From May 1, the oral contraceptive Slinda (drospirerone) will be listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). This means the price will drop for the more than 100,000 Australian women who currently use it – from around $A320 a year to around $94.
It’s the third contraceptive pill the federal government has added to the PBS this year, after Yaz and Yasmine. But these two are combined oral contraceptives – meaning they contain both the hormones oestrogen and progestogen – whereas Slinda is progestogen-only.
So, Slinda is a little bit different – here’s how it works and what it will cost.
What is Slinda and how does it work?
Oral contraceptive pills contain active ingredients based on the female sex hormones oestrogen and progesterone to prevent pregnancy.
Contraceptive pills with both hormones are known as combined-contraceptive pills. Progesterone only pills are often referred to as mini-pills.
The active ingredient in Slinda is a progestogen, which is a synthetic derivative of progesterone, which makes the medication a mini-pill.
Slinda works by stopping ovulation (the ovary doesn’t release an egg) and making the mucus in the cervix thicker so sperm cannot get into the uterus from the vagina.
Both combined contraceptive pills and mini pills effectively prevent pregnancy, but their suitability varies for different women. Mini-pills, including Slinda, can be 99% effective if used perfectly – but with typical day-to-day use, they provide only around 93% protection.
Who will find Slinda useful?
Slinda may be a particularly beneficial alternative for people who can’t use contraceptives containing oestrogen.
This may include women who are older, overweight, or prone to migraines. This is because oestrogen is known to increase the risk of blood clots which lead to deep vein thrombosis – already a higher risk for older and overweight women.
Similarly, combined pills containing oestrogen aren’t appropriate for those who’ve had a baby in the last 21 days or are breastfeeding. Lower levels of oestrogen are needed in a woman’s body post-birth as it stimulates prolactin, the hormone responsible for milk production. Taking an oestrogen-based pill can potentially interfere with that.
Slinda can be taken at any time after childbirth, including while breastfeeding, and generally remains a safer option for people with a history of blood clots or migraines.
Slinda also has advantages over other, older generations of progestogen-based contraceptive pills. Mini-pills such as Microlut and Noriday have no pill-free days, whichs means if a woman misses taking the pill by even a few hours it can increase her chance of becoming pregnant.
The pill-free window for Slinda is 24 hours. This means if you are less than 24 hours late it’s considered a late pill, not a missed pill. If you take the late pill as soon as you remember, and then the next pill at the normal time, you should have effective protection from unwanted pregnancy.
The potential side effects for Slinda are similar to other contraceptive pills. Women may find that their period may stop altogether, or they may experience bleeding irregularities or spotting, as well as breast tenderness.
The pill may also not work effectively if it’s not taken correctly every day, or if it is taken with other drugs, such as the anti-viral ritonavir and anti-seizure medication phenytoin.
If a woman is suffering from vomiting or severe diarrhoea, Slinda may not be effective and she should use back-up contraception such as condoms.
There are other progesterone-only contraceptive options available on the PBS, such as levonorgestrel pills and implants, including the intrauterine devices, Mirena and Kyleena.
Why was Slinda added to the PBS?
Slinda has been available in Australia since at least 2004, but not at a subsidised price.
In November 2024, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee recommended Slinda’s listing on the PBS. The committee cited several reasons, including advice from doctors, the need to provide women with more contraceptive options and Slinda’s longer pill-free window.
At a stakeholder meeting in October 2024, doctors stressed the need for more choice for women, when choosing a pill.
They highlighted women starting an oral contraceptive pill for the first time will often first use PBS-subsidised medications, even though a non-PBS product may be more suitable for them. Slinda’s listing makes it a more accessible first choice for women.
As Slinda is a prescription-only medication, if you wish to change pills or start on the drug you will need to consult your doctor. If you do change, from May 1 and based on similar PBS medications, you can expect to pay around $31 for a four-month supply.
Nial Wheate in the past has received funding from the ACT Cancer Council, Tenovus Scotland, Medical Research Scotland, Scottish Crucible, and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance. He is a fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Nial is the chief scientific officer of Vaihea Skincare LLC, a director of SetDose Pty Ltd (a medical device company) and was previously a Standards Australia panel member for sunscreen agents. Nial regularly consults to industry on issues to do with medicine risk assessments, manufacturing, design, and testing.
Jasmine Lee and Shoohb Alassadi do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
A man who was found critically injured on a roadside in Miramar, Wellington has died in hospital this morning, with Police opening an unexplained death investigation.
The man was found critically injured on a footpath about 2.20am on Monday, at the intersection of Camperdown Road and Totora Road. It was the second serious incident, following the burglary of a Darlington Road address at 2am, where two adults found a stranger in their home.
After being confronted and fighting with one of the occupants the intruder fled. It was when Police were carrying out area enquiries that officers came across the injured and unconscious man, a short distance from his vehicle.
Parallel investigations are under way into both incidents and Police are still working to determine if there is any link between the two.
Sightings of the victim
We would like to hear from anybody who walked or drove in the area near Camperdown Road and Totora Road between 12.30am and 2.30am on Monday. You may not think you have anything to contribute, but we would like to know what you may have seen, or view any dashcam footage.
Public appeal
We ask that residents in Darlington Road, Totara Road and Camperdown Road, particularly the block north of Camperdown Road, to check their properties for any missing clothing from clotheslines or missing footwear or other items. We also want to hear from anyone who locates any discarded items of property on their sections.
Investigators also want to hear of any sightings of any suspicious persons in this area between 12.30am and 2.30am on Monday, or from anyone with CCTV footage. We are particularly interested in any sightings of a man wearing a white cap, shorts and gumboots.
Police would also like to hear of any suspicious activity or people prowling in the area over the last couple of weeks, including any previously unreported thefts from properties or vehicles since early March.
Enquiries ongoing
Police are still completing scene examinations and will be visiting properties to ask residents if they saw anything of relevance to the investigation and whether they have CCTV footage.
At this stage it has not been established if there is a connection between the intruder and the deceased, but that is a focus of the investigation.
While we are still piecing the events of Monday morning together, Police can confirm the intruder was unknown to the occupants of the property that he broke into. They do not know him, and do not know why he was in their house.
We know these events will cause concern in the community and we are working hard to answer the many questions around Monday morning’s incidents. Police are carrying out reassurance patrols in the Miramar area and this will continue over the coming days.
If you can help
If you have any information that could help our enquiries, please update us online now or call 105.
Please use the reference number 250317/6324, or reference Operation Celtic.
Information can also be provided anonymously via Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111.
Man charged following evade incident in Huon Valley
Tuesday, 18 March 2025 – 2:33 pm.
Police have today charged a man with several offences following an evade incident in the Huon Valley. The man was arrested yesterday when the vehicle he was allegedly driving was intercepted on Swamp Road at Franklin. The 50-year-old man of no fixed address has been charged with several offences including motor vehicle stealing, evade police, drive while disqualified and assault a police officer. He was detained to appear before the Hobart Magistrates Court this afternoon.
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has released a new set of updated financial benchmarks to help small business owners take the pulse of their business.
Updated annually, the ATO’s benchmarks act as a health check, allowing small business owners to compare their performance including average expenses against other businesses in the same industry.
Quotes attributable to ATO Assistant Commissioner Tony Goding:
‘The benchmarks are a valuable tool for small businesses wanting to stay in good financial health.’
‘Think of our benchmarks like a routine test you take with your GP each year. These can help small businesses diagnose their strengths or spot the early warning signs.’
‘Whether you’re running a pizza shop, pet store or a plumbing business, the benchmarks can help you see how your business stacks up.’
‘If your numbers are outside of the benchmark range compared to others in your industry it may be time for a closer look at your business plan.’
‘Businesses that remain within industry benchmarks are generally less likely to attract the ATO’s attention.’
