The most common terms typed into search engine Google this year show Kiwis are a diverse bunch interested in murder, boxing, tragedy, science fiction and naked women.

Kiwi spammer Lance Atkinson has been fined US$15.1 million (NZ$21m) by a United States judge for his part in a spamming operation.

Atkinson, who now lives in Queensland, had admitted his involvement in a spam operation that sent millions of email messages marketing "male-enhancement" drugs and weight loss pills to computer users around the world. He was fined $100,000 in the High Court at Christchurch last December.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took its own action against Atkinson, whom it identified as the operation's ringleader.

It said that Atkinson and US resident Jody Smith recruited spammers from around the world and sent billions of e-mail messages directing consumers to websites operated by an affiliate program called Affking.

"The defendants' spam messages deceptively marketed (the drugs) in violation of federal law.

Thieves have hacked into payment machines at the Downtown carpark in central Auckland and stolen the credit-card details of thousands of people.

The matter came to light after banking systems pinpointed the council-owned carpark as a common point of purchase on fraudulent card transactions.

It is unclear whether the thieves attached a skimming device to the payment machines or accessed the devices' credit-card database internally, in which case those responsible could be overseas.

One of the questions surrounding legendary New Zealand racehorse Phar Lap's last race may have been answered by an Auckland physicist.

Dr Graeme Putt, of Auckland University, applied physics to footage of Phar Lap races to give new insight into the chestnut gelding's feats.

Kiwi pop star Ladyhawke has scored big at the New Zealand Music Awards, taking home six Tuis - including Album and Single of the Year.

Kiwi internet users have a love affair with illegal downloading and any changes to copyright law will fail to deter many, a survey has revealed.

A study of more than 1000 New Zealand internet users aged between 18 and 70 found every respondent had downloaded copyrighted material at least once in the past year.

Of those, 82 per cent copied music, while half downloaded software and 35 per cent movies.

Nearly one in five respondents said nothing could deter them from illegal downloading. One said attempts to legislate against illegal downloading were like "trying to stop an avalanche with a stick".

By BARRY LICHTER - Sunday Star Times
02/08/2009

TAB cost cutting is about to hit racing's Trackside television channel with scores of redundancies, the axing of most shows, and reduced raceday coverage.

And the impending cuts have industry leaders worried the channel, racing's shop window, will become a turnoff for viewers with little more than wall-to-wall racing from obscure overseas venues.

THE 1981 anti-tour movement leader John Minto has had a "friendly" meeting in South Africa with the Springbok captain whose games he was trying to disrupt.

Minto, on his first trip to South Africa, said captain Wynand Claassen told him the anti-tour protests had had "a very positive effect" on South Africa by helping to end apartheid.

Claassen's view was that the protests in New Zealand made white South Africa "realise for the first time that the system could not go on", Minto said.

The meeting at Claassen's Pretoria home was amicable. "He is an intelligent person," said Minto, who was accompanied on his two-week trip last month by a film crew from TV3's 60 Minutes programme, to screen tomorrow.

Claassen and the other members of the 1981 Springbok team were planning to have a reunion in New Zealand in 2011 during the Rugby World Cup. "I invited him to come and have a cup of tea with me," said Minto, who lives near Auckland's Eden Park, scene of violent protests during the tour.

Minto, now in his late 50s, also had a meeting with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the leading campaigners in South Africa against apartheid.

However, Minto said that the end of apartheid had not brought economic justice to the people of South Africa. "Things are really quite desperate worse than I'd imagined," he said. The unemployment rate was 40% and poverty was rampant.

The African National Congress, the leading anti-apartheid movement and the governing party for the past 15 years, had gone quickly from liberator to oppressor, he said. Its neo-liberal economic policy offered no hope for the majority. Although self-help social movements were developing in the shanty towns, the government's economic policy would not change under new president Jacob Zuma.

On Friday May 1st Sunline lost her battle with the crippling hoof disease laminitis.

Stephen McKee, who trained Sunline in partnership with his father Trevor, said the mare had fought intense pain in her final days.

"She had her moments. Some weeks she'd look good, other weeks she'd slip back. Her last couple of weeks she'd really gone downhill and she'd spent a lot of time laying down," McKee said.

"Experts said she wouldn't have any quality of life in the paddock and her foot would have rotted, so there was no other option."

United States veterinarian Ric Redden, who is considered the world's premier expert on laminitis, was in Cambridge for a three-day seminar last week and agreed to inspect Sunline in Auckland on Monday.

McKee said an X-ray Redden took showed blood flow was being cut off to her hooves and bone in her feet was dying.

It's an awful end for such a great mare.

I saw her win her first race and like everyone else started to marvel at her toughness and courage as the wins kept rolling in. My personal favorite race was her second Doncaster win in 2002. She was the top weight with 58 kilos on her back and she shouldn't have won that race. In fact she looked beaten with the finish line approaching. Then she got up. I was sitting on the couch with my grand daughter and we were both screaming the house down as Sunline came home and won it. It was the most incredible race I ever saw her win.

After she had won 2 Cox Plate's I followed her to Melbourne in 2001 for her tilt at a third Cox Plate and then again for the 2002 Cox Plate for what was to be her final race.

I was so awestruck by her that when she raced in New Zealand I couldn't do the photofinish duties and handed those meetings over to by business partner.

I'd go and watch her and try to get that one great photo of her that summed her up. It wasn't easy. But finally as she went past the finish line in Melbourne on the first lap of her last race I got that one photo that I was after.

Here is that photo:

CLAIRE BIRD cried for joy many times during Sunline's stellar racing career. On Friday, she shed tears again for the horse she came to love, when the champion mare's part-owner and trainer Trevor McKee rang her with the news that Sunline had been put down after a long battle with the crippling hoof disease laminitis.

"She was more than a horse. She was like a child to me," she said from her Sydney home. "It's like losing a child. I spent every day with her and travelled all around the world with her. She knew she was special and she just tried her hardest, no matter what she did.

"She was so tough. No horse deserves to go through what she went through."

As Sunline's strapper, nobody was closer to the classy mare than Bird. She would get up in the early hours to feed and ride her. On race days, she would be in her stall keeping an eye on her and sometimes signing autographs on the mare's behalf for adoring fans.

"She was definitely a crowd favourite," Bird said. "I spent five-and-a-half years with the horse. I didn't take a day off for two years because I loved her so much."

When McKee rang, Bird, the racing manager of Harvey Norman co-owner Gerry Harvey's bloodstock interests, was packing for a week's holiday. "I just sat down for a while and thought about how much I missed her. I thought about how special she was. She was the first horse inducted in the Australian Hall of Fame while still racing. She won seven horse of the year titles, including three in Australia. And no horse has ever done that.

"I'm obviously biased because I was so closely associated with her, but you sometimes don't realise what you've got till it's gone. I've been watching tributes and it really does bring a tear to your eye knowing how good she really was."

Sunline won 32 of her 48 race starts and earned nearly $14 million in a racing career that pitted her against the best in Australia, where she won two Cox Plates (one by seven lengths) and two Doncaster Handicaps. She took on some of the world's best horses in Hong Kong and was invited to compete at the world's richest raceday in the United Arab Emirates in 2001. It was in the blazing heat of Dubai that Sunline produced what Bird regards as one her best performances.

"It was like an oven. I wasn't used to that kind of heat and I knew she was struggling with it. She ran third. She was the horse every other jockey was watching for. I know she got beaten but I've never seen her try so hard. After the race it was just so emotional. She had put in everything, she could barely blink, she was that tired."

When Sunline was retired in 2002, it took Bird a long time to adjust. "I didn't have a reason to get up," she said at the time. "She gave me such unconditional love. She used to follow me around and when I was down she knew and she would comfort me."

The last time the two old best friends saw each other was on Boxing Day. Bird knew then Sunline didn't have long to live. "It was heartbreaking, a tragic way for such a great racehorse to go."

Sunline was buried at Ellerslie racecourse on Friday in an area accessible to the public. The Auckland Racing Club is planning to erect a memorial in her honour.

"That would be a tremendous touch. It gives people a chance to pay their respects. It gives me a chance to say my final goodbyes."