Author: Press Room
A woman whose holiday home was at the centre of an online scam says it has taken weeks for the host site to take the property offline.Kellie Walker noticed her six-bedroom holiday home in Ōrewa was on the Booking.com website in October, but she had never listed it on that site.She told the site about the scam listing, but says nothing happened for weeks, until she contacted media about the issue.Booking.com said it had closed the listing as a precautionary measure.Walker told RNZ’s Checkpoint that she contacted the bogus lister, asking to view the house before she rented.”There was no…
An iwi bid to have the central North Island village of National Park renamed Waimarino has been successful.A second iwi proposal to change the name of the village railway station from National Park Station to Waimarino Railway Station has been declined.Land Information Minister Chris Penk made the determinations in his statutory role as final decision maker.The Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa New Zealand Geographic Board announced the decisions this morning.Iwi representatives said Waimarino was the original Māori name for the area, referring to calm waters pooling on the plains as they came down from the mountain.The proposal was to alter…
Whangārei District Council has today stepped up its fight against fluoridating its drinking water with the threat of a High Court injunction.This move strengthens its position as the only council in New Zealand to strongly resist a 2022 Director-General of Health order to fluoridate its drinking water.Councillor Gavin Benney said today his council wanted Director-General of Health Dr Diana Sarfati to extend WDC’s March 28 fluoridation deadline.But, if that did not happen urgently, the council would instead be applying for an interim injunction to pause the directive. It would also formally push for the Governor General to instead pause the…
A Canterbury man has been fined $6000 for driving a digger repeatedly through a large black-billed gull colony, destroying their nests.Clive Gordon drove a utility vehicle and a 14-tonne digger through about 100 birds on his property in Belfast, in November last year.Department of Conservation (DOC) staff visited the site following a tip off from the public, and found it abandoned, with several dead chicks, broken eggs and wrecked nests.DOC operations manager Andy Thompson said the incident was confronting, due to the scale of the disturbance and the deaths of the species.”Black-billed gulls are endemic to New Zealand – they…
By Gyles Beckford of RNZ New Zealand’s economy was in a deeper than expected recession in the middle of the year, with widespread contraction across many sectors. Stats NZ data shows gross domestic product, the broad measure of economic growth, fell 1% in the three months ended September, to be 1.5% lower than a year ago. Significant revisions to previous figures resulted in a fall of 1.1% in the June quarter, meeting the definition of technical recession. These were the biggest quarterly falls since late 2021 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, but excluding those the six…
The arrival of New Zealand’s urban search and rescue team in quake-struck Vanuatu has been delayed because of an engine fire warning on an old Air Force Hercules.The specialist team of firefighters and volunteer doctors and engineers was due to land in Port Vila with 10 tonnes of equipment at about 8.30pm yesterday.But the NZDF said the crew was forced to divert to Noumea in New Caledonia after an engine fire warning.A second plane is due to leave this morning to recover them and take them to Vanuatu.Other flights including a new Hercules with foreign affairs staff will leave at…
Telecommunications company 2degrees’ ice sculpture, installed in central Auckland to stimulate conversation about the impacts of climate change, came as the company became the first of its kind to have its net-zero 2040 target validated by global organisation Science Based Targets Initiative.The three metre-tall installation in Takutai Square, made from 2500 litres of rainwater and weighing in at two tonnes, was intended to communicate the scale of the world’s environmental challenges as it inevitably melted throughout the day.In Antarctica and Greenland, the amount of ice predicted to melt annually roughly equates to around 183 billion of these ice sculptures, according…
One ticket has won $5 million with Powerball First Division this evening.The winning numbers are: 03, 13, 14, 23, 31, 35, bonus ball 32, and Powerball 01.The winning ticket was sold on MyLotto to a player from Otago.Strike Four has rolled over to $1.5 million on Saturday’s draw.
Brussels wants to use Ankara’s influence to guarantee unity in Syria, as well as to avoid a new confrontation in the northern part of the country. ADVERTISEMENTAll roads leading to Syria pass through Ankara… Or so it has seemed ever since Turkey emerged as one of the biggest winners out of the downfall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, having had a significant, indirect military presence in the country and supported the rebels who seized power. This has given Ankara immediate access to Syria’s new leaders, and international recognition as a major player in the country’s affairs. From US Secretary of State Antony…
The sequel to Wicked will now be titled Wicked: For Good.The upcoming musical movie was initially announced as Wicked: Part Two, but Universal Pictures has now revealed it has changed the title while confirming the flick will hit cinemas on November 21, 2025.Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo – who play Glinda and Elphaba in Wicked – took to Instagram to share the new title, reposting a clip from the official Wicked account.The caption read: “You will be changed. ‘Wicked: For Good’, only in theaters November 21, 2025.”Wicked – which was directed by Jon M Chu and also stars Jeff Goldblum,…