New Zealand Family Celebrates THANKSGIVING For the First Time! (Never tried turkey or pumpkin pie)

 

Birds on the Brink

 

We showcase New Zealand’s trailblazing environmental policy that aims to see the country rid of predators by 2050.

New Zealand is famous for its unique birdlife, including the iconic kiwi. But the South Pacific nation has one of the world’s worst extinction rates; introduced predators kill an estimated 25 million native birds each year.

Now, an ambitious plan is in place to save the country’s feathered friends. “Predator Free 2050” aims to rid the island nation of all rats, possums and other pests by 2050.

Taiwan vs New Zealand: Who's pandemic strategy is best?

 

Strict lockdowns save lives. That's New Zealand's philosophy for dealing with Covid-19. Taiwan avoided them. It preferred tests, quarantines and masks to contain the virus's spread. Initially, both islands enjoyed success. But that changed for Taiwan, which was recently hit by the alpha variant.

New Zealand: Surviving a Massacre

 

Two years after New Zealand’s deadly mosque shootings, 101 East returns to find out how those most deeply affected are coping.

On March 15, 2019, the New Zealand city of Christchurch was shattered when a gunman opened fire at two mosques, killing 51 people and wounding another 40.

In the following days, flowers and messages of support flowed in from around the world amid a public outpouring of grief. But two years later, the world’s media and international attention have moved on, while those at the heart of the tragedy are still finding ways to deal with the trauma.

New Zealand Declares Climate Emergency | NowThis

 PM Jacinda Ardern explains why New Zealand joined more than 30 other countries in declaring a climate emergency and pledged to make its public sector carbon neutral by 2025.

New Zealand: Trapped in the Volcano

We investigate how a luxury cruise turned into a deadly nightmare when a volcano erupted on New Zealand's White Island.

It was meant to be the cruise of a lifetime.

A trip on Ovation of the Seas promised the opportunity to get up close to New Zealand's renowned natural beauty.

But on the afternoon of December 9, 2019, tragedy struck.

Cruise ship passengers and other day-trippers became trapped in the middle of a volcanic eruption on White Island - 21 people died, 19 of them were from the Ovation of the Seas.

New Zealand: A Place to Call Home

We investigate the housing crisis sweeping across New Zealand, leaving families struggling to cope.

New Zealand is in the grip of a housing crisis.

Auckland has become one of the most unaffordable cities in the world, ranked just behind Sydney, Australia.

The average house now costs more than one million New Zealand dollars ($600,000), inequality is rife, and the most vulnerable people are being pushed into desperate situations.

Auckland Action Against Poverty (AAAP), a volunteer-led organisation, helps people apply for emergency housing grants.

Countering White Nationalism

A year after the Christchurch mass shooting we discuss the root causes of the growth in white nationalist attacks.

A year ago this week a white supremacist massacred 51 Muslims in mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in an attack that shocked the world and put the spotlight on the rise of racist attacks occurring worldwide.

"The level of violence, the number of people killed, the way it was live-streamed ... I think was really shocking," said Christian Picciolini, a former neo-Nazi who founded the Free Radicals Project, which works to deradicalise individuals.

In recent months there have been a number of attacks fuelled by white nationalism in places like Germany, France and the United States. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a senior fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, says the phenomenon is in part caused by a legitimisation of the ideology by mainstream politicians.

New Zealand’s Dark Days | 101 East

101 East investigates New Zealand's worst mass shooting that killed dozens of innocent people.

Quiet, picturesque New Zealand was the last place most people expected to see a massacre.

"This is not us," the country grieved en masse after the Christchurch killings.

But as the dust settles on a mass shooting that saw 51 Muslims shot and killed as they prayed, community leaders, survivors and activists are starting to tell a different story.

They say alarms about rising Islamophobia and glaring loopholes in the gun laws were ignored repeatedly.

Despite New Zealand's harmonious image, refugees like Guled Mire say they have long battled racism.

Check Into An Airbnb: Get Spied On

A family from New Zealand traveling with their four children and a niece checked into their Airbnb in Ireland only to discover they were on T.V.  The father an IT security specialist did a scan of the homes Wi-Fi network and discovered a camera hidden in what looked like a smoke detector.  How f-ing creepy is that?  What did Airbnb have say about this illegal intrusion?  

