An international naval team has discovered a piece of history in Tuvalu waters, uncovering a staggering 22 World War II-era bombs near the isolated Pacific nation.The Tuvalu Government asked the Australian Defence Force to search…
Tag Archives: oceania
18-year-old arrested after shooting in Gisborne overnight
Police arrested an 18-year-old after two young people and a woman were shot in Gisborne on Tuesday night.Police received multiple calls about 9.45pm yesterday of multiple gunshots at a house on Totara Street, Tairāwhiti Area…
Fruit yoghurt recalled after 'chemical contamination'
A fruit yoghurt sold at IGA in two Australian states has been recalled due to the presence of sanitiser.
Brownes Food Operations today issued a recall of its Dairy Mango Yoghurt 120g that has an expiry date of October 14, 2022.
READ MORE: Popular craft beer sold at Dan Murphy's, BWS, Liquorland recalled for 'excess alcohol'
The recall is due to "chemical contamination" from sanitising solution.
The yoghurt has been for sale at independent food retailers including IGA stores in New South Wales and Western Australia.
Food products with a low concentration of sanitising solution may cause illness or injury if consumed.
EXPLAINED: What to do if your details have been hacked in the Optus data leak
The NSW Food Authority has advised people with this yoghurt to return the product to the place of purchase for a full refund.
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"Consumers should not eat this product," the recall stated.
"Any consumers concerned about their health should seek medical advice."
Kiwi trial to investigate magic mushrooms and treatment-resistant depression
A new trial is set to look into whether a hallucinogenic drug could provide effective treatment for those with severe depression. University of Otago Christchurch professor Marie Crowe said the trial will take 10 weeks and involve…
Ex-football star breaks silence after attempted carjacking
A former Australian football player went into "fight or flight" mode when she fell victim to an attempted carjacking at knifepoint during a live radio interview.
Elissia Carnavas, an ex-Young Matilda, was being interviewed live by Simon Hill for SEN radio's The Global Game shortly around 10.30pm on Tuesday when she suddenly started screaming.
Hill had no idea Carnavas' car had been surrounded, with one person producing a knife and demanding she give up the car.
READ MORE: Two blasts detected before sinister disturbance on Baltic Sea
"I have no idea what has gone on there, I really hope Elissia is okay," Hill said.
Carnavas explained that she'd pulled over as she didn't want to wake her kids while doing the interview and that she "thought nothing of it" when the car first pulled up, thinking the occupants were lost.
"It was all very, very quick," she told SEN, explaining she was in her "own world" as she gave her football analysis.
"The most harrowing thing was (having) people right at the window, wanting to get in and take your vehicle.
"(I went into) flight or fight mode, I put the car into drive and got out of there as quickly as I could.
"My first reaction was to call my husband – he didn't answer – so then the police."
Carnavas said she is doing okay, despite the "scary experience".
"It was a bit of shock to be honest – a little bit of wrong place, wrong time," she said.
"But I'm feeling okay given the circumstances.
"When you're so close to home I guess you don't really think that someone will ambush your car."
Police said a group of "at least" five men pulled up alongside the footballer's car in a VW Passat in Coorparoo.
EXPLAINED: What to do if your details have been hacked in the Optus data leak
"The males attempted to open the door, with one of them producing a knife and yelling at the woman through the closed driver's side window," a statement said.
"They were unable to gain entry as the vehicle was locked and returned back to the VW Passat before leaving onto Bennetts Road."
An investigation into the incident has been launched.
Later that evening Hill took to Twitter to assure listeners Carnavas was okay.
"Shout out to @elissiacar who had an awful experience tonight live on @GlobalGameSEN as thieves attempted to hijack her car," he wrote.
"Thankfully, she got out of that situation and is fine.
"The most terrifying moment of my career that's for sure, and we're just relieved she's okay."
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SEN also released a statement after the interview.
"To all who heard Elissia Carnavas on air, she is okay," a spokesman said.
"A scary situation which she has managed to get herself out of.
"We thank everyone for their concern".
Carnavas made history when she became the first African-born woman to feature for an Australian national team.
She helped drive a 2021 independent review of the team amid allegations of bullying, intimidation and inappropriate behaviour.
Killer bomber jailed over Las Vegas murder escapes from prison
A 42-year-old convicted bombmaker serving life in prison for a deadly 2007 explosion outside a Las Vegas Strip resort has escaped from a Nevada state prison.
Officials realised Porfirio Duarte-Herrera was missing during a morning head count at Southern Desert Correctional Centre near Las Vegas, and a state Department of Corrections statement said search teams were looking for him.
Duarte-Herrera, from Nicaragua, was convicted in 2010 of killing a hot dog stand vendor using a motion-activated bomb in a coffee cup atop a car parked at the Luxor hotel-casino.
READ MORE: Two blasts detected before sinister disturbance on Baltic Sea
Records show his co-defendant, Omar Rueda-Denvers, remained in custody on Tuesday.
The 47-year-old from Guatemala is serving a life sentence at a different Nevada prison for murder, attempted murder, explosives and other charges.
A Clark County District Court jury spared both men from the death penalty in the slaying of Willebaldo Dorantes Antonio, whom prosecutors identified as the boyfriend of Rueda-Denvers’ ex-girlfriend.
EXPLAINED: What to do if your details have been hacked in Optus data leak
Prosecutors said jealousy was the motive for the attack on the top deck of a two-storey parking structure.
The blast initially raised fears of a terrorist attack on the Strip.
Officials described Duarte-Herrera as 5 feet, 4 inches tall (162cm) and 135 pounds (61kg), with brown eyes and brown hair.
Putin's draft could upend the deal that kept him in power
Russian President Vladimir Putin has managed the unexpected in just under a week: upending the social contract that has kept him in power for over two decades.
