Author: Press Room

A man has been arrested after allegedly presenting a firearm towards someone in Auckland yesterday.Police seized a loaded 3D printed firearm and a makeshift taser in connection with the incident.Police were responding to a family harm incident when they were flagged down by a man on Te Irirangi Dr at around 6.20am yesterday.Inspector Rakana Cook said the victim told police he was drinking with a group at the Manukau Velodrome when one person presented a firearm towards him before leaving in a BMW.”The police Eagle helicopter was in the area and located five vehicles at the velodrome, one of which…

Members of the European Parliament benefit from parliamentary immunity, but that doesn’t mean they are completely invulnerable to legal proceedings. ADVERTISEMENTCertain members of the European Parliament have come under increasing scrutiny over the past couple of years for a range of alleged misconduct.Hungarian investigators are looking into allegations that Italian MEP Ilaria Salis attacked right-wing activists, for example, while various MEPs and parliamentary officials are under the microscope for their alleged involvement in the so-called Qatargate corruption scandal.Allegations also abound that various MEPs received cash from a Kremlin-backed network to spread Russian propaganda in Europe as part of the Russiagate…

The trial of the man accused of murdering Christchurch real estate agent Yanfei Bao has been adjourned for the day as proceedings head for a penultimate week.Justice Lisa Preston this morning released the jury because one of its members was unwell.It is hoped the continuation of evidence would resume tomorrow, Preston said.”It is important he goes home, gets well, looks after himself,” she said.”Particularly when you work so closely together in your jury room and in breaks.”After jurors were dismissed, a matter was then heard in chambers.Bao, 44, vanished on 19 July 2023, and her remains were found in a…

The COP29 climate summit is midway through now and negotiators are trying to hammer out a deal that might be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. ADVERTISEMENTSeveral experts have said one trillion dollars a year or more is needed both to compensate for such damages and to pay for a clean-energy transition that most countries can’t afford on their own.But the previous goal of $100 billion annually until 2025 was only met two years ago. Now, the “new collective quantified goal” aims for at least ten times that, according to the UN’s trade and development organisation, or UNCTAD. “The goal…

BNZ offers tips to small and medium-sized enterprises: How to go electricElectrification is good for business. It means lower energy costs, greater business resilience and energy independence, and it’s good for environmental and human health.If your business decides to flick the switch, BNZ’s Head of Sustainable Finance, Alex West, has some tips for making the transition and powering the change with renewable energy.How an SME can make it work as an enterprise“A business should start by mapping out all the considerations for switching to electric, and then do a cost-benefit analysis,” says West. This includes looking at what can be…

The New Zealand Defence Force says the removal of fuel from HMNZS Manawanui will begin next month.Pacific 7 Limited and Bay Underwater Services NZ Ltd have been engaged by the defence force to remove, recover and dispose safely of fuel and other pollutants that are on board the vessel.The NZ Navy vessel sank on a coral reef off the coast of Upolu after running aground and catching fire on October 6. All 75 of its passengers and crew safely evacuated.Equipment will leave on a salvage vessel next week, with an estimated sailing time of up to 11 days.The NZDF Senior…

A missing man who fell into the Manawatū River while walking his dog and failed to resurface over the weekend is a serving member of the New Zealand Army.Emergency services were called to Ahimate Reserve in Palmerston North at around 1.35pm on November 16.A search for the man began immediately — involving police search and rescue staff, a water rescue boat, kayaks, drones, a helicopter and other volunteers.Police Dive Squad members scanned sections of the river using sonar yesterday while a defence force drone provided aerial coverage of the river.No items of interest have been located and the search effort…

A woman spent a week in hospital and needed a skin graft after she was left with a severe third-degree burn while undergoing a body contour treatment at a beauty clinic.The woman’s ordeal was detailed in a recently released report by the Health and Disability Commissioner (HDC), which found the beauty clinic had breached her rights. The woman, the clinic, and the beauty therapists involved in the incident are not named in the report.She visited the clinic on June 15, 2021, to undergo thermal shock lipolysis (TSL) treatment, a non-surgical treatment in which a combination of hot and cold temperatures…

As money in the community sector dries up, ImpactLab’s boss sees the information the analytics firm provides “as a tool” to help charities prove their worth.The company, co-founded and chaired by former prime minister Sir Bill English, has completed nearly 300 assessments measuring what it calls “social return on investment”.Its chief executive Maria English told Q+A her organisation’s reports, which can cost charities up to $30,000, aim to demonstrate the long-term value of social services. She said: “If you take government, for example, often the most information they get about what community organisations are doing is through their contract reporting,…

There are “major gaps” in surveillance of new pathogens from animals and countries should prepare for a pandemic worse than Covid-19 in our lifetimes, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.Covid-19 technical lead Dr Maria Van Kerkhove also said that New Zealand, being an island nation, was not protected from this risk.It has been five years this month since scientists believe Covid-19 began to spread from animals to humans, triggering a global pandemic that the WHO estimates to have caused at least 20 million deaths and $16 trillion in lost revenue.Van Kerkhove told 1News she did not think this pandemic needed…