New Zealand

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said yesterday the ongoing peace process between the Afghan government and the Taliban movement in the Qatari capital Doha is the best opportunity to reach a permanent political solution to the conflict in Afghanistan.

The prime minister announced in a statement that her country will pull its last six troops out of Afghanistan by May as part of the Doha agreement concluded in February 2020 between the US and the Taliban, which stipulated the withdrawal of all foreign troops.

Wellington, Feb 17 (AP-PTI) A lockdown in the New Zealand city of Auckland will end at midnight, the government announced Wednesday after concluding a coronavirus outbreak had been contained.

This is good news, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.

Wellington, Feb 16 (AP-PTI) For a second consecutive day, New Zealand reported no new community cases of the coronavirus on Tuesday, raising hopes that a lockdown in Auckland will be lifted Wednesday.

Just how three family members contracted the disease remains a mystery. After the cases were found, top lawmakers hurriedly placed New Zealand's largest city into a three-day lockdown, the nation's first in six months.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand’s largest city of Auckland will be placed in a three-day lockdown beginning just before midnight Sunday following the discovery of three unexplained coronavirus virus in the community.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the move Sunday evening after an urgent meeting with other top lawmakers in the Cabinet. She said they decided to take a cautious approach until they found out more about the outbreak, including whether the infections were of the more contagious variants.

WELLINGTON, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand's first batch of Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is set to arrive in New Zealand next week subject to transportation plans and quality temperature control, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Friday.

"We have been working behind the scenes to secure the timely arrival of vaccines for our border workers and their families and it's great they will arrive well within our scheduled timeframes," Ardern told a press conference.

Wellington, Feb 3 (AP-PTI) New Zealand's medical regulator has approved its first coronavirus vaccine, and officials hope to begin giving shots to border workers by the end of March.

New Zealand has no community transmission of the virus, and border workers are considered the most vulnerable to catching and spreading the disease because they deal with arriving travellers, some of whom are infected.

ROTORUA, Jan 25 (NNN-AGENCIES) – New Zealand’s Earthquake Commission and Geological Survey (GeoNet), reported a magnitude 5.1quake in New Zealand near Rotorua, Bay of Plenty, only minutes ago.

The quake hit at 8:12 am local time this morning, at a very shallow depth of five km. The exact magnitude, epicentre, and depth of the quake might be revised within the next few hours, as seismologists review data and refine their calculations, or as other agencies issue their report.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand’s central bank said Sunday that one of its data systems has been breached by an unidentified hacker who potentially accessed commercially and personally sensitive information.

A third party file sharing service used by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to share and store sensitive information had been illegally accessed, the Wellington-based bank said in a statement.

Governor Adrian Orr said the breach has been contained. The bank’s core functions “remain sound and operational,” he said.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Up to a quarter of a million children, young people and vulnerable adults were physically and sexually abused in New Zealand’s faith-based and state care institutions from the 1960s to early 2000s, a public inquiry revealed on Wednesday.

An interim report by the Royal Commission of Inquiry found children, some from as young as nine months old, suffered years of abuse, which included rape and electric shock treatment, by staff at psychiatric and state care facilities, clergy and foster guardians.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A woman whose son was killed in a volcanic eruption in New Zealand a year ago said that as she stood crying, wailing and calling out his name on a beach soon afterward, a stranger came up to her and held her.

“To this day, I do not know who that lady was,” said Avey Woods during a televised service held Wednesday in the town of Whakatane to mark the first anniversary of the tragedy. “I hope she’s listening, because that just shows you what a community we are, and how powerful that felt that day.”