New Zealand Herald

Friday, 11 August 2000, 10:54 am
Article: Alastair Thompson

Undercover Detection – Kylie Jones x 2 – Meningitis – ERB – Overstayers – Hamilton Stadium – Firefighters To US – Joanne McCarthy – Janet Frame – Moore On Samuels – Aussie Citizenship

For full text see… http://www.nzherald.co.nz/

UNDERCOVER DETECTION: An undercover detective who infiltrated two crime rings sparked a series of police raids beginning at dawn yesterday in which guns, drugs and stolen goods were seized.
Police claim the raids - with 145 officers taking part - broke the two Waikato crime rings.

KYLIE JONES: A woman who trained as an anti-violence facilitator with Kylie Jones' killer, Taffy Hotene, says he was a reserved young man with no apparent hostility towards women.
Dr Vanya Kovach and Hotene took a course run by the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), a voluntary programme to teach prisoners anti-violence techniques.

KYLIE JONES: Outspoken tougher sentences campaigner Mark Middleton has vowed to kill the man who murdered 22-year-old Auckland journalist Kylie Jones if he is ever released from prison.
Middleton said yesterday that he or his "brotherhood" would kill 30-year-old Taffy Herbert Hotene if he was ever released, because the justice system was incapable of protecting innocent people.

MENINGITIS: New Zealand's decade-long epidemic of the deadly meningococcal disease is being driven by household crowding, says a major study.
The three-year investigation is the first of its kind in this country to look at the risk factors for meningococcal disease.

ERB: All an employer need do to circumvent the law giving greater workplace access to unions is take a mattress to work and call it a dwelling-house, says Act leader Richard Prebble.

OVERSTAYERS: Long-term overstayers are bracing themselves for legislation granting immigration officers the power to detain them and send them home on the same day.
The legislation is already in force for illegal immigrants who arrived in New Zealand after October 1 last year.

HAMILTON STADIUM: Hamilton's $30 million dual sports stadium project has hit another stumbling block. Its governing trust is facing liquidation.
Redman Advertising and Marketing has filed papers in the High Court at Hamilton seeking to place the Waikato Stadium Trust in liquidation over a 12-month-old bill.

FIRE FIGHTERS TO US: Big Gulch, Fish Creek, Bruin Pt, Sombrero Butte - these are some of the American hotspots that Auckland firefighter Larry Crocker will help to damp down.
The 49-year-old Counties Manukau fire chief today flies out with nine colleagues - two from the Rural Fire Authority, five Department of Conservation staff, one Defence Force member and another from the Timaru District Council - to join 22,000 people battling blazes in the western states.

JOANNE MCCARTHY: Joanne McCarthy was involved in a "pitched mortal battle" as she fought for her life, Simon Moore, the Crown Solicitor for Auckland, said yesterday.
In his closing address in the Travis Burns murder trial in the High Court at Auckland, Mr Moore said it was a fight that Joanne McCarthy was to lose.

JANET FRAME: It might not have arrived with the flash and flurry of Harry Potter, but a biography of New Zealand writer Janet Frame seems to have cast a spell over bookstores nationwide.
Michael King's biography Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame has forced publisher Penguin Books to schedule a second printing just a week after the book hit store shelves.

MOORE ON SAMUELS: World Trade Organisation head Mike Moore is backing his friend sacked minister Dover Samuels saying he should take a break with him in Geneva.
"I know the Samuels family. Those kids adore him. He's stayed at my house. I have stayed at his house. I just do not believe some of the cruel rumours planted around this town [Wellington].

AUSSIE CITIZENSHIP: Prime Minister Helen Clark has poured cold water on Dr Michael Cullen's call for reciprocal citizenship for New Zealanders and Australians, yet the Finance Minister still wants to talk his colleagues round.
"I think Dr Cullen might be slightly optimistic about common citizenship," Helen Clark told a business conference in Wellington yesterday.

© Scoop Media

Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

Contact Alastair Thompson

• Linkedin
• Twitter - @althecat
• Facebook
• Email - alastair@scoop.co.nz