TGIF Edition 9 October 09

9 October 2009 NZTONIGHT

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ISSN 1172-4153 | Volume 2 | Issue 47 |

| 9 October 2009

“Bring her home!”

WELLINGTON, OCT 9 – Angela Symes, the mother of missing West Auckland toddler Aisling, says her daughter vanished in the time it took to turn off a tap.

There has been no sign of the two-year-old since she went missing from Longburn Rd, Henderson about 5.30pm on Monday.

Police say it is more likely she has been abducted than drowned in one of the local waterways, and have more than 60 officers working to get her home.

Alan and Angela Symes faced media yesterday to talk about their ordeal, but Mrs Symes was too overwrought to speak.

Today she clasped a Winnie the Pooh toy on her knee, which she bought for Aisling on Monday morning, just hours before she disappeared.

“I can’t seem to put him (the bear) down,” she told Campbell Live with her husband at her side.

She said before Aisling vanished on Monday afternoon she had been inspecting a washing machine at the Longburn Road property with Aisling and her elder daughter Caitlin, five, in tow.

“I turned off the hot tap, looked behind me – she was there watching what Caty and I were up to. I turned off the cold tap looked behind me and she was gone -- that fast.”

She leapt out the door screaming out Aisling’s name, but there was no trace of her.

“I just can’t believe that she moved so quickly. In the time it took just to turn off a tap, she was gone.”

Mrs Symes had a message for her daughter’s She was always watching Aisling, who turned abductor. two in June, because she was so fast and fit, Mrs “She’s not a doll. She’s somebody who loves her Symes said. parents, her family, her sister, her pets. She belongs Aisling was a stubborn and bold girl who was not with us. She needs to be back with us. easily diverted from her purpose, she said.

“We miss her terribly and no matter what reason

on the

INSIDE

NEW TARGET Al Qa’ida, not Taliban P age 8

MOON LANDING

Rockets hit surface Page 9 you took her, whatever you’re going through, look what you’re putting her through, look what you’re putting us through.

“Please just bring her home, that’s where she belongs. Just bring her home.We need her.”

Caitlin was finding her sister’s disappearance

NO BACKUP Computer tips Page 17 Continue reading

Obama wins $2m, and Nobel Prize OSLO – US President Barack Obama has won this year’s $2 million Nobel Peace Prize, it was announced in Oslo tonight.

The surprise win comes only nine months into Obama’s presidency.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.”

Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said the committee had considered what Obama had done during the year, and the prize was not for the future when asked about challenges facing Obama and the US, in for instance Afghanistan. Jagland

told broadcaster CNN that the five-member committee’s decision was “unanimous”.

He said that Obama had done most for peace“in the past year,” citing the US president’s efforts to promote nuclear disarmament.

It is the third time a sitting US president has won the coveted award. In 1906 the prize was awarded to President Theodore Roosevelt while in 1919 it was won by President Woodrow Wilson.

Obama becomes the 90th winner of the award since 1901.

“There have been positive reactions from Russia and the People’s Republic of China to his initiatives,”

Jagland told reporters.

Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister and foreign minister, earlier this year took over as chair of the Nobel Committee. He also mentioned Obama’s support for international organizations like the United Nations.

“If you look at the history of the Nobel prize, we have tred to enhance what many personalites have tried to do,”Jagland said, citing the efforts in the 1970s byWest German ChancellorWilly Brandt and in the 1980s by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The prize – worth 10 million kronor (1.4 million dollars) – is scheduled to be presented in Oslo on

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December 10. There were a record 205 nominations for the 2009 peace prize, of which 33 organizations.

Last year former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari won the peace prize for his mediation efforts.

Former US President Jimmy Carter was named winner of the peace prize in 2002.

The peace prize was the fifth of this year’s Nobel awards, which are also made for medicine, physics, chemistry and literature.The prizes were endowed

by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.

– DPA

NEW ZEALAND

2

off BEAT

HONEST COLLEGE STUDENT GETS $10,000 NORFOLK, VA., OCT. 9 (UPI) – A Virginia college student reaped a $10,000 reward this morning when he returned a 15-carat diamond ring he found in a parking lot to its rightful owner.

Jeremy McIntosh told The Virginian-Pilot he found the ring in the middle of September outside a dry cleaner where he works to put himself through Norfolk State University.

“At first when I saw it, it was unbelievable,” McIntosh said. “I thought it was a fake.”

But he realized quickly the ring was valuable. He learned Thursday morning from a story in the newspaper that the ring, valued at US$96,000, belonged to James Ramsey of Norfolk.

Ramsey had been searching for the ring for weeks.

He now thinks it dropped out of a pocket when his fiancée took his clothes to the cleaners.

The exchange took place at the Zoots Dry Cleaners in Chesapeake, where McIntosh is the manager. He hurried to the bank with an envelope full of $100 bills.

McIntosh has big plans for the money, paying off credit cards and the loan on his used Nissan Maxima.

“And then maybe I’ll get a new pair of shoes or take some friends out to dinner,” he said.

BURGLARS BREAK TO SHOP FOR TOOLS MIAMI, OCT. 9 (UPI) – Three burglars took a break from a $100,000 high-end perfume heist so they could buy tools to get into a locked warehouse in Miami, police said today.

Investigators released video from security cameras that caught the Sept. 27 break-in and still pictures from the store where the men bought more tools after discovering they did not have the equipment they needed, The Miami Herald reported. Once they got in, the trio loaded a white Econoline van with Chanel perfumes.

Chanel No. 5, the company’s best-known brand, retails for $95 a quarter-ounce or $260 an ounce, according to a Chanel Web site.

Detective Rebecca Perez, a spokeswoman for MiamiDade police, asked the public to alert police if they spot Chanel being sold at bargain prices.

More than likely they’re going to try and sell them on the street,’’ she said. People should be aware of what they’re out there purchasing. If anyone comes in contact with anyone trying to sell these items, they should call police immediately.”

TWIN IMPERSONATED BROTHER FOR SEX NEW HAVEN, CONN., OCT. 9 (UPI) – A former Connecticut police officer is charged with luring a woman into sex by pretending to be his twin and then raping her when she realized her mistake.

Jared Rohrig, 25, of Milford pleaded not guilty at a hearing Wednesday, The New Haven Register reported.

Rohrig resigned last month as a probationary police officer in Orange.

Rohrig faces charges of sexual assault and criminal impersonation. He is free on bail pending his trial.

Prosecutors say the alleged victim was a friend of Rohrig’s brother, Joseph. When she arrived at the house where they live with their parents July 18, Joseph did not feel like seeing her and told Jared to spend time with her.

Jared allegedly instead told the woman he was Joseph. She said she only realized she was with Jared when they were in bed because Joseph has a cowboy tattooed on his buttocks.

The woman alleges Jared forced her to remain with him, putting a pillow over her face.

9 October 2009

Brothel-creeps found guilty of schoolgirl rape

By Hamish Stuart of NZPA

WELLINGTON, OCT 9 – Two Wellington brothel owners were today found guilty of raping a 14-yearold girl, who they later employed as a child prostitute.

Gary John Duffin and Sharyn Lee Hills, the father and step-mother of murdered Lower Hutt schoolgirl Karla Cardno, were jointly found guilty of raping a 14-year-old girl, who shortly after began working for them as a prostitute.

In the High Court at Wellington today, the jury also found Duffin guilty of indecent assault, through touching the girl’s genital area during the incident, which happened between May 1991 and December 1992.

Duffin was also found guilty of an additional charge of sexual violation, for later rubbing himself up against the girl’s groin when briefing her for her first job in the couple’s Mt Victoria brothel.

Hills and Duffin were found not guilty of two charges of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection.

The jury reached their verdict after five-and-ahalf hours of deliberation.

Yesterday, the couple changed their earlier pleas to admit 10 charges of supplying three teenagers – including the girl – with cannabis between May 1991 and December 1992.

About two years before the sexual assault, Duffin’s 13-year-old daughter, Karla Cardno, was kidnapped, raped and tortured.

Her killer, Paul Dally, then took her to a beach near Wellington, beat her on the head with a piece of driftwood and buried her alive.

However, Justice Warwick Gendall told the jury to feel neither prejudice against nor sympathy for either of the accused or the complainant, who after the rape became, by her own admission, a drugaddicted child prostitute.

Justice Gendall told the jurors they did not need to determine any motivation of the accused for the sexual violation.

“All you need to determine is, if you believe her, for whatever reason, that that is what happened... that night.”

After the jurors returned their verdict, the judge told them: “Try not to think about what has happened this week, though it will be a very human thing to do.

Time will erase what you have heard this week,” he said.

The couple’s defence centred around suggestions the girl consented to having sex – variously saying she wanted money or cannabis, or was attracted to Duffin.

Earlier today, Hills’ lawyer, Rennie Gould, told the court the violations were really “an evolved, or changed, record of events”.

“Her believing it to be true does not make it true,” Ms Gould told the jury.

She suggested the complainant needed to blame someone for her descent into the “sordid world”of prostitution and drugs and invented the rape and violation.

The couple were remanded in custody for sentencing in the High Court at Wellington on November 13.

– NZPA

Samoa mourns tsunami casualties WELLINGTON/APIA, OCT 9 – Wreaths were laid for the 143 casualties of the tsunami which hit Samoa last week at a memorial service in Apia today.

As the names of those who died were read out, school children laid two white wreaths for each by the front of a stage where the coffins of 11 victims were laid.

Relatives and mourners cried as the names were read out at the emotionally charged service attended by up to 5000 people at Apia Stadium, Radio New Zealand reported.

Foreigners killed in the tsunami on Tuesday last week were remembered with purple wreaths.

Iuma Tafua lost 13 relatives and said the memorial service helped his family cope with their loss.

“I am comforted in the knowledge that our nation cares and has come together to mourn the loss of those dear to me and my family,”he told AFP. “This ceremony will assist in the grieving process.”

Originally, at least 100 victims were expected to be buried together in the Apia cemetery.

But other families elected to bury their loved ones in plots near their homes – or where their homes used to stand.

The 11 coffins were earlier brought into the stadium on three police trucks covered with ceremonial tapa cloths as the police band played funeral hymns.

Prime Minister Tuila’epa Sailele Malielegaoi told the mourners that Samoans’innate resilience would see them through this tragedy, as it had in previous disasters.

“Our people are used to tragedy and sadness.We are generally prepared and the end of this tragedy

RNZ AIR FORCE

will signify the beginning of preparations for the next tragedy.”

Flags flew at half mast all day in Apia and the mood was sombre ahead of the memorial service.

Six people remain missing and thousands are homeless after the tsunami, triggered by an 8.0 magnitude earthquake, slammed into the southern coast of the most populated island of Upolu.

Another 32 were confirmed dead in neighbouring American Samoa and nine on Tonga’s northern island of Niuatoputapu.

Meanwhile the New Zealand-based Samoa Tsunami 2009 Appeal will send its first shipment of 12

containers of relief to Samoa tomorrow on HMNZS Canterbury, just days after opening collection centres in Auckland.

“New Zealanders have again responded very generously to an appeal for help,” former All Blacks great Michael Jones, a member of the appeal organisation, said.

Canterbury, which will carry a Seasprite helicopter, has supplies and equipment for Samoa and Tonga.

“Immediate emergency response needs in the Pacific have largely been met. Canterbury’s departure means we are moving into the vital rebuilding phase,”Defence Minister Wayne Mapp said.

The first group of New Zealand medical and support staff in Samoa are expected to return home this weekend at the same time as a group of eight more health professionals fly out to Samoa.

While most of New Zealand’s health response to Samoa has been provided in Samoa, a few Samoan tsunami survivors have been flown to New Zealand for specialist care, Health Minister Tony Ryall said.

Three arrived in Auckland on Wednesday.The two adults and one child are all in a stable condition.

A New Zealand baby born prematurely in Samoa two days after the tsunami and needing medical and surgical care not available there arrived back safely in Auckland this morning.

The baby arrived in a specially equipped plane which left Sydney on Thursday and flew through the night from Samoa.

The baby was in a stable condition in Auckland’s Starship hospital.

– AFP/NZPA

Beijing calls shots in Auckland WELLINGTON, OCT 9 – A controversial Chinese activist has been given a visa to enter New Zealand next week, but Auckland University has said she cannot speak there as planned.

Rebiya Kadeer was due to visit from October 12 to 15, when she would speak at two public meetings, visit Parliament and meet MPs. She is from Xinjiang, a mainly Muslim province of 20 million Uighur in western China.

