Just eight months after construction began, the Suzanne Aubert Catholic School in Pāpāmoa is ready to welcome its first pupils.”Today we can officially say that Suzanne Aubert Catholic School has been opened and blessed….

One person has died in a serious crash north of Auckland tonight that closed State Highway 1.Emergency services were called to the scene of the two-car crash between Puhoi and Warkworth, near Pohuehue, about 5pm.Police have now…

Help was only a phone call or a few minutes’ walk away, but Guy Appleton did not seek it as his friend, Clayton Graves, lay dying in a crashed boat.Today, Appleton, 45, was jailed for the manslaughter of Graves, 29, as a court was…

The family of a disabled Brisbane man says he was left without support funding for five weeks after the National Disability Insurance Scheme took months to review his case.

Christian Dean, 22, was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy at the age of six.

The degenerative disorder – which causes wasting of the muscles – is terminal, with doctors originally telling his family he would likely only live until he was about 16.

READ MORE: Report on 'horrific' abuse suffered by disabled Australians

Mr Dean is now unable to walk, eat or swallow on his own and needs one-on-one care, 24 hours a day in his home.

A small, family-run disability support service, called Evolving Support Services, has been providing carers to meet Mr Dean's needs at the recommended NDIS rates.

After electing to self-manage his own NDIS plan, Mr Dean noticed last August the funding for his core support services, which he uses to pay his carers, was on track to run out within a few months.

Emails sent by Mr Dean to the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) – seen by nine.com.au – show he first contacted them about his concerns on August 7 last year.

On the agency's advice he then requested a review of his NDIS plan on August 21.

In an email on September 29, Mr Dean informed the NDIA his funding had run out.

"My funding has completely run out and I need an urgent review of my funding. This has been requested multiple times in the past eight weeks!" he wrote.

However, the requested review did not take place until almost a month later on October 26.

As a result of the review, the NDIA implemented a new funding plan for Mr Dean, which started on November 3.

'It was a no-brainer'

When Mr Dean ran out of support funding, Evolving Support Services made a decision to continue providing care for him.

"If we weren't good people and we were just worried about where the money was coming from we could have taken our support out of there at any time," Letia Donnelly, who runs the business with her father, said.

"But for us it was a no-brainer. If it happened again then we would still do it.

"We would make sure he was looked after because that's the right thing to do."

Ms Donnelly said her company had provided $70,000 worth of services to Mr Dean which the NDIS was now refusing to pay.

Mr Dean's mother Louise said she was enormously grateful to Ms Donnelly's company for the care they had provided her son.

"This wonderful company has gone above and beyond to keep Christian safe and cared for. They just took that on out of their own heart," Mrs Dean said.

"I'm afraid of what would have happened if they hadn't done what they did. I'm afraid that Christian wouldn't have made it through."

A spokesperson for the NDIA said the agency always worked to respond as quickly as possible when a review has been requested.

"The agency apologises for any distress caused to Mr Dean, where he did not receive an immediate response," the spokesperson said.

"The NDIA acknowledges Mr Dean's core supports funding was used as of late September, however some funding was available in other areas of Mr Dean's overall plan."

But Ms Donnelly said while it was true funds from other categories in Mr Dean's plan could be used, he had less than $8000 in total of funding left, which would not have met his support needs.

Hospital stay complicates care

Mr Dean's mother, Louise, said it was as her son's funding was running out in August that his condition started to deteriorate further, making it necessary for a second carer to come to their home for six hours a day to help him in and out of his wheelchair as well as provide personal care.

This extra carer was not yet approved in Mr Dean's NDIA plan, however was requested as part of his review.

In September, Mr Dean began having trouble breathing and was taken to the Prince Charles Hospital.

"Christian ended up in an emergency situation and went straight to the hospital in an ambulance," Mrs Dean said.

For three of the five weeks that Mr Dean was without NDIS support funding he was in hospital.

According to an agreement made by the State and Federal Governments when the NDIS was set up, hospitals are responsible for all patient care during their admission.

"It is important to note that Mr Dean continued to receive appropriate care – through the health system – while in hospital," an NDIA spokesperson said.

However, Mr Dean's parents said they were extremely concerned there were not enough nurses in the thoracic ward to meet his one-on-one care needs.

A spokesperson for the Metro North Hospital and Health Service confirmed to nine.com.au the nurse to patient ratio in the Prince Charles Hospital's thoracic ward is 3:6.

However, the spokesperson referred all other questions about Mr Dean's care to the NDIA.

"It would be unsafe in my opinion without his carer there in the hospital to support the staff," Mr Dean's father Aaron said.

