Author: MIL OSI Publisher

Source: Radio New Zealand

A woman has been found dead at a Canterbury property.

Police have launched a homicide investigation over the the death of the woman in Burnham.

The woman was found early on Tuesday morning.

One person has been arrested.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/27/woman-found-dead-at-a-canterbury-property/

Source: Radio New Zealand

Crews working on the Mount Maunganui recovery mission are hoping for sunshine on Tuesday, labelling moisture “the enemy”.

Work has resumed to recover six people presumed dead after a landslide at a Mount Maunganui campground last Thursday.

While the ground is slowly stablising, any rain risks further slips.

An independent review, announced by Tauranga City Council, will look at events leading up to the landslide. Meanwhile, WorkSafe says it will looking into the organisations that had a duty of care for everyone at the Mt Maunganui holiday park.

Follow the latest in RNZ’s live blog at the top of this page.

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LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/27/live-criminal-liability-to-be-probed-after-mount-maunganui-landslip-recovery-crews-hope-for-sun/

Source: Radio New Zealand

New Zealand First has climbed into third place in the latest RNZ poll, recording its strongest result in the Reid Research series in more than eight years.

The RNZ-Reid Research poll, published Tuesday, also showed NZ First’s Winston Peters leaping up the preferred prime minister ranks, closing the gap on the Labour and National leaders.

The results, if replicated on polling day, would return the coalition government to power with a narrow majority of 61 seats.

Follow the latest in RNZ’s politics blog at the top of this page.

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LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/27/politics-live-parliament-returns-for-2026-first-poll-shows-boost-for-nz-first-labour/

Source: Radio New Zealand

New Zealand First has climbed into third place in https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/poll/556774/rnz-reid-research-poll-view-all-results-and-charts the latest RNZ poll], recording its strongest result in the Reid Research series in more than eight years.

The RNZ-Reid Research poll, published Tuesday, also showed NZ First’s Winston Peters leaping up the preferred prime minister ranks, closing the gap on the Labour and National leaders.

Follow all the reactions and latest news on RNZ’s live politics blog

The results, if replicated on polling day, would return the coalition government to power with a narrow majority of 61 seats.

Labour remained out in front on 35 percent, up 0.7 points since September, while National slipped to 31.9 percent, down 0.6.

NZ First had the biggest bump in support, jumping 1.1 points, to hit 9.8 percent, its highest result with Reid Research since July 2017.

The Green Party fell 1.3 points to register 9.6 percent. ACT was on 7.6 percent, up 0.4 points.

And Te Pāti Māori continued its slide, falling to 3 percent, down 1.1 points.

Outside of Parliament, The Opportunity Party picked up support, climbing 0.9 points, to touch 2.3 percent.

The poll – which ran from 15-22 January – surveyed 1000 eligible voters online with a maximum margin of error of 3.1 percent. Undecided or non-voters made up 7.2 percent of those polled.

If those were the results on election day, National would bring in 40 MPs, NZ First 12 and ACT nine.

That would make 61 MPs between the current coalition parties, the slimmest possible majority in a 120-seat Parliament.

On the left, Labour would pick up 43 seats, the Greens 12 and Te Pāti Māori four. Together, that adds up to 59 MPs, not enough to claim power.

If Te Pāti Māori retained all six of its current seats, however, Parliament would have a two-seat overhang, resulting in a 61-61 deadlock.

NZ First’s lift in support was mirrored in Peters’ personal standing too.

On the preferred prime minister measure, Peters jumped a sizeable 3.7 points to hit 12.6 percent, his highest result in the series since January 2016.

His surge helped close the gap with the leaders of Labour and National, both of whom took a knock in support.

Labour’s Chris Hipkins remained the top choice of voters, receiving the backing of 21.1 percent of voters, down 1.9 points.

National’s Christopher Luxon dropped 0.2 points to 19.4 percent.

Almost 17 percent of voters declined to choose a prime ministerial candidate or said they did not know.

The poll also found an improvement in general sentiment since the lows of September, though it still remained deep in negative territory.

The results showed 36.3 percent (up 2.3) of respondents thought the country was heading in the right direction, compared to 46.6 percent (down 2.3) who thought the wrong direction.