Ms Kadeer was jailed for six years for speaking out on what she saw as human rights violations and discrimination against the Uighur.

Released after an international outcry, she now promoted the Uighur case from her base in the United States.

The Chinese government put pressure on theAustralian andTaiwanese governments not to grant her a visa.

Ms Kadeer has been granted a visa for New Zealand, Auckland University Student Association president Darcy Peacock told NZPA. She was to speak at the University, at the invitation of the Greens on Campus club. However, when the club tried to book a lecture theatre they were told they could not because of security concerns.

It was normal for a club to book a lecture theatre and the university had hosted the prime minister, and many controversial speakers, Mr Peacock said.

He “doubted” security concerns were the real reason behind the denial and was “disappointed” the university was not allowing free speech.

Links with China were important for the university as international students were a significant revenue source, he said.

Mr Peacock had not received any complaints about Ms Kadeer’s appearance.

Auckland University registrar Tim Greville said the university was not in a position to provide the appropriate levels of security and support.

“Whilst we appreciate the right of people to advance their views, I was not consulted on the security issues for the speaker or the audience as required by university policy and procedures.

“The University therefore cannot be expected to take the responsibility and costs on board.”

– NZPA

NEW ZEALAND

9 October 2009

3

Online purchases could mean jail

By Maggie Tait of NZPA

WELLINGTON, OCT 9 – People tempted to get around a ban on over the counter sales of cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine by shopping online could find themselves in trouble with the law.

Police say people face sentences of up to 14 years’jail under changes the Government announced yesterday to make pseudoephedrine,a main ingredient in many cold and flu medication, a Class B2 prescription-only drug. People would now have to go to their doctor for a prescription before they could purchase it.

Medsafe has been asked to consider if a total ban on pseudoephedrine, used to make the illegal drug “P”, pure methamphetamine, should go ahead.

There are alternative medications containing Phenylephrine which could not be used as a precursor for P estimated to be effective for about 80 percent of people.

Police Detective Sergeant Paul Tricklebank, who works in the national drug intelligence bureau, said people could find themselves in court for buying it on-line.

“It would be dangerous to start importing it for use as a cold remedy because once you start importing scheduled drugs you are breaking the law.The bottom line is you are breaking the law no matter what your intent to use it for was.”

Under present law importing sizable quantities of pseudoephedrine can result in an eight-year jail sentence.

“If they schedule it up to Class B2 ... it becomes even more serious with 14 years’ imprisonment.

“There is legislation around importing drugs and pseudoephedrine is a scheduled drug already.”

Customs were vigilant at mail centres and dogs were used to scan mail.

“The chances of getting caught are quite high...

There would be some sort of inquiry by enforcement agencies as to why they are importing pseudoephedrine.”

There has been strong criticism of the partial ban, saying it unfairly penalised law-abiding citizens, but MethCon Group director Mike Sabin today defended it saying it was “a necessary and important move”.

He also welcomed enhanced police and Customs powers.

However, he was critical of a harm minimisation approach. He said a coercive approach to treatment and drug treatment courts would deliver better results.

Health Minister Tony Ryall said people with the flu would be able to manage their symptoms without using pseudoephedrine -- and 80 percent of those buying cold and flu tablets already were.

“Up to 80 percent of over the counter cold and flu tablets already contain no pseudoephedrine.

“Most people find these pseudoephedrine-free products safe and effective during the few days that they need to take something.”

– NZPA

Labour warns over Maori ‘precedent’

By Kate Chapman of NZPA

WELLINGTON, OCT 9 NZPA – The Government’s discussions with Ngai Tahu over its forestry Treaty of Waitangi settlement went against legal advice and could set a dangerous precedent for other settlements, Labour MP Charles Chauvel says.

The South Island iwi wanted compensation for what it saw as a loss in the value of forests received as part of its historicTreaty claim settled more than a decade ago.

The iwi said an emissions trading scheme (ETS) would make the conversion of forest land into other uses,such as dairying,less economic,therefore lowering

NZ dollar retreats from highs WELLINGTON, OCT 9 NZPA – The New Zealand dollar lost some steam today when the United States dollar rose on comments by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke.

Mr Bernanke reiterated that accommodative policies were likely to be warranted for an extended period, but added that as a recovery takes hold, it might need to tighten to prevent inflation.

The NZ dollar was US73.94c at 5pm from US74.30c at 8am and US73.99c at 5pm yesterday.

The US dollar has been under relentless pressure on the prospects of US interest rates remaining low when interest rates have started rising in this part of the world.The NZ dollar squeaked briefly above US74.50c for the first time in more than 14 months as the Australian dollar rose on strong economic data this week.

ANZ bank said the NZ dollar was “riding in kanga’s pouch”.

The aussie got close to US91c on Thursday night and was US90.45c at 5pm today.

Against the aussie the NZ dollar was A81.73c at 5pm from A81.98c at the same time yesterday.

The NZ dollar has been at a 16-month high of 0.504 euro but was 0.5021 by 5pm from 0.5012 yesterday, and was up to 65.95 yen from 65.31.The trade weighted index was 66.65 at 5pm from 66.59 yesterday.

– NZPA

the land’s value. Four other iwi were similarly affected but Ngai Tahu has the most significant holdings.

Climate Change Minister Nick Smith said Ngai Tahu’s issue was around whether the Government at the time breached the good faith of negotiations and withheld information about the value.

In Dr Smith’s view it was a“cock up not a conspiracy”.

Ngai Tahu was prepared to take the matter to court, or back to the Waitangi Tribunal and the Government wanted to“sit down and talk”about it.

The Government must be free, post Treaty settlements, to make changes without having to reopen negotiations, Dr Smith said.

Ngai Tahu and the Government will continue negotiations but there would be no changes needed to the ETS bill, he said.

Mr Chauvel said by entering discussions the Government paved the way for other Treaty settlements to be re-opened.

“Would going to court have been a better way to go than opening all settlements up to questions?”

It set a “very unfortunate”precedent,”he said.

The Ngai Tahu issue “wasn’t a cock up or a conspiracy, it was an agreement in good faith”.

The Government was advised by Queens Counsel Helen Aikman that there had been full and appro-

priate disclosure during the initial negotiations, Mr Chauvel told NZPA. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to ignore Crown legal advice in order to get a political deal with another party.”

Mr Chauvel was alluding to an agreement between National and the Maori Party for their support of the ETS legislation through its first reading.

Dr Smith said National had not concluded negotiations with Maori Party.

The Maori Party had been concerned with the affect of the ETS on low-income people, he said.

– NZPA

Swine Flu’s impact on NZ revealed in study WELLINGTON, OCT 9 – New Zealand and Australian hospitals experienced a 1500 percent jump in demand for beds in intensive care units (ICUs) when swine flu struck in the seasonal flu season.

Swine flu had a profound effect on ICUs over the winter from June through August, the New England Journal of Medicine reported today.

Doctors from the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society analysed the 722 H1N1 swine flu cases admitted to ICUs in the two countries, from June 1 through August 31.

The H1N1 patients were among 856 with type-A influenza admitted to ICUs. The 722 patients had the swine flu strain confirmed with laboratory tests, Royal Perth Hospital’s Steven Webb said.

In each of the previous four years, the hospitals had admitted an average of 57 patients with lung inflammation, as result of flu.

This year, swine flu patients took up a total of 8815 bed days and of the patients where data was available, 64.6 percent were on mechanical ventilation for a median period of eight days.

By September 7, 14.3 percent of the patients had died and 15.8 percent were still in hospital.

The toll was similar to a normal seasonal flu epidemic, but the study did not give a breakdown of deaths by age – doctors have said swine flu infected more young people than seasonal flu did.

Children and teens accounted for nearly half of the hospital cases: a third of total patients were

young or middle-aged adults who were neither pregnant, nor had a known co-existing condition.

Admissions for viral lung inflammation were highest especially among pregnant women, the obese and people with chronic lung disease, the study found.

Pregnant women, about 1 percent of the population on both sides of the Tasman, were responsible for 9.1 percent of the intensive care cases.

Obese patients were responsible for almost 30 percent of admissions, even though they only made up 5.3 percent of the population in 2003.

Asthmatics and other patients with chronic lung conditions made up just 13 percent of the population – but 33 percent of the severe cases.

During the peak of severe illness, patients with the new flu strain filled between nine and 20 percent of all intensive care hospital beds in Australia and New Zealand.

In some hospitals, the pandemic filled all available beds in intensive care. New Zealand hospitals postponed non-essential surgery in July.

The greatest effect on ICU resources in a given region occurred about five to six weeks after the

first confirmed winter admission.

The journal published the research as swine flu rates fell in the Southern Hemisphere, and the virus spread in most American states.

Indigenous groups were over-represented in the study: Maori (13.6 percent of the population) were 25 percent of the patients on this side of the Tasman.

Almost half of all patients (48.8 percent) had acute respiratory distress syndrome or viral pneumonitis, and 20.3 percent were diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia.

– NZPA

EDITORIAL

9 October 2009

Editorial

A hole in all our hearts This weekend is going to be a living hell for Alan and Angela Symes.Never before separated from their two little daughters,they’ve spent the past five days sleepless in absolute terror at the fate of missing Aisling.

Like the Madeleine McCann disappearance in Portugal, Aisling’s vanishing has affected every parent like a fist clenching around the heart.We all know how quickly toddlers move, and parents usually have eyes built into the backs of their heads to compensate for that.

As we kiss our own kids goodnight and tuck them into a warm bed while it rains and snows outside, we are all the more keenly aware this weekend that one

bed in our community remains empty, the fate of its owner unknown.

For Alan and Angela, the not knowing is what tears you apart.We don’t know whether Aisling simply wandered off on the coldest night this spring with all of the implications that brings, or whether she was taken by a sexual predator, or whether she was stolen by a mentally-unwell woman, or whether she was hit by a motorist who panicked.

Was the woman seen with Aisling really Asian, or perhaps another race – and if so has the concentration on“Asian”set a false image in people’s minds?

It is also dangerous to judge an investigation

based on the law of averages, as some in talkback land are starting to do. Statistically, random abductions of children are exceedingly rare.Yet they do happen, and we shouldn’t forget that. Incredible as it may be, we are left with a couple of independent sightings of Aisling on the road near the house in the company of a woman – a woman who has not come forward to police to explain herself.

Given that this woman was the last adult seen with Aisling, it lessens the likelihood that the child was then left on her own to be hit by a car later or get lost. It beggars belief that an innocent adult finding a two year old wandering a main road would leave her alone, or fail to come forward.

Spare a prayer for Aisling this weekend.

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Comment

Letterman’s cultural Rorschach test a $2 million extortion plot by a man who threatened to expose his sexual relationships with“Late Show” employees. And when Dave admitted to said dalIn a few days, David Letterman will emerge liances - “Yes, I have,” the host said - the audience unscathed from the hullabaloo surrounding the laughed and then clapped. bombshell about that extortion plot against him.

“With Letterman, one is never sure if the story His fans don’t care about his indiscretions, and is true,”tweeted ourpaldave.“I wasn’t sure until the the notoriety will probably make his show more end, so I tittered with the audience.” popular than ever.And what do you bet the blackBut on TVBarn.com, E. O’Neal said Dave’s fans mailer will join the “Fire Dave”protesters as regu- are way too easy to please.“They’re supposed to lars in Dave’s monologue? laugh every time he pauses. It’s a conditioned reflex No, that’s not how it’s going to be at all. This is that shows they’re in on the joke. Last night was the beginning of the end for Letterman. He was especially creepy.” funny once, but in recent years his on-air persona “He certainly flipped the script in TV confeshas gone from goofy to eccentric to, as he put it sions,”Scott Tobias tweeted.“My first reaction was, Thursday night,“creepy.”

‘Huh. He did not do what you’re supposed to do in More revelations will leak out about young women situations like this.’And that’s kinda remarkable.” in his office being cherry-picked for a role on Dave’s As for the incident itself, the responses can be casting couch, and as they do, disgusted viewers will roughly distributed among four large, overflowing start switching to Conan O’Brien. buckets: No, that’s too pessimistic a view. Dave will be chasThere are the fans of Dave, those who find a bit of tened by this episode, as he was by his heart bypass, consensual office sex to be not that big a deal - espeas he was by 9-11, as he was when he learned that the cially in a week that has featured Polanski’s arrest, woman breaking into his home was suffering from Mackenzie Phillips’ lurid Daddy-dearest tale and schizophrenia (which is when he stopped making the heartbreaking testimony of Elizabeth Smart. jokes about her).

