Christchurch’s Mayor Garry Moore has taken to his bed with influenza.

He expects to be off work for the rest of the week and this means that he has had to cancel his weekly Chat with residents in Cathedral Square this Friday at noon.

Mr. Moore hopes he will be fit again by the weekend to attend the Local Government NZ conference in Wellington.

There he intends to discuss the future of the Southerner train with other mayors from the lower South Island and also arrange a meeting with the Minister of Transport, Mark Gosche, about the train’s future.

Diary note: On Tuesday 24 July at 1pm Mr. Moore, with the Rev Maurice Gray, will plant a camellia called “Volunteer” on the corner of Worcester Street and Oxford Terrace, behind the Municipal Offices building, to commemorate the International Year of Volunteers.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>