A quick word
Prosecutors say impeachment acquittal would hurt democracy
Vale Antoines! Where can one now go for an excellent and reliable meal of tripes?
Peter Clapshaw, Remuera.
I have just read in the Herald that New Zealand gave Myanmar $42 million in aid between 2018 and 2020. Why?
L H Cleverly, Mt Roskill.
Ties in Parliament? How about getting on and running the country as they were elected to do instead of devoting most of their time and our money in deliberation over whether or not to wear a tie at work.
Paul Beck,
West Harbour.
Why is social housing designed to be town houses rather than apartments?
Who would want to leave new houses, gifted to them?
This could be a house for life, with no motivation to make it on your own. Nishi Fahmy, Avondale.
The Prada Cup has all the hallmarks of being a classic battle. A brash street fighter up against yachting's very best. My money will be on the most successful Olympic yachtsman ever. So if Team NZ do eventually lose, the best outcome for the coveted trophy would be a win for Ineos.
Dave Miller, Tauranga.
We are told that the annual inflation rate for the past four years is 2 per cent.
For young families their biggest expenditure will be either rent or mortgage.
Houses have been increasing 15 per cent annually for the past four years and rents have sky rocketed. Obviously, mortgages and rent are not reflected accurately in the annual inflation rate. Housing, mortgages and high rents keep those on low incomes in the poverty cycle.
Neil Hatfull, Warkworth.
Why are the Greens and Labour so hell-bent on damaging Air New Zealand?
Chris Parker, Campbells Bay.
On Wednesday February 10, submissions opened to allow public comment on the abolition of the right to force a public poll to veto Maori Wards on councils.
On Thursday February 11, submissions closed. Is this the new democracy a la the unbridled Labour Government?
Wendy Clark, Pukekohe.
I'm not a great tennis fan, but having a sales background I've always appreciated the efforts of Karl Budge to entice top players to Auckland and grow the ASB Classic by obtaining great sponsors. He is an irreplaceable loss to tennis and I hope Russell Coutts and his new sailing venture appreciate his particular talents.
You will surely be missed by Auckland tennis, Karl. Susan Wilson, Waiheke Island.
Dire harm from Donald Trump’s false and violent incitements will vex American democracy long into the future unless the Senate convicts him and bars him from future office, House prosecutors insisted yesterday as they concluded two days of emotional arguments in his historic impeachment trial.
Making their case, they presented piles of new videos of last month’s deadly Capitol attack, with invaders proudly declaring they were merely obeying “the President’s orders” to fight to overturn the election results as Congress was certifying his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump is accused of inciting the invasion, which prosecutors said was a predictable climax of the many public and explicit instructions he gave supporters long before his White House rally that unleashed the January 6 attack.
“If we pretend this didn’t happen, or worse, if we let it go unanswered, who’s to say it won’t happen again?” argued prosecutor Joe Neguse. Even out of office, Democrats warned, Trump could whip up a mob of followers for similar damage.
Trump’s defence will take the Senate floor today, arguing that as terrible as the attack was, it clearly was not the President’s doing.
The proceedings could finish with a vote this weekend by the senators who are sitting as impeachment jurors.
The Democrats, with little hope of conviction by two-thirds of the evenly divided Senate, are also making their most graphic case to the American public, while Trump’s lawyers and the Republicans are focused on legal rather than emotional or historic questions, hoping to get it all behind as quickly as possible. Five people died in the Capitol chaos and its aftermath, a domestic attack unparalleled in United States history.
Trump’s second impeachment trial, on a charge of incitement of insurrection, has echoes of last year’s impeachment and acquittal over the Ukraine matter, as prosecutors warn senators Trump has shown no bounds and will pose a continuing danger to the civic order unless he convicted.
Even out of the White House, the former President holds influence over large swathes of voters.
The Democratic House members acting as prosecutors drew a direct line yesterday from Trump’s repeated comments condoning and even celebrating violence — praising “both sides” after the 2017 outbreak at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — and urging his rally crowd last month to go to the Capitol and fight for his presidency. He spread false claims about election fraud, without evidence, and urged his supporters to “stop the steal” of the presidency.
