Reporter’s diary

Press, 13 February 1986, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Pedalfers CRANKING pedals with their hands, four New Zealanders on Saturday will try to break their own 1982 record of 10 hours 45 minutes for crossing Cook Strait by hand power. The paraplegic team is home from its successful crossing of the English Channel in the hand-operated catamaran Para Power 11. The craft is the same one used on the Channel crossing. It was built by Sir Len Southward, the New Zealand engineer and philanthropist. Crew members face each other on deck-mounted chairs.

Pedals are connected by a bicycle chain drive to a shaft that turns a fourbladed propeller. This Cook Strait crossing should be faster than the last if conditions are right because the craft is lighter than the first one, which had the crew sitting in modified wheelchairs.

Crew members plan an early start from Paramata in the North Island, but a launch might tow the craft across the strait for a South Island start if weather and tides require it.

Child savers YEAR-ROUND activities of the North Canterbury branch of the Save the Children Fund last year netted a profit of $31,000. Thirty children in different countries will benefit by having a year’s education funded at $240 each. The rest of the money will be used to build two cold-storage rooms in Upper Volta for vaccines against polio, measles, and diptheria. The North Canterbury branch has 270 people sewing, knitting, and making soft toys during the year to raise funds. Coal poetry A GOVERNMENT department is mining for information about poetry written through the years that’ deals with coalminers. State Coal Mines, part of the Ministry of Energy, is thinking about compiling an anthology of poetry by and about miners, and wants any samples it can find in publications or spirited away in archives. The department needs names of authors, publication dates, and details of copyright holders. One 1939 collection, “Pit Poems,” has been found that was written by Leo Fowler. A book for secondary schools may be published, but a publication for wider consumption may be considered if enough suitable poems are found. Poems found so far have provided an insight about social conditions in mines and their communities. If you can help, the State

Coal Mines compiler can be reached through us. Money back WHITCOULLS responded yesterday to the story about a Christchurch man who had bought a train book twice for his small son, after the boy (although he was vague about doing it) had dropped it in the store. The man says the $2.50 being refunded will probably be put towards another train book. King County SEATTLE, a sister city of Christchurch, is considering an unusual name change for its county which would not be much of a change at all. King County was named in 1852 for William Rufus DeVane King, who was a vicepresident of the United States and a slave owner in Alabama. The proposal calls for renaming the county after another king, the civil rights leader, Martin Luther King. The know-all

IT IS an old journalistic trick, but some people never tire of using it. Larni Hunter, a television “Eye Witness News” reporter, managed to get the jump on the competition on Tuesday evening with a story about the troubled New Zealand Steel Company’s expansion project. His story, about a directors’ recommendation to shareholders concerning the company’s reconstruction, was littered with “we understand” and “sources tell u 0 All would be

revealed on Wednesday when shareholders received the document, he said. In fact, Hunter attended a press briefing in Auckland on Tuesday and was given copies of the document, which was embargoed until midnight. That was too late for the news programme, and so the reporter — who tried unsuccessfully to get permission to break the embargo — invented a few sources and carried on regardless. The code THE DEPUTY Mayor of Washington, D.C., has called him a nerd and an imbecile, but Alvin Frost is not budging in his dispute with his bosses. Alvin holds the key to the city’s financial management system. He has changed the computer password that is the key to unlocking the master accounts, and he is not letting on what it is. He says he cannot remember, but it has something to do with the Declaration of Independence, and is a sevenletter code. He says that city cryptographers will be working with a pool of about eight million combinations to get the answer. Alvin’s superiors are not amused by his stunt. The cash management analyst has a history of insubordination. He denounced the city’s administration as corrupt, and accused finance officials of improprieties in the awarding of city contracts. A colleague who has flashes of insight thinks the code word might be FREEDOM. , —Stan Daring