Competitive And Close - Yachting Teams Fight It Out

Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes syndicate fought a close match to finish first during the opening round of the Louis Vuitton Cup on Auckland's Hauraki Gulf.

Stars and Stripes led the French challenger Le Defi BTT by almost 80 seconds early in the race. But in an excellent display of competitiveness the French pulled Conner's yacht back to a two metre lead as they crossed the finish line.

The French took advantage of a wind shift to close to gap to just nine seconds at the finish.

In the other races on the opening morning, Young America beat America True by 37sec, Nippon beat Abracadabra 2000 by 38sec, AmericaOne was home 1min 09sec ahead of Bravo Espana, while the heavily favourited Prada boat stood out as a challenger favourite by beating FAST 2000 by 4min 20sec.

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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>>