founder of the World Wide Web, was working as an obscure consultant at Cern, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in the suburbs of Geneva. BernersLee loved the laboratory. It was full of stimulating projects and creative people, but his work, and the work of his colleagues, was stymied by the lack of institutional knowledge.

So Berners-Lee proposed adding “hypertext”to the Cern network, basically embedding software in

documents that would point to other related documents. And thus was born the Web, a global communications network that has shaken up industries, created enormous wealth and transformed the way ordinary people live their lives.

“When two years is a typical length of stay, information is constantly being lost,”Berners-Lee wrote in his paper proposing a new system for information management.“The technical details of past projects are sometimes lost forever, or only recovered after a detective investigation in an emergency.”

On March 12, Cern celebrated the 20th anniversary of Berners-Lee’s proposal in its trademark wooden sphere called“the globe,”which it touts as a symbol of the Earth’s future. In Silicon Valley, where there is less appetite for pomp, the celebration took

the form of hundreds of thousands of workers using the Web to build the future.

En route to Cern, Berners-Lee declined a request for an interview.

What lies ahead? “The only thing that you can predict about the Internet is that there are going to be surprising applications that come along that you did not predict,”said Len Kleinrock, a professor of computer science at UCLA who developed the mathematical theory of packet switching, the technology that drives the Internet, while he was a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1960s.

Like other fathers of the Internet, Kleinrock was stunned by the power of Berners-Lee’s idea.

“This was a fantastic application,”Kleinrock recalls thinking.

Still, it took a while for the word to spread. Berners-Lee wrote his software in 1990 and put up the first Web site in 1991.

“I was trying to tell people how – explain to people what it was going to do and what it was going to be like and why it was going to be interesting, and they’d look at me with blank stares,” Berners-Lee recalled in an interview in 2002.

Then in January 1993, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, students at the University of Illinois, released the first graphical browser for the Web. Berners-Lee forwarded a message announcing their software to some news groups,and soon technically inclined people all over the world were downloading the browser.

Craig Partridge, the chief scientist at BBN Technologies, the company that built the Internet in the late 1960s, recalls a colleague giving him his first tour of the Web later in 1993. Though there were only 200 Web sites,“it was clear that this was going to blow away competing information services,” he recalled.“Tim got it right.”

Right, but not perfect.All Web pages got names, called uniform resource locators, or URLs. It was like naming the books in the library by the shelves they were on.

“You can’t move books around; you can’t add new shelves,”said David Clark, a senior research scientist at MIT who has been leading the development of the Internet since the mid-1970s.

And neither the Internet nor the protocols that Berners-Lee added to it were built with security in mind.

“We trusted everybody, made it very easy to get access to the network and made it anonymous,” Kleinrock said.“The way we set it up was almost a perfect formula for the dark side.”

But that won’t stop its continued development, including plans to extend the network to outer space.

“You have to imagine, there is a whole lot more that can be done,”said David Smith, an analyst with Gartner.

New iPod Shuffle a delight, despite flaw

By Eric Benderoff Chicago Tribune

Apple solved one problem with its fun, new iPod Shuffle:With the push of a button on its headphone cord, it can tell you what song is playing.

But it created another problem if you want to use a different pair of headphones than those shipped with the Shuffle.

Otherwise, the iPod Shuffle is a delight and the most interesting music player I’ve used in some time. It holds about 1,000 songs on a 4-gigabyte flash drive.

Strikingly small, the size of a thumb but much thinner, the gadget elicits wonder from those I’ve shown it to. It could pass for a USB thumb drive, and there’s a chance you’ll lose it one day.

Shrinking the Shuffle required controls to be built into the headphone cord.That means you can use only Apple headphones with this product,at least for now.

And the controls take a little practice to learn.

In the past, if you had a decent amount of music on your Shuffle and a spotty memory, you often didn’t know what was playing.

