Category Archives: New Zealand

1. Bodies-in-suitcases suspect appears in New Zealand court  NPR
2. South Korea extradites suspect in New Zealand suitcase murders  NBC News
3. Mother appears in New Zealand court over alleged suitcase murders  CNN
4. Mother of two children found dead in suitcases in New Zealand charged with murder  Sky News
5. Suitcase murder case: Suspect, mother of children, remanded in custody without plea  New Zealand Herald
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Bodies-in-suitcases suspect appears in New Zealand court - NPR

Rugby World Cup: Black Ferns take trophy on road around New Zealand, starting next week  Newshub

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Rugby World Cup: Black Ferns take trophy on road around New Zealand, starting next week - Newshub

1. New Zealand Prime Minister Visits Antarctica  VOA Asia
2. New Zealand leader Ardern makes rare trip to Antarctica  WNYT NewsChannel 13
3. New Zealand's role in Antarctica 'incredibly important', says PM  RNZ
4. New Zealand has duty to Antarctic: Ardern  The Singleton Argus
5. New Zealands Jacinda Ardern makes rare trip to Antarctica  NBC News
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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New Zealand Prime Minister Visits Antarctica - VOA Asia

I Flew on Air New Zealand's 17-Hour Nonstop Flight From New York to AucklandAnd the New Route Is a Game Changer  Cond Nast Traveler

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I Flew on Air New Zealand's 17-Hour Nonstop Flight From New York to AucklandAnd the New Route Is a Game Changer - Cond Nast Traveler

Cattle photographed in New Zealand. Agriculture plays a major role in New Zealand's economy, especially when it comes to exports.

David Clapp | Stone | Getty Images

New Zealand plans to tax agricultural emissions including those related to the burps, urine and dung from livestock like cows and sheep in a move its government hopes will help the country meet climate change goals.

The aim is for the "agricultural emissions-pricing system" to come into force in 2025. A consultation looking at how levies are set, transition assistance and sequestration which the document defines as "the process of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere" was launched this week, and will run until Nov. 18.

The government said revenue from the levy would be "recycled back into [the] agriculture sector through new technology, research and incentive payments to farmers."

The idea of introducing such a system by the middle of this decade was contained within an emissions reduction plan published in May 2022, as well as a recommendation published in June by the He Waka Eke Noa Primary Sector Climate Action Partnership.

In a statement Tuesday, New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern backed the plans. "This is an important step forward in New Zealand's transition to a low emissions future and delivers on our promise to price agriculture emissions from 2025," she said.

"No other country in the world has yet developed a system for pricing and reducing agricultural emissions, so our farmers are set to benefit from being first movers," Ardern went on to say.

Agriculture plays a major role in New Zealand's economy, including exports, but it accounts for a considerable chunk of the country's emissions.

In the consultation document, authorities said greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane were responsible for more than half of New Zealand's gross emissions.

According to the document,carbon dioxide stems from urea, while nitrous oxide comes from livestock dung and urine. Methane is emitted through belching and, to a lesser extent, gas.

While the plans have the backing of figures such as Ardern, they have not been universally welcomed. On Tuesday, Federated Farmers of New Zealand reacted furiously to the government's proposals, stating that they would "rip the guts out of small town New Zealand."

Others reacting to the news included Andrew Morrison, the chairman of Beef+Lamb New Zealand, who focused on the issue of sequestration.

"We need to further analyse these changes carefully, but one area of immediate concern is the proposed changes to sequestration, which is of real importance to sheep and beef farmers," he said.

"We know we have a role to play in addressing climate change and our farmers are among the first to feel the effects of it," Morrison added.

"However, if farmers are to face a price for their agricultural emissions from 2025, it is vital they get proper recognition for the genuine sequestration happening on their farms."

In an email to farmers, Morrison and Sam McIvor, the organization's CEO, offered more insight into their views on the plans. "New Zealand is the first country in the world to look to put a price on agricultural emissions," they said.

"While we recognise our role in reducing emissions, we are one of the most carbon efficient producers in the world and we will not accept a system that disproportionately puts our farmers and communities at risk," they added.

