Aotearoa / New Zealand

Duelling opinion pieces have been published this morning about the standoff between police and Stuff, after the news website posted police audio from the night fugitive dad Tom Phillips was shot dead. In a rare move, Police Commissioner Richard Chambers has explained the fears police had over the radio communications being heard by the public; in response the website's editor in chief has shot back outlining his rationale. RNZ is publishing both pieces in full below.

I don't know that I can fairly summarise the statements so you'll have to read them for yourself. I'm interested to hear thoughts on if the concerns are valid and if Stuff's response is appropriate.

A 13-year-old boy in New Zealand swallowed up to 100 high-power magnets he bought on Temu, forcing surgeons to remove tissue from his intestines, doctors said on Oct 24.

After suffering four days of abdominal pain, the unnamed teen was taken to Tauranga Hospital on the North Island.

“He disclosed ingesting approximately 80 to 100 5x2mm high-power (neodymium) magnets about one week prior,” said a report by hospital doctors in the New Zealand Medical Journal.

The magnets, which have been banned in New Zealand since January 2013, were bought on online shopping platform Temu, they said.

An X-ray showed the magnets had clumped together in four straight lines inside the child’s intestines.

“These appeared to be in separate parts of bowel adhered together due to magnetic forces,” they said.

[...]

Surgeons operated to remove the dead tissue and retrieve the magnets, and the child was able to return home after an eight-day spell in hospital.

“This case highlights not only the dangers of magnet ingestion but also the dangers of the online marketplace for our paediatric population,” said the authors of the paper, Dr Binura Lekamalage, Dr Lucinda Duncan-Were and Dr Nicola Davis.

Surgery for ingestion of magnets can lead to complications later in life such as bowel obstruction, abdominal hernia and chronic pain, they said.

[...]

A consumer advocate says testing has revealed some children's toys being sold by online shopping giant Temu are unsafe.

More than 160 products, including children's toys, have been tested by several European consumer groups in Germany, France, Denmark and Belgium.

The test sold through Temu and Shein found more than 60 percent of the products investigated from both online stores had failures.

The worst categories were products marketed as suitable for children younger than 3 years old and USB electronic chargers.

Consumer NZ research writer Belinda Castles told Midday Report the research showed some products failed safety testing.

"It was quite concerning actually. There was a number of failures," she said.

The products were tested against European Union (EU) standards and were tested for mechanical, chemical and electrical compliance.

Mechanical safety issues were found in 30 of the 54 toys tested, Castles said.

"They were looking for harmful substances, so chemicals that shouldn't be there, and also mechanical and electrical safety and labelling requirements. And what they found was that 18 of those 54 toys actually had high severity non-compliance issues," she said.

[...]

Warning and compliance label issues were also found in 26 of the 27 Temu products, alongside all 27 Shein products tested.

"Although that's obviously not as serious as sort of the mechanical and the electrical failures, it's still a concern if they're not providing consumers with the correct information about how to use those products safely," Castles said.

A case study in the New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ) said surgeons at Tauranga Hospital had to remove part of the boy's bowel after he ate between 80 and 100 of the small but powerful magnets.

The magnets were banned in New Zealand.

The report by NZMJ claimed the magnets were purchased from Temu.

"It just highlights the real difficulty in these online international platforms. People are still able to buy from them," Castles said.

Consumer "strongly recommended" not purchasing children's toys and USB chargers from Shein and Temu.

[...]

Last thread here

Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!

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When structural inefficiencies prevent successive governments from effectively maintaining public infrastructure: a star is born.

Fonterra's farmer shareholders have voted overwhelmingly in favour of the sale of the brands like Mainland and Anchor to a French company.

More than 88 percent of the votes cast at a special meeting backed the $4.2 billion sale to French dairy giant Lactalis.

ASB Bank estimated the sale proceeds would ultimately be worth about $4.5b to the economy, with farmer shareholders receiving an average tax-free payout of about $392,000 if the sale went ahead.

The sale to the world's biggest dairy group, French-based Lactalis, is the final step in Fonterra's transition to a slimmed-down New Zealand-based supplier of raw ingredients and high-value products to other manufacturers.

This is pretty interesting! I like the bits where they show the 1950s aerial view vs the present ones to show how the river changed.

Anyone having issues getting to some sites? It looks like https://www.legislation.govt.nz/ is down.

It was Azure:

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/577269/live-major-microsoft-outage-disrupts-websites-around-world-air-nz-boardings

Glad they are finally doing it and this should hopefully get much needed funding for our healthcare system. Whats shocking to me is that even with all the controversial bits taken out its still unpopular. I swear nz has the most hardheaded people out there.

RNZ-Reid Research poll last month found 43 percent in support of a CGT on investment properties

What is left for people to whine about?

Immigration New Zealand says 1000 people each week submit photos that have been filtered or airbrushed.

The agency receives about 20,000 visa requests per week, so about one in 20 photos has been altered.

On Friday, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment deputy secretary Alison McDonald told the Association for Migration and Investment conference in Auckland that the number of touched-up pictures was increasing and was creating big problems.

"We've got more and more applicants applying, having kind of morphed their photos using AI or filters.

