Victoria Fires - a tribute

This month's fires in Victoria, Australia have been horrendous. These fires are the worst natural disaster in Australia's history. As of today the death toll stands at 181, but that has not been updated for days as forensics examiners struggle to identify what are human remains, let alone whose remains they might be.

New Zealand is very close to Australia - both geographically and culturally - and I weep at the news that is flowing from Victoria.

Here is a multimedia tribute, hosted by Stuff (NZ news) but originally from The Age (Australian news).

Our Darkest Day

I cannot begin to imagine the horror of wanting to escape, but having no idea where would be safe, where the fire is, where it's going next, or how to save my babies. So many families have got a single surviving parent who has lost their spouse and all their children - my worst nightmare.
Read more...

frozen embryos given a chance

I spotted this today, and thought it classified as good-news news (as opposed to ordinary 'news' which is almost never 'good').

Couple receive embryos frozen for more than 15yrs

By DEIDRE MUSSEN - Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 27 July 2008

Six embryos frozen for more than 15 years finally have a chance at life after an Auckland family donated them to an infertile couple desperately wanting a baby.

It is believed to be one of the longest periods of time that embryos have been frozen in New Zealand and later transplanted to try to create a baby.

The unique case challenges new fertility laws, which ban keeping embryos left over from in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment for more than a decade without an exemption.

The donor couple, who wanted to remain anonymous, adopted a son 16 years ago and had an IVF son in 1993. They decided they did not want more children but kept their 12 left-over embryos frozen at an Auckland fertility clinic. "When they asked what do you want to do with them, we realised these aren't just eggs, they're embryos. It means destroying them and after all we've gone through, you can't," the donor husband said... [click link in title to read full article]

Lovely to read of these frozen babies being given a chance, rather than just being 'thrown away'. Read more...

Teenagers get good press

I saw this very rare breed of news article this evening and thought it warranted more attention.

The abridged version: three Bay of Plenty teenagers had been at a party, were on their way home at 2am, saw a house fire and, with no thought of personal safety, pulled a man from the burning house and applied appropriate first aid until emergency services arrived. From Stuff

Yay Read more...

A tough week in NZ

On Tuesday evening I first heard about 10 students, a teacher and an instructor missing during a camp at the Sir Edmund Hilary Outdoor Pursuits Centre. By Wednesday morning the news was all bad. 6 students and a teacher from Elim Christian College in Auckland died during a canyoning exercise in a flash flood. The instructor managed to help 4 students to safety, so much kudos to her for managing that. Unbelievable grief.

Yesterday 1000 job losses were announced in NZ - 450 of them in Dunedin. The Fisher and Paykel manufacturing plant and Tamahine knitwear both announced plans to close/move production off-shore this year. The other 500 jobs are to be lost from ANZ bank shifting part of its call-centre to India. Welcome to the recession, the weather's looking dodgy and unstable.

This morning we heard that a body found just out of Christchurch is probably that of a 15 year old girl who has been missing for 12 days. The early days of the search were hampered by all sorts of weird coincidences about her imitating a movie in which a teenager was kidnapped, speculation it was a run-away hoax etc etc. But it turns out it was probably something much more simple, brutal and tragic.

Sadness. Read more...