Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: Radio New Zealand

Two schools and a medical centre in the Bay of Plenty town of Katikati are in lockdown as police hunt for a person of interest in the town.

Katikati College posted on its social media shortly before 1pm that it’s been asked by police to go into lockdown.

Katikati Primary School and the local medical centre have also posted to their Facebook pages about going into lockdown.

Both schools say all students are safe and accounted for, and they’re waiting for instructions from police.

The police say they’re making enquiries to locate a person of interest in Katikati.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

The death of a beloved Auckland maths teacher has sent shock waves through the Chinese community.

Students and parents paid tribute to Kevin Hu, head of calculus at Takapuna Grammar School, who died in a diving accident in Fiji, according to an email the school sent parents on 17 November.

The email described Hu as a highly respected member of the faculty who worked primarily with Year 10 and senior classes and played a significant role in the school’s International Baccalaureate programme.

Krissi Yang, a Year 12 student at the school, described Hu as consistently upbeat, cheerful and full of energy.

“He had a natural ability to connect with us,” Yang said. “All the students enjoyed being around him and talking to him. If we had secrets or worries, we were happy to share them because we trusted him completely.”

Yang said Hu’s death had cast a heavy sadness over teachers and students.

“Even now, it’s still hard to accept,” she said. “Everyone was shocked, heartbroken, and full of regret and disbelief.

“He was such an incredible teacher and then, suddenly, he was gone.”

After the school announced the news Monday, Yang said students began paying tribute to Hu in a uniquely personal way: folding origami cranes.

“We wrote messages on the cranes and ended up making more than 1000,” she said.

“We hung strings of cranes around his classroom and placed some on his desk. Each of us also wrote him a letter and left it there.

“Just walking past his classroom makes people emotional. And going into his office, with his photo, our letters, the cranes and the flowers, makes it even harder to stay composed.”

Yang felt as if she still had something to say to the maths teacher.

“If I could say something to him, it would be this: We are all so grateful and so lucky to have had a teacher like you – so kind, warm, genuine and dedicated.”

Cherrie Gao, whose son is also a Year 12 student at Takapuna Grammar School, said Hu had a significant impact on her son’s learning and development.

“After my son joined his class, he changed a lot,” Gao said. “With Mr. Hu, [my son] started thinking more long term and became more willing to challenge himself. Mr. Hu also actively encouraged him to enter maths competitions.

“Mr. Hu was incredibly reliable, which is why my son trusted him so much. If you had a question, you could go to him and he would never turn you away.”

She said Hu’s passing has been deeply upsetting for her family.

“I was driving when I saw the principal’s email marked as important. I opened it while driving, and my mind just froze,” she said.

“It felt impossible. I even wondered if the principal had sent it by mistake,” she said.

“My son constantly talks about ‘Mr. Hu, Mr. Hu’ – he brings his name up all the time. I still can’t believe it was him. How could something like this happen to him?”

Before teaching at Takapuna Grammar School, Hu had previously been a maths teacher at Avondale College and before that spent seven years teaching in Nanjing, China.

Beyond his work as a maths teacher, Hu was also well-known on Chinese social media platform Red Note, where he had thousands of followers who watched his videos and livestreams about his life and his teaching experience in New Zealand.

After several media outlets reported his death on Thursday, hundreds of people flocked to his account, posting “rest in peace” messages under his recent videos and leaving tributes expressing their respect and grief.

Felix Xu, an early childhood teacher in Auckland, said he had followed Hu’s social media for more than a year.

Xu said he often watched Hu’s videos and livestreams and occasionally asked him questions about teaching.

He described Hu as an exceptionally experienced maths teacher and said his death was a loss for the education sector.

He said Hu’s background as a migrant also resonated with him.

“I felt a sense of empathy because we’re both new immigrants,” he said. “I know how difficult the journey is.

“It felt like his life in New Zealand had just begun. At such a good age, he suddenly passed away. It feels like a huge loss.”

Sally Wang, who knew Hu and is a maths teacher at an Auckland secondary school, said several teachers were helping to set up a Givealittle page to support Hu’s family.

She said Hu had no family in New Zealand, and that his parents arrived on Wednesday but did not wish to be contacted by media.

Takapuna Grammar School said in an email to parents that Hu’s passion for teaching and dedication to his students would be deeply missed.

The school said its guidance staff would continue to support any students who might need help during this period.

Students who worked closely with Hu and believed their upcoming NCEA exams had been significantly affected could also contact the school to discuss the possibility of applying for derived grades, the school said.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

A model who used puberty blockers as a teenager says the government is “cursing an entire generation of young transgender women to social stigma” after it halted new prescriptions of the drug for young people with gender dysphoria.

Te Manahou Mackay says she can’t imagine what her life would have been like if she hadn’t had that “early intervention” and had to deal with the “lifelong implications” or going through male puberty.

The government is halting new prescriptions of puberty blockers for young people with gender dysphoria, saying “a precautionary approach” is needed while evidence remains uncertain.

The move has provoked strong feelings on both sides of the debate.

The drugs – known as gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogues – would remain available for people already using them for gender dysphoria, as well as for other medical conditions such as early-onset puberty, endometriosis, and prostate cancer.

Mackay said she had started taking them at age 13-14 after “extensive” discussions with psychiatrists and therapists and nurse practitioners.

“They really do make you justify soundness of mind, she said. “It’s not something that is just handed out lightly.”

Mackay said the general practitioner she initially went to to explore her options became “one of the most important people in my life”.

She met with psychologists and therapists before starting puberty blockers and decided on it because the drugs were “so reversible”.

“If you just stop taking them, everything kind of goes back to baseline. That’s within two years, I believe.”