The magic with this version is that it can tell you what’s playing.You press and briefly hold the center

of the controls on the headphone and the song title and artist’s name are spoken.The voice is clear and generally accurate. It can speak in 14 languages.

Sure, the voice makes mistakes. It struggles with Lupe Fiasco, for example, but the feature is far more useful than annoying.

Also, if you keep holding the centre control button, it will scroll through your playlists.

At first, I found the playlist function frustrating. It reads the playlist names from the beginning, in alphabetical order, not from the last playlist you picked. I sort my playlists primarily by artists – others do it differently. So if I stop at Lou Reed, listen to a few songs and then want to move on, I would like to start at the next playlist, which would be Luna.

It doesn’t work that way.

Frustrated, I went online to read the full Shuffle instructions at Apple.com – the first time I’ve done this with an iPod – and learned that if I hit the controls for volume up or down, I can quickly move

through playlists.

Much better, but I still would prefer to start from where I stopped.

Having the controls on the headphone, as handy and as easy to use as they are, are also the Shuffle’s biggest flaw.

The iPod headphones are adequate but there are many third-party products that sound better. Currently, they don’t work well with this Shuffle.

That is being addressed, and at least a halfdozen third-party headphones are already in development, said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iPod and iPhone Product Marketing.

Other headphones do work with the Shuffle, Joswiak said, but you can’t control volume, hear song information or change playlists.

That criticism aside, this iPod is a remarkable little device, and Apple has once again raised the bar for how to create a fresh music player.

discovery

in 60 seconds Study finds elephant sharks perceive colour SINGAPORE, March 20 (UPI) – Singaporean and British scientists say they used genome sequencing to discover the elephant shark can see colours much in the same way humans can.

Byrappa Venkatesh of Singapore’s Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, and Professor David Hunt of the University College London’s Institute of Ophthalmology said the finding might enhance scientists’ understanding of how colour vision evolved in early vertebrates during the past 450 million years.

The elephant shark is a primitive deep-sea fish that belongs to the oldest living family of jawed vertebrates.

“It was unexpected that a ‘primitive’ vertebrate like the elephant shark had the potential for colour vision like humans. The discovery shows that it has acquired the traits for colour vision during evolution in parallel with humans,” said Venkatesh, who led the research that appears in the journal Genome Research.

In a separate paper, published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, the research team said they also discovered the protein sequences in elephant sharks were evolving at a slower rate than in other vertebrates.

That finding, said the scientists, suggests the elephant shark has retained more features of the ancestral genome than other vertebrates belonging to the same evolutionary tree and hence is a useful model for gaining insight into the ancestral genome, in which the human genome also has its roots.

Ares I-X motor segments arrive at Kennedy CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., March 20 (UPI) – The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the four motor segments for the Ares I-X have arrived at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

After a seven-day, 2,917-mile journey, a train carrying the four motor segments – the final hardware needed for the rocket’s test flight this summer – arrived today from Promontory, Utah, where NASA contractor Alliant Techsystems Inc. manufactured them.

NASA said the test flight will be used to check and prove hardware, analysis and modelling methods and facilities and ground operations needed to develop the Ares I, which is NASA’s next crew launch vehicle. The test also will ensure the entire vehicle system is safe and fully operational before astronauts begin travelling in it to the International Space Station and moon.

“We have achieved a tremendous milestone with the arrival of the segments,” said Bob Ess, mission manager for Ares I-X at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston.

For NASA personnel and contractor teams throughout the country, this is the culmination of years of hard work and dedication.

Scientists create protective windows POTSDAM, Germany, March 20 (UPI) – German scientists say they have created windows and doors that can detect suspicious movements before a crime is committed and, if necessary, sound an alarm.

A motion sensor developed at the Fraunhofer Institutes for Applied Polymer Research in Potsdam and by Computer Architecture and Software Technology in Berlin can enable window panes and glass doors to detect movements thanks to a special coating.