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New Zealand plans to tax emissions from livestock burps and dung - CNBC

Greg Forans decision in 2019 tostep down as CEOof Walmarts $300 billion-a-year U.S. business and lead Air New Zealand took retail industry observers by surprise. After all, Foran is credited with revitalizing Walmarts massive fleet of 4,500 stores and adapting them to e-commerce. Why would he walk away from one of the most prominent jobs in retail, and what did he know about running a small airline anyway?

After eight years in the U.S. and China, Foran was ready to return to his home country of New Zealand and was drawn to the opportunity to be a CEO with no one above him (Walmart U.S.s CEO reports to the CEO of Walmart Inc.). While Foran acknowledges a large difference between running a gigantic retailer and a national air carrier, he says there are common threads.

He was only a few days into his job as the airlines CEO in February 2020 when the pandemic hit, forcing him to tap many of the skills he developed at Walmart U.S. CEO and map out the airlines revitalization plan. Its similar to the playbook I had at Walmart U.S., which was similar to the one I had in China, which was similar to the one at Woolworths, Foran tellsFortune, referring to the giant retailer down under. Youve got to decide what kind of culture you want the business to operate in, he says. More importantly, Youve got to be great at the basics.

With air travel stalled, Foran set about devising a plan to reinvent the airline, focusing on dominating select routes, building more market share in its home country, and improving customer service.

But even with air travel back in full swing, the leadership tests keep coming: Air New Zealand recently started its long-desired direct New York-Auckland route, a service at the center of Forans ambitions for the company. But a few days after his interview withFortune, the airline already had toreduce the number of passengersand bags it allows on those flights to carry more fuel.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Fortune: Air New Zealand recently had its inaugural nearly 18-hour New York-Auckland direct flight. Why is this so crucial to your plans for the airline?

Foran: North Americas a great market for us. Weve been coming to the U.S. for 50 years. It started in L.A., then Houston began a few years ago, and Chicago not long before COVID started. As we looked at the plane fleet, it made sense to fly to New York since we can now make it directly from Auckland to the East Coast. One of the things people sometimes dont realize is New Zealands about two and a half hours closer to America than Australia is, and thats a competitive advantage.

You seem to be banking on New Zealands growing attraction as a business center and not just tourism.

New Zealand could offer itself as a wonderful alternative environment for startups. I hope that happens, though tourism will probably be the lead edge.

When you took over in February 2020, some of your Asian destinations were already closing. Within five weeks, America and Europe locked down, too, forcing Air New Zealand to shut down entirely for weeks. Walk us through that experience as a rookie at the company.

On the first day I started, a Monday, we stopped flying to Shanghai. The following Monday, we stopped flying to Korea; the following Monday, we stopped flying to Tokyo. On the following Monday, we stopped flying to Hong Kong. Then six weeks later, about the 24th of March, business stopped entirely, so we went from doing $100 million a week to nothing. There was a rule book from what happened on 9/11, from when we hit SARS (2003), from when we hit bird flu (2007). But then you get to the 24th of March and have to put the book away. We needed to rewrite the rules.

You still didnt know how the airline industry nor the company worked. Whose outside counsel did you seek?

Within the industry, there are some excellent, experienced, wise people. So I called friends. And when youre trying to learn it quickly, theres a lot of value in chatting with Willie Walsh, who ran British Airways (Walsh is currently head of the industry group International Air Transport Association), and Aer Lingus. Theres another chap in Australia called Rod Eddington (an alumnus of British Airways and Cathay Pacific.) So I rang Rod, and I said, Help me. What do I do?

So how did you go about your job during that time, and what were your priorities?

I took the playbook I had at Walmart, which was very similar to the one I had in China, which was similar to Woolworths. Youve first got to decide what sort of culture you want the business to operate in, and youve got to be able to demonstrate that through your actions and behaviors. Once youve got that reasonably clear in your head, you then need to plan. The plan for us was simple: grow our domestic business and get about 85% market share (from about 80% now.) Its a good business, and its profitable. And then we also work to optimize our international business. That means dont try and fly everywhere; pick where you want to fly, and optimize that. Youve got to be brilliant at the basics: the planes should leave on time and arrive on time.