Putin's deal with the Russian electorate has long been that they would stay out of politics and he would guarantee a modicum of stability – which seemed to be the bargain on offer when Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
At the time, Putin was careful to emphasise the military assault – euphemistically referred to as a "special military operation" – would only be fought by military professionals.
READ MORE: Two blasts detected before sinister disturbance on Baltic Sea
That was a fiction, and one that allowed many Russians to be lulled into a sense of normalcy, going about their lives in Moscow or St Petersburg indifferent to the horrific carnage in Ukraine.
The "partial mobilisation" declared last week by the Kremlin leader has abruptly ended that and fear is now convulsing Russia's body politic.
The long line-ups of cars queuing at Russia's borders with Finland, Georgia and Mongolia show that thousands of Russian men eligible for military service are voting with their feet.
Protests are erupting in ethnic minority regions.
And military enlistment offices are being set on fire – and a recruitment officer has been shot
EXPLAINED: What to do if your details have been hacked in the Optus data leak
Rumours are now swirling the Russian government may be preparing to close its borders, prevent military-age men from leaving the country altogether, or announce some form of martial law.
The Kremlin's denials have not been reassuring.
"I don't know anything about it," Kremlin press spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about possible border closures.
"There are no decisions regarding this yet."
Putin built his power in Russia by positioning himself as the opposite of former leader Boris Yeltsin, who presided over Russia's chaotic post-Soviet transition in the 1990s.
But today, scenes of angry crowds confronting officials and brawling with local police over the conscription of husbands and sons look very much like a flashback to that decade.
The same goes for the scenes emerging on Russian Telegram channels and other social media.
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Some appear to show Russian draftees receiving news that they will be sent to the front with scant training.
One widely shared video shows a woman in military uniform telling new inductees that they need to provide their own essential kit, from sleeping bags to tourniquets.
"Ask girlfriends, wives, mothers for sanitary pads, the cheapest sanitary pads plus the cheapest tampons," she says in the unverified video.
"Do you know what the tampons are for? Gunshot wound, you plug it in, it starts to swell and it supports the walls. Men, I know this from Chechnya."
The first war in Chechnya from 1994 to 1996 ended with a humiliating defeat for the Russian Federation.
It laid bare both corruption in the ranks and the collapse of Russia's military might.
Putin rode to power on the second Chechen war that began in 1999. In that war, the Kremlin was much more careful about controlling the media, helping Putin create an aura of competence and toughness.
But the images of dead and captured Russian soldiers and destroyed hardware in Ukraine today offer strong visual parallels with the disastrous first Chechen War, when photographers captured images of frightened and poorly-equipped conscripts in Chechen captivity.
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Putin presided over a professionalisation of the Russian military that was supposed to reduce the use of conscripts in favour of contract service.
There's a reason for this: treatment of draftees in the Russian military is traditionally brutal, and activist groups such as the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers mobilised during the Chechen wars to help provide legal advice to conscripts.
Russian mothers famously organised to retrieve their sons who had been taken prisoner by the Chechens and often challenged the authorities over their treatment of soldiers.
Recent protests against Putin's partial mobilisation are a reminder that the draft remains a third rail in Russian political life.
In heated protests against the mobilisation Sunday in Makhachkala, the regional capital of the north Caucasus region of Dagestan, women were captured in social media videos confronting police, saying, "Why are you taking our children? Who attacked who? It's Russia that attacked Ukraine!"
That explains why Putin's most ardent propagandists are also channelling some of the public rage over what appears to be a dragnet by local officials, with officials issuing call-up papers to medically disqualified men and banging on doors to meet apparent quotas.
Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state TV channel RT (formerly Russia Today) posted a series of complaints about heavy-handedness by officials on social media, including one case involving an employee going on vacation with return ticket in hand who was turned back at the border.
Still, such criticism of officials overzealously or incompetently carrying out orders is not directed at Putin.
It's reminiscent of an old trope from Russian history of the "good tsar" and "bad boyars."
The tsar – in this case, Putin – is seen popularly as a wise, munificent (albeit distant) ruler, while his conniving local subordinates and lower-level functionaries are to blame for undermining his good intentions.
They, not the ruler, are the targets of popular anger.
There's also an implied threat here.
It's not just the bad local officials who can be punished for failing to meet their quotas properly.
The call-up is also a tool meant to instil fear and passivity.
In another social-media post, Simonyan with satisfaction noted that draft summons had been issued to men who took part in an anti-mobilisation protest on the Arbat, a central thoroughfare in Moscow.
"All the men who were attended the rally against mobilisation on the Arbat were issued over 200 draft notices. Another shipment prepared," she wrote.
"Better them than the Teacher of the Year from Pskov, in my view."
Competently carried out or not, the partial mobilisation may be on of Putin's riskiest moves to date.
And while his grip on power remains strong, he is pulling on a foundation block of Russia's Jenga puzzle.
Breakdown on Auckland's Northern Motorway, delays northbound
A breakdown on Auckland’s Northern Motorway has caused delays northbound. A truck broke down and blocked the left lane after the Esmonde Rd off-ramp during rush hour. Waka Kotahi NZTA said tow trucks were on their way to the scene….
Napier drinking session ends in 'nasty' livestreamed assault, woman's hair cut
A man has been jailed and a woman sentenced to a night-time curfew after they carried out a “nasty assault” on another woman, cut her hair and live-streamed the attack on social media. Rihari Hata Brown, 25, and Cheyenne Te Whaia…
Man sentenced for indecently assaulting son's former girlfriend
A lawyer aiming to get his client discharged without conviction on sexual offence charges has been berated for a comment a judge said was irrelevant and old-fashioned.The defendant, who no longer has name suppression but can’t be…