Cancer survivor makes her mark

HUMAN CANVAS: Cate Murphy at her new tattoo business, The Room.

A year ago tattoo artist Cate Murphy was given only months to live. A couple of weeks ago she opened her own studio.

The Room is in the same building as a barbershop on Collingwood St in Nelson, and it’s where she works her magic.

Murphy did her first tattoo since getting diagnosed with secondary cancer a couple of weeks ago. Her friend, Cam Woods, got a tui and kowhai flower design on his arm for his 40th birthday.

She has created five other large pieces since, but is hoping to build up her clientele.

‘‘I’m not competing with anyone, because I have my own style. It’s not about getting a rushed tattoo, it’s about creating something really special for each person,’’ she said.

The 49-year-old, who grew up in Stoke and is married to an Irishman, battled breast cancer eight years ago.

She thought she was in the clear so many years down the track, but was given bad news in February last year.
The breast cancer had spread, and she had secondary cancer in her liver, lung, and bones.

Murphy also had four tumours on her brain, which subsequently led to ‘‘a lifetime dose of radiation’’, on top of chemotherapy to treat the rest of her body.

She didn’t pick up her tattooing equipment for a year, while she battled with chemotheraphy, radiation treatment, and steroids.

‘‘I was on a lot of steroids, which makes you really puffy. I was very tired. The steroids also make you quite aggressive – my poor husband.’’

Murphy and her husband – Will Andrews – have been going back and forth from Ireland for 15 years, after meeting in San Francisco, but her latest illness put a stop to that lifestyle.

San Francisco was where their relationship began, and it’s also where Murphy’s started her life as a tattoo artist. They’re returning in June for her 50th birthday.

‘‘We thought what should we do since I’m still alive? We’d better go to San Francisco.’’

Murphy worked in one of Dublin’s oldest tattoo shops, tattooing up to 10 clients a day, often with football club emblems.

‘‘It was a good way to learn, because we were so busy. It took me three years to get over the fear of marking someone for life. I used to go into the toilet and take Rescue Remedy,’’ she said.

She has always painted, using vibrant colours and found objects such as weathered pieces of board: ‘‘I love outsider art, and folk art, and that kind of thing.’’

Another inspiration was William ‘‘Bill’’ Traylor, who was born into slavery on a plantation in Alabama. He was set free as an 80-year-old, and became a prolific artist, creating drawings on cardboard.

‘‘I have always joked to customers that I was really good with colouring books when I was a kid. I was really obsessed about keeping in the lines.’’

Murphy is revelling in her good health, despite last year being touch and go at times, and is enjoying having her own space to work from.

‘‘I feel pretty good. I cycled to Toad Hall in Motueka and back on Sunday.

That’s a big accomplishment,’’ she said.

Murphy got her first tattoo in London, which she describes as ‘‘that little smudgy thing’’ on her arm, and her body is now a human canvas.

And, there are more to come. Her next one might be a monarch butterfly.

‘‘I feel blessed for the fact that I have been given a second chance.

I love Nelson, because it’s my home town. I spent my whole life trying to get out of Stoke, and now I live on Ranui Rd. My Mum is here, and nothing beats your Mum at the end of the day. She’s 88. She’s a legend.’’

The Room is at 96 Collingwood St, through the Delly Barber salon.

– © Fairfax NZ News

*BREAKING NEWS* New Zealand toddler dies after being hit by car

Police are investigating the death of a toddler who was hit by a car in Rotorua this evening.

The incident happened just after 5.30pm on Turner Drive, in Rotorua’s Western Heights.

Police said it seemed a woman was leaving an address on the street and did not see the child had followed her out of the house.

“Her vehicle struck and killed the 16-month-old boy on the footpath,” said police spokeswoman Kim Perks.

“The driver is understood to be a relative of the child but is not the child’s mother.”

Police were investigating the incident and support was being provided to the distressed family.

Inside out: Google launches indoor maps

Google has launched indoor maps in Australia allowing users to find their way around inside airports, shopping centres, train stations and other large buildings using their mobile devices.

Australian engineers at firms such as Navisens, CSIRO and UNSW are leading the world in developing advanced indoor navigation technology capable of helping people locate specific products on supermarket shelves, tracking athletes’ performance or guiding the visually impaired.

UNSW is beginning trials this week on technology to help visually impaired people navigate indoors.

The indoor Google Maps technology, which uses nearby wi-fi networks and mobile towers rather than GPS to determine your location, is available for 200 indoor locations across the country.