‘While we never use the benchmarks in isolation, small businesses who fall outside the ATO’s benchmarks are more likely to trigger a closer examination from us to identify if they are making mistakes or deliberately doing the wrong thing.’
The ATO takes non-compliance with tax seriously. Small businesses avoiding their tax obligations are participating in the shadow economy which puts pressure on Australians who are doing the right thing.
Deliberate shadow economy behaviours contribute nearly 60% of the gross small business income tax gap or around $11.2 billion per annum in missing tax. Approximately $8.9 billion of this is associated with under reporting of income and over claiming of deductions.
‘The benchmarks are just one of the tools we use to tackle the shadow economy, along with community tip-offs and data matching.’
‘It’s all about levelling the playing field for honest businesses who are being undercut by their dishonest competitors that aren’t paying the tax they’re supposed to,’ Mr Goding added.
The benchmarks cover 100 industries and over 2 million small businesses around the country. The industries include:
Accommodation and food
Building and construction trade services
Education, training, recreation and support services
Health care and personal services
Manufacturing
Other services
Professional, scientific and technical services
Retail trade
Transport, postal and warehousing.
Small business owners who need help understanding how to improve their business performance can consult a business adviser or registered tax professional. The ATO’s online learning platform Essentials to strengthen your small businessExternal Link can support small business owners to prepare for these conversations, as well as further understand their tax and super obligations.
The benchmarks are accessible on the ATO website and via the ATO app business performance check tool. The key benchmark ratios can also be downloaded from data.gov.au.
Example
The below example shows a small business using the ATO benchmarks to compare its performance to similar businesses in the same industry.
Anna’s pizza shop
Anna operates a pizza shop as a sole trader. Anna wants to know how her business compares to her competitors and how she can improve her business.
Anna searches online for ‘pizza shop benchmarks’ and finds the ATO small business benchmarks. She follows the instructions to download the ATO app. Then, she goes to the business performance check tool.
Anna enters her details into the business performance check tool. She learns the key ratio of cost of sales to turnover for her shop is 44%.
While this is within the range for businesses in her industry with a turnover of $550,300, Anna sees that the range for cost of sales starts at 37%. She realises some of her competitors have lower cost of sales.
Anna looked at other suppliers in the market and got a better deal to reduce her business’s expenses and improve profits.
A vacancy fee return is an online form that you lodge using Online services for foreign investors once a year while you own the residential property.
The information required includes how many days in a vacancy year your property was occupied, that is:
occupied by the owner living in the property
rented by a tenant
made genuinely available for rent.
You or your representative must lodge the vacancy fee return within 30 days from the end of each vacancy year using Online services for foreign investors.
How a vacancy fee applies to you
A vacancy fee is a fee that you pay when your residential property is vacant for 183 days (6 months) or more in one vacancy year. By living in the dwelling or making it available for rent, you may not need to pay the fee.
Note: Established dwellings purchased as a principal place of residence cannot be rented or leased. The property needs to be genuinely occupied by foreign owners or their family members.
You may need to pay a vacancy fee if your residential dwelling is not:
residentially occupied
genuinely available on the rental market
rented out for 183 or more days (6 months) in a 12-month period.
A vacancy fee may also apply if the vacancy fee return is not lodged by the due date.
When you lodge your vacancy fee return, the confirmation page will tell you if you are liable to pay a vacancy fee and the amount you need to pay. You can pay the fee when lodging the return or within 30 days of lodging the vacancy fee return.
The vacancy fee is based on the fee amount you paid when you submitted the foreign investment application.
After you’ve lodged we will email you a notice of liability of the vacancy fee payable that includes the following:
information on the reason we are charging you this fee
the fee amount payable
payment details
the due date.
It is important you use the correct payment reference number (PRN) when making a payment.
Changes to legislation mean that for vacancy years that start from 9 April 2024, the vacancy fee will be double the foreign investment application fee. This applies for all residential properties that are within scope of vacancy fee.
Example: calculating the vacancy fee
Myeong purchased a newly developed townhouse for $850,000 as an investment property in Geelong. Myeong paid a foreign investment application fee $13,200 and settlement occurred on 1 August 2022. Each year in August, Myeong is required to lodge a vacancy fee return.
If Myeong is liable for a vacancy fee, for:
the vacancy years 1 August 2022 to 31 July 2023 and 1 August 2023 to 31 July 2024, the fee would be the same as the foreign investment application fee of $13,200
the vacancy year 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025, the vacancy fee will be double the foreign investment application fee. The vacancy fee will therefore be $26,400
End of example
If you acquired the dwelling under a New or near-new dwelling exemption certificate held by a developer, the vacancy fee payable will be based on what the foreign investment application fee would have been for the dwelling had the exemption certificate not been in place.
If the application fee was waived, the vacancy fee is based on the lowest foreign investment application fee that would have been payable.
In the case of joint tenants, only one vacancy fee will be payable. For tenants in common, the fee payable will be based on the foreign investment application fee that was payable by each individual tenant.
The vacancy fee may also apply where a foreign person failed to submit a foreign investment application but purchased a residential property before 9 May 2017.
Joint owners or multiple dwellings
If the dwelling is owned by 2 or more people as joint tenants, you only need to lodge one vacancy fee return.
If you own a share of a dwelling as a tenant in common, you must each lodge a vacancy fee return.
When multiple dwellings are constructed on the land, you must lodge a vacancy fee return for each new dwelling constructed.
When you are not required to lodge a vacancy fee return
You are not required to lodge a vacancy fee return but are required to update your details if any of the following occur during a vacancy year:
the dwelling is sold or otherwise legally transferred (including if the owner dies)
you are no longer a foreign investor.
You do not have to lodge a vacancy fee return if you own vacant land and a dwelling has not yet been constructed on the land. You must lodge a vacancy fee return once a dwelling has been constructed and for each new dwelling constructed.
If any other changes occur, such as changes to your foreign person status or property, you can update your details.
More information about conveyancers, real estate agents and other persons charging a fee for services is available the Tax Practitioners BoardExternal Link website.
In applying the vacancy fee rules, a vacancy year is each successive period of 12 months starting on the occupation day for the dwelling during which you have continuously held an interest in the dwelling.
A vacancy year is unique to each dwelling held by you. It is not a calendar year or a financial year.
What is occupation day
The occupation day is the first day you have the right to occupy the dwelling. This will typically be the:
settlement day for an established dwelling
day on which a fitness for occupancy certificate for a new dwelling was issued.
Edmond is a foreign person who purchased an apartment that settled on 5 October 2022. As this was the date the apartment could be lived in, the occupancy date for the apartment is 5 October 2022.
As long as Edmond is the owner of the property and is a foreign person, he is required to lodge a vacancy fee return for each vacancy year.
The vacancy year starts from the occupancy date for the apartment. For Edmond, the first vacancy year is 5 October 2022 to 4 October 2023.
Edmond must lodge his first vacancy fee return by 3 November 2023. This is the date that is 30 days after his vacancy fee year ended on 4 October 2023.
His vacancy year for each subsequent year is 5 October to 4 October.
End of example
When is a dwelling residentially occupied
A dwelling is considered residentially occupied if any of these situations last for at least 183 days in a vacancy year:
The owner or a relative of the owner genuinely occupied the dwelling as a residence.
The dwelling was genuinely occupied as a residence subject to lease or license for minimum terms of 30 days.
The dwelling was made genuinely available as a residence on the rental market (with minimum terms of 30 days).
Residential occupancy of at least 183 days does not need to be one continuous block of time. Residential occupancy can be made up of multiple continuous periods of at least 30 days throughout the vacancy year.
If a dwelling is made available for a short-term lease of less than 30 days (including via web-based stay sites) it is not residentially occupied. These dwellings are liable for a vacancy fee.
