ANZAC DAY SPECIAL

Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand, and is commemorated by both countries on 25 April every year to honour members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I. It now more broadly commemorates all those who died and served in military operations for their countries. Anzac Day is also observed in the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa and Tonga.



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WORLD CUP VILLAGE

A temporary facility will be built on Auckland's Queens wharf to host 'party central' for the Rugby World Cup, Murray McCully confirmed today.


The Rugby World Cup Minister announced the plans at a media conference in downtown Auckland this morning.

Mr McCully said the structure was "most assuredly not a tent" and would be built out of steel and glass.

The Government would pay $9 million for the "cost-effective building" and Auckland regional ratepayers would pay $10 million for the upgrade of the wharf, Mr McCully said.

He said the Queens Wharf development would feature a fanzone with an international media lounge providing backdrops of the harbour and downtown Auckland. It would also act as a cruise terminal.

The structure would take up between 5.5 and 6 acres on the site - about 20 per cent of the wharf.

Mr Mccully said earlier temporary options involving two 98-year-old cargo sheds on the wharf were "prohibitively expensive".

Auckland Regional Council (ARC) chairman Mike Lee confirmed both of the sheds were going, subject to consultation with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust.

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THIEVING OCTOPUS

A diver chased a thieving octopus underwater off the Wellington coast for more than five minutes to retrieve his new digital camera.


Wellington man Victor Huang was diving near the Wahine Memorial between Breaker Bay and Moa Point on Wednesday when he spotted the octopus.

The Weta digital animator swam closer to get a better picture of the octopus when it suddenly grabbed his camera with one of its tentacles and swam off, Fairfax media reported.

Mr Huang gave chase and caught up with the thief while the camera was still recording.

With the help of a speargun placed beneath the octopus, he managed to wrench the camera free from the creature's mouth.
However, the octopus grabbed the speargun and refused to let go, Mr Huang said.

He swum around a bit with the octopus in tow and as he neared the shore, the octopus let go.

Mr Huang moved to Wellington from San Francisco six years ago to work on animation in the King Kong movie, and said he had fallen in love with the lifestyle in New Zealand.

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KIWI SURFER WINS

New Zealand's 15-year-old Sarah Mason pulled off a colossal upset by eliminating Australian world champion Stephanie Gilmore from the women's world surfing championship tour event off Taranaki on Thursday.

Mason and compatriot Paige Hareb both advanced to the quarterfinals, where they will meet, but it was the last-gasp performance of Mason that drew hoots and screams from a sizeable crowd at New Plymouth's Fitzroy Beach.
Needing a score of 6.56 on her final wave with two minutes remaining to catch three-time world champion Gilmore, tour debutant Mason managed 7.10 off a long ride that included two inside moves and finished with a sharp hook where she did well to remain on the board.
That pushed Mason's total to 14.03, pipping Gilmore's 13.66 and recording one of the biggest imaginable boilovers on the Dream Tour.
Mason received a wildcard invitation on the eve of the event and finished a fighting last in her first round heat on Tuesday.
She survived the subsequent elimination round to advance to Thursday's third round where few gave her a chance against Gilmore.
Quality waves deserted her until the final six minutes of the 30min heat, where she recorded her two scoring rides.
Gilmore did all her scoring early in the inconsistent 1-1.5m waves.
Hareb was less stressed in beating Australian Rebecca Woods, scoring 13.83 to 8.07 in a heat which the Taranaki local always led.
It sets up a home town quarterfinal featuring Hareb, in her second year on the Dream Tour, against national champion Mason, who grew up in Taranaki but is now based in Queensland.
Other early third-round winners on Thursday were Hawaii pair Carissa Moore and Melanie Bartels, with Moore winning with a particularly impressive score of 17.00.
Earlier, organisers were happy to move the event's location to the No.1 beach at Fitzroy after being forced to use an isolated location south of New Plymouth for the first two rounds. Competition on Sunday, Monday and Wednesday was postponed because of inadequate conditions.
The event is scheduled to finish on Friday.

