Everton midfielder has family in village hit by disaster 'If I could leave training and do aid work I'd do it' Everton's Tim Cahill is to launch an appeal to help the victims of the tsunami in Samoa. The midfielder, who was born in Sydney to a Samoan mother, dedicated his goal in Thursday night's 2-1 Europa League victory over BATE Borisov to those affected by the disaster but now plans to go further....
The disasters this week show people on Pacific shores still lack basic protection from tsunamis The official responses to this week's double disaster first, the Samoan tsunami on Tuesday, and then the Sumatran earthquakes on Wednesday and Thursday again reveal worrying flaws in the early warning systems that are the first, and usually only, lines of defence against the natural hazards that regularly...
Alexander Chancellor writes (G2, 2 October) that until now the Samoans have believed in the benevolence of the weather, and further, it was this benign weather that brought Robert Louis Stevenson to Samoa. The great set piece of Stevenson's book on colonialism in Samoa, A Footnote to History, is his account of the hurricane in March 1889 that sank 11 of the 13 British, German and American ships...
Bereaved islanders pray for those who died in last week's disaster Hundreds of survivors in Samoa and neighbouring Pacific islands have gathered at churches and community halls to remember those killed in last week's tsunami. The Congregational Christian Church of Lalomanu, Samoa, was packed with about 1,000 people, including relatives from Australia and New Zealand and rescue workers, for a belated...
609 people confirmed dead in Indonesia alone A coalition of charities is today launching a major fundraising appeal to help those left destitute by the devastating earthquakes and typhoons in south-east Asia. ...
t have to pay for fat people. When booking, customers estimate their weight, and are then weighed again at the airport. If they weigh more than they'd suggested, then presumably they'll be charged more, or perhaps flogged and dragged to Fat Jail? Alternatively, they could save money by chopping off an arm or a leg. Not their heads though – that would be inhumane. It serves them right, doesn't it? The...
baggage at check-in, but weighing the person too, and charging a variable rate per kilo per mile. Basic physics confirms that the weight of passengers does affect the fuel costs of flights, and one can understand why obesity is a particular problem for airlines in the South Pacific. Samoa is the second most obese country on earth, squeezed between the neighbouring island nations of Nauru and American...
pay what you weigh' ticket policy, saying families have been particularly pleased by cheaper child tickets A Samoan airline that has become the world's first carrier to charge passengers according to their weight has defended its policy. People wishing to travel with Samoa Air have to submit their weight, including their luggage, when booking to calculate their fare. Proclaiming the "pay only for what...
s No13 grew up playing rugby with a plastic bottle stuffed with grass and was almost deported from the UK for outstaying his welcome in 2009 The surprises keep rolling from Manu Tuilagi. Just a few weeks after he helped propel England to a shock victory over New Zealand at Twickenham , while producing some deft skills to complement his familiar rampaging power, Tuilagi offers some equally unexpected...
A powerful cyclone rips through Samoa, one of the Pacific islands, killing at least two people ...
s example. That lesson, it could even be argued, is both practical and metaphorical. For is not modern Britain also at risk of wandering on to the wrong side of a symbolic date line? And perhaps we too may need to take a bold collective grasp of ourselves to get to where our nation ought to be? There is a wider metaphor to pursue here. But there is an irritatingly practical point to deal with first....
time with Asia-Pacific trading partners. The westward time jump means that Samoa's 186,000 citizens, and the 1,500 in the three-atoll UN dependency of Tokelau will be the first in the world to ring in the new year, rather than the last. The date line switch came 119 years after US traders persuaded local Samoans to align their islands' time with nearby US-controlled American Samoa to assist their...
Samoa skips a whole day to leap to the other side of the international dateline, catching up with its economic partners in Australia, New Zealand and Asia ...
s Friday in the Pacific islands state may be less happy. This year, 30 December is disappearing as Samoa skips the day entirely. The country that has been able to say it sees the world's last sunset of the day is about to edge ahead of Tonga as the place where 2012 begins. The decision to change Samoa's place in the world temporally reflects a new business order. It will be on the same day as New Zealand,...
s been put on hold," Suveinakama said. "We are cautious of the situation given the possible health issues." He said that Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand, had tapped emergency funds to buy desalination machines, which turn salt water into fresh water. He hopes those will be shipped to the islands soon. In Tuvalu, a country made up of low-lying atolls that is home to less than 11,000 people, the...
s biggest time machine as it skips today and goes straight to tomorrow Age: Variable. Appearance: Invisible. Blimey, hard one today. Or tomorrow! Um. Think it's still today. Or tomorrow! No, still today. It's a clue, you idiot. Ah! The international date line! Yes – how did you guess? It's in the title. Anyway, what is it? Some sort of hotshot dating service? Er, no. It's the imaginary line that slices...
s dawn on Sunday in Samoa, it's already dawn on Monday in adjacent Tonga – and fast approaching dawn on Monday in New Zealand, Australia and China. Samoa has found its interests lying more with the Asia-Pacific region and now wants to switch back to the west side of the international dateline, which runs roughly north-to-south along the 180-degree line of longitude in the Pacific Ocean. "In doing business...
s travels, but also the story of their discovery. In 1909 Father Otto Meyer picked up a shard of pottery decorated with angular patterns on a Papua New Guinea beach. Then, in 1950 a French geologist compared Meyer's shards with recent finds from the Isle of Pines, south of New Caledonia , and realised that they belonged to the same tradition. The term "Lapita" was coined in 1952: an American, Edwin...
s disappearance has only grown more complex in the 73 years since the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic went missing attempting to fly around the equator. One theory had it that she crashed into the sea after running out of fuel during her expedition over the Pacific Ocean. Others claimed that Earhart was executed by the Japanese for spying, was pressed into making propaganda broadcasts from...
s medic, put them on an intravenous drip, but the boys were able to sip water and soon wanted real food. "They are in incredibly good shape for the time they have been at sea," he said. The boys had a couple of coconuts on board which they finished after two days but were without water. "Somehow they caught a bird, I don't know how, but they caught it. They ate it; that is what is recommended," Fredricsen...