TGIF Edition 8 May 2009

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EDITION

17

www.tgifedition.com

ISSN 1172-4153 | Volume 2 | Issue 35 |

| 8 May 2009

SAS troops deployed

on the

INSIDE

Police not convinced gunman is dead

NZ KEY TO FLU

All eyes downunder Page 5

An army LAV leaves the scene after over 20 shots were fired as Napier police deal with an incident in Chaucher Road where a police officer was shot and an armed offender is still at large, Napier. NZPA / Kerry Marshall

By Ian Wishart, with NZPA

Wellington, May 8 – Crack New Zealand Army SAS troops are believed to have been deployed as the siege in Napier deepens,and police tonight were playing down reports the gunman had killed himself.

Fifty-one year old Jan Molenaar,an ex-Territorial soldier with an alleged“Rambo complex”, remains

holed up at his Chaucer Road house tonight, after an exchange of rapid gunfire with police early this evening that gave officers enough cover to retrieve the body of slain officer Len Snee.

TV3’s Campbell Live sparked a flurry of speculation after reporting that Molenaar may have shot himself, but police have distanced themselves from the report saying Molenaar’s status remains ‘unchanged’.

Whether that’s because it is considered too dangerous for police to get close to the house under cover of darkness to check out the claim, or whether police have some positive evidence that Molenaar is still alive, the exact reason for the police statement remains unclear.

Radio reports earlier this evening suggest the two LAV armoured vehicles that approached the house

BANK HOLE

More billions needed Page 8

SUN WEAK

Cooler climate coming Page 17 Continue reading

UN finds NZ breached pedophile’s rights Wellington, May 8 – The Government is considering a United Nation’s Human Rights Committee ruling it breached the rights of a repeat child sex offender in the handling of his parole application.

The case taken by lawyer Tony Ellis involves the sentencing of Allan Dean who was handed down a sentence of preventive detention after he put his hand on the crotch of a 13-year-old boy while in a cinema in 1995.

Prior to this he had received 13 convictions for various indecency offences over 40 years and had been warned on two previous occasions that he

faced preventive detention.

In 1995 he was sentenced to preventive detention with a minimum 10-year non-parole period, Mr Ellis took the case to the UN committee complaining numerous breaches of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Among other things Mr Ellis complained that Dean had been discriminated against because he was a homosexual, that he had not been offered rehabilitation treatment and there was undue delay in the hearing of his appeal.

The committee said this was not true and that

Dean had refused rehabilitation.

Mr Ellis also said the sentence was excessive for the offence.

The committee said Dean had a long history of offending and had committed the offence for which he received preventive detention within three months of leaving prison for a similar offence.

However, the committee did find by a majority that he should have been offered a parole hearing three years earlier than he was in 2005 as the maximum sentence for the offence he committed was seven years.

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This was a violation of Dean’s right to approach a court for a ruling on the lawfulness of his detention period.

The committee said the Government was obliged to offer a remedy for the breach and should respond to the committee within 180 days about what it had done.

Mr Ellis said in a statement that the only effective remedy was compensation.

A spokesman for Justice Minister Simon Power said the committee’s report was being considered.

– NZPA

NEW ZEALAND

8 May 2009

The house where police deal with an incident in Chaucer Road where a police officer was shot and an armed offender is still at large, Napier. NZPA / Kerry Marshall

off BEAT Giant goldfish attacks jetskier PEKIN, Ill., May 8 (UPI) – Authorities in Illinois said an Asian carp in the Illinois River jumped out of the water and knocked a man from his jet ski.

The Pekin Fire Department said Tad Newell, 22, called 911 on his cell phone after the fish knocked him into the river and his jet ski began sinking, the Peoria (Ill.) Journal-Star reported today.

“I turned to avoid a tire floating in the water, and an Asian carp flew up and hit the jet ski,” Newell told the Pekin Daily Times. “I went one way, and the (jet) ski went the other. I couldn’t get the (jet) ski to flip over, so I called 911”.

Fire Chief Chuck Lauss said firefighters in a rescue boat towed the jet ski to a dock and rescued Newell, who was uninjured, the Journal-Star reported.

World’s dumbest bureaucrat award goes to…

WHITE HOUSE, Tenn., May 8 (UPI) – Members of a Tennessee family said they were penalized by a nursing home for not giving at least 30 days notice before their mother died.

Randy Harrell said he received a security cheque refund from the Windlands Center nursing home in White House after his mother, Lucille Harrell, 81, died at the facility March 20, WSMV-TV, Nashville, reported today.

“At that time, the cheque was $301 instead of $1,295, which was her original deposit,” Harrell said.

He said nursing home bosses told him the money was deducted for not giving 30 days notice of his mother’s departure from the home, despite the reason being death.

Windlands Center manager John McCrory said the contract states that notice of leaving must be given at least 30 days in advance, although the document does not mention the word death.

“If they see they are having lots of problems, I even recommend them giving 30-day notice at that time,” McCrory said. “That way, it’ll cut off some of the costs.”

Lost dog home after 8 years AUSTIN, Texas, May 8 (UPI) – A Texas family said they have been reunited with their long-lost pet dog, but they do not know where the animal has been for the past eight years.

Alison Murphy of Austin said she and her family offered a $500 reward for the return of their dog, Dancer, after the dog went missing eight years ago, but they received no word of the beloved pet until the Humane Society in New Braunfels, Texas, called last week, KVUE-TV, Austin, reported today.

The Humane Society told Murphy that a musician found the dog wandering the streets of New Braunfels, Texas, last week and brought it to the group’s office, where workers used the dog’s microchip to track down its owners.

Murphy said the dog, which now answers to the name Fern, does not appear to have lived on the streets for very long.

“Her teeth are in great shape,” she said. “She just doesn’t look like she’s been on the streets for 11 years.

Somebody’s been taking care of her.”

“It’s just wonderful to have her back,” Murphy said.

“She’s older now and she’s a little more mellow than she was, of course, as a younger dog but she still likes to go for walks first thing in the morning. And she likes to cuddle at night. She’s still the same old girl.”

Coffee too hot for mayor YAKIMA, Wash., May 8 (UPI) – Officials in a central Washington city say too many businesses are using sex to sell coffee and pastry, a phenomenon known as sexpresso.

Yakima Mayor David Edler told the Yakima HeraldRepublic he has asked the city lawyers to investigate whether a crackdown is possible. He said he decided things were out of hand when he saw a young woman standing outside the Dream Girls Espresso Bar wearing a revealing garment he called a nightie or a teddie.

“I’m really not sure what you call it,” he joked. “All I know is that I’m thinking, ‘This is Yakima Avenue.’ It just didn’t seem right to me. If I were dressed like that, I’d get arrested.”

Edler and Cesar Dominguez, the mayor’s foster son and pastor of the Franklin Hill Foursquare Church, said they believe Dream Girls and similar businesses should be regulated as adult businesses.

“If they were selling magazines, they would be regulated as an adult bookstore,” Dominguez said. “They’re exploiting a little bit of a loophole in the ordinance.”

Molenaar appears to have snapped, says friend Wellington, May 8 – Jan Molenaar is a calm, collected person who appears to have snapped, a long time friend said tonight.

Archie Hyde said he spoke to Mr Molenaar, the gunman at the centre of a siege in Napier, last week.

“He was perfectly relaxed,”Mr Hyde told Radio NZ.

However,while he was calm normally,Mr Molenaar had a short fuse, Mr Hyde said.

“Sometimes his temper got the better of him.In this circumstance,by the sound of it he has arrived home and found people in his house and that would have meant one thing for him – he would have lost it,”he said.

shortly before 5pm were loaded up with soldiers, not police. The police contingent – Special Tactics Group officers – followed in a separate police 4WD vehicle behind the LAVs. Military analysts say that can only mean one thing – Special Air Service troop deployment.

They say the Army would not put ordinary infantrymen – many of them barely out of their teens – up against an experienced former soldier armed to the teeth who was already holding elite police units at bay.

Only the SAS, with extensive recent combat experience against al Qa’ida and Taliban snipers in Afghanistan, would be likely to play any part in the current siege, one analyst told TGIF. The SAS would only be there as back-up, he said, with police STG members expected to take the lead in any confrontation with the gunman. The SAS troops will have been deployed to strategic sniper positions to provide extra cover for police if needed, and to assist with observation of Molenaar from different vantage points.

Additionally, SAS troops are trained to operate over extended periods, whereas civilian police will be more likely to require rest breaks and shift changes. The SAS will be surrounding Molenaar’s house so that he can be targeted from a number of angles if necessary.

Meanwhile, as NZPA report, police have retrieved the body of slain police officer Senior Constable Len Snee.

Armed police entered the property of the alleged

gunman Jan Molenaar at Chaucer Rd on Napier hill just after 5pm.

Mr Snee’s body was recovered from the driveway of the property, where he had lain for about 32 hours.

Eastern District Commander Superintendent Sam Hoyle said it was a relief to be able to bring Mr Snee’s body away from the scene.

“We are pleased for the family that we are able to bring him out – it has been a traumatic and immensely difficult time for them,”Mr Hoyle said.

Mr Molenaar remains at the Chaucer Rd house.

No one was injured during the retrieval of the body.

Mr Molenaar yesterday allegedly shot and killed Mr Snee and badly wounded Senior Constables Bruce Miller and Grant Diver, as well as a neighbour who tried to help police.

The officers had been on a routine drugs operation at the house.

Armed police moved in on Mr Molenaar’s house shortly after 5pm.

A resident of a house 200m from the property told Radio New Zealand that two armoured vehicles were at the gunman’s house and armed men were moving between the vehicles towards the house.

He said shots had been exchanged between the armed police and the gunman.

A flurry of 23 shots had rung out on Napier Hill.

Mr Molenaar has been inside the Chaucer Rd house since yesterday morning, when the three police officers and a civilian were shot.

Mr Hyde said in his teenage years, his life was saved by Mr Molenaar in a large bar brawl.

“In that circumstance he was very calm, very controlled. One of his main jobs in his life was doing security in pubs,in that situation he knew about calming people down.”

Mr Molenaar, a former army territorial, was a “gun nut,” Mr Hide said.

“He told me he had an arsenal,” he said.

“He was a very physical guy, proud of his fitness, he trained every day, he is formidable in terms of physicalities. I have never seen anyone in my life that, if push come to shove and it was physical, that would beat him. He knew that and he never dealt it. He was very controlled in that way.”

Mr Hyde said he disagreed with media portrayals of Mr Molenaar as a potential serial killer.“To me he just seems like he has just snapped.”

In the siege,Mr Molenaar would be “totally focused”on what was going on around him.

“He may have committed himself in his own mind that this is the end of the day.”

Mr Hyde said he sent Mr Molenaar a text yesterday, telling him to give up. “There are too many innocent people being hurt,”he said.There was no reply.

“I don’t want to interfere with it because the police have got their job to do,”he said.

He issued a personal plea to Mr Molenaar over the radio.

“Jan, please don’t make this a sad ending, it is sad enough as it is. Face the consequences in life, not death, because it doesn’t stop there.”

– NZPA

Tonight’s shots came within 40 minutes of two light armoured vehicles and two police cars full of armed police heading up Chaucer Rd. Police Minister Judith Collins said tonight police were under no political pressure to wrap up the siege in Napier.

Ms Collins visited police tactical headquarters today and made it plain to officers she did not want anyone injured just for some sort of time frame.

There was no political pressure on them, she said.

“We don’t want the police thinking at any stage that they can’t do anything except the best job that they can,”Ms Collins told Radio New Zealand.

She also visited Len Snee’s family today.

His wife, Vicki, sons Sam and Joseph and the extended family were “utterly devastated”, Ms Collins said.

“They’re trying to be so brave, they’re trying to greet all these people coming to their home, they’re doing their very, very best.”

