UK widow sent 16,000 cards for 100th dies

A BRITISH widow with no family who received 16,000 cards from strangers for her 100th birthday has died.

WINNIE Blagden, who lived alone and had no children, received birthday wishes from across the world in May after a Facebook appeal by BBC Radio Sheffield went viral.

Mrs Blagden died at her home in Sheffield on Sunday night, a spokeswoman for the BBC said.

The radio station launched the appeal after being informed by a care worker that Mrs Blagden had no surviving family to help her celebrate the landmark birthday.

The Facebook post was seen by six million people, with presents and 16,000 cards sent to the radio station.

Prime Minister David Cameron and actor Dustin Hoffman were among those who sent cards, while gifts included 100 pink roses, a stay in a hotel, a locket, fish and chips, pizza, personalised perfume and even a trip out in a limousine.

Thousands of people from the US, Australia, New Zealand, Romania and Japan responded to the appeal online.

Blagden, whose husband George died 30 years ago, was taken to Sheffield Town Hall to celebrate her birthday.

"Winnie's story touched the hearts of people around the world and the response to our appeal was extraordinary and moving," BBC Radio Sheffield managing editor Martyn Weston said on Monday.

"Winnie was a little overwhelmed by what happened - as we all were. But she thoroughly deserved and enjoyed the attention.

"She was a lovely woman and it is wonderful to think our listeners, and kind-hearted people from around the world, came together to make her last birthday so special."

Earlier this year, Mrs Blagden urged people not to be sad when she died.

She told BBC Radio Sheffield: "When I die I don't want anyone to be sad. I want them to remember the good times we had."

Helicopter disappears in Indonesia

A SEARCH is underway for a helicopter with five people onboard that might have plunged into a lake in Indonesia's North Sumatra province.

THE helicopter, owned by the charter company Penerbangan Angkasa Semesta, disappeared on Sunday, the latest of a series of air accidents in Indonesia in recent months.

"Residents said they saw a helicopter flying low over Lake Toba and heard a crashing sound," said Gusti Syaiful, the head of the local search and rescue agency.

The chopper was on a 45-minute trip to the Kuala Namu international airport in Medan city.

Lake Toba is a 100km-long natural body of water occupying the caldera of a supervolcano.

Australia `could deport about 1000 Kiwis'

NEW Zealand Prime Minister John Key has told parliament about a thousand New Zealanders living in Australia could be "in the pipeline" for deportation.

QUESTIONED by opposition MPs on Tuesday, Mr Key denied he had been slow to raise the issue with the Australian government.

He said he first raised Australia's new immigration laws with former prime minister Tony Abbott in February and again in April.

"I also raised it with the Australian foreign minister in New York, and it was raised by the New Zealand foreign minister on numerous occasions," he said.

Mr Key said he expected there would be "a wide ranging discussion" about it when he meets Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Auckland on Saturday.

About 200 Kiwis are being held in Australian detention centres - including about 40 in the notorious Christmas Island facility - as they wait to be sent back to New Zealand.

"Advice provided to me by officials suggests there are currently about 1000 New Zealanders in the pipeline for deportation from Australia, but this number will move around," Mr Key said.

The new immigration laws were introduced in December, and they mean anyone who isn't an Australian citizen and who has served a sentence of 12 months or more can be deported.

Mr Key has previously said he can't "badger" Australia over its policy, but hopes he can convince Mr Turnbull of the need to tweak it.

"When politicians on both sides of the Tasman talk about the fact that Australia and New Zealand are family, I think they actually mean that," he told reporters on Monday.

"But one of the ways of demonstrating that would be a bit more flexibility about where the threshold is set for this particular policy."

The government is particularly concerned about Kiwis who went to Australia when they were very young and grew up there, no longer having family or other connections with New Zealand.

No MH370 wreckage found: Philippines

PHILIPPINE authorities insist a Malaysia Airlines jet that went missing last year did not crash on to a remote island after a man's claims that wreckage had been found there made headlines.

THE precise fate of Flight 370, which went missing in March last year with 239 people on board, remains a mystery, and the latest reports appear to be yet another false lead based on no evidence.

While a wing part from the jet was found washed up on a beach in the Indian Ocean in July, the rest of the plane has yet to be found.

Malaysian media reported at the weekend that a Filipino man told Malaysian police that his relatives had found wreckage of a plane, with skeletons inside, in the jungles of the Philippines' remote Tawi-Tawi island chain.

Despite the report appearing to have little credibility, some media in Britain, the US, Singapore and elsewhere picked it up, saying wreckage of a plane had been found on the island and it could be from MH370.

Philippine authorities said on Tuesday that no plane wreckage had been found, and questioned the credibility of the apparent police witness.

"I sent people to the site where it (the plane wreck) was supposedly seen and the results were negative," the deputy police director of Tawi-Tawi, Superintendent Glenn Roy Gabor, told AFP by phone on Tuesday.

"There was someone who was spreading that story, but it has no truth to it and the person spreading it has disappeared."

Gabor said that if a big plane had crashed on Sagbay island, as the man reportedly claimed to Malaysian police, local residents would definitely have noticed.

"We interviewed the local people and they didn't see anything. That is a small area. It is impossible they wouldn't see something like that," he said.

Tawi-Tawi governor Nurbert Sahali also released a statement saying no wreckage had been found.

The Boeing 777 mysteriously disappeared as it was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Authorities believe it crashed into the Indian Ocean, but a massive investigation has failed to find the main body of the plane or determine why it went missing.

The only major breakthrough came in late July when a two-metre wing part washed up on a beach on Reunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean.

Authorities later confirmed it was from MH370, in the first confirmation that the plane had met a tragic end in the Indian Ocean. But the discovery has not led to any further hard evidence of what happened to the plane.

NZ woman loses $NZ267k to Nigerian scammer

A LOVESICK New Zealand woman has reportedly been swindled out of more than a quarter of a million dollars by a Nigerian scam artist.

THE two met online before the Nigerian man, Akintunde Vincent Abiodun, posing under the English alias of Christopher Williams captured the woman's heart.

He convinced her to send $NZ267,000 ($A243,668), reassuring her he was good for the money courtesy of a family heirloom: a gemstone worth more than $NZ18 million.

She believed he was using the money to come to New Zealand and settle down with her.

The Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is investigating Abiodun, and he is set to be arraigned once the investigation is complete, Nigerian media have reported.