Taonga

On Tuesday New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, met Korean President, Lee Myung-Bak. On the same day a Korean student stabbed a teacher in the back at Avondale College, Auckland, New Zealand. The P.M’s meeting went virtually unreported. A stabbing at a College is so unusual an event in NZ that a... Sign in to see full entry.

The story so far…. Richard Williamson, a bishop of the breakaway right-wing Catholic Society of St Pius X, has been banished from Argentina (where he lived) back to Britain (where he was born) after claiming the Holocaust never happened (his exact claims were - no Jews were gassed and only 300 000... Sign in to see full entry.

There have been several pedophile stories this week - child sex stories sell. Just ask Britain’s “Sun” newspaper. The most interesting case occurred in Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S. where a Federal judge ordered a British citizen convicted of trafficing child porn to pay US$200 000 restitution to a... Sign in to see full entry.

British comedian, Stephen Fry, has entered the fray to protest against section 92A of New Zealand’s new Copyright Act (a section that is supposed to come into force this month). This section was passed, under emergency (I.e. no proper scrutiny) in the dying days of the last government. It requires... Sign in to see full entry.

Three stories about immigration and all from New Zealand. Iranian overstayer, Ali Panah, has finally been granted Refugee Status. He had converted to Christianity and feared being executed for apostasy if returned to Iran. In 2004 he refused to sign documents that would have allowed him to be... Sign in to see full entry.

In the February 16 th edition of the New Zealand Herald both Brian Rudman and Tapu Misa discuss the Bruce Emery case from their narrow socialist perspective (and, in Ms Misa’s case there is more than a little scent of racism). Emery was convicted for the murder of 15 year old Pihema Cameron and... Sign in to see full entry.

The annoucement of a daughter, Masie, to Alfie Patten and his girlfriend Chantelle seems to have come as a surprise to the rest of the world. Alfie was 12 at the time of conception and his girlfriend 14. Which of these two will be charged with rape? Which is the pedophile? What about the parents of... Sign in to see full entry.

Alfred Douglas Dibley, No3/1136 NZEF, New Zealand's last surviving Gallipoli veteran. In 1915 he was working for an oil company in Wellington when he and a friend spotted a newspaper advertisement seeking helpers at Trentham Military Camp hospital where spinal meningitis was raging. "A cobber (1)... Sign in to see full entry.

No, not small exams but good news… at least for people like me who campaign vociferously against the idiot notion of recreational drug use. The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle has discovered a link between cannabis use and the risk of developing testicular cancer. Those who use the... Sign in to see full entry.

"History isn't made up of truth anyway, so why worry?" (T.E. Lawrence to Lowell Thomas) In Cairo Godley ordered an immediate parade of his NZ troops to impress on this " handful of decrepit, homesick, thoroughly verminous and blasphemously fed-up scarecrows" that " the war had only just begun." Most... Sign in to see full entry.