The Government has confirmed it will introduce a deposit insurance regime at the upper end of its proposed limit to better protect customers in the event a bank goes under; and a Pardon Bill that recognises the Crown’s unlawful conviction of Tūhoe prophet Rua Kēnana will have its final reading in Parliament today.
1.Prominent New Zealand businessman, Sir Ron Brierley, has been arrested and charged for alleged possession of child pornography, according to Australian media reports. Australian media have reported that the 82-year-old was arrested at Sydney Airport where he was about to board a flight to Fiji.
2.A soldier has been taken into military custody suspected of being part of a far-right group. He is being held at Linton Military Camp near Palmerston North.
3.A Pardon Bill that recognises the Crown’s unlawful conviction of Tūhoe prophet Rua Kēnana will have its final reading in Parliament today. In 1916 armed police invaded Maungapōhatu and wrongfully imprisoned Rua Kēnana for resisting arrest.
4.Bad weather in Whakatane continues to hamper the search for two people missing since the Whakaari/White Island eruption. Despite widening the search area yesterday the police admit the bodies of tour guide Hayden Marshall-Inman and 17-year-old Australian Winona Langford may never be found.
5.A friend of the Whakatāne ICU nurse who died in a car crash says its difficult to describe her grief. Sheila Cheng looked after patients following the deadly eruption, she died at the weekend.
6.Ngāti Awa says a rahui preventing the gathering of seafood remains until further notice following the Whakaari eruption. A total rāhui was bestowed out of support to those that died and their whanau.
7.People eligible to use medicinal cannabis products for pain relief will continue to be exempt from prosecution. As the new medicinal cannabis scheme gets set up, the regulations setting up the quality and licensing requirements for manufacturing and distributing medicinal cannabis announced today will come into effect next April.
8.The Ministry for Culture and Heritage Chief Executive Bernadette Cavanagh accepts the Ministry breached the privacy of applicants for the Tuia 250 Voyage and has apologised.
9.The head of Nelson Tasman Emergency Management says better communication with the public is needed around emergency cordons. A detailed report on the response to the Pigeon Valley wildfire in February which triggered the evacuation of 3000 people has been released in Richmond.
10. The Government has confirmed it will introduce a deposit insurance regime at the upper end of its proposed limit to better protect customers in the event a bank goes under.
11. Donald Trump has some words for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the congressional Democrats on the eve of his impeachment. Over six pages, on White House letterhead, the president piles adjectives like cords of wood, fires rhetorical fusillades in all directions and invokes the judgement of the American people, the nation’s founding fathers and history itself.
12. Researchers have calculated that as many as 2.5 million moa may have once roamed the country. Landcare Research was able to work out what the mean national density of moa might have been a thousand years ago before humans arrived.
13.A group of eight Chinese construction workers have been deported after an Immigration New Zealand investigation discovered they had been working illegally for up to two years.Immigration New Zealand (INZ) said the group, all men, were detained after a tip off saying they lived in the Auckland suburb of Mount Roskill.
14.Heavy rain and wind warnings have been lifted for most parts of the country for now. NIWA forecasters say rain is easing which decreases risks of flooding, but a new front is likely to bring heavy rain and strong winds later this week.
15.The entire genetic code of a 5,700-year-old human has been extracted from little more than a piece of ancient “chewing gum”. Scientists found that the person who chewed the gum was a young girl living in Denmark, with dark skin and blue eyes.
16.Biosecurity New Zealand has suspended fresh melon imports from Queensland after an unwanted fruit disease was detected at the border.The department says routine testing on Friday detected cucumber green mottle mosaic virus (CGMMV) on a consignment of watermelons from Queensland, Australia.
17. There are not enough ugly people in New Zealand, that is the conclusion of casting agencies working on a new TV series based on the Lord of the Rings.