That gives a net score of -10.3, an improvement of 3.3 points compared to the last poll in September.

Just over 15 percent of voters sat on the fence, while another 1.8 percent said they did not know.

National supporters were the most optimistic with a net score of +65.8, followed by ACT supporters on +28.2.

Notably, more NZ First voters thought the country was on the wrong track than the right track, recording a net score of -9.9.

The pessimism also showed up when voters were asked to consider their financial position compared to one year ago.

Asked about the cost of living, 57.5 percent of respondents said they were finding it harder to manage than this time last year. Just 6.4 percent said they were finding it easier and 34.8 percent said “about the same”.

Similarly, just 12.2 percent of voters said they felt better off financially compared to January 2025. More than 46 percent said they were worse off, while 40.1 percent said neither.

Politicians respond – or don’t

Both Luxon and Peters declined interview requests from RNZ. A spokesperson for Luxon said he was prioritising the weather event situation.

Te Pāti Māori also declined to be interviewed.

Speaking to RNZ, Hipkins said he was encouraged by Labour’s continued rise in the polls.

“This would suggest a neck-and-neck result,” he said. “We’ve got a lot more work to do… but being ahead of National, being the most popular party in New Zealand, that’s a good place to start election year.”

Hipkins said he would not read too much into Peters’ jump, saying NZ First’s support was always “very volatile”.

Greens’ co-leader Marama Davidson said, regardless of the polls, the party would stay focused on finding solutions.

“Understandably, people are exhausted and switched off, but this November, people get to use their power and agency to demand so much more.”

ACT leader David Seymour told RNZ his party started election year in a “very comfortable position” and he intended to build on it.

“We’ve shown that we can be effective and collegial in government… but we’re also prepared to say when the emperor has no clothes.”

This poll of 1000 people was conducted by Reid Research, using quota sampling and weighting to ensure representative cross section by age, gender and geography. The poll was conducted through online interviews between 15-22 January 2026 and has a maximum margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/27/new-rnz-reid-research-poll-brings-boost-for-nz-first-labour/

Source: Radio New Zealand

A local council representative drove through the Mount Maunganui campground and directly past three slips about two hours before a deadly landslide, a camper who contacted emergency services at the time says.

The woman, who was woken by one of the victims, Lisa Maclennan, early that morning, has spoken to RNZ about efforts to raise emergency services earlier that morning, including her own call to police three hours before the landslide.

She has also provided the first images of the initial slips that caused the calls to emergency services.

The victims of the landslide have been named as Lisa Anne Maclennan, 50, Måns Loke Bernhardsson, 20, Jacqualine Suzanne Wheeler, 71, Susan Doreen Knowles, 71, Sharon Maccanico, 15, and Max Furse-Kee, 15.

The woman, who did not want to be named, said she had been at the campground for about three weeks and was staying right next to Maclennan and her husband.

She said she was woken shortly before 5am on Thursday morning to Maclennan banging on her window.

“She’s like ‘Oh I’m so sorry I’m waking you up’, but the slip had pushed her campervan about a metre forward, so she said, ‘I’m just waking everyone up because I think everyone should move’.”

The woman moved her campervan straight away and Maclennan’s campervan was moved parallel to the shower block.

The woman said the group then went to the office, but there was no one there.

She said Maclennan had tried ringing the emergency number at the campground and could not get hold of anybody.

The woman said Maclennan told her she was going to try call Civil Defence. It was at that moment the woman called police.

Shortly before calling police, the woman took some photos and video of one of three slips, including one right at her campsite. An image, supplied to RNZ, was timestamped at 6.15am and the video, which shows the slips, was taken a minute later.

A call log provided by the woman confirms she called police at 6.18am. The outgoing call lasted eight minutes.

“I explained to them about the slips. I said, ‘look, I understand that you guys will be really busy, and this might not be anything, but this is what’s happened here’. 

“It was enough to push the ladies’ campervan forward, and there’s a homeless man in the toilet block, and he was actually going crazy and sort of banging on the walls and smashing things.

“And so I said, maybe you should send someone to have a look at that, just in case. You know, there’s a lot of kids here… and they said, yeah, it is a really busy night. It’s been a busy night. It’s a busy morning, we’ll try and get a unit there.”