“The glass is coated with a fluorescent material,” said IAP group manager Burkhard Elling. “The coating contains nanoparticles that convert light into fluorescent radiation.”

He said an ultraviolet lamp illuminates the window panes and generates fluorescent radiation in the coating that is channelled to the edges of the window, where it is detected by sensors. If someone steps into the light, less light reaches the coating and less fluorescent radiation is produced. If several sensors are installed on all four sides of the window frame, conclusions can be drawn from the data as to how fast and in what direction an object is moving.

Elling said size can also be estimated by the sensors.

“Is it a small creature such as a bird or is it a person?

The threshold for the alarm can be set, so that moving objects the size of birds, for example, do not trigger an alarm.”

A demonstrator system already exists, and the researchers now say they plan to refine the technology.

LIFEFOCUS

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20 March 2009

Margitay-Becht, poses this question:“If unfriending is so cruel or unusual or rude, then does it mean that in 30 years we’ll still be friends with these students?”

Good point.Your online profile is your creation.

So, if you have to remove someone – be it a nosy ex or a handful of people you never interact with – be firm.“The first step is admitting the problem.

After that, take off 10 percent (of your friends),”says Greg Atwan, the NewYork-based co-author of“The Facebook Book”(Abrams Image, $12.95), a satirical handbook for maximizing your Facebook page.“Cut anybody that you’re sick of. If you’re sick of hearing about so-and-so’s dog grooming, he’s not going to notice when you drop the ax.”

In the book,Atwan suggests“trimming the friend hedge” twice a year. In his circle of twentysomethings, 500 friends is the sweet spot. For folks older than 30, the largest growing segment of Facebook users, it’s often less. If you’re concerned about hurting someone’s feelings, don’t be.“There’s a difference between the passive aggressive unfriending of someone you know well and you think will notice, and the judicious pruning of the hedge,”Atwan says.

A while back,Atwan noticed that a circle of people associated with an ex-girlfriend had ritually unfriended him. He didn’t make a big deal about it.

“This is how friendship is defined now,”he says.“It used to be by Aristotle and now it’s by my Facebook page.”As for the random friend from junior high, there is an ignore button, he adds.

Go ahead, unfriend ‘em

By Jessica Yadegaran Contra Costa Times

I knew I had to delete her or suffer the consequences.

I’m talking about my Facebook profile, that page on the social networking site devoted to me and where 175 million other users around the world can “friend”me by sending a simple note.The female in question was an acquaintance of a friend. I barely know her, but she has a reputation as queen of gossip in the greater Los Angeles area.

I thought about it for another second then clicked “remove,”and freed myself.Two days later, I was on the phone with the original friend and there was an awkward pause in our conversation.“So, Ashley is hurt that you don’t want to be her friend,”my friend told me. I wasn’t sure how to respond.

So I spoke the truth:“Ashley and I barely know each other.Who cares?”

Not long ago, most devotees of social networking sites believed in numbers. Fill your page with goofy photos and pensive updates then amass as many friends as possible to prove your popularity.These virtual friend armies became the norm, and even though we never spoke or saw each other, somehow we felt validated by the three- and even four-digit tallies. Now our pages are oversaturated, however, and we’re craving a little peace and privacy.As such, friend pruning and unfriending have taken over as the latest behaviours on social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.

But rather than agonize over whom to remove – your boss? your girlfriend’s mom? – many users are starting from scratch or scaling back on whom

they friend or accept requests from in the first place.

Discretion, it seems, has also surpassed the need for numbers, experts say.

SELF-CENSORSHIP LizaDawn Ramirez of Hayward, Calif., knew it was time to do some major friend cleaning when she began censoring herself on her Facebook page. She had hit 143 friends, and didn’t feel close to many.

So, she deleted everyone and started over. First, she reached out and friended family. Then, close friends.

“It’s awesome. It’s so freeing,”she says of the purge.

“I know the people on my Facebook now and genuinely feel that they have my best intentions at heart.