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DRIVING AGE INCREASE

The driving age looks certain to be raised to 16 following Cabinet approval of the move.
Transport Minister Steven Joyce announced today Cabinet had approved the rise as a first step in implementing the Safer Journeys: New Zealand's Road Safety Strategy 2010-2020.
The move requires a law change and the Government was talking to its support partners, ACT and the Maori Party.
New Zealand had one of the lowest driving ages in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and raising the driving age supports a "lifetime of safe driving", Mr Joyce said.
Other planned changes include making the restricted licence test more difficult to encourage 120 hours of supervised driving practice, improving the quality and accessibility of road safety education for young people, allowing approved courses to be taken in the learner licence phase, and raising public awareness of the crash risk for young drivers.

The Government will also investigate having vehicle power restrictions for young drivers and tougher penalties for breaches of restricted licences.
A second package of initiatives to be released by Cabinet shortly will include plans to reduce the youth blood alcohol limit to zero.

Mr Joyce said young New Zealanders have a 60 percent higher fatality rate than in Australia and the Government looked at Australian measures.
New Zealand learner drivers do an average 50 hours of supervised practice. Research shows the crash risk is significantly lower for drivers who do 120 hours of supervised practice, Mr Joyce said.
The Automobile Association has said increasing the age was not going to make roads safer. The association supported enforcing 120 hours of supervised driving before a learner can drive alone.
Federated Farmers have said raising the driving age would affect farming families who had limited travel options.
In January, a survey of 2300 people reported 74 percent would like the driving age raised to at least 18, though when given the option, 20 was even more popular, with 80.5 percent opting for that.

TENT FOR WORLD CUP??

Planning has started for a giant tent to be erected on Queens Wharf for the Rugby World Cup on the site of one of two 98-year-old cargo sheds, both of which will be demolished.


The Government and the Auckland Regional Council, which took ownership of the wharf this month, have hired architectural firm Jasmax to design a temporary tent as "party central" for the cup tournament.

One source said the tent would be about 25m by 100m. It would be 12m tall at the highest point and would be on the site of Shed 10, on the eastern side of the wharf.

Plans for showcasing Auckland to the world next year have shrunk a long way from the $500 million waterfront stadium dreamed up by then-World Cup Minister Trevor Mallard in 2006.

Under that plan, Eden Park would have been dropped in favour of the new project as the city's premier stadium.

But the proposal was abandoned after a majority of Aucklanders rejected it.

Several proposals to open up the waterfront have since been put forward, but each has failed to satisfy all interests.

Heart of the City chief executive Alex Swney said that this year, 82 per cent of Aucklanders spoke out against a rushed $100 million plan for a hybrid cruise ship terminal and party centre.

"Today we learn that we are lurching towards the other end of the spectrum - an entirely temporary tent structure," he said.

"It had always been our hope that the legacy of the Rugby World Cup was going to be an interim step that would activate our waterfront by enabling us to get behind the Red Fence and experience it while we develop a masterplan for our waterfront."

The latest plan for Queens Wharf has alarmed interested parties, who believe the 1912 cargo sheds should remain until the Super City council developed a new masterplan for the Auckland waterfront.

A second source said demolition of the two cargo sheds would enable Rugby World Cup Minister Murray McCully to pursue the cruise ship terminal that Auckland mayors in February decided against because of the economic climate.

Mr McCully is overseas, and his office did not return calls yesterday.

But Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee said Jasmax - which was part of last year's cancelled contest-winning design for Queens Wharf and a second cancelled cruise ship terminal design this year - had come up with an attractive temporary covered space for the cup tournament.

EARTHQUAKES HIT NZ

A string of earthquakes have struck off the North Island's east coast between Gisborne and Tolaga Bay since Tuesday morning.


Ranging from 3.9 to 4.5 in strength, five quakes struck in the same area between 10.29am Tuesday and 2.48am Wednesday, GNS Science reported.