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The indoor maps automatically appear when you zoom in on a building using the app. At launch the most popular venues are shopping centres with many Westfield, Stockland and Centro floor plans covered, among others.

The list also includes 10 train stations (such as Flinders Street and Town Hall), airports (Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide), several IKEA stores, sports venues (Hisense Arena, Rod Laver Arena, Etihad Stadium, ANZ Stadium) and several cultural venues including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of NSW and the Sydney Opera House.

Google’s indoor map of Flinders Street Station, Melbourne.

Australian Google Maps product manager Nabil Naghdy said the plan was to rapidly increase the number of floor plans, and to speed this up business owners could upload their own plans to Google.

“It’s like having an indoor directory in the palm of your hand helping you work out where you are, what floor you’re on and how to get to where you want to be,” he said.

Currently only a “handful” of venues support the “blue dot” that approximates your location on the indoor map. Google must do surveys of each venue to determine users can be located to within a few metres.

Google’s indoor map of the Queen Victoria Building, Sydney.

The technology largely relies on nearby wi-fi networks as conventional satellite technology doesn’t work inside or in some built-up outdoor environments. It will initially only be available on Android devices.

Around the world so far about 10,000 floor plans have been added to Google Maps in countries including the US, Britain, Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, Spain, Japan, Germany, France, Denmark, Canada and Belgium.

Australian indoor navigation firm Navisens recently won the “best technology” award at the Launch Festival 2013 in the US for discovering how to do indoor and underground mapping without any infrastructure, including wi-fi networks.

Google’s indoor map of Melbourne Airport.

Navisens managing director Ashod Donikian said his technology instead used the inertial sensors built into smartphones such as accelerometers and gyroscopes to calculate the user’s location by measuring their acceleration and orientation from a starting point. This data is then crunched by complex algorithms.

Donikian said there are a variety of applications such as offering targeted location-based deals in shopping centres, finding where specific items are located inside stores, finding seats at sporting events, meeting friends at busy venues and locating people during emergencies.

“In the near future, you will never have to open a door or switch a light, the environment will know where you are and where you’re going and act accordingly,” said Donikian.

“The heating will optimise to where you spend most of your time. Lights will already be on before you get to the dark room. Your fridge door will slide open as walk to the fridge.”

He hopes companies like Google will acquire or license the Navisens technology and incorporate it into their apps to enable more efficient and accurate indoor navigation.

CSIRO has also developed indoor navigation technology and is targeting industries that require extremely high accuracy such as sports and mining. CSIRO’s research director for wireless and networking technologies, Dr Iain Collings, said it was accurate to 10 to 20 centimetres.

Catapult Sports is already using the CSIRO technology to track and measure performance data of athletes including six NBA teams and several indoor Olympic athletes.

“Location based services are part of the next revolution of smartphone and tablet applications,” said Dr Collings.

Google software engineer Waleed Kadous, an Australian who leads Google’s indoor mapping effort from California, told a conference at UNSW in November last year that indoor mapping was approaching the tipping point of mainstream adoption but there were still “major flaws” such as problems gathering the required data.

Kadous showed off an example of an application that is still in development at Google, which allows people to see where their friends are in a shopping centre and easily meet them without communicating

UNSW researchers are working on indoor maps applications for the visually impaired, allowing them to more easily get around chaotic settings such as airports without assistance. They have already developed the technology including a user interface that supports Braille and will begin trials with six visually impaired volunteers this week. The researchers have mapped buildings at UNSW and the Vision Australia headquarters in Sydney to use as test beds.

Another Australian organisation, Abuzz, which already provides interactive wayfinding kiosks in 50 of Australia’s largest shopping centres, has been offering to develop indoor navigation apps for existing clients but said the take up so far by shopping centres was slower than expected.

Mars could have supported life – NASA

Drilling into a rock near its landing site, the Curiosity rover has answered a key question about Mars: The red planet long ago harboured some of the ingredients needed for primitive life to thrive.

Topping the list is evidence of water and basic elements that teeny organisms could feed on, scientists said Tuesday.

“We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably if this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it,” said chief scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology.

The discovery comes seven months after Curiosity touched down in an ancient crater. Last month, it flexed its robotic arm to drill into a fine-grained, veiny rock and then tested the powder in its onboard labs.

Curiosity is the first spacecraft sent to Mars that could collect a sample from deep inside a rock, and scientist said they hit pay dirt with that first rock.