New Zealand is a country of 5 million people, a small market. How does a relatively small national airline like yours create a need for itself?

You carve out a niche and drive market share in that particular niche. Dont think about Air New Zealand as an airline that does $6 billion a year and goes up against United, Delta, British Airways, and all the others that do 10 times our turnover. The relevant question is, What is your market share in New Zealand? Whats your market share on the Auckland-New York route?

What made you take the job?

I dont live life in isolation. I have a wife and children, and she has a say in what Im going to do and where I will go. A bit of my thinking was also that it might be time to hand that job on to the next person to let them have a shot. I dont believe that you have these jobs for life or that you should. And I was quite keen to see what would happen if I tried something different. You know, Ive been 14 years in retail. So, how transferable are those skills?

So how transferable are they?

While its helpful to have all the technical knowledge about whether that planes a 787 or a 747, or whether those are GE engines or another kind, you can learn them quite rapidly. Learning culture is not something you do in five minutes but is an entirely transferable skill. Knowing how to build a strategy is also transferrable. Its helpful to have some technical background, but you dont have to have all of that in your toolbox.

What else did you take from your turnaround of Walmart to Air New Zealand?

One thing that happens in airlines, which is a bit similar to what happens in retail, is that you create silos when you create teams. For instance, people in merchandising might concentrate nearly all their attention on that and become very good. But theyre not all that interested in ensuring the distribution centers run smoothly, and vice versa.

How does it translate for airlines?

Airlines are a bit the same. Theyll be keen on the revenue side of the business to sell as many tickets as possible, but how much consideration do they give to the fleet team responsible for maintaining the airplanes? Because if Im now flying more, Ive got more maintenance. What if I dont have all those planes available because Ive got four of them in the hangar that I have to do engine checks for? So were rewiring Air New Zealand. Now we have what we call tribes, which are cross-functional and responsible for integrated planning.

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The former CEO of Walmart U.S. left the $300 billion retailer to lead Air New Zealand. Just days in, business screeched to a halt: We went from doing...

Has the Vatican forgotten to replace New Zealands bishops?

You can see why it might have slipped Vatican officials minds. New Zealand is not exactly in the Holy Sees neighborhood, after all: it takes a full day to fly from Rome to Wellington, the capital of the island country that lies in the Pacific Ocean.

Also, there are barely half a million Catholics in New Zealand out of a total population of five million. The country ranks in 96th place in the list of nations with the greatest number of Catholics, behind Japan and Russia.

The number of baptized is shrinking, while secularism gains ground. Around a third of New Zealanders described themselves as having no religion in 2006. By 2018, that had risen to almost half.

So, the Vatican might not regard filling New Zealands vacant dioceses as an urgent priority.

Two of the six Catholic dioceses in the country are currently vacant. One, the Diocese of Hamilton, has lacked a bishop for almost a year. The other, the Diocese of Palmerston North, has been leaderless for more than three years.

The Pillar spoke with clergy in New Zealand about possible reasons for the delay. They asked to remain anonymous given the small, tight-knit nature of the local Catholic community.

The two dioceses awaiting bishops are both located on New Zealands North Island, where the majority of the population lives. Indeed, they are neighboring dioceses. They also serve similar numbers of Catholics: around 70,000 in the Diocese of Hamilton and roughly 64,000 in the Diocese of Palmerston North.

But local clergy saw no significance in this geographical proximity as the two dioceses have never been connected. The territory covered by the Diocese of Hamilton belonged to the Diocese of Auckland until 1980, while the Diocese of Palmerston North was part of the Archdiocese of Wellington until that year.

While Hamilton diocese covers several larger cities, Palmerston North is more rural. They have other differences too.

Hamilton diocese has experienced less turbulence than its neighbor. The diocese has had a total of three bishops. The first, Bishop Edward Gaines, governed for 14 years, until his death in 1994. The diocese was then overseen for 20 years by Bishop Denis Browne, who retired in 2014 at the age of 77. He was replaced that year by Bishop Stephen Lowe, who was appointed bishop of Auckland on Dec. 17, 2021. Lowe is currently serving as apostolic administrator of Hamilton diocese as it awaits a new bishop.

