Delamere Sacked – Massage For Shipley – Horses Shot – Y2k – Plane Crash – ACC - Flood

For full text see… http://www.nzherald.co.nz

DELAMERE SACKED: National is scrambling to sort out a legal and political mess after the Prime Minister yesterday sacked Immigration Minister Tuariki Delamere over special treatment given to Chinese investors prepared to put money into Maori projects. Jenny Shipley has made her deputy, Wyatt Creech, acting minister and instructed him and officials to sort out the problem "forthwith."

MASSAGE FOR SHIPLEY: Jenny Shipley was happy to stumble across a portable back massager in a Manukau shopping mall yesterday and used it to soothe her campaign tensions. After several hours working the crowds at Ellerslie Flower Show and Southmall in Manurewa, as well as coping with a heavy cold, the little mechanical levers gave welcome relief.

HORSES SHOT: Four horses were put down after a disease-control experiment went wrong at the Ministry of Agriculture isolation unit in Wellington. Two of the horses were injured, one on a truck and another by an exposed spike in the concrete cattleyard where three of them were kept.

Y2k: Alarming numbers of companies are ignoring advice to prepare for unexpected problems caused by the millennium bug. While many businesses are confident they have fixed potential in-house problems, not enough have realised the importance of putting contingency plans in place.

PLANE CRASH: A body washed up on a Canterbury beach has been identified as a Japanese passenger missing since a plane crash on Sunday. The body of Takuya Taira, aged 25, of Okinawa, was found by a member of the public about 7.15 am yesterday on a beach just south of where the plane was thought to have crashed into the sea, Canterbury police said.

ACC: An Auckland locksmith company has accused the ACC of hounding it for thousands of dollars after one of its employees was badly beaten while out on a job. In September 1996, an Accurate Locksmith employee was sent on a job which involved cutting new keys for a woman's car. The woman's partner arrived at the house and bashed the locksmith several times with a heavy torch.

FLOOD: Queenstown stayed dry and the forecast rain stayed away from the headwaters of Wakatipu, easing fears the lake was set to flood again yesterday. While no one expected a repeat of last week's record floods, many Queenstowners prepared for the worst on Tuesday night when clouds gathered above the western ranges.

© 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.

CONTACT ALASTAIR THOMPSON

• Mobile - 021707044
• Twitter - @althecat
• Google+

• Linkedin
• Facebook
• Email - alastair@scoop.co.nz