Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown says $13m has already been spent on the related planning work.

Some Kiwis reported feeling ‘quite panicked’ that the site was not working.

Several Amazon Web Services are down in the Middle East after three data centres were damaged in drone strikes.

The company has issued an alert for disruptions to multiple services in the United Arab Emirates and in Bahrain.

"Due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, both affected regions have experienced physical impacts to infrastructure as a result of drone strikes," Amazon Web Services said.

READ MORE: The Australian employers where the gender pay gap is widening

"In the UAE, two of our facilities were directly struck, while in Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities caused physical impacts to our infrastructure.

"These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage."

It has led to error rates in Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB, AWS Lambda, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon RDS, and the AWS Management Console and CLI services in both regions.

The issue is not affecting services outside the UAE and Bahrain. 

Amazon is working with local authorities to restore full service, but said it expects this to take some time due to the extent of the damage and ongoing strikes in the Middle East.

READ MORE: Australians in Saudi Arabia told to take shelter

It is also working to restore services that do not require the data centres to be repaired. 

Amazon advised customers with workloads in the Middle East to back up their data and migrate their workloads to alternative regions, like Australia and the wider Asia Pacific, the US or Europe.

"Even as we work to restore these facilities, the ongoing conflict in the region means that the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable," the company said.

Amazon has an estimated 30 per cent of the global cloud market and powers more than four million businesses worldwide. 

Iran has issued strikes at US military bases in the UAE and Bahrain as it retaliates against President Donald Trump's fatal attack on the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei.

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The council said the flag was raised to mark AmeriCARna, a US car event.

It was likely the stolen items were going to be traded for money or drugs.

A man has been shot dead by police at his home in Brisbane.

Police were called to the home on Thurston Street in Tingalpa for a welfare check at 9am today.

As officers attempted to negotiate, the 21-year-old man made threats to police while armed with a knife and was shot.

READ MORE: Armed man shot dead by police in inner Sydney after 'attacking two women'

Despite receiving immediate medical assistance, he died at the scene.

"This is a devastating incident," Acting Chief Superintendent Heath McQueen said.

"My thoughts are with all the officers involved, emergency services in attendance and the family of the man involved in this incident today.

"These incidents are often dynamic in nature and split-second decisions need to be made in relation to those incidents.

"I'm confident that the use of force was appropriate given the circumstances, however, this will still be investigated by Ethical Standards Command with oversight from the CCC."

One officer sustained a minor injury.

The death will be investigated by the Ethical Standards Command on behalf of the State Coroner, with oversight from the Crime and Corruption Commission.

The incident came just hours before two similar shootings in New South Wales.

An armed man was shot dead by police officers in the Sydney suburb of Potts Point after allegedly attacking two women at 10.50am, while in Newcastle a wanted man was seriously injured when he was shot by police during an attempt to arrest him.

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The Shepherd’s beaked whale was first spotted at St Heliers late this morning.

Major Australian brands are failing to turn the dial on the gender pay gap, with some even slipping backwards in the past year, a detailed new report has revealed.

The massive annual data dump by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) reports on the gender pay gap for 10,500 Australian employers in both the private and public sectors, accounting for 5.9 million workers.

It shows an incremental overall improvement in the gender pay gap, with half of employers having a gender pay gap in favour of men larger than 11.2 per cent.

LIVE UPDATES: Trump says the 'big wave' is yet to come in war with Iran

This is down from 12.1 per cent last year, but well beyond the target range of five per cent.

Among the worst performers was Qantas, where the gender pay gap has crept up to 41.7 per cent – up 0.5 per cent compared to a year ago.

While women make up 44 per cent of the national carrier's workforce, they hold just one in seven of their high salary roles, which comes with an average total pay packet of $343,000.

In contrast, more than two-thirds of the carrier's low salary positions – where the average pay packet is $79,000 – are held by women.

At a national level, men are still 1.8 times as likely as women to earn a high salary in the top quartile of earners, averaging $221,000.

Women are also 1.4 times more likely to be low income earners, making an average salary of $60,000.

READ MORE: Cyclone threat puts northern Australia on high alert

"The fact that men are nearly twice as likely as women to be in the highest paid roles and that women still dominate the lowest paid roles should offer a reality check for anyone who thinks Australia has achieved equality in the workplace," WGEA CEO Mary Wooldridge said.

"Employers should treat gender equality like their other business goals. Do a detailed analysis to find the issues, create an action plan to address them and set targets to be accountable for ensuring progress happens."

Employers in high-paying and male-dominated industries are more likely to have the largest gender pay gaps.

Mining and resources company BHP pays its employees an average salary of $201,000, almost double the average Australian wage.

But just over a quarter of its top-earning employees are women, while women make up two-thirds of its lowest paid workers.

BHP has also seen its gender pay gap widen in the past year, from 11.2 to 12.8 per cent.

Banking and the financial sector has previously scored particularly poorly in the WGEA report, but this year has seen incremental improvements amongst the big four.

Commonwealth Bank, where the average annual remuneration is $167,000, has narrowed its pay gap by one per cent in the past year to 21.3 per cent.