We consider a dwelling genuinely available for occupation as a residence (with a term of 30 days or more) if it is:
made available on the rental market
advertised publicly
available at a market rent.
You may need to provide supporting evidence to prove a dwelling was residentially occupied during a vacancy year. For example, if you are requesting a fee waiver on the basis that the dwelling was occupied.
How to lodge a vacancy fee return
You should lodge a vacancy fee return using Online services for foreign investors. Select either:
From July 2023 when you register a residential dwelling, you will receive an asset identification number (asset ID), previously known as a land registration number.
If you:
received a vacancy fee reminder from us, the number will be in the email
have not received a vacancy fee reminder, you may need to register your asset first in Online services for foreign investors to receive an asset ID.
Vacancy fee exemptions
You do not pay a vacancy fee if you can show that your dwelling was incapable of being occupied as a residence for at least 183 days in a vacancy year. You must still lodge a vacancy fee return to claim this exemption.
Your dwelling may be considered incapable of being occupied as a residence if any of the following apply:
The dwelling is damaged, unsafe or is otherwise unsuitable to be occupied as a residence.
The dwelling is undergoing substantial repairs or renovations.
Occupation of the dwelling as a residence is prohibited or legally restricted by an order of a court or tribunal or a law of the Commonwealth, state or territory.
A person (who may or may not be the foreign person) who ordinarily occupies the dwelling was absent from the dwelling due to receiving long-term, in-patient, medical or residential care.
You may be required to provide acceptable supporting evidence to prove the dwelling was incapable of being occupied.
Vacancy fee waivers
We only waive or remit fees in limited circumstances.
The vacancy fee waiver form is not available in Online services for foreign investors.
If you do not lodge your vacancy fee return by the due date, you may be liable to pay a vacancy fee. This is regardless of the number of days the dwelling was residentially occupied during the vacancy year.
If you are directed to pay the vacancy fee for failing to lodge, you will receive an email from us. The email notice will provide the following information:
reason we are charging the fee
amount of the fee you have to pay
payment details
due date.
You may be liable for an infringement notice or a civil penalty if you do not:
lodge a vacancy fee return on time
keep records that are relevant to your liability for vacancy fees.
You are required to keep these records for at least 5 years after the end of each vacancy year.
A CERES-1 carrier rocket carrying eight satellites blasts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on March 17, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua] China’s CERES-1 commercial rocket put eight satellites into the 535-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit on Monday. The carrier rocket, CERES-1 Y10, blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 4:07 p.m. on March 17 on a mission dubbed “Auld Lang Syne.” It delivered five satellites, including the Yunyao-1 55-60 and the AIRSAT-06 and -07 satellites. Equipped with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) occultation detection payloads, the Yunyao-1 satellites are part of the commercial meteorological satellite constellation the Tianjin-based company Yunyao Aerospace is building, with plans for 90 in total. The payload enables satellites to collect atmospheric temperature, humidity, pressure and ionospheric electron density data. The constellation aims to establish a real-time global atmospheric and ionospheric detection system for global weather forecasting and application in various industries. Specifically, it will provide meteorological forecast information with a real-time performance better than 20 minutes for countries along the Belt and Road partner countries, according to the company. Beijing-based rocket company Galactic Energy has completed 17 successful launches, with its most recent mission marking the first commercial launch of the year in China.
More than 50 percent of China’s new energy power generation was consumed through market-based transactions last year, a milestone that underscores the significant progress of China’s electricity market reforms over the past decade, according to the country’s top energy authority.
China’s national installed capacity for new energy reached 1.45 billion kilowatts last year, making up 43 percent of the country’s total installed capacity, figures released by the National Energy Administration reveal.
The combined trading volume of green electricity certificates (GEC) meanwhile reached 446 billion kilowatt-hours, a dramatic 364 percent increase year-on-year. This means that roughly one-quarter of all new energy production realized its environmental value through the green certificate and green electricity market, it said.
GECs are the sole proof of the environmental attributes of renewable energy power in China and serve as the only certificate for verifying renewable energy production and consumption, according to relevant rules.
China’s issuance of green electricity certificates saw a significant increase in January as the country continues accelerating its push for sustainable development.
The NEA issued 231.2 million GECs in January, including 94.74 million from wind power, about 40 percent of the total, 81.82 million from hydropower and 39.43 million from solar power, all of which represent an increase of 225 percent year-on-year.
China introduced the GEC system as a pilot program in 2017. In December 2023, the NEA issued the first batch of GECs after being designated as the authority responsible for green electricity certificate management. By the end of January, China had cumulatively issued 5.19 billion green electricity certificates, according to the NEA.
The figures highlight the deepening impact of power sector reforms initiated in 2015. Market-based electricity trading volume has surged from 1.1 trillion kilowatt-hours in 2016 to 6.2 trillion kWh in 2024 and now accounts for 63 percent of total electricity consumption nationwide.
Inter-provincial and inter-regional market trading has seen even more dramatic growth, reaching 1.4 trillion kWh in 2024, a more than tenfold increase compared to 2016, according to the NEA.
The number of participants in the market has also exploded. Registered market entities have increased nearly 20-fold, from 42,000 in 2016 to 816,000 currently. This diverse group includes power generators and consumers across various energy sources, from coal-fired plants to new energy and nuclear power facilities.
Industry experts suggest that the continued deepening of China’s electricity market reforms is not only effectively promoting the consumption of clean energy, but also laying the foundation for a more efficient, flexible and sustainable power system, vital for China’s green energy transition and high-quality economic development.
A major challenge for renewable energy is its variability and the potential for curtailment. Market-based transactions provide a mechanism to better match supply and demand, incentivizing consumption when renewable energy is available and reducing curtailment, said Lin Boqiang, head of Xiamen University’s China Institute for Studies in Energy Policy.
China is deploying renewable energy at an unprecedented scale. To make this sustainable, it needs efficient mechanisms to consume this power. Market mechanisms are essential for managing the variability and scale of renewable generation, ensuring it’s not just installed but actually used, he said.
“Market-based transactions allow for more efficient allocation of electricity resources. Prices signal scarcity and abundance, guiding generation and consumption decisions toward the most economically and environmentally sound options.”
Hao Ruifeng, director of the NEA’s market supervision department, noted that China’s electricity market now boasts a comprehensive trading system, encompassing medium- and long-term contracts, spot markets, ancillary services and green electricity certificates and trading.
Medium- and long-term trading is now operating routinely, and spot market development is advancing rapidly. Market mechanisms have become a crucial tool for optimizing electricity resource allocation across China, said Hao.
China has maintained a new energy utilization rate above 95 percent. In 2024, green electricity trading volume reached 233.6 billion kWh, a year-on-year jump of 235 percent, according to NEA data.
Health Minister Simeon Brown has today officially opened the new East Building expansion at Manukau Health Park.
“This is a significant milestone and the first stage of the Grow Manukau programme, which will double the footprint of the Manukau Health Park to around 30,000m2 once complete,” Mr Brown says.
“Home to Ophthalmology and Women’s Health, this modern, fit-for-purpose building has been meticulously planned to optimise the best clinical care for patients.
“Previously, ophthalmology services were delivered across two sites at Middlemore Hospital. The relocation of the clinics from Middlemore Hospital to the Health Park will enable the entire service to be delivered from one facility, providing patients a ‘one-stop shop.’
“This will streamline the patient journey while increasing efficiencies and enabling new models of care.
“It will also free up enough space at Middlemore Hospital for an additional 30-bed acute award, which will support winter planning in Counties Manukau and assist in improving hospital flow.
“Women’s Health will also be able to coordinate from one facility, delivering more clinics and services and improving access for cancer-related procedures such as colposcopies and hysteroscopies.
“Improving health infrastructure is a priority for the Government to ensure patients have access to timely, quality healthcare.