Palmerston North has had only two bishops in its 42-year history. Bishop Peter Cullinane led the new diocese for 32 years until his retirement in 2012. He was succeeded that year by Bishop Charles Drennan, who resigned on Oct. 4, 2019, at the age of 59. Cardinal John Dew of Wellington is serving as apostolic administrator until the appointment of a new bishop.

A local priest said that Bishop Drennans resignation was a complex process. Church authorities announced in 2019 that a young woman had accused the bishop of unacceptable behaviour of a sexual nature. The complaint triggered a Vos estis probe under the oversight of Cardinal Dew, the metropolitan archbishop. Following the investigation, Bishop Drennan submitted his resignation to the pope.

Cardinal Dew said at the time that the young woman had asked that the details of her complaint remain private, but he emphasized that in the eyes of the Catholic Church, Bishop Drennans behavior was completely unacceptable.

Drennan was ordered to move out of the diocese and to cease public ministry, but remains a bishop. Local clergy said it was some time after his resignation that he relocated which might have delayed the process of finding his successor.

Outside observers of Palmerston North diocese said that the local Church had fared surprisingly well without a bishop for the past three years. But there are certain decisions that must wait until the arrival of a new bishop.

I would say that the group that suffers the most in all of this is probably the diocesan team, because they sort of work for the bishop, a local priest said. Theyre his people who do his bidding. And I would say of everybody, theyre a little bit lost.

Catholicism only arrived in New Zealand in 1838, brought by French missionaries. To this day, the countrys episcopal appointments are overseen by the successor body to Propaganda Fide, which is responsible for the Churchs mission territories.

While the Dicastery for Bishops is the principal Vatican department involved in the selection of bishops in Europe and North America, it is the former Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (now incorporated into the Dicastery for Evangelization) that takes charge of the process in New Zealand.

Could this be a reason for the delay? It seems unlikely. The department led by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle is considered to be adequately staffed and fairly efficient.

But the department doesnt handle bishops appointments by itself. It cooperates with the Vatican Secretariat of State, the powerful body at the heart of the Roman curia. Its possible that this interaction could slow the process down, but there is no evidence to suggest this is the case.

What if the problem instead is that New Zealand lacks suitable episcopal candidates?

Like other countries in the Western world, New Zealand has experienced a priestly vocations crisis. The national seminary Holy Cross Seminary in Auckland currently has 13 students in residence and two on placements. The candidates come not only from New Zealand, but also Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, America, and Tonga.

A priest belonging to a religious order told The Pillar that he could easily name five good candidates for the vacant sees. He argued that the problem was not the availability of candidates, but rather the criteria by which they are chosen, which he felt were outmoded.

He said he had been asked to fill in forms about potential bishops which asked questions such as whether there was any reason in the candidates family that would cause scandal to the Church.

Were looking for these men who are pluperfect, he said.

A diocesan priest commented: The model still looks for men who are able to be subservient, and at the same time almost be careerists. And so it becomes a sort of oxymoron that youre looking for.

Since 2019, the Tanzanian Archbishop Novatus Rugambwa has served as apostolic nuncio to New Zealand. He is also the nuncio for a dizzying array of other territories, including Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa.

He has overseen some significant appointments, such as Bishop Lowes move to Auckland and Bishop Paul Martins nomination as coadjutor archbishop of Wellington in 2021, and Bishop Michael Gielens transfer to Christchurch in May this year. But these involved previously ordained bishops.

Nuncios often collaborate with a countrys bishops to draw up lists of suitable candidates for vacant sees. Priests speculated that a reason for the delay in appointments in New Zealand could be the relationship between the nuncio and the bishops. They suggested that they might have different visions of Church and find it hard to converge on candidates.

At his installation Mass in Auckland in March, Bishop Lowe thanked Archbishop Rugambwa for his presence.

Can I please ask you to work hard to find a great bishop for Hamilton? I think Palmerston North and Christchurch are looking for one too, he remarked, to laughter in the congregation.

