Moko the friendly dolphin has become so friendly she has
taken to bringing swimmers fish - but she has been receiving some
unfriendly treatment in return.

The three-year-old bottlenose dolphin has made Mahia Beach
her home for more than 18 months, and has become a familiar sight
socialising with swimmers and boaties.

Many a bodyboard, crayfish buoy and rugby ball have been taken out
to sea, never to be seen again, as the cheeky dolphin continues to play
on her own.

Others had been on the receiving end of Moko's generosity, Conservation Department programme manager Jamie Quirk said.

"She has actually been bringing fish to people. People have had
kahawai and gurnard brought to them and some lucky people have had her
bring them seahorses," he said.

Lately, however, some people have been "roughhousing" with Moko,
scarring her skin with scratches caused by jewellery and sharp
fingernails.

"We are a bit concerned that some people are getting into rough play
with her - they jump on her back or grab her dorsal fin," said DoC
Wairoa field officer supervisor Malcolm Smith.

"She can play rough right back - she's a big, powerful animal, she probably weighs 150 kilograms. She could damage someone."

Mr Smith said Moko appeared to be well-fed and healthy, despite all the human attention.

Mahia resident Bill Shortt has been watching Moko's movements since she arrived in the area at Easter 2007.

"Moko is getting tamer than ever," he said. "It's really amusing.
She comes right in to the shore now, into only a few feet of water, to
play with the children."

VICTORIA CROSS FOR NEW ZEALAND (V.C.)

Corporal Bill Henry APIATA (M181550) - Citation

"Lance Corporal (now Corporal) Apiata was, in 2004, part of a New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS) Troop on patrol in Afghanistan, which laid up in defensive formation for the night.

At approximately 0315 hours, the Troop was attacked by a group of about twenty enemy fighters, who had approached by stealth using the cover of undulating ground in pitch darkness. Rocket-propelled grenades struck two of the Troop's vehicles, destroying one and immobilising the other.

The opening strike was followed by dense and persistent machine gun and automatic rifle fire from close range.

The attack then continued using further rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun and rifle fire. The initial attack was directed at the vehicle where Lance Corporal Apiata was stationed.

He was blown off the bonnet by the impact of rocket propelled grenades striking the vehicle. He was dazed, but was not physically injured.

The two other vehicle crew members had been wounded by shrapnel; one of them, Corporal D, was in a serious condition.

Illuminated by the burning vehicle, and under sustained and accurate enemy fire directed at and around their position, the three soldiers immediately took what little cover was available. Corporal D was discovered to have sustained lifethreatening wounds. The other two soldiers immediately began applying basic first aid.

Lance Corporal Apiata assumed command of the situation, as he could see that his superior's condition was deteriorating rapidly.

By this time, however, Lance Corporal Apiata's exposed position, some seventy metres in front of the rest of the Troop, was coming under increasingly intense enemy fire. Corporal D was now suffering serious arterial bleeding and was lapsing in and out of consciousness.

Lance Corporal Apiata concluded that his comrade urgently required medical attention,or he would likely die. Pinned down by the enemy, in the direct line of fire between friend and foe, he also judged that there was almost no chance of such help reaching their position.

As the enemy pressed its attack towards Lance Corporal Apiata's position, and without thought of abandoning his colleague to save himself, he took a decision in the highest order of personal courage under fire. Knowing the risks involved in moving to open ground, Lance Corporal Apiata decided to carry Corporal D singlehandedly to the relative safety of the main Troop position, which afforded better cover and where medical treatment could be given.

He ordered his other colleague, Trooper E, to make his own way back to the rear.

In total disregard of his own safety, Lance Corporal Apiata stood up and lifted his comrade bodily. He then carried him across the seventy metres of broken, rocky and fire swept ground, fully exposed in the glare of battle to heavy enemy fire and into the face of returning fire from the main Troop position. That neither he nor his colleague were hit is scarcely possible. Having delivered his wounded companion to relative shelter with the remainder of the patrol, Lance Corporal Apiata re-armed himself and rejoined the fight in counter-attack.

By his actions, he removed the tactical complications of Corporal D's predicament from considerations of rescue.

The Troop could now concentrate entirely on prevailing in the battle itself. After an engagement lasting approximately twenty minutes, the assault was broken up and the numerically superior attackers were routed with significant casualties, with the Troop in pursuit.

Lance Corporal Apiata had thereby contributed materially to the operational success of the engagement. A subsequent medical assessment confirmed that Corporal D would probably have died of blood loss and shock, had it not been for Lance Corporal Apiata's selflessly courageous act in carrying him back to the main Troop lines, to receive the immediate treatment that he needed."

A Cambridge man is relishing the sound of silence after years of living with a mass of mites on his eardrum.

Paul Balvert's "noisy nightmare" went undiagnosed for two years, the New Zealand Herald reported today.

The infestation has stunned ear therapists and a clinical microbiologist who are unaware of any other documented cases of mites thriving and reproducing in a human ear.

Entomologists believe the eight-legged inhabitants were flour or grain mites known as Acarus siro.

Mr Balvert is jubilant and "forever grateful" a Hamilton ear nurse made the creepy discovery and eradicated the mites – ending what he had considered an inescapable nightmare.

He believed one or more of the mites got into his ear the day a chicken feed pan emptied over his head. He owns a business specialising in cleaning large chicken sheds.

"For years I had no idea what was wrong. I had been hearing continual bubble and squeak noises in my ears and it was worse at night. Sometimes I would get up in the morning and think I would be lucky if I had got any sleep.

"And there was movement. That was the worst – the itch. Many times during the day and night I would stick my fingers and cotton buds in my ears to try and relieve the itch. It was unreachable."

His doctor twice flushed his ears with warm water with no respite.