The sons who were young men, seemed to be holding it together and were trying to be strong for their Mum and their family, she said.

“It’s a good family, it’s an extended family.They’re very strong but gee it’s tough time for them.”

Ms Collins also went to the hospital today and met the families of Senior Constable Diver, 50 and Senior Constable Miller, 40, who were critically injured, one in an induced coma.

It was a tough time for everyone, she said.

“I’ve seen adult very, very experienced police officers with tears in their eyes.”

NEW ZEALAND

8 May 2009

Get lost, NZ tells WHO over flu

By Kent Atkinson of NZPA

Wellington, May 8 – The World Health Organisation is asking countries such as New Zealand which have pre-ordered shipments of pandemic flu vaccine to share them with under-developed nations.

But a senior New Zealand health official today signalled that the country will hang onto its priority placing in the queue for any vaccine, though it will share with Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau.

New Zealand’s director of public health, Mark Jacobs, announced in 2005 that the nation has been “guaranteed”a vaccine against pandemic influenza, through a formal agreement with an Australian manufacturer.

“We have a formal arrangement with Australia’s CSL Ltd – the only influenza vaccine manufacturer in the Southern Hemisphere – which gives us a guaranteed supply if we need a pandemic vaccine,”he said.

New Zealand expected to get access to a pan-

demic vaccine within four to six months of the World Health Organisation declaring the existence of a pandemic.

New Zealand is third on the priority list for CSL – after Australia and a small country which put in its order before NZ – and has a contract for supply of eight milion doses so that each person can have two doses.

Health Minister Tony Ryall was asked what stance the Government will take to sharing that vaccine, but referred the question to the MOH. But Steve Brazier, the ministry’s national coordinator of emergency planning, said assisting other countries to purchase vaccine “after our order has been filled”is a bigger question than New Zealand can answer by itself.

“The priority of the Ministry of Health is and always will be the health and well-being of New Zealanders,”he said.

“In the event that this strain mutates and becomes more virulent, a vaccine can help contain

the spread, save lives, reduce the economic and social impact of a pandemic, and get the country re-started faster.

“New Zealand has a vaccine supplier because we organised one many years ago”.

Mr Brazier said New Zealand’s small population meant that any action it took itself on vaccines would have only limited effect.

New Zealand had already provided supplies of Tamiflu to the Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau, and information, advice and substantial financial support to strengthen pandemic preparedness across the Pacific region.

Marie-Paule Kieny, director of WHO’s Initiative for Vaccine Research, said an expert group will hold a teleconference on May 14 to discuss whether drug companies should switch their production from regular flu vaccine to pandemic vaccine.

WHO expects swine flu to spread to at least one-third of the world’s population within the next year and has

said a full-fledged pandemic remains possible.

In two weeks, the flu jumped from isolated reports in the USA. and Mexico to confirmed infections in 2371 people in 24 countries, with 44 deaths.

Vaccine producers can only make one kind of flu vaccine at a time: seasonal flu vaccine or pandemic vaccine, and the WHO may tell vaccine makers to switch to making a pandemic one.

But that decision means WHO has to guess whether the world will need pandemic vaccine more than it needs vaccine for regular seasonal flu which flu kills up to 500,000 people a year.

Because production takes months, a decision needs to be made soon,Associated Press reported.

WHO hopes to find out next week how many doses are “locked-in”by those countries, and how much spare capacity manufacturers still have.The world’s vaccine producers could turn out between 1 billion and 2 billion doses of pandemic vaccine a year.

– NZPA

NZ dollar rallies again Wellington, May 8 – The New Zealand dollar today drifted off a four-month high it reached overnight on a combination of positive factors then rallied again on the close.

The NZ dollar rose to US59.91c in overnight trading,its highest since January 7.In its domestic session today it reached US59.36c by late morning,drifted off, then returned to US59.36c at 5pm in a late rally.This was up from US58.85c at the same time yesterday.

BNZ Capital currency strategist Danica Hampton said a combination of factors contributed to the rises.

These included an ongoing positive reaction to better-than-expected unemployment data yesterday in both New Zealand and Australia.

Also, there were no“nasties”in the results of stress tests on US banks.

Markets are waiting for a US jobs report tonight

and other key data next week. Retail sales data is the biggest item on the local agenda next week.

ANZ bank said today that a test and break of the US60c level was a matter of time, in an environment where little demand for the US dollar meant that by default the NZ dollar rose.

“Whether local fundamentals warrant such a rise can be debated with the benefit of hindsight,”ANZ said.

There was a lot of activity on the Australian cross, which ended the domestic session at A78.70c from A78.10c yesterday.

The NZ dollar also strengthened against the Japanese currency, rising to 58.88 yen from 57.87, but was little changed against the European currency, buying 0.4435 euro.

The trade weighted index was 58.20 from 57.66.

– NZPA

Pacific Blue 1, NZ plover 0 Wellington, May 8 NZPA – A showcase tour of New Zealand’s regional airports by budget airline Pacific Blue was temporarily grounded by a birdstrike at Hamilton Airport.

The Christchurch-based company was touring the 104-seat Embraer 190 E-Jet – which it has hinted could be used to compete with Air New Zealand on domestic routes – when it sucked a bird into an engine on the Hamilton runway.

Simon Hollinger,the airport’s operations manager, said bird strikes were a“fairly rare”event there.

“The aircraft was in the take-off roll and had to stop after having ingested a bird in the engine,”he said.The plane was about to fly to Palmerston North when a plover hit the right engine.

Pacific Blue spokesman Phil Boeyen said the birdstrike was just before lift-off yesterday and three fan blades in the engine were damaged.

“They were replaced early this morning and the aircraft made its scheduled visit to Invercargill this afternoon, flying there direct from Hamilton,” he told NZPA.“It will fly to Australia tomorrow”.

In Palmerston North, where balloons, a band and bubbly were waiting for the plane’s arrival,Pacific Blue executive Dean Mann,told waiting guests:“It appears

a bird in Hamilton wanted the first low fare.”

The Manawatu Standard newspaper reported some locals expected the airline had been preparing for scheduled flights to Palmerston North, and quoted Mr Mann as saying:“We’re not landing in Palmerston North simply for afternoon tea.”

Further discussions were needed before any announcement could be made, but people in Manawatu could “get their hopes up a little”, he said.

According to Pacific Blue general manager Adrian Hamilton-Manns, the Embraer has been used by parent company Virgin Blue on Australian routes, and it could be ideal for New Zealand operations.

The carrier has in the past few months been in talks with regional airports, including Hamilton, Palmerston North and Rotorua about a secondtier schedule.

Pacific Blue has operated 180-seat Boeing 737800s on domestic trunk routes for 18 months, but Mr Hamilton-Manns said there remained other “tempting opportunities”.

Qantas-owned budget carrier Jetstar is entering the New Zealand market from June.

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– NZPA

Wellington, May 8 – National is spurning an offer from Labour to work co-operatively on setting up an emissions trading scheme, Labour’s climate change spokesman Charles Chauvel said today.

Mr Chauvel said he had written to his ministerial counterpart Nick Smith on March 30 and there still had been“no substantive response”yet.

Dr Smith suggested in Parliament yesterday Labour was not co-operating on the ETS legisla-

tion currently being reviewed by the Government, Mr Chauvel said.

He said this was not true and the offer to cooperate had been a genuine one“designed to rescue National from becoming captive to ACT extremism” on the policy.

National should proceed to an ETS and not use delays of a similar scheme in Australia as an excuse.

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EDITORIAL

8 May 2009

Editorial

Family Matters

TVNZ Sunday programme a disgrace Anyone who watched last week’s TVNZ Sunday programme segment on climate change will be heartened to hear the state broadcaster has been slammed with formal complaints on the grounds of accuracy and balance.

The documentary, presented by reporter John Hudson, opened with claims that the island of Takuu, near Papua New Guinea, is being overrun by the ocean because of rising sea levels.The segment included dramatic video footage of ocean waves sweeping across the island and washing houses and gardens away.

But here’s what John Hudson didn’t tell you: the island of Takuu is well-documented in geological

files because it is sinking.That’s right, sea levels are not rising dramatically, the island instead is sinking dramatically back into the Pacific Ocean.

Takuu, you see, is poised on the junction of tectonic plates, and subject to earth movements and volcanic activity.Those submarine volcanoes could also be the cause of a 5C rise in ocean temperatures around the island reported by Hudson, especially as recent data suggests there has been no warming of the global oceans since 2002.

Of course, those of you who’ve read Air Con will already have sniffed a rat in the TVNZ coverage, but it serves as a strident reminder that some in the media are so wedded to the idea of human-caused

global warming that they don’t properly check their facts.

Air Con, meanwhile, has struck a resounding chord with readers, rocketing straight to number one on the bestseller list in its debut week on sale.

It goes on sale this coming week right across Australia as well, adding to a growing debate on both sides of the Tasman about whether climate change is human caused or not.

It’s an important, in fact crucial, debate to have, and it’s good to see people now finding the courage to lay formal complaints about shoddy media coverage of the issue.After all, it’s your money at stake.

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Analysis

American eyes watch NZ flu progress

By Suzanne Bohan Contra Costa Times

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. – As the world warily watches the spread of the H1N1 virus around the globe, attention is shifting south of the equator, where the flu season is just starting.

There, the virus will be scrutinized with every tool available – from disease tracking and testing to genetic sequencing – to help predict whether it might just fade away, only behave like a typical seasonal flu bug, or become more severe. In the worst-case scenario, it could mutate or combine with another flu virus and become more virulent, rebounding with a vengeance next fall in the Northern Hemisphere.

“All eyes are on the south, and wondering what will become of H1N1 next fall,”said Roger Baxter, an infectious disease specialist with Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif.“My only prediction is it will certainly be another interesting flu season.”

While there are only a handful of confirmed cases of H1N1 infections in the Southern Hemisphere, most right now in New Zealand, those numbers are certain to rise.

“We’ll be working very closely with the international community to understand what happens to this virus over the next few months as flu season begins in the Southern Hemisphere,”said Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“That will tell us a lot about whether the virus is changing, whether it’s becoming more severe and what measures we might want to take in the fall,” Besser said this week during a news briefing.

The CDC is working with vaccine manufacturers to possibly mass produce an H1N1 vaccine for the fall season. But the final decision on whether to ramp up production will be based upon how the virus spreads or changes south of the equator.

Influenza trackers have long monitored flu activity in the Southern Hemisphere to gauge what might be in store when the flu season begins north of the equator in the fall.The composition of the season’s vaccine is in large part determined by tracking flu strains circulating in the opposite hemisphere.

But this year it’s different. The so-called swine flu strain that emerged late in the flu season here is a novel type. It’s a mix of swine, avian and human influenza viruses, said Dr. Richard Wenzel, immediate past-president of the International Society for Infectious Diseases.

“Whenever we have a new strain, we never know which way it’s going to go,”Wenzel said.

The typical seasonal flu strains, he said, “are variations on the theme”from the previous year’s strain.

“This is kind of the test for what might come back and resurface in the fall and winter in 2009 and 2010,”he said of the Southern Hemisphere flu season.

The spread of the H1N1 strain is expected to slow

in the Northern Hemisphere in the coming weeks, as changing conditions thwart its spread. Influenza is noted for its seasonality – it’s named after the Italian word for“influence,”referring to the influence of the winter season in fostering the illness.

It’s not entirely clear why the spread of the virus slows during the warmer months, although studies show that rising humidity significantly reduces the virus’viability, said Jeffrey Shaman, an atmospheric scientist with Oregon State University. The virus simply doesn’t survive well in the environment in conditions of higher humidity, he said.

Other suggestions behind the flu’s seasonality include crowded indoor conditions such as schools being in session, which facilitate the spread of infectious microbes and which can strain immune

systems. Others point to a lack of vitamin D – a crucial nutrient that’s produced by the sun hitting skin – as another reason for a rise in flu cases during the shorter days of winter.