"It's impossible. You can't leave that room because his saliva needs suctioning every three to four minutes.

"There is also his cough assist machine that needs to be operated by two people and takes about 20 minutes."

Aaron Dean said a lack of coordination between the State and Federal Governments since the introduction of the NDIS had caused problems for patients like his son with high-level needs.

"Before the NDIS, when it was state-based funding, the carers were still funded while Christian was in hospital," he said.

Ultimately, Evolving Support Services provided one carer for six hours per day while Mr Dean was in hospital to help meet his care needs.

Disability service 'still owed $70,000'

Ms Donnelly said she had made numerous appeals to the NDIA to reimburse her company for the services they provided to Mr Dean.

The added expenses had "almost crippled" the small company, she said.

"We did go into debt ourselves to cover the cost," she said.

"NDIA's response to our complaints was that due to the lack of legislation allowing them to back date payments it is 'reasonable' to not pay for the services provided," she said.

A spokesperson for the NDIA said: "Retrospective approval of supports is not permissible under the NDIS Act."

In response to the NDIA's refusal to reimburse her company, Ms Donnelly made a complaint to the disability watchdog, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, which found it was outside their scope to investigate.

Mrs Dean said it was vital the NDIA reimbursed Evolving Support Services.

"The NDIS need to fix this. If it wasn't for Letia and her company then Christian probably wouldn't even be here with us," she said.

Contact reporter Emily McPherson at em********@******om.au.

Photographs taken by a father and son in 1989 and 2020 have revealed how one of Europe's largest glacier has shrunk by 400 square kilometres due to climate change.

British scientist Kieran Baxter literally followed his father's footsteps to Vatnajökull in Iceland more than 30 years later to capture the scale of retreating ice.

At 7700 sq km, Vatnajökull is one of the biggest glaciers in Europe and spans about 8 per cent of Iceland's landmass in the country's south-east.

READ MORE: Big spike in glaciers' rate of melting

The before and after images show the dramatic effect of climate change on one of the world's most fragile environments.

In the three decades that have elapsed since 1989, Vatnajökull ice cap, has lost up to 200 sq km of ice and its area has been reduced by more than 400 sq km, according to the Icelandic Meteorological Office.

In September, 1989, Scottish landscape photographer Colin Baxter visited the glacier during and took a picture of the frozen landscape.

Last August his son Kieran Baxter, a lecturer at the University of Dundee in Scotland and who was also there with his father in 1989, took a set of photographs of the glacier.

READ MORE: Colossal Thwaites Glacier is melting fast

The photographs reveal the retreat of five of Vatnajökull's outlet glaciers – Fláajökull, Heinabergsjökull, Hoffellsjokull, Hólarjökull and Skaftafellsjökull.

"I remember being in absolute awe of the stunning natural landscape and overwhelmed by the beauty of the glaciers tumbling down from the icecap up there in the distance," Kieran Baxter said.

"It is a bittersweet experience to relive those memories and witness the glacial landscapes that we visited that have now changed so radically.

"Now in 2020 it is equally overwhelming and extremely alarming, to see the disappearance of all that ice after only 30 years."

Last year Australian and New Zealand research found human-influenced climate change and greenhouse emissions are rapidly melting the world's glaciers and could lead to extreme climatic events globally.

Annual glacial melts were found to have been 10-times as likely in 2018 as a result of climate change caused by human emissions, a study conducted by Dr Lauren Vargo from Wellington's Victoria University and assisted by Monash University's Professor Andrew Mackintosh.

Scores of people in Myanmar's largest city honked car horns and banged on pots and pans on Tuesday in the first known public resistance to the coup led a day earlier by the country's military.

What was initially planned to take place for just a few minutes extended to more than a quarter-hour in several neighbourhoods of Yangon.

Shouts could be heard wishing detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi good health and calling for freedom.

READ MORE: Aung San Suu Kyi 'feeling well' after being detained by Myanmar's military in coup

"Beating a drum in Myanmar culture is like we are kicking out the devils," said one participant who declined to give his name for fear of reprisals.

Several pro-democracy groups had asked people to make noise at 8pm to show their opposition to the coup.

READ MORE: Workout video during Myanmar military coup goes viral

A senior politician and close confidante of Suu Kyi also urged citizens to defy the military through civil disobedience.

Win Htein, a leader of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, spoke on Tuesday from a small party office in the capital, Naypyitaw, not far from where hundreds of lawmakers elected in November national polls were detained when the military seized power on Monday in a lightning takeover.

"The curse of the coup is rooted in our country, and this is the reason why our country still remains poor. I feel sad and upset for our fellow citizens and for their future," the former political prisoner said.

