Author: Press Room

The Charter School Agency signed a charter school contract with a trust that did not exist.In October, Associate Education Minister David Seymour posted a notice in the New Zealand Gazette that the agency had entered a contract with the “NZPAA Charitable Trust” to set up the New Zealand Performance Academy Aotearoa as a charter school.But no such trust or trust with a variation of that name existed or exists in the Charities Register.The secondary school is to be established in Trentham next year, with a focus on young athletes in Years 11 and 13.It would be based at the New…

Rotorua supermarkets have ruled out adopting Kmart’s anti-theft, coin-release trolley system.One said a bylaw targeting abandoned trolleys had almost halved the number needing retrieval.Rotorua Kmart began charging customers a 50c trolley bond earlier this month in a bid to stop theft.Stolen and abandoned trolleys have blighted Rotorua in recent years.Kmart ran out of trolleys last Christmas Eve, according to an employee.Discarded supermarket trolleys in Rotorua. (Source: Local Democracy Reporting)Rotorua Lakes Council introduced a waste bylaw in August aimed at curbing the issue.The council collects abandoned trollies and retailers are given 24 hours to recover them or face storage and delivery…

Hot and humid weather has long been a culprit for a bad night’s sleep, and may also be the cause of more vivid — or even scary — dreams. People dream most often during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, which starts about 90 minutes after you fall asleep and occurs in cycles throughout the night. As New Zealand rolls into the summer period, Auckland Sleep founder Sumit Samant told Breakfast the heat caused more disruptions to normal sleep cycles, which can in turn make dreams feel more vivid. “So people are waking up a lot more easily after the REM…

Analysis: Unethical decisions can easily become normalised by the people making them, writes Professor Michael Macaulay.The scandal over how police handled complaints against former deputy police commissioner Jevon McSkimming has exposed serious failings at the organisation’s highest levels.It has also brought into sharp focus how poor judgement and processes can corrode public confidence in an institution that relies so heavily on integrity.This week, the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) released a 135-page report outlining how senior officers failed to act on serious allegations against McSkimming.The IPCA’s investigation began after a non-sworn police employee, with whom McSkimming had an affair dating…

Forty years after its first visit sparked the revival of Māori ocean voyaging, the Hawaiian waka Hōkūleʻa is due back at Waitangi this Friday as part of an epic four-year voyage around the Pacific.Among those joining the crew for the last leg across the Bay of Islands will be Stan Conrad, the only Māori on board during the Hōkūleʻa’s historic 1985 journey.”It was a privilege, sailing on that maiden voyage of Hōkūleʻa, on the Voyage of Rediscovery from Rarotonga to Aotearoa. There were 14 crew members, but I was the only Māori boy from Aotearoa. The rest were all Hawaiian.…

The Department of Conservation is grappling with the environmental loss at Tongariro National Park after a devastating fire scorched nearly 3000ha of park land. The fire broke out on Saturday, November 8 and prompted some evacuations, and days of intense firefighting efforts from crews on the ground and in the sky. Rain forecast for the area significantly helped efforts to extinguish the blaze. A DOC spokesperson said it “will take weeks for us to understand the severity of the damage” from the fire. Large tracts of Tongariro National Park blackened with ash from a huge wildfire over the weekend. (Source:…

Thirteen years after being sentenced for kidnapping his ex-partner, holding her hostage for 38 hours on Great Barrier Island, Nathan Boulter stood in front of a judge in the High Court. This time he was pleading guilty to murdering a woman. RNZ’s Sam Sherwood reveals how the violent, possessive stalker became a killer.As Nortessa Montgomerie looked at her phone and read the news article, she felt nervous.It was about a man sentenced for disorderly behaviour. He had made unwanted remarks to a young woman at a shop in Riverton and then challenged her father to a fight.The offending itself was…

TVNZ has unveiled plans to refresh Breakfast next year and announced that co-host Jenny-May Clarkson is leaving the broadcaster.Clarkson said she was leaving with gratitude and pride after nearly two decades at the company.Her final appearance on Breakfast will be on Friday, November 21.TVNZ is now beginning a process to appoint a new presenter for the show. Jenny-May Clarkson to leave TVNZ’s Breakfast show – Watch on TVNZ+The former Silver Fern began her TVNZ career as a netball commentator in 2005. She progressed to a variety of high-profile presenting roles and has co-hosted Breakfast since 2020.She is one of TVNZ’s…

A Government bill to bring in congestion charging passed its third reading in Parliament yesterday. Why is it happening – and how much could drivers end up paying?Congestion pricing, or as it’s now often called, time-of-use charging, has been floated and debated for years between multiple governments. If implemented, the scheme, already used overseas, could charge drivers a toll at busy times for motorists to enter a downtown area, or just target busy roads and corridors.Momentum has built in the past several years across the current coalition Government and previous Labour government to introduce congestion charging.(Source: 1News)With the support of…

Published on 12/11/2025 – 20:00 GMT+1 •Updated 20:03 Above is the second episode of Euronews’ brand new debating show “The Ring” that aspires to bring a flavour of the European Parliament chamber to your couch. As you know, 720 elected members of the European Parliament meet regularly in the Chambers of Strasbourg and Brussels and debates can often get heated. In our second episode, we are joined by centre-right Estonian MEP Riho Terras and the German Left MEP Martin Schirdewan. They disagreed on most topics regarding Rearming Europe and Schirdewan called for a tax on the rich. The EU has…