I don’t have to censor myself anymore.”She also got rid of her MySpace page and limits LinkedIn to a home for her resume.“I don’t ever update my status there and just stay connected to colleagues in case I ever have to find a job,”she says.

Today, Ramirez is happy with her 44 Facebook friends, and hasn’t had to deny anyone. Most of the fat she cut was well-meaning but long-lost high school and college classmates or people she met at parties who reached out to her but whom Ramirez knew she would never hear from again.“I felt like Pokemon because people were trying to collect me,” she says. Her rule now? “I’m definitely not going to accept anybody if I don’t think we can carry on a legitimate relationship outside of Facebook,” she says.

Yolanda Higareda of Calif., has all of five people on her Facebook page, and they’re all relatives. She surfs chat rooms but doesn’t belong to other social networking sites.The family uses Facebook to post

photographs of the children. Higareda did friend one person outside of her family, and eventually deleted her following an offline falling out.“In this world, you just surround yourself with people who make you happy,”she says.“You can get drama online and off.Who needs it?”

Before the Web turned networking into a computer-human relationship, socializing had to do with sharing place-appropriate information, says Dana Herrera, an assistant professor of anthropology at Saint Mary’s College who researches virtual worlds such as Second Life.That could explain the added drama.

‘WE’RE SOCIAL CREATURES’ “When we would socialize at work or school, we would talk about work or school information,”Herrera says.“We’re social creatures. We enjoy feeling part of a group.This is how we developed as humans.

One thousand years ago, being taken out of the group was a social commentary on your success.”

Even though the sites don’t alert the person who’s been dumped – the sudden lack of access does – the situation can still be awkward. Even for Herrera.“I can’t begin to understand the social ramifications of unfriending a student,”she says. So, at the beginning of each semester, the professor encourages her students to friend her but suggests they consider their click very carefully.

“I remind them that if they can see me, I can see them,”she says.The result? Out of 70 students, one will end up friending her.A fellow professor at St. Mary’s friends students only after they graduate, Herrera says. Another colleague, Herrera’s coresearcher, adjunct economics professor Andres

TOO MUCH INFORMATION Experts, such as Margitay-Becht, believe that the social downsizing comes as consumers realize the pitfalls of sharing personal details with acquaintances and strangers. And as these sites continue adding applications that encourage users to share even more juicy information – from home videos to politically inclined invitations – all those so-called friends may know more about you than some of your distant cousins.

“One of the major points that’s happening is a desire to reduce the information clutter,” he says.

“These online personalities have a life of their own and there are large privacy issues here. Everyone’s burned themselves, and when that happens, the knee-jerk reaction is to cut off as many people as possible.”

It’s sobering, to say the least.At least most social networking sites have privacy settings that can limit the amount of personal information people see about you.You can also block people and control who can search for you. But they’re not for everybody.

“Unless you’re a bona fide celebrity or in the CIA, it doesn’t seem necessary to use the privacy settings,” Atwan says.“The entire premise of Facebook is that if two people have a lot in common and don’t know each other, they should be able to come together through Facebook. That to me is a sounder basis for friendship than junior high.”

Unless the person’s a Los Angeles gossip.

TIPS ON UNFRIENDING Looking to downsize your social army? Follow the tips below, which include suggestions from Greg Atwan, co-author of “The Facebook Book” (Abrams Image, $12.95), a guide for Facebook users: • Admit you have a problem amassing too many friends.

Then, cut off 10 percent.

• Continue to cut off people you’re sick of hearing about.

That includes the friend of a friend who posts regular updates about grooming her dog.

• Trim your friend hedge every six months.

• If someone unfriends you, don’t make a big deal out of it.

• If you unfriend someone and she confronts you about her hurt feelings, be honest. Assure the person you didn’t mean to hurt her feelings but that you are trying to limit your page to close friends.

