Author: Press Room

Police across New Zealand have observed a minute of silence in honour of Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming who was killed in Nelson in the early hours of New Year’s Day.The 62-year-old was one of two officers struck by a vehicle in Nelson’s Buxton Square at around 2am on January 1. She died later that day of her injuries, making her the first New Zealand policewoman to be killed in the line of duty.The minute’s silence at 1pm today marked 24 hours before Fleming will be farewelled at a funeral service in Nelson with full police honours.A floral tribute outside Nelson…

The 32 NATO allies will likely decide to increase the defence spending benchmark from the current 2% of GDP during a summit in The Hague in June. ADVERTISEMENTNATO member states will have to find ways to increase joint purchases and use existing infrastructure, or face an increase in defence spending of up to 3.7% of their GDP. The transatlantic military alliance’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, told the European Parliament on Monday.”If you do joint buying and use the NSPA (NATO Support and Procurement Agency) and everything else within NATO and the EU, then you can deduct joint buying, you can…

Local health experts are reconsidering their approach to obesity as new research criticises doctors’ reliance on the body mass index.The paper, published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet, said the typical approach to diagnosing obesity was ineffective and prone to misdiagnosis.Researchers criticised the definition of obesity being tied to BMI – a measurement of height and weight – as opposed to more accurate measurements of a person’s fat, muscle, and bone mass.”BMI was never really designed to diagnose an individual’s health status, it was really developed to help us monitor big changes across population groups,” Massey University Māori Health and…

More animals are continuing to be killed as a precautionary measure in Germany a few days after the first outbreak of the foot-and-mouth disease in more than 35 years. ADVERTISEMENTOn Monday, 55 goats and sheep and three cattle were slaughtered as a precautionary measure on a farm in Schöneiche in Germany’s Brandenburg state days after a foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak was confirmed.The affected farm had purchased hay from a buffalo farm in Hönow a few days prior, where the disease was first reported and confirmed. A 72-hour ban on transporting cows, pigs, sheep, goats and other animals was immediately put…

The owners of a holiday home destroyed in a landslide at a Victorian tourism hotspot say they are grateful no one died in the emergency and have engaged lawyers.Nick and Kellie Moran’s property at Penny Lane at McCrae on the Mornington Peninsula crashed down a hill shortly before 9am on Tuesday. It happened just a week after the family escaped another slip at the $2 million property that pushed earth and trees up against their house, reaching almost as high as the gutter.A council worker, aged in his 50s, suffered lower body injuries in the collapse on Tuesday while doing…

Last week, the European Commission confirmed a German press agency DPA report revealing that European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen had been hospitalised for a week due to severe pneumonia. ADVERTISEMENTWhy did the European Commission choose not to disclose Ursula von der Leyen’s hospitalisation for pneumonia? Why did von der Leyen not delegate authority to her deputy, Spanish commissioner Teresa Ribeira, when she was ill? Does it denote a culture of secrecy at the commission or suggest von der Leyen’s unwillingness to delegate power? Today Radio Schuman answer these questions with Euronews reporter Gerardo Fortuna.Last week, the European Commission…

A Rotorua landlord who has left tenants living in a leaky and draughty rental property for more than a year has been ordered by the Tenancy Tribunal to repair the house and pay thousands of dollars in damages.The Ministry for Business, Employment and Innovation’s (MBIE) Tenancy Compliance and Investigations team (TCIT) first visited the house in August 2023 after a complaint by a tenant.It found several issues including: rotting flooring on a deck, sagging ceiling panels, a hole in the Perspex roofing in the entranceway, missing roof flashing, no extractor fan in one bathroom, and a section of the garage…

The Bay of Plenty Regional Council has estimated it will cost up to $7 million to litigate claims brought against it in regard to the Edgecumbe flood eight years ago.Regional council chairman Doug Leeder said the cases raised issues across the local government sector in terms with how they deal with natural disasters.”The sad reality is that there is only one group of people that will end up paying for that, and that is the community by way of ratepayers.”On April 6, 2017, Edgecumbe was flooded due to the breach of a Rangitaiki River floodwall at College Road.In May 2023,…

The leaders of Ukraine and Slovakia are locked in a spiralling dispute over supplies of Russian gas, and can’t even agree on a location to hold further talks. ADVERTISEMENTUkrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy has invited Robert Fico for face-to-face talks in Kyiv, effectively rejecting a proposal put forward by the Slovak prime minister to resolve an ongoing dispute over Russian gas.Zelenskyy’s move throws down the gauntlet to Fico, after the pair spent a good few weeks butting heads over the issue, significantly increasing tensions between the two neighbours.Zelenskyy refused to renew a long-term transit contract between Russia’s Gazprom and Ukraine which…

NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte pledged to send drones, frigates and aircraft to the region as he highlighted a concerted campaign of ‘cyber-attacks, assassination attempts and sabotage.’ ADVERTISEMENTNATO will increase its military presence and technological innovation in the Baltic Sea to protect critical infrastructure from sabotage, the head of the transatlantic alliance said at a Helsinki Summit on Tuesday. Safeguarding infrastructure “is of utmost importance,” Mark Rutte told reporters, citing energy from pipelines and the 95% of internet traffic that is secured through undersea cables.In the last two months alone, there’s been damage to one cable between Lithuania and Sweden, another…