New Zealand Lowers Taxes to Stall Worker Exodus to Australia

May 21,New Zealand’s government is betting tax cuts will deliver higher incomes and encourage workers to stay in the country and spend rather than depart for better paying jobs overseas.

NZ troops in the hunt as Taleban suicide bomber kills 18

A Taleban suicide car bomber struck a Nato convoy in Kabul yesterday, killing six of its service personnel, five of them American, officials said.

Twelve Afghan civilians also died - many of them in a public bus in rush hour traffic.
New Zealand SAS troops, along with the Afghan crisis response unit, were called in to help track other insurgents responsible for the mission. No New Zealanders were hurt in the blast.

Forty-seven other people were wounded in the explosion, the first major attack in the capital since February when suicide bombers struck two small hotels in the city centre. That attack killed 16 people and led Afghan police to pledge that they would tighten security and surveillance.

The target of the attack was the foreign convoy, he said. The area around the blast site was littered with debris as US troops and Afghan police held a security cordon around the wrecked vehicles. There were no obvious military vehicles but Nato troops often travel in unmarked SUVs in the capital.

At least 12 Afghan civilians also died and 47 were wounded yesterday - most of them in the packed city bus, the Interior Ministry said.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack. "There were casualties among the Nato forces as well as among civilians - women, children and schoolchildren," Karzai told a news conference.

New Zealand World Cup team

       Of all the All Whites going to the football World Cup, perhaps the most intriguing selection is that of uncapped defender Winston Reid.