NEW ZEALAND
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PIGEON FASTER THAN BROADBAND DURBAN, South Africa, Sept. 11 (UPI) -A South African company says it found a carrier pigeon carried data faster than its Internet service. The South African newspaper Beeld said staff at Unlimited IT in Durban, frustrated with the speed of its ADSL service provided by Telkom, set out to see if an 11-month-old pigeon named Winston could get a 4GB memory stick 60 miles away faster than it would take to have the same amount of data transmitted via broadband, the BBC reported today. It took Winston 1 hour, 8 minutes to fly from Unlimited IT’s call center in Howick to its office in Durham. It took another hour to upload the information on the memory stick. In the same time, only 4 percent of the data had been sent through the ADSL connection. Telkom said it was not responsible for the Durban firm’s slow Internet speeds. Several recommendations have, in the past, been made to the customer but none of these have, to date, been accepted, Telkom’s Troy Hector told the South African Press Association in an e-mail. At last report, Winston was basking in the glory of his victory. WORLD’S OLDEST DOG? SHREWSBURY, ENGLAND, SEP. 11 (UPI) – A British man said Guinness World Records is investigating whether his dachshund, age 20 years and six months, is the world’s oldest dog. Peter Jones, 68, of Shrewsbury, England, said he believes the dachshund, Otto, is the world’s oldest living dog after the death of a 21-year-old dachshund in the United States, the Daily Mail reported today. “When I saw this dog had died and he was the oldest in the world, I thought Otto must be getting on to being the oldest as well,” Jones said of the canine, who has reached 147 in dog years. “I thought it would be good to see if Otto is the oldest. My vet said to me that they hadn’t got any older dogs going to see them. “He will follow me wherever I go and doesn’t go running off. If I go out, I come back and he’s sat by the door waiting. He’s got a bit of arthritis but apart from that, he’s quite well. Jones said he has submitted a certificate proving Otto’s age to Guinness World Records. BOTTLE MESSAGE FOUND AFTER 5 YEARS GOONHAVERN, ENGLAND, SEPT. 10 (UPI) -- A British man who discovered a message in a bottle on a beach said he tracked down the U.S. teenager who dropped it from a cruise ship five years ago. Tony Hoskings, a retired electrician, said he found the bottle in July while walking his dog in Goonhavern and discovered a message inside from cruise ship passenger Daniel Knopp, the Daily Mail reported today. “I noticed paper and could just see that it said Grandeur of the Seas, which I recognized as a cruise ship belonging to the company that my wife and I took a cruise with on their liner Song of America,” Hoskings said. The message, which bore the date June 21, 2004, reads: “Hello, my name is Daniel Knopp. I am on a cruise ship. I hope whoever reads this finds great joy. God bless.” The note also identified Knopp’s home as Baltimore, Md. Hoskings said his local paper, The West Briton, contacted the Baltimore Sun for help in locating Knopp. He was found after a seven-week search and discovered to be a 19-yearold political science student at the University of Maryland. “I was 14 when I threw the message off the ship in Freeport, in the Bahamas,” Knopp said. “I thought it would be unreal if it were ever to be found, and I figured it would be destroyed by the ocean environment.