The only crime here is extortion.

He knows he needs to make amends with some of “It was fine,”Teresa Kopec said.“He didn’t molest his viewers. He’ll apologize for his lack of workplace a child, nor has anyone accused him of sexual harethics. He’ll ease off the jokes about public figures’ assment. People sleep around at the office. Human.” sex lives. And he won’t make light of blackmail on Others, including some “Late Show” viewers, his show.

It’s too early to tell how this episode will end, though any of the above scenarios strikes me as plausible. One thing is certain: Letterman’s confession on Thursday’s“Late Show”provided us with an instant cultural Rorschach test.

In the 12 hours following the broadcast, hundreds of readers posted comments to my Facebook, Twitter and TV Barn pages. Across the Internet, thousands of people vented about the story involving Dave, the blackmailer - allegedly a longtime CBS News producer named Joe Halderman - and a woman they both reportedly shared a bed with.

Let’s start with the weird way Letterman broke the news to his audience.

During the monologue, Letterman told several jokes about Roman Polanski and disgraced South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, and the audience ate them up - having no idea, of course, that the person on stage was about to enshrine himself in their rarefied company.

It’s possible that Dave knew all along that he was going to play his confession for laughs - not unlike his retelling of the story of driving to the county courthouse in Montana earlier this year and finally getting married to his longtime girlfriend, Regina Lasko.

When the show aired, many of those watching at home hadn’t heard the news, so they laughed right along with the audience as Dave started sharing the tawdry details of what he called the “creepy stuff”he had done. Many in the audience were still laughing even after he revealed he was the target of

By Aaron Barnhart McClatchy Newspapers

found the news troubling.

“Unless he had no power over their jobs - financially or otherwise - he’s on the hook,”Susan Dennis wrote. In fact, as the owner of the now unfortunately named Worldwide Pants, which produces “Late Show”for CBS, Letterman has a special power over people inside the building. That is why people get sued for sexual harassment, no? It’s not about the sex, it’s about the power.

And then there were the many readers of the Drudge Report, which linked to my story.

They posted comments similar to this one from Rob: “Isn’t this the man that made fun of Sarah Palin’s daughter for sexual escapades? THE CHICKENS ARE COMING HOME TO ROOST!”But I sense these folks don’t really watch Letterman.

Of more concern to the “Late Show” joke writers might be the sentiment put forth by this commenter:“Letterman should get out and apologize to John Edwards, Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer and others in similar situations he lived off of over the years making jokes about them. I don’t care for them, but fair is fair.”

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ANALYSIS

9 October 2009

War crimes ‘stunts’ starting to irk Israel

By UPI staff writers

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL, OCT. 9 – Israel’s leaders are circling the wagons against international efforts to arrest them abroad on war crimes charges.

The deputy prime minister, Gen. Moshe Boogie Yaalon, a former military chief of staff, this week cancelled a fundraising visit to London for fear he might be arrested for the assassination of Hamas military chief Salah Shehahdeh in July 2002.

Shehahdeh was killed when the air force dropped a 2,200-pound bomb on his apartment block in Gaza City, along with 14 other people, including his wife and nine children.

Yaalon, a former commander of the Israeli army’s elite Sayaret Matkal special forces unit, was forced to call off an earlier visit to London in September 2005 after Palestinian groups sought warrants for his arrest for the Shehahdeh killings.

A week ago a London court rejected a Palestinian bid to have Defense Minister Ehud Barak, another retired general who is the Jewish state’s most decorated war hero, arrested on similar charges, this time linked to the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip in December and January.

On Sunday the current chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi, had to fly secretly to Normandy for a military conference with U.S. and French commanders amid warnings that senior Israeli officers could be arrested in Europe because of their involvement in Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip on Dec. 28.

Israeli concerns that the country’s leaders have become targets of a widening campaign to hold them accountable for alleged war crimes against the Palestinians, and other Arabs, over the years are not new.

But they were dramatically heightened by a 574page U.N.report on the 22-day Israeli invasion of Gaza that alleged Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity during that offensive in which some 1,200 Palestinians,mainly civilians, perished. Israel fatalities totaled 13.

The closely documented report was issued Sept.

15.The four-member commission headed by widely respected former South African Supreme Court Justice Richard Goldstone, who is Jewish, also accused Hamas of war crimes.

But it came down particularly hard on Israel, denouncing the disproportionate use of force

employed during the winter offensive.

Israel refused to cooperate with the commission, appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council based in Geneva.

The scathing report was given weight because Goldberg is one of the world’s most respected experts on war crimes and served as chief prosecutor of the U.N. International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

The Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv branded the report a prize for terrorists. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu held emergency meetings to discuss the consequences of the report.

“The goal is to avoid a slippery slope which would lead Israel to The Hague,” said a senior official in the premier’s office.

According to J.J. Goldberg of The Forward, an influential Jewish weekly published in the United States, Israel’s international isolation and vulnerability is several degrees deeper following the report’s release.

How serious the damage will be depends in considerable measure on how Israel chooses to respond. Initial signs are not encouraging.

The report urged the Israeli government to investigate its allegations and take the appropriate action.

If Israel failed to do so within three months, the United Nations was urged to refer the case to the 108-state International Criminal Court, which could potentially indict Israeli generals and political leaders.

If that happens, they could find themselves in the same situation as African tyrants currently on trial for war crimes or quarantined like President Omar al-Bashir.

Now, Goldberg noted, that sort of isolation is a real threat for Israeli leaders.

The Israelis are currently faced with a new principle of international law – universal jurisdiction – that permits prosecutions by countries other than those in which the alleged crimes were committed.

No Israeli leader has ever been convicted of such crimes. In 2001 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was tried in absentia in Belgium, though not convicted, for the massacre by Israeli-allied Lebanese Phalangists of as many as 2,000 unarmed Palestinian civilians in Beirut’s Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps during Israel’s 1982 Lebanon invasion.

– UPI

7

WORLD

8

update

in 60 seconds US PULLOUT WEAKENED IRAQ WASHINGTON, OCT. 9 (UPI) – Demographic pressures, corruption and ethnic and sectarian rivalries put Iraq at risk of slipping back into conflict, a non-profit research center warns.

The independent Fund for Peace in its ninth report on Iraq warns the country is still at risk of returning to serious conflict if inequalities and political divisions are not addressed.

The report, covering a period from July 2008 through August 2009, finds that despite improvements in relative national security, bombings and assassinations continue to undermine political progress in Iraq.

The report, A Way Out: The Union of Iraqi States, stresses that Iraq has yet to reach a level of stability that local authorities could sustain.

The Fund for Peace points to lingering issues, ranging from stress brought on by pervasive drought to rivalries between the various religious and sectarian groups in Iraq, as inhibiting further progress.

Pauline Baker, president of the Fund for Peace and the author of the report, said Iraqis must move quickly to address their remaining issues.

9 October 2009

FBI director: Terrorists recruiting youth countries such as Afghanistan or Iraq,Yemen, or others in a suicide bombing at a United Nations Somalia” for terrorist training and to fight, often checkpoint in Mogadishu. for groups affiliated with al-Qaida.

In July, a 25-year-old graduate of Seattle’s RooSEATTLE – In a visit to the Seattle field office today, He delivered the same message before the Senate sevelt High School, Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, pleaded FBI Director Robert Mueller warned of the dangers Judiciary Committee two weeks ago,after a long sum- guilty in Minnesota to providing support to terposed by outside attempts to recruit and radical- mer that saw several major terrorism cases emerge, rorists in connection with U.S. recruitment efforts ize young Western Muslims, but wouldn’t discuss including the bureau’s attempts to confirm that a by al-Shabaab. an ongoing investigation into reports that a young young Somali man from Seattle was one of a team Earlier that summer, federal authorities received Somali man from Seattle was involved in a suicide of suicide bombers in Mogadishu in early September. information that Ruben Shumpert of Seattle, an bombing that killed 20 in Mogadishu last month.

The director’s comments about the bureau’s African-American who converted to Islam in Mueller said he didn’t“talk about particular inves- efforts to penetrate and cooperate with Muslim prison, was reportedly killed in a U.S.-supported tigations.” His more general comments reflected testimony he has provided to Congress on the issue, AS MANY AS 20 MINNESOTA SOMALI MEN ARE in which he has said these recruits – who travel for BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN RECRUITED BY AL-SHABAAB, terrorist training to Somalia or Pakistan – pose a special threat here because they may have access to A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION WITH LINKS TO AL-QAIDA U.S. passports and are familiar with Western society.

Mueller said communities being targeted by the communities were less enthusiastic than those he rocket attack near Mogadishu. Mueller also briefly radicals are“every bit as patriotic as any other com- offered Thursday in Seattle.The Somali community, discussed the unsolved slaying of Assistant U.S. munity in the United States,”and urged members in particular, has proved “more insular”than some, Attorney Thomas Wales, who was gunned down to cooperate.“They are a substantial part of the he told senators. eight years ago this coming Sunday in the basesolution to this,”he said.

As many as 20 Minnesota Somali men are ment of his Queen Anne home.

In May, Mueller told members of the House believed to have been recruited by al-Shabaab, a “For the last eight years, it has been a priority Judiciary Committee that the bureau was aware terrorist organization with links to al-Qaida, and at case,”Mueller said.“It continues to be a priority case.” of “young men from communities in the United least three have died. Last fall, 27-year-old Shirwa RELATED STORIES: States, radicalized and recruited here to travel to Ahmed from Minneapolis blew up himself and 29 Islamic radical preachers in NZ

By Mike Carter The Seattle Times

US Afghan strategy focuses on al-Qaida

By Christi Parsons Tribune Washington Bureau TALES OF SEX WITH ‘BOYS’ HAUNTS OFFICIAL PARIS, OCT. 9 (UPI) – France’s new culture minister, Frederic Mitterrand, struggled overnight to save his job amid revelations he paid boys for sex, officials said.

The nephew of the late President Francois Mitterrand is openly gay and was thrown on the defensive after opposition politicians focused on a memoir in which he told of delight in visiting brothels in Bangkok.

“I got into the habit of paying for boys,” he wrote.

“The profusion of young, very attractive and immediately available boys put me in a state of desire that I no longer needed to restrain or hide.”

La mauvaise vie (The Bad Life) was a critically acclaimed bestseller in 2005. Mitterrand, 62, a popular television presenter, was praised for his honesty, The Times of London said.

But, it backfired on him this week after he jumped to the defense of filmmaker Roman Polanski, who was arrested in Switzerland for extradition to Los Angeles on a charge of having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Now, there are angry demands from all sides, intensified by the Internet, for his resignation.

Supporters, seeking to defuse the accusations, pointed to Mitterrand’s earlier explanation that homosexuals call all men boys and none of his male prostitutes were under age.

Gay websites however openly list ages of consent in various destinations as part of a gay tourism service, with some countries allowing sex with children as young as 13.

HOUSE VOTES TO EXPAND HATE-CRIME SCOPE WASHINGTON, OCT. 8 (UPI) – The House voted today to expand the scope of U.S. hate-crime law to include crimes based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability.

The vote was 281-146 to expand the definition of violent hate crime under federal law, with most Democrats and more than 40 Republicans voting in the majority, The New York Times reported. Republican leaders criticized Democratic leaders for making the measure part of a US$681 billion defense bill.

“We believe this is a poison pill, poisonous enough that we refuse to be blackmailed into voting for a piece of social agenda that has no place in this bill,” said Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, joined other Republicans in arguing the measure would prosecute so-called thought crimes.

“The idea that we’re going to pass a law that’s going to add further charges to someone based on what they may have been thinking I think is wrong,” Boehner said.

The measure is considered likely to win approval in the Senate, the newspaper said.

WASHINGTON – Nearing the end of a lengthy war review, President Barack Obama and his top advisors are moving toward a strategy in Afghanistan that defines al-Qaida as a greater threat to U.S. security than the Taliban, a view that could avoid the major troop increase sought by military commanders.

The strategy represents a subtle shift for an administration that has always considered al-Qaida its top enemy, while viewing the Taliban as closely allied and supportive of its extremist ambitions.

White House officials now are taking pains to decouple the two groups.

“The distinction between the Taliban and alQaida is a critical one for the American people to understand if they want to understand our policy in the context of protecting our homeland,”a senior administration official said in an e-mail exchange.