The woman said no-one arrived until about 7.45am, when she said she saw what she described as a ute that was sign-written with Tauranga City Council. The ute stopped and the woman says she called out, “Look, I don’t know if you can see them from where you are, but there’s these slips up here, I think, you know, someone should look at them.”

The woman was unsure the man heard her. The woman said the ute then drove through the Pilot Bay side of the campground slowly past the slips that she had filmed directly in front of several campsites.

“I figured, well, everything will be fine. Someone from the council’s come, they’ve seen the slips, he’s driven past them, he’s driven through the water that was coming down from that corner that collapsed. So I had no worries after that.”

The woman then had a shower and left the campground to visit her parents.

It was not until about an hour after the fatal landslide that she returned. She said the emergency services at the scene were “amazing”.

It was about midday that she discovered that Maclennan was missing.

“The group of people that was … camping in the area, were all in tears. There was an older couple that we were sitting with in there, and he was heartbroken. It was just terrible and so incredibly unfair.

“I don’t think there was many people that were in the surf club for the day that weren’t, you know, in tears. It was pretty difficult.”

She said Maclennan, who worked at Morrinsville Intermediate School was “being a teacher”.

“She took control. She was making sure everyone was safe. She was, you know, literally rounding people and making sure they were all safe, and being the organiser.

“Lisa [Maclennan] and her husband were amazing. And if it hadn’t been for them there, I would imagine that there would have been many more people.”

Looking back, the woman said she believed there should have been staff at the campground at all times, given the weather warnings.

“I know nothing about running camping grounds, but it seems like a no-brainer to have had people in the campground during a red rain watch and a state of emergency. 

“Either they should have evacuated the campground, which is great in hindsight, but at the very least somebody, there should have been a number of people that worked for the campground or the council on the ground during a state of emergency, because the fact that there was no one there made us all think maybe it’s not that bad.”

She said the days since the landslide had been “awful”.

“It’s dreadful, not sleeping. It’s terrible,” she said.

“I think it’s feeling extraordinarily lucky to not have been hurt and grateful that Lisa woke us up and then just incredibly sad for the families whose people didn’t get out.”

RNZ approached the Tauranga City Council and police for comment on Monday evening on the woman’s account.

“Once the recovery efforts are completed, we have secured the site and have geotechnical assessments that the landslide area is stable, there will be a process undertaken to examine the events that took place before and during this tragic event,” the council’s controller Tom McEntyre said.

“It would not be appropriate to make any comment now that could affect that process or pre-empt the outcome.”

In response to earlier questions from RNZ, Deputy National Commander Megan Stiffler confirmed FENZ received a 111 call at 5.48am on Thursday, 22 January, from a person reporting a slip near the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park.

“Our call takers made contact with the Tauranga City Council, the landowners of the camping ground, and notified them of this information at 5.51am.

“The landslip that was referenced in the 111 call received at 5.48am did not impact life or property and therefore Fire and Emergency did not respond firefighters to attend, instead we notified Tauranga City Council as the landowner responsible.”

Speaking to the New Zealand Herald, Tauranga City Council chief executive Marty Grenfell said there was no record of a 111 call being referred to the council.

However, a council statement released only hours later backtracked on this version of events.

“After further enquiries, we can confirm that the Tauranga City Council’s main Contact Centre received a call from Fire and Emergency New Zealand at around 5.50am on Thursday, 22 January.”

The council said the chief executive’s earlier comments referred specifically to information logged in the council’s Emergency Operations Centre, which did not receive a call.

At about 9.30am a slip came down at the Beachside Holiday Park at Mount Maunganui, smashing into campervans, tents, vehicles and an ablution block near the Mount Hot Pools.

WorkSafe’s head of inspectorate Rob Pope told RNZ’s Midday Report Tauranga City Council was one of the entities it needed to speak with and understand its part in the event.

When asked if it would be extraordinary for an investigation not to be launched given six people were presumed dead, Pope agreed but said they needed to understand the scope and context first before committing resources to a formal investigation.

A WorkSafe spokesperson told RNZ it was in the “very early stages” of assessing what its role may look like once the search and recovery phase was complete.

“We are currently bringing together a team of inspectors and will be working closely with New Zealand Police to determine next steps.

“We will be looking into the organisations that had a duty of care for everyone at the holiday park, and whether or not they were meeting their health and safety responsibilities.”

Currently, the focus needed to remain on the recovery efforts, the spokesperson said.

“When the time is right, our inspectors will begin engaging with witnesses and technical experts and gathering evidence from a range of sources including the organisations involved in the operation of the holiday park and the scene.

“In the meantime, our local inspectors have also extended an offer of support to Emergency Management Bay of Plenty and other agencies to ensure that workers involved in the response are kept safe and healthy.”

Pope told RNZ WorkSafe was working closely with police to coordinate their responses after the “incredibly tragic event”.

He did not have a timeframe for when a decision on a formal investigation would be made but said the inspectors would be working at pace and focused on providing the right level of confidence for the families who wanted answers.

“We will be committed to addressing this issue as quickly as we can.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Morning Report he supported Tauranga City Council’s decision to conduct a full, independent review into the landslide.

“There’s lots of concerns that people have about why they weren’t evacuated sooner. I think they are very legitimate, very good questions that need answers.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/27/tauranga-city-council-staff-drove-past-three-mt-maunganui-slips-hours-before-deadly-landslide-camper-says/

Source: Radio New Zealand

A homicide investigation is underway after the death of a woman in Canterbury.

Detective Senior Sergeant Karen Simmons said the woman was found dead at a property in Burnham in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

“Emergency services were called to a Burnham School Road address about 3.05am after a report of disorder.

“After arriving at the property, police located the body of a woman.”

Simmons said one person has been arrested and is helping police with its inquiries.

“Cordons are in place and a scene examination has commenced at the property.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

The slash debate heats up – again – in Gisborne as forestry operators urge the government to remove their legal accountability for the devastating discharge.

When the rain stops in Tairāwhiti, the damage doesn’t.

Because when the rain hits hard, it floods wood. Lots of it.

On beaches, whole trees lie tangled like matchsticks.

Rivers choke with debris; bridges are smashed; roads are closed; and communities are left staring at a costly and heartbreaking mess.

The debris has a name, slash. It is the branches, logs and waste left behind after commercial forestry harvesting.

And now, it’s been revealed the industry at the centre of it is asking the government to remove legal accountability when slash escapes.

Under current law, forestry companies can be held responsible if slash causes environmental harm or property damage.

And in recent years, slash in the area has caused widespread destruction of billions of dollars of public and private infrastructure.

So, three years after the devastation left by cyclones Hale and Gabrielle, The Detail speaks to Dr Mark Bloomberg, an adjunct senior fellow at the School of Forestry at Canterbury University, about forestry, slash and who should be accountable.

“The [forestry] companies came in and let’s say, I don’t like to use the word good faith, but in good faith, they went in, and where they hadn’t complied, they took their licks and set about to try and be compliant with the consents they were operating under and contributing to clean up,” Bloomberg said.

“But then the bills kept coming, and the council came back and said, ‘yeah, well, apart from any liability in terms of complying with consents, there’s a broader liability under the RMA [Resource Management Act] because you guys did the logging, you are it’.

“I think that issue has got to be resolved.

“In the short term, we have a problem arising from harvesting practices over the last decade.

“But in the medium term, we have got to solve the problem by stopping the discharges.”

He said slash had long been a feature of forestry landscapes, but in steep, erosion-prone regions like Gisborne, it had become a recurring hazard.

Heavy rain mobilises the debris, sending it downstream with devastating force. Cyclone Gabrielle made the consequences impossible to ignore.

“This is probably where I am a little bit tough on the forestry industry,” Bloomberg said.

“I think these large, clear fells – they should have seen it coming. It was pretty foreseeable, actually, that large volumes of sediment and the accompanying slash would be triggered in the next storm.”

He recommended replacing large-scale clear-felling with “smaller coupes” (a coupe refers to an area of felled trees, resulting from a forestry harvesting operation).

“It’s the scale of the clear-felling that caused a lot of the damage in terms of slash and sediment. We have got to get those coupes down to small sizes. This is, in fact, what happens overseas. If you look at difficult erodible land being harvested in Europe, they’ll be down to coupe sizes, sometimes one to two hectares.