11 September 2009
Kiwi dollar skyrockets up WELLINGTON, SEPT 11 NZPA - The rise and rise of the NZ dollar continued today. It climbed above US70c just before 5am and rose through the day to be worth US70.40c at 5pm. It hit a new one-year high and at the end of the day, was still rising, hitting US70.52 a few minutes after 5pm, despite Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard’s clear concerns about the dollar’s relentless rise, The ascent of the kiwi came amid improving risk appetite as world stock and commodity prices rose, and as the US greenback fell to its lowest level in nearly a year against a basket of major currencies. Announcing yesterday that the official cash rate was remaining at the record low 2.5 percent, Dr Bollard said the sustainability of the present “patchy”recovery would be brought into question if the exchange rate were to continue its recent rise. Today BNZ analyst Danica Hampton said that “huffing and puffing”would not be enough to talk
down the NZ dollar exchange rates. If the trade weighted index (TWI) -- which climbed to 64.21 points today -- continued to appreciate over the coming months to around 70 points she expected the Reserve Bank to again start adding to foreign reserves. Last summer, over November to February, it bought about $1.2 billion of the NZ dollar. But Ms Hampton noted the TWI was still 20 percent below its 77.25 peak in mid-2007, and said that though the Reserve Bank was uncomfortable with the strength of the economy, it“appears almost resigned to the fact that there is relatively little it can do about it”. The ANZ bank said it shared Dr Bollard’s concerns about the sustainability of any recovery and the need for the economy to rebalance. The kiwi looked like it had the momentum to push higher,ANZ said. “At present, markets are ignoring NZ’s domestic
economic fundamentals and trading is driven more by risk appetites and hopes of reflation. “Something will have to give eventually. But knowing when and what the catalyst will be is incredibly difficult.” The NZ dollar was still at A81.46c against the Australian dollar at 5pm -- on a par with its 8am rate -- from A81.11c at 5pm yesterday. It fell slightly to 0.4820 euro from 0.4823 earlier in the day, and to 64.29 Japanese yen from 64.50 over the same period.The trade weighted index was 64.24 at 8am and 64.21 at 5pm. BUY SELL Australia.......... 0.8225 0.8040 Canada.......... 0.7658 0.7445 Euro.............. 0.4887 0.4727 Great Britain. 0.4265 0.4147 Japan........... 65.19 63.01 United States 0.7127 0.6938 NZPA WGT hsp
Eight hurt in Nelson crash tonight WELLINGTON, SEPT 11 NZPA - Eight people have been injured after their 4WD ran off the road and rolled into a ditch near Nelson tonight. The family group was heading to Blenheim when the accident happened just after 6pm on the Gentle Annie hill on State Highway 6, about 13km northeast of Nelson, said St John Ambulance spokesman
Ian Henderson. One male and one female suffered serious injuries, two girls, two women in their 20s and one man in his 20s suffered moderate injuries, while another girl suffered minor injuries. All eight were taken by road to Nelson Hospital. Nelson Fire Service station officer Grahame
Kurth told NZPA firefighters found the vehicle upside down in a ditch about 5m from teh road. All eight people were out of the vehicle and had suffered a range of injuries. The accident happened on a 100kmh stretch of road and the people were“very lucky”, he said.
as president earlier this year, said Mr Goff was the only MP in the Labour caucus who could take the party to victory. Looking to the future, Mr Little said political parties around the world were looking for alternatives to the “madness”of the last 30 years. “The idea that banks and finance houses will act in the public interest has been shown up for the fantasy it was,”he said. “The idea that taking rights and conditions off working people will help the economy, and conversely that shoring up rights and improving incomes will wreck it, has been exposed for the contempt that underpins it.” Mr Little criticised the policies of the present government, saying it did not stand for all the people. “All of this gives us the opportunity to start afresh, to look at the next generation of ideas and to reassert our principles and our values,”he said. The conference will spend most of tomorrow dis-
cussing policy and on Sunday Mr Goff will give his keynote speech. He is expected to set a new agenda for Labour and stamp his style of leadership on the party.
Labour Party president Andrew Little with leader Phil Goff. Little says Labour ‘might’ have been too nanny state. PHOTO: NZPA Back to the front page
Prodigal Jim returns to Labour conf. ROTORUA, SEPT 11 NZPA - Jim Anderton has made his first appearance at a Labour party conference since he split with the party over policy direction in the 1980s. In a speech to Labour’s conference in Rotorua, Progressive party leader Mr Anderton pledged his
party’s support for Labour saying the two parties shared common values and goals. Mr Anderton backed Phil Goff as Labour leader and said with organisation and recruitment Labour could win the 2011 election. He believed the electorate had not rejected the last Labour g ov e r n m e n t because of its values. “ T h e y rejected us because they believed we had moved onto other priorities. They tired of controversies, mini-scandals and mistakes we should not have made,” Mr Anderton said. The former
Labour party president and MP currently leads the Progressive party and is it sole MP. Mr Anderton left Labour over the party’s economic policy under David Lange and Roger Douglas. It was a turbulent split, which tore the Labour party apart and Mr Anderton opened his speech today with a joke. “Its been 21 years since I last spoke at a Labour Party conference. Did anything happen while I was away?” After leaving Labour, Mr Anderton formed New Labour which later become part of the Alliance. When the Alliance splintered over the 2002 invasion of Afghanistan, Mr Anderton formed the Progressive party and he continued to sit in the Labour Cabinet. The party has always been close to Labour -- Mr Anderton shares office space with his old party, and Progressive party members were recently allowed to hold dual Labour party membership. The party is expected to be wound up when Mr Anderton retires, probably at the 2011 election.