A 48 year old man has been charged with murder in relation to a homicide in the Northland township of Omapere.
The man is due to appear in court shortly.
The victim, a 78 year old man was found at a residential address on Friday morning.
Updates to follow.
Three people have died in a boating accident in Manukau Harbour.
They were among a group of four when their boat capsized near the Manukau Heads bar around 4.45pm yesterday, Saturday 16 October.
The survivor was airlifted to hospital in a serious condition. The bodies of the deceased were also removed from the water.
The incidents come after two people in separate incidents died on the harbour.
Police investigations are continuing.
Updates to follow.
Super Saturday has smashed vaccination records with people rolling up their sleeves for their COVID-19 vaccinations today, with 129,995 doses administered – 39,024 first doses and 90,971 second doses as at 10pm tonight.
Auckland now has 89% of its eligible people vaccinated with at least one dose.
“I want to give a huge thanks to every eligible New Zealander who stepped up today and over the past few days to get their shot, as well as to the hundreds of health providers, businesses, workplaces and community organisations who’ve pulled out all the stops as part of the nationwide push for vaccination,” says Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.
“People have turned out in droves to the 783 vaccination sites around the motu for their vaccinations – from free hangi at Pôtahi Marae in Northland’s Te Kao to vaccinations on the TSS Earnslaw on Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown.
“It’s fantastic that Auckland has enjoyed its biggest ever vaccination day with 8,957 people getting their first doses and 31,686 people receiving their second doses.”
“It’s also the biggest ever day for Māori vaccinations with 10,941 first doses and 10,874 second doses. I want to thank Māori providers for the enormous amount of mahi that has gone into making today such a success.
“It was also a great day for the Pacific community with 4,223 first doses and 8,093 second doses.
“I also want to thank all those involved with our first ever ‘Vaxathon’ – both those behind the scenes and those in front of the cameras who united to energise and celebrate this historic vaccination day, encourages New Zealanders – particularly young Māori, Pacific and tāngata whaikaha (those living with a disability) – to get vaccinated.
“It’s also been inspirational to see the many novel and creative ways our DHBs, general practices, pharmacies and hauora, businesses and other community organisations have encouraged their communities to get vaccinated.
“We take our hats off to the thousands of vaccinators, volunteers, DHB and healthcare staff, community helpers, logistics teams, delivery people, Healthline call centre takers and everyone else who played their part, without whom this result would not have been possible.
“It also now means that 3,565,692 New Zealanders – or 85% of New Zealand’s eligible population, have had at least one vaccination, and 2,748,291 people (or 65%) are fully vaccinated.
“Even if you were not able to get out and get a jab today, don’t worry, there are still lots of opportunities to get vaccinated, with the usual huge range of vaccination sites continuing to operate as normal across the motu beyond this weekend.
“Super Saturday has been a shot in the arm for the final stage of our COVID-19 vaccination programme and we now need to finish the job to protect all New Zealanders from the virus.
“Getting every eligible New Zealander vaccinated has never been more important, nor has it been more easy, so if you haven’t already, please step up and get your shot. Or, if you know of a friend or whānau member who hasn’t, please support them to get theirs.”
To book a vaccination, go to Bookmyvaccine.nz, or call the COVID Vaccine Healthline on 0800 28 29 26. For more information about Super Saturday events, go to the Unite Against Covid website.
Final vaccination numbers for Super Saturday will be published on Sunday 17 October.
Judging by the reaction of the paid and bought propaganda arm of the State (also known as the legacy mainstream media) ‘Super Saturday’, 16 October 2021, was a roaring success. The amount of coverage given to it online by the NZ Herald and Stuff amounted to column miles, not inches.
On the face of it, the numbers look impressive. According to the Ministry of Health (now known as the ‘Ministry of Jabs’, because that’s all they seem to be doing nowadays), a record 129,995 doses were administered today, including 39,024 first doses. The previous record for a single day was on 26 August when 90,757 doses were given.
But like anything, there’s a context that needs to be considered before jumping to any quick conclusions.