“It’s recognised that big commercial clear felling, on this kind of land, is just not a goer. If you want one take-home message, then these big clear fells have to stop, and they have got to stop pronto.”

In recent years, slash has blocked access to beaches, affected business and tourism, destroyed infrastructure and threatened safety. In some cases, debris contributed to loss of life.

And it has returned in recent days, albeit on a much smaller scale, following heavy rain in Tairāwhiti and surrounding areas.

“Unless we grasp the nettle and sort this one out, any of the outcomes [environmentally and economically] will not be good. I’d be pretty confident there.”

At its heart, the slash debate is not about whether storms will come – they will.

But whether, next time, the responsibility is owned or quietly slips away.

Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/27/slash-storms-and-the-fight-over-responsibility/

Source: Radio New Zealand

Geotechnical engineers told Tauranga City Council two decades ago that buildings should not be allowed in the “runout” zones of potential landslides unless they have specially constructed protection like a retaining wall.

The runout zone is the area at the base of a slope that might be inundated in a slip.

A motorcamp and hot pools were struck by a landslide at the base of Mauao last week, killing several people.

It is not clear how engineer runout calculations might apply to the area.

The advice in 2005 has been superseded in part by new science that has led to the adoption of smaller runout zone sizes in the Mt Maunganui and Papamoa neighbourhoods, but the thrust was obvious – to steer clear.

“Only in rare circumstances would it be prudent to violate” the zone criteria, wrote two geotechnical engineers in the study into 300-plus landslides across Tauranga triggered by a big storm.

“Because of this we believe that the following changes to the criteria would be appropriate: 1. Buildings are not to be located within the [zone]. Only if special measures are taken, such as construction of properly engineered structures (ie retaining walls, piled foundations and deflection bunds) can these criteria be exceeded.”

The old runout zones in Tauranga were calculated as ‘4H:1V’ – four times the vertical height of the slope (V), extending horizontally from the base (H). The new zone in 2025 was suggested as half that – 2H:1V.

The study on this for the city council last year by engineering consultants WSP covered all the Pacific seaside neighbourhoods except Mauao itself. RNZ has asked the council why Mauao was not mapped, and also for comment on runout zones.

‘Directed away from areas with an unacceptable risk’

Auckland Council has been sharing its country-leading work on landslides with Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty region. Tauranga was “unique” in how prone it was to rain-induced slips, WSP said in 2025.

Mayor Mahé Drysdale told Morning Report they were setting up an independent review into the “facts and events leading up to the landslide”.

Auckland Council said because of that review it was inappropriate for it to answer queries about landslide risk on Mt Maunganui.

But it laid out its own advances on landslide mapping that it said meant the information people could get about landslides on Land Information Memorandums, or LIMs, was more reliable, and its controls over what got built and where were better.

“Before our 2025 mapping, we didn’t have good regional maps showing landslide susceptibility because we didn’t have the data available to create them,” chief engineer Ross Roberts said in a statement.

“This meant that it was more difficult to identify where activities were taking place in areas potentially susceptible to landslides.”

It was also difficult and complex to apply controls to existing activities.

Since last year it could statistically model the landslide susceptibility, which was feeding into plans and LIMs.

“This means it can be used by people when choosing where to buy or rent a house, and by infrastructure and asset owners… Together, these mean that future development can be directed away from areas with an unacceptable risk, and existing assets can be assessed and their use modified if appropriate,” Roberts said.

Checks on individual sites were still sometimes needed, such as when protective structures had been built, earthworks had changed the land profile or underlying characteristics were unusual.

‘Avoid building in run-out areas’

Martin Brook, professor of applied geology at University of Auckland, said understanding landslide runout on Mauao was important because the maunga had a history of slips.

“Understanding and modelling the runout of landslides and where the detached material is going to run out and end up and possibly inundate is really important,” he said.

“You should avoid building in run-out areas. That’s sensible, and people would follow that advice in most parts of the Western world.”

But the light-detection (LIDAR) tech used to detect historical landslides was not so useful for runout and he was not aware of much research on it.

“Most of New Zealand is under-researched from a sort of a geological standpoint.”