Mars today is a frigid desert, constantly bombarded by radiation. Previous missions have found that the planet was more tropical billions of years ago. And now scientists have their first evidence of a habitable spot outside of Earth.

 

This was an environment where microbes “could have lived in and maybe even prospered in,” Grotzinger said.

The car-size rover made a dramatic “seven-minutes-of-terror” landing last August near the planet’s equator. As high-tech as Curiosity is, it lacks the tools to detect actual microbes, living or extinct. It can only use its chemistry lab to examine Martian rocks to determine the kind of environment they might have lived in.

The analysis revealed the rock that Curiosity bore into contained a chemical soup of sulfur, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and simple carbon – essential chemical ingredients for life. Also present were clay and sulfate minerals, signs that the rock formed in a watery environment.

NASA rovers Opportunity and Spirit – before it fell silent – also uncovered evidence of a wet Martian past elsewhere on the planet, but scientists think the water would have been too acidic for microbes.

The ancient water at Curiosity’s pit stop appears to be neutral and not too salty. It previously found a hint of the site’s watery past – an old streambed that the six-wheel rover crossed to get to the flat bedrock.

Curiosity has yet to turn up evidence of complex carbon compounds, fundamental to all living things. Scientists said a priority is to search for a place where organics might be preserved.

The drilled rock isn’t far from Curiosity’s landing spot in Gale Crater; the rover is ultimately headed to a mountain in the crater’s middle. Images from space spied signs of clay layers at the base of the mountain – a good spot to hunt for the elusive organics.

It has been slow going as engineers learn to handle the rover, which is far more tech-savvy than anything that has landed before on Earth’s planetary neighbor.

Over the years, Mars spacecraft in orbit and on the surface have beamed back a wealth of information about the planet’s geology. Scientists have also been able to study rocks from Mars that have occasionally landed on Earth.

The latest news comes during a lull in the two-year mission. Curiosity has been prevented from doing science experiments as engineers troubleshoot a computer problem.

Scientists still plan to drive toward the mountain but not until Curiosity drills into another rock at its current location. Since flight controllers on Earth will be out of touch with Mars spacecraft for most of next month due to a planetary alignment, the second drilling won’t get under way until May.

– AP

HIV man charged over unprotected sex

A Sunshine Coast man has been charged after allegedly having unprotected sex with a woman while knowingly infected with HIV.

The 51-year-old was working in Noosa when the act is alleged to have occurred, in August last year.

Police now believe there may have been more women exposed to the virus, which can only be infected when body fluids from an infected person enter the blood stream of another person.

The man was issued with a notice to appear before Maroochydore Magistrates Court on April 3, to face charges of causing grievous bodily harm or transmit serious disease.

source: brisbanetimes.com.au

Violent Gold Coast, Australia carjacking: vehicle found

Woman bashed for her car. Police are hunting a group of men who bashed a 55-year-old Chinese woman unconscious at a Gold Coast shopping centre before stealing her car Wednesday.

Police have found the car stolen during a Gold Coast carjacking in which a woman was beaten unconcious in a carpark.

The car was found parked in Bungowla Street, Bracken Ridge, on Thursday afternoon and police were examining it at the scene.

Linda Cheng, 55, who works two jobs, fell asleep in her Nissan Tiida at Crestwood Plaza, Parkwood, after finishing an 11 hour shift on Tuesday night.

She awoke about 2am on Wednesday morning to a group of what police have described as “thugs” dragging her from her car before beating her unconscious and stealing her Nissan Tiida.

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Her son, Johnny, fronted media on Thursday morning, describing the moment police knocked on his front door to tell him his mother was in hospital after being assaulted.

“I’m kind of angry and sad,” he said.

“When the two police officers came to my house at 4am, I was pretty shocked about it.

“I was angry then but when I got to hospital and saw my mum’s face, I was a bit sad.

“I don’t know how anyone could do this stuff.

“Especially to a female, it’s horrible.”

It is not known exactly how many people were involved in the attack but police believe it could be as many as seven.

The carpark had CCTV cameras, but police have admitted the footage has not been a great help to their investigation and Mr Cheng is appealing to anyone with information about the incident to come forward.

“She [Ms Cheng] is very distraught,” he said.

“She doesn’t understand why someone would do this to anyone.

“We’re just appealing to the Gold Coast public to help find anyone who would do this kind of stuff.”

Mr Cheng said his mother was still “dizzy” and had not told him all the details of the beating but he described her as “strong” and said she would not be paralysed by fear after the attack.