Prosecutors used the rioters’ own videos from that day to pin responsibility on Trump.
“We were invited here,” said one. “Trump sent us,” said another. “He’ll be happy. We’re fighting for Trump.”
“They truly believed that the whole intrusion was at the President’s orders,” said Diana DeGette.
Though most of the Senate jurors seem to have made up their minds, making Trump’s acquittal likely, the never-before-seen audio and video became a key exhibit this week.
Senators sat riveted as the jarring
video played in the chamber on
Thursday.
The footage showed the mob smashing into the building, rioters engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police, with audio of officers pleading for back-up. Rioters were seen roaming the halls chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” and eerily singing out “Where are you, Nancy?” in search of
The graphic compilation underscored how dangerously close the rioters came to US leaders, shifting the focus of the trial from an academic debate about the Constitution to a raw retelling of the assault.
Trump attorney David Schoen said the presentation was “offensive” and that the Democrats “haven’t tied it in any way to Trump.”
He claimed Democrats were making the public relive the tragedy in a way that “tears at the American people” and impedes efforts at unity.
And by yesterday senators sitting through a second full day of arguments appeared somewhat fatigued, slouching in their chairs, crossing their arms and walking around to stretch.
One Republican, Senator said during a break: “To me, they’re losing credibility the longer they talk.”
The goal of the two-day presentation by prosecutors from the House, which impeached the outgoing president last month a week after the siege, was to cast Trump not as an innocent bystander but rather as the “inciter in chief ” who spent months spreading falsehoods and revving up supporters to challenge the election.
“This attack never would have happened but for Donald Trump,” Madeleine Dean, one of the impeachment managers, said with emotion.
Trump’s lawyers are likely to blame the rioters themselves for the violence.
The first President to face an impeachment trial after leaving office, Trump is also the first to be twice impeached.
His lawyers say he cannot be convicted because he is already gone from the White House.
Even though the Senate rejected that argument in Tuesday’s vote to proceed to trial, the issue could resonate with Senate Republicans eager to acquit Trump without being seen as condoning his behaviour.
While six Republicans joined with Democrats to vote to proceed with the trial this week, the 56-44 vote was far from the two-thirds threshold of 67
If we let it go unanswered, who’s to say it won’t happen again?
Joe Neguse, Democrat
Pelosi.
India, the unmatched vaccine manufacturing power, is giving away millions of doses to neighbours friendly and estranged, to counter China, which has made doling out jabs a central plank of its foreign relations. And the United Arab Emirates, drawing on its oil riches, is buying shots on behalf of its allies.
The coronavirus vaccine — one of the world’s most in-demand commodities — has become a new currency for international diplomacy.
Countries with the means or the know-how are using the shots to curry favour or thaw frosty relations. India sent them to Nepal, a country that has fallen increasingly under China’s influence. Sri Lanka, in the midst of a diplomatic tug of war between New Delhi and Beijing, is getting doses from both.
The strategy carries risks. India and China, both of which are making vaccines for the rest of the world, have vast populations of their own to inoculate. Though there are few signs of grumbling in either country, that could change as the public sees doses sold or donated abroad.
“Indians are dying. Indians are still getting the disease,” said Manoj Joshi, a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. “I could understand if our needs had been fulfilled and then you had given away the stuff. But I think there is a false moral superiority that you are trying to put across where you say we are giving away our stuff even before we use it ourselves.”
The donating countries are making their offerings at a time when the United States and other rich nations are scooping up the world’s supplies. Poorer countries are frantically trying to get their own, a disparity that the
World Health Organisation recently warned had put the world “on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure”.
With their health systems tested like never before, many countries will take what they are offered — and the donors could reap political good will.
“Instead of securing a country by sending troops, you can secure the country by saving lives, by saving their economy, by helping with their vaccination,” said Dania Thafer, executive director of the Gulf International Forum, a Washington-based think tank.