The country had woken up recently to tsunami risk and signs and advice had sprung up, but had only begun waking up to the risk of landslides since 2023 though they were the country’s most deadly natural hazard, he added.

‘Reliant on outside advice’

Northland geotechnical engineer David Buxton said councils nationwide had really struggled since the 1990s – when they began shedding expertise – to get their own technical advice to back their decisions on the likes of runout zones.

“They’re reliant on outside advice to give these things, but then they’re reliant on in-house people without that depth of technical knowledge to make that decision-making, and I think it would be really good if councils were able to invest in that in-house technical ability.”

Buxton himself, as a consultant, benefited from the current set-up, he said – however it was not just expensive, but led to patchy follow-through sometimes.

Auckland Council had invested in-house and that was paying off in its response to floods, Buxton said.

The WPS study for Tauranga last year had some gaps – for instance, it did not look at the likely size or volume of likely slips.

“The factors that determine the volume and runout characteristics of the landslide, and the consequent impacts on infrastructure in proximity to the slope, could be considered when looking at specific slopes as part of site-specific studies,” said the short study, that sits alongside two longer engineering reports into landslides in the city and region.

“This should be carried out as part of considering the risk posed to infrastructure or property at particular sites.”

The landslip map showed small zones of “failure” and runout at several streets, the largest of which were around Hopukiore Reserve.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/27/tauranga-officials-told-not-to-allow-buildings-in-potential-landslide-zones-more-than-20-years-ago-documents-show/

Source: Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/27/could-you-be-working-on-unrealistic-life-goals/

Source: Radio New Zealand

A survey from the Classifications Office shows two thirds of New Zealanders have seen extreme and potentially illegal content online.

The report Online Exposure: Experiences of Extreme or Illegal Content in Aotearoa was based on a survey of 1000 New Zealanders aged 18 and over.

The Classifications Office said it was believed to be the first of its kind to ask adults directly about their experiences with extreme or illegal content online.

It also found 49 percent of the population believed encountering extreme content online was unavoidable and 78 percent thought the likelihood of seeing it was increasing over time.

Chief censor Caroline Flora told RNZ it was essential people online understood the law.

“A big part of releasing this research is to communicate with the public – thank you we recognise your experience and we all have a part to play.

“Reporting this content is really important and understanding your rights and responsibilities when it comes to content is really important as well.”

Flora said it was necessary to note people were not incriminating themselves to have extreme content if they were obtaining it to provide to authorities.

“What I would say is if you come across something online to report it to the platform and to online safety organisations and law enforcement.”

She said it was important people did not create objectionable content – particularly given new technologies such as AI generated content.

“If you create objectionable content, it will still be objectionable even if it is synthetic or fake and the penalties for creating content are very severe.”

Research done by the Classifications Office last year found that young people had similar experiences to the findings in the latest survey, Flora said.

“The findings make it clear that exposure to extreme or illegal content can happen to anyone, but it is significantly more common amongst younger people.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Follow Our Changing World on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Our brains never touch the outside world.

We experience a perception of the world that the brain builds based on all the sensory inputs it receives, as well as existing knowledge.

This is how our sensory systems, like vision, work. We see things because light reflects off a surface and then bounces off the back of our eyeballs, but from there the brain does a lot of work to create an image and fill in the blanks.

These interactions of physical inputs, sensory systems and our brains allow us to develop our sense of self, and how we fit in the world. And this is why neuroscientist Professor Vincent Reid is totally fascinated about where and when this all begins.

Studying sight in the womb

Vincent, now head of the School of Psychological and Social Sciences at the University of Waikato, spent 25 years of his research career investigating how infants learn, including how infants perceive the world through sight. But he realised that he, and others in the field, were working off assumptions.

There was this idea that newborn abilities and preferences in the realm of vision were rapidly acquired directly after birth. But, Vincent thought, could it be possible that these visual abilities and preferences already existed in the womb?

“And so that’s when I started looking at the human foetus and realised that we really didn’t know very much at all about what was going on in the third trimester of pregnancy,” Vincent said.

“Specifically when you had sensory systems that are operational. But at the same time, we didn’t even understand the environment in which they were processing information.”