The quakes were all at a focal depth of 33km and likely to have been felt further south in Hawke's Bay.

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FREE TRADE FOR NZ

Prime Minister John Key was tonight preparing to present New Zealand's case for a free trade agreement at meetings with United States Vice-President Joe Biden and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on the eve of a 47-nation nuclear security summit in Washington.

Mr Key was due to meet Mr Biden in the White House about midnight (NZT) followed by a formal lunch with Mr Vilsack.

Acting Prime Minister Bill English today described the meetings as "a pretty special opportunity" to advance New Zealand's trade interests.

"The practical negotiations have just got started and of course negotiating any trade deal with the US is going to be a complex job requiring persistence, so the prime minister is taking the opportunity to push our case every chance he can," Mr English said.

Talks started last month in Melbourne on a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which would extend the previously negotiated P4 trade agreement between New Zealand, Brunei, Chile and Singapore to include the US, Australia, Peru and Vietnam.

PLANES IN DOGFIGHT

Thousands of people flocked to Auckland's Mission Bay today to watch a number of mock explosions in a re-enactment of a World War 2 dogfight.


Crowds lined the streets and the beach to watch two Japanese fighter planes take on a New Zealand Kittyhawk. The sky was clear for the many people snapping photographs below.

The dogfight was staged to promote TV One's new mini-series The Pacific, which screens tomorrow at 8.30pm.

Appropriate authorities had been involved in the planning of the explosions, said TVNZ spokeswoman Megan Richards.

The dogfight has been organised by the same people who manage the Warbirds over Wanaka air show, she said.

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$100,000 REWARD

A reward worth more than $100,000 has been offered for information on a New Zealand woman who disappeared in Australia 30 years ago.
Australian police today announced the New South Wales Government was putting up a $A100,000 ($NZ123,031) reward for information on the disappearance and presumed murder of Linda Suzanne Davie, who was last seen on April 6, 1980.

Ms Davie was the second New Zealand woman a $A100,000 reward was being offered for in recent months.

In January, a reward was offered for information on the disappearance of 24-year-old Marion Sandford, who was last seen in January, 1980, and went missing in similar circumstances as Ms Davie.

Ms Davie was 22 years old when she went missing in Sydney.

At the time, she was living with her Australian boyfriend Stephen Lavender, in a house they shared with others in Wollstonecraft on Sydney's North Shore.

The night before her mystery disappearance, police said Ms Davie went to a club called The Manzil Room in Kings Cross with a friend -- where two men attempted to pick them up, and later dropped Ms Davie and her friend home.

The next day she visited Mr Lavender at the Royal North Shore Hospital where he was a patient. That was the last day she was seen.

Mr Lavender became concerned when Ms Davie failed to visit him in hospital on April 7. Three days later, he received a letter believed to be from Ms Davie saying she would be away until the following week. This sudden absence and the letter was out of character, he told police.

Mr Lavender became more concerned when, on his discharge from hospital on April 15, he returned home and found that all of Ms Davie's belongings were still in the house.

Police said they believed the two men who drove Ms Davie and her friend home from Kings Cross on April 5 might have information vital to the investigation.

Police wanted to hear from anyone who knew Ms Davie, whether it be friends, relatives or associates. They would also like to speak with witnesses who came forward initially to police when she was reported missing in 1980.

In 2002, Ms Davie's disappearance was investigated by police in connection with the disappearance of two other women - Ms Sandford, who was last seen in North Sydney, and Mary Wallace - last seen in Sydney's Crows Nest in September 1983.

At the time of Ms Sandford's disappearance, she was living with her brother in suburban Cammeray on Sydney's North Shore.

She penned a note to her brother Peter three days after he last saw her, saying that she would be home soon.

"I am not sure when I will be home, but it should be within 2 days to 1 week at the latest I suppose," the note said.

"Met a couple of friends. See you later."

Mr Sandford, who now lives in Wellington, contacted police when his sister did not return.

- NZPA

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