“Combining these services into one single site will make a real difference for patients who can now access comprehensive, coordinated care in one place. This new building will provide an enhanced patient experience and shorter wait times, while increasing capacity across the Counties Manukau district,” Mr Brown says.
Manukau Health Park will deliver 150,000 additional outpatient appointments and 3,600 additional surgical procedures to serve the needs of the rapidly growing South Auckland population once complete.
The full Grow Manukau redevelopment programme is expected to be complete in 2027. Once finished, Manukau Health Park will have three new buildings, a new outpatient renal care centre, a standalone theatre block with four new theatres, a 20-bed post-anaesthesia care unit, and extensive refurbishments and expansion of existing facilities.
Five people have been arrested following an aggravated robbery and attempted burglary in Whangārei this morning.
At about 6am Police received a report of an attempted break-in at a service station on Tarewa Road followed, by another report of a group of people breaking into a premise (service station) on Kiripaka Road at about 6.15am.
Detective Sergeant Ryan Cooper, Whangārei CIB, says cash, cigarettes and vapes were targeted before the offenders fled in two vehicles.
Both vehicles were quickly located abandoned in Aratiatia and Rerewai Place and towed for forensic examination.
“Enquiries have led us to execute a search warrant at an address on Pebble Beach Road where two people were taken into custody without incident.
“Some of the stolen property has been recovered from the address.”
Detective Sergeant Cooper says CCTV also assisted in Police stopping a vehicle of interest nearby, where another three people were arrested.
“A search of the vehicle has also located some of the stolen goods and cash.
“This was a quick response by our teams, ensuring our community knows we are dedicated to holding offenders to account for these crimes.
“I hope the Tikipunga and wider Whangārei community feels reassured by these arrests.”
Five people, aged 15 and 16, will appear in the Whangārei Youth Court charged with unlawful gets into motor vehicle, attempted burglary and aggravated robbery.
Latrobe man charged with drug and traffic offences
Tuesday, 18 March 2025 – 2:00 pm.
A Latrobe man has been charged after an evade incident yesterday, and a subsequent search where police seized a quantity of drugs. Around 11am officers from Task Force Scelus attempted to intercept a vehicle on Forbes Street at Devonport. The vehicle evaded officers and police subsequently searched a residence in Devonport and took a man, alleged to have been the driver, into custody. During a search at the property police seized a quantity of methamphetamines. The 40-year-old man from Latrobe has been charged with several drug and road safety related offences including with trafficking in a controlled drug and aggravated evade. He was detained to appear before the Devonport Magistrates Court today.
Woodville Gardens man Bill Frangos was murdered more than three hours before his Essex Street home was set alight in a bid to destroy evidence, Major Crime Investigation Branch detectives have revealed.
In a significant development in the murder investigation, detectives have also revealed they believe those responsible for the murder returned to the scene in a distinctive grey Holden Commodore shortly before lighting the fire.
CCTV has revealed just after 3.30am on 7 November 2024 the grey Commodore – which has a silver front bumper panel, damage to the front passenger door and a black tyre rim on the front passenger side – was parked on Ridley Grove at Woodville Gardens, a short distance from Mr Frangos’ Essex Street house.
A man wearing a backpack was seen walking from the grey Commodore towards the Essex Street house and a short time later CCTV captured it erupting in flames.
The vision also shows what detectives believe to be the same man then running back to Ridley Grove and leaving the area in a southerly direction in the grey Commodore.
In December detectives released CCTV of a red Ford Falcon XR6 utility leaving the vicinity of the murder. New CCTV footage reveals two people returning to this vehicle before it leaves. Investigations have revealed these two people are male of African appearance.
This vehicle has been seized by detectives as part of the investigation.
This new CCTV footage captured the two men walking between Mr Frangos’ address and back to the utility parked in nearby Parker Street on a number of occasions between 10.30pm and midnight on 6 November 2024.
Detectives believe the same two men are responsible for Mr Frangos’ murder and the subsequent arson attack on his home. It is believed the two men and Mr Frangos were acquainted and the murder is not random.
Major Crime Investigation Branch Officer-in-Charge Detective Superintendent Darren Fielke appealed for anyone with information on the whereabouts of the grey Commodore or who knows of any individual associated with it to contact police.
“It is a distinctive vehicle, particularly with the silver front bumper panel, that people will certainly recognise,’’ he said.
“The investigation is now moving rapidly, but we are still seeking information from the public to obtain more evidence that will assist us in rebuilding the full picture of what happened that night.
“We are confident there will be a resolution in the case as investigations continue. The net is closing in on those responsible for Bill’s murder. Now is the time to come forward with information.’’
Anyone with any information on the grey Commodore or those associated with it during the evening of Wednesday 6 November and the early hours of Thursday 7 November are urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
The 72 hours after the sexual assault of a child can be a crucial window for police to collect biological evidence and document signs of bruising or injury.
But this procedure – known as a forensic medical examination – can be scary and invasive.
In new research published with colleagues, I interviewed ten children (aged 4-16) and their parents about their experiences attending a Melbourne paediatric hospital in the hours after an alleged assault.
This was a small group, but their stories shed light on wider concerns. Addressing them can help put children first in what may be the most traumatic time of their lives.
Its purpose is to gather biological evidence from the victim to help police identify an offender and prosecute them.
At a hospital crisis care suite, the child will speak to a specialist doctor (a forensic paediatrician) alongside another clinician, usually a psychologist or social worker. Police also attend.
The doctor will take the child’s medical history, as well as asking for an account of the assault.
The doctor swabs relevant areas – such as the child’s vulva, vagina or anus – to collect biological materials that may be present, including saliva or semen. They will also look for injuries or bruising.
This examination can be uncomfortable and can take hours. It may also be emotionally harrowing, for the child as well as their carer.
In the following days, children often need to give another statement to police and are referred for counselling.
A child usually attends a forensic medical examination alongside their parent. fizkes/Shutterstock
A trauma-informed approach means prioritising a sense of safety for children who have experienced trauma, building trust and sharing control, to avoid retraumatisation.
This means explaining to children and their carers what is going to happen next, gaining their consent and giving them some control over the timing and pace of any interventions (such as being swabbed).
Children and families have different – sometimes traumatic – experiences of dealing with health services and police. So considering a child’s personal history and culture is important.
However there is still little research examining children and young people’s experience of crisis care.
My study involved seven girls, two boys and one non-binary child, aged between four and 16. In the days or weeks after their examination, I interviewed the child and the parent who attended hospital with them, both individually and together (in child-parent pairs).
The interviews uncovered four areas that were important to children and their parents.
1. Repeating their story but not feeling heard
After they first report their experience, children need to tell their story several times to various strangers.
This means sharing highly personal details while distressed to people who often don’t have the time to get to know them, their context, family, previous trauma history or culture.
Fiona* (16) found this aspect of the process “very, very, very stressful.”
Some said repeating their story felt like they had to convince professionals it was true.
Layla (14) commented:
I felt like I was the one in trouble.
2. Being treated with care matters
Several young participants discussed feeling “traumatised,” “intimidated” and “ashamed” during the examination itself.
Seven-year-old Sasha told us about the doctor who examined her:
She kept saying, ‘Lie still,’ and it was hard for me to just lie still. Then she just, when she did the examination […] I was crying on the bed, and it hurt me […]. And she just looked at me. Because she’s seen me crying and she just looked at me.
But when the doctor, or the clinician was caring – and took time to understand them and their individual needs – it helped ease some of the distress.
One parent, Kaye, felt the clinician “had this incredible demeanour and heart about her” and helped her child “understand what was going to happen.”
Other young people appreciated the clinician helped them with panic attacks and “made us feel relaxed.”
The youngest participant Ava (4) said she liked that she was given a teddy bear.