In 2017 Vincent, then based at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, did a world-first experiment to investigate whether foetuses would respond to certain light stimuli. He did this using lasers and ultrasound.

On ultrasound images a third trimester foetus’ eye in the womb appears as a large, round, dark circle. As the eye moves, light reflects off the lens – a bright disc on this dark ball. By tracking this movement, researchers can determine the direction in which a foetus in the womb is looking.

By shining a red laser with three dots against the womb, Vincent and his team were able to show that the foetuses displayed a preference for a “top-heavy” T shape, compared to the inverse.

At the time other researchers in the field challenged these results. But in 2025 a group in Italy saw the same response in their study.

It is an intriguing finding because newborn infants show a strong preference for looking at faces, thought to be one of these rapidly learned abilities post-birth.

However, if the preference for a “face-like” T shape already exists in the womb, this disrupts this idea of how the visual system develops.

Since those early findings, further work by Vincent’s group at the University of Waikato indicates that these third trimester foetuses also show an effect called “anticipation” where they react to a sound cue and look towards a light source before it switches on.

Part of the challenge in the field was that it remained unclear how much light actually gets into the womb, so Vincent set out to address this question by recruiting some mathematical colleagues.

A red moonlit night

Associate Professor Jacob Heerikhuisen’s research involves mathematical modelling of all sorts of different things. But modelling how light particles, called photons, would bounce, scatter and move through clothing and tissue to get into the womb was a new one for him and Dr Zac Isaac, who was doing his PhD research with Jacob at the time.

With Vincent’s help, the team fossicked around in various biology textbooks to find the light properties related to all the different layers – skin, fat, muscle, the wall of the uterus and the amniotic fluid.

Then they built a model to account for all these layers, set realistic parametres for each of them and investigated how much light would get through.

“The level of light is comparable to a night sky with a full moon,” Jacob said.

“So certainly when I go outside now, every time there’s a moon, I’m like, oh, yeah, this is like the amount of light that gets through to a foetus. It’s significant.”

Their model also revealed that the wavelength of light more likely to get through was in the red spectrum. Blue and green light did not appear to penetrate far enough.

The work has excited Vincent because of what it means for the environment within the womb that the visual system is already developing in.

According to this modelling the light that is getting through is enough for the foetus to have a visual experience, Vincent said, and he would like to know how that is shaping vision, even before birth.

From a psychology point of view, it was fascinating to think about, but the results have a practical application too, Vincent said, particularly in neonatal care units where pre-term babies are likely experiencing an environment very different to what they should be.

“This work can actually inform what those units should look like, what they should do… which then, in theory, would lead to downstream health benefits for those children.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/27/our-changing-world-sight-in-the-womb/

Source: Radio New Zealand

Fundraising pages set up for some of the Mount Maunganui landslide victims’ families have raised thousands of dollars, with donors paying heartfelt tribute to those trapped by last week’s massive slip.

Six people were caught when a landslide came down at the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park, smashing into campervans, tents, vehicles and an ablution block at about 9.30am on Thursday, 22 January.

The victims have been named as Lisa Anne Maclennan, 50, Måns Loke Bernhardsson, 20, Jacqualine Suzanne Wheeler, 71, Susan Doreen Knowles, 71, Sharon Maccanico, 15, and Max Furse-Kee, 15.

A Givealittle page set up by Maclennan’s sister had raised almost $13,000 (12,876) within 13 hours for the Morrinsville teacher’s family.

“She lost her life trying to save everyone else,” the page said.

“We cannot put a value on the loss of a loved one but any donations will make a difference and help this whanau through this extremely difficult time.”

Many donors commented on Maclennan’s work with Morrinsville Intermediate School students over the years, while others paid tribute to the final acts of a “courageous, selfless woman”.

A separate page has also been set up “In Loving Memory” of Furse-Kee, with $35,435 donated to the teenager’s family in less than 15 hours.

Page creator and family friend Samuel Holliday wrote that he’d had the privilege “of seeing Max grow into the beautiful, much-loved child he is”, and said the family was “facing an unimaginable loss”.

“There are no words that can truly ease the pain of losing a child. Max was deeply loved, and his loss has left a hole in the hearts of his family, friends, and everyone who knew him.”