"If you see your client and they don't look like the picture, find yourself - if you can - a really nice way to point out that they're not that beautiful."

Last thread here

Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!

This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.

It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:

• Something interesting that happened to you
• Something humourous that happened to you
• Something frustrating that happened to you
• A quick question
• A request for recommendations
• Pictures of your pet
• A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
• Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)

So how’s it going?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/44706118

Australia and New Zealand have issued support for the Pacific Islands Forum after China called in Pacific ambassadors to complain about their decision to include Taiwan at the summit last month.

Beijing had pushed to exclude the island from the regional gathering.

[...]

Both New Zealand and Australia are showing increasingly public signs of frustration about the way China has heaped pressure on Pacific nations over Taiwan, arguing that it risked splintering PIF unity, and distracting the region from critical development challenges.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters took a thinly veiled swipe at China when Solomon Islands decided to exclude all partners from this year's PIF leaders meeting, saying "outsiders" were determining who the Pacific could invite as guests.

A spokesperson for New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade would not say exactly when or where China lodged its complaints over this year's communique, but suggested Beijing had no right to remonstrate with Pacific nations over Taiwan.

[...]

A spokesperson for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade also did not provide any details about the diplomatic complaints China had lodged.

But they also delivered a clear message to Beijing, saying Australia "encourages China to engage with the PIF and its members in a manner that promotes regional unity".

"This includes working through and respecting regional institutions and norms, including the PIF's decisions with respect to engaging Taiwan," they said.

"Australia has made its position clear, including directly to China."

[...]

Measles cases have been breaking out around Aotearoa in recent months, with Health NZ's public health medicine specialist Dr Sharon Sime warning there may be undetected cases circulating not linked to overseas travel.

Measles is highly contagious - up to 90 percent of non-immune people (those who have not been vaccinated or have not already had it) will be infected if they are exposed to the virus.

The measles vaccine is free, delivered as part of the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella).

About 80 percent of New Zealanders are immune - well below the 95 percent coverage needed to prevent an outbreak - and it is lower still for young children, who are among those most at risk of serious complications.

Title - only have $70 till Tuesday next fortnight.

Need to feed two. Feels impossible.

Food banks are too far away (I'm in Opaheke) it seems no - one can deliver this far and walking 10kg+ with that weight as a 41kg male it's just barely possible.

Haven't the feintist idea what we will do.

Asked wins for a grant but I've already had two this year and as of late (3wks) they won't accept my application for TAS.

What do I do guys? Loosing my mind.

This is the best option for New Zealand to achieve 100% renewable energy.

It's a giant battery that can store solar and wind energy for later use which would drive the price of electricity down, which would reduce the money / dividends the government gets from its 51% stake of the three biggest gentailers: Meridian, Mercury, and Genesis.

"McDonald's is back for round two in Wānaka after strong community opposition scuppered its first bid to build a restaurant in the lakeside hotspot."

I completely understand the towns resistance (and applaud it, frankly). I wonder if they'd have better luck if they didn't include a drive through... (My limited understanding is the primary resistance was rubbish-related)

An estimated 100,000 nurses, teachers and public sector staff walked off the job in New Zealand on Thursday to call on the government to better fund and resource public services, in one of the country’s largest ever strikes.

The so-called “mega strike” brought together workers from multiple sectors, including more than 60,000 school teachers, 40,000 nurses and salaried medical specialists and 15,000 public service staff.

This "news" story kinda annoys me. Its in my opinion irresponsible to write a story glorifying a guy with 0 fighting ability and thinks hes Neo disarming a guy with a knife and saving the day.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5221017

Archived version

Australia is being urged to establish a regional intelligence sharing alliance with New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji to counter mounting threats in the Pacific.

The status quo of patchwork agreements had failed to tackle transnational crime, illegal fishing, disaster response, climate-related security, and cybersecurity issues, according to Lowy Institute’s Pacific islands programme director Mihai Sora.

“These vulnerabilities create space for external actors, above all China, to gain leverage in the Pacific Islands,” he said in a policy brief released on Wednesday.

The intelligence-sharing arrangement would mirror the Five Eyes partnership between Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

...

The meth explains a lot about the decision making in this story.

Last thread here

Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!

This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.

It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:

• Something interesting that happened to you
• Something humourous that happened to you
• Something frustrating that happened to you
• A quick question
• A request for recommendations
• Pictures of your pet
• A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
• Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)

So how’s it going?

Landscape astro photographer, Tom Rae, has won the Royal Museums Greenwich Skyscapes Astronomy Photographer of the Year for a second time.

His winning picture this year is 'The Ridge' taken at Aoraki Mount Cook is comprised of 62 individual photos stitched together to create a panoramic view.

Rae, who is based in Canterbury, scoped out the potential image by taking preparatory shots with his phone, he says.

“I climbed up this ridge line and I took some photos on my phone and then I thought yep, this is one that I'll have to come back for when the Milky Way aligns, which was a year from that date.”

The winning image:

Last Wednesday, Sean Plunket - founder and boss of alternative streaming service the Platform - read aloud a letter he'd had from the BSA telling him someone had objected to Plunket describing Māori tikanga as "mumbo jumbo" earlier this year.