DISCOVERY

20 March 2009

19

Luxury Irish hotels stunning

By Patti Nickell

DUBLIN, Ireland – For you intrepid travellers who, having sampled St. Patrick’s Day, might have a trip to Ireland in your future, I have a trivia question for you.What do the Duke of Wellington and the Guinness family of brewers have in common – beyond the obvious, of course?

Answer:The onetime homes of the Duke and of Lord Ardilaun of the Guinness clan have been transformed into world-class hotels – one in Dublin and one in the pastoral countryside of County Mayo.

The “Town and Country Experience,”a customized six-night trip, allows visitors to experience the best of both historic properties.

The Merrion, Dublin When Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington and Napoleon’s nemesis at Waterloo, was born at 24 Upper Merrion Street in 1769, the townhouse faced stately Leinster House, seat of the Irish government; coaches-and-fours paraded up and down the thoroughfare; and just around the corner were the leafy gardens of St. Stephen’s Green.

More than 200 years later, the view has not changed, but the coaches have been replaced by stretch limousines, and the Duke’s birthplace, along with three other Georgian townhouses, now comprise Dublin’s most elegant hotel,The Merrion.

On a chilly morning last November, the sun was a pale smear in a slate sky and the usual Irish mist was falling, but inside The Merrion, all was warm and toasty.A log fire burned in the drawing room as I sat down to tea, and I could smell freshly baked bread from the kitchen and the winter lilacs in every room.

This was my third stay at this exquisite hotel, and as always, I was awed by the details: the intricate Rococo plaster work, Corinthian cornice in the stairwell, Belgian tapestries and French chandeliers, and a delicate color scheme that ranges from light blue to sage green to cream. It seemed as if the dashing Duke himself could descend the curving staircase at any moment.

But if he had, he surely would be surprised at the changes wrought by the dramatic restoration that

began in the late 1990s. Although the restoration was faithful to the spirit and charm of Georgian Dublin, it incorporated features that would appeal to modern guests.

For example, Restaurant Patrick Gilbaud, overlooking the private garden, is home to the acclaimed chef who has raised its status to 2 Michelin stars.

Guests may celebrate the cocktail hour in the candlelit Cellar Bar, part of the original 18th-century vaults, or the intimate No. 23, just off the drawing room.The Tethra Spa, with its 59-foot infinity pool, has been voted the best hotel spa in Dublin by Harpers and Queen Magazine, and the terrace gardens, dripping with roses, honeysuckle and clematis, surround a central pond.

In what is perhaps The Merrion’s most noteworthy feature, the impressive art collection includes works from Dutch,Flemish and French landscape painters, but the vast majority are works by Irish artists.

In addition to being a historic sanctuary filled with artistic and culinary delights,The Merrion is a perfect base for touring Dublin’s city sights – the Temple Bar district, National Gallery of Ireland, and Trinity College, with its famous Book of Kells.

The mind’s ideal and idyl After three days in Dublin, it’s on to Ashford Castle in County Mayo.

If ever there was a perfect castle of the imagination, it is this one, a grand collage of turrets and towers surrounded by expansive gardens that meander down to the waters of Lough Corrib,Ireland’s second-largest lake. Nineteenth-century Irish novelist and poet George Moore,after a visit to the castle,was inspired to rhapsodize about the“fairylike silences,”and write that the “noble wilderness, the wild outlines of the guardian mountains which arise are as still and calm as the visions of an Icelandic god,and in the exquisite clarity every detail is visible.”

Flowery, perhaps, but if ever a place deserved to be described in poetic terms, it’s Ashford Castle.The isolated location, with only the mountains, forest and lake as backdrop, could have been a setting for a Merchant-Ivory period film. The loudest sounds you are likely to hear are the swaying of the trees

in the breeze, the chatter of the birds and the soft plop of water in the garden fountain. Without the distractions of a noisier, more congested world, it is easier to focus on each detail.