China was one of the first countries to make a diplomatic vaccine push, promising to help developing countries last year even before the nation had mass-produced an effective vaccine. This week, it said it would give 300,000 doses to Egypt.
But some of China’s vaccinediplomacy efforts have stumbled from supplies arriving late, a lack of disclosure about the efficacy of its vaccines and other issues. Chinese government officials have cited unexpectedly strong needs at home amid isolated outbreaks, a move that could blunt any domestic backlash.
India saw its own chance to bolster its own image.
The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine factory, churns out the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine at a daily rate of about 2.5 million doses. That has allowed India to begin to dole out free doses to neighbours. To much fanfare, planeloads have arrived in Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles and Afghanistan.
“Acting East. Acting fast,” said S. Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, announcing the arrival of 1.5 million doses in Myanmar, on Twitter.
The Indian government has tried
Instead of securing a country by sending troops, you can secure the country by saving lives, by saving their economy.
Dania Thafer, think tank
to score publicity points for doses shipped to places such as Brazil and Morocco, though those countries purchased theirs. The Serum Institute has also pledged 200 million doses to a global WHO pool called Covax that would go to poorer nations, while China recently pledged 10 million.
For now, the Indian government has room to donate abroad, even after months when cases soared and the economy was hobbled, and even as it has vaccinated just a tiny per cent of its 1.3 billion people. Part of the reason for a lack of backlash: the Serum Institute is producing at a faster rate than India’s inoculation program can handle, leaving extras for donations and exports.
And some Indians are not in a rush to get vaccinated because of scepticism over a homegrown vaccine called Covaxin. The Indian government approved its emergency use without disclosing much data about it, leading some people to doubt it. While the AstraZeneca-Oxford jab has
faced less scepticism, those vaccinated don’t choose the vaccine.
For India, its soft-power vaccine drive has given it a rejoinder to China, after years of watching the Chinese make political gains in its own backyard — in Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Nepal and elsewhere. Beijing offered deep pockets and swift answers when it came to big investments that India, with a layered bureaucracy and slowing economy, struggled to match.
“India’s neighbourhood has become more crowded, more competitive,” said Constantino Xavier, who studies India’s relations with its neighbours at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress, a New Delhi think tank. “The vaccine push bolsters India’s credibility as a reliable crisis-responder and solutions provider to these neighbouring countries.”
One of India’s largest donations has been to Nepal, where India’s relationship has been at a historic low. Sandwiched between India and
China, the tiny country is strategically significant to both.
Over the past five years, following border disputes and what some in Nepal criticise as a master-andservant relationship with India, the government of K.P. Sharma Oli, the prime minister, began cosying up to China. Oli held workshops on “Xi Jinping Thought,” based on the strategies of China’s top leader, and signed contracts for several projects as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s infrastructure and development push.
But the prime minister started losing his grip on power last year. As both Chinese and Indian delegations arrived in Kathmandu to steer Nepal’s domestic political jockeying, the Nepali leader seems to have lowered the temperature with India.
After Oli sent his foreign minister for talks in New Delhi, India donated a million doses. China’s Sinopharm has also applied for Nepal’s approval of its vaccine, but drug authorities there
have not given it the go-ahead.
“The vaccine emerged as an opportunity to normalise ties” between Nepal and India, said Tanka Karki, a former Nepali envoy to China.
Still, the strategy of using vaccines to win hearts and minds isn’t always successful.
The United Arab Emirates, which is rolling out vaccines faster than any country except Israel, has begun donating Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccines it purchased to countries where it has strategic or commercial interests, including 50,000 doses each to the Seychelles and Egypt.
But in Egypt some doctors said they did not trust the data the UAE and the vaccine’s Chinese maker had released about trials. The government of Malaysia, one of the Emirates’ biggest trading partners, declined an offer of 500,000 doses, saying regulators would have to independently approve the Sinopharm vaccine. Malaysia bought others instead.