"All the voters who gave their backing to us in the 2020 general election should follow Aung San Suu Kyi's instructions to carry out civil disobedience," he said, referring to a note posted on Monday on Facebook attributed to her.

The military began to lift restrictions on Tuesday on the hundreds of members of Parliament who had been confined at a guarded government housing complex, with the new government telling them to go back to their homes, party spokesman Kyi Toe said.

READ MORE: Why did the military stage Myanmar coup?

He said Suu Kyi was in good health at a separate location where she was being held and would stay there for the time being.

His comments couldn't immediately be confirmed.

The coup came as lawmakers gathered in the capital for the opening of a new parliamentary session.

The military said the seizure was necessary because the government had not acted on the military's unsubstantiated claims of fraud in November's election, in which Suu Kyi's party won a majority of seats.

It claimed the takeover was legal under the constitution. The move was widely condemned abroad.

The coup highlights the extent to which the generals ultimately maintained control in Myanmar, despite more than a decade of talk about democratic reforms.

Western countries had greeted the move toward democracy enthusiastically, removing sanctions they had in place for years.

It comes as Myanmar faces a growing coronavirus outbreak.

As of Tuesday, it had over 140,300 confirmed cases, including about 3,100 deaths.

The country has just received its first supply of vaccines from India.

Win Htein heavily criticised the generals for the impact he said the coup would have on efforts to protect lives.

"These people, they are super crazy to do this. They are not courageous," he said.

"The virus still remains, and the people are struggling a lot. Their only priority is power and their personal desire."

As a result, he said, "vaccines will be delayed, the economy will go down and there will be pressure from other countries."

The takeover presents a test for the international community.

US President Joe Biden called the military's actions "a direct assault on the country's transition to democracy and the rule of law" and threatened new sanctions.

The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on Tuesday but took no action.

Suu Kyi's party released a statement on Tuesday calling for the military to honour the results of the election and release all of those detained — as have the leaders of many other countries.

"The commander in chief seizing the power of the nation is against the constitution and it also neglects the sovereign power of people," the party said.

An announcement read on military-owned Myawaddy TV on Monday said Commander in Chief Senior Gen Min Aung Hlaing would be in charge of the country for one year.

A new Cabinet composed of current and former generals and former advisers to a previous government headed by former Gen Thein Sein held its first meeting on Tuesday.

The takeover marked a shocking fall from power for Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who had lived under house arrest for years as she tried to push her country toward democracy and then became its de facto leader after her party won elections in 2015.

Suu Kyi had been a fierce critic of the army during her years in detention.

But after her shift from democracy icon to politician, she worked with the generals, who despite allowing elections maintained control of key ministries and guaranteed themselves enough seats in Parliament to have veto power over any constitutional changes.

The UN envoy for Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, urged the UN Security Council "to collectively send a clear signal in support of democracy in Myanmar."

She said the Security Council's fundamental role must be "ensuring democracy is expeditiously restored and the country does not fall back into isolation."

Diplomats said that was the key element of a draft statement for the council to release, along with a call for the immediate release of all those detained.

But the statement was not issued because it requires support from all 15 council members, and China, which has close ties to Myanmar, and Russia said they needed to send it to their capitals, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.

A SpaceX prototype rocket successfully launched this morning but exploded in a huge fireball while attempting to land.

The next-generation Starship rocket aimed to fly to a height of 10-kilometres, an altitude of around 32,800 feet, above Texas.

SN9 took off and flew without incident, but blew up while landing, just like the SN8 prototype rocket did last December.

READ MORE: Elon Musk overtakes Jeff Bezos to become world's richest person

"We had, again, another great flight up … we've just got to work on that landing a little bit," SpaceX principal integration engineer John Insprucker said on the company's webcast of the flight.

CEO Elon Musk is believed to have made the Starship program his company's top priority.

Last year SpaceX launched it first successful astronaut mission.

Mr Musk's goal is for Starship to become a completely reusable carrier, like a commercial airliner.

SpaceX builds its starship rockets in Boca Chica, Texas.

READ MORE: SpaceX launches 143 satellites into space in record-breaking mission

READ MORE: South Australia to launch own satellite into space

China says it has lodged a formal complaint with Canada over T-shirts ordered by one of the country’s Beijing Embassy staff that allegedly mocked China’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, in an apparent mix-up between the city of Wuhan and the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters today that China called on Canada to “thoroughly investigate the incident and give China a clear explanation.”

The incident arose after a T-shirt maker posted on the Chinese internet that a staff member from the Canadian Embassy had ordered T-shirts with a bat print.