“She’s not scared to go out or anything. She just wants to know why someone would do this to her,” he said.

“…I thought nothing would ever happen to my family, ever.”

Ms Cheng works at a dry cleaning store in the morning and at a Chinese Restaurant at night. On the day of the incident she had gone to the the plaza to do some shopping.

Mr Cheng said she meant to nap for 10 to 15 minutes but was so tired she slept for hours.

Police have still not recovered her car.

Superintendent David Hutchinson said there were people on the Gold Coast who would know who was behind the attack.

“You could only describe them as thugs, for any male to do what they’ve done to a slightly built 55-year-old woman is horrible,” he said.

“…Obviously someone out there knows something and hopefully we can appeal to their better senses and have someone contact the police and let us know who has done this.”

Anyone with information should contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

Fence post company in New Zealand fined after employee loses leg

A Dunedin fence post producer has been fined $52,000 and ordered to pay $40,000 in reparations over an accident which cost an employee his leg.

The worker’s leg was dragged into a post-peeling machine at Juro Corporation Limited (JCL) – trading as Great Southern – in May last year, the Dunedin District Court heard yesterday.

The extent of his injuries meant that his leg had to be surgically amputated below the knee.

An investigation by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment found that JCL had failed to identify hazards on the post-peeling machine, which was more than 20-years-old, and did not have guarding in place to protect workers.

“Regardless of the age of the machine, we have current guarding standards that must be complied with to ensure workers are kept safe.

“There is simply no excuse for this accident and its very unfortunate impact on a worker who had every right to expect to be safe at work,” said Francois Barton, the Ministry’s Southern Regional Health and Safety General Manager.

– nzherald.co.nz

Kelly Rowland – Kisses Down Low

Music video by Kelly Rowland performing Kisses Down Low. ©: Republic Records, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.

‘Cannibal cop’ convicted in gory case

Gilberto Valle. Photo / AP

 

A New York City police officer has been convicted of charges he plotted to kidnap and cook women to dine on their “girl meat” – a macabre case that subjected jurors to often gory evidence and asked them to separate fantasy from reality.

The jury reached the verdict in federal court at the kidnapping conspiracy trial of Officer Gilberto Valle, a 28-year-old father with an admitted fetish for talking on the internet about cannibalism.

Valle’s lawyers at what the tabloids dubbed the “Cannibal Cop” trial chose not to hide what they called his “weird proclivities”. But they insisted that he was just fantasising and noted that none of the women were ever harmed.

Valle bowed his head and looked teary-eyed when the verdict was announced. He hugged his lawyer, Julia Gatto, who said later that she had been crying.

“It’s a devastating verdict for us. We poured our hearts and souls into this,” said Gatto.

“The jury was unable to get past the thoughts,” Gatto said. “Obviously, the case involved thoughts that were unusual and bizarre and frankly very ugly.”

 

Valle’s mother, Elizabeth, shook her head as the verdict was rendered.

“I’m in shock and want to be left alone,” she said after her son was led away. She said to herself as she sat on a court bench alone: “This is going to kill my mother.”

Prosecutors declined comment.

Valle faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced on June 19.

The defence team said it would ask the judge to set aside the verdict. Defence attorney Robert Baum said the verdict set a “dangerous precedent”.

“People can be prosecuted for their thoughts and convicted,” he said.

Prosecutors countered that an analysis of Valle’s computer found he was taking concrete steps to abduct his wife and at least five other women he knew.

They said he looked up potential targets on a restricted law enforcement database, searched the internet for how to knock someone out with chloroform, and showed up on the block of one woman after agreeing to kidnap her for $5000 for a New Jersey man, now awaiting trial.

Valle “left the world of fantasy and entered the world of reality,” prosecutor Hadassa Waxman said during closing arguments. She said the officer’s arrest near Halloween last year interrupted a ghoulish plan to “kidnap, torture, rape and commit other horrific acts on young women”.

The jury, which deliberated for just over two days, heard Valle’s potential victims testify that they were trading innocent-sounding emails and texts with him, unaware he was supposedly scheming to make meals out of them.

The government also sought to drive home the point that Valle was more of a threat because he was a police officer.

The trial opened a window on strange online underworld where people share sick and twisted fantasies of torture, murder, dismemberment and cannibalism.

– AP

Tyga – Hotel California (Album Tracklist)

Release Date: April 9, 2013