It was a similar story at other major banks, with NAB, ANZ and Macquarie Group seeing incremental improvements of 0.9 per cent, 0.4 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively.

Large differences in discretionary payments, like performance bonuses and overtime hours, are a key driver of many organisations' gender pay gaps.

This is particularly evident for businesses that rely heavily on bonuses and commission, such as the financial sector.

For example, at Bell Financial Group the base pay for men and women differs by just 7.4 per cent, yet the overall pay difference is a stark 55.5 per cent.

Major healthcare providers also faired poorly.

Advana Heartcare – which bills itself as Australia's largest provider of cardiology services with over 500 employees – has a gender pay gap of 69.2 per cent, up almost three per cent in the last year.

One of Australia's largest pathology and radiology providers with over 5000 Australian staff, Sonic Healthcare saw its pay gap rise from 36.2 to 39.9 per cent.

One notable exception however was pathology provider Healius Ltd, which has reduced its gender pay gap by 13.3 per cent in a single year, now sitting at 27.6 per cent.

Nine, the publisher of this website, recorded a gender pay gap of 15 per cent, down from 17 per cent last year.

Chief People Officer Vanessa Morley said Nine was committed to closing the gap, saying "we have made some progress" but "acknowledge there is more work to be done".

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The apps on your TV are likely about to change – again.

As part of the $US111 billion ($156 billion) merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery announced at the weekend, the newly-combined company has revealed its plan for streaming services.

In a conference call on Monday (today AEST), chief executive David Ellison revealed the Paramount+ and HBO Max apps would become one platform.

READ MORE: Armed man shot dead by police in inner-city Sydney after two women attacked

"We will combine the streaming portfolios of the two companies into one stronger platform over the coming years," Ellison said.

"Across the two platforms, there are over 200 million DTC (direct-to-consumer) subscribers today in more than 100 countries and territories worldwide."

In their end of year reports, Paramount said it had 78.9 million direct-to-consumer subscribers, while Warner Bros. Discovery reported 131.6 million.

Netflix, which lost out in the bidding war for Warner Bros, reported having 325 million subscribers globally at the end of last year.

Ellison did not suggest a name for the new combined streamer, but it will almost certainly result in another rebrand for WBD's streamer, which just this past summer rebranded back to HBO Max after spending two years as simply Max.

As part of the merger, Paramount will also acquire CNN, which is currently owned by WBD.

During Monday's call, Ellison told analysts that Paramount has "no divestitures planned at this time" regarding cable — meaning the company does not plan to sell cable assets.

The newly merged streaming giant will boast some of the most coveted franchises in television history, ranging from The Sopranos and Game of Thrones to recent hits such as Yellowstone.

In a previous statement announcing the merger, Ellison has also pledged to keep the 45-day theatrical window for new films, and he promised the merged studios would put out 30 films a year.

– Reported with CNN

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Donald Trump's attacks on Iran have angered some of his most prominent and influential backers.

A litany of conservative commentators have panned the US president's decision to begin a military conflict in the Middle East.

Among those to express their disgust are Tucker Carlson, Benny Johnson, Alex Jones and Matt Walsh.

READ MORE: Fierce red rash spotted on Trump's neck

Jones described the war as a "gigantic problem".

"This is supposed to be America first. We're not supposed to be running around doing this anymore," he said.

Walsh pushed back on the idea that Americans should be responsible for bringing freedom to Iranians.

"As Americans, the freedom of Iranians is not our responsibility," he said.

"If a single American life is lost in the service of that goal, it will be a travesty."

Carlson meanwhile described the attack as "absolutely disgusting and evil".

And prominent "manosphere" commentator and accused rapist Andrew Tate was angry in his response.

LIVE UPDATES: Trump says the 'big wave' is yet to come in war with Iran

"Why would going into a war with Iran benefit anybody in America at all?" he said.

"NOBODY WANTS THIS WAR."

The backlash comes as polling shows the American people are not happy with the president's decision.

A CNN poll found 59 per cent opposed military action in Iran. The Washington Post found 52 per cent were opposed, but only 39 per cent in favour.

Trump's approval rating is also in the doldrums.

Part of the backlash stems from Trump's long-running public opposition to the US getting involved in foreign wars.

It was a central and specific claim that motivated many dithering voters to choose the Republican.

READ MORE: Three US fighter jets accidentally shot down by Kuwaiti air defences

"Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly — not skilled," he wrote on Twitter in 2013.

"Now that Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin – watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate," he said in 2012.

"In order to get elected, Barack Obama will start a war with Iran," he said in 2011.

Trump forecast the war would take several weeks, but flagged it could be much longer.

He made the prediction during a ceremony to give three veterans the Medal of Honour.

Briefly speaking on Iran, he went into substantial detail on his renovations for the White House's East Wing.

"In about a year and a half from now you're going to see a very, very beautiful building," he said.

"I picked those drapes in my first term. I always liked gold.

"It'll be spectacular, be the most beautiful ballroom."

Six American service members have been confirmed killed since Saturday's surprise attacks.

READ MORE: Trump's past comments on Iran come back to haunt him

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