New Zealand Covid response among world’s best but ‘scars’ remain, inquiry finds

Royal commission says response led by Jacinda Ardern was broadly ‘appropriate’, in a wide-ranging report featuring recommendations for future pandemics

A royal commission into New Zealand’s Covid response has found it was one of the best in the world but acknowledged the period had left “scars”.

The second of two inquiry reports on the pandemic was released on Tuesday and focused on the period between February 2021 to October 2022, when the government changed from an elimination strategy to one of suppression and minimisation of the virus. It also examined vaccine safety and the government’s immunisation programme, lockdowns and tracing and testing technology.

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Trump’s Iran war will reinforce North Korea’s view that nuclear weapons are the only path to security

As speculation mounts that Kim Jong-un and Trump could meet this month, analysts say Pyongyang will continue to see nuclear weapons as a matter of survival

North Korea’s launch last week of a missile from a naval destroyer elicited an uncharacteristically prosaic analysis from the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un. The launch was proof, he said, that arming ships with nuclear weapons was “making satisfactory progress”.

But the test, and Kim’s mildly upbeat appraisal, were designed to reverberate well beyond the deck of the 5,000-tonne destroyer-class vessel the Choe Hyon – the biggest warship in the North Korean fleet.

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Trump claims Iran or ‘somebody else’ could have carried out deadly school strike

President makes evidence-free claim despite video showing US Tomahawk missile hit naval base next to school

As oil prices surged amid the widening war with Iran, Donald Trump suggested, without evidence, on Monday that the strike on an Iranian elementary school could have been carried out by Iran or “somebody else”.

During back-to-back appearances in Florida, Trump was asked whether the US would accept responsibility for a strike that hit the school and killed scores of people, many of them children, after video evidence showed a US Tomahawk struck the naval base next to it.

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Iraq war’s aftermath was a disaster for the US – the Iran war is headed in the same direction – The Conversation

  1. Iraq war’s aftermath was a disaster for the US – the Iran war is headed in the same direction  The Conversation
  2. Clinging to WWII Analogies in Iran War Is Folly  Cato Institute
  3. Iran and the perils of fighting the last war  Engelsberg Ideas
  4. Is Iran another Iraq? : Sources & Methods  NPR
  5. Opinion | George W. Trump Goes to War  The New York Times
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Three Australians jailed for more than a decade over Melbourne man’s shooting death in Bali

Sentences of 16 and 12 years handed down over 2025 death of 32-year-old Zivan Radmanovic

A court on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali has sentenced three Australian citizens over the fatal shooting of a fellow Australian national, after they claimed to have been paid by a man they will not identify.

Mevlut Coskun, Paea I Middlemore Tupou and Darcy Jenson were convicted of the shooting death of Zivan Radmanovic, a 32-year-old from Melbourne.

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Iran bets on endurance, energy disruption to outlast US, Israel – Reuters

  1. Iran bets on endurance, energy disruption to outlast US, Israel  Reuters
  2. The ‘Fourth Successor’: Iran’s plan for a long war with the US and Israel  Al Jazeera
  3. Week 2 of Iran: Military momentum meets economic and political reality  CNN
  4. Operation Epic Fury: Iran’s Declining Capabilities and Emerging Strategy as the Conflict Nears Its Second Week  Hudson Institute
  5. Why Escalation Favors Iran  Foreign Affairs
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Black people up to 48 times more likely to be stopped and searched in richest areas of London

Research found extreme disproportion in use of police power in districts such as Richmond-upon-Thames

Black people are up to 48 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police in some of London’s best-off areas, a new report has found.

The study found that the reasons given by officers for subjecting black people to the controversial power were more likely to be vague, with examples including that a black person gave a “furtive glance”.

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