First, the timing of the event was cynical. This week mandatory vaccinations for health and education workers was announced. This affects a huge portion of the population, from front-line workers, full-time and part-time staff, and even contractors who are not employed in those sectors, but carry out contract work in schools and hospitals. Hundreds of thousands of kiwi workers are now required to get the jab, or have no job. Other requirements, such as weekly testing, needed for contractors and employees to even enter onto relevant sites start as early as next week. Most of these people would chose not to have the vaccine if they could, and the rest were hesitant about it.
But these people face losing their jobs and income if they don’t. That’s not super. That’s compulsion. They have no choice but to get it.
I would say a large majority of people turning up for the jab this ‘Super Saturday’ would chose not to be there, if they had a free choice.
How can anything which requires the coercion and compulsion of another to achieve its aim be considered a success?
Another section of those that took the jab on ‘Super Saturday’ would have been those who were going to get it anyway, but took advantage of the day off, great weather, and free bribes to get it done today. It must be remembered we are still under Level 3 restrictions for most of the population. One of the only reasons you can go outside is to get a vaccination. So why not combine the desperation to get some sun with a permitted activity? It will be interesting to see what the daily numbers are in the following days to see if this hypothesis can be confirmed.
By 3pm the number of 100,000 had been ‘smashed’, and Jacinda Ardern, who cut a comical figure at times wearing a Polynesian headress and face mask (why does someone ‘protected’ by the vax have to wear a face mask anyway?), urged kiwis to get it past 150,000 by the finish time of 8pm. As it turned out the final figure was well short of that, by 21,000. ‘Super Saturday’, it seemed, had ended on a downer.
And let’s look at the amount of coverage the event has had. Millions upon millions of dollars of taxpayer money, funnelled into the mainstream la-la land, providing wall-to-wall coverage of the ‘get vaxed’ message on all forms of media. Turn on the radio, its about the vax. Change the station, still the vax. Online the coverage is ubiquitous, hogging the main headlines for hour after hour, with story after story about getting the vax and what’s going to happen to you if you don’t. There were A-list kiwi celebrities from Lorde to Neil Finn urging us from their privileged mortgage-free mansions to get the needle. I certainly hope our home-grown celebrities don’t start preaching to us plebs about how to live our lives, like they do in Hollywood. With all this money, power, coverage, resources, compulsion, coercion, the threats of loss of income and livelihood, you would think a million kiwis would have been mobilised to visit their local jab centre.
Far from it.
Lotto Powerball was not struck this evening, and the prize for next Wednesday’s draw has jackpotted to a massive $42 million.
Tonight’s winning numbers were 2, 7, 19, 28, 32 and 40. The Bonus Ball was 13, and the Power Ball was 1.
Four players shared a Division 1 prize of $250,000 each.
Covid-19 “vaccine lottery” schemes across 19 states had no noticeable effect on vaccination rates and may have squandered millions in tax dollars, according to newly published research that suggests the programs were a major flop.
Published in the JAMA medical journal on Friday, the pre-print study by researchers at the University of Colorado Denver showed that the links between vaccine lottery announcements and inoculation rates were “very small in magnitude” and “statistically indistinguishable from zero.”
“No statistically significant association was detected between a cash-drawing announcement and the number of vaccinations before or after the announcement date, a period that included announcements of lottery winners for most lottery states,” said the study, which has yet to be peer reviewed.
While previous studies have reviewed individual lotteries, the research published on Friday looked at all 19 lottery programs collectively, comparing vaccination rates in those states before and after their announcements to other states that did not implement similar incentives.
It noted, however, that the lackluster outcomes may have been driven, in part, by “vaccine misinformation,” as well as poorly crafted “messaging” by state governments, and observed that lotteries “may be less effective than incentives that pay with certainty.”
Ohio became the first state to roll out a lottery incentive program to encourage vaccinations in May, unveiling a $1 million cash drawing for randomly selected vaccine recipients over the age of 18 and educational scholarships to those in younger age groups. Ultimately, 26 states would follow suit and attempt some type of incentive program – including Washington’s more out-there ‘Joints for Jabs’ campaign, which offered free pot to residents – with 19 implementing cash drawings.
