Author: Press Room
By Susan Edmunds of RNZ Chocolate prices could be set to rise further as the cost of cocoa keeps pressure on. Stats NZ said this week that chocolate blocks were part of the reason that grocery food prices were up 2.4 percent in the year. Consumer prices manager James Mitchell said the average price of a 250g block of chocolate was up 20 percent over the year. The average price of a block had risen from $3.27 in mid-2006 to $5.56 in August. Foodstuffs said customers were still buying chocolate, but at a lower volume. “Our retail pricing for chocolate…
The defence in the Philip Polkinghorne murder trial has called its last witness and finished giving evidence.Warning: This article contains content that could be disturbing to some people.Its final witness told jurors there is no way to know who will harm themselves.The trial, which started in late July, was at the end of the seventh week of evidence and approaching the final stages.Polkinghorne, 71, denies strangling and killing his wife Pauline Hanna at their Auckland home in 2021, and making it look like a suicide.His defence is that he woke to find the 63-year-old already dead on Easter Monday.Associate professor…
Bucharest and Kyiv’s senior officials have condemned the attack, claiming Russia was behind it. ADVERTISEMENTA suspected Russian missile struck a Turkish-operated cargo ship delivering Ukranian grain to Egypt, roughly 48 kilometres off the Romanian coastline on Thursday, authorities in Kyiv and Bucharest said.Ukrainian officials said in a statement that the missile had been launched by a Russian strategic bomber.In a Facebook post on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said there were no casualties in the incident, while photographs supplied by his office show significant damage to parts of the vessel.The strike occurred outside national waters but within Romania’s exclusive maritime…
Police have released the name of a man who died after a crash in Waimate earlier this week.He was 65-year-old local, Alan George Weir.A truck and a car collided on the Waimate Highway (State Highway 1) near Makikihi, Waimate shortly after 6am on Wednesday.A fire broke out. Fire and Emergency said crews were sent in a “dual capacity, both to clear the scene and provide first aid and also due to a fire that started as a result of the crash”.St John sent one ambulance, one operations manager and one helicopter to the scene, a spokesperson confirmed.Police said inquiries into…
ADVERTISEMENTDanish firm DSV has secured a deal to buy Schenker, the logistics unit of German state railway Deutsche Bahn (DB).The deal, signed on Friday, values Schenker at €14.3bn, with €11.3bn of equity.Friday’s announcement marks the largest sale in DB’s history and will make DSV the world’s biggest logistics firm.DSV said it will finance the purchase through a share sale of as much as €5bn and debt financing.”The acquisition of Schenker is a transformative transaction for DSV,” said the Danish company in a statement on Friday.”Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined revenue of DKK 293bn… and a joint workforce…
The Breast Cancer Foundation is welcoming news Pharmac is proposing to fund a new drug for those with an advanced form of incurable breast cancer. Enhertu is a treatment given to patients with HER2-positive advanced breast cancer.It was heralded as a “wonder drug” by the Breast Cancer Foundation NZ.Trials showed patients reduced their risk of death by 27% and were given 29 months of progression free survival (time when their cancer didn’t get worse), the foundation said.Other drugs included in Pharmac’s latest proposal for medicine funding are:Tagrisso for lung cancerSynagis for RSVBreztri Aerosphere for COPDChief executive of Breast Cancer Foundation…
Hundreds of residents have fled the eastern Donetsk region via evacuation trains from Pavlohrad to Kropyvnytskyi and Lviv, amid the escalating conflict as Russian forces advance in the area. ADVERTISEMENTAt least one person has been killed in Russian shelling on an apartment building in the eastern city of Kostiantynivka.Local authorities say the city came under fire from cannon artillery and a 43-year-old woman was killed.”Our windows were blown out, and this is it, the walls inside the apartment were smashed by the debris. We had three hits. The first time was upstairs, the second time a woman was killed, this…
Police said investigations are underway following reports of a “hate motivated assault” in Central Auckland earlier this month. “At about 2.50pm on September 2, a woman was approached by an unknown female on the corner of Queen Street and Scotia Place,” Auckland City Central response manager Senior Sergeant Dave Plunkett said in a statement. “The offender has assaulted the victim, before yelling verbal threats and took a number of items before leaving on foot.”Plunkett said police have “no tolerance for this type of crime or intimidation in our communities”.Support is being provided to the victim, Plunkett said. “Anyone who may…
The stolen work is one of several versions of ‘Girl with Balloon’, a stencilled image of a child reaching for a heart-shaped red balloon. ADVERTISEMENTTwo men have been charged with burglary over the theft of an artwork by street artist Banksy that was taken in a smash-and-grab raid on a London gallery.The Metropolitan Police said that Larry Fraser, 47, and James Love, 53, are alleged to have taken ‘Girl with Balloon’ from the Grove Gallery on Sunday night.The suspects appeared at Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court on Thursday and were ordered detained until their next hearing on 9 October.Surveillance camera footage showed…
Rotorua’s mayor is worried scrapping minimum apartment size rules would allow motel rooms to be turned into housing.The Government announced in July, as part of its Going for Housing Growth policies, it would scrap the ability for councils to set minimum floor areas and balcony requirements for apartments.Housing Minister Chris Bishop highlighted the cost pressures size requirements can impose, therefore limiting the supply of lower-cost apartments.”Evidence from 2015 shows that in the Auckland market, balcony size requirements increased the costs of an apartment by $40,000 to $70,000 per unit.”Bishop said at the time: “Do you know what is smaller than…