There was nothing in the light-hearted comment to suggest there was a gulf between the nuncio and the bishops. But it did imply that the lack of new bishops is weighing on Church leaders minds.

Archbishop Rugambwa had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

One option the Vatican might consider is uniting the Hamilton and Palmerston North dioceses under one bishop without merging them. This process, known as linking dioceses in persona episcopi, has been used in recent years in Canada, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Wales.

That might be an attractive prospect in New Zealand as it would only require the recruitment of one bishop to oversee the two currently vacant dioceses. As the dioceses would not be merged, it arguably would not matter that they have never been linked before.

Or the Vatican could simply stick to the traditional process and appoint two new bishops when it was confident it had found suitable candidates. When that might be is anyones guess.

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Has the Vatican forgotten to replace New Zealands bishops? - The Pillar

Microplastics are found in three of every four of New Zealands fish, huge portions of indigenous seabirds and marine species are threatened with extinction, and warmer oceans are becoming uninhabitable to native species, a stark new government report on the state of the countrys oceans has found.

The ministry of environments marine stocktake, released on Thursday, lays out a grim picture of species under threat. It found that 90% of indigenous seabirds, 82% of indigenous shorebirds, 81% of assessed marine invertebrate species and 22% of marine mammal species were classified as threatened with extinction or at risk of becoming threatened with extinction.

More than 4,100 seabirds were killed by longline fisheries in a year, and warmer, more acidic oceans were becoming uninhabitable for taonga (treasured) species and affecting traditional food sources for Mori. The reports data shows ocean acidification rose 8.6% between 1998 and 2020, overall water temperatures were rising, and marine heatwaves were becoming more frequent and severe.

The report is right to say it paints a sobering picture, said the environment minister, David Parker. He pointed to the emissions reduction plan, ban on single-use plastic bags, and freshwater management plans as examples of government action to relieve some of the pressure on ocean environments.

On some measures in the report, things were either improving or staying the same: in nationwide measures for nutrient pollution in the form of nitrogen and phosphorus, more sites had improving trends than worsening trends.

Green party spokesperson Eugenie Sage, however, said the report tells a decades-long story of government neglect when it comes to the health of our oceans.

The health of our oceans is deteriorating at an alarming rate and were at risk of losing precious habitats for ever, she said, calling for greater regulation of the fishing industry, a ban on more single-use plastics and the expansion of ocean sanctuaries.

Conservation group Forest and Bird called the findings a crisis and said in a statement that the true scale of the crisis affecting the oceans could be much worse because the extinction risks facing most marine mammals, fish, and invertebrates remains unknown, due to lack of research.

Aotearoa New Zealand is an island nation we depend on the health of our ocean ecosystems, said Nicola Toki, Forest and Bird chief executive. The fishing industry is already suffering the effects of degraded and warming oceans, with dying salmon stocks, and collapsed hoki and crayfish populations.

Toki called for urgent, cross-party political action to give our ocean the protection it deserves.

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Microplastics found in 75% of fish in New Zealand, report shows - The Guardian

Grant Robertson and Gordon Brown have quite a lot in common.

Robertson, New Zealands finance minister and deputy PM, had dreams of leading his Labour party while it wallowed in opposition, just as Brown did with his. Like Brown, Robertson ended up putting these dreams on hold and settling for the finance portfolio as a more charismatic ally took the party to victory.

Both men are also political wrestlers. In the words of Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese, they like fighting Tories. And to do this, they both laid basically the same trap: A new income tax bracket that only applied to very rich people. Brown put his in back in 2010, Robertson in 2021.

Browns trap just went off on new UK prime minister Liz Truss, who attempted to abolish that tax rate only to embarrassingly U-turn after public outcry. National, New Zealands right-wing equivalent, are still completely committed to abolishing ours.

The details are a bit different New Zealands top tax rate is 39%, not 45% but the overall political calculus is similar.

