Author: Press Room

It has been a rainy start to Christmas week so far, and holidaymakers planning outdoor activities are advised to make most of the sunny weather today.MetService said today’s weather is the best pick of the Christmas week, with sunny spells across much of the country.Northland, Auckland, Coromandel and the Bay of Plenty will mostly be fine today.Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay will also mostly be fine today, with isolated showers inland.The area from Waikato to Wellington will be clearing up today, after yesterday’s rain.Meanwhile, rain is expected on Christmas day, with a cold front bringing rain in the morning along the…

Some banking customers have been affected by an outage to online banking services, a day out from Christmas Day. ANZ has confirmed that some customers are experiencing “intermittent issues” logging into the goMoney app and internet banking services. According to Downdetector, a site which monitors internet outages, more than 2600 customers had reported an outage between 10am and 12pm. An ANZ spokesperson apologised for the inconvenience and said the team was working to resolve this as quickly as possible.

The mother of Upper Hutt teen Maia Johnston – who was missing for two days – says her daughter has a long recovery ahead after falling at a waterfall.The 19-year-old went missing on Saturday night and was last seen leaving a family home in the suburb of Totara Park during heavy rain.She was found injured with a broken leg and ribs, but alive, early on Monday in the hills above Upper Hutt.Family members and friends embraced Johnston as she was carried out of the bush by search and rescue, and loaded into an ambulance.She was taken to hospital and treated…

Police have arrested a fourth person over the death of Napier man Boy Taylor.The 19-year-old man is due to appear in the Wellington District Court later today, charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.”This is the fourth arrest to be made and police are not looking for anyone else in relation to Mr Taylor’s death,” Detective Inspector David de Lange said.On December 18, police were called to Napier CBD near the intersection of Emerson and Hastings streets around 3.15am, following a report of a person lying on the street.Taylor, 58, had sustained injuries consistent with assault at…

Police are looking to locate a prisoner who escaped Corrections custody while on a visit at Waikato Hospital yesterday afternoon.He is the second prisoner to escape Corrections staff at Waikato Hospital in a month, with a 25-year-old allegedly assaulting staff and carjacking a vehicle during a medical appointment in November.The remand prisoner from Spring Hill Corrections Facility, named by police as 48-year-old Damon Anderson, “absconded from Corrections staff while on a hospital visit at around 1.30pm on Monday.Spring Hill Corrections Facility general manager Scott Walker told 1News he was handcuffed and wearing a GPS monitor at the time.Walker said police…

About a third of the $1.2 million spent on Auckland’s downtown Christmas tree are costs associated with the installation of the tree for the first two years, new information from the Auckland Council has revealed.The newly installed Te Manaaki tree is 18 metres tall, with more than 10,000 LED lights and 200 giant baubles, and is owned by Heart of the City and Precinct Properties.Auckland Council said it had given $800,000 to support the project, using money from the city centre targeted rate – money that city centre residential and commercial property owners pay on top of their normal rates,…

By Susan Edmunds of RNZ For Anne, the psychological blow of having been caught up in an investment scam is proving harder to deal with than the at least-$80,000 she has lost. “I feel so stupid,” she says. The 67-year-old, whom RNZ has agreed not to identify because not even her husband knows the full extent of her losses, fell into the scam last year. She was talking to friends about being interested in investing in shares and a man told her he had got into trading, and recommended a company that could help. “I went online, they had a…

Newly appointed French Prime Minister François Bayrou formed the country’s fourth government in less than a year, with a key challenge for his cabinet being securing approval for the 2025 budget. ADVERTISEMENTThe list of France’s new ministers under freshly nominated Prime Minister François Bayrou was unveiled on Monday by the Elysée presidential palace secretary, Alexis Kohler. The new cabinet is made up of 34 members, including leading figures and former ministers, mostly conservative and centrist politicians. Who are some of the new ministers?Elisabeth Borne, the former prime minister, becomes the Minister of Education and the government’s second most important figure.Jean-Noël…

The Government’s Hauraki Gulf Marine Protection Bill passed its second reading in Parliament this week which will establish 19 new marine high protection areas — designed to help protect the Gulf from overfishing.It’s controversial though, because the Government will allow commercial fishing in two of those high protection areas (HPAs).Back in May, commercial ring-net fishers wrote to the Conservation Minister Tama Potaka, seeking a meeting over their concerns about the Hauraki Gulf Marine Protection Bill. They warned that if they were excluded from fishing in the new high protection areas, they’d lose their winter fishing grounds and their businesses might…

Romanian president nominates incumbent premier to lead a new pro-European coalition government ADVERTISEMENTRomania’s president on Monday nominated incumbent Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu to lead a new pro-European coalition government following a top court’s annulment of a presidential election.After deliberations with Romania’s political parties, President Klaus Iohannis nominated Ciolacu of the leftist Social Democratic Party (PSD) to try to form a government, in hopes of ending a protracted political crisis in the European Union country.Ciolacu, whose party topped the polls in a 1 December parliamentary election, has served as prime minister since June last year.It is widely seen as a tactical…