Such an approach also would let U.S.-led forces concentrate on a part of the war where they have had the most success recently, using unmanned aircraft attacks and missile strikes on al-Qaida operatives and outposts in the remote region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Obama meets this weekend with top national security advisers as part of the review, and officials said he is at least a week away from any decisions on the new U.S. policy or troop levels.The top U.S. commander has recommended up to 40,000 additional American troops, in addition to the 68,000 already there.

Top administration officials have expressed skepticism about sending so many extra troops without a close examination of U.S. aims. They also have become wary as extremist violence continues unabated, Afghanistan wrestles with the aftermath of an election marred by fraud and support for the war plummets among Americans and many U.S. lawmakers.

By emphasizing the danger of al-Qaida, many interpreted the direction of the strategy outlined in comments by the senior official and White House staffers as a narrower approach, focused more on attacking violent extremists than on painstakingly remaking civil order throughout Afghanistan.

The direction of the strategy discussion also rekindled an eight-year-old debate about how closely al-Qaida and the Taliban are aligned. Many experts view the two groups as virtually interchangeable sets of violent militants, while others see the Taliban as more of a local movement.

Pro-Taliban muslims show the white-colored Taliban flag during an anti-US rally in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Experts also said it carries a host of risks and liabilities in a region of the world where U.S. influence is uneven and where ethnic and religious tensions are high.The area’s volatility was underscored

by Thursday’s suicide blast near the Indian embassy in Kabul, an attack that killed 12 and is likely to lead to suspicion in India that Pakistanis were involved.

A similar blast suicide near the Indian embassy last year claimed 60 and was linked to militants with ties to Pakistani intelligence.

The emphasis outlined Thursday could clear the way for an approach that would put U.S.-led forces in an arena where they have had the most success recently, in counterterrorism tactics aimed at alQaida.

In those operations, the military has used unmanned aircraft attacks and missile strikes to target al-Qaida operatives and outposts in the remote region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border – operations that do not involve significant troop support on the ground.

Critics argue that it is risky to build any strategy based on the idea that al-Qaida can be separated from an insurgency that has provided it with security and support for more than a decade. Some analysts see in the White House dogma the groundwork

for a limited strategy that stops short of the increase in troops that Obama’s commander in the field has requested.

Aides stress that Obama has not reached conclusions about the strategy review or troop levels.“The president has always evaluated our policy,”White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday, “based on those that pose a direct threat to attack our homeland or to attack our allies. Included in that group are any that would provide safe haven for those activities.”At the same time, Gibbs said that al-Qaida and the Taliban are “not the same type of group.”

“Al-Qaida is a global, transnational, jihadist movement that has conducted attacks on the United States homeland, conducted attacks on our allies, continues to plan, and has the intent and will to do so again,”he said.

The Taliban, meanwhile, is an“indigenous”movement located in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and includes elements that are “homegrown political actors with localized ambitions and concerns,”the senior administration official said.

“Are they violent adversaries? Yes,” the official wrote.“And we would not tolerate their return to power as they were before 9/11.”

WORLD

9 October 2009

9

Moon shot on target WASHINGTON – A NASA rocket crashed into the moon tonight,sending a huge plume of dust above the surface in an experimentscientists hope will provide data about ice hidden in the perpetuallydark lunar craters.Astronomers around the world were standing by to capture theimpact of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) into the moon’s Caebus crater at 1130 GMT. The rocket deliberately crashed into the moon at 9,000 kilometresper hour, kicking up a plume of dust that scientists hope to analysefor traces of water that they believe are abundant in the cold,shadowy craters.

The impact is designed to mimic that of the large, natural asteroids that slam into the moon several times a month. The NASA probe is targeting a 100-kilometre wide, 4-kilometre deep crater and is timed to strike when lighting conditions are ideal for observing the impact.The 585-kilogramme craft will hit the moon at about 9,000 kilometres per hour creating at impact crater about 2 metres deep.

Despite the concerns of some naysayers in the blogosphere, the moon will not be harmed by the event.“The impact has about a million times less impact on the moon than a passenger’s eyelash falling to the floor of a 747 during flight,”said Daniel Andrews, LCROSS project manager.

The total event – from impact until the dust settles – will last just 120 seconds, but scientists say the experiment will produce valuable information to be collected on nine instruments, including five

cameras that capture images in colour, thermal and near-infrared images.

Simultaneously, images of the impact will be captured by the companion Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter,a satellite now circling the moon,as well as the Hubble SpaceTelescope and terrestrial telescopes.The composition of the material kicked up by the impact will help scientists deduce whether water is present.

When seen from the ground with an amateur telescope,the dust cloud will amount to a dim shimmer across a shadow adjacent to the crater. NASA says the best way to watch is at the parties being hosted by astronomy societies or online at the NASA website.

Data from three deep-space missions late last month revealed that there are small, but widespread amounts of water across the entire surface of the moon.That announcement is seen as complementing, not preempting, the LCROSS mission.

Astronomers said before the impact that new data from 79-million- dollar LCROSS mission will complement the earlier findings because water is believed to be much more abundant in the craters.

The findings could aid future manned missions to the moon, which could establish long-term outposts.

NASA scientists said that it is possible for frozen water to have remained in the moon’s craters for billions of years, because the bottoms of the craters are never reached by sunlight and protect any ice from evaporation into the thin lunar atmosphere.

– DPA

Fear of Muslim backlash buries novel DUESSELDORF, GERMANY – A German publishing house has decided not to print a novel about an honor killing out of fear it could be read as an insult to Muslims.

Duesseldorf-based publishing house Droste said it had canceled the printing of a murder mystery because it contained anti-Islam passages that may have caused a backlash. Droste took the decision after Gabriele Brinkmann, the author of the book To Whom Honour is Due, refused to change several passages that defamed the Koran.

“We are a publishing house that for the past three generations has issued critical and educational books, Felix Droste, the head of the company, said in an interview with Berlin-based daily taz.A crime novel that defames Islam and contains xenophobic passages doesn’t fit our profile. I don’t publish books

that hurt the feelings of our fellow citizens. And much less would I do it for the mere provocation.”

Critics have accused the publisher of undermining free speech by backing down because of Islamist intimidation; Droste said his company has received threats from far-right groups accusing it of bowing to Islamists.

Brinkmann told German weekly Bild am Sonntag that she deemed it a scandal, that a publishing house is showing the white feather.

“What on earth is this all about, where are we here? We are in a free country,”she said.

Droste has linked the decision to the Prophet Mohammed cartoon row, which was prompted by a Danish newspaper’s decision to print a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban.

Reprints of the cartoons in 2006 triggered violent

Trial for 1999 honour killing LONDON, OCT. 9 – A Turkish immigrant killed his 15-year-old daughter in 1999 because she was having an affair with an older man, a British prosecutor said today.

“Mehmet Goren’s wife remained silent for years because she feared her husband,”Jonathan Laidlaw, the prosecuting lawyer told a jury in London’s Old Bailey. Mehmet Goren, 49, and his brothers,Ali, 55, and Cuma, 42, deny killing Tulay Goren, The Daily Mail reported.

Her father was angry because her boyfriend, Halil Unal, 31 at the time, was a Sunni while the Gorens were Turkish Kurds from the Alevi branch of Islam, Laidlaw said.

Tulay’s father was outraged and was filled with a sense that his reputation and that of his family had been destroyed, Laidlaw said.

Mehmet Goren’s wife, Hanim, recently told police her husband sent her and her three other children to stay with relatives after he brought Tulay home.

She never saw her daughter again but returned to find the garden had been dug up.

Tulay Goren’s body has never been found. Mehmet Goren was convicted in 2000 of assaulting Unal with an ax, an attack he survived.

– UPI

protests all over the world that killed more than 50 people. They also sparked a boycott of Danish products and attacks on Danish institutions in Muslim countries.

In Germany,a Berlin opera house in 2006 decided to cancel the Mozart show Idomeneo, which depicts the severed heads of mythical and religious figures,including Poseidon,Jesus,Buddha and the Prophet Mohammed.

Officials from the opera house feared outbursts of violence similar to those sparked by the Danish cartoon row. The cancellation caused uproar: German Chancellor Angela Merkel as well as Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who hosted the Islam Conference, harshly criticized the move.

This time, politicians have not yet commented on the decision to cancel the printing of the book.

CRITICS HAVE ACCUSED THE PUBLISHER OF UNDERMINING FREE SPEECH BY BACKING DOWN BECAUSE OF ISLAMIST INTIMIDATION; DROSTE SAID HIS COMPANY HAS RECEIVED THREATS FROM FAR-RIGHT GROUPS ACCUSING IT OF BOWING TO ISLAMISTS

– UPI

harder and harder, Mrs Symes said.

“She’ll be playing, then all of a sudden she’ll just go quiet and burst into tears.

“She’s asking us questions like `if she doesn’t eat she’s going to die isn’t she?”’

Alan Symes said they missed their daughter every second of every day.

“I love her to bits.The house is very empty without her.”

Police were urging anyone holding Aisling to drop her off at safe place such as a hospital so she could be returned to her parents, investigation head Inspector Gary Davey said.

“Our primary aim is to have Aisling returned to the safety of her family as soon as possible.”

He was still hopeful police could find Aisling alive.

“As every hour passes, her family, friends, police and members of her community become increasingly distressed.

“If she was returned safely to a safe place the chances of her survival are greatly improved.

“In short, if anyone knows where she is or who she is with, they need to return her to where she belongs or they need to contact us.”

Police still want to hear from an Asian woman in her 30s seen with Aisling on Longburn Rd shortly before she disappeared.

The woman was about 165cm tall with a medium

build and long straight black hair, wore a black crew neck top, with three-quarter length sleeves, threequarter length blue jeans, black leather sandals and black socks, and had a black and grey medium sized dog on a lead.

Aisling was wearing a green parka jacket or ski jacket, blue jeans embroidered with flowers, and white tennis shoes when she disappeared. NZPA WGT smc kn – NZPA Back to the front page

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11

All Whites ready for the ‘real deal’, says Herbert

By Robert Lowe of NZPA

AUCKLAND, OCT 9 – The All Whites are ready, coach Ricki Herbert declared today as they wrapped up their camp in Dubai ahead of the opening leg of their World Cup soccer qualifier in Bahrain.

He said he liked what he had seen from his 19-man squad after three days of preparations since they assembled in the Middle East.

The New Zealanders fly to Bahrain tomorrow and, after four years in charge, Herbert said the match at the National Stadium in Manama was “the real deal”.

“I see the glint in the eye,I sense the hunger,”he said.

“It’s important to see players in that frame of mind.There’s a real nice feeling.”

Herbert is due to name his starting 11 tomorrow and has the luxury of almost a full-strength squad at his disposal.

Skipper Ryan Nelsen, who sat out Blackburn’s 2-6 loss to Arsenal in the English premier league last weekend, was given the all-clear after a back injury yesterday.

Only goalkeeper Glen Moss, who is serving a suspension, is unavailable.

“We sit here,touch wood,48 hours out,with no issues in the squad and that’s an absolute first,”Herbert said.

“Apart from Glen Moss, we’re everywhere positional-wise that we wanted to be.

“We eased Ryan in and, to be fair, it’s taken 3-1/2 days to make sure that he’s going to be 100 percent.

“But his quality as a player, his strength of character and leadership, everything that he is going to bring to the side – I would have played him at under 100 percent.”

After four solid training sessions during the first two days in Dubai, the All Whites had a solitary afternoon run today to allow them time to recharge their batteries.

After they arrive in Bahrain, they will have one final session at the match venue.

Herbert said an advance party that included assistant coach Brian Turner and technical advisor Raul Blanco left for Manama today to ensure that all arrangements were in order.

“Once we hit the hotel, then it is kind of like lockdown,”he said.

“We want the players to go through their mental preparation.

“There will be a lot of tension.There’s a massive lot riding on it and we want them in the right zone when they cross the white line.”

Herbert said he was happy with the choice of a European referee, Hungarian Viktor Kassai,

because European officials were involved in toplevel matches on a regular basis.

He said it would be a case for his players of finding the balance between being rash and being conservative.

“We have to make sure we’re not putting anything at risk and making the referee make decisions,”he said.

“But there’s a lot up for grabs and we can’t afford to hold off either.”

Herbert was expecting few surprises in terms of the stadium or the playing surface.

While a partisan home crowd was in store,“it’s probably not as hostile as going into Saudi Arabia”, whom Bahrain beat to set up the showdown with the All Whites.

Herbert also pointed to New Zealand’s only successful World Cup qualifying campaign, which both he and Turner played in.