"It was such a shock. It was just a really horrible feeling," Nealie Barker told CNN.

She called Airbnb to report the camera. "They had no advice for us over the phone," she said. "The girl just said that if you cancel within 14 days, you won't get your money back."

A client calls to inform you that there is a illegal hidden camera in the residence and your first reaction is to offer information on refunds?  What a grand business model. 

The family relocated to a nearby hotel and called Airbnb the following day. "They still didn't seem to grasp the seriousness of the issue. They were treating it like a canceled booking," Nealie Barker said. Ultimately, Airbnb's trust and safety team promised to conduct an investigation, and it temporarily suspended the listing.

Not caring about the family and more concerned with losing a listing Airbnb completely exonerated the owner of residence after an internal investigation.  

 if Mrs. Baker hadn’t posted about the incident on Facebook and local news stations in New Zealand hadn’t picked up the story Airbnb would have done nothing about the property owner who installed the camera. 

In a statement, Airbnb told CNN: "The safety and privacy of our community -- both online and offline -- is our priority. Airbnb policies strictly prohibit hidden cameras in listings and we take reports of any violations extremely seriously. We have permanently removed this bad actor from our platform."

How many people had used that property? How many were filmed? What did the owner do with the video?   

Why is Islamophobia increasing in Western countries?

New Zealand mourns for at least 50 Muslim worshippers killed by a lone gunman in two mosques.

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern calls it a "terrorist attack".

She was sent a 74-page so-called "manifesto" against Muslims and immigrants by a suspected gunman just minutes before he began firing indiscriminately at the first of two mosques in Christchurch.

In the manifesto, he describes Donald Trump, the president of the United States, as a symbol of renewed white identity.

New Zealand shooter called Donald Trump 'a symbol of white identity' as he murdered 49 people

Mark Sumner  

Daily Kos Staff

New Zealand has a reputation—unmatched beauty, adventurous, filled with eclectic animals, people concerned about the environment, and lots of sheep—but despite its being on the far side of the world from the hotbeds of white nationalism, events on Friday morning showed that no nation is safe from the destructive power of murderous white radicals. 

At least 49 people have died in an attack on two mosques in the city of Christchurch. Dozens more were wounded or otherwise injured. And there’s absolutely no doubt about the cause of this sickening event. Because one of the killers livestreamed it to Facebook, while delivering a white-power manifesto about his hatred for “invaders.” This does not appear to be the act of a “lone gunman,” but a coordinated, planned slaughter staged to catch worshipers at their morning prayers. In addition to the alleged gunman, police have detained at least two others, and reports indicate that one of them was found with a number of explosive devices. Even the awful total so far may not have been close to what was intended in this racist attack.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has issued an official response, saying, “The United States strongly condemns the attack in Christchurch.” And, of course, she provided New Zealanders with the same assistance that has so often been extended to American victims in similar mass-murders: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.” What’s not in Sander’s statement is any hint about why this happened. Nothing about the hate for Muslims that she, her party, and especially her boss have carefully nurtured. Nothing about the global spread of white nationalism that has seen a rise of hate crimes across America and Europe.

This morning, Donald Trump finally followed up with a tweet providing “My warmest sympathy and best wishes,” because apparently someone told him not to say thoughts and prayers. But what was the tweet that Trump delivered just before that one? While the shooting was underway, Trump was tweeting out a link to the nationalist outlet Breitbart. Before that was a tweet about how he was looking forward to vetoing the repeal of his emergency declaration so he could stop “Crime, Drugs, and Trafficking” from flowing into the United States. In other words … keep out the invaders.

Which is no coincidence. As part of his rant, the livestreaming shooter called Donald Trump a “symbol of white identity and common purpose." 

In a manifesto posted to social media (deliberately not linked), the New Zealand shooter frames his motivations around “replacement”—the same term invoked by the Nazi marchers at Charlottesville that Trump described as “good people.” The shooter went on to call immigration “white genocide.”

