Author: Press Room

ADVERTISEMENTIran has confirmed that the next round of nuclear talks with the United States this weekend will be held in Rome after earlier confusion over the location of the negotiations.Officials initially identified Rome as hosting the negotiations, only for Iran to insist early on Tuesday that they would return to Oman.An Iranian state TV announcement said Oman will again mediate the talks on Saturday in Rome. Oman’s foreign minister served as an interlocutor between the two sides at talks last weekend in the capital Muscat. The stakes of the negotiations couldn’t be higher for the two nations closing in on…

Former Labour leader Andrew Little has announced he’s running for Wellington mayor. He joins current mayor Tory Whanau, councillor Ray Chung, Rob Goulden, Kelvin Hastie, Karl Tiefenbacher and Graham Bloxham in putting their names forward. In a post to social media, Little said the capital needs “serious leadership”. Little retired from politics after Labour’s loss at the 2023 election.He was party leader between 2014 and 2017 and a senior minister in government before the last election. He would stand in the Wellington City Council election later this year.In a video, he said Wellington needs urgent change and he’s got the…

ADVERTISEMENTAuthorities have dismantled four major criminal networks responsible for fuelling the flow of drugs into the European Union and Turkey, arresting more than 230 people in a sting known as Operation Bulut. The final three arrests were made in the Netherlands and Germany on Wednesday, bringing the trans-European operation to a close.Europol said the investigation took place across multiple jurisdictions and involved authorities in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.What set this operation apart, was the extent to which law enforcement officers employed digital tracking within encrypted digital platforms to track down and arrest suspected drug smugglers. In an…

When Aimee Clark walks out of the University of Otago campus for the last time, she hopes she leaves a lasting legacy. Ms Clark, who is completing a master’s degree in marketing this year, has established the university’s first-ever Women in Business Club and discussion around succession was part of its formation. It was last year when she decided she wanted to get involved with some more activities. Other large universities had business clubs for women and she assumed Otago had one. When she found that it did not, she decided to do something about it and WIB was launched…

The union representing senior doctors is defending plans for industrial action, saying patient safety is already being sacrificed by a depleted health system.More than 5000 members of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) are set to strike for 24 hours on May 1. It comes after several months of pay negotiations between the union and Te Whatu Ora hit the skids.The ASMS union sought a 12% pay increase with the health agency, but was met with an offer of between 1 and 1.5%. The union’s executive director Sarah Dalton said Te Whatu Ora has been unwilling to move from…

ADVERTISEMENTA few weeks on from Washington’s first wave of tariff announcements, international trade data points to a subdued outlook, with key indicators signalling serious risk of trade diversion to Europe as a result of the disruption in trade between US and China, according to the World Trade Organization (WTO).The WTO’s “Global trade outlook” released on Wednesday found decoupling Chinese and US economies would lead to an 81% plunge of merchandise trade between both countries in 2025 and 91% without the recent exemptions granted by the US administration for products such as smartphones.As a consequence, the report foresees an increase of 6%…

The Government has put out a multi-billion dollar plan for rebuilding hospitals it says are so run down patient care is being affected.The long-delayed plan was released on Wednesday, five years after the first national stocktake of health facilities found they needed over $20 billion of investment — a figure repeated by the Government on Wednesday. Health Minister Simeon Brown said the system was “under significant pressure from ageing infrastructure”.”This is a first for New Zealand — a single, long-term plan that lays out a clear pipeline for health infrastructure,” he said in a statement.Simeon Brown says new facilities will…

ADVERTISEMENTTwo bodies have been retrieved by authorities from the Bug River on Poland’s border with Belarus. They are believed to be migrant men who had attempted to cross the border into Poland.Investigators are conducting an autopsy to determine the identities and cause of death of the bodies, which were significantly decomposed when they were found, according to Katarzyna Gągolińska of the Biała Podlaska police.The Polish Border Guard says that almost 300 attempts have been made to cross the Polish-Belarusian border in the Lublin province since the start of this year. Dariusz Sienicki, captain of the Bug River Border Guard Unit,…

A large weather system is expected to bring heavy rain and strong winds to the upper North Island from today. Already, winds gusting more than 50 knots (90 km/h plus) have been recorded off the coasts of Auckland, Northland and the Coromandel.Electricity network provider Northpower was reporting about 150 customers were without power as nightfall approached on Wednesday.MetService  issued heavy rain and strong wind warnings across parts of the North Island and some areas of the South.  (Source: 1News)Authorities were warning of coastal inundation when predicted 5m-6m east coast swells were to be combined with severe gale winds and a 10pm…

ADVERTISEMENTThe European Commission presented its first list of ‘safe’ countries of origin on Wednesday for the purposes of asylum, providing a list of states from which those applying for asylum will be subject to expedited processing within a three-month deadline.The Commission considers that all candidate countries meet the criteria to be designated as safe countries of origin, with the temporary exception of Ukraine due to the ongoing war in its territory. That means Albania, Bosnia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkiye are all on the list. Seven others join them: Kosovo, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco and Tunisia. Migrants…