The history that emanates from every stone is palpable.The castle dates to 1228, when an AngloNorman family wrested the land from the native O’Connors of Connaught, retaining ownership for 3 and a half centuries.The most famous clan to be associated with the castle was the Guinness family, which, according to my driver,“brought to the lips of every Irishman a bit of liquid gold.”

In 1985, a group of Irish-American investors bought Ashford Castle, and although the castle had functioned as a hotel since 1939, the new owners set about moulding it into what it is today, one of the top resort properties in Europe and one of the most luxurious hotels in the world. Its setting alone would be enough to attract those in search of the perfect idyll, but it offers so much more.

There is the gourmet dining experience of the formal George V Dining Room. The very idea of entering such a temple of culinary excellence and its adjoining Prince of Wales Bar in anything but your best duds seems a sacrilege.You can be more informal when you join locals in an evening of revelry, and if you’re lucky, some real Irish folk music, in the justly famous Dungeon Bar. To this add an array of activities that range from lake cruises on the resort’s boat, the Isle of Inisfree, to fishing for trout and salmon in Lough Corrib to golfing on any number of spectacular courses.You can hunt game of the clay variety (Ashford’s sporting clay range features targets that simulate game typical of the region).You can even enroll in the Ireland School of Falconry on the grounds of the castle (the school’s Hawk Walks offer an unparalleled experience in the art of flying hawks).

I am not ashamed to admit that I did none of the above. On most of my trips, I’m the first to take advantage of everything, whether scuba diving or horseback riding, whitewater rafting or flat water canoeing. However, at Ashford Castle, I was overcome with a rare case of inertia, whose symptoms included an unwillingness to lace up my Wellies and

take fishing rod in hand, or to take aim through the crosshairs and bring down a wily clay woodcock.

Instead, I spent an entirely guilt-free couple of days, enjoying a Gothic novel that would have been virtually unreadable in any other location, while sipping countless cups of tea. I did get in some exercise in the form of moving from one overstuffed couch to another in the drawing room so that I could take in the incomparable view from every angle.

I was content to do as the poet Moore had done – let my mind and body relax,and give my senses free rein to revel in the beauty of one of Ireland’s treasures.

IF YOU GO

TOWN AND COUNTRY EXPERIENCE The Merrion Hotel in Dublin and Ashford Castle in County Mayo offer three opportunities to luxuriate in two of Ireland’s internationally renowned hotels with a six-night trip.

The Silver Experience (US$2,204 a person, double occupancy) includes three nights each at The Merrion and Ashford Castle, full Irish breakfast each morning, one-hour massage at each property, limousine transfer between properties and other amenities. The Gold Experience (US$2,834) offers, in addition to room and meals, a half-day Georgian walking tour in Dublin and half-day fly fishing at Ashford Castle, and air transportation on Aer Arann between the two properties. The Platinum Experience (US$6,614) includes suite accommodations at both hotels, three spa treatments at each property, cocktails and dinner at both properties, and a helicopter transfer between properties.

FYI For those choosing the Gold Experience, note that Aer Arann charges for overweight baggage, which averages $75 round-trip.

The Town and Country Experience can be booked through either hotel at their Web sites, www.merrionhotel. com or www.ashford.ie, or by calling Ashford Castle 0168 1-800-346-7007. Indicate that you are interested in the Town and Country Experience.

In addition, Ashford Castle will celebrate its 70th anniversary as a hotel this year. Ask about other packages that will be offered during the celebration.

NZ CLASSIC

20

20 March 2009

A cry in the dark

Acclaimed science fiction writer Jules Verne didn’t just write Around the World in 80 Days, he also wrote an epic about New Zealand and Australia called In Search of the Castaways, published in 1867. If you missed the previous instalment of this serial, you can download it here.

The crew soon heard that no light had been thrown on the situation of Captain Grant by the revelations of Ayrton, and it caused profound disappointment among them, for they had counted on the quartermaster, and the quartermaster knew nothing which could put the Duncan on the right track.