The funds raised would be used to help with immediate and ongoing costs, time away from work, and whatever support the family needed, the page said.

On Monday evening, about 100 people gathered at Auckland Domain to remember another Pakuranga College student and landslide victim, Sharon Maccanico.

Meanwhile, work has resumed to recover the six missing people, with tens of thousands of cubic metres of dirt to comb through.

Tauranga City Council is heading an independent review into the events leading up to the landslide and WorkSafe has announced it will look into the organisations involved in the holiday park.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/27/thousands-donated-to-mt-maunganui-landslide-victims-families-donors-pay-tribute/

Source: Radio New Zealand

Some of New Zealand’s least generous savings accounts are paying as little as 0.05 percent in interest.

A survey of bank rates showed the main banks have a number of products that offer very little return.

ASB’s Savings On Call account offers 0.1 percent.

ANZ has a Select account that pays 0.05 percent on balances over $5000 – there is a monthly account fee of $6 but that is waived if the monthly balance remains over $5000.

Westpac’s Simple Saver pays 0.05 percent – customers are sent “nudge” emails if they have higher balances to remind them of other options.

Co-Operative’s Smile On Call account pays 0.1 percent to balances over $4000.

Reserve Bank data shows the average rate across the market for unconditional savings accounts is just over 1 percent.

New Zealanders have almost $120 billion in savings accounts, a total that has increased over the past year.

Squirrel chief executive David Cunningham has previously said that people leaving money in low-paying accounts provide a lucrative income stream for the banks.

Banking expert at Massey University Claire Matthews said she had money in a Westpac Simple Saver account.

“I’ve just realised at the weekend how low the interest rate is. It changed substantially over 2025 as the OCR was cut and interest rates fell. I’m going to fix that shortly.”

Financial Markets Authority research showed across all age groups, people said that the highest interest rate was the most important factor in choosing a savings account.

But for those aged 65 to 74, the stability of the rate and how easy it was to access savings were equally important.

The FMA said the self-reported importance of finding a high interest rate peaked in midlife and declined thereafter as people began to attach more importance to other factors.

Lower-income earners also placed more importance on the ability to access savings than the rate they were getting.

The self-reported importance of a high interest rate increased with income, to a point, while the importance of access declined with income.

But Matthews said there could be a few reasons why people did not look for a better deal.

“Speaking personally, it is inertia – as far as I’m aware you can’t now open a Simple Saver with Westpac, so I don’t believe anyone would be actively choosing it. It’s possibly the same with similar accounts at other banks.

“So I think for most people it is likely to be historic, and they either haven’t looked at what interest rate they are receiving and the options available or they just haven’t worked up the energy to make a change.”

Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen said people might like the security of knowing they could access their money easily.

“People are clearly sometimes willing to compromise returns for access.

“There’s a wider conversation – people often talk about the lazy tax and how there’s all these people who pay the lazy tax because they don’t move their bank account, they don’t move their power bill or don’t move their internet or whatever. In dollar terms I completely understand it, but as someone who’s also tried to adjust some of these settings myself – it can sometimes take so much time.”

He said it could sometimes take a lot of effort to make a change.

Olsen said he kept some money in an account he was aware paid little interest.

“It’s a pretty small amount and so it is one of those things that it’s pretty minimal given I keep that as a bit of as emergency fund if I have to up and do something right now it’s always available.

“But if you’ve got half your savings or something in it and you’re hoarding that to buy a house or whatever and it’s not getting any interest, what’s the point there?”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/27/are-these-new-zealands-least-generous-savings-accounts/

Source: Radio New Zealand

Crews working on the Mount Maunganui recovery mission are hoping for sunshine on Tuesday, labelling moisture “the enemy”.

Work has resumed to recover six people presumed dead after a landslide at a Mount Maunganui campground last Thursday.

While the ground is slowly stablising, any rain risks further slips.

An independent review, announced by Tauranga City Council, will look at events leading up to the landslide. Meanwhile, WorkSafe says it will looking into the organisations that had a duty of care for everyone at the Mt Maunganui holiday park.

Follow the latest in RNZ’s live blog at the top of this page.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/01/27/live-mt-maunganui-recovery-crews-hope-for-dry-weather/