Author: Press Room

The Justice Minister is defending the amount of money spent on the Government’s retail crime advisory group in 100 days, saying the group has come up with ideas the Government will implement to better deal with retail crime.The Labour Party says the half-million dollar sum is hard to stomach, and that ideas the group came up had previously been dismissed as being too dangerous.But the group’s chairman says its budget is strictly managed and controlled, and he had robust checks and accountability measures in place.The Government has announced a suite of law-and-order reforms designed to crack down on retail crime,…

Councils have been blindsided by the Government’s call to halt planning work, which they say will have “unintended consequences”.Resource Management Act (RMA) Reform Minister Chris Bishop has put a stop to councils working on District and Regional Plans until the new RMA legislation takes effect.”Rather than let these pricey, pointless planning and policy processes play out, we will be giving councils clarity on where to focus their efforts while they await the new planning system,” Bishop said at the Local Government NZ conference in Christchurch today.The shake-up of the RMA is expected to come into effect in 2027.Resource Management Act…

A Māngere family is faced with a difficult decision after learning that their home is considered an “intolerable risk to life”.After waiting two years for answers, the Taufoous are now forced to choose between staying uninsured or leaving the community they have built over decades.Auckland Council claimed that the buyout was fair and voluntary but local leaders, including Councillor Alf Filipaina, said families should have access to all relevant information before making their decision.Daisy Taufoou, who has lived on Hinau Rd for 42 years, was shocked to return to her flood-damaged home only to discover that it was categorised as…

Published on 16/07/2025 – 13:41 GMT+2ADVERTISEMENTRussian forces launched a fresh wave of attacks on several Ukrainian cities overnight into Wednesday, with at least 15 people injured in one of the strikes.Russia launched 400 Shahed and decoy drones, as well as one ballistic missile, through the night, the Ukrainian air force said. The strikes targeted north-eastern Kharkiv, which is Ukraine’s second-largest city, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, Vinnytsia in the west and Odesa in the south.”Russia does not change its strategy,” Zelenskyy said. “To effectively counter this terror, we need a systemic strengthening of defence: more air defence, more…

A former director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre says New Zealand is one of the most prepared countries in the world for devastating space weather.Solar storms that can bring down global power grids, telecommunications and GPS are extremely hard to predict, but the risk to Earth will peak in the coming year, in an 11-year cycle. The damage to technology is caused by dramatic changes to Earth’s magnetic field, from the Sun’s highly charged particles and ‘solar wind’.Dr Michelle Thaller, who has just retired from NASA after 27 years, told 1News, “The Sun has a natural 11-year cycle and…

Dozens of people are signing up to a job site for older workers every day, with more and more of them noticeably struggling to find jobs over the past nine months.Wellington Pools is looking for a lifeguard who is more than 50 years old, according to an advertisement which told applicants to “forget your preconceptions of what lifeguard looks like… we want people from all stages of life”.But the team behind the Seniors at Work website says with 7000 registered jobseekers over the age of 50, they need many more opportunities like this to match the spike in people looking.Seniors…

ADVERTISEMENTIn a keynote speech in London last month, the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte repeated a warning he has made in public at least three times this year: the western alliance is severely lagging behind Moscow on ammunition production.“In terms of ammunition, Russia produces in three months what the whole of NATO produces in a year,” Rutte said on 10 June, adding that Putin’s war machine is “speeding up, not slowing down”.Rutte, who became chief of the military alliance in October last year, went on to repeat the same warning.“Let me repeat it again. NATO’s economy is 25 times bigger…

An MP yesterday presented a petition to Parliament asking for a change to the rules around sport competitions for homeschooled students and says the Government is “doing a lot of hard work” to fix the issue.Watch the full story from Re: News on TVNZ+Bay of Plenty MP Tom Rutherford received the petition from two homeschooled students after they cycled 760km over 10 days to the Beehive.George Fisher, 12, and Amelia Twiss, 13, carried the petition from Cambridge to Wellington on their bikes to raise awareness for how homeschool students are treated differently in high school sport.The Tauranga duo recently made…

Published on 16/07/2025 – 7:15 GMT+2ADVERTISEMENTHungary has called for European Union sanctions against Ukrainian officials following the reported death of a Hungarian citizen during military mobilisation in Ukraine.Prime Minister Viktor Orbán claimed last week that József Sebestyén, a 45-year-old ethnic Hungarian from Ukraine’s Transcarpathia region, was beaten to death for refusing to join the Ukrainian army. Ukrainian authorities have firmly denied the allegations, stating the mobilisation was lawful and that Sebestyén died of a pulmonary embolism with no signs of bodily harm.”The Hungarian government has initiated the inclusion of Ukrainian leaders responsible for József Sebestyén’s death on the EU’s human…

New Zealand’s Defence Force is putting its latest gear to the test during the huge war games in Australia. But it’s not just about hardware. The people behind the tech are proving Kiwis can hold their own on the global stage.The Vector Scorpion drone, new modular body armour, and upgraded Bushmaster vehicles are just some of the tools transforming how New Zealand soldiers operate, and they’re all being tested in real-time during Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025.The multinational military exercise, hosted by Australia and the United States, involves 19 countries and nearly 40,000 personnel, including around 700 Kiwis. And for Combat…