Author: Press Room

Kiwis will want to make sure they put their clocks forward an hour before bed tonight, as daylight savings kicks in overnight.Daylight savings means clocks go forward by one hour at 2am.It starts each year on the last Sunday in September, and ends at 3am on the first Sunday in April.The event is also important to Fire and Emergency New Zealand, who use it as a reminder for Kiwis to clean and check their smoke alarms while they’re changing clocks, as well as having a three-step escape plan in place.Tom Ronaldson, community education and behaviour change manager, said “just push…

With the rapid advancement of AI, the ability to create ‘deepfake’ pornographic images is cheap, easy and available. All that’s needed is a photograph of a person and explicit images that appear to be them can be created – and shared on social media, degrading and devastating them. Some of the victims are New Zealand schoolkids, but will the law move quickly enough to address it? By Gill Higgins. Watch this story on our home for news, in-depth and consumer stories TVNZ+. Websites that allow anyone to create explicit pornographic images have proliferated in the last few years. The marketing…

Police are concerned for missing man Luke Berwick, who has been missing from Raglan since earlier this week.Berwick, 31, was believed to have been staying at the Raglan Holiday Park since Monday, with the intention of going fishing, police said. He was last in contact with his family on Tuesday.”Luke has good knowledge of the Raglan area and fishes from the wharf at the end of Wallis Street, Raglan mouth, Ngaranui, Wainui, Manu Bay, and Ruapuke rocks,” police said.”If you have any information that could help our inquiries, please call 111 and use the reference number 240927/5606.”

Transport Minister Simeon Brown has signed a new speed limit rule which will see speed limit reductions brought in under the previous government reversed.A number of road safety experts have spoken out against the Government’s moves, saying more people will be killed or seriously injured.Earlier this month a group of local and international road safety experts, academics and health professionals penned an open letter to the Government saying people will die if it goes ahead with the reductions.Brown announced today the Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2024 would come into force on October 30.It would see speed limit…

Spain’s maritime rescue service said on Saturday that a boat carrying 84 migrants capsized overnight in the Canary Islands, killing at least nine people. ADVERTISEMENTAfter Tenerife’s rescue centre received an emergency call overnight from one of the people on the boat, Spain’s rescue service was deployed and managed to rescue 27 people.Nine bodies were also recovered from the sea.The rescue service said the boat capsized shortly after midnight four miles off El Herrio, one of the islands that make up the Canaries, when the migrants rushed to one side of the boat. The search was hampered however by gusts of…

New proposals limiting where dogs can be exercised have stoked tensions between dog owners and conservationists across Tasman.Nowhere is this more evident than at the scenic Little Kaiteriteri Beach where “neighbour is against neighbour”.Currently, dogs are permitted on the beach, except for summer months when they’re only allowed between 5 and 9am.But Tasman District Council is now proposing to allow dogs on the beach year-round provided they are on leash.The council’s reasoning for the change would be to simplify the rules while still allowing dogs to exercise and the protection of wildlife.Little Kaiteriteri is an important site for little blue…

Two consecutive Russian attacks on a medical centre in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy killed at least nine people on Saturday morning, officials said. ADVERTISEMENTAfter the first strike killed one person, Russia attacked a second time whilst patients and staff were evacuating, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said. Local officials in Sumy reported that Iranian-made Shahed drones were used in the attack. Eleven other people were wounded, the head of the Sumy City Military administration, Oleksii Drozdenko, said. Sumy lies some 32 kilometres from Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops have been deployed since Aug. 6 in a bid…

Three people have been injured after an incident in a river near Invercargill earlier today. Police said it received a report of a person needing assistance in the Oreti River, near West Plains Rd, at around 10.30am today. Two people self-rescued and contacted emergency services, while one person needed to be rescued by emergency services.St John responded with two ambulances, one rapid response unit and one operations manager. St John transported two patients in a serious condition and one in a moderate condition to Kew Hospital.

New research has uncovered the earliest – and unlikely – place kūmara was cultivated in Polynesia.The first people to arrive in Aotearoa likely arrived with the intention of growing crops, the study by University of Otago – Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka and published in international archaeology journal Antiquity, found.Evidence of microscopic kūmara starch granules was discovered alongside taro and Pacific yam (uwhi) at Triangle Flat in Golden Bay (Mohua), were cultivated as early as AD 1290-1385.This corresponded with the early settlement of Aotearoa, providing the first pre-1400 evidence for kūmara cultivation in Te Waipounamu – as early as anywhere else in…

A Hastings resident baffled by the approval of the region’s new Gateway signs has whipped up a storm on social media.Yvonne Lorkin said while the region boasts an impressive tapestry of natural beauty, the new branding has been presented in the colour of “old porridge with a hideously old-fashioned font.”“My whole life I have been fiercely proud of my place, my turangawaewae, this profoundly wonderful region. Now every time I drive past one of these signs my toes curl in embarrassment that that’s the image our authorities chose to represent us.“How and why was this approved? I’m baffled,” Lorkin said.Lorkin’s…