Because this H1N1 strain is new, humans have limited natural immunity to it. But health experts are now noting with relief that it appears to be no more serious than the typical flu viruses. In the United States, the CDC on Wednesday reported 642 confirmed cases and two deaths – a toddler from Mexico visiting a Texas hospital and a 33-year-old woman.

Both had compromised immune systems, noted Wenzel.

The evidence suggests that“this is not an incredibly aggressive strain,”he said.

By Bob McCoskrie -Children Penalised in Parenting Orders Children are missing out on access to both their parents as a result of parenting orders being made in the Family Court, and there appears to be a clear bias against fathers. Figures obtained by Family First NZ under the Official Information Act show that only 13% of disputes results in custody being split amongst the parents.

The figures for the three years since the passing of the Care of Children Act also show that mothers are more likely to be granted the most time, gaining sole custody in 2/3’rds of cases, but fathers have only a 12% success rate.

These figures are a tragic reminder that children are the ultimate losers when there is a breakdown in the parent relationship. The greatest injustice is that a parent can lose regular and sufficient access to their children when they may have done nothing wrong and never agreed to the separation in the first place.

Family First is calling for shared parenting to be the default position for child custody arrangements in the family court. Children deserve access, support and love from both parents during the difficult period of breakdown and separation. This should be our starting point.

-Marriage up, divorce down, civil unions irrelevant The latest statistics on marriage, civil unions and divorce showing a downward trend on divorce, an increasing rate of marriage over the past decade, and the demand for civil unions being negligible.

The civil unions legislation has proved to be a complete white elephant despite howls by the previous government that it would supposedly strengthen human rights and support the choices of apparently 300,000 people who were not married but lived in stable relationships.

There have been only 1,646 civil unions registered between April 2005 and March 2009. These comprised 1,330 same-sex unions (594 male and 736 female), 312 opposite-sex unions, and just four transfers from marriage.

NZ’ers didn’t feel discriminated against, and didn’t have a problem with the religious connotations of marriage, which are not compulsory anyway.

The huge amount of energy spent on trying to concoct a need for civil unions would have been better spent on developing policies which promote, encourage and strengthen marriage, and to minimise the likelihood of divorce, thereby providing the best and safest environment for children to be raised.

-Ethnic groups confused by anti-smacking Law – Study Research just released from the Families Commission shows that immigrant families are confused by the antismacking law and still see non-abusive smacking as a viable option for correcting their children.

The research report funded by the Families Commission and carried out by Victoria University entitled ‘SETTLING IN: parent-adolescent family dynamics in the acculturation process’ documents the experiences of migrant and refugee families in New Zealand adapting to NZ culture and laws.

The report said ‘A major issue of both frustration and change in the families studied was discipline and the rights of children. Most of the families came from a culture where physical discipline was the norm. Many of the parents mentioned that they found the New Zealand law concerning the rights of children difficult to understand and to follow. The corporal punishment of children was still seen as a viable method of reprimand by some parents, although they knew that this was against the law.’

This is further evidence that the anti-smacking law is completely out of touch with the views of parents, including migrant and refugee families. It also reiterates the level of confusion that parents are under regarding the effect of the law.

The Families Commission needs to pay attention to their own research and the views of the majority of parents if they want to maintain any credibility as a voice for families.

Sign Up Now to receive FREE regular updates about the issues affecting families in NZ http://www.familyfirst.org.nz/index.cfm/Sign_Up

ANALYSIS

8 May 2009

Walker’s World

Obama’s fateful choice: climate or health?

By Martin Walker

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama’s first 100 days have very tidily disposed of most of the overseas resentments that he inherited from the Bush administration.

Cautious gestures and offers to talk have been extended to old enemies like Cuba and Iran.Very little pressure has been exerted on old friends like the Europeans and Japan. China has been given a pass on its manipulation of its currency.The neighbours in the Western Hemisphere have been treated with dignity and respect.

But beyond the two obvious pitfalls – Afghanistan will soon become Obama’s war, and the economic crisis will almost as fast become Obama’s recession – there is a one very large minefield that looms ahead.And it could undo much of the goodwill the new president has generated abroad.

From December 6 to 18, more than 170 countries will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, to develop a new agreement on tackling climate change to replace the Kyoto Protocol that runs out in 2012.

This is the big match since it is the last time that the parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change meet at the government level before the protocol needs to be renewed.And passions are running high.

Although President Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, he never dared put it to the Senate for ratification.As a result, the United States as the world’s biggest consumer of energy and secondbiggest greenhouse-gas producer has become the ‘villain’ of the ‘climate crisis’.

Obama has pledged to change that, but the challenge he faces is doubly difficult. First, he must decide whether climate change is more important and more urgent than his pledge to reform the U.S. healthcare system. And second, he must decide whether he prefers to offend a crucial group of moderate and conservative Democrats in Congress or his own environmentalists and much of the global community.

The remarkable feature of the Obama presidency so far has been the resolve of its leader to drive full speed ahead with his main reform priorities of healthcare, education and the environment, despite the distraction and the huge cost of the economic crisis. Even though common sense and fiscal prudence would insist that Obama cannot afford everything, he is determined to try.

That is why his budget envisages a $1.7 trillion deficit.To put it in perspective, if the U.S. deficit were a country, it would be the eighth-largest economy in the world. The deficit is bigger than the gross domestic product of Russia, India or Brazil.

But these grandiose ambitions ran up against the reality of the U.S. Congress, whose members control the purse strings.Without their agreement, a U.S. president has very little financial leeway.And while Obama has a reasonable shot at getting some Republicans to accept healthcare reform, he has much less chance of getting them to sign up for capand-trade legislation against climate change, and Democrats from oil, gas and coal states are likely to be equally obdurate.

Behind the scenes in Congress, a spirited debate is under way over a process called“reconciliation”, which is about the complex rules of procedure that can, in certain circumstances, get around the Senate’s usual rules on filibuster.The usual rule is that a single senator or group of senators can talk as long as they wish, or filibuster, and exhaust the time available for any piece of legislation, thus killing it.

Blocking a filibuster requires 60 of the Senate’s 100 votes. But if a bill is agreed to be a financial measure, then only 51 votes are required to stop a filibuster and pass the bill.

Republicans and energy-state Democrats seem close to a deal under which they will allow reconciliation for healthcare reform but not for climate change.That would mean Obama’s team going into the Copenhagen negotiations in December as the bad guys, with no legislation – and not much chance

In Baghdad, they love the nightlife the latest uptick in violence that has seen more than 150 people killed in bombings in recent weeks, the BAGHDAD – The solar-powered streetlights in cen- streets are coming alive after dark once again. tral Baghdad flicker on shortly after sunset, pushing Hind Salah, 32, admits she feels a mixture of optiback the darkness that once brought fear to the mism and apprehension when she heads out for an capital. Their glare signals the return of nightlife evening on the town with her husband. to the Iraqi capital.

“The occasional blasts do plant a seed of fear in Cars filled with fashionable young Baghdadis us,”said the mother of two. cruise down Karrada Street. Families bustle into Ahlam al-Dulaimi, on the other hand, expressed clothing shops, restaurants and teahouses. Long- a more defiant tone. shuttered bars and nightclubs are filled once more “Nothing has changed because of the (recent) with young patrons. attacks,”said the 35-year-old Sunni housewife.“The As security has improved and curfews have Iraqi nature is unique; we’ve learned how to live in eased, Baghdad’s once-famous nightlife has slowly hell and heaven simultaneously.” re-emerged. It is a symbol of normalcy in a city long Baghdad’s young people in particular are keen brutalized by war and still tormented by bomb- to escape the confines of their homes.Young men ings. say they are happy to resume Indeed, after six years of their favourite pastime: meetdespite the war and terror when, as one ing women. resident said,“People locked Samer Jamal, 26, a student latest uptick their doors at 4.p.m.,”the city in Baghdad’s University of appears to have adopted the in violence that Technology, says he hands saying, carpe diem, or perhaps has seen more girls he meets in clubs his busimore appropriately in this ness card as an introduction. than 150 people case, seize the night.

“Girls like this because it’s At the Al-Hasna restaurant killed in bombings more civilized,”he said. in central Baghdad, 300 to in recent weeks, In the past, when religious 400 customers arrive nightly extremists controlled part of to watch the entertainment, the streets are the capital, a young man could have a meal or drink an alco- coming alive after find himself hauled away for holic beverage. trying to slip a girl his phone dark once again “Customers don’t care number.“The security forces about the cost,” said Ahmed aren’t going to stop you from Saed, a 28-year-old guard at the restaurant.“All doing that now,”Jamal said. they care about is relaxing.”

Rana Ahmad, 24, wears military fatigues – the Cabarets are the latest addition to Baghdad’s latest fashion among Baghdad’s young women nightlife, following a government order last year – when she heads out to the clubs these days. that allowed nightclubs to reopen. Former President Her impression gained at the crowded club scene Saddam Hussein had ordered them closed in 1994, is that “the guys in Baghdad are getting back to when he attempted to win support from conserva- normal.” tive Islamic regimes following the first Gulf War. And for some young men, that means drinking There is, of course, a practical reason for Bagh- alcohol. Broken beer bottles can now be seen on dad’s lively nightlife. Soaring temperatures, par- some streets of the capital. ticularly in spring and summer, make evenings Those streets are largely deserted shortly after the ideal time for Iraqis to socialize. Feasts that midnight. A curfew in the city remains in place extended well past midnight have long been a fix- between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. ture of Baghdad restaurants, as were hours-long Basim al-Shara is reporter in Iraq who writes for The Institute for chats in its teahouses.

War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists That all came to an end in 2003. But now, despite in areas of conflict.

By Basim al-Shara

of any – to back up his promise to be the green president who finally brings the United States into the Kyoto process.And for a lot of committed environmentalists around the world, joining the Kyoto process means joining the human race. If Obama ducks this, his international reputation is going to take some very hard blows.

In short, it looks as if Obama cannot have it all ways, healthcare reform and cap-and-trade; stimulus spending and a bank bailout. Something has to give.

There may be one way out. Now that carbon dioxide has been classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a gas that can damage human health, it is open to regulation. It would be risky and outrageously provocative to many Democrats as well as Republicans,but Obama could try to tackle climate change through regulating carbon dioxide.

It would almost certainly expose him to a ferocious and well-funded TV ad campaign that charged him with weakening U.S. industry in the middle of a recession, and it could give up so many Democratic seats in the 2010 midterm elections that the Democrats lose their current dominance of Congress.

These are high stakes, likely to define the Obama presidency as much as the Afghan war and the economic crisis.

– UPI

ANALYSIS

8 May 2009

Obama helps Fox rate through the roof

By John Timpane The Philadelphia Inquirer

NEW YORK – In the Age of Obama, Fox News is thriving.

The conservative news cabler has forged a ratingsrich bond with an audience that feels ignored and under siege as Democrats dominate Washington.

And nobody speaks to that audience with more passion, more empathy, than Fox newcomer Glenn Beck.

Stocky and stentorian, easily moved to tears for his country (Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart has mocked his emotionality), Beck knows his audience: “I tell my viewers,‘Keep a journal.You’re living in historic times – perilous times.We are the crew of the Titanic, and we have to watch out for ice.’”His show is now the third-leading cable news program, behind those of Fox colleagues Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.

Led by the O’Reilly-Hannity-Beck trinity, Fox has surged past its nearest rivals, MSNBC and CNN, especially in prime time. Fox is now the secondmost-watched cable channel of all during prime time (behind only USA).

During a recent show at the Fox News studios in New York, Beck, an energetic performer on an energetic stage, shows just how a host connects.

