NZ Engine

Source: Radio New Zealand

A spooky image described a “grim reaper” has shown up in a medical scan of someone who’d just be in a car accident.

The person was actually unharmed, but the New Zealand Medical Journal has highlighted the case an an example of pareidolia.

That was the tendency of humans to see faces or figures in objects.

The image in the journal was from a radiograph of the atlas bone of the neck.

It looked like a skull surrounded by a black hood although, on closer inspection, it could also be perceived as a friendly skeleton.

The report, by Stephen Rowlands, said the tendency to spot faces in objects was evolutionarily advantageous but the interpretations could sometimes be humorous or eerie.

“Cases of pareidolia in medicine are rare but not unprecedented, with reported examples including the Star Wars “Baby Yoda” character being seen in sacral magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scans,” it said.

The image was in fact created by a cluster of cysts in the neck.

Even though the patient was not seriously injured, the cysts could make them more susceptible to a neck injury.

The image was a good chance to reinforce anatomical knowledge but also to show the “cognitive pitfalls” that could come with radiology, the report said.

“Awareness of pareidolia is important for radiologists and clinicians alike, as it underscores the influence of subconscious visual biases on image.”

A University of Sydney study in 2021 concluded being good at spotting faces was part of human evolution – and that was why they tended to see them in objects.

Facial recognition happened in a few hundred milliseconds.

It was beneficial to be able to spot and assess a face quickly and the benefit of never missing a face outweighed sometimes getting it wrong, the study found.

Social media is full of examples of faces in gherkins or trees or power sockets and more.

More than 20 years ago a Florida woman made headlines when she sold a cheese sandwich for US$28,000 because it looked like an image of the Virgin Mary.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Imported liquified natural gas could be a stopgap insurance policy against dry years – or an expensive, dirty fuel that will hit Kiwis in the pocket

The Government’s proposed plan to import liquefied natural gas detonated a political fight this week – not over energy, but over whether Kiwis are about to be hit with a new “gas tax”.

“If it looks like a tax and it quacks like a tax, it’s a tax,” was the echo throughout parliament, and fiercely debated on talkback radio.

But behind the rhetoric sits a serious problem: New Zealand’s domestic gas supply is shrinking, electricity demand is rising, and officials warn the country risks shortages without backup fuel.

So imported LNG, most likely from Australia, is being pitched as that backup.

The plan would see New Zealand import super-cooled natural gas, shipped in from overseas, stored and regasified for use in electricity generation and industry.

Newsroom senior political reporter Marc Daalder tells The Detail it’s a proposed stopgap – insurance against dry years, dwindling gas reserves, and rising demand.

“Every once in a while, it rains less than you’d like it to, particularly in autumn and winter.

“That means our hydro lakes run low, and we can’t necessarily rely on things like wind, [as] it tends to be less windy when it’s less rainy; or solar in the winter when the sun isn’t shining, the sun’s gone down at the time we have our peak power demand, which is usually around 6 pm in July or August when people get home and turn on the heat and start cooking dinner, and suddenly the country’s power demand spikes.

“So renewables on their own aren’t able to fill that gap. We burn fossil fuels instead in dry years … but the problem is that we don’t have quite enough fossil fuel generation and quite enough supply, particularly of gas, to be able to reliably access it when you need it in a dry year.

“And that’s because of the second problem that’s going on, which is that our gas reserves are dwindling. They have essentially fallen off a cliff in the last few years.”

Not for want of trying, he says, with $1.5 billion spent on drilling 53 different exploration wells.

“A few of them have had small successes, but it’s turned out that the big, big fields that we have relied on for quite a long time have just started coming up empty.”

He says LNG is more expensive than domestic gas – about double the price.

“The theory is, on the government’s part, this is a backstop. The gas is available if we need it in a dry year, yes it’s more expensive, so it won’t be used otherwise.”

Daalder warns that, potentially, LNG could be dirtier than coal.

“There has been some research recently to suggest when you account for the emissions that go into producing the gas, into converting it to LNG, the leakages that occur while it’s being shipped across the ocean, and then it has to be regasified, and then distributed around a country like New Zealand, then actually LNG is potentially as dirty or dirtier than coal when you take that full supply chain into account.”

Questions remain

Martin Gummer, managing director of Optima, which looks at energy management solutions, tells The Detail that he largely supports the move, saying gas remains critical for manufacturing, food processing, and electricity reliability.

“You’ve got heavy industry, major manufacturers, steel, wood processors but also a wide spectrum of intermediate-sized businesses such as food products,” says Gummer. Schools and hospitals are also big gas users.