I am confident that this short, sharp circuit breaker will be effective. We will be able to smother this. We will be able to prevent it getting away from us.
Premier Daniel Andrews, left
Victoria has been plunged into a third lockdown after a cluster of cases linked to the state’s hotel quarantine system grew.
Premier of the Australian state, Daniel Andrews, said the lockdown would last five days from 11.59pm last night until the same time on Wednesday.
Victorians will only be allowed to leave their homes for the following reasons: essential supplies, care and caregiving and exercise and essential work.
Exercise and shopping will be limited to 5km from Victorians’ homes.
Masks will need to be worn everywhere except in your own homes and no visitors are allowed in homes. Public gatherings are not permitted.
Andrews said that if you can work from home, then you must.
Schools will close but will remain available over three days — Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday — for vulnerable children.
Child care and early childhood centres will remain open.
Places of worship are closed. Religious gatherings and ceremonies are not permitted. Funerals can involve no more than 10 people for both indoor or outdoor settings. Weddings are not permitted unless on compassionate grounds.
There will be no crowds at the Australian Open.
All non-essential retail must close, but supermarkets, bottle shops and pharmacies can stay open. One person in each household can go shopping per day.
Cafes and restaurants will be restricted to takeaway only, dine-in is not allowed. Pubs will have to close.
Andrews said he was left with no option because of the speed with which cases were spreading.
“I know it’s not the place that we wanted to be in,” he said.
“However, we’ve all given so much, we’ve all done so much. We’ve built something precious, and we have to make difficult decisions, and do difficult things, in order to defend what we’ve built.
“I am confident that this short, sharp circuit breaker will be effective.
We will be able to smother this. We will be able to prevent it getting away from us.
“I want to be here on Wednesday next week announcing that these restrictions are coming off, but I can’t do it on my own. I need every single Victorian to work with me, and with our team, so that we can run this to ground and we can see this strategy work.”
He said the UK variant was posing huge problems to the contact tracing effort.
“We have talked about this (the UK strain) for a long time, because it is so hyper-infectious, and moves so fast, that it is presenting a very, very real challenge to our status, our stay-safe, stay-open, our precious thing that we’ve built — all of us — throughout 2020,” he said.
“Now, while we don’t have cases outside those that were notified as possible close contacts, those who had been, by virtue of who they’d been with or where they had been, while it’s not surprising that we’re seeing extra cases within those groups — and in some respects it’s pleasing that that’s where those cases are — the way in which they are presenting is a very significant concern to us.
“That makes it incredibly difficult, incredibly difficult — difficult to do contact tracing, because there is no gap, if you like, between when we have the first case and their close contacts and potentially others that they have spent time with.
“The whole process, because of the hyper-infectivity and the speed at which this moves, the whole process has been condensed down, and it is now, I am sad to have to report, it is the advice to me that we must assume that there are further cases in the community than we have positive results for, and that it is moving at a velocity that has not been seen anywhere in our country over the course of these last 12 months,” Andrews said.
He said he has to assume the virus is spreading at “light speed”.
“We may find that, because of the contact tracing that we’ve already done, because of these sorts of charts and the thousands of hours of work that’s gone on these last 10 days or so, that we don’t have this problem,” he said.
“The challenge is I can’t wait a week to be proven right in that.
“We have to assume, based on advice, that there’s transmission out there that we don’t know about, and that it’s not moving quickly, it’s moving at light speed.” Authorities are not only concerned about the growing Holiday Inn cluster, but they are also understood to have worried about virus fragments detected in wastewater across Melbourne.
A source close to Emergency Management Victoria said authorities feared they had lost control of the outbreak — describing scenes of “pandemonium” at the agency.
They said there were deep concerns at the failure of contact tracers to match information they had been given by confirmed cases and their close contacts with what the results of sewage testing was showing about the virus’s spread.
Officials are working with the theory that all of the cases linked to the Holiday Inn outbreak are UK strain cases — meaning it could spread a lot more quickly than the strain that took hold of Victoria last year.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison was in Melbourne yesterday, touring the
CSL manufacturing plant where local doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for Covid-19 will be produced.
