National MPs Scrap in Public - National MPs are at loggerheads over a proposed change to New Zealand’s murder laws. Back bench MP Brian Neeson is putting forward a Private Member’s Bill to bring in degrees of murder. Doug Graham insists that this is foolhardy and reflects thinking of people who don’t understand legal principle. Mr Neeson says Mr Graham is out of touch: “Doug is bound in the old crusty ways of people who have had it to lord over us all these years, and he doesn’t want to see these changes.” He is confident his Bill will receive majority caucus support.

Police Figures Show Social Standing Not Ethnicity - A Maori academic says child homicide has more to do with class structure than ethnicity. New police figures show nearly half the people charged with murdering children under the age of 14 are Maori. Less than a fifth of the population are Maori. Professor Ranginui Walker says the situation is a symptom of Maori position in New Zealand society as an underclass. Other social indices show poorer educational achievement, unemployment, and family breakdowns. He says to say it is simply a matter of ethnicity is wrong because the beating up of wives and children occurs across all races.

Winebox Appeal Court Ruling Due Today - New Zealand First leader Winston Peters and his Winebox will be back in the news this afternoon when the Court of Appeal decides whether he was wrongly maligned. Mr Peters has challenged the Winebox Commissioner’s findings which were critical of the claims he had made. Mr Peters mounted his challenge to Mr Davison’s findings on a point of law, saying he wrongly applied the law to what has become known as the Magnum Transaction.

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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>>