Gummer wrote an open letter to the prime minister that was published in the NZ Herald last December which was critical of the government’s handling of the energy problem and called for an urgent “bold, decisive” strategy.

As the country fast runs out of natural gas, Gummer says the LNG announcement won’t address all the concerns and there are still questions over the date of opening of a new plant and the price customers pay for the gas.

“While LNG is not a perfect answer, there is no perfect answer, it is probably the next best and most sensible interim step that needs to be taken.”

A missing part of the jigsaw is a funding stream – or subsidy – to assist industry to transition to renewable energy sources.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Finance Minister Nicola Willis is urging the previous Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr to front up to the inquiry into the economic responses to Covid-19.

The government announced the independent review on Wednesday, saying it would identify key lessons from the spike in inflation and house prices.

The central bank’s actions – including official cash rate cuts and money printing – as well as its interaction with government policy, will all be in scope.

Willis said it was up to Orr whether he appeared, but had a message for him.

“Put New Zealand’s interests at the heart of your decision,” she said.

“It’s in New Zealand’s interests that you are candid about the decisions the Reserve Bank made in response to the Covid pandemic so that our country can learn from any mistakes that you made.”

Willis said she would still be going ahead with the inquiry whether Orr was still governor or not.

“Yes. I first sought advice on the shape of a potential inquiry when we first came into government. The decision I made at that time was to first focus on the legislating of a singular inflation-fighting target; the renegotiation of a funding agreement,” she said.

“At the point of Adrian Orr’s resignation, which occurred of course just a few months into our term as government, I determined it wouldn’t be appropriate while we were recruiting for a new governor to initiate the review, but the appointment of Dr Anna Breman has provided an appropriate juncture.”

Opposition parties have criticised the timing of the review – with the findings set to be released in September, just weeks before the 7 November election – labelling it a politically motivated hit-job and an attack on the central bank’s independence.

Willis said the reviewers – former Cyprus central banker Athanasios Orphanides and former RBNZ assistant governor David Archer – would be travelling to New Zealand to carry out their work including conducting interviews.

They would have access to all Reserve Bank information, she said, and she expected it would also look at wealth inequality.

Orr led the bank during the pandemic but resigned unexpectedly last March over a lack of funding for the central bank.

His resignation came more than a year after the government took office.

Messy handling of his exit later led chair Neil Quigley to resign too, putting Willis under pressure over what she knew and when.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Vape stores within stores like dairies and petrol stations are allowing retailers to get around flavour restrictions, and a new study has found they’re far more common in low socio-economic areas.

The authors of this new research out of Massey University say it goes against efforts to limit the exposure of young people to vape products.

Regulations mean only specialised vape retailers (SVRs) are allowed to sell the full range of vape products and flavours – and a store can only qualify as an SVR if vaping products make up 70 percent of their sales.

Convenience stores, petrol stations and supermarkets, which don’t meet that bar, can only sell mint, menthol or tobacco flavoured vapes.

But by opening a vape shop as a store within a store, these retailers could stock the full range, and then market those products to their existing foot traffic – for example, someone who has popped in for a bottle of milk.

A new paper out of Massey University, titled “Scoping the vape retail environment and retailers’ responses to vape control measures in selected Auckland suburbs with different levels of socio-economic deprivation” by Robin van der Sanden, Chris Wilkins, Marta Rychert, Jude Ball, Janet Hoek, Penelope Truman, Geoff Kira, El-Shadan Tautolo, has analysed the locations of these vape shops.

Out of 160 specialist vape retailers in 14 Auckland suburbs, 44 percent were stores within stores, and they were concentrated in suburbs with higher socio-economic deprivation, and residential areas rather than commercial centres.

High-deprivation suburbs had a median of 8.5 store-within-a-store outlets, compared to just two in low-deprivation areas.

In addition, 56 percent of all speciality vape retailers were located within 300 metres of at least one educational institute – be that primary, secondary, or tertiary.

The Auckland CBD had the highest total number of specialist vape retailers at 43, while some low-deprivation suburbs like St Heliers had none.

‘Stores within stores undermined efforts to curb exposure to youth’ – researcher

Study author and public health researcher Dr Robin van der Sanden told RNZ:

“It really is about wanting to maintain access to what are essentially the most appealing vape products, and the products that sell the best and most widely, which really are your fruit flavours [and] your lolly flavours.”

Regulations needed to balance accessibility for people who wanted vapes to quit smoking, while limiting exposure to young people and non-smokers.

In June last year, the government introduced strict regulations banning disposable vapes and restricting visible marketing.