He said that the traumatising impact of the lockdowns on Victorians was “real” and he understood why it was upsetting news that the option was on the table.
He said a third shutdown of Melbourne is the last thing anyone wants to see.
“I can assure you that everyone is doing everything to ensure that’s not replicated again on this occasion. There’s no reason it should, as other states have demonstrated.
“You can get on top of this pretty quickly.
“I have reason for confidence that they can do the same thing by following that same process.”
Meanwhile, Australia’s chief medical officer said he will investigate claims that a man breached hotel quarantine requirements in the state and slipped through hotel staff to deliver a PlayStation 4 to a friend in quarantine.
Professor Paul Kelly said he would “follow it up” and that the situation was “not ideal”.
“What you describe there is not ideal of course, we want quarantine to be exactly that, to separate people from the wider community to minimise the chances of the virus spreading.”
When jockey Ryan Elliot canters down to the start of today’s $400,000 Herbie Dyke at Te Rapa it will be with a little bit of heartache and a lot of hope.
Elliot will partner Beauden as he tries to spoil the party at the expected Melody Belle record-setting party in New Zealand’s richest weight-for-age race, the centrepiece of Waikato’s best race meeting of the season.
If Melody Belle justifies her $1.45 price she will pass Sunline as the most successful Group 1 thoroughbred trained in New Zealand. Elliot is one of nine rival jockeys trying to deny her but not quite on the horse he wants.
For months when the Waikato jockey has thought of the Herbie Dyke Stakes, it has been with mother Leanne’s stable star and family pet Rock On Wood in mind. Until tragedy struck at Trentham two weeks ago.
Elliot was aboard Rock On Wood when he broke a leg in the Thorndon Mile that was Melody Belle’s 13th Group 1, and had to be put down. The Elliot family were devastated. “It was a very, very hard thing to go through,” admits Elliot.
“Not only to lose my favourite horse but because I was worried about Mum and the rest of the family.
“It hurt but I have got a job to do and I am lucky to be on Beauden because he is a really good horse. But yes, I am still getting over it.”
Beauden may not have the sheer speed Rock On Wood was blessed with but he is a tough open-class galloper who has been carrying huge weights to victory so weight-for-age now looks his friend.
But that weight scale still means giving Melody Belle 2kg and Elliot says his best hope is staying in front of her.
“He has been going good races and is fit so if we can stay close to Camino Rocoso, who should lead, and hope she [Melody Belle] has some bad luck we might get our chance.
“She is a great mare and we realise a lot of people will be hoping she gets the record but it is our job to beat her.”
Although Melody Belle should win, you can make cases for
Sinarahma (on her last start), The Chosen One (on his Aussie best) and Tiptronic (defending champion) to at least test her.
But if Melody Belle shows the same improvement between the Thorndon and today as she did between two Group 1 races she won in similar circumstances in October, the mare the stable call Valarie should leave Te Rapa as holder of New Zealand racing’s hardest-won record.
At any normal meeting the Herbie Dyke, with its class, stake money and tease of something truly special would totally dominate the chat but it has a rival for attention in the $200,000 BCD Sprint.
Avantage and Levante may never threaten Melody Belle’s record but they are two incredibly talented mares set to meet at the peak of their powers in the 1400m weight-for-age Group 1.
Avantage is class and has already won our two most glamorous sprints this summer but when Levante lets rip in a race it looks like she has been fired out of a giant equine slingshot.
The race may come down to luck in the running and tempo but because Levante could be last for the first half of the race, if she is going to beat Avantage, Callsign Mav and Julius she may need something freakish.
Add in some of the best three-yearolds in the country in the Waikato Guineas and the Ellis Fillies Classic and today is as good a race meeting as you will see in New Zealand outside the Karaka Million.
One thing looks near certain. At least one outstanding female thoroughbred (Melody Belle, Avantage, Levante, Amarelinha) is going to do something amazing. Or maybe all of them.
Take your pick.