“In ‘81, our team loved nothing more than playing in front of 100,000 opposition fans,”he said.

“Sometimes it can be something that ignites the hunger that’s always inside a Kiwi person. I think it will be no different for this group.”

The return leg is in Wellington on November 14, with the winners of the tie earning a berth at the World Cup finals in South Africa next June and July.

ICON

Win underlines growing Canterbury dominance WELLINGTON, OCT 9 – Canterbury underlined their growing dominance of rugby’s Air NZ Cup and strengthened their grasp on the Ranfurly Shield with a 50-26 win over Manawatu in Christchurch tonight.

Apart from the opening few minutes, when Manawatu ignored the script to score an early try, Canterbury looked assured in racking up a dominant eight-try victory.

They were aided in no small part by the return of a swag of All Blacks, with props Wyatt Crockett and Owen Franks, lock Brad Thorn and blindside flanker Kieran Read all starting.

All Blacks Richie McCaw and first five-eighth Dan Carter began on the reserves bench, although McCaw was called into action after flanker Kieran Read left the field after just 20 minutes.

Carter only came on for the final 15min, and wasted barely 1min of that before crossing for Canterbury’s last try.

But it was Manawatu who struck first, catching Canterbury unawares after some elusive running from New Zealand under-20 captain and first fiveeighth Aaron Cruden.

Cruden ghosted through two defenders and timed his pass to Aaron James perfectly for the winger to cross after just 3min, with Isaac Thompson converting to give the visitors a surprise lead.

But that lead lasted all of 1min a minute before Read resumed normal service with a well-taken try on the counter-attack after an initial break from halfback Andy Ellis.

Tries to Sam Whitelock and winger Tu UmagaMarshall followed in quick succession as the competition leaders stretched out to a 19-7 lead after only 12min.

With Canterbury looking increasingly slick, and with a plentiful supply of quick turnover ball, Read picked up his second try to extend the lead to 26-7.

Manawatu ended the first half as they began, a try to lock James Goode after a period of concerted pressure finally breaking through Canterbury’s well-drilled defence as the southerners went into halftime 33-12 ahead.

Second-half tries followed for Canterbury to Ellis, Colin Slade and Carter as both teams ignored a kicking game in favour of running rugby.

Manawatu, who scored through Goode again midway through the second half, were rewarded in the closing minutes when substitute centre Tevita Taufui crossed for the bonus point try.

The win entrenched Canterbury’s position at the top of the table, with only two losses from 11 games while Manawatu, with three wins to their credit, lie 11th.

– NZPA

Rugby 7s confirmed for Olympics COPENHAGEN (DPA) – Golf and rugby sevens were admitted to the Olympics by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), while Jacques Roggee was reelected its president for a final four-year term on Friday.

The two sports will join the summer Games in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. Golf returns after 112 years, while rugby was played at the Olympics in 1924 in its 15-a-side version.

Both sports made 20-minute presentations to the IOC before a ballot approving their inclusion for the 2016 and 2020 Games.

Golf proposes a 72-hole strokeplay competition with 60 women and men each, while rugby plans a 12-team tournament for men and women.

Members voted 63-27 for golf, and 81-8 in favour of rugby.

Tiger Woods and some of the world’s leading golfers urged the IOC to include the sport on the Olympic programme.

Woods, who is playing at the President’s Cup in the United States, appeared in a video message in which he said it would be“an honour for anyone who plays this game to become an Olympian.”

Earlier Rogge was reelected for another four-year term as IOC president.

All but five of the 93 IOC members at the 121st IOC Session voted for the 67-year-old Belgian, who has been IOC president since 2001 and was unopposed for a final four-year term.

“You have paid me a great honour. Together we have achieved a lot,”said Rogge, who took over from Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch on July 16, 2001.

Rogge insisted on a secret ballot, even though he could have been reelected through acclamation as he was the only candidate. Rogge received 88 votes in his favour with one against.Three members abstained and one vote was invalid.

Four new members were elected to the IOC execu-

tive:Mario Pescante of Italy,Ser Miang Ng of Singapore, Craig Reedie of Britain and John Coates of Australia.

Pescante and Ng take take vacant posts as vicepresidents, joining Germany’s Thomas Bach and China’s Yu Zaiqing.

The Olympic body also re-elected its current assembly and accepted six new IOC members, bringing the total number of IOC members to 112.

Danish Crown Prince Frederik was among the new members, who also included Richard Peterkin of St Lucia, Habu Ahmed Gumel of Nigeria, Habib Abdul Nabi Macki of Oman, Lydia Nsekera of Burundi and Goran Petersson of Sweden.

There was praise for Rogge from Samaranch who said that thanks to the president’s leadership qualities the Olympics movement was stronger than ever.

“Your are a great president,”he said.

Rogge said there was “much more to do” in his final four-year term, and underlined the importance

of the new Youth Olympic Games, which will debut in Singapore in August, followed by the Youth Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck in 2012.

“We will take this initiative from infancy to maturity and leave a lasting legacy for the world’s youth,”he said.

“We will be staunch allies for athletes. We will continue to lead the fight against doping, and we will establish a new independent monitoring body to combat irregular betting and match fixing.

“We will narrow the gap in sport between the developed and the developing worlds; and between men and women.

“We will redouble our efforts to place sport at the service of mankind – to inspire young and old alike; to give athletes the opportunity to lead by example; and promote the Olympic values of fair play, respect, solidarity and the pursuit of excellence.”

– DPA

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WEEKEND

9 October 2009

13

TV & Film

Couples Retreat

0Cast: Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau, Malin Akerman 0Director: Peter Billingsley 0Lenth: 104 minutes 0Rated PG-13 (for language, sexual innuendo, adult themes)

A Serious Man

0Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick 0Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen 0Rated: R (for strong language, nudity) 0Lenght: 105 minutes We’ve come to expect drollery and eccentricity from Joel and Ethan Coen.With works like Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing and the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men, the filmmakers have specialized in ruthlessly comic, often mercilessly bleak anatomies of the foibles of ordinary men.

What is much less expected is the humanity and emotion that comes pouring out of the comedydrama A Serious Man, the brothers’ 14th feature film. This portrait of a university professor under extreme duress has the shaggy-dog storytelling elasticity of Barton Fink, the gorgeously stark visual compositions that propelled Fargo and a supporting cast – a la O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Big Lebowski – populated by hilariously off-kilter oddballs. But this time the Coens wed their singular style to an intellectual probity and moral purpose.

It’s the best film of their careers.

The movie begins with an elusive prologue, spoken entirely in subtitled Yiddish, set in 19th-century Eastern Europe, where a man announces to his wife that he has invited a new friend to his cottage, only to have his wife react with terror.The man in question died two years ago, and thus a ghost must be on his way to visit. Once the opening credits roll, this strange fable is never again referenced. But it seems to encapsulate everything the Coens are reckoning with in A Serious Man, about the struggle against chaotic forces larger than us, and our hapless search for meaning in all that chaos.

Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a university professor about to come up for tenure. He has a wife and two children and a house in the Minneapolis suburbs, circa the late 1960s. All at once, though, everything seems to go to pot. His brother (Richard Kind) has moved in with him, a squealing fussbudget who spends most of the time in the bathroom draining a cyst on his neck.A student (David Kang) attempts to bribe him to raise his grade, and then starts blackmailing him when he refuses to accept the bribe. The ultimate indignity: His wife (Sari Lennick) announces that she’s leaving him for a touchy-feely widower named Sy (Fred Melamed), who wants Larry to move out of the family home and into a hotel.

Even if it weren’t steeped in Jewish iconography and references, it would be fairly obvious that A Serious Man functions as a contemporary retelling of the Book of Job, with Larry as the stoically suffering hero who clings to his faith as the screws tighten all around him. The Coens have great fun piling abuses upon this poor schlep, who must also contend with a neighbor (Peter Breitmayer) trying to build a shed too close to the property line, a potaddled young son (Aaron Wolff) who wants nothing more than for Dad to climb on the roof and fix the aerial antennae and another neighbor (Amy Landecker) who sunbathes in the nude, unconsciously taunting our hero.

Yet just at the moment when A Serious Man might have tipped over into snide mockery, it takes a glorious leap into the unknown. Larry’s friends urge him to “go see the rabbi”to make sense of his problems. He ends up going to three, who, in their own unique and very funny ways, lay out three different philosophies of faith, all equally unsatisfying to Larry. It’s here that the Coens indulge in some of the most playful and inventive flourishes (watch

out for the long anecdote involving a dentist who discovers a message in one of his patient’s teeth). But these scenes also find the Coens driving straight to the complex theme of the film:What does it mean to be a faithful Jew surrounded mostly by Christians in a fundamentally secular society?

Holding all of these sometimes heady notions together is Stuhlbarg, a stage actor who manages to make Larry extremely likable even in his passivity. It helps, too, that the Coens (who grew up in Minnesota, the sons of a university professor) are

YET JUST AT THE MOMENT WHEN A SERIOUS MAN MIGHT HAVE TIPPED OVER INTO SNIDE MOCKERY, IT TAKES A GLORIOUS LEAP INTO THE UNKNOWN clearly speaking from the heart in a way that they never have before.

A Serious Man most brings to mind the raging satire and philosophy of Philip Roth, especially his classic story collection Goodbye, Columbus (one of A Serious Man’s most memorable images, featuring Larry standing on the roof of his house, is a direct crib from Roth’s story The Conversion of the Jews). Just like Roth, the Coens draw on both autobiography and a range of Jewish storytelling traditions – vaudeville, borscht belt, spoken ghost tales – to conjure up something original and resonant: a deeply serious comedy.

Watch the trailer

– By Christopher Kelly

Whenever Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau get a scene all to themselves in “Couples Retreat” (like a sequence in which they debate whether the act of fantasizing is tantamount to cheating on your wife), the movie’s energy suddenly spikes, the dialogue becomes faster and punchier, and you remember how naturally funny and combustible these longtime friends are when they’re together. They’re so comfortable and familiar with each other, they seem to forget the camera is trained on them.

As actors, Vaughn and Favreau spontaneously bring out the best in the other, the way they did in their indelible debut “Swingers” and their lesser (but still worthy) follow-up “Made.” But going by the merits of “Couples Retreat,” the duo should not be allowed to collaborate on a mainstream comedy again – like, “ever.”

It is unreasonable to expect Vaughn and Favreau to maintain their “Swingers” personas forever (although Vaughn struck a nice compromise in “The Break-Up” and “Wedding Crashers”), and it is understandable that at this point in their lives – middle-aged, successful (Favreau is now an A-list director after “Iron Man”) and comfortable – they’d be more inclined to write about adult relationships, marriage and raising families.

But “Couples Retreat” proves they were better – or at least funnier – when they were poor, unknown and hungry.

The premise of “Couples Retreat” – four couples who buy a group vacation package to a paradisiacal South Pacific island discover marriage counseling is a mandatory part of the resort’s daily activities – isn’t bad on a conceptual level. The joke is that three of the couples, who believe their relationships are rock-solid, discover gigantic fissures in their presumably iron-clad bonds (the fourth couple, played by Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell, is the one that cooks up the trip with the intent of saving their marriage, only to discover it may be too late).

But after a promising set-up, “Couples Retreat” gradually succumbs to all the worst cliches of Hollywood romantic comedies, arriving at a cornier-than-Karo-syrup conclusion that argues no matter what difficulties a marriage faces, they can be overcome with a night of drinks and dancing in which the partners learn to enjoy each other’s company. Cue the happily-ever-after music.

Although the characters are written as ordinary, middleclass Americans who have to plan careful budgets in order to retile the family kitchen, “Couples Retreat” constantly reveals itself to be the work of rich, insulated celebrities whose lives bear little resemblance to ours. Forget the fact that only rich people can afford to mend their relationships in five-star resorts in Bora Bora, or even that the film manages to make the great Jean Reno, as the resort’s reigning self-help guru, boring for the first time in his career. By the time “Couples Retreat” devotes five minutes of screen time to an endless scene in which Vaughn plays “Guitar Hero” – arguably the most blatant and disruptive bit of product placement to ever grace a Hollywood film – the movie has become something close to vile.

The only thing that elevates “Couples Retreat” above bottom-of-the-barrel dregs like “The Ugly Truth” or “All About Steve” is its cast, who are too talented not to generate laughs even when stranded in a movie as banal and lame as this one.