Moves to set up vape stores within liquor stores drew concern from alcohol harm prevention groups last year, while the vaping industry argued liquor store age restrictions would likely limit exposure to young people.

Van der Sanden said stores within stores undermined efforts to curb exposure to youth, particularly in areas already facing greater health inequities.

“Kids are popping in and out of the dairy to buy an ice cream after school and as a result, they are coming into contact with that vape retail environment, and they’re seeing people exiting that little vape store carrying quite a cool, brightly coloured looking vape package,” she said.

From a policy perspective, she said, changes to close this loophole could have “a really noticeable impact”.

Associate Health Minister Casey Costello, whose portfolio vaping falls into, told RNZ specialist stores were not supposed to have products displayed outside them, nor were under-18s allowed in them.

“If they’re breaking those laws, that’s an enforcement issue and there has been a significant increase in enforcement capacity and activity over the last two years to back up these changes.”

“Overall, the latest statistics show that youth vaping is continuing to reduce, as are our smoking rates. However, we need a more coherent and sensible regulatory regime around tobacco and nicotine products to better address the harm from smoking and I’ll be interested to see this research and any suggestions.”

Vaping Industry Association also wants loophole addressed

The Vaping Industry Association (VIANZ) told RNZ they, too, thought the loophole needed to be addressed.

In a statement, chairperson Jonathan Devery said the group supported the intent of regulations to reduce youth exposure, while maintaining access for adults seeking an alternative to smoking.

He said it was clear the store-within-a-store model had emerged as an unintended consequence of the current framework, “and we believe this loophole should be addressed to ensure the regulatory system operates as originally intended”.

Specialist vape retail should reflect genuine, standalone specialist premises with robust age-verification and compliance standards, not hybrid formats that blur the line with general retail, he said.

“We are committed to working constructively with regulators to strengthen the integrity of the specialist retail model while continuing to protect adult access to regulated, smoke-free alternatives.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Hundreds of thousands of files have been identified by Tauranga City Council that it thinks could be relevant to a review of what it knew and how fast it acted before the deadly landslip at Mount Maunganui that left six holiday-makers dead.

The council on Thursday named retired High Court judge Paul Davison KC to help the external review.

The review, while separate to a government inquiry also confirmed the same day, would aim to work alongside it and try to cut any duplication.

Davison has been tasked with delivering his findings by the end of June, a target both he and Tauranga Mayor Mahé Drysdale were confident of reaching.

“It really depends on once he gets into his work and understands the scale,” Drysdale said.

“It is quite a narrow scope, but with the ability for him to go wider if he feels it’s relevant, so we’ll trust his judgement on that.”

But the mayor told RNZ it was a big job ahead.

“The total documents that we’re looking at the moment is in the hundreds of thousands,” he said.

It was based on search terms staff had used to scour through documents.

“So, just literally searching every file we have, every e-mail, every conversation that’s recorded,” Drysdale said.

The mayor said all of these now had to be waded through to see if they were relevant to Davison’s review.

Drysdale said Davison was “the right man for the job” given his extensive experience, and what he said was a reputation for rigorous analysis.

Read RNZ National Crime Correspondent Sam Sherwood’s earlier report of who knew what, and when.

The mayor was asked if he had considered any future actions if Davison’s report found any fault with the council.

“Look, at the end of the day we lost six lives and it’s important that we understand what happened, whether that’s good, bad or indifferent,” Drysdale said.

“I’m sure that there’s going to be some things that are found that we could have done better and it’s important that we know that so we can put those processes in place going forward to enable that we don’t go through a similar situation.”

Fire and Emergency (FENZ) previously confirmed it got a 111 call at 5.48am before the tragedy, from a person reporting a slip near the holiday park.

It said at the time it contacted Tauranga City Council at 5.51am, given it owned the camping ground.

The council confirmed it received a call from FENZ.

Davison told RNZ he would need unrestricted access to “any” information the council held.

“If I didn’t have unrestricted information or access to it, then clearly I wouldn’t be able to undertake an effective review,” he said.

The deadline for the review was able to be extended with agreement from the mayor.

“But … we need this in a timely manner, because we don’t want to wait,” he said.

“We’re hopeful we can get the report as quickly as possible.”

Davison said he would work to complete the report as soon as he possibly could.

Who is Paul Davison?