He got short-term relief when a nurse suctioned his ear out but then read an article on tinnitus – noises in ears – and thought that was what he had as he grew older.

Last year he visited Tolbecs Ear Centre in Hamilton.

"A nurse there took one look and called in her boss and others. Then the microbiologist got called in. They were all quite excited," Mr Balvert said.

Centre director Theresa O'Leary said she was amazed to see an infestation of "very active, tiny, bulbous, semi-transparent mites moving around in a moist layer and white eggs present all over the canal and eardrum.

"There were about a 100 of them. It was a well-stocked breeding ground."

Suction removed visible mites and eggs but hidden eggs soon hatched and the problem began again.

More suction followed and Waikato Hospital clinical microbiologist Dr Chris Mansell was asked to help identify the mites and help find an anti-mite agent. They settled on a liquid used for scabies and headlice.

Soaking the ear with the liquid and more suctioning worked.

Last week Mr Balvert returned for a final checkup after celebrating undisturbed sleep.

The Maori Party have proposed a bill banning smoking anywhere and a ban on tobacco products, since a third of Maori deaths are due to tobacco. This has effectively exposed the hypocrisy and illogical attitudes from the rest of parliament.

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) director Becky Freeman said banning tobacco simply made it an issue for the courts to deal with, rather than keeping it as a health issue.

British American Tobacco spokesman Carrick Graham said he found himself in the unusual position of agreeing with ASH.
"Legitimate tobacco companies could pack up and go away, but then the market would be run by criminal organisations and I think the Maori Party would agree that isn't the best course of action."

Prime Minister Helen Clark, who is stridently anti-smoking, said through a spokesman that she did not support prohibition. She said it would simply criminalise people with an addiction, and she favoured a public health approach to tobacco and addiction.

The fact that these people apply these attitudes selectively to one drug (nicotine) but applying the opposite attitude to a less harmful drug (THC) shows what a confused society it is that we live in.

The tension between the USA and New Zealand has been revealed in inadvertantly released top secret documents. Among them is a letter from former minister David Caygill, written on March 21, 1986, in which he describes a lunch with United States ambassador Paul Cleveland.

"The ambassador asked me if I realised what was at stake in the dispute between the two countries," Caygill writes.

"I asked him what he meant. He replied trust. I asked him what he meant by that and he said that until now the USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand had had a unique relationship. 'We have not spied on each other. If you go ahead with your policies we will not be able to trust you'.

"I took the clear implication from his remarks that if our relationship with the US deteriorated further, then the US would no longer feel any inhibition in conducting intelligence gathering operations against us."

Caygill writes that the ambassador said the head of the CIA was also concerned. He had considered what action should be taken, and had asked whether he should get tough with New Zealand.

The ambassador also told Caygill Lange had upset the US further when, in response to threats that the flow of intelligence from the US would be cut off, he replied "that would give more time to do the crossword".

Also contained in Lange's papers is the 1985-86 annual report of the Government Communications Security Bureau, the government's electronic spying agency, which is marked "top secret" and "umbra" - the highest security classification given to intelligence documents.

The report lists the countries and agencies on which New Zealand was spying. They include targets that have never been officially acknowledged, including UN diplomatic communications, Argentine naval intelligence, Egypt, Japan, the Philippines, Pacific Island nations, France, Vietnam, the Soviets, North Korea, East Germany, Laotia and South Africa.

The following appeared in the Dominion Post regarding the aid given for the Boxing Day tsunami

Less than half of the $94 million New Zealanders donated for the Boxing Day tsunami relief effort has been spent, as hundreds of thousands of victims continue to live in rotten tents and shacks.
...
An aid specialist said New Zealand may not have the bargaining power to pressure affected governments to hasten the recovery – as it was one of the few countries that had already distributed aid funds. Many others pledged money but are yet to deliver it.

This article is slanted in a way I'd more likely expect from Fox News.
For a start, if the reporter had bothered to question the reason why only half the aid money had been spent s/he would have discovered that it was in order to avoid corruption and waste - had all the money ben given out in the first few months it would have led to massive corruption and shoddy work being done in the rebuilding effort. It's also impossible to rebuild that many houses in a year - there just aren't enough people qualified to do the task.

The second paragraph I've included above really sickened me though. To suggest we should have withheld money as a "bargaining tool" like most other countries points to a far worse aspect of international aid. The fact is most aid pledged is never delivered. Here's a flash animation on the subject.

Telephone users in New Zealand are still paying considerably more for some telephone services compared with other developed nations, according to an Economic Development Ministry report.

New Zealand is at, or close to, the bottom of the 30 developed nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on mobile phone calling prices, charges for calling a mobile from a home phone and for business high-speed Internet connections. It is either 28th, 29th or 30th on price in these services.

Read more »

Billionaire Graeme Hart is forcing suppliers to Carter Holt Harvey's building products retail chain to reduce their prices as he moves to cut costs across the company's operations.

In one of the estimated 2500 letters to suppliers, Carters national timber buyer Jarrod Langstone wrote that Hart, CHH's new majority shareholder, was working with all divisions of the company to improve performance.

"As part of this review, it has been brought to our attention that Carters is behind market standards in terms of supplier rebate.

"Consequently, Carters will be introducing a rebate ... on total purchases, which we will deduct automatically off your account, effective from January 1, 2006."

In my time working at a joinery factory which was both customer and supplier to CHH (they supplied door jam) I learnt what an evil company CHH is - they used their size and dominance even then to screw the little guy - never ever paid their bills on time - often months late - but getting heavy handed whenever their own invoices were a day late.

One of the suppliers said it was not in a position to give a rebate.

"Why should we, who have slogged at this business for years, make less money so that Graeme Hart can get even more ridiculously rich than he already is? They haven't even gone out and priced the market to see if our prices are competitive."