Wellington  - Two men and one woman on a crippled yacht that ran out of fuel between Australia and New Zealand were airlifted to safety Tuesday, news reports said.

The 13-metre Boundless, sailing from Brisbane to Auckland, activated an emergency beacon on Monday after its sail was damaged in heavy seas.

A New Zealand Air Force plane located it and monitored the boat's progress as the crew motored towards New Zealand.

Wellington  - The corruption trial of a former member of the New Zealand Parliament and government minister, Philip Field, was halted before it began on Tuesday when seven of the 12 jurors sworn in the day before were allowed to withdraw.

The judge talked to each of the five women and two men privately and gave no reason for excusing them but the New Zealand Herald website said they had indicated the trial, which is scheduled to last three months, would have placed them in too much hardship.

Wellington  - A New Zealand lolly called an Eskimo and in the stereotypical shape of an Inuit person has angered a Canadian tourist who says it is an insult to her people, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Seeka Lee Veevee Parsons, 21, an Inuit from Canada's Nunavut Territory, told the Taranaki Daily News that the word Eskimo, used by confectionery manufacturer Cadbury/Pascall in its popular lolly mix, was unacceptable because it had negative racial connotations.

Eskimo means "eater of raw meat," she said, and the correct term for her people is Inuit.

Wellington - A former member of the New Zealand Parliament and government minister, Philip Field, pleaded not guilty to 12 charges of bribery and corruption when he went on trial in Auckland on Monday.

Field, who was in parliament from 1993 until defeated at November's general election, also denied 23 charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice during an inquiry by a government-appointed attorney into his actions in 2005.

Wellington - New Zealand is joining the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, Israel and Australia in boycotting a UN conference on racism this week in Geneva, Foreign Minister Murray McCully announced Monday.

He said the scheduled follow-up to the "extremely contentious" 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, was "not likely to advance the cause of race relations at the international level."

Wellington - New Zealand is reluctant to send more troops to Afghanistan because it believes the situation there is becoming more unstable, Prime Minister John Key said Monday.

"The determining factor is whether we can see a plan, whether the plan in our opinion is likely to work and whether it fits in with our long-term exit strategy," he said at his weekly news conference.