• Admitted as a barrister and solicitor in 1975
• Made a High Court judge in 2015 and retired in 2023 before continuing work in law as a mediator, arbitrator and consulting
• Has sat as a member of a Divisional Court of Appeal
• Has acted as counsel in several major commissions of inquiry, notably the Royal Commission into the Air New Zealand Erebus disaster
• In 2025, undertook a government-appointed role of independent arbiter to determine financial redress for Lake Alice survivors
• Appointed Kim Dotcom’s lawyer soon after his arrest
• Lead defence lawyer in 2009 for Mangere MP Taito Phillip Field
• Appeared as Crown counsel in the case against David Tamihere.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

More Pākehā are enrolling in Treaty education workshops and seeking out information about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, according to long-standing Treaty educators.

Waitangi Network Whangārei, a community-based rōpū said membership enrolments have tripled in the last year, alongside increasing attendance at its public workshops introducing people to Te Tiriti.

“We’ve had big numbers in the last few years, so there’s a lot more interest in people trying to understand about Te Tiriti,” Network Waitangi Whangārei member and educator Ngaire Ray told RNZ.

“There’s a real movement for people to understand what does Te Tiriti mean for all of us.”

Network Waitangi Whangārei has been operating since 1985. Originally known as Project Waitangi, the group was established to educate non-Māori about the Treaty in the lead-up to the 150th anniversary of its signing in 1990.

Ray said the group had been travelling to Waitangi for decades, focusing on encouraging Tangata Tiriti to see Te Tiriti as relevant to them.

“It’s our partnership, it’s a relationship,” she said.

“Te Tiriti is for all people and if we embrace Te Tiriti, it sets out the path and the future for Aotearoa.”

She said Te Tiriti was an agreement between two nations – Māori and the Crown – and that non-Māori had a responsibility to understand the historical context and the commitments made in 1840.

“It’s really important that my people, that Pākehā people and non-Māori are present in the relationship and understand Te Tiriti, we understand the historical context of where that was signed, what was agreed in Te Tiriti and what does it mean for us and the future of Aotearoa.”

Kathryn McKenzie, a Pākehā Treaty educator who has been running workshops for 32 years, said many people were only now beginning to learn a history they were not taught at school.

“If it was happening in our schools, we wouldn’t need to be here. If our people knew our history, we wouldn’t need to be here,” she said.

“We’ve got a history of colonisation, and we have for many, many years tried to hide it. And that doesn’t create stable partnership if we don’t acknowledge our past.”

McKenzie said Treaty education gained momentum following the 1981 Springbok Tour protests, when Pākehā protesters were challenged by Māori activists to “go and educate your people” about racism and Te Tiriti.

Project Waitangi emerged from that period of activism, alongside other anti-racism movements. It later became Network Waitangi, with autonomous regional groups continuing the education kaupapa to this day.

The group describes itself as an independent, voluntary community organisation providing information, education and support to help people understand and implement Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

McKenzie said people attending workshops included Pākehā, Māori and newer migrants – often referred to as tangata Tiriti – who had come to Aotearoa after 1840.

“Everybody needs to learn because they’ve all come through the standard education system where the Treaty has not been taught,” she said.

She said terms such as “Pākehā” and “Tangata Tiriti” were often misunderstood.

“Tangata Tiriti, we’re the partners that signed the Treaty. Because we have signed the Treaty, that was what gave us permission to settle here.”

Recent national data suggests the growing interest in Treaty education reflects wider public attitudes.

For the third year running, Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission surveyed New Zealanders’ awareness, understanding and attitudes toward Te Tiriti, human rights and the constitution.

The December 2025 survey, conducted by Horizon Research, found strong support for protecting Te Tiriti and fostering respectful discussion.

Seventy percent said it was important that Te Tiriti is protected in New Zealand’s laws and constitution, while 78 percent said respectful discussion of Te Tiriti was important for the country’s future.

Eighty-seven percent said it was important that everyone knows the country’s history, 83 percent said positive relationships between Māori and the Crown is important, and 79 percent supported protecting and celebrating Māori culture, language and identity.

The survey also found 93 percent believed it was important that everyone feels a sense of belonging in Aotearoa.

Commission Indigenous Rights Governance partner Dayle Takitimu said the findings challenged narratives of division.

“Many of the results tell a different story to the narrative of division we have been fed over the past two years,” Takitimu said.

“The majority of New Zealanders value Māori culture and traditions, care about the real histories of Aotearoa, and want respectful discussions about Te Tiriti.”

Ray said education is central to what happens next.

“We aren’t going to get to a better future unless we talk to people, educate people, inform people, help them to understand our history,” she said.

“It’s a beautiful document, it’s a simple one-page document, it’s a peaceful agreement, and it has held so much potential for how we can be together as a country and as a people.”

McKenzie said facing the past was necessary to build stronger relationships in the future.

“We can build a better future if we face our past,”

“Don’t be scared, because Te Tiriti o Waitangi is actually good for us all.”

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