Bateman’s slow-burn indignation when things don’t go his way, Vaughn’s whiny tantrum about a tiny scrape on his knee that he claims is a shark bite or Favreau’s session with a beautiful masseuse (“I have a lot of tension in my upper thighs”) are all undeniably funny. Favreau is particularly good, conveying his character’s dissatisfaction with his marriage via a perpetual, vague grumpiness (“You sound like Chewbacca,” he tells a bellhop whose accent he can’t understand).

– By Rene Rodriguez

REVIEWS

14

9 October 2009

Music

Top 40 radio is back on top kind of contrary to what people say they want, but it always works.”

But beyond the general criticism of Top 40 – that We don’t know yet whether Lady Gaga is the Syl- it represents what’s easy, comfortable and familiar, via of 2009, destined to be remembered only when rather than what’s going to move music forward – today’s listeners play dinner-party trivia games there have been periods in recent decades when the asking for the names of her Top 40 hits. record charts turned off significant portions of the But we do know, without looking it up, that Syl- populace by being too thick with boy bands, rappers via sang“Pillow Talk”and that Ms. Gaga represents or chest-pounding Canadian divas. a musical genre – the Top 40 – that is once again Today’s Top 40, by contrast, is a musical masala, drawing attention for its diversity, its ubiquity and mixing rock, country, hip-hop and commercial its cultural stickiness. balladry, a close analog to how it was in the 1970s Radio stations that play what’s most popular heyday. are on the upswing, even as the charts are growIs it embarrassingly overburdened by the use of ing musically diverse again, a sort of long-distance Auto-Tune vocal processing? Yes. Do the rock and dedication to the similarly inclusive 1970s golden rap tunes lean toward the bubble gum side of those era of Top 40. genres? Of course.

This past summer has seen records set for most But the top 10 alone for the week of Oct. 10 feaconsecutive weeks at No. 1 by a single artist (Black tures the Peas, a hip-hop group; Miley Cyrus, a DisEyed Peas,“Boom Boom Pow” and “I Gotta Feel- ney product; Gaga, a dance chanteuse/performance ing”) and most consecutive weeks for one song artist;Taylor Swift, a country singer; Mariah Carey, a on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (Jason Mraz,“I’m veteran balladeer; and Kings of Leon, a rock band.

Yours”).

The only thing missing is a flat-out novelty song.

Meanwhile, Casey Kasem, the link between count- Who will step up and serve as the Ray Stevens (“The downs past and present, retired during the summer Streak”) of the new millennium? from the specialty countdown shows he was still “It’s a broad range of music, just like the ‘70s,”says emceeing. Ryan Seacrest is the “American Top 40” Sean“Hollywood”Hamilton, who hosts radio shows host today’s target audience of teens and young in New York and Los Angeles and the syndicated adults will remember.

“Weekend Top 30”countdown.

The Top 40 has never gone away, of course. By “We’re very bullish on Top 40 right now,”says Julie definition, it reflects what’s popular, and something Talbott, executive vice president of affiliate marketalways is popular, whether you like it or not. ing for Premiere Radio, syndicator of“American Top “You play the hits.You play ‘em to death. A lot 40 with Ryan Seacrest”and scads of other talk and of people object to that, but the masses listen to it,” music programs. says B. Eric Rhoads, publisher of Radio Ink, a radio “From (ratings) book to book, we’ve seen sizindustry trade publication. able increases, sometimes up to 17 percent” for “We’ve done loads and loads of research over the Top 40 formats, Talbott says. “Within specific years.You’d go into a focus group, someone would markets, we’re seeing room for additional Top 40 say,‘You play the music too frequently and I’m sick stations.”InsideRadio.com lists 944 U.S. stations of it.’And yet when you create a format that does playing Top 40 or the similar Hot Adult Contemexactly what they say they want, they won’t listen porary formats as of September, up from 879 a year to it.What’s magical about the Top 40 format is it’s earlier.

By Steve Johnson Chicago Tribune

We could debate quality, contend that the Black Eyed Peas aren’t Gladys Knight and Kings of Leon aren’t Lynyrd Skynyrd. But then we’d have to admit that adults of the 1970s probably said Knight and Skynyrd didn’t measure up to Chuck Berry and Fats Domino.

“It’s actually probably in the best, most cohesive shape it’s been in in 10 years,”says radio consultant Sean Ross, vice president of music and programming for Edison Research.

“There is probably a ton of virally generated music that Top 40 programmers know nothing about. But those kids (listening to those songs) have self-selected themselves out of the radio audience, and the kids who are left are the ones who are happy to listen to Pink and Kelly Clarkson with their moms.”

TODAY’S TOP 40,

BY CONTRAST, IS A MUSICAL MASALA, MIXING ROCK, COUNTRY, HIP-HOP AND COMMERCIAL BALLADRY, A CLOSE ANALOG TO HOW IT WAS IN THE 1970S HEYDAY Apple Inc. has played a prominent role in the re-emergence of a more broad-based pop universe, partly because digital music buyers pay for singles rather than albums, partly because a mass, digital marketplace is a counterweight to radio’s tendency to follow industry fads as much as fan taste.

“When we began including digital downloads in early 2005, it reinvigorated the charts like nothing I’ve ever seen before,”says Silvio Pietroluongo, director of charts for Billboard.“Once we introduced downloads, the consumer voice once again became a huge part of the chart.”

Ross agrees and adds the TV-and-music jugger-

naut“American Idol”to the list of major influencers.

“Idol”launched hit-makers with crossover appeal, he says. He cites “Idol” winner Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone,”a single from a 2004 record, as a key moment:“That helped make it much more of a pop world, in terms of being the first record in a while that other formats were jealous of,”Ross says.

Another significant hit this summer, Ross contends, was“Boom Boom Pow.”“It represents what’s happening in terms of dance music and R&B and pop converging,”he says.

At WXLC-FM in Lake County, Ill., north of Chicago, the format is the sort of adult Top 40, known in the industry as“Hot AC”or“Modern AC.” The difference, says program director Haynes Johns, is that his station targets people 21 and older, while pure Top 40 radio includes teenagers as well.

“My analogy would be, ‘It’s like an amoeba,’” Johns says.“It’s always changing depending on the product that’s out there.”

By skewing more to adults, the station has more options to pick and choose from, but he says positive music is doing particularly well these days.

“People are looking for something to take their mind off their troubles,”Johns says.“ ‘Now that you mention it’” – referring to the Black Eyed Peas’ party anthem “I Gotta Feeling” – “ ‘I am going to have a good time tonight.’Remember when ‘Celebration’came out from Kool & The Gang? We couldn’t play it enough.”

WDVD-FM in Detroit has been successful with a similar format, morning man Blaine Fowler says.

A lot has changed about the music business, he says: “My kids are 13 and 11, and I think between the two of them, they own three CDs. They buy songs instead of albums.”

But one thing remains true:“You’ve still got to play the hits.”

And there is, in radio, one other enduring truth to consider:What’s working now probably won’t a few years from now. And we’ll all be wondering,“What has happened to the Top 40?”

REVIEWS

9 October 2009

NEW CD RELEASES Mika

0The Boy Who Knew Too Much 0Casablanca No need to add any sweetener to your morning coffee while listening to Mika. He’ll provide all the sugar you need, and then some.The Beirutborn, London-based pop star, who made himself known with the 2007 hit“Grace Kelly,” continues on his candy-colored way on his follow-up to his aptly titled “Life in Cartoon Motion.”“Who gives a damn about the family you come from, you’ll give it up when you’re young and you want some!”he enthuses on the ebullient opener,“We Are Golden,” which, typically, embeds serious thoughts about coming-of-age identity issues in irresistible hooks.

As with his debut, the transparent influences are Queen and Elton John.And throughout, Mika – who was born Michael Penniman, and shares a surname (and a flamboyance) with Little Richard – is as glammy as he wants to be, with occasional quiet moments at the piano like “By the Time” to catch his breath.And it’s no wonder he needs to: Bouncing around on Mika’s aural trampoline for a full album is an exhausting experience.

– Dan DeLuca

Girls

0Album 0Fantasy Trash Can The boys in Girls are San Franciscans J.R. White and Christopher Owens, and it’s the latter’s life story – raised in a Children of God cult that sometimes forced his mother into prostitution – that is the hook on which the indie media mania for the band’s debut album is hung.

It’s the California fuzz-pop songs on “Album,” however, that make the backstory immaterial, if not irrelevant.There’s a Beach Boys-on-Quaaludes wooziness and a wholly impressive dedication to classic pop songcraft to the whole “Album,” and Owens’ troubled-soul directness gets right to the point.“I wish I had a father, then maybe I would have turned out right,” he sings on the giddy lo-fi opener (and Iggy Pop nod) “Lust for Life.”And though the album’s centerpiece,“Hellhole Ratrace,” might sound like a sad song on paper, in practice it’s a gloriously life-affirming salvo of unhurried noise-pop. Excellent“Album.”

– D.D.

The Mountain Goats

0The Life of the World to Come 04AD The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle is an expert in dysfunctional relationships, whether it be within the alpha couple of Tallahassee and other albums, or his own with his stepfather on “The Sunset Tree.” For “The Life of the World to Come,”he tackles an even bigger relationship: the spiritual crises of a doubtful believer (or maybe a believing doubter). In insistent, often understated tunes (mostly an acoustic guitar trio, sometimes laced with strings or piano), Darnielle struggles with faith, mortality, and salvation.

“You were a presence full of light upon this earth, and I am a witness to your life and to its worth,” Darnielle murmurs. The song is a heartbreakingly vivid and poetic depiction of dealing with a friend’s terminal cancer that skirts being maudlin even when it turns:“It’s three days later when I get the call, and there’s nobody around to break my fall.”

It’s called “Matthew 25:21,”and that it and all the other songs are tied to Bible verses only deepens what are already complex emotions.

– Steve Klinge

15

Books

Retracing the steps of Stanley to find a failed state Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart 0Tim Butcher 0Grove Press (361 pages, 25).

The Congo River is 2,900 miles in length and could be the highway to the future for the 67 million Congolese and tens of millions in neighboring countries.

But today it represents one of Earth’s last frontiers.

Only the most intrepid venture onto the river or into the interior of this impoverished wasteland known as the Democratic Republic of Congo, a land that has gone from shaky post-colonial state to a primitive, almost impassible jungle.

Henry Morton Stanley, the Welsh-born American journalist reporting for the New York Herald and London Telegraph, was the first to traverse the river through the heart of Africa in 1877, a 999-day journey in which two thirds of his 300 member party died en route. Tim Butcher, the Telegraph’s Africa correspondent from earlier in this decade, decided to retrace his steps – with some assists from international charities, which made available motorbikes and drivers, and the U.N. mission, which let him hitch a ride on chartered vessels. He spent 44 days and lived to tell about it.

This is travelogue at its best, but so much more: Those who care about the fate of Africa, who want to see the continent prosper, should read this book to grasp the immensity of the problems of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Fifty years ago, the journey would have been relatively easy, for Belgium, the colonial power, left a relatively efficient system of steamboats on the navigable stretches and rail transport where it was impassable.Today, the only way to follow the course of the river is by motorbike along rough and pitted dirt roads, pirogue or dugout canoe, and, if you’re lucky, on U.N. boats. Butcher calls it“ordeal travel.”

After traversing Katanga province, where Mai Mai tribesmen at the time were routinely sacking and burning villages, leaving devastation in their wake, he arrives in Kasongo, the first major stop on the journey, to receive an incredulous greeting from a Kenyan employed by Care International.“Well you must be as crazy as Stanley,” says aid worker Tom Nyamwaya.“God knows what they would have done to you if they caught you ... I would not travel anywhere in this country except by plane.You would have to be mad to go out there into the bush.”But like so many other aid workers, all of whom Butcher contacted in advance,Tom provides him motorbikes and drivers for the onward journey.

The Congo he crosses is a completely failed state.

At the first village where they overnight, his driver tells him the village chief“welcomes us, and is sorry but there is no food to offer ... he said the Mai Mai passed through here a few days ago and they took all the food before they left ...”

There is no almost public transport, and often no private transport. Everywhere he goes, people live in abject poverty and fear of gunmen from unknown quarters. More than a few older Congolese are nostalgic for the Belgians.This is astonishing when one recalls that King Leopold laid claim to the country in 1885 with the aid of the same Henry Stanley, then ran the country as a private property, until human rights campaigners in Europe and the United States shamed Belgium into taking control.

