EUROPE'S ASH CLOUD

LONDON (Reuters) - A huge ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano turned the skies of northern Europe into a no-fly zone on Thursday, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers.


The European air safety organization said the disruption, the biggest seen in the region, could last another two days and a leading volcano expert said the ash could present intermittent problems to air traffic for 6 months if the eruption continued.

Even if the disruption is short lived, the financial impact on airlines could be significant, a consultant said. The International Air Transport Association had said only days ago airlines were slowly coming out of recession.

The volcano began erupting on Wednesday for the second time in a month from below the Eyjafjallajokull glacier. It hurled a plume of ash six to 11 kilometers (3.8 to 7 miles) into the atmosphere, and this spread south east overnight.

Volcanic ash contains tiny particles of glass and pulverized rock which can damage engines and airframes and an Icelandic volcanologist said on Thursday the eruption was growing more intense.

Britain barred flights in its air space, except in emergencies, until at least 0600 GMT on Friday, with a flight returning soldiers from Afghanistan having to be held in Cyprus.

It was the first time within living memory that a natural disaster had caused such a halt, a spokeswoman for Britain's National Air Traffic Service (NATS) said. Even after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Britain did not close its air space.

John Strickland, director of air transport consultancy JLS Consulting, saw possible broader hazards.

"Iceland sits right on one of the key routes between Europe and the USA and... depending on meteorological conditions it could also affect flights from Europe to Asia so there are two big international flows which could be affected by this."

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OBAMA INVITED TO NZ

Prime Minister John Key wants United States President Barack Obama to carve off part of a day from his upcoming trip to Australia and spend it in New Zealand.
He had told Mr Obama that he could easily divert to New Zealand en route to Australia from Indonesia and spend three-quarters of a day in Auckland without losing any time.
"I said to him, 'It would be great if you could come to New Zealand."'
Mr Obama was forced to postpone a visit to Australia in March for a crucial vote on healthcare reforms.
Mr Key said yesterday that he thought it unlikely Mr Obama would take up his offer to visit New Zealand while Down Under – and there appears to be some concern that the president's schedule might push back a visit by Mr Key to the White House.

With the US facing crucial mid-term elections in November, a delay much beyond June might force a postponement till next year.

Last night Mr Key wrapped up the Washington leg of his North American visit, joining the leaders of 47 other countries represented at Mr Obama's two-day nuclear security summit in pledging to act in support of measures to prevent nuclear terrorism.

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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.

CHINA EARTHQUAKE

A series of earthquakes has struck China, with a magnitude 6.9 quake killing at least 300 people and injuring another 8000 in Qinghai province, on the mountainous Tibetan plateau.
A series of quakes and aftershocks caused low, brick buildings in Qinghai province's Yushu region to collapse, residents and state media said. Troops have been dispatched to the area.
"Certainly there have been people hurt. Rescuers are trying to pull them out," resident Talen Tashi told Reuters.
"A lot of one-storey houses have collapsed. Taller buildings have held up, but there are big cracks in them."

People from the Yushu prefecture highway department were frantically trying to dig out colleagues trapped in a collapsed building, department official Ji Guodong said by telephone.
Most of the low residential buildings had fallen, Huang Limin, a government official in Yushu told state television.
"Casualties are unclear. Maybe dozens were injured, maybe more. It's hard to say," said Zhuo De, an ethnic Tibetan resident of Yushu, who spoke by phone from the capital of Qinghai province after contacting his family in Yushu.
"The homes are built with thick walls and are strong, but if they collapsed they could hurt many people inside."
The quake was centred in the mountains that divide Qinghai province from the Tibet Autonomous Region.
The foothills to the south and east of the area are home to herders and Tibetan monasteries of Yushu county, known for its horse festival, while the area to the north and west is arid and desolate.
The quake was centred 240 km north northwest of Qamdo in Tibet and 375 km south southeast of the mining town of Golmud in Qinghai, and had a depth of 10 km, it said.
A magnitude 5.0 quake struck the same region late on Tuesday night, and aftershocks of magnitude-6 and over rattled the town Wednesday morning, sending fearful residents into the streets.
The Tibetan plateau is regularly shaken by earthquakes, but casualties are usually minimal because so few people live there. The exception was the magnitude-8 quake that hit the Sichuan foothills in May 2008, killing 80,000 people.

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COMA PATIENT AMAZES

Doctors in Croatia are baffled by a coma patient who woke up fluent in another language.


Medics are scratching their heads over the 13-year-old who now speaks perfect German - but can't converse in Croatian.

The girl's parents, who hail from the southern town of Knin, say their daughter had only just started to learn German before she lapsed into the coma.

Her unconscious spell only lasted 24 hours but it has left her able to speak German to a far higher level than before her illness, reports the Daily Mail.

Her parents claim she had been trying to watch German television shows and read books in German but wasn't very proficient in the language.

She is still being cared for at Split's KB Hospital as she has apparently forgotten how to speak Croatian.

Doctors are still trying to discover what caused her coma, which may have been prompted by extremely high body temperature, and why it affected her language skills.

"You never know when recovering from such a trauma how the brain will react," says the hospital's director Dujomir Marasovic. "Obviously we have some theories although at the moment we are limited in what we can say because we have to respect the privacy of the patient."

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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ARTIC BALLOON CROSSING

A French explorer's team says he has made the first Arctic crossing by balloon, landing in the tundra of eastern Siberia five days after taking off in Norway.
Jean-Louis Etienne travelled 3,130km in his special balloon, sailing over the Arctic Circle.

The 63-year-old radioed his team after landing on Saturday, expressing relief "because there were difficult moments and I was starting to lose sleep". The landing had been set for Alaska, but Etienne had to change course after a snowstorm on Wednesday near the North Pole hindered the recharging of batteries via solar panels.

Etienne measured the atmosphere for C02 during his trip and did other tests. In 1986, the explorer became the first person to reach the North Pole alone.

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BLUR IS BACK

British band Blur will release its first single for seven years later this month, although only 1,000 copies of the limited edition vinyl record will go on sale, NME music magazine reported.


The two songs, recorded two weeks ago, follow the band's reunion shows last summer and are part of an initiative to support Record Store Day on April 17.

The annual event is designed to highlight the plight of independent record stores which have struggled to survive in the digital download age.

"We want independent record stores to continue, they're an important part of our musical culture," said Blur frontman Damon Albarn. "Music is a simple way for Blur to show our support and we hope people like it."

The release is likely to heighten expectations of a full Blur reunion. Last summer the popular group played major shows at London's Hyde Park and the Glastonbury and T in the Park festivals.

The new Blur release is part of a series of limited edition seven-inch singles being released by the band's label to mark the day, with The Beatles and Lily Allen also among EMI's releases limited to 1,000 copies each.

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