Children told us caring gestures – such as providing a teddy bear – made the experience less scary. fizkes/Shutterstock
3. Unpleasant surroundings made the experience worse
Some participants described the space where the forensic medical examination took place as small and unwelcoming.
Dylan (16) felt it was “unsafe”, while Ava said it was “a bit scary”.
Examination spaces need to be kept forensically clean. In the hospital where these examinations took place, that meant there were no windows, pictures on the walls or soft furnishings.
Several young participants felt it showed what had happened to them was somehow shameful. As Felicity explained:
it was frightening. […] You’re just walking down a really long corridor, all these white […] ceilings and walls. And it was kind of just like a bit […] not welcoming, not nice and hidden away.
Parents often felt sidelined or unheard before, during and after the examination.
Samira (a parent) said she didn’t feel like her concerns were understood:
I come from a different background, I don’t know what is happening and I don’t know what to ask. I’m not very trusting of police.
Children themselves worried about their parent. As Layla said:
it’s not just me that’s going through this, it’s my mum. […] I feel like she should be able to have that support too. None of it was offered to her.
One parent said they’d been “sent home without any support”. Another had a sense of being “just left there and wondering what to do”.
Responding to the whole child
The children and adults I interviewed made clear they wanted a holistic approach.
They wanted professionals (including doctors, clinicians and police) to not only pursue justice on their behalf, but also listen and respond to their physical, emotional and social needs and take into account their particular context and culture.
The response needs to make children and their families feel safer – not more scared.
It also needs to help them recover from the trauma, including counselling for both parents and children without long waitlists.
The National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.
*Names have been changed.
Caroline Whitehouse is employed by the Northern Centre Against Sexual Assault, which is affiliated with the peak body Sexual Assault Support Services Victoria (SASVic). She was previously employed by the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, where this study took place. The Royal Children’s Hospital, along with LaTrobe University, gave ethics approval for the study.
Source: United States Senator for Rhode Island Jack Reed
WASHINGTON, DC – As the Trump Administration confirms it is halting more than $1 billion in federal assistance that enables public schools and food banks to purchase nutritious produce and food from local farmers, U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) says these cancellations will harm hungry students and low-income families, farmers and food producers, and local economies.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs on the chopping block include the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA). In a statement to The Hill, Trump’s USDA claimed that the essential programs that help provide nutritious food to hungry Americans “no longer effectuate the goals of the agency.”
This year, the programs were set to distribute $660 million for schools and child care facilities and $500 million for food banks to work with local farmers within a set geographic range to purchase local food from farmers, fishermen, and food producers. The successful programs have increased access to locally-grown, nutritious food in underserved communities and helped family farmers, fishermen, and local food producers significantly expand their markets.
Senator Reed joined with U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) and 30 other colleagues in urging USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins to reverse course on these cuts and provide additional information about implementation of the USDA programs set to be cancelled.
“At a time when food insecurity remains high, providing affordable, fresh food to food banks and families while supporting American farmers is critical. Notably, LFPA and LFS have benefitted producers and consumers by providing funding for purchases through all 50 states, four territories, and 84 tribal governments,”the Senators wrote. “Through LFPA and LFS, USDA has prioritized the procurement and distribution of healthy, nutritious, domestic food. It has also taken an important step towards igniting rural prosperity by expanding and strengthening markets among farmers and rural economies. As of December 2024, the programs had supported over 8,000 producers, providing increased marketing
opportunities.”
According to Farm Fresh Rhode Island, these cuts would cost Rhode Island approximately $3 million and negatively impact about 100 small businesses in the Ocean State.
Senator Reed noted that these drastic cuts come as Republican budget proposals threaten access to critical nutrition assistance programs and as the demand on local food banks across the nation continues to soar in Rhode Island and across the nation.
“Making it harder for schools and food banks to serve up fresh, nutritious, local foods to students and struggling families is a shameful way to scrounge up cash for President Trump’s billionaires-first tax giveaway. We know that hungry students do not perform as well in the classroom as their peers who have access to regular, nutritious meals. These reckless cuts to essential USDA programs will have an outsized impact on low-income families and on the local farmers, fishermen, and food producers who have benefitted significantly from expanded local markets for their goods,” said Senator Reed. “Time and time again, President Trump has insisted that his Administration’s devastating cuts will magically not impact vulnerable American families. By cutting these vital USDA programs, he is making his priorities crystal clear – billionaires come first and American families come last.”
During the COVID pandemic, Congress made $900 million available for U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) food purchasing efforts through the LFPA. These programs helped strengthen local and regional food systems, improved agricultural supply-chain resiliency, and supported underserved producers and communities. Using LFPA funds, states set up approved programs to purchase food produced within the state or within 400 miles of the delivery destination, which was then distributed through food banks, pantries, and other food distribution centers where hungry families in need can receive food.
In Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM), working with nonprofits like Farm Fresh Rhode Island, was awarded a total of $1.78 million to purchase local foods for distribution within the state. To date, DEM, Farm Fresh, and their partners, have purchased food from 95 local producers and distributed that nutritious, local food to over 65,000 Rhode Islanders.
Last year, Senator Reed introduced legislation that would codify LFPA into law, providing permanent funding to ensure the program continues. Reed’s EAT Local Foods Act gained the support of a wide range of farmers, food hubs, coalitions, and business networks across the nation in addition to several leading Rhode Island organizations, including: the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, Farm Fresh Rhode Island, the Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Food Policy Council, and Southside Community Land Trust.
In addition to Senators Reed and Schiff, the letter was signed by U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY); Ben Ray Luján (D-NM); Amy Klobuchar (D-MN); Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH); Tina Smith (D-MN); Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI); Ron Wyden (D-OR); Richard Blumenthal (D-CT); Martin Heinrich (D-NM); Chris Van Hollen (D-MD); Michael Bennet (D-CO); Elissa Slotkin (D-MI); Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY); Elizabeth Warren (D-MA); Jeff Merkley (D-OR); Raphael Warnock (D-GA); Tammy Baldwin (D-WI); Richard Durbin (D-IL); Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV); Patty Murray (D-WA); Angus King (I-ME); Bernie Sanders (I-VT); John Hickenlooper (D-CO); Gary Peters (D-MI); Jacky Rosen (D-NV); Peter Welch (D-VT); Alex Padilla (D-CA); Cory Booker (D-NJ); Ed Markey (D-MA); and Mazie Hirono (D-HI).
Full text of the letter follows:
March 14, 2025
Ms. Brooke Rollins
Secretary
U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave SW
Washington, DC 20250
Dear Secretary Rollins:
We write to express serious concerns regarding the cancellation of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs supporting local and regional food purchases providing assistance to those in need. These successful programs, the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA) and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program (LFS), allow states, territories, and Tribes to purchase local foods from nearby farmers and ranchers to be used for emergency food providers, schools, and child care centers.
At a time when food insecurity remains high, providing affordable, fresh food to food banks and families while supporting American farmers is critical. Notably, LFPA and LFS have benefitted producers and consumers by providing funding for purchases through all 50 states, four territories, and 84 tribal governments.
Through LFPA and LFS, USDA has prioritized the procurement and distribution of healthy, nutritious, domestic food. It has also taken an important step towards igniting rural prosperity by expanding and strengthening markets among farmers and rural economies. As of December 2024, the programs had supported over 8,000 producers, providing increased marketing
opportunities.
Most importantly, we ask that you reverse the cancellation of LFPA and LFS. We also ask that you provide a thorough and complete update on USDA’s implementation of LFPA and LFS,
including answers to the following questions:
What is the status of reimbursements for entities that have agreements with USDA through LFPA and LFS? What is the last date for which states, territories, and Tribes received reimbursements for food purchases under LFPA and LFS?