In Ubundu, at the top of Stanley Falls, where Butcher arrives via pirogue, a Roman Catholic priest provides lodging for a night but begs him to leave quickly, fearing the Mai Mai.“This is a terrible place where terrible things happen.You really must leave before they find you,” says Father Adalbert Mwehu Nzuzi.

In Kisangani, the L’hotel Pourquoi Pas – where Katherine Hepburn stayed when filming“The Afri-

can Queen” in the 1950s – is now “a broken ruin, home to scores of squatters who sleep on the bare floor next to walls stained with damp.”

A hawker jumps on the UN barge Butcher hitched a ride on for 600 miles from Kisangani towards Kinshasa. “A boat like this is our only chance to earn any money,”said Jerome Bilole, 36.

“My village is like a community from the olden times, when people did not have clothes to wear.

Your boat is our only lifeline.”

In a village of Mutshaliko, along the way, the local administrative secretary bemoans the gunmen who “come from time to time and take everything...we don’t know where they come from or who they are fighting for. They just take our chickens and our goats and cassava and then leave.”

Speaking of cassava, the staple of the jungle village, Butcher recalls toying “with a marble sized piece (of cassava), struggling to overcome a gag reflex brought on by the rotting cheese smell and wallpaper-paste texture.”

But for the“ordeal traveler,”the greater the challenge, the greater the reward.

“High on the Congo there were no helicopters to summon, no rescue teams to call on. I felt very alone.

But instead of being overwhelmed by helplessness, I found it liberating,”he writes.That may be the zen of it for Butcher; for a reader, his tribulation illuminates the journey, the traveler, and most important the plight of that benighted land.

– By Roy Gutman

LeBron James scores with Shooting Stars Shooting Stars

0LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger 0The Penguin Press (258 pages, $26.95) Will he or won’t he? If you’re a Knicks fan (I’m assuming there are a few left), it’s a question that’s probably been gnawing at you.The“he”in question is LeBron“King”James, arguably the best basketball player in history not named Michael Jordan. James is a free agent after this season, and NBA followers are wondering if he will re-up with the Cleveland Cavaliers or come to New York and revive the fortunes of a hapless franchise.

James has proved his value as the best all-around player in the NBA. He’s also the anti-Kobe – likable, gracious, even humble. In Shooting Stars, James, with a big-time assist from Vanity Fair contributor Buzz Bissinger, looks back to his high school days in Akron, Ohio.You’ll learn a lot about the player and his hard times as the son of a single, working-class mother, but what distinguishes the memoir is how James turns the spotlight on his teammates.

James got all the attention as the star player for St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, and Shooting Stars is his way of giving thanks to the supporting cast. Like James, they were hardscrabble kids, some from broken homes, others trying to escape bad neighborhoods.Those kids met on a youth basketball league team and forged a bond. If James was destined for fame, the sparkplug of the team was “Little”Dru Joyce, the coach’s son. Little Dru was small but an aggressive playmaker who never backed down. (He once scored seven straight threepointers in 10 minutes.)

Little Dru and his teammates joined James at St. Vincent-St. Mary, and the players’decision sparked controversy:The school was predominantly white, and there were charges that James and his mates

turned their back on Akron’s black community.

James brushed aside such misgivings, and began a remarkable run with his mates, dubbing themselves the“Fab Five.”

St.Vincent-St. Mary began to get national attention, as did James, who, at 17, appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated. But when his mother began driving a $50,000 Hummer (secured with a legitimate loan), folks began to whisper. Was James on the take from college boosters? (He wasn’t.) More controversy ensued when he accepted two free T-shirts from a sporting goods store, leading to a two-game ban. James vigorously rebuts the allegations, and it’s hard to not conclude he was being nickeled and dimed.

None of this deterred James from his desire to win a national championship for St. Vincent-St. Mary. He succeeded, but the victory brought its own bittersweet consequences.“The Fab Five never did play a game of basketball again after winning the national championship,” James muses.“But ... what we ultimately brought to the city of Akron cannot be diminished, nor can the pride.”James now makes millions and is the face of the NBA, but in his soul, there will always be a place for Akron and his shooting stars.

– By Matthew Price

Willing to try anything The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life As An Experiment 0A.J. Jacobs 0Simon & Schuster (256 pages, $25)

Bookstores and movie screens are full lately with stories of regular people who have taken up some offbeat activity for a year – cooking Julia Child’s recipes, spending no money, traveling the world eating, praying and loving.

For his two previous books, expert experimenter and Esquire magazine editor at large A.J. Jacobs read through the Encyclopedia Britannica in a year and spent another following the rules of the Bible (stoning an adulterer is harder than it used to be, he discovered).

His latest book is a collection of pieces detailing some of his most notable – also strange and hilarious – short-term projects.They include: outsourcing most of his life to India; posing naked for a photo shoot at the behest of Mary-Louise Parker; living according to the civility rules of George Washington and trying to tell the absolute, brutal truth in every situation.

“If I’d removed my filter in every single situation – instead of 90 percent of the time – I probably would have gotten beaten up, fired, and divorced,” he admits about the“Radical Honesty”experiment.

The nine stories reveal an everyman who is willing to try just about anything and doesn’t even try to gloss over his foibles.Witty self-deprecation is Jacobs’ bread,butter and jam,and his attempts to correct (or at least confront) his flaws drive the action.

Some of the chapters are more entertaining than others. Jacobs’ posing as his gorgeous nanny on an Internet dating site makes for better reading than his efforts to think rationally at all times.

Some experiments could serve as public-service projects, such as the writer’s attempt to excise multitasking from his life after he got into a car accident while listening too intently to an audiobook. He vows to spend a month doing only one thing at a time, but the plan is easier vowed than done:“This is awful. I feel like my brain has entered a school zone and has to slow down to 25 mph.”

The experiment that should earn the most applause involves Jacobs’extremely long-suffering wife Julie, who would like her husband to spend a year giving her foot massages. Instead he decides to do whatever she wants for a month. His wife “jumped for joy,”Jacobs writes.“I’m not speaking metaphorically.”

– By Hannah Sampson

HEALTH

16

9 October 2009

Adult stem cell breakthrough in liver disease

By Mark Johnson Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MILWAUKEE – In a fresh demonstration of science’s new-found ability to alter the basic units of human life, researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin have turned the cells in adult human skin into those in the liver,work that opens new avenues for treating diseases of the liver without relying on organ transplants.

Professor and stem cell researcher Stephen A. Duncan and other scientists in his lab reported this week in the journal Hepatology that they have created reprogrammed mouse liver cells that were identical to those grown in nature and were able to integrate and grow alongside those in an actual mouse liver.

Duncan and his fellow researchers also showed that human liver cells made through reprogramming are virtually the same as those grown from embryonic stem cells, though both appear to differ from adult liver cells in one respect. Those grown with reprogrammed or embryonic stem cells in the lab had fewer of the enzymes that fulfill the liver’s function of filtering out toxins than adult liver cells that have developed in the body.

The Medical College experiments, which represent roughly 2½ years of work, also showed that scientists have a reliable and efficient method of turning primitive cells into liver cells, a finding that could offer pharmaceutical companies promising opportunities to test drugs and provide researchers with a window that will allow them to observe liver diseases progress at the cellular level.

The cells the scientists made are called hepatocytes and make up about 70 percent of all the cells in the liver.

“You can now make hepatocytes from individuals with a liver disease. Then you can start screening for drugs and molecular approaches to reverse the disease or treat the disease,”Duncan said.

Karim Si-Tayeb, a post-doctoral researcher in Duncan’s lab who worked on the project, said it may still be five to 10 years before liver cells made using reprogramming are “clinical grade” and approved for use in people. But he and Duncan envision the possibility that liver cells made in the lab can be injected into an unhealthy liver and replace cells damaged by disease.

Much of the mouse work for the new paper was done by Fallon Noto, a graduate student in Duncan’s lab.

“It’s really very impressive. Only a few elite labs in the world have done what Duncan’s lab has done,” said Kenneth Zaret, associate director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Zaret was not involved in the research.

Duncan’s team had hoped to become the first group to provide published evidence that reprogramming could be used to make liver cells, but two other groups have succeeded in making liver cells in this manner. Chinese scientists published their results in late September, and this week a group led

by Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut published similar work online.

However, the Medical College work in both human and mouse cells suggests treatment strategies right out of the pages of science fiction. For example, both Duncan and Si-Tayeb talked about the possibility of growing livers in mice that contain mostly human cells.

DUNCAN’S TEAM HAD HOPED TO BECOME THE FIRST GROUP TO PROVIDE PUBLISHED EVIDENCE THAT REPROGRAMMING COULD BE USED TO MAKE LIVER CELLS, BUT TWO OTHER GROUPS HAVE SUCCEEDED IN MAKING LIVER CELLS IN THIS MANNER

“I could make a mouse that has your liver.That’s incredibly valuable,”Duncan said.

Such a technique would help doctors solve the problems created by drugs that are generally safe but in a small number of people have devastating side effects.

In theory, here’s how the procedure would work: Scientists would take a skin biopsy from you and reprogram the cells back to the embryonic state, then coax them into becoming liver cells. They would then inject these liver cells into a mouse’s liver until most of the mouse’s liver was made up of your cells. Before they gave a drug to you they would give it to the mouse, which has a liver very similar to yours. If the drug harmed the mouse’s liver, doctors would know not to use it on you.

Since some drugs have very serious side effects in a small percentage of patients, this technique would allow scientists to create a model of your liver in a mouse, then use that specific mouse to determine whether a drug will be safe for you.

Duncan’s team also will be looking to build on the new work by collecting skin cells from patients with liver diseases and reprogramming them into liver cells. Diseases they hope to examine using this method include mature onset diabetes of the young (MODY), mutations that affect cholesterol levels and hypercholesterolemia, a metabolic problem that can contribute to diseases.

The Medical College work also could one day help people whose livers have been damaged by hepatitis C, alcohol or large amounts of certain drugs. Such ailments could be addressed by the injection of healthy liver cells to replace those that have been damaged or destroyed.

Treatment can allow birth despite dangerous disorder

By John Fauber Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MILWAUKEE – It’s a decision that an expecting mother should never have to make: Abort your unborn child and save your own life or deliver the baby and face possible death a few days later.

Those were the awful choices facing Terrilyn Priessnitz a few weeks after she became pregnant with her first child earlier this year.

Priessnitz, 36, developed shortness of breath in March and a short time later was told she had pulmonary hypertension, an often fatal lung disorder.

Along with the diagnosis came a terrible statistic: Women with pulmonary hypertension who give birth face up to a 50 percent chance of dying shortly after the baby is born.The usual recommendation is to abort the pregnancy.

“It was hard, the thought of ending it,”Priessnitz said from her bed at Aurora Sinai Medical Center, a few days before she gave birth last week.“Either I have this baby or there are no babies.”

Medical literature is replete with warnings about the combination of pulmonary hypertension and pregnancy.

The combination is so dangerous that women with the condition are advised to be sterilized.

Not found in the published annals of medicine is an aggressive treatment devised by a Milwaukee doctor that may allow women like Priessnitz to safely deliver their babies.

The protocol developed by cardiologist Dianne Zwicke, who practices at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center, now has been used on 45 pregnant women with pulmonary hypertension, mostly in Milwaukee, all of whom survived along with their babies.

The treatment, which involves timing the delivery with the condition of the heart, could have worldwide implications for women with the disease. At least 100,000 people are known to have pulmonary hypertension in the U.S. and women are more than twice as likely as men to have it.

The key to the protocol is to constantly use ultrasound to monitor the condition of the right ventricle, the chamber of the heart that pumps blood

into the lungs.Those echocardiograms are used to determine when to induce birth, although Zwicke does not allow the women to go beyond 36 weeks.

The women also receive IV diuretics to drain excess fluids, and are given other drugs. They are admitted to cardiac intensive care immediately after the baby is born and stay there for at least three days.

Doctors familiar Zwicke’s protocol warned that while it is promising, it is too preliminary to recommend it to women who are deciding whether to give birth.

“The risk is unacceptably high even if it (mortality) is only 10 percent,”Uri Elkayam, a professor of cardiology and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Southern California School of Medicine.“If you continue the pregnancy and deliver, you can die.”

Elkayam did successfully use Zwicke’s approach on a couple of patients, but cautioned that Zwicke’s research is unpublished and has not been rigorously reviewed. It addition, it represents a series of case

reports mostly from one hospital, not the experience of several doctors with large numbers of patients from a variety of institutions.