His set asserts electrified space, with flashing news images, Fox News logos, labels, headlines, and quotes in constant motion.Yet he manages to project a sense of conversation, of speaking to and with the audience. It’s not just a trick; it’s the key to the Fox News style.

On a recent afternoon, he is interviewing Kathy Barkulis, who marched in an April 15 Chicago“tea party” protest. Beck plays a video clip in which Barkulis tells CNN’s Susan Roesgen:“We are sick and tired of the government taking our money and spending it in ways we don’t have a say in.”

Beck comments in a tone not so much sarcastic as expecting agreement:“Someone finally had the guts to stand up to a CNN reporter.”Barkulis responds in kind:“Everybody knows that the media is biased, and we see what goes on every day on all different networks and in newspapers.”

Fox is confident that it holds a mirror up to its audience.

“Fox News fits our world,”says Michael Clemente, senior VP for news,“where there’s so much access to information, through people’s iPods, their portable laptops, cell phones.You get in a taxi and there’s a video screen telling you what’s going on. We have an extraordinary number of stories of national concern, and we feel like we’re having an ongoing conversation with viewers about it, and bringing that into our coverage.”

With Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, some wondered whether Fox News could maintain the viewer loyalty begun in the Clinton era and built up through the Bush years. Fox answered with a new lineup for 2009, bringing in Beck for the 5 p.m. slot and naming longtime newsman Bret Baier to succeed Brit Hume as host of Special Report at 6. Even longer-time news anchor Shepard Smith (who has been with Fox News since its birth in 1996) holds down The Fox News Report at 7.And liberal Alan Colmes left Hannity’s primetime show.

In prime time, Fox News’ ratings have risen as much as 26 percent. MSNBC, traditionally third among cable-news outlets, also has enjoyed strong gains, especially during its left-leaning prime-time shows with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

The shocker: CNN, daddy cable newsie of them all, has fallen off the table in prime time.The channel that prides itself on its straightforward,‘unbiased’ news has lost a quarter of its viewership at the time of night when it counts.

(There are many ways of slicing these numbers.

CNN, for example, beat the other two cablers in the crucial 25-54 age bracket during Obama’s news conference last Wednesday. Barbara Levin, vice president of communications for CNN, says, “CNN’s audience is growing each month, increasing

an impressive 25 percent in April by doing journalism the right way.We offer a range of opinions and are not in the pocket of the right, nor the left.”She emphasizes the total number of unduplicated viewers this year to date, in which CNN has 70 million to Fox News’ 59 million and MSNBC 53 million.)

The implications are lost on no one.“We’ve been No. 2 in all of cable for the last nine weeks,” says Bill Shine, Fox vice president of programming,“and we’re keeping an eye on USA.” Why the Fox surge? Are viewers abandoning objective news in favor of political extremes?

A certain number may be. But some perspective: Even though the big networks have lost market share, audiences for individual cable channels are smaller than for network shows. According to Nielsen data, almost 99 percent of U.S. households have TVs, of which about 89 percent have either cable or satellite.Against only a handful of national broadcast networks, there are hundreds of cable channels, so the audience is fragmented. A hit prime-time show such as “The Mentalist” on CBS may pull 10 million to 11 million viewers; Fox News’ biggest show,“The O’Reilly Factor,”peaks at around three million.

This is the cable version of the“school-board-vote effect”: a small but passionate number of absolutely dependable viewers can deliver ratings success.

Obama’s victory was “a blessing for Fox,” says Eric Alterman, a professor of journalism at Brooklyn College and the City University of NewYork and

media columnist for the Nation.“Now it can be the voice of the opposition.”Obama’s people are giving Fox“an endless cornucopia of things to be against ... solidifying a motivated, loyal audience for Fox.” People at Fox News credit Story No. 1 – the economy – for viewer loyalty. News anchor Smith says:“That’s the story affecting everyone. The left is blaming Bush for the meltdown. The right says Obama’s ideas won’t work.”Baier, who works from the Washington bureau, calls the flood of news“like drinking out of a fire hose.”

At the behest of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, longtime Republican media consultant Roger Ailes created the channel to appeal to people who, as Beck puts it,“are so starved for someone to treat them well, someone to feed them some meat, not just cookies all the time.”

Cable news, like the Internet, offers a rich range of alternatives for those disaffected with big,“mainstream”media.“It’s nothing new for people to seek media with their values,”says Diana Mutz, professor of political science and communications at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.What’s new “is that cable now offers people more choices; it can narrowcast to smaller, yet still profitable audiences.”

All the Fox News professionals interviewed for this article emphasized the tightly managed“wall” between the opinion side and the news side,“very much like a newspaper,”as Baier puts it. Smith says that news and opinion “have different teams, dif-

ferent backgrounds, different goals. We feed two different beasts.” For him,“Fox News is first and foremost what it was created to be: a news-gathering operation.We may cover stories the other channels don’t, but that’s what has made us what we are.”

The “tea party” protest story illustrates the difference Fox News labours to create. No other news outfit covered the run-up to the protests in greater detail.The channel ran more than 100 ads promoting the coming protests. Critics – taking the news and opinion sides together – accused Fox News of cheerleading for the anti-tax crowd. On tax day itself, through almost the entire broadcast day, news and opinion alike was dominated by tea-party reports and discussions.

According to the statistics Web site fivethirtyeight.com, about 300,000 demonstrated that day from coast to coast, with the largest single crowd of 15,000 in Atlanta, and crowds generally larger in the South than elsewhere.

That’s small, especially compared to the crowds Obama and John McCain regularly attracted during the election, but significant. It suggests that although this audience may be a minority (most polls show acceptance of taxes and support for Obama’s economics, so far), it really does exist, truly feels marginalized and antagonized, and is ready to protest to assert its viewpoint.

As Fox News veteran Smith says:“Why would so many people be watching us if they didn’t think we were doing something right?”

WORLD

update

in 60 seconds OBAMA SUPPORT GROUP CHARGED WITH VOTE FRAUD PITTSBURGH, (UPI) – Seven people affiliated with the activist group ACORN were charged today in western Pennsylvania with voter registration fraud, officials said.

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. said the defendants face charges in connection with 51 allegedly fraudulent voter registrations, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Zappala said he was also investigating whether ACORN had a daily quota for voter registrations, which would be illegal in Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh PostGazette said.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, the group’s full name, has been the target of investigations in several states. The former field director and former regional director for voter registration were charged in Nevada this week with voter registration violations for allegedly filing thousands of garbage registrations to meet an illegal daily quota – charges the ACORN officials have denied.

ACORN became an issue during the presidential campaign, with Republicans alleging it had illegally registered thousands of likely Democratic voters. The organisation had extremely close ties to the Obama campaign.

LATEST ON NEW FLU TOLL Geneva (dpa) – The number of laboratory-confirmed cases of infections of the new influenza A (H1N1) virus rose to 2,099 in 23 countries, the World Health Organization said today, and increased the death toll to 44.

Its previous numbers, posted a day before, had the spread at 1,893 cases and 31 deaths. The rise reflected confirmed results from laboratory testing.

The health agency confirmed that Mexico had 42 deaths related to the disease. The United States, which reported two deaths, was the only other country to suffer fatalities.

Mexico had 1,112 laboratory-confirmed human cases, while the US had 642 such infections. Canada reported 201 instances, the WHO said.

In Europe, Spain remained hardest hit with 73 cases and Britain had 28 infections. Germany reported nine cases.

New Zealand had five cases and South Korea had two. Israel, the only Middle Eastern country to report cases, had four confirmed infections.

TYPHOON WHACKS PHILIPPINES Manila (dpa) – At least five people were killed in landslides and other accidents caused by a powerful typhoon that pummelled the northern Philippines, disaster relief officials said Friday.

Three people were also reported missing and five injured in landslides in the northern provinces of Ifugao and Zambales, according to the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC).

Two people were killed in the landslide in Ifugao, while two drowned in the provinces of Bataan and Batangas.

One man succumbed to a heart attack in Olongapo City.

Typhoon Chan-Hom slammed into the northern province of Pangasinan late Thursday with maximum winds of 150 kilometres per hour (kph) and gusts of up to 185 kph.

The weather bureau said Chan-Hom weakened as it made landfall and continued to move north-east at 15 kph. Its maximum winds dropped to 95 kph and gusts of up to 120 kph.

It was expected to be out of the country by Sunday.

Chan-Hom toppled electrical posts, uprooted trees and busted electrical transformers in the northern resort city of Baguio, where five landslides occurred, the NDCC said.

Thousands of passengers were also stranded in various ports in the northern and central Philippines as the coast guard prohibited sea travel amid stormy seas.

Electricity was also down in a wide area in the affected provinces, the NDCC said.

Chan-Hom struck the Philippines a few days after typhoon Kujira battered eastern provinces, killing 27 people and damaging more than 9 million dollars worth of crops, livestock and fisheries.

8 May 2009

Taliban get closer to Pakistan nukes Kabul (dpa) – US Defence Secretary Roberts Gates said today in Afghanistan that the Taliban’s reach to“within dozens of kilometres of Islamabad” served as an alarm to the country, but expressed confidence that there was little chance for the militants to access country’s nuclear weapons.

Gates, who was speaking in press conference in the capital Kabul, said that the Taliban in western part of Pakistan had“overreached”with their recent offensive in a district, which is “within dozens of kilometres of Islamabad.”

“I think there is very little chance of Taliban in Pakistan achieving a level of success that would give them access to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,” he added, however.

He said the Taliban’s advance towards the capital swerved “as an alarm for the Pakistani government that these violent extremists in western part of Pakistan are a significant danger to the government of Pakistan.”

Praising recently military operations in the area, Gates said:“I believe that the reaction of the Pakistani army shows their recognition of the danger that exist in western part of the country.”

He ruled out any possibility that the US forces would cross the border from Afghanistan and attack the militants on the other side of the border.

“Our goal is to work with the Pakistani army as they deal with this problem and we are willing to do all we can to help them.”

Gates comments came a day after US President Barack Obama met his Afghan and Pakistani counterparts in Washington to discuss ways in fight against Taliban militants and their al-Qaeda allies based in tribal areas along the shared border between the two Islamic countries.

– DPA

US banks still looking shaky Washington – A government review of the health of the US financial industry has found that 10 of the 19 largest US banks need a combined 75 billion dollars to weather the continuing recession, US regulators said today.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that much of the extra capital could be raised from private investors, and many banks would be able to meet the government’s demands by simply converting preferred shares into common equity.

The capital shortages revealed by the so-called stress test review, which was designed to check whether banks have enough resources to survive another dip in the US economy, were lower than many outside analysts had expected.

Bank of America Corp faces the largest task, needing to raise 33.9 billion dollars in extra capital.

That could force the bank to make the government a major stakeholder in exchange for extra support.

Other top banks that will be asked to raise more money: Citigroup Inc needs 5.5 billion dollars, Wells Fargo & Co needs 13.7 billion dollars, and Morgan Stanley must find 1.8 billion dollars. GMAC LLC, the former financing arm of ailing carmaker General Motors Corp, must raise 11.5 billion dollars.

Major banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and American Express Co passed the stress tests. The government has already invested hundreds of billions of dollars in Wall Street since the financial sector was brought to the brink of collapse in September.

Some of the healthier banks are now considering repaying the government loans, but Geithner said they would first have to prove a“material ability”to keep making private loans to US consumers. Credit access has been severely curbed since September, fanning a US recession that has already stretched for 16 months.

The stress tests lie at the centre of President Barack Obama’s effort to nurse the US financial system back to health, which is considered the only

means of pulling the United States out of a wider economic downturn, considered one of the worst since the Great Depression.

Geithner said the results would help markets get a better sense of the state of the US financial system.

But he said most banks still had a long way to go to restore their balance sheets, which have been damaged by losses related to the housing market downturn.