Has the Administration conducted any assessments of how these program cancellations will impact producers and recipient organizations (e.g., food banks, schools, child care centers)? If so, please provide a copy of any such assessments.
We have grave concerns that the cancellation of LFPA and LFS poses extreme harm to producers and communities in every state across the country. At a time of uncertainty in farm country, farmers need every opportunity to be able to expand market access for their products.
Please provide responses to the information requested in our questions no later than Friday, April 4. Thank you for your attention to this urgent and important matter.
In this Jan 15, 2015 photo, Lee Shau-kee, Hong Kong real estate tycoon and founder of Henderson Land Development, poses for media during a press conference. [Photo/China Daily] Lee Shau-kee, founder of Hong Kong’s Henderson Land Development and one of the city’s most successful property businesspeople and philanthropists, died on Monday at the age of 97. Lee passed away peacefully at dusk, surrounded by his family, according to a statement by Henderson. Born to a merchant family in Shunde, Guangdong province in 1928, Lee started in his business in Hong Kong in his twenties and established Henderson in 1976. Lee’s decades-long success in real estate development and investment made him one of the wealthiest people in the world. In 1996, he was ranked by Forbes as the fourth-richest person globally, with a total fortune of $12.7 billion. Beyond his business achievements, Lee was also celebrated for his charitable works. In 2008, Lee and Henderson together donated nearly HK$600 million ($77.2 million) to assist people struck by the magnitude-8 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan province. Lee’s charity foundations have generously supported students and universities throughout Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland, promoting educational development. Lee was awarded the Grand Bauhinia Medal by the SAR government in 2007 in recognition of his contributions. Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu expressed his condolences on Lee’s passing in a statement on Monday night. Praising Lee as an exceptional business leader and entrepreneur, the chief executive said that Lee had contributed greatly to the economic development, prosperity and stability of Hong Kong. Lee’s generous donations and dedication to support talent also contributed to the development of education and research, the chief executive said.
New Zealand could face twice as many of the most extreme atmospheric rivers by the end of the century, according to new research by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) published today. Not only could the narrow bands of concentrated water vapour increase, but in the future rainfall from these ‘rivers in the sky’ is likely to make up a much bigger proportion of New Zealand’s total annual rainfall.
The research, led by NIWA research assistant Felix Goddard, analysed the latest climate change projections released last year by NIWA and the Ministry for the Environment, and was recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
Co-author, NIWA climate scientist Dr Peter Gibson, says the study examined projections for the frequency and intensity of atmospheric rivers under a relatively high greenhouse gas emissions future. Only one scenario was investigated at this time.
“Atmospheric rivers have been responsible for some of our biggest downpours in recent years, such as the West Coast flooding that took out the Waiho Bridge in March 2019, the widespread flooding in Westport in July 2021, and the exceptionally wet Auckland summer of 2022-2023. As an island nation surrounded by oceans, we experience atmospheric rivers when huge amounts of water vapour are transported down from the tropics and sub-tropics and make landfall. These ‘rivers in the sky’ cause heavy precipitation and flooding when they make landfall in New Zealand, producing extremely large rainfall totals, especially when they interact with mountainous terrain.”
Dr Gibson says there are two reasons why atmospheric rivers are likely to increase in the future. “The first reason is that an overall warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour, while the second reason why we may see an increase in atmospheric rivers is because of changes in wind patterns. Climate projections show changes to atmospheric circulation, with an intensification of the westerly jetstream over New Zealand with strong winds flowing west to east in the South Pacific region, and a shift of the jet towards the South Pole.”
As well as finding that the most intense atmospheric rivers are likely to be more frequent and more intense, the researchers say that the phenomena may add up to 20 percent more to annual rainfall totals in some places.
“Overall, the biggest hotspot for these future changes is over the west coast of the South Island, where atmospheric rivers already often produce the largest impacts,” says Dr Gibson.
He says the latest climate projections for New Zealand, available on the Ministry for the Environment’s website, provide detailed information for every 5-kilometre square across the country. “The latest projections give us a much more comprehensive and detailed picture of our future climate. These updated climate change projections are based on refining the projections from six global climate models from the projections provided in the most recent report by the United Nations body that assesses the science related to climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
The more detailed information will enable better evidence-based discussion and choices, says Dr Gibson. “Development of these updated, high-resolution climate projections was a mammoth science and technology effort and involved huge supercomputing power. The dataset is now helping New Zealanders – including councils, companies and communities – to better understand their specific climate-related risks. In turn, this will improve decision-making for climate adaptation and support people to build resilience to extreme weather events.”
More research is being undertaken by NIWA into specific climatic features in the projections, to provide clarity on the future climate New Zealanders are likely to face in the decades to come.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Former ambassador Phil Goff is the latest (so far) and (probably) the least of many ‘statesmen’ who have invoked Munich and the ‘resolute’ Winston Churchill (a backbench MP in 1938) in the cause of good-war mongering. (Refer Winston Peters sacks Phil Goff as UK High Commissioner RNZ 6 March 2025, and What Was Actually Wrong With What Phil Goff Said?, Giles Dexter, RNZ and Scoop, 7 March 2025.)
The Munich narrative is central to the ‘Good War’ morality trope, through which democracies (especially the United States) justified wars of aggression; what used to be called ‘gunboat-diplomacy’ in the British days of empire. It’s the now-commonplace narrative that frames any putative war to be fought by a ‘liberal democracy’ against an ‘autocracy’ (ie fought by us against them) as a contest between Good and Evil; and if we don’t “stand up to” Evil – anywhere and everywhere – then Evil goes on to ‘win’, and subsequently to dominate and exact tribute as a regional or global hegemon.
The corollary of the Munich narrative is that Good should never give up, even if Evil is winning on the battlefield; Good neither surrenders to Evil nor negotiates with Evil. Not ‘at any cost’. The logical conclusion of this is that, if that’s what it requires for Good to prevail, life on Planet Earth could be forfeit; better Dead than Red or Black. Earth’s tombstone, left for a future intergalactic explorer to discover, might read: “At Least ‘Atila the Hun’ [substitute any Eurasian ‘Devil’] Did Not Win”. Peter Hitchen (see below, p.27) notes: “one day, this dangerous fable of the glorious anti-fascist war against evil may destroy us all [through our rulers’ vanity]”.
Phil Goff is an example of persons who know just enough fragments of popular history to think they can use a historical argument to substantiate their rhetoric. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, meaning that superficial knowledge may be more problematic than ignorance. On the Munich question, Phil Goff is in good company. Peter Hitchens, in The Phoney Victory (p8, p20), cites the former Prince of Wales (now King) as making the same mistaken views about World War Two and the Ukraine-Russia War, as moral crusades.
(Meanwhile, as well as trying to cut disability benefits as a result of boxing itself into a corner, Keir Starmer UK government – unlike the political leadership of Canada and the European Union – is doing everything it can to appease Donald Trump on international trade and other matters.)
For readers’ interest, Stevan and Hugh Eldred-Grigg have written a New Zealand take on World War Two that does not follow the ‘Good War’ trope: Phoney Wars: New Zealand Society during the Second World War, Otago University Press 2017.
Were Neville Chamberlain’s actions at the September 1938 Munich Conference wrong?
No, neither with foresight nor hindsight. If Britain and/or France had signed a pact with Czechoslovakia similar to the one they signed with Poland in 1939, they would have been committed to declaring at most a phoney war. Neither had the capacity to wage war on Germany nor to come to Czechoslovakia’s aid. At best, British hostilities against Germany in 1938 would have been as ineffective as they were in Archangel, Russia, in 1918.
