Author: Press Room

ADVERTISEMENTFormer surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec was handed a 20-year sentence on Wednesday, after being found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting 299 children, over a 25-year period which spanned from 1989 to 2014. Judges followed the public prosecutor’s recommendations, sentencing Le Scouarnec to France’s maximum jail term for aggravated rape after a three-month trial. Most of Le Scouarnec’s victims were unconscious or sedated hospital patients when the crimes occurred. The 74 year old’s victim include 158 boys and 141 girls, aged on average 11 years at the time of the crimes. The criminal court of Morbihan in Brittany, ordered the…

Police have arrested a man sought in connection with a “violent assault” in Auckland’s Papatoetoe earlier this month.Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Hayward said the man presented at the Ōtāhuhu Police Station this afternoon and was arrested.”Police acknowledge the public for sharing our appeal today in this investigation.”The incident occurred after midnight on May 9 when the victim and offender walked down Sutton Cres in Papatoetoe together, Hayward said.At some point, an argument broke out between the pair, which continued as they walked towards Kolmar Rd.”The female victim attempted to walk away from the male offender but was assaulted.”Hayward said the…

ADVERTISEMENTIt’s been a rough takeoff to 2025 for many European air passengers.The first five months of the year were marred by tens of thousands of delays and cancellations.A new analysis of Europe’s 20 busiest airlines ranked their performance, revealing which ones had the most turbulent starts.Cancellations: Finnair, KLM and BA report worst ratesDutch carrier KLM scrapped the most flights between January and May (2,760), followed by British Airways (1,763) and Germany’s Lufthansa (1,757), says the report by flight compensation company FlightRight.Raw numbers aside, the highest rate of flights scrapped was on Finnair: 3.35% out of a total of over 43,000…

A landlord who says he’s currently living in a garage has had his attempt to reduce a fixed-term tenancy on his home rejected by the Tenancy Tribunal.Graham Mark Shieff went to the Tenancy Tribunal seeking to reduce the term of the tenancy.Last August, he advised his tenant that he needed to sell the property because he was moving to Australia.The tenant, who has two children with her full-time and others who stay on weekends, found this a stressful experience because she helped with open homes and presenting the property for sale.Shieff was able to find a buyer but he then…

Kiwis living on the Gold Coast who have fallen on hard times are being offered one-way tickets back to New Zealand.The Nerang Neighbourhood Centre is offering the repatriation flights as New Zealanders are ineligible for governmental support for general homelessness.Nerang Neighbourhood Centre general manager Vicky Rose told Morning Report for some people, a flight back to New Zealand was the only option.”Our job is to put all the options on the table and we wouldn’t be doing our job properly if we didn’t put going back to New Zealand on the table.”Often it’s the only option for that person or…

A major bank has lowered home loan rates across the board ahead of tomorrow’s widely anticipated official cash rate (OCR) cut.BNZ said there were 20% more customers applying for home loans in the six months to April, as compared to the same period last year. The bank’s standard six-month fixed rate dropped from 5.49% to 5.35%, while the one-year rate fell from 4.99% to 4.95%. Its 18-month term fell from 4.95% to 4.89% and two-year term fell 4 basis points to 4.95%. The three-year term fell 20 basis points to 5.09%, four-year fell 30 basis points to 5.39% and the…

A man has appeared before the courts on charges including arson after a person was seriously injured in a “suspicious” house fire in Nelson last week.Detective Sergeant Ian Langridge said emergency services received reports of the fire on Konini St at around 9.50pm.Fire and Emergency NZ responded with six crews and extinguished the fire shortly after midnight on Thursday.St John said it responded with one rapid response vehicle and one ambulance.”One patient, in a serious condition, was transported to Nelson Hospital,” a St John spokesperson said.Langridge said police were appealing for the public’s help to identify to witnesses travelling in…

ADVERTISEMENTThe humanitarian sector is facing critical challenges following US cuts to development funding amid escalating global conflicts, the Secretary General of the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) has told Euronews. On 20 January, Donald Trump announced a pause on all US foreign development assistance programs to conduct a comprehensive review. By 10 March, 83% of USAID programmes had been terminated, creating a US $60 billion (around €55.3 billion) funding gap. Slente warned that unless the US restores its assistance, the sector faces an “extremely critical situation.” “We are going to see a rising population with all kinds of elements of fragility, hunger, marginalisation, no access to…

A retail group says it accepts police don’t have the resources to investigate every report of crime.A recent memo directed police staff not to investigate crimes under a certain value, such as shoplifting allegations under $500.Police clarified this was not a firm rule and that investigations were triaged on a combination of value and solvability.”We’re pleased that the police have clarified there isn’t a hard and fast rule against investigating these lower value crimes… Ideally we would have the police turning out to every report of crime, but we understand they just don’t have the resources to be able to…

A man was seriously injured after being struck by a car doing burnouts during a street gathering in Hamilton over the weekend, with one arrest made as police launch a “significant investigation”.Police were called to Airport Rd at 11pm on Saturday where around 300 cars were said to be congregating with around 20 cars performing skids on the road.Waikato Road Policing Manager Inspector Jeff Penno said the group dispersed when police arrived.However, multiple reports were received of other large groups of anti-social road users at other locations in and around the city, he added.”In one of these instances, a man…