Both top tax brackets raise little actual revenue in the wider scheme of things, as they have been set so high as to capture only a small slice of the population who can comfortably be described as rich without anyone raising their heckles. This means that when right-wing parties talk about cutting or abolishing these taxes, its very easy for the left to say they are cutting taxes for the one per cent largely because its true.

In the UK, about 200,000 people were in the top tax bracket when it was introduced in 2010 about 0.3% of the population. In the years since as incomes have risen that group has remained tiny its now about 0.9%. In New Zealand, about 59,000 are in Robertsons top tax bracket: Or 1.1%.

Another way these taxes are great political tools, even as they fail to raise meaningful revenue, is in the personal stories one can tell with them. Whenever National party leader Christopher Luxon says about abolishing the top tax rate Labour just plugs his potential salary as prime minister into a calculator and talk about the $18,000 tax cut he would be giving himself. Its very effective politics.

The odd thing about both situations is that the right-wing parties also have far more popular tax cut policies that their left-wing oppositions have essentially given up fighting over, as they benefit a far wider group of people. UK Labour has said it supports the cut to basic rate from 20% to 19%, while in New Zealand, Nationals policy to index various other tax rates to inflation is tactically rarely mentioned by the government. Both Labour parties know these tax cuts, which will put a meaningful amount of money into the pocket of an average earner, are far, far harder to credibly oppose.

National naturally dislike the UK comparison. And its fair to point out that the countries have vastly different finances: New Zealand has far lower government debt and a far more sustainable energy mix, meaning it isnt having to splurge on an energy subsidy anywhere near the size of the UKs. That means funding tax cuts in New Zealand would not require the same degree of borrowing, so is unlikely to wreak the havoc weve seen in the UK markets of late.

But there is an overall challenge that National share with Truss: Satisfying a public who want US tax rates but European social services. As in the UK, most of New Zealands national budget is not easily trimmable without serious political, and often social, pain. There is always a few million dollars going to various wasteful-sounding things you can cancel, but a serious look at the budget shows that the things people spend a lot of time talking about, like arts funding (0.4% of budget 2022) pale in comparison with things like health (17% of budget 2022) or education (12% of budget 2022), all of which generally need to grow each year just to keep pace with population growth and public expectations.

This is not an impossible bind for National, as the party is not yet proposing particularly large tax cuts. There is some large capital spending on things like light rail in Auckland that National say they will cancel, which gives them room to manoeuvre early on if not for that long, as capital spending is one-off, while tax cuts last forever. The party could always use the old trick of slowing the rate by which you increase funding to areas like health and education, letting inflation and population increases do the actual cuts while you technically increase funding every year.

This talk is somewhat premature: to be in the position to make choices like that National still have to win the election next year. The polls are looking reasonably good for National, who are ahead in most of them, but not by anything like an unassailable margin. Things could get a lot tighter in election year, when the scrutiny on Nationals costings will increase and the government will get a chance to set the scene with a budget.

It will be then that Robertsons tax trap is at its strongest but Labour will need more than that to actually win. Gordon Brown may feel vindicated right now, but he still lost in 2010.

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Will New Zealands opposition fall into the same tax trap as Liz Truss? - The Guardian

Air New Zealand will unveil its refreshed mobile app early next month.

The new Air NZ app, which has been a year in the making, will add features on a regular basisbased on feedback and input from customers on what they would like to see to improve their digital travel experience.

Customers will also be able to see all upcoming flights in chronological order in the new-look app, as well as viewing options to select a seat, add a bag, upgrade or select any add-ons, and even order a coffee in the lounge.

Those with the existing Air NZ app will see the app update automatically, provided that theyhave enabled automatic app updates within the settings.

Air New Zealands chief digital officer Nikhil Ravishankar commented:

Were fortunate to have an engaged customer base who regularly use the Air NZ app while travelling around New Zealand and abroad, and we want them to share their feedback and tell us what they want to see introduced into the app next.

This could be enabling a contactless journey through airports, allowing customers to track their baggage status or customise their entertainment and meal experience ahead of their flight; were listening and will be using this feedback to shape the future roadmap of the Air NZ app.

airnewzealand.com

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Air New Zealand to launch refreshed app Business Traveller - Business Traveller