“I think there is reassurance in clarity,”Geithner told reporters.“We are at the early stages of repair and recovery of the financial system.”

Banks facing capital shortfalls will have until June 8 to present plans and until November 9 to meet the demands. Some are expected to make up the difference from private investors, while others will have to look for more government support.

Wells Fargo immediately announced a new, 6-billion-dollar stock offering to raise some of the money.

Morgan Stanley promised its own 2-billion-dollar stock sale and a 3-billion-dollar debt offering.

For many investors, the results of the monthslong review – overseen by an array of government regulators – demonstrated that most banks may be more solvent than expected.

US stock markets jumped more than 1 per cent yesterday as details of the stress tests were leaked but erased those gains today just before the official release.

Douglas Elliot, an economist with the Brookings Institution, had predicted that banks would need between 100 billion-200 billion dollars to help them absorb new losses from mortgage-related assets.

The stress-test results could still prompt the Obama administration to take a more hands-on approach to Wall Street, forcing some banks to give the government increasing shares and even making changes in top management.

Geithner would not rule out management changes at banks that return to the government for more loans. Bank of America’s chief executive Ken Lewis is considered one of the most likely casualties.

It would not be the first time:The administration asked General Motors chief executive Rick Wagoner to resign earlier this year as part of a deal to continue supporting the country’s largest carmaker.

Obama launched the stress tests in February to get a better sense of how banks were managing the current financial crisis. The 19 banks in the stress test were selected for having more than 100 billion dollars in assets. Together, they hold two-thirds of the assets and more than half of the loans in the US banking system.

Some 600 billion dollars have already been invested by the government to keep Wall Street and the US car industry alive.About 100 billion dollars more is left over from a financial rescue package that was approved by Congress in October.

Bank of America and Citigroup have already received 45 billion dollars in emergency loans from the federal government. Wells Fargo has taken 25 billion dollars.

– DPA

WORLD

8 May 2009

Recession scaring Ireland into EU control Dublin – With the Czech Republic’s parliament approving the Lisbon Treaty this week, the eyes of Europe will now once again be on Ireland, which rejected the treaty in a June 2008 referendum.

Irish acceptance has to be achieved before the treaty, aimed at streamlining decision-making in the 27-member European Union, can come into force. Even though the Czech parliament has now approved the treaty, Czech President Vaclav Klaus has hinted he won’t sign it until Ireland reverses its rejection.

“The Lisbon Treaty is dead for the moment. It is dead because one member state of the European Union turned it down in a referendum,” the eurosceptic Klaus told reporters after the vote.“Therefore, my decision on its ratification is not on the agenda for the time being.”

Last June, 53.4 per cent of Irish voters rejected the treaty,motivated by a myriad of concerns including fears about neutrality and a loss of influence in Europe, and worries that the country’s favourable

corporate tax regime would be jeopardized by EU tax harmonization.

However, the global recession has changed everything with Ireland harder hit than almost any other European country.Tax revenues, overly dependent on the construction and property sectors, have collapsed, forcing steep government borrowing, while unemployment has risen sharply. It is predicted that gross domestic product (GDP) will decline by as much as 10 per cent this year.

Understandably, a country buffeted by such harsh economic winds has become keenly aware of the benefits of EU membership, with Iceland serving as the perfect example of what can befall a small, independent country in these tough times.

As a consequence, an Irish Times TNS/mrbi poll of 1,000 voters in February found that 51 per cent of Irish voters would now back the treaty if Ireland is given guarantees on key concerns such as taxation, abortion and neutrality. The no vote has declined to 33 per cent.

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen has committed to rerunning the referendum. After an EU summit in Brussels in December at which he received assurances, he said that “on the basis of today’s agreement ... I am prepared to go back to the Irish people next year.”

No date has been set for the second referendum but it is expected to be held this autumn.

Cowen’s problem is that while polls have shown growing support for the treaty, his government is widely unpopular, blamed by many for the demise of the so-called Celtic Tiger which saw a decade of runaway growth.

His Fianna Fail party is expected to take a hammering in June European and local elections and party strategists will be hoping that by the time a Lisbon rerun comes around the electorate will have already exorcized its anti-government rage, allowing the treaty to be judged on its merits alone.

As with the original referendum, all the main

political parties are backing the treaty. The main opposition will again come from the Libertas movement of millionaire entrepreneur Declan Ganley.

Libertas describes itself as “a pan-European political movement dedicated to creating a new, democratic, accountable and open European Union” and is fielding candidates across Europe for June’s European Parliament elections. Ganley himself is running in Ireland’s North-West constituency.

Ganley is confident of defeating the referendum again but most commentators believe that a badly shaken electorate coupled with a less complacent political establishment will ensure a yes vote for the Lisbon Treaty this time around.The Irish have form in this regard, originally rejecting the Nice Treaty in 2001 before accepting it in a rerun a year later.

Aside from in the Czech Republic and Ireland, the ratification has not been completed in Germany and Poland, whose presidents are yet to sign the charter.

– DPA

White House claims human shields killed in Kabul Kabul – US Defence Secretary Roberts Gates apologized for civilian casualties caused by his country troops in Afghanistan today, but blamed the Taliban for using civilians as human shields.

Gates’comments came as Afghan and US military officials were investigating allegations that more than 100 civilians were killed in a US military airstrike in Bala Boluk district of western Farah province.

“We regret any, even one,Afghan civilian casualty ... innocent civilian casualty,”Gates told a press conference in Kabul.

“I believe in many instances the Taliban use civilians as shields,”he said, adding that the Afghan people “need to recognize that exploiting civilian casualties and causing civilian casualties are parts of fundamental Taliban strategy and it is measure of ruthlessness with which they fight.”

The US defence chief said that mounting civilian deaths could“pose a risk”to efforts of international military forces that have been trying to bring peace and reconstruction to the war-torn country.

“What is critical for the success of the Afghan government and for us as the governments and Afghan people’s partners is that the Afghan people believe that we are in their sides, that we are here to help them,”he said, adding,“we are here to protect them not to hurt them.”

On Thursday morning, hundreds of people gathered in the main mosque in Farah, the capital of the province of the same name, chanting slogans against the US forces in the country and Afghan government.

The protesters claimed that more than 100 civil-

ians lost their lives in the air raid in the district. If confirmed, it would be the deadliest incident involving civilian fatalities since the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Tuesday their team saw dozens of bodies at the attack site.

Afghan security forces fired shots into the air when the protestors tried to approach the provincial governor’s office,Ahmad Wali, a Farah resident, told the German Press Agency dpa.

and the culprits be punished,”Nasrat said.“The residents in Farah city closed their shops and gathered in the central mosque to pray for the dead civilians and express their anger against this barbaric act by American forces.”

A joint team of Afghan government officials and US military forces were scheduled to visit the concerned villages tonight to investigate the incident, Deputy Provincial Governor Mohammad Younus Rasouli told dpa.

The airstrikes hit the area Monday night after militants killed three civilians and three policemen in Girani village.Afghan officials said that at least 25 militants were also killed in the operation.

Civilian casualties caused by US strikes have been an ongoing source of tension between the US and Afghan leaders.

More than 2,100 civilians were among thousands of people – mostly insurgents – killed in Afghanistan’s conflict last year, according to the United Nations. Afghan and UN investigators said that around 90 civilians were killed in a US air raid in He said several people were wounded when the the western province of Herat last August. demonstrators hurled stones at security forces and The US military initially denied many civilians they responded with gunshots. had been killed in that incident, but later acknowl“Three people were wounded during the demon- edged that 33 people were killed when videos showstration and receive treatment in a city hospital,” ing dead bodies of women and children emerged.

Farah legislator Mohammad Musa Nasrat said, addGates’s visit comes months before more than ing that he was not certain if they were wounded by 20,000 additional US are expected to arrive in bullets, or trampled by other protestors when they Afghanistan. Currently around 70,000 international fled the area after the shots were fired. forces, with more than half of them American sol“More than 1,000 people took part in today’s diers, are stationed in the country. protest, and they just want their voice to be heard – DPA

Wildfire spreads in California Los Angeles – Thousands of Californians fled for their lives this afternoon as an out-of-control wildfire destroyed at least 20 houses in the posh Southern California city of Santa Barbara and threatened thousands more.

Strong winds forecast for later Thursday threatened to spread the 526-hectare fire, which exploded late Wednesday, more than a month before summer officially begins, underscoring the growing threat facing California as climate change makes wildfires bigger and more frequent.

The Jesusita fire was fed by winds of up to 80 kilometres an hour, which sent clouds of glowing embers and thick blankets of smoke across the Pacific Coast mountainsides and toward the densely populated town centre and the ocean. Television pictures showed multimillion-dollar houses burned to their foundations.

With temperatures soaring to 37 degrees, more

than 5,400 homes were evacuated late Wednesday as the evening winds whipped what had been a previously manageable fire into an unstoppable inferno.

The National Weather Service warned of“explosive”fire growth potential due to the combination of high winds and dead brush to fuel the fire in the foothills and coastal areas under threat.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger toured the site of the fire Thursday after declaring a state of emergency. He said that a total of 13,575 homes are under mandatory evacuation orders and 13,000 more are under recommended evacuation.

“I thought we were going to die,”homeowner Albert Lindemann told broadcaster KTLA-TV.“Until I started seeing those firemen coming in there,I didn’t think any human being could be out there.”

Ten firefighters were injured when the blaze overran their engine,

the Santa Barbara News-Press reported.

Some 1,400 firefighters were battling the blaze, supported from the air by 12 airplanes and helicopters.

The fire came six months after a blaze in the same area burned more than 200 houses. It was the third blaze there in 9 months.

Experts predicted that California would face a growing threat from wildfires because of climate change and development that has pushed homes further into woodlands.The National Interagency Fire Centre has warned that California and other Western states face a worse- than-average fire season.

Santa Barbara Mayor pro tem Dale Francisco told KABC-TV Channel 7 that firefighters were trying to make a stand but that“when these winds are blowing hard enough, nothing can stop it.”Fire officials said containment was at zero per cent.

– DPA

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SPORT

8 May 2009

11

Iro happy in Wayne’s world

By Mark Geenty of NZPA

Brisbane, May 8 – It’s no poisoned chalice,Tony Iro insists. Rather, the chance to succeed Wayne Bennett as Kiwis assistant league coach has made it his dream job.

Iro, who played 25 tests from 1988-1998 and represented five Australian clubs, teamed up with his old Kiwis roommate, Steve Kearney, this week to form the team’s newest coaching duo.

Bennett’s name has been liberally mentioned in Brisbane this week, despite the fact his days in a black polo shirt are long gone after he opted to focus solely on his new job in Wollongong with the high-flying St George-Illawarra Dragons.

Iro says the Bennett influence, which played such a part in the Kiwis’World Cup win last November, made it a lot easier to step into the role.

“Definitely, no doubt about it, and Wayne’s influence in the team is still strongly felt.The boys spoke about his influence on the squad and trying to live up to his high expectations,”Iro said on the eve of tonight’s test against Australia.

“I don’t think anyone could expect to be Wayne Bennett and I’m certainly not going to try.The biggest disappointment was that I wasn’t here last year to learn some things off him.

“I know Steve learned plenty off him last year in camp, and the boys certainly did.

“We’ve just tried to maintain those high standards that Wayne imposes on any team he coaches.”

The first acid test was this week when the team only assembled on Sunday night for a Friday test.

It wasn’t about reinventing the wheel, Iro said, as the team just tried to make a smooth transition from their World Cup-winning formula.

With both sides having rushed preparations this week, the true test of their respective merits should come on the end-of-year quadrangular tournament in England and France after an extended buildup.

Much has been made this week of the unofficial world No 1 ranking going on the line in Brisbane.