While the Ohio state government initially touted the scheme as a resounding success, claiming it helped to boost vaccinations by 28% among Ohioans aged 16 and older, a study published in July suggested the results were overstated. The research found no evidence that the lottery was “associated with increased rates of adult Covid-19 vaccinations,” and, to the contrary, observed a greater decline in vaccination rates in Ohio compared to the rest of the country following the state’s May 12 announcement.
California attempted the country’s largest vaccine lottery to date in late May, offering $116 million in cash prizes for its “Vax for the Win” initiative, which also included free tickets to Six Flags amusement parks and other giveaways. The effort proved a major flop, with seven-day averages for first-dose vaccinations declining by 65% after it was unveiled. Similar programs in New York and West Virginia also failed to produce results despite pouring millions of dollars into prizes.
Though other states continue to claim success with their cash giveaways, the JAMA study, as well as previous research, indicate that such programs have effectively made “zero difference,” according to Andrew Friedson, one of the study’s lead authors.
“Drawings were not, by any means, an informative vaccine promotional strategy,” Friedson told Forbes. “It is highly possible that putting funds toward clear and complete messaging on vaccination would have been far more effective, such as awareness campaigns or more aggressive countermeasures against misinformation.”
Vaccinations in the US have slowly plummeted since their daily high of 3.6 million doses in April, dropping to fewer than 2 million doses per day by the following month, despite efforts by state governments to combat those trends. To date, some 66.5% of Americans aged 12 and older have been fully vaccinated, or around 188.5 million people, according to the CDC.
An operation to evict squatters from the left-wing Kopi trailer camp in Berlin has turned into a medieval-style standoff as shield-bearing police officers used siege towers and armored vehicles to ram the walls of the compound.
The “autonomists” living inside the housing project on 137 Kopenicker Street – commonly referred to as ‘Kopi’ by Berliners – in the center of the German capital had been fortifying their camp during the week, including placing barbed wire on top of the walls, ahead of the planned eviction on Friday.
They vowed to defend their home and stage protests elsewhere in Berlin, but this wasn’t enough to stop law enforcement from moving against yet another illegally occupied property in the city.
Some 2,000 officers have taken part in the operation, with some of them storming the trailer camp and the rest preventing possible provocatory acts in other parts of Berlin.
Early in the day, police in full riot gear bearing protective body shields cornered off the area and attempted to make their way inside the trailer camp.
Footage by RT’s Ruptly video agency has captured a police armored vehicle being used to ram the walls of the makeshift fortress, but failing to break through.
Meanwhile, the masked defenders of the camp threw projectiles at officers and burned flares, while playing music and shouting obscenities at them through a loudspeaker.
The police then brought in two siege towers made of metal rods in order to start dismantling the barricades from the top.
The ‘castle’ fell only after the officers weakened a part of the wall with buzz-saws and tore it out with a towing wire attached to an APC.
After that, the police made their way into the hole in the barricade and soon started emerging, escorting Kopi’s inhabitants outside. Multiple arrests have been made.
Members of Berlin’s radical-left scene have been squatting at Kopenicker Street since the 1990s and were even able to legalize their presence on the property. But the building had been auctioned, and this June the judge ordered it to be evicted.
The Kopi was one of the last major left-wing squats in Berlin after the police removed illegal occupants from a building in Liebig Street and shut down the Mutiny and the Syndikat clubs over the past two years.
An explosion at a Shia mosque in Kandahar, Afghanistan during Friday prayers has left at least 33 people dead and 73 injured, according to officials, with victims being transported to hospital in ambulances and cars.
The explosion hit the Bibi Fatima mosque while Shia worshippers were gathering for packed Friday prayers, with an estimated 500 people in attendance.
Two bombs were detonated at the security gate, while two other suicide bombers ran into the mosque, setting off explosions among the congregation.
The Taliban’s interior minister, Sayed Khosti, confirmed the attack had “martyred and wounded” a number of “compatriots,” stating that special forces arrived on scene shortly after to “determine the nature of the incident.”