Despite the location of the shooting, the United  States is at the center of the manifesto. The shooter spends a great deal of his 74 pages talking about “threats to the electoral college” and his desire to “end the melting pot” by “balkanizing” the United States “along political, cultural and, most importantly, racial lines.” In his rant, he repeats phrases and themes from both Trump and American white nationalists, focusing on the Second Amendment as a primary divide in American culture. The shooter also throws out other familiar right-wing phrases, from his concern that  “taxation is theft” to his discussion of “demographic change” in Texas that will lead whites to start a civil war.

There is also a section on how to deal with immigration that seems to come from the Trump playbook: “Few parents, regardless of circumstance, will [be] willing to risk the lives of their children, no matter the economic incentives. Therefore, once we show them the risk of bringing their offspring to our soil, they will avoid our lands.” One whole section of the manifesto is titled “Diversity is weakness.”

The theme of dividing the U.S. along racial lines reoccurs repeatedly in the manifesto. The shooter states that he deliberately chose to use firearms rather than bombs specifically to create more anger over gun violence in hopes of spurring the fight over the Second Amendment and driving a wedge through America. 

As the BBC reports, the entire nation of New Zealand is on heightened alert, and across Europe nations are sending extra security to protect mosques. 

The shooting itself seemed to go on for at least 10 to 15 minutes of nearly continuous gunfire. It’s currently unclear what kind of weapon or weapons were involved. As of Friday afternoon in Christchurch, the death toll included 41 worshipers at the Al Noor Mosque, and eight at the Linwood Mosque several miles to the east. Another victim died in hospital. Police had released one of those they had questioned, but were investigating a property at a rural location about 200 miles south of Christchurch.

Responses around the world have mostly reflected horror and anger … but not always aimed where you might expect. In Australia, white nationalist Senator Fraser Anning did not blame the attack on the shooters, but said the "real cause of bloodshed" is immigration policy that "allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place." As the New York Times reported last August, Anning has called for a “final solution” to Muslims. He also called for changes to immigration laws to reflect “historic European-Christian composition” and “values as a people.”

It’s not just Trump inspiring these attacks. But that doesn’t mean it’s not Trump.

An Innocent Warrior

A Maori activist's fight for his people after being accused of running a paramilitary training camp in New Zealand.

In 2007 New Zealand police arrested charismatic Maori leader Tame Iti and others in anti-terrorist raids after a period of surveillance.

In a long trial, Iti and three other people (the "Urewera Four") were accused of running a terrorist training camp and of being members of a criminal group. The high court found them not guilty of terrorism but they were jailed for firearms offences. The case was the culmination of 170 years of conflict between the New Zealand Crown and the Ngai Tuhoe tribe, who had suffered appalling injustice including the dispossession of their land.

Polluted Paradise (video)

People & Power investigates New Zealand's water pollution problem as regional elections gear up.

New Zealand's pristine and abundant rivers and lakes have long been central to its proud reputation as a land of breath-taking natural beauty - and fundamental to a clean, green, outdoorsy brand that's used to attract millions of foreign visitors every year. 

But are its waterways really as sparkling and bountiful as the tourist ads suggest?

It seems not. 

Although the issue hasn't attracted huge global attention, for some years now campaign groups such as Greenpeace have been ringing alarm bells about the deteriorating quality - and curiously diminishing volume - of New Zealand's fresh water, problems they say are both directly attributable to the country's most profitable industry and in danger of being exacerbated by government-backed projects in support of that industry.

Tsunami warning issued after quake strikes New Zealand

US Geological Survey says 7.8-magnitude earthquake has hit central New Zealand, prompting a tsunami warning.

A powerful magnitude 7.8-magnitude earthquake has rocked New Zealand, prompting a tsunami warning and knocking out power and phone services in many parts of the country.

The US Geological Survey said the shallow temblor hit 90km from the South Island city of Christchurch, which was devastated five years ago by a 6.3 tremor.

That quake killed 185 people in one of New Zealand's deadliest disasters.

Monday's earthquake, initially put at 7.4 but later upgraded, struck at 12:02am local time (1102 GMT on Sunday).