The yacht therefore continued her course. They had yet to select the island for Ayrton’s banishment.

Paganel and John Mangles consulted the charts on board, and exactly on the 37th parallel found a little isle marked by the name of Maria Theresa, a sunken rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 3,500 miles from the American coast, and 1,500 miles from New Zealand.

The nearest land on the north was the Archipelago of Pomotou, under the protectorate of France; on the south there was nothing but the eternal ice-belt of the Polar Sea. No ship would come to reconnoitre this solitary isle. No echoes from the world would ever reach it. The storm birds only would rest awhile on it during their long flight, and in many charts the rock was not even marked.

If ever complete isolation was to be found on earth, it was on this little out-of-the-way island.Ayrton was informed of its situation, and expressed his willingness to live there apart from his fellows.The head of the vessel was in consequence turned toward it immediately.

Two days later, at two o’clock, the man on watch signalled land on the horizon.This was Maria Theresa, a low, elongated island, scarcely raised above the waves, and looking like an enormous whale. It was still thirty miles distant from the yacht, whose stem was rapidly cutting her way over the water at the rate of sixteen knots an hour.

Gradually the form of the island grew more distinct on the horizon.

The orb of day sinking in the west, threw up its peculiar outlines in sharp relief.A few peaks of no great elevation stood out here and there, tipped with sunlight. At five o’clock John Mangles could discern a light smoke rising from it.

“Is it a volcano?”he asked of Paganel, who was gazing at this new land through his telescope.

“I don’t know what to think,”replied the geographer;“Maria Theresa is a spot little known; nevertheless, it would not be surprising if its origin were due to some submarine upheaval, and consequently it may be volcanic.”

“But in that case,”said Glenarvan,“is there not reason to fear that if an eruption produced it, an eruption may carry it away?”

“That is not possible,”replied Paganel.“We know of its existence for several centuries, which is our security.When the Isle Julia emerged from the Mediterranean, it did not remain long above the waves, and disappeared a few months after its birth.”

“Very good,”said Glenarvan.“Do you think, John, we can get there to-night?”

“No, your honour, I must not risk the Duncan in the dark, for I am unacquainted with the coast. I will keep under steam, but go very slowly, and to-morrow, at daybreak, we can send off a boat.”

At eight o’clock in the evening, Maria Theresa, though five miles to leeward, appeared only an elongated shadow, scarcely visible.The Duncan was always getting nearer.

At nine o’clock, a bright glare became visible, and flames shot up through the darkness.The light was steady and continued.

“That confirms the supposition of a volcano,”said Paganel, observing it attentively.

“Yet,”replied John Mangles,“at this distance we ought to hear the noise which always accompanies an eruption, and the east wind brings no sound whatever to our ear.”

“That’s true,” said Paganel.“It is a volcano that blazes, but does not speak.The gleam seems intermittent too, sometimes, like that of a lighthouse.”

“You are right,”said John Mangles,“and yet we are not on a lighted coast.”

“Ah!”he exclaimed,“another fire? On the shore this time! Look! It moves! It has changed its place!”

John was not mistaken.A fresh fire had appeared, which seemed to die out now and then, and suddenly flare up again.

“Is the island inhabited then?”said Glenarvan.

“By savages, evidently,”replied Paganel.

“But in that case, we cannot leave the quartermaster there.”

“No,”replied the Major,“he would be too bad a gift even to bestow on savages.”

“We must find some other uninhabited island,”said Glenarvan, who could not help smiling at the delicacy of McNabbs.“I promised Ayrton his life, and I mean to keep my promise.”

“At all events, don’t let us trust them,” added Paganel.“The New Zealanders have the barbarous custom of deceiving ships by moving lights, like the wreckers on the Cornish coast in former times. Now the natives of Maria Theresa may have heard of this proceeding.”

“Keep her off a point,”called out John to the man at the helm.“To- our duty, mine, at least, to do for him. My life has one purpose to which morrow at sunrise we shall know what we’re about.” it should be entirely consecrated – that is to search, and never cease At eleven o’clock, the passengers and John Mangles retired to their searching for my father, who would never have given us up. Ah, Mary, cabins. In the forepart of the yacht the man on watch was pacing the how good our father was!” deck, while aft, there was no one but the man at the wheel.

“And so noble, so generous!” added Mary.“Do you know, Robert, At this moment Mary Grant and Robert came on the poop. he was already a glory to our country, and that he would have been The two children of the captain, leaning over the rail, gazed sadly numbered among our great men if fate had not arrested his course.” at the phosphorescent waves and the luminous wake of the Duncan.

“Yes, I know it,”said Robert.

Mary was thinking of her brother’s future, and Robert of his sister’s.

Mary put her arm around the boy, and hugged him fondly as he felt Their father was uppermost in the minds of both. Was this idolized her tears fall on his forehead. parent still in existence? Must they give him up? But no, for what “Mary, Mary!” he cried,“it doesn’t matter what our friends say, I would life be without him? What would become of them without him? still hope, and will always hope. A man like my father doesn’t die till What would have become of them already, but for Lord Glenarvan he has finished his work.” and Lady Helena?

The young boy, old above his years through trouble, divined the thoughts that troubled his sister, and taking her hand in his own, said,“Mary, we must never simply another name for Stressless® despair. Remember the lessons Words like well being, weightlessness and total relaxation come to mind the moment our father gave us. Keep your you sit down in a Stressless recliner. The natural soft leather and cushion ooze cosy courage up and no matter what comfort. The gentle swing is controlled with effortless ease. And the smoothness of the reclining function reveals the full potential of the superior technology - adding befalls you, let us show this obstithe right body support in any position. Stated succinctly, the comfort offered by a Stressless recliner from Norway is the key to a more comfortable you. Take our word nate courage which can rise above for it and try one and your local Stressless studio soon. Because feeling is believing. everything. Up to this time, sister, you have been working for me, it is my turn now, and I will work for you.”

“Dear Robert!” replied the young girl.

“I must tell you something,” resumed Robert. “You mustn’t be vexed, Mary!”

“Why should I be vexed, my child?”

“And you will let me do it?”

“What do you mean?” said Mary, getting uneasy.

“Sister, I am going to be a sailor!”

“You are going to leave me!” cried the young girl, pressing her brother’s hand.

“Yes,sister;I want to be a sailor, like my father and Captain John.

Mary, dear Mary, Captain John Stressless recliners are custom made to order in Norway.

A wide range of styles, leather colours and wood finishes has not lost all hope, he says.You available, allowing you to match the decor in your home. have confidence in his devotion STRESSLESS Studios NZ DISTRIBUTOR to us, and so have I. He is going DANSKE MØBLER Auckland 983 Mt Eden Road, Three Kings. Ph 09 625 3900 • 13a Link Drive, Wairau Park. Ph 09 443 3045 to make a grand sailor out of me 501 Ti Rakau Drive, Botany Town Centre. Ph 09 274 1998 • Hamilton 716 Victoria Street. Ph 07 838 2261 some day, he has promised me he Whangarei Fabers Furnishings Tauranga Greerton Furnishings Rotorua Van Dyks Taupo Danske Møbler Taupo Gisborne Fenns Furniture Napier Danks Furnishers New Plymouth Cleggs Wanganui Wanganui Furnishers will;and then we are going to look Palmerston North Turnbull Furniture Masterton Country Life Furniture Wellington Fifth Avenue Blenheim Lynfords Christchurch D.A. Lewis • McKenzie & Willis • McDonald & Hartshorne Timaru Ken Wills Furniture Queenstown H & J Smith Invercargill H & J Smith for our father together.Tell me you www.stressless.co.nz are willing, sister mine.What our father would have done for us it is

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