NZPA/Wayne Drought

Iro, in his second season as Warriors under-20 coach, said the rankings meant little to the Kiwis, but he was excited about the potential for year’s end – if the dreaded injury curse which claimed Jeremy Smith and Frank Pritchard stays away.

“When you look at what the Australians have done in the history of rugby league, I think they’re always going to deserve to be the favourites and ranked No 1.

“All we know is that any time you play a side in

Chiefs’ chief is doing it right, says Mils

By Daniel Gilhooly of NZPA

Wellington, May 8 – Chiefs Super 14 coach Ian Foster hasn’t been afraid to alter his style under the advice of players this year and it’s paying dividends, says captain Mils Muliaina.

Reducing the number of training sessions each week has been one fundamental change introduced

by Foster in his sixth year at the helm, with his second-placed team seemingly having benefited.

Veteran All Blacks fullback Muliaina noted Foster had endured years of criticism for the Chiefs’failure to reach the playoffs – much of it unjustified.

He felt the 43-year-old had become peerless in terms of his open approach with the players and his willingness to take on player-driven concepts.

“He’s been absolutely outstanding in the way he’s listened to some of the feedback,”Muliaina said.

“Some of the feedback, he could probably take it the wrong way but he’s come back and talked about it.

“Having the faith to train three times a week, as opposed to the whole week now, he listened to that.”

Under Foster, the Chiefs reached the semifinal in his first season in 2004 but since then they have placed sixth or seventh.

They could yet miss the playoffs again but Muliaina suggested that shouldn’t be pinned on Foster.

“He’s had a lot of critics and what-not (but)... there’s no questioning the way he coaches in this environment.

“He’s a good coach and he just needed to start listening.And that’s the thing he’s done.”

green and gold you’ve got to turn up, otherwise it could get nasty on you pretty quickly.

“We’re a young team which is the way the NRL’s going now. The average age in the NRL is 24. A number of our guys have got long representative careers ahead of them.

“They’ve also got some belief in terms of what they can achieve, and there’s a lot of good juniors :C@<EK GL9C@:8K@FE coming through the ranks too, guys who will put :FM<I ;8K< J ')(-(--+* KI@D J@Q< pressure on guys in this team.” `e]f7`[\ek`k%Zf%eq D`jkiXc Jf]knXi\ @em\jk`^Xk\

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Kearney was a joy to work with as coach and his preparation was always “faultless”, his old Kiwis mate said.

“He’s exactly the same as I knew him as a player.

Very well prepared and very well organised.

“He knows what he wants out of this team, he has high expectations and puts high demands on his players.At this level you don’t expect anything less.

“The influence of Wayne Bennett’s still around, but this is Steve’s team, no doubt.”

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Hurricanes mentor Colin Cooper has had just one year longer at the helm of his franchise.

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WEEKEND

8 May 2009

13

TV & Film

Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past

0Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Michael Douglas 0Director: Mark Waters 0Length: 100 minutes 0Rated: M (contains sexual references)

Spock beams up

A changing of the guard on the Starship Enterprise

By Rick Bentley McClatchy Newspapers

LOS ANGELES – There was a time, not long after the original run of the television series Star Trek, when Leonard Nimoy tried to distance himself from the show. He had played many roles before slapping on the pointy ears to portray Spock, but that character was the only role anyone seemed to remember.

Nimoy eventually embraced the inevitable: He will always be known as the actor who played Spock on the ‘60s TV show. He could not ignore the fan interest or the fact that Spock tops lists of the mosticonic television characters.

Now, with the new Star Trek feature film, Nimoy has someone with whom to share the burden.

Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman say the movie would not have been possible without Nimoy being part of it, but they also needed someone who could play a younger Spock.

Heroes star Zachary Quinto portrays Spock in the early days of the Star Trek mythology when Spock and Kirk, and the rest of the Enterprise gang, came together.The plot also includes a major role for Nimoy’s more mature version of the character.

Seated next to each other at the Four Seasons Hotel, Nimoy and Quinto discuss the movie. Nimoy explains how excited he was to have the opportunity to slip back into the role.

“These people, the makers of this film, I think reawakened in me the passion I had when we made the original film and series. I was put back in touch with what I cared about, what I like about Star Trek and why I enjoyed being involved in Star Trek. So, it was an easy way to come on home,” Nimoy, 78, says.

Quinto, 31, was born eight years after the original television series went off the air and was only 2 when Nimoy first agreed to play Spock for the first big-screen version of the series, the 1979 offering Star Trek:The Motion Picture.

The actor admits that when he was 12 he had the same bowl-shaped haircut that Spock sported.

But he never had anyone tell him that he looked like the famous Vulcan. He prepared for the role by watching episodes of the television show. He also had the luxury of being able to chat with Nimoy during the filming.

“The whole experience for me was so fulfilling.

Beyond my wildest expectations in terms of just getting to know him and understanding how this character has formed. His creative processes and life. It was great fun,”Quinto says.“I got asked a lot

if there was pressure because of Leonard’s involvement. My response is always to the contrary. Having him as a resource, and such a generous available support system, made it much easier for me to step into the experience.

“I felt that it was incumbent upon me to determine my own relationship with this character.That was the mandate that (director) J.J. (Abrams) set forth very early on in the process.We were expected to use the foundation as a point of entry into our own experiences with the characters.”

Nimoy smiles at the young actor’s response, and says:“He sounds like Spock. Doesn’t he?”

Nimoy has nothing but compliments for how Quinto handled the role.The pair never talked about the “dos”and “don’ts”of playing Spock. Their conversations where more about the philosophy and psychology of the character, the philosophy of Star Trek and even the fans’reactions to various aspects of Star Trek.

“I’m very proud of what he did. I loved the idea that he is doing the character.That he did it so well.

I think we have book-ended the character. He has created a Spock that comes before the Spock that I portrayed in the series. I’m playing a Spock that comes much much later and is much more resolved,

and is,I think,much closer to who I actually am today.

So, I think it works extremely well,”Nimoy says.

There is one huge storyline in the movie involving the younger Spock that will catch Star Trek fans off guard. It would be unfair to reveal what happens except to say that it illustrates Quinto’s suggestion that there is a real misconception about how much emotion Spock feels.

Spock is the son of a Vulcan father and an Earth mother.The“Star Trek”lore is that Vulcans have long suppressed emotions because they are not logical.

But Spock has always had to deal with the added pressures of his human side.

“I think he feels emotion very deeply. But he’s just restricted in the ways that he can express it. For me, it was about cultivating a deeply rooted inner life and not being able to do much other than to hold on to it.Which can be frustrating as an actor, especially when around me, my fellow actors are emoting and running about having a good time,” Quinto says.

“Obviously, it’s a formidable challenge and one that I was really excited to be faced with.”

Now, it will be up to Quinto whether to live long and prosper as Spock – or to go warp speed away from the character in a few years.

Watch the trailer

Live long, and prosper

By Rick Bentley McClatchy Newspapers LOS ANGELES – Few television characters have reached the iconic status of Star Trek science officer Spock – from his pointed ears to the “live longer and prosper” greeting, the character is entrenched in the pop-culture fabric.

It was Leonard Nimoy, a lanky actor from Boston, who gave Spock life first in the television series and then in a string of movies. Nimoy has returned to the role in the new Star Trek feature film, which looks at the early days of the Star Trek mythology when Spock and Kirk, and the rest of the Enterprise gang, came together. The plot includes a major role for Nimoy’s more mature version of the character.

“These people, the makers of this film, I think re-awakened in me the passion I had when we made the original film and series.

I was put back in touch with what I cared about, what I like about Star Trek and why I enjoyed being involved in Star Trek. So, it was an easy way to come on home,” Nimoy, 78.

Nimoy had no input in the script. His first meeting with director J.J. Abrams, along with writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, was to see about his interest in playing Spock again. He read the script and agreed to sign on.

It was imperative that Nimoy be in the movie because the major storyline deals with the older Spock traveling through time to the year when he was first at Starfleet Academy.

Abrams also is the man behind such television shows as Alias, Lost and Fringe. Nimoy will appear in this season’s finale of Fringe and will be in at least two more next season.

He was happy to take on the television role because, as Nimoy explains, “It’s a wonderful opportunity because it’s a blank canvas.” Most of the colors had already been filled in when it came to playing Spock again.

Nimoy had one other reason he agreed to be on Fringe.

“When they tell me J.J. Abrams is on the phone,” Nimoy says, “I have to take the call.”

Like weddings, wedding comedies are all about the upholding of traditions. Family tensions must flare and be defused.

A lovelorn bridesmaid or two must meet her ideal match.

Off-key or off-colour toasts must be offered. Some elaborate tower of artifice (an ice sculpture, a triple-tiered cake, the bride’s composure) must come crashing down and be frantically slapped back together again.

Above all this, however, is the one sacred rule of wedding comedies. A bad boy – a beyond-sexy Casanova who loves ‘em, leaves ‘em and thumbs his nose at matrimony – must be brought to heel. He must see the error of his caddish ways, embrace monogamy and risk everything to win the heart of a wise and understanding woman. Never mind that emotionally bankrupt sex addicts rarely reform in real life.

We’re selling fantasy here. If you don’t believe in magic, try the nature documentary in the next theatre.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past crams these well-worn themes into the familiar structure of “A Christmas Carol,” lurching from scene to scene when it ought to flow. Matthew McConaughey plays Connor, a smirky glamour photographer and all-around lothario. A master of the 49-minute relationship, he breaks up with multiple girlfriends on conference calls to save time.

Drinking too much at his brother’s rehearsal dinner, he’s visited by visions from his past, present and future. Michael Douglas, as the playboy uncle who raised the orphaned Connor, returns from the dead, introducing the spirits that will teach his nephew a cautionary lesson. Douglas, radiating an arid narcissism, does looks as if he was recently exhumed.

Whether this is a deliberate makeup choice or unfortunate lighting is hard to guess.

The novelty of the premise wears down fast, and the movie goes on and on. Jennifer Garner dimples fetchingly as Connor’s childhood sweetheart, but she seems to be looking around for a friend to tell her what she’s supposed to do. McConaughey delivers a performance grating enough to shred Parmesan.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past pilfers exactly the wrong part of Dickens. What makes his stories timeless wasn’t the plots, but his special gift for seeing people as full, complex individuals, not types to be placed into neat pigeonholes. The appeal of Dickens’ redemption fable depends on the character of Scrooge, a flinty, sarcastic, intelligent old sinner.

There isn’t much wit (when one female wedding guest says “Spooning is nice,” Connor ripostes, “Not as nice as forking.’) And there’s no subtlety in the characters. Instead of making Connor a carefree playboy, or a fabulous rat like Bill Murray’s character in Scrooged, he’s simply an egocentric jerkwad. Connor simply doesn’t seem the sort to say, “Sure, I’ll give up a lifetime of one-night stands in exchange for a big turnout at my funeral.” Because the character is misconceived, the happy ending feels forced, rushed and arbitrary. Bah! Humbug!

Watch the trailer – By Colin Covert

REVIEWS

14

8 May 2009

Music

Churchhouse rock

By Ron Orozco

FRESNO, Calif. – Move over Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend.

Worship music at some evangelical churches is cranking up – driven by electric guitars.

Many churches have long provided services that appeal to their congregants’musical interests: traditional, contemporary or blended. Now, some of them also have expanded into rock-style worship.

It’s not so loud that you need earplugs, but we’re talking the sounds of alternative pop rock, straight rock, pop punk and indie rock.

Near the pulpits, guitars glow under stage lights and their images flash onto large screens. It’s like something you’d see on worship cable channels.

Marty Blackwell, creative arts coordinator at Celebration Christian Fellowship in Clovis, Calif., says worship bands – with two lead guitarists, bass guitarist, keyboard/piano player, drummer and vocalists – work because it’s a style that worshippers enjoy.