Pulmonary hypertension, which has several known causes but often develops for unknown reasons, is a condition in which the blood pressure is abnormally elevated in the pulmonary artery, the major vessel taking blood from the heart to the lungs. Priessnitz’s pulmonary hypertension was caused by an autoimmune disease that formed blood clots in her lungs. While most of the larger clots have been dissolved, Priessnitz will be on blood thinners for the rest of her life.

The condition makes the heart work harder, a workload that becomes even greater because of the demands of pregnancy and giving birth.

Published reports place the maternal death rate at 30 percent to 56 percent, usually within 10 days of delivery.

Even for those who don’t become pregnant the disease has no cure and the overall survival rate is poor, traditionally about three years from the

onset of symptoms. However, several promising new treatments have become available in recent years and some people now can live with the disorder for 15 to 20 years.A lung or heart-lung transplant may be the only option for some patients.

Zwicke said that in addition to the women she has treated here, she also has consulted on several cases in other countries, all 45 with the same outcome: survival of the mother and baby. Still, she said, her approach should not be used to assure women that they can safely deliver their babies.At the same, she said she does not tell women they have to terminate their pregnancy.

“If you read the literature, it says you should abort,” she said.“(But) what good am I to walk in and say,‘You have to abort?’“ It was only a year ago that Zwicke presented her findings at a national meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians. Hundreds of specialists were in the audience and many wrongfully thought she was saying that her approach could be safely applied to women all over the country, said Gerald O’Brien, a pulmonologist with the Christiana Care Health System in Wilmington, Del. “She was attacked,” O’Brien said.“A lot of specialists were saying you shouldn’t even imply this.”

Even knowing Zwicke’s promising results, the decision for Priessnitz was difficult. Eighteen to 20 weeks into the pregnancy, she waffled between terminating it and continuing.

“I was a mess,” said her husband, Daniel Bauer.

“I didn’t know what to think.”

Priessnitz, of Racine, Wis., said she was encouraged by Zwicke’s research so she continued with the pregnancy.

“It could have been that’s what I wanted to hear,” she said.“She (Zwicke) said I’ll tell you if I think you should end this.”

On Oct. 5, about 36 weeks into her pregnancy, Priessnitz was induced.

Finally, about 4 a.m. Oct. 6, a cesarean section was performed and 5-pound, 9-ounce Braden Bauer was born.

Zwicke said late last week that mother and child were doing well.

SCIENCE/TECH 17

9 October 2009

There’s no perfect way to back up your hard drive

By Troy Wolverton San Jose Mercury News

If there’s one thing to keep in mind about computers, it’s this: Hard drives fail.

I relearned that lesson recently when one of my laptop’s external hard drives stopped working and then my 4-year-old iPod died.

Fortunately, the failures weren’t disastrous. I had recently moved all my personal media from the external drive that failed to a newer, smaller one.

That new hard drive also has copies of the music and photos I had on my iPod. Still, the drive failures left me worried because I could have lost irreplaceable photos and videos of my kids, as well as much of my music library.

The external drive that failed had the only recent backup copy of my laptop’s internal hard drive. My new external drive is now the only functioning one on which I have stored most of my pictures, videos and music; those files aren’t backed up elsewhere.

Some of my other documents and data are now preserved only on an external hard drive that’s even older than the one that failed.

So I’ve been struggling to figure out how to back up my data. But picking the right solution hasn’t been easy.

I basically have three options – another external hard drive, a network-attached drive or an online backup service. None of those options is ideal.

The easiest solution would be to buy another external drive. I could get a portable hard drive with a capacious 1 terabyte of storage space for about $200.

But with two functioning external drives and one broken one already occupying space on my desk, I’m loath to buy yet another one. External drives are little better than paperweights if they aren’t plugged into your computer.You can’t access any

of the data on them and you can’t back anything up to them.

That’s a particular issue with laptops, because having an external drive attached can limit their portability.What’s more, constantly having a drive plugged into one of your USB or FireWire ports can make it difficult to plug in other devices, such as iPods or digital cameras.

Also, external hard drives can be difficult to access from computers other than the one they are attached to, an important consideration if you share data or use the drive to back up more than one computer.And unless you have a large enough internal hard drive – which I don’t – you face the prospect of needing two external hard drives attached to your computer: one to supplement your internal drive and one to back up everything.

So instead of buying an external hard drive, I’ve been thinking about getting a network-attached drive.These drives address many of the failings of external ones.

As the name suggests, network-attached drives are connected to your home network – via a cable to your router – rather than to a particular computer.

That means you don’t have to have a drive tethered to your computer. It also means you can back up more than one computer and can easily share files among a group of computers.

Many network-attached drives have bays for up to four individual hard drives.That can provide you plenty of space – up to 8 terabytes in some cases.

And through a drive technology called RAID, you can use the multiple drives to create mirror copies of the backups. If one drive fails, the data stored on it will still be preserved on the other drives on the device.

Unfortunately, network storage devices, particularly those that offer multiple drive bays, are expensive.The one I’ve been looking at has 3 terabytes of

storage and costs about $1,000.That hefty price has kept me from buying one just yet.

Perhaps more troubling than the price is that a network drive won’t fully solve my backup problem. Because network drives are located inside your house, they are vulnerable to the same types of disasters and dangers that threaten your computer, including theft, fire and earthquakes.

So I’ve also signed up with Mozy, one of a number of online backup services.

Unlike network drives, Mozy is cheap; it costs just $54 a year for unlimited storage space. And because Mozy stores data on the Internet, it will still be there even if your house is destroyed.

But Mozy’s not perfect, either. Uploading data to it can take days or even months, depending on the volume of data and the speed of your Internet connection. And while Mozy doesn’t cap the amount of data you can store, your broadband provider might cut off your service if you send more than a given amount in a particular month.

What’s more, Mozy’s nominal price can understate the service’s actual cost. In some cases, the only way to restore your data from Mozy is to have the company send it to you on DVDs, for which it charges fees that can run up to hundreds of dollars, depending on the amount of data you need to recover.

All of that leaves me in a quandary – and hoping against hope that I don’t have a third failure anytime soon.

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES CAN BE DIFFICULT TO ACCESS FROM COMPUTERS OTHER THAN THE ONE THEY ARE ATTACHED TO, AN IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION IF YOU SHARE DATA OR USE THE DRIVE TO BACK UP MORE THAN ONE COMPUTER

In the clouds

Mobile devices are using cloud computing, a method of storing information remotely, to create efficiency.

Examples of what can be stored

Documents Users can create and modify files that are stored in a remote “cloud” server

NASA announces new video space game MOFFETT FIELD, CALIF., OCT. 7 – The U.S. space agency says it has developed a video game designed to give young people the virtual experience of working on the International Space Station.

NASA said the game is based on work astronauts performed during the course of several ISS missions.The space agency said the game is part of its educational outreach effort to engage and inspire students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

It’s all about getting the next generation excited about space exploration, said Chris Kemp, chief information officer at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. Players, or ‘astronauts,’

Calendars Users can directly sync their appointments with a company’s calendar

Images Picture files stored in the cloud can be shared automatically with others

What are the benefits?

Space Less room is needed on the hard drive for storage and processing, enabling devices to be smaller and cheaper

can virtually navigate their way through mission critical tasks.This game provides players a sense of the magnitude of complexity and thrill associated with NASA missions.

Players visualize a detailed virtual mock-up of the International Space Station.They participate in four critical spacewalks that provide power to the station to keep it operating at full capacity. Players must complete their tasks quickly and carefully, before their air supply is exhausted.

A virtual spacewalk as presented in the Station Spacewalk game is available at http://www.nasa.gov/ multimedia/3d_resources/station_spacewalk_game.html.

– UPI

Speed Time needed to access programs from the cloud is typically much shorter than from a stationary machine Mobility Files can be accessed and modified from any computer or device anywhere, as long as there is an Internet connection

What is cloud computing?

• The computer or mobile device user launches an application, such as a wordprocessing program; the user then saves the file to be worked on later

• Instead of the file saving to the computer or device’s hard drive, it is transferred through the Internet to a server or collection of servers owned or leased by the cloud-computing service provider; the servers, which are essentially the “cloud,” could be thousands of miles away

• The user can again access and modify the file or share it with other users © 2009 MCT Source: Chicago Tribune Graphic: Max Rust, Rick Tuma, Chicago Tribune

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TECHNOLOGY 19

9 October 2009

Spin me right round baby…

Ian Wishart reviews Akai’s new plug and play turntable I have a major admission to make. As one who migrated to CDs in 1987 when there were only about five titles available on the digital format, you’re reading the words of a guy who long ago confined his record collection to a cupboard. But do you know what? I had forgotten how incredibly good vinyl sounds!

Some of you will have noticed the new ad from Akai we ran last month featuring the plug and play ATT023U USB turntable. It wasn’t the ad we’d originally planned to run, but ended up in the slot by accident. It caught our attention in the Investigate office, however, because – like many of you I suspect – it’s been an aeon since we last saw turntables advertised in anything beyond Trade Me. Occasionally, while shifting house or searching for something, I’m sure most of us have stumbled upon old 45s and 33 LPs and spent a moment or two reminiscing about lost youth and the days when album covers were an art form.

I asked my 11 year old Cade what a“record”was and he looked at me blankly. Nine year old Logan was a little more savvy:“I’ve seen one of those on Bugs Bunny”.

While there’s an old turntable (actually two), stored away with the record collection, it hasn’t been used in anger in 15 years and frankly I doubt it is compatible with the modern sound systems without the addition of a pre-amp (cue 11 year old: “what’s a pre-amp?”).

So when I saw Akai’s stunning-looking analogueto-digital turntable that boasts recording direct to computer, SD card or USB flash drive, a little lamp inside my head went off: think of all the old albums you can record straight to your MP3 player! No messy connections to stereos and then downloading to a digital recorder before re-uploading to a computer, it just plugs straight into a USB port and uploads whatever’s playing on the turntable direct to a folder on your hard-drive.

The model we’re testing has all of those features; a slightly cheaper version lacks the direct to SD or USB flash, but still records direct to your computer via the USB cable. Incidentally, it also works as a turntable on any sound system or MP3 player that has a ‘line-in’ facility, so you can be confident you are getting a versatile turntable tailored to the 21st century user.

And so, onto the sound. Rich, vibrant, real. If mahogany was aural ambience, it would sound like this. The Akai does what Akai always did best – in this case harvesting analogue sound from the grooves of a 25 year old LP - and transports listeners to a concert auditorium (it was the Dragon Live album from 1985, recorded at the Sydney Entertainment Centre and released in remembrance of keyboardist Paul Hewson who’d recently died of a drug overdose.

None of the tinny emptiness of a CD here. I’d truly forgotten what bass on a vinyl LP sounds like.

For those interested in hearing the results, I’ve uploaded a WAV file to our website [23mb, so it will take a minute to download] featuring a few samples from the raw, unedited recording. I say unedited because the turntable comes complete with software enabling easy erasing of scratches and other vinyl idiosyncrasies. I chose not to edit the sample – what you hear is just as the computer recorded it straight from the platter. The software of course gives you the option of converting to MP3 or CD quality WAV. On a need to know basis, the specifications include the ability to play 33 and 45rpm discs, and old 78s with a special adjustment. Rather than direct drive, Akai have opted for a belt driven turntable and boast stylus head interchangeability. Pitch is adjustable, while an anti-skate feature helps keep

your stylus on-track by minimizing and balancing some of the forces that act on tone arms.An audio out RCA feed can plug into the Line In socket of your MP3 recorder or audio system, while the USB cable and Audacity software work with both PC and Mac computers.

The Akai turntables will save you a packet in iTunes fees or new CDs, if you’ve been looking for a way to digitize your old record collection. Sure, you could save $60 and buy a cheaper turntable.

But then it wouldn’t be an Akai, would it? And it probably wouldn’t have the name of a trusted audio house on it.

It’s a fantastic Christmas gift for the music lover in your household, and sure to give old record collections a new lease on life.

RRP: $349.95 for the baseline ATT022U, and $449.95 for the direct-to-SD card ATT023U.

bring your vinyls to life With Akai’s Att023u usb turntable

The ATT023U delivers the ultimate way to enjoy your record collection. With it’s full sized aluminum platter, S-shaped tone arm and manual speed adjust, you will have perfect reproduction of your prized record collection. The included software package allows you to remove any unwanted noises, after recording direct to your PC, Mac or memory device.

Makes Sense For more information please visit www.akai.com.au Distributed by Digitalblue T- 64 9 476 6381 F- 64 9 476 6384 www.digitalblue.co.nz