افغانستان کے صوبے #کندھار میں امام بارگاہ میں بم دھماکے کے نتیجے میں ابتدائی اطلاعات کے مطابق 7 افراد جانبحق جبکہ 13 زخمی ہوئے ہیں۔#Kandahar pic.twitter.com/2SuPsX4Ani
— ???????????????????? ???????????????????? (@Salamsabr) October 15, 2021
Purported video shows the scene at Fatemieh Imam Bargah in #Kandahar after an explosion was witnessed during prayers. #Afghanistan #Afghan #Kabul #Taliban #Talibans pic.twitter.com/vAW9oGqzCB
— The Pakistan Daily (@ThePakDaily) October 15, 2021
#Explosion near the largest Shiite mosque in Kandahar which is Famous with the name of Bibi Fatima Mosque or Imam Bargah. Primary reports: 7 killed and 13 other injured. #Afghanishtan #knadahar pic.twitter.com/TqSH4OhVLT
— Yahya Aliyar (@yahya_aliyar) October 15, 2021
Blast Hits Mosque in Kandahar, Casualties Reported. pic.twitter.com/XgrQSD4GpM
— Zahid Mazhar (@ZahidMtweets) October 15, 2021
Smoke could be seen billowing from the area where the mosque is located, in the center of the city, in the aftermath of the blast. Distressing videos showed bodies, covered by blankets, as they were surrounded by worshippers who attempted to help them in the wake of the explosion.
While official have stated that it was a suicide bombing, no group has admitted responsibility yet. It is the second suicide bombing in Afghanistan in recent weeks, with IS-K having taken responsibility for an explosion in Kunduz last week.
Kandahar has been under the Taliban’s control since August 13, as the militant group swiftly gained territory across Afghanistan ahead of their ousting of the country’s government.
Metropolitan Police has officially declared the murder of Conservative MP Sir David Amess in Essex to be a terrorist incident, and put Counter Terrorism Policing in charge of the investigation.
“The fatal stabbing in Leigh-on-Sea has tonight been declared as a terrorist incident,” by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon, the Met announced late on Friday, adding that “The early investigation has revealed a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism.”
The murder of Sir David Amess in #Essex earlier today has now been declared as a terrorist incident, and the Met's Counter Terrorism Command will lead the investigation.
Read more here: https://t.co/qM34hqoqBz
— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) October 15, 2021
The Counter Terrorism Command is “working closely with colleagues from the Eastern Region Specialist Operations Unit (ERSOU) and Essex Police,” the Met added.
Amess was attacked and stabbed multiple times on Friday, during a weekly meeting with constituents at the Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea. The authorities identified the suspect only as “a 25-year-old British man” who was arrested at the scene on suspicion of murder and is currently in custody at a police station in Essex.
Within hours, however, the British media said the suspect was “of African appearance” and identified him as being of Somali origin. His name has not been released.
Police said they believe the suspect acted alone, and are not seeking anyone else in connection with the incident at this time. Officers are currently searching two addresses in the London area as part of the investigation.
Amess was a prominent and popular Tory MP, who represented Basildon from 1983 to 1997, and Southend West since then. He is the second serving MP to be stabbed to death in the past five years, after Labour MP Jo Cox was killed in June 2016.
China sent its second manned mission to the Tiangong space station on Friday, with the crew including the station’s first female Taikonaut, Wang Yaping.
The crew of the Shenzhou-13 spacecraft is set to stay on the Tianhe core module for 183 days – the longest in Chinese history – before returning to Earth in April 2022.
The taikonauts are 55-year-old Zhai Zhigang, 41-year-old Wang Yaping, and 41-year-old Ye Guangfu.
Two to three extravehicular activities, or #spacewalks, have been scheduled for China's Shenzhou-13 mission: Lin Xiqiang, CMSA spokesperson https://t.co/Rhas0xGH5j pic.twitter.com/I2MzrDWgf4
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) October 15, 2021
The last crew returned to Earth in September after three months aboard Tianhe. As the first people to live aboard the space station, they worked on maintenance and testing the living conditions of Tiangong after its first modules were constructed and attached in the previous months.
The new crew will test various technologies, including a robotic arm, and conduct spacewalks in orbit. Wang will become the first female Chinese taikonaut to experience a spacewalk.
China will continue to add modules to the station over the next few years and manned missions are set to continue, with the second crew’s six-month stay to become the norm moving forward, according to the Global Times. China expects Tiangong to be fully crewed by late 2022.