Cash destined for AIDS sufferers is being held up while two groups bicker.

Auckland’s AIDS charities claim $11,000 is missing from proceeds collected during this year’s Hero Parade. The charities claim organisers of the Hero Parade spent the money and that this was a breach of trust as the money was gifted to go towards supporting people living with AIDS and HIV.

The Hero Project is in debt by $180,000 after this year’s festival. Its chairperson has conceded that an error was made in failing to set up two separate bank accounts - one for operating costs and another for money raised for the charities.

Money collected at the Hero Parade was banked into the operating account and became inaccessible when the Hero Project fell into financial difficulties.

A squabble has continued since then. The Hero Project says as the charities turned down an offer from a benefactor to make up the difference they have created their own problem. While the charities say the benefactor withdrew the offer, and that the Hero Project entered into a verbal contract that any money collected during the Parade was to be put into a trust.

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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>>