Airline which operates some of world’s longest flights is considering ‘Skynest’ sleep pods with pillows, sheets and blankets
Air New Zealand has announced it could have flat beds in economy for some of its long-haul flights, but it will be more than a year before customers could get the chance to sleep in one of the new pod beds.
Continue reading...We have had a history of suppressing information about those facing trial, but it is unclear if it can survive in the era of Facebook, Google and Instagram
British backpacker Grace Millane’s murderer was last week sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years.
However, the killer’s identity has not been published in New Zealand. When convicting Millane’s killer, Justice Simon Moore extended an existing suppression order that not only prohibits his naming, but also the reasons for making it.
Continue reading...Concerns mount that the spread of Covid-19 cannot be stopped as stock markets fall amid investor fears. Follow latest news
Italy may need to call on the European Union to offer leeway on its budget targets as it struggles with the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, a senior official said.
Deputy economy minister, Laura Castelli, made the comments a day after prime minister Giuseppe Conte warned that the fallout from the outbreak, which has concentrated in the economic powerhouses of northern Italy, would be “very strong”.
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Continue reading...Swedish citizen who disappeared in 2015 is sentenced in Ningbo for ‘providing intelligence’ overseas
A Chinese court has sentenced Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai to 10 years in prison for “providing intelligence” overseas, in a case that has highlighted China’s far-reaching crackdown on critics.
A court in Ningbo, an eastern port city, said on Tuesday that Gui had been found guilty and would be stripped of political rights for five years in addition to his prison term. The brief statement said Gui had pled guilty and would not be appealing against his case.
Continue reading...Prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s resignation sets rival parties against each other and could result in a snap election
The country’s ruling alliance collapsed on Monday after the prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, the world’s oldest leader, shocked the nation by announcing that he would be stepping down. The king accepted his resignation but asked for him to stay on as interim leader. The country is now in limbo as rival parties rush to strike deals and form a government.
Continue reading...Nation brings in ‘maximum measures’ to contain outbreak at secretive church
South Korea has stepped up its “maximum measures” to contain the coronavirus with plans to test around 200,000 members of a secretive church believed to be at the centre of the country’s outbreak.
Along with an emergency budget and a crackdown on the hoarding of face masks, the government in Seoul will test members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus after its founder agreed to provide authorities with the names of all its members in the country.
Continue reading...Channon Lumpoo, 27, was shot as he conducted exploration activities for a new gold mine in the region
A Thai geologist working at a new gold mine in Bougainville has been shot dead in the second killing at a mining project in the autonomous region of Papua New Guinea in recent months.
Channon Lumpoo, 27, was shot by a high-powered weapon on Monday in the Kokoda constituency of south Bougainville.
Continue reading...Peacocks, porcupines and pangolins among species bred on 20,000 farms closed in wake of virus
Nearly 20,000 wildlife farmsraising species including peacocks, civet cats, porcupines, ostriches, wild geese and boar have been shut down across China in the wake of the coronavirus, in a move that has exposed the hitherto unknown size of the industry.
Until a few weeks ago wildlife farming was still being promoted by government agencies as an easy way for rural Chinese people to get rich.
Continue reading...Latest updates amid alarm over sudden rise in cases in Italy and Iran
The World Health Organization has played down fears of a coronavirus pandemic sweeping the world, despite sudden serious outbreaks in Italy and Iran, but some experts said they believed it was now inevitable.
“Using the word pandemic now does not fit the facts, but it may certainly cause fear,” said the WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at a briefing.
Related: Coronavirus outbreak a pandemic 'in all but name', says expert
Austria has said it will stop people suspected of carrying the coronavirus from crossing its border, after parts of northern Italy were put into lockdown over the weekend following a surge in cases.
The Austrian government released a travel warning for affected areas of Lombardy and Veneto, following a meeting of the government’s coronavirus taskforce that included the chancellor, Sebastian Kurz.
Related: Austria to close border for those suspected of carrying coronavirus
Continue reading...A queue of hundreds of people wanting to buy face masks from a supermarket stretched round several streets in Daegu on Monday.
Customers queued outside one of Daegu's E-mart stores, which began to sell face masks at half price in the city, according to local media reports. South Korea has raised its infectious disease alert level to its highest for the first time since 2009
Thorny issues await the two prime ministers when they meet in Australia this week
As gang violence in New Zealand soars – partly fuelled by Australian deportees, police say – prime minister Jacinda Ardern is heading to Sydney for her annual bilateral with Scott Morrison.
The issue of New Zealanders with only distant links to their home country being summarily shipped back to Aotearoa will again be on the agenda, but experts say it is unlikely Ardern will take as tough a stance as last year, when she said the issue was having a “corrosive” affect on trans-Tasman relations.