READ MORE: WHO teams visits Wuhan food market in search of COVID clues

That appeared to reference allegations that the virus developed in China from bats and then spread to humans in the city of Wuhan, where infections were first reported in late 2019.

But Canadian media reports said the logo was a W in homage to the New York hip-hop group the Wu-Tang Clan and that Ottawa had apologised for any misunderstanding.

READ MORE: Russia's Sputnik V vaccine appears safe, effective

READ MORE: Captain Sir Tom Moore dies of COVID-19

China's government is extremely sensitive to accusations it was the source of the pandemic and failed to respond quickly enough when cases were first reported in Wuhan.

The T-shirts were reportedly ordered last summer and it wasn't clear if any were still in circulation.

The controversy underscores the plunge in relations between the countries in the past two years over China's demand that Canada release a top executive of communications giant Huawei who is wanted on fraud charges in the United States.

Meng Wanzhou, who is also the daughter of the company's founder, denies the charges.

China says her case is politically motivated as part of a US effort to stifle the nation's global economic expansion.

Her lawyers argue she has been subjected to abuse of process and should be freed.

Canada arrested Meng at Vancouver’s airport in late 2018.

In apparent retaliation, China detained former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and Canadian entrepreneur Michael Spavor, placed restrictions on various Canadian exports to China, and sentenced a convicted Canadian drug smuggler to death in a sudden retrial.

Emergency services are at the scene of a serious crash on Russley Rd (SH1) in Christchurch.Police were alerted to a car that rolled between Ryans Rd and Bentley St at around 6:40am on Wednesday.A St John spokesman said one person…

Captain Sir Tom Moore, the British war veteran who captured hearts with his fundraising during the pandemic, has died from coronavirus, aged 100.

The WWII veteran was admitted to hospital on January 31 after having difficulty breathing. He was diagnosed with pneumonia and later tested positive for COVID-19.

"It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our dear father, Captain Sir Tom Moore," Capt Sir Tom's daughters Hannah Ingram-Moore and Lucy Teixeira said this morning.

"We are so grateful that we were with him during the last hours of his life; Hannah, Benjie and Georgia by his bedside and Lucy on FaceTime.

"We spent hours chatting to him, reminiscing about our childhood and our wonderful mother. We shared laughter and tears together.

"The last year of our father's life was nothing short of remarkable. He was rejuvenated and experienced things he'd only ever dreamed of.

"Whilst he'd been in so many hearts for just a short time, he was an incredible father and grandfather, and he will stay alive in our hearts forever."

Capt Sir Tom's daughters praised the care he received at Bedford Hospital and from the NHS was "extraordinary", saying staff have been "unfalteringly professional, kind and compassionate and have given us many more years with him than we ever would have imagined".

And the appreciation was mutual with chief nurse of Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Liz Lees, saying: "It has been our immense privilege to care for Captain Sir Tom Moore.

"We share our deepest condolences and sympathies with his family and loved ones at this incredibly sad time. We'd also like to say thank you, and pay tribute to Captain Sir Tom Moore for the remarkable contribution he has made to the NHS."

https://twitter.com/captaintommoore/status/1356634749339590657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The family also shared a very simple update to his followers on Twitter — posting a picture of the centenarian with the caption 1920 – 2021.

Captain Tom Moore became famous around the world last year when he raised almost £33 million ($60m) for the UK's National Health Service (NHS) during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Pledging to walk 100 laps of his back garden before his 100th birthday on April 30, his fundraising total skyrocketed as he heroics captured the hearts of people everywhere, particularly in the UK during its first major lockdown.

https://twitter.com/captaintommoore/status/1331280442255953921?s=20

His efforts earned him a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth in July last year, who also upgraded his rank to Honorary Colonel on his 100th Birthday.

Buckingham Palace says Her Majesty is sending a private message of condolence to the family.

"The Queen is sending a private message of condolence to the family of Captain Sir Tom Moore. Her Majesty very much enjoyed meeting Cpt Sir Tom and his family at Windsor last year," a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said.

"Her thoughts, and those of the Royal Family, are with them, recognising the inspiration he provided for the whole nation and others across the world."

https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1356654437381656581?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1356644984951365637?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson shared a tribute to the pandemic hero via Twitter and sent his condolences to the family.

"Captain Sir Tom Moore was a hero in the truest sense of the word. His legacy will long live after him," the PM wrote.

Downing Street also shared a photo of the Union Jack flags flying at half mast over No. 10, in memory of the veteran.

https://twitter.com/10DowningStreet/status/1356656639160557569?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw