Cancer Inquiry (and editorial) – Copter Ad A Lie – East Timor – Election Date – Kiwi Logo – Reserve Bank Travel – Frida Kahlo

CANCER INQUIRY: The Sunday Star Times leads today with a report that colleagues of disgraced Gisborne pathologist Michael Bottrill tried to stymie the cervical smear review which revealed the extent of his incompetence.

COPTER AD A LIE: The front-page photo story shows a wheelchair bound woman – Miki Vague – and reports that a television advertisement in which a disabled woman claims she was saved by a rescue helicopter has been branded a lie.

Also on the front:

- EAST TIMOR: a report that East Timorese who worked for the UN carrying out the independence ballot are being traced down and killed. UN sources in Darwin said yesterday there had been 10 confirmed reports of assassinations in places as varied as Bali and Jakarta;

- ELECTION DATE: a report that Prime Minister Jenny Shipley is to announce this afternoon whether the country is in for a short, fiery election campaign or a long, steady one.

- KIWI LOGO: a report that a peacock on speed? A bird with its bum on fire? A gross perversion of our national icon? Or all three? The talking point is the Saatchi &Saatchi designed logo for the international Arts Festival 2000;

Inside:

- EAST TIMOR: a report that NZ Foreign Minister Don McKinnon believes Indonesia’s strained relationship with New Zelaand may be repaied as quickly as the New year, assuming the East Timor peacekeeping operation is successful;

- RESERVE BANK TRAVEL: a report that Reserve Bank governor Don Brash’s wife is accompanying him on an overseas business trip at taxpayers expense – the third time she has done so since July 1997;

- FRIDA KAHLO: a report that the International Festival of the Arts to be held in Wellington next year has scored the coup of securing an exhibition of works by the painter Frida Kahlo.

EDITORIAL: The editorial discusses the ministerial inquiry into the cervical cancer smear debacle in Gisborne.

© 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.

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