Popular sentiment was absent in 1938 in the United Kingdom towards war with Germany. That situation had changed by March 1939 after Germany fully annexed Bohemia and Moravia, the territories that make up twenty-first century Czechia. Due in part to changed popular sentiment, the British and French responded differently when Poland was similarly threatened in 1939. The western ‘powers’ declared war on Germany following the first attack on Poland, but did almost nothing to fight Germany or to protect Poland during what became known as the ‘Phoney War’. (The phoney war ended with the German conquest of France in May 1940.)
The 1939 declaration of war was arguably more duplicitous than the 1938 declaration of peace. Poland’s half-century-long tragedy – far worse than anyone today, except for a few professional and amateur historians, realise – began to unfold. (France briefly invaded Germany’s Saarland in 1939, southeast of Luxembourg, before withdrawing. Nowhere near Poland.) The war in 1939 in Poland, remote to the United Kingdom, was far from ‘phoney’.
Examples of invoking or evoking ‘appeasement’ and /or ‘Munich’ and/or Churchill on behalf of ‘democracy’:
Peter Hitchens gives these post-WW2 examples (pp.13-17):
President Harry S Truman, in December 1950, re the continuation of the Korean War
Anthony Eden, 1956, to justify the Suez War (which first brought Israel into an external war of aggression)
President Lyndon Johnson in July 1965, justifying the escalation of the Vietnam War
US Secretary of State George Shultz in February 1984, re conflict in Nicaragua
US Deputy Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger, in August 1989, before the US invasion of Panama
George Bush (senior) in June 1990, re the first war against Iraq (noting that the initial response to the immanent invasion of Kuwait was not unlike Churchill’s lesser-known response in 1938, to the German reoccupation of the Rhineland [“more talks”])
Bill Clinton’s 1999 comparison of Slobodan Milosevic to Hitler, in the context of the probable secession of Kosovo from Milosevic’s Serbia
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, in 2003, justifying the second invasion of Iraq
President Trump’s aids in June 2017, referring to Barack Obama’s Cuba initiative
Winston Churchill’s worst Appeasement, and Atrocities
The worst act of appeasement that I can think of was Winston Churchill’s kowtowing to Joseph Stain at Yalta (Crimea) in the second week of February 1945 (ref Hitchens p.6 and Wikipedia citing Leo McKinstry, “Attlee and Churchill: Allies in War, Adversaries in Peace”, Atlantic Books, 2019, Ch 22). According to McKinstry “When Churchill arrived at Yalta on 4 February 1945, the first question that Stalin put to him was: ‘Why haven’t you bombed Dresden?’.”
Ten days later, Churchill did indeed firebomb Dresden, immolating 25,000 people – mostly civilians and refugees. Stalin (metaphorically) said “jump”, Churchill said “how high?”. And Churchill delivered.
Dresden was far from Churchill’s only actual or intended atrocity. Operation Gomorrah, on Hamburg at the end of July 1943, was a worse 24-hour atrocity than Dresden. The malevolent intent of that ‘raid’ lies in the biblical name given to the operation. While it was largely a test-run and forerunner for later bombings – including a forerunner of the firebombing of Tokyo exactly 80 years ago – it killed more than 35,000 mostly civilians “in their homes”.
(As a single event the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9 March 1945 – Operation Meetinghouse – caused easily more deaths [100,000] than Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima [70,000] or Nagasaki [35,000]. In the mainstream media, I saw no 80th-anniversary commemoration stories of this ‘worst-ever in the history of the world’ attack on civilians. Now is a timely time for us to be reminded about this kind of aerial megadeath.)
The third Churchill atrocity to mention was the Bengal famine of 1943, which killed three million people. Encyclopedia Britannica says that “the 1942 halt in rice imports to India did not cause the famine, and the 1943 crop yield was actually sufficient to feed the people of Bengal. It was ultimately special wartime factors that caused this difficult situation to become a disastrous famine. Fearing Japanese invasion, British authorities stockpiled food to feed defending troops, and they exported considerable quantities to British forces in the Middle East”. Churchill’s atrocities have been justified on the basis that the casualties were to them while saving some of our lives. But the people of Bengal were, at least notionally part of us, citizens and civilians of the British Empire.
In Wikipedia: “Madhusree Mukerjee makes a stark accusation: “The War Cabinet’s shipping assignments made in August 1943, shortly after Amery had pleaded for famine relief, show Australian wheat flour travelling to Ceylon, the Middle East, and Southern Africa – everywhere in the Indian Ocean but to India.” Indeed, Bengal was required to export rice to Ceylon to support British naval operations there. Of Churchill’s major atrocities, this was the only one to be mentioned in Netflix’s recent over-the-top account Churchill at War.
The Netflix ‘docuseries’ does at least mention Churchill being sidelined by the Americans in late 1943 and 1944. Churchill was sidelined from the top table of war-command largely on the basis of his penchant for atrocities and his unwillingness to confront Germany head-on (an unwillingness that could have been interpreted as ‘appeasement’, and probably was understood as such by the Americans). Churchill indulged in a number of side-wars, including a successful invasion of Madagascar in 1942; an invasion that put paid forever to the 1940 German fantasy of resettling Eastern European Jews there.
The Americans took much longer than Churchill to become convinced about the merits of holocaust-scale bombing than did the British. It would seem that the British burning of Hamburg – which was bombed because it was there, easily accessible from Britain – left quite a bad taste upon some American commanders, and indeed upon President Roosevelt himself. (We note that the atrocious American incendiary bombings of Japan in March 1945 were undertaken after Harry Truman became Vice President, and in the context that Roosevelt was seriously ill, and died soon after the February Yalta ‘Peace’ Conference.)
Churchill’s final atrocity to mention here never actually happened, except to create an environmental disaster on a Scottish Island (Gruinard, Britain’s mysterious WW2 ‘island of death’ Myles Burke, BBC, 22 April 2024). It partly explains some of Churchill’s reticence towards the D-Day invasion of Occupied France. Churchill had another plan, which he seems to have kept secret from his Allies: biological warfare, Anthrax.
“The plan was to infect linseed cakes with Anthrax spores and drop them by plane into cattle pastures around Germany. … The proposed plan would have decimated Germany’s meat supply, and triggered a nationwide anthrax contamination, resulting in an enormous [civilian] death toll. … The secret trials carried on until 1943, when the military deemed them a success, and scientists packed up and returned to Porton Down. As a result, five million linseed cakes laced with Anthrax were produced but the plan was ultimately abandoned as the Allies’ Normandy invasion progressed, leading the cakes to be destroyed after the war.” The test programme on Gruinard was cynically called ‘Operation Vegetarian’. “Gruinard was not the only site where the UK conducted secret biological warfare tests, but it was the first. The consequences of what happened there stand as a grim testament to both the dangers of biological warfare and humanity’s capacity for destruction.”
Have Bill Clinton and subsequent US presidents drawn inspiration from Brezinski’s 1997 essay as a clarion call for world domination?
Zbigniew Brezinski’s call for US world hegemony seems not much different to what Richard Evans claims was Hitler’s aim: “Hitler’s obvious drive for European and eventually world conquest.” (Zbigniew Brzezinski, “A Geostrategy for Eurasia,” Foreign Affairs, 76:5, September/October 1997; review of Peter Hitchens’s Eurosceptic take on the Second World War, by Richard J Evans, New Statesman, 26 Sep 2018.)
Evans’ claim about Hitler is obvious hyperbole; Germany never could have had the capacity to “conquer” the world. (Think of the socio-geographic limits to the Roman Empire.) But the Nazi imperial vision for Germany was to create a mega-state in Central Eurasia that would have hegemony over the rest of the world. Is there any country in the twentieth or twenty-first century which has sought such ‘unipolarity’; sought to be the world’s one-and-only superpower, which expects other countries to say “how high?” whenever it says “jump”?
Perhaps there is? Did Brezinski – Henry Kissinger’s 1970s’ foreign policy rival – spell it out in 1997?
