Author: Press Room

Mystery and intrigue is rippling through a Lower Hutt community, where random letterboxes have been stuffed with romantic literature over the past week.Erotica and romance — or smut — has been soaring in popularity amongst Generation Z, but the books being delivered to letterboxes from Eastbourne to Lowry Bay are no modern reads.They mostly appear to be tales from the 1980s, like Lovestorm by Barbara Benedict, in which the protagonist is “stripped of her pride by a dashing rogue” and learns “the sweet fury of passion’s tempest”.Recipients of the smut dropper’s kindness have been throwing around theories about why they…

Although hardly a surprise, President Trump’s executive decision to exit the international effort to halt global heating for a second time has been met with dismay on this side of the Atlantic. ADVERTISEMENTA global agreement to limit global temperature rise remains “the best hope for all humanity”, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a day after Donald Trump ordered the US out of the Paris Agreement on his first day back in the White House.“All continents will have to speed up the transition towards net zero and deal with the growing burden…

NZME, owner of The New Zealand Herald, plans to cut 38 jobs as it reorganises its news operations. It called staff into a meeting this morning and told them its plans to “reorganise and resize” its news operations across the national newsroom, including the NZ Herald, BusinessDesk, and Newstalk ZB. It says it will publish and produce fewer stories, to focus on those that engage audience. It said it would also further invest in video. Journalists would be grouped into a team-based structure across live news, business, sport, lifestyle and politics. The cuts are understood to be across 14 reporting and…

The union representing journalists is urging the Government to protect the media industry, with more possible job losses for editorial staff at NZME outlets New Zealand Herald, Businessdesk and Newstalk ZB.In a Media Insider column published on the NZ Herald’s website on Tuesday, NZME editor-at-large Shayne Currie wrote that journalists and editorial staff fear there may be job cuts after being called to a meeting on Wednesday morning “to provide details of some proposed newsroom changes”.E tū union negotiator and former Labour MP Michael Wood told RNZ he was aware of the meeting, but did not know the shape of…

This article was originally published in German The party was rebuffed in an appeal to the Saxon Higher Administrative Court against its designation as a “far-right extremist” group by Saxony’s domestic intelligence agency. ADVERTISEMENTThe Saxon Higher Administrative Court has rejected the AfD’s appeal against being designated as far-right extremist, with the court finding the party’s counter-arguments were insufficient. This means that the AfD’s local party organisation in the state of Saxony can now be categorised as right-wing extremist by Saxony’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which acts as the state’s domestic intelligence agency.The Saxon State Office for the Protection…

WorkSafe has filed a charge against a scaffolding company – one year after a scaffolding wall crashed onto a busy Auckland road.At the time, 1News spoke to a motorist on Peach Parade in Remuera who described their “shock”. Dash cam footage showed cars swerving out of the way of the falling platform, with a black Tesla being struck.This week, one year after the incident, WorkSafe confirmed it had filed a charge under the Health and Safety at Work Act on January 20, 2025.In a statement, WorkSafe said the nine-metre-high scaffolding collapsed on a busy road, striking and “severely damaging” a…

By Susan Edmunds of RNZ New Zealand coffee drinkers are being warned price rises are likely – but maybe not to the extent that Australians are expecting. Australian Restaurant and Cafe Association chief executive Wes Lambered warned this week that the cost of a coffee “could reach double digits” in some capital cities due to the high price of beans. In New Zealand, according to Stats NZ, a takeaway coffee was an average $4.84 in December, up from $3.65 10 years earlier. But it is not uncommon to pay a couple of dollars more. Flight Coffee managing director Richard Corney said he…

Bowel cancer in the under-50 age group is rising swiftly in many countries, and research shows lifestyle is likely to be a major factor. Sarah Allinson, a professor in biomedical and life sciences in the UK, reports.Almost two million people are diagnosed with bowel cancer each year. Also known as colorectal cancer, it’s the third most common cancer worldwide.While the majority of people diagnosed with bowel cancer are over 50, recent years has seen an alarming increase in the number of young people being diagnosed with the condition.Japan is a country where bowel cancer rates have been on a steep…

A profit of more than $US100,000 ($NZ177,000) is no easy feat, and would have made a great payday for three Dunedin students. Unfortunately for them, none of the money was real. University of Otago finance students Shenjian Li, Mingxuan Yu and accountancy student Junxiu Lyu ranked first in both New Zealand and Australia at the Bloomberg Global Trading Challenge 2024 recently. The challenge, held over five weeks in October and November last year, involved beating the market benchmark relative to the Bloomberg World Large, Mid & Small Cap Price Return (WLS) Index by generating a return that outperformed the market…

A Christchurch memorial for New Zealand’s deadliest blaze has been desecrated by thieves after 23 historic bronze plaques were stolen from the site.The plaques were taken from the Ballantynes Fire Memorial located at the Ruru Lawn Cemetery in Bromley.The memorial was erected to commemorate the 41 people killed in November 1947 when a fire engulfed the central Christchurch department store. One of them was a pregnant woman, who jumped from the building to escape the flames.Each plaque is embossed with the name of a victim who died in the blaze. Di Keenan – the niece of Jessie Smith, who died…