Continue reading...Turkey and Pakistan close borders with Iran after eight deaths, while in northern Italy towns are on lockdown after jump in cases
Here’s Angela Giuffrida, Patrick Wintour and Sam Jones’s roundup of today’s coronavirus developments across the globe.
Four of the 32 British and Irish Diamond Princess cruise ship passengers taken to Arrowe Park, Merseyside on Saturday have tested positive for coronavirus strain Covid-19, the chief medical officer for England has said.
Prof Chris Whitty said: “Four further patients in England have tested positive for Covid-19, bringing the total number of cases in the UK to 13.
Continue reading...Country confirms more than 430 cases as WHO head voices concern over fifth death in Iran
Thousands of members of a secretive religious sect in South Korea are being screened for the new coronavirus after more than 430 cases were confirmed in the country by officials, one of several fresh clusters of the disease globally.
More than 78,000 people around the world have been infected by the Covid-19 virus, with most cases in mainland China, though clusters that have unclear origins have emerged in Singapore, Iran and South Korea.
Continue reading...Depp plays real-life US photojournalist W Eugene Smith who travels to cover the story of mercury poisoning that caused horrendous disfigurements
Minamata is not a masterpiece and there are one or two cliches here about western saviours and boozy, difficult, passionate journalists who occupy the perennial Venn diagram overlap between integrity and alcoholism. This movie’s producer-star Johnny Depp has form on this score, with his starstruck impersonation of Hunter Thompson. And once again, he has chosen a role in which he wears a hat indoors. But Minamata is a forthright, heartfelt movie, an old-fashioned “issue picture” with a worthwhile story to tell about how communities can stand up to overweening corporations and how journalists dedicated to truthful news can help them.
Depp plays real-life US photojournalist W Eugene Smith whose glory days were in the second world war and the decades following, working for Life magazine in that now-forgotten era when analogue cameras were incapable of lying and magazines with compelling photos could command newsstand sales.
Continue reading...From Wuhan to the north of England, people have been affected by the outbreak in different ways
The coronavirus is a public health emergency, but its threat is not only medical. Millions of lives have been altered by the outbreak, from those in self-isolation in China to Chinese nationals experiencing racism abroad. We talk to those affected in different ways, from Wuhan to the north of England.
Continue reading...The mother of the murdered British backpacker says she is tormented over 'the terror and pain she must have experienced at your hands'. Gillian Millane was speaking to a court via video link. Her daughter was killed in New Zealand in 2018.
A 28-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years for Millane’s murder.
Continue reading...The New Zealand man found guilty of murdering the British backpacker Grace Millane has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years.
Speaking outside the high court in Auckland after the sentencing, DI Scott Beard said the killer's sentencing ended a 'long and difficult period' for the Millane family, but that they were the ones who had been given the life sentence.
Millane, 22, from Essex, arrived in New Zealand in November 2018 as part of a round-the-world trip. She died by manual strangulation on 2 December during sex in the man’s hotel room in central Auckland. The pair had met on the dating app Tinder.
Continue reading...Justice chief sacked in Shandong province with prison guard reported to be source of outbreak, as South Korea adds 52 new cases. Follow latest news
China’s Global Television Network is reporting that 200 prisoners in a facility in the eastern province of Shandong are infected with Covid-19. The sources of the infection is reported to be an affected prison guard.
These prison cases may partly explain the spike in new cases today to 889, up from 394 reported on Thursday.
East China's Shandong Province reported 200 #COVID19 cases from the Rencheng Prison on Thu., bringing the total to 207 in the facility
- Virus brought in by affected prison guard
- Treatments underway
- Provincial justice chief among eight officials removed from office pic.twitter.com/yyMWa21a86
Car sales plummeted in China in February, state media is reporting.
Retail of domestic passenger #vehicles in China plummeted 92% y-o-y in the first half of Feb, a record decline, due to #COVID19: industrial report pic.twitter.com/SkLUjtOdqA
Continue reading...Police say one migrant was charged $22,000 before being taken to China, France and then the UK
Police in Vietnam have charged seven people in connection with the deaths of 39 migrants whose bodies were discovered in the back of a lorry in the UK in 2019, authorities said late on Thursday.
The victims, who included two 15-year-old boys, were mostly from two provinces in north-central Vietnam, where poor job prospects, encouragement by authorities, smuggling gangs and environmental issues have fuelled migration.
Continue reading...Man, who has name suppression, to spend at least 17 years in prison after murder of British backpacker that shocked New Zealand
The New Zealand man found guilty of murdering British backpacker Grace Millane has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years.
The man appeared in Auckland’s high court on Friday morning, and his sentencing was overseen by Justice Simon Moore.
Continue reading...