Finally
‘Appeasement’ is like ‘Antisemitism’; the powers-that-be only have to say either word to silence commonsense debate about peace and war and genocide. As Hitchens points out (p.27): “We have mythologised the experience so completely that [politicians] only have to say the word ‘appeasement’ to silence opponents and bring legislators and journalists to their side, on any wild adventure.” Phil Goff is a hapless victim of what Joseph Mali and Shlomo Sand have called “mythistory”.
Wars since the 1930s are no more ‘moral’ than were wars before that time. (Indeed, if we wish to personalise it, WW2 at its core was a war between Hitler and Stalin; neither men are commonly described as ‘moral’.) In fact, recent wars are less moral. WW2 became the first major war in which civilians were actively targeted as a predominant military gambit. This approach to war is now becoming entrenched, with drones replacing soldiers, and civilians evermore in the firing line.
We should not be coerced into supporting wars on the basis of narratives by powerful know-not-much persons or cliques dropping words like ‘appeasement’, ‘Munich’, ‘Churchill’ or ‘Hitler’. Wars are very costly, but the costs are not usually paid – at least in the short term – by those elites who promote them from far away.
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
The Government is continuing its damaging campaign to hollow out the public service with 133 roles (69 being fixed term) proposed to go from the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA).
Staff were told today of the latest proposed job cuts which could result in the net loss of 64 permanent roles, plus 69 fixed term roles which are not being renewed beyond 1 September, for a total reduction of 133 roles. These are spread across all five branches of DIA.
The latest cuts aim to save approximately $8 million a year. They follow a wave of restructuring last year which saw, among many changes, the loss of key staff keeping children safe from online harm, and those stopping scams and international crime syndicates engaging in money laundering.
“Once again, we see the Government hell bent on downsizing the public service, regardless of the consequences,” said Fleur Fitzsimons, National Secretary for the Public Service Association for Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi.
“The Government is blind to the fact that the public service is right sized for our population and economy and should in fact be expanding to meet our many challenges from a growing and ageing population through to climate change and the infrastructure deficit.
“It’s all about ideology and doing more with less. But the reality as we have seen with cuts across the public service, the Government will be doing less with less – there will be fewer workers at DIA able to support the needs of New Zealanders.
“For example, the disbanding of the Ministerial and Monitoring Group, which has already had roles cut, will slow down decision making, impacting the provision of timely and quality advice to Ministers.
“The proposal to cut back on Personal Assistants is a false economy that will see senior managers spending more time doing administrative tasks.
“The proposed downsizing of the Digital Services branch, which has faced constant restructuring since 2019 will see among other things a loss of product testing roles. These roles are vital to ensuring a smooth introduction and upgrading of technology that New Zealanders rely on to do things such as apply for, or renew, their passports.
“The proposed disbanding of the Workplace Services and moving some staff into other teams means there will no longer be a proper focus on ensuring maintenance is carried out for government buildings and equipment. This will affect productivity and will raise health and safety issues over time. Workplace Services is also responsible for security of Government property.
“Internal Affairs purpose is to serve and connect ‘people, communities and government to build a safe, prosperous and respected nation’. These cuts coming on top of the damaging cuts from last year will make achieving that purpose all the more difficult and the PSA will be opposing them.”
The Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahiis Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest trade union, representing and supporting more than 95,000 workers across central government, state-owned enterprises, local councils, health boards and community groups.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
As most of us appreciate, there is a whole geopolitical world that overlays the formal political world of about 200 ‘nation states’ (aka ‘polities’). Geopolitical fractures – a result of the ‘big games’ over and above the ‘rules-based order’ – occur in all sorts of places, sometimes through provinces, even counties. Their significances wax and wane, as geopolitics itself is a dynamic game of changing exceptions and allegiances, and the expansions or contractions of ‘real estate assets’.
How about this one, given the apparent detaching of the United States of America from the liberal democratic western alliance? (Is the western alliance – which includes Canada – in the process of becoming a set of American proxies, like certain Latin American countries, rather than a partnership? Or is it a process of divorce?) Point Roberts is a United States enclave within the Greater Vancouver urban area. Should Canada – or British Columbia – file for Point Roberts? It would be the tidy thing to do, as part of the divorce settlement.
Geopolitics operates on at least two levels. There are the big fractures, where potential world wars – hot and cold – are simmering. Then there are the smaller fractures, such as those between the European Union and its neighbours: Northern Ireland, Gibraltar, Cyprus. And those within the world’s mini-empires: Denmark vis-à-vis Greenland; Australia vis-à-vis Norfolk Island; New Zealand vis-à-vis Cook Islands; France vis-à-vis New Caledonia.
At an intermediate level are boundary disputes between Japan and Russia (Kuril Islands), India and Pakistan (Kashmir), India and China (Himalayas), and Rwanda and the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo). Then there are new hot-fractures being created through civil wars; such as that between the Arabic and African worlds within Sudan, Islamic and Buddhist populations within Myanmar, and different ethno-cultural minorities within (and on the edges of) Syria and in the west of China.
There’s also a growing north-south sectarian divide in Nigeria (reflecting complex geopolitical game-playing in the Sahel, to Nigeria’s north and northwest), Africa’s most populous country. And there are geopolitical pushes and pulls in the non-EU Balkans. Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina (European countries with majority Islamic populations) have become effective proxies of the United States; the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina is fractured almost fifty-fifty, the other part being the autonomous though unrecognised Russian-aligned Republika Srpska. (China is currently building a north-south railway through the Balkans from Piraeus in Greece to Budapest in Hungary, while the European Union is sponsoring a new railway from Albania in the Adriatic Sea to Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast.)
Finally, there’s a big geopolitical tension within the core Islamic world, which has led to the long-running civil war in Yemen; the two sides being proxies for Iran and for Saudi Arabia; for Tehran and for Riyadh.
The players – the ‘Great Powers’
At present, it would seem, the United States of America, which sees itself as the world’s preeminent geopolitical player, is impatient for conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine to end, so that it can get on with its ‘game of choice’, namely the ‘new cold war’ conflict with China.
We should note that, in Geopolitics, the players are typically identified by the countries’ capital cities. Thus, the United States becomes Washington, the United Kingdom becomes London, and the European Union becomes Berlin or Brussels. Sometimes the players are or have been referred to by power-centres within cities, such as the Kremlin (Moscow), or the Quai d’Orsay (Paris). (The New Zealand equivalent might be ‘Bowen Street’!)
Beijing and Taiwan; and Washington
I saw this Daily Telegraph story in the New Zealand Herald last weekend: Chinese navy practices amphibious landings with new barges in South China Sea. To this end Taiwan is the American proxy through which the conflict may be waged; just as Ukraine and Israel are American proxies; proxies in the most visible of the world’s current geopolitical hot wars.
From the story: ‘Emma Salisbury, a sea power research fellow at the Council on Geostrategy’ says “The fact Beijing has permitted details of these barges to become public signals the threat China poses in the region.” No, it doesn’t. It indicates that China is – had has been for decades – playing the geopolitical game of ‘optics’. Beijing is saying to Washington “don’t mess with us”, rather than “we are going to mess with you”.
Kinmen and Lienchiang Counties, Fujian. But what country?
Is this the world’s least understood geopolitical faultline?
The central piece of geography in the New Cold War is understood to be the Taiwan Strait; indeed we routinely see pictures of that Strait on our news bulletins. Usually, they look like these BBC versions:
The clear tale being told here in these maps is that there is a simple border in the Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and China, and that there are two countries, Taiwan and China. The constitutional reality is that there are two regimes claiming constitutional sovereignty over a single estate. We may call these regimes China-Taipei and China-Beijing. (In the Olympic Games and other sports, Taiwan competes as Chinese-Taipei.) The official name of the two regimes are Republic