Mackay did that for around a year and a half before “ultimately deciding to go through hormone replacement therapy and transition properly”.

Having puberty blockers at that age gave her “an extra amount of time to really think before committing” to hormone replacement therapy, she said.

“To me, this [announcement] is basically cursing an entire generation of young transgender woman to social stigma, to moving through this world and having to deal with so much – I don’t have another word for it – violence.

“[Health Minister Simeon Brown] talks about the health implications, but what about the life implications this has on all of these young trans men and women?”

In a statement on Wednesday, Health Minister Simeon Brown said Cabinet had agreed to the new settings until the outcome of a major clinical trial in the United Kingdom, expected in 2031.

Brown said the new rules – which take effect on 19 December – would give families confidence that any treatment was “clinically sound and in the best interests of the young person”.

“These changes are about ensuring treatments are safe and carefully managed, while maintaining access to care for those who need it.”

Otago University Emeritus professor Charlotte Paul said she supported the extra restrictions, due to “substantial uncertainties” about the harms and benefits of puberty blockers.

“It’s not just the uncertainty about the balance of benefits and risks,” Paul said. “It’s that we don’t know enough about the population that we’re treating and that we could be harming a lot of kids.”

However, Paul said the government’s announcement did not give her any confidence about the “care of these young people”, and acknowledged young people with gender dysphoria were “distressed”.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

The lawyer for Pike River families says police now have enough evidence to lay manslaughter charges over the disaster.

Nigel Hampton KC said police believe they have evidence showing specific acts of gross negligence, which are linked to the fatal explosion, in which 29 men were killed.

“From that, sufficient evidence has been collected by the police for them to conclude that they can now show specific acts of what they say were gross negligence and they can link those acts causatively to the explosion and therefore to the deaths.

“That equals potentially 29 charges of manslaughter being brought against certain individuals, the police have reached that view. It’s now with the Crown and the Crown have got to make a decision about what they’re going to do.”

Hampton said he was not able to comment on who those charges would be laid against, without breaching confidentiality.

“It’s been a cause of frustration and further anguish to the families, the time delay, but if it’s another month or two months or three months or whatever, they’re prepared to wait it out.”

‘Slap in the face’

Hampton said that anguish was exacerbated for Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse this week, after they were asked to meet with Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden on the 15th anniversary of the disaster, in a meeting they described as a complete waste of time.

“They attend at Parliament instead of being on the Coast with other families commemorating, grieving the deaths of their loved ones…then they are met with a negative response from the workplace minister indicating that from their point of view, the family’s point of view, there’s going to be rollback on health and safety stuff that came out of the Pike disaster and that only feels like a slap in the face for the women.”

Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori all expressed support for a corporate manslaughter charge.

A Royal Commission of Inquiry into the explosion in 2012 found New Zealand’s old safety laws lacked teeth, and there were catastrophic failings in the mining company’s systems, despite numerous warnings of a potential disaster.

Hampton said following the inquiry, police reached the view there were acts of gross negligence, both in terms of actions taken and actions not taken by the mining company and those in charge that would have formed the foundation of a prosecution for criminal nuisance under the Crimes Act, but the acts couldn’t be directly linked to the initial explosion and the deaths.

At the same time, the Department of Labour laid health and safety charges against Pike River Coal Ltd, its former chief executive Peter Whittall and a contractor, VLI Drilling Ltd.

The charges against Whittall were dropped in 2013 in exchange for payments to the victims’ families, which had since been declared unlawful by the Supreme Court.

Efforts by Pike River families, including Osborne and Rockhouse, to prevent the mine from being sealed in 2021 ultimately led to police being able to re-enter the mine and recover further material and evidence from the inside the drift.

In September 2022, police announced they were reopening the borehole drilling operation as part of the investigation and 10 boreholes were drilled, imaged, and resealed. Human remains were found in the mine in 2023.

Police have been working with the Crown Solicitor since the investigation concluded, over whether to lay charges.

A police spokesperson said they could not provide a timeframe for when a decision would be made on the matter.

The Crown Law office said the decision whether to prosecute ultimately sat with police and they were working with the Wellington Crown Solicitor on matters relating to the decision to prosecute.

The office said it was aware of that work and didn’t have anything further to add at present.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

A New Zealand disability advocate caught up in the fire at the annual COP climate meeting in Brazil says she and her group were left to fend for themselves.

The fire took hold in a pavilion area while negotiations were still underway, forcing the evacuation of thousands of delegates from the venue.

There were no casualties but at least 13 people have been treated for smoke inhalation.

Kera Sherwood-O’Regan (Ngāi Tahu) is at COP30 representing the New Zealand Disabled Persons Assembly and her hapu, Te Rūnanga o Moeraki.

She was in a building next to the area where fire broke out but said there was no alarm or other alert.

“A lot of people initially thought, ‘Oh is this a protest?'”

Many in her group had disabilities so they decided not to take any chances, she said.

“We’re very conscious that oftentimes in emergency situations we really do get left behind and that’s why we’re here at the COP advocating.

“We made our way to one of the side doors to get outside and soon after that there was a massive influx of everybody getting out.”

At that point there was still no official information and people were instead coordinating in group chats, she said.

“There wasn’t a single clear alarm system, there was no signage on the screens or anything. People were really confused.”

Later she saw footage of the fire close to an area where she had spoken the day before.

“I received … a video of flames which were just floor to ceiling, over in the pavilions area … so that was obviously quite frightening for us.”

The UN body that oversees the COP talks said there had been “limited damage” but the site would reopen no sooner than 8pm (12pm Friday NZT).

The fire took place as ministers were deep in negotiations aimed at breaking a deadlock over fossil fuels, climate finance and trade measures, with one day left in the two-week conference.

-RNZ / AFP

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