“It’s, in a sense, breaking out of the old mode of thinking that in church there has to be an organ and look a certain way,”he says.“We try to put out there what the everyday person would hear on the radio.”

The churches expanding into rock-style worship aren’t all the same. Some say they don’t want to present just one genre. Rather, they want to present what the worship song calls for – their artistry.

For example, the worship team at NorthPointe Community Church in California opened a recent service with Christian musical artist Lincoln Brewster’s hit song,“Today is the Day.”Brewster is considered one of the industry’s most talented guitarists.

As the NorthPointe worship team performed the

song, worship pastor Todd Anderson sang the lyrics, “I will stand up on your truth.”Then, he asked the congregation to repeat them. They did. And lead guitarist Steve Partain hit just the right notes so his guitar sounded as if it were “talking.”

“I try to hit the same octaves they’re singing,” Partain says.“We’re just praising God. I’ve had a blessed life. I feel it’s one way to give back.”

After the worship team performed a couple of songs, they took a short break for the church’s announcements. Soon, Brewster’s image flashed onto the sanctuary’s large screens – kicking up his heels while wailing on guitar.

Anderson says there’s strong interest in rock worship. About two dozen churches nearby in the San Joaquin Valley present this kind of service.And even more churches have contacted Anderson to help them make the transition.

Anderson traces rock-style worship to the 1970s, the“Jesus rock days,”when electric guitars became more acceptable in churches.And musical production groups, such as Maranatha! Music and the Vineyard Movement, kept the sound popular in the 1980s.Anderson arrived at the tail-end of that sound in the 1990s.

“I haven’t set out to do rock worship, but I’ve been fortunate to land in a church where my style of music, that I naturally listen to and play, is accepted,” he says.

At the NorthPointe service, congregant Mike Angelo, 71, says he appreciates the rock sound at church.

“Rock and religion – it’s good,”he says.“It brings the young people here. But when you get over 70, you can’t hear as well. Sometimes, you can’t understand the words.”

Another lead guitarist, Paul Carlson, says he prefers NorthPointe’s alternative pop rock style. But regardless of the style, he says he appreciates the common mission.

“I love it because it’s worshipping God,”he says.

At Celebration Christian Fellowship in Clovis, Calif., coordinator Blackwell oversees three worship groups that all feature guitar-driven music, but at varying levels.

And don’t think hymns are off limits to any group.

They’re performed, just with contemporary flair.

For instance, Blackwell says he performs the song

“It’s in the medium they’re used to when they turn on their radio or iPod,”he says.

It’s not a phenomenon confined to the US either.

Australia’s Hillsong church rock band has had worldwide hits with its anthemic offerings, while in New Zealand the Parachute music festival attracts tens of thousands to Christian rock.

Alan G.Yerxa also has helped churches present rock-style services, including Lifebridge Community Church.

He also has a band,The Alan G.Yerxa Band, which performs a couple of times monthly at churches or larger venues.

It’s not a phenomenon confined to the US either.

Australia’s Hillsong church rock band has had worldwide hits with its anthemic offerings, while in New Zealand the Parachute music festival attracts tens of thousands to Christian rock “Holy, Holy, Holy”on guitar with a smooth jazz feel and an electric-guitar lead.

“People respond to it,”he says.

Celebration Christian Fellowship also has branched out.

In the summer, it holds rock outreach concerts at the Starbucks patio area at Sierra Vista Mall in Clovis.The church pays for the coffee drinks of nonchurch members in attendance.

Whether at church or at Starbucks, the church’s pastor, the Rev. Joe Lavagnino, says the lyrics in Christian rock connects the Gospel message with people, particularly youth.

“It’s a wild horse when you get on it,”he says.

The Alan G.Yerxa Band also has a reputation as a top band at events presented by church Celebrate Recovery programs.

They are Christ-centered recovery programs addressing all types of people’s hurts, habits and hang-ups.

“They’re used to rock ‘n’ roll music,” he says.“A lot of times when people become Christians, they feel they have to give up the fun stuff – and a lot of times it’s the music.With Christian rock, people can gravitate to that.They hear it and understand it. It’s their language.”

REVIEWS

8 May 2009

NEW CD RELEASES Tony Bennett/bill Evans

Books

Rita Dove’s tones are deep and rich

play during his stay in Paris in 1789. (Dove imagines that Sally Hemings, Jefferson’s slave and lover, would have been along.)

There also are references to “Mad King George,” Sonata Mulattica “Papa”Haydn and a battery of other historic figures.

0Rita Dove “I did feel that the facts, the bone facts, should be Although this space deals mostly true,”she said.“After you honor the past, the facts, with new recordings, a reissue Rita Dove was watching Immortal Beloved, a fic- then anything goes. Be true to a heart, the zeitgeist appears every so often that cries tional biography of Beethoven, in 2005 when the of that era; but I did not feel that I had to apologize image of a black violinist flashed on-screen. out to be heard. for making up a scene or that people might be put The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet knew about off by that as disrespectful.”

The two albums that singer Tony Bennett made in the mid- George Polgreen Bridgetower, a one-time child In writing the book, Dove found that she still had 1970s with pianist Bill Evans is one. Fantasy added prodigy and friend of Beethoven,but after seeing the to overcome what she calls the“stultifying awe”that a second disc to this collection containing outtakes movie,Dove became transfixed by the fleeting figure surrounds history in general and classical music in of the original sessions. And while that makes the who was a footnote in the great composer’s life. particular.

She tried to put it to rest with research – she set more attractive, the pairing of the two giants is “You mention classical music and people adjust is the Commonwealth Professor of English at the their posture – they sit up straight,”she said.“You more than enough to carry the day.

Bennett, who was drawn in a pop direction earlier University of Virginia, after all. say that it’s a book with Beethoven and Haydn, But the spirit of Bridgetower would not leave her. and they feel like it’s got to be hard going and difin his career, gets drawn back by Evans to a deeper She wrestled with it until she pinned it down,commit- ficult, not at all energetic. But everything I read jazz expression.

The settings are very simple and serve both men’s ting the welter of dreams and emotions to paper.

– the actual accounts and letters, the farces ... and The result is Sonata Mulattica, her startling new political cartoons – were so lively, so full of life. Some talents. Evans is a terrific accompanist, creating wonderfully light and dark passages that stand on collection of lyric poetry and dramatic dialogues. of the stuff was way raunchier than much of what Bridgetower, to whom Beethoven once dedicated you read today.” their own or set off the soloist in handsome relief.

Bennett finds himself in these tunes, from“Young what is now known as the Kreutzer Sonata, offered Dove writes about freak shows, the 19th-century and Foolish”to“You Must Believe in Spring,”and he Dove a kind of historic validation. version of reality TV (“Hear Ye!”) and the obses“I grew up playing the cello, dragging it home to sion with ancestry and blood that she references in unrolls them with suppleness and conviction.

The newly released outtakes show the two men practice and having kids look at me like I was crazy,” poems such as “Capriccio”and“ReNaissance.” experimenting with the same tunes, changing the she said in an interview last week from her home in “The way we seek fame, the way we want ever tempo or striking different emphases, such as the Charlottesville,Va.“Entering his world meant con- more prurient details revealed about people, the mournful climax of “You Don’t Know What Love necting with all of these great musicians I revered and way we take an ordinary person and clamor to see was made to understand were not my birthright,so to them do something weird on television, that feels Is.”It’s cool to hear them stretching.

– Karl Stark speak. In the middle of writing this book, I realized close to contemporary life,”she said.“We’re still very that I’d been living my whole life to do this.” much there, in that moment.”

Dove has spent a good deal of her life defying Brahms After she saw the Bridgetower figure in the film in expectations and claiming lofty territory. The 2005, she began keeping notes almost immediately.

0String Quartet Op. 51, No. 1; Piano daughter of a chemist, she grew up in Ohio and The first poem didn’t come until that summer, when Quintet Op. 34” Arcanto Quartet, earned degrees from Miami University and the Uni- she and Viebahn went for a stay at friend’s house on Silke Avenhaus, piano versity of Iowa. She won a Fulbright Fellowship to Martha’s Vineyard.

0Harmonia Mundi Germany in 1974. (She’s fluent in the language and She wrote two or three poems, then stopped.“I is married to German novelist Fred Viebahn; they was too busy,”she said. Inspiration welled up in her “Trio in A minor Op. 114, Sonatas have one adult daughter.) and came pouring out during an 18-month sabbatiDove shot to fame in 1987 when Thomas and Beu- cal that started in 2007. for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 120 Nos. 1 and 2” Kennedy Center lah, her third poetry collection, won the Pulitzer She had an initial bout of fear about how to treat Chamber Players (Dorian, 4 Prize. She has also written fiction (the short-story historical characters – how to get into their psyches. collection Fifth Sunday and the novel Through the She solved it by latching onto the tiniest details. stars) “Quintet in B Minor Op. 115” Ivory Gate) and drama: Her play, The Darker Face Dove would imagine, for example,“the way the colRicardo Morales;Wister Quartet and others (Direct- of the Earth, was staged at Minneapolis’ Guthrie lar feels on the neck”of a character.

Theater in 2000. to-Tape Recording, 3 { stars) “It sounds mystical, but I don’t think it really She has served as poet laureate of both the United is,” she said.“No matter how successful you are, or No matter that these discs all have Brahms chamber music in common,they’re hugely different experi- States (1993-95) and the state of Virginia (2004-06), talented or rich, we all have certain emotions that ences,because of the endless range of interpretations and has been awarded the National Humanities we tap into, this incredible frustration, a feeling of this composer offers,and because the juxtapositions Medal and numerous honorary doctorates. not being able to realize your potential or to be who As she did in Thomas and Beulah, which is about you are. I feel that way often.” of the programs redefine even the most familiar works.

Though the Arcanto Quartet lineup includes high- her grandparents’relationship, Dove engages in a bit Dove had not intended to make Mulaticca a mixprofile soloists such as violist Tabea Zimmermann of poetic archeology in Mulattica, a work of “light ture of poetry, philosophical musings and dramatic and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, the performances and shadow, (of) what we hear and the silence that monologues. are remarkably low-ego,which yields a greater sense follows.”

“The genre that makes me feel like I’m leaving It is as if she has found a body that has been badly my body and leaving this world is drama,”she said. of inner characterization than the group’s previous Bartok disc - even in the Piano Quintet,often treated buried and exhumed it. Mulattica gives Bridgetower “I love writing dialogue.What I don’t like is what his proper rites. like a chamber concerto. happens afterwards – the time it takes to workshop, “The impulse of Thomas and Beulah was to show to produce the play. Being a Virgo, I like letting go.

The other discs are most notable for their individual participants.The Kennedy Centre’s is masterminded ordinary people’s interior lives, and situate them in Fine. But (an actor) can decide to just emote and by pianist Lambert Orkis,whose restless intelligence history,”she said.“Bridgetower – he’s not an ordinary destroy the whole thing when the lights come up.” always commands attention. Here, he believes the person.Yet we get to see him with his contemporarShe satisfies all of her yens in Mulattica. three pieces together create an emotional arc of strug- ies – the Prince of Wales, for example.We get to see “All things considered,” she continued,“poetry gle, acceptance, and hope. It makes sense, but most him in ordinary times.” gives me the most pleasure. I love getting down to Bridgetower was born in 1780 in Biala, Poland, to the bone of the language.The smaller the cage, the important is the performances’ sense of inner life.

Though National Symphony clarinetist Loren Kitt a father described as an African prince and a Polish more I’m going to sing.” dominates, you first hear an incredibly stylish, emo- mother.That biracial heritage proved to be one dif– By Rohan Preston ficulty for the violin virtuoso, who lived in London tion-packed cello entrance by David Hardy.

Among clarinetists, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s but moved freely in a 19th-century European milieu Ricardo Morales (heard with the excellent Wister governed by a strict caste system.

Beethoven and Bridgetower met in Vienna in Quartet) is in a class by himself, even if the acoustics of the recording venue, Carmel Presbyterian Church 1803. They became fast friends, and they played in Glenside, feel a bit remote.The rest of the disc is together at the premiere of Beethoven’s Sonata for more Carmel than Brahms, with organ prelude and Violin and Piano No. 9 in A Minor, Op. 47, which Resilience postlude plus the recently composed Illuminations, Beethoven dedicated as the Bridgetower, in 1803. 0Elizabeth Edwards a wonderfully original song cycle by Stephen Mager But the two men soon fell out – Bridgetower is based on texts in archaic English for voice, piccolo, reputed to have ogled or insulted Beethoven’s love CHARLOTTE, N.C. – As Elizabeth Edwards conand harp. Though soprano Janice Fiore isn’t the interest – and when the sonata was published it was tinued to air details of her husband’s affair Thursideal interpreter, the piccolo and harp contributions dedicated to violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer. day, she opened the gates to a tabloid torrent that

by Lois Bliss Herbine and Sophie Bruno Labiner Dove chronicles much of this history in “Mulat- left even friends and supporters questioning her are models of color-driven expression. tica,”which includes a cameo by Thomas Jefferson, motives.

– David Patrick Stearns who would have seen the 9-year-old Bridgetower In an hourlong interview with Oprah Winfrey, she

0The Complete Tony Bennett/ Bill Evans Recordings 0Fantasy

15

Elizabeth Edwards’ biography invites fight

talked about former Democratic presidential candidate and North Carolina senator John Edwards’ affair with a campaign worker. And in a new book out Friday, she calls the former mistress, Rielle Hunter,“pathetic.”

The media campaign, with more TV appearances and book signings scheduled, breaks months of silence about the affair. It also sparked a backlash.

Hunter has said she wants a DNA test to prove the paternity of her year-old child. Her sister kept the issue alive Thursday night on “Entertainment Tonight.”Blogs are breathlessly following the latest turns of what’s become North Carolina’s long-running soap opera.

Meanwhile, some of the Edwardses’ friends are scratching their heads.

“The risk is that it stirs up a lot of ugliness and unpleasantness,” said Gary Pearce, a Democratic strategist who helped John Edwards win a 1998 Senate race.“Who knows why people do things. She may feel that she has an audience and something to say that helps people who are going through tough times. And I’m sure some people will say ‘Why is she rehashing all this publicly? Is this too much information?’”

One supporter said,“Everybody’s watching it like you do a car wreck.”

“Nobody wants to be there,”said the supporter, who asked not to be named.“But you can’t leave because they’re forcing us to endure it.”

In the interview and in her new book, Resilience, Elizabeth Edwards described her pain at finding out her husband cheated. He told her on Dec. 30, 2006 – two days after announcing the start of his second presidential campaign.

“He wasn’t coy but he wasn’t forthright either,” she wrote.“A single night and since then remorse, was what he said.”

She said she wanted him to quit the race.

“I wanted him to ... protect our family from this woman, this act,”she wrote.“It would only raise questions, he said, he had just gotten in the race; the most pointed questions would come if he dropped out days after he had gotten in the race.And I knew that was right.”

Critics blame her for letting her husband continue his campaign knowing that the affair could not only come to light but, if he were nominated, cost Democrats the White House.

Winfrey said they could have quit the race three months later when they announced a recurrence of her breast cancer.

“I think ... that was a way out,”Winfrey said.“Considering the fact that you already knew that there had been an affair.”

“I knew that there had been a night,” Edwards replied.“You know, that’s all I knew.”

She said she didn’t find out it was a prolonged affair until he acknowledged it last summer.

When the affair became public, Edwards’former aide AndrewYoung claimed to be the father of Rielle Hunter’s daughter. Hunter refused to let her child take a paternity test. It was John Edwards who agreed.

“I would welcome participating in a paternity test, would be happy to participate in one,”he told ABC’s“20/20”last August.“I know that it’s not possible that this child could be mine because of the timing of events.”

He hasn’t replied to Hunter’s latest request.

Elizabeth Edwards told Winfrey she has “no idea”if her husband is the father of Frances Quinn Hunter.

– By Jim Morrill

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SCIENCE

8 May 2009

17

Dimmer sun signals cool world

By Scott Canon McClatchy Newspapers

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Could Earth’s star, that lifegiving ball of fire worshipped by the ancients and the tanned alike, be mellowing?

New research suggests the sun might be calming, erupting in fewer solar flares and winds that send cosmic rays spraying out toward the planets.

That could mean colder weather. And although it’s not time to put away your Ray-Bans, the sun also could be dimming ever so slightly.

A similar phenomenon caused what’s often called the Little Ice Age that chilled Europe and North America enough to form an ice barrier around Greenland and freeze solid the canals of the Netherlands.

Scientists don’t yet know if the seemingly calmer sun will linger in this lull. It’s too early to tell.

Yet a more tranquil sun would mean less protection from cosmic rays swirling into the solar system from elsewhere in our galaxy.That, in turn – assuming a controversial correlation between clouds and cosmic rays is correct – might mean fewer clouds, and without that pillowy cumulus, we might...bake more than ever.

Or ... without them, the warming blanket effect of clouds could be lost and we could chill.

“You could have all these competing effects,”said Gregory Rudnick, an astronomy professor at the University of Kansas.“We don’t have a really good understanding of this.”

What is known is solar activity is as mild as it’s been in nearly a century.

The sun has always been an up-and-down heavenly body,regularly running through 11-year cycles of high

and low flaring and winds and sunspots as its magnetic poles switch from north to south and back.

That overlaps with the Gleissberg Cycle, which runs roughly 80 years. If the universe is seeing those two line up now, the effect on Earth could be a decade or two of slightly lower temperatures.

Last year was at the bottom of the 11-year cycle with its next peak due in 2013 – most obvious in the form of more dramatic northern lights on Earth.

Yet 2008 was even more placid on the fiery orb than in most down years. Sunspots were seen barely one day out of four, the calmest since 1913.

So far this year, they’ve been seen hardly one day in 10.

If the effect is to cool the Earth, as in the so-called Maunder Minimum, the Little Ice Age that ran from 1645 to 1715, some scientists worry it would mask the effects of global warming caused by a buildup of greenhouse gases.

“The problem is if the sun is, indeed, going into a minimum, which we don’t know yet, people will think that we don’t have to act on climate change,” said Angela Speck, an astrophysicist at the University of Missouri.“The sun came back out of that minimum in the 18th century” – when the River Thames turned to ice – “and it will come back out of this.”

At most, it might be losing a tenth of a percent of its brightness and that might be a factor in changing temperatures on Earth.

Whatever is happening, it’s not the dying of our star.

The ball of gas took shape almost 5 billion years ago and is actually growing ever hotter. Scientists think it has at least another 5 billion years left.

Europe about to lead astronomy race

USEFUL STUFF

By Robert S. Boyd

The terminator of sensitive files

WASHINGTON – The world’s astronomers are about to get a trio of powerful new eyes on the sky that can see better and farther than existing space telescopes.

As a result, Europe will hold a scientific and technological lead over the United States in some key areas of cosmology, at least for a while.

On Monday,NASA will send a crew of astronauts to install greatly improved instruments on the 18-yearold Hubble Space Telescope.Just three days later,the European Space Agency will launch two even more advanced telescopes, named Planck and Herschel.

The American and European launchings will be “right on top of each other,” said Jon Morse, the director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division.

If all three instruments work as planned, scientists will be able to look back almost to the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago.They could detect the first stars and galaxies, and prove – or disprove – theories about what happened in the first seconds after the “big bang,”when cosmologists think that everything began.

Each of the three telescopes “sees” things in a different wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s like looking through different windows on the cosmos.

Hubble sees mostly in optical light, the narrow band between infrared and ultraviolet that’s visible to human eyes. Herschel will collect photons – particles of light – in a much wider infrared wavelength.

Planck detects even longer microwaves, which carry photons left over from the big bang.

The three telescopes will study “different pieces of the universe,” said Ray Villard, Hubble’s news director.“They’re complementary.”

Herschel will have the largest mirror ever put in space, 11.5 feet – 3.5 meters – across, half again as big as Hubble’s mirror.Planck will have the sharpest vision, detecting differences as small as two parts in a million. Hubble, meanwhile, is better able to study galaxies, stars and planets beyond our solar system.

To save money, ESA will launch Planck and Herschel atop a single Ariane 5 rocket from the European spaceport in French Guiana, on the coast of

By Noah Matthews

South America.They’ll travel separately to a point 900,000 miles – 1.5 million kilometres – away, where they’ll enter a yearlong orbit around the sun.

Herschel,named for British astronomerWilliam Herschel,the discoverer of Uranus,will sweep the entire sky every six months over a three-year period.It will build the most accurate map ever made of the cosmos.

Since light from very old and distant objects is stretched out toward the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum, Herschel’s infrared vision will let it see stars and galaxies as they were forming billions of years ago. In addition, Herschel can peer through clouds of cold gas and dust that block Hubble’s view of new stars being born.

The best American infrared telescope, NASA’s five-year-old Spitzer Space Telescope, has a much smaller mirror – 2.8 feet, or 0.85 meters – and a narrower viewing range than Herschel does.

“Herschel is big brother to Spitzer,”Villard said.

“Herschel does everything Spitzer does, but does it better.”

The Planck satellite is named for Max Planck, a famed German physicist of the last century. Since it detects microwaves,Planck will study tiny ripples in the cosmic microwave background, a curtain of hot plasma shrouding what happened before the universe was 380,000 years old.Astronomers think that these irregularities formed the seeds of future galaxies.

“Planck will provide the deepest, clearest, sharpest and least obstructed view of the beginning of the universe ever seen,” said Benjamin Wandelt, a Planck scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It will be “a quantum leap in our ability to address fundamental questions about how the universe began, (such as) ‘What banged at the big bang?’“ ON THE WEB

More information on Herschel: http://www.esa.int/ SPECIALS/Herschel/index.html

More information on Planck: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Planck/index.html”>

More information on Hubble: http://hubblesite.org

Short of removing your hard drive, soaking it in acid and pounding it with a steel mallet, erasing sensitive files from your PC is iffy at best. Hackers know that deleted files can be undeleted quickly and with great success because files don’t go away until they’re overwritten by another file. Even then, your 10-year-old nephew can find the file and restore it to its original state.

While most of my files could be broadcast over the Internet and cause me no real harm, I do have sensitive financial files that I’ve deleted and moved to a backup drive. I’d be upset if someone retrieved those files. Since I don’t work for the CIA, high-security file cleaners aren’t available. But there are choices for consumers that will get rid of sensitive files once and for all.

I’ve been testing program for Windows PCs called File Cleaner, which has eight ways to delete files. One level will simply rename a file and overwrite it with dollar signs and zeroes. It’s the quickest way to delete a file, but someone who wants that file can retrieve it fairly easily. The other seven get progressively more secure, and would be more difficult for someone to restore. A Defence Department method overwrites a file 12 times. If that’s not good enough, the eighth level of security overwrites a file 35 times, making it virtually impossible to restore it. As you choose more secure methods, the actual file-wiping takes longer. It took nearly two minutes to delete a file using the eighth – and most secure – level.

You can delete single files, folders, your entire hard drive, along with USB drives and – don’t forget this one – your recycle bin. Like most utilities, File Clean keeps a history of your file operations, and you can even choose to wipe that file off the face of the Earth.

File Cleaner takes up minimal memory, works in the background, and requires no skills to install and set up.

It claims to do one thing, and, in my tests, does it very well. I tried everything to restore my deleted files, with no success. So, put the mallet away; there are easier ways to delete a file.

File Cleaner works on Windows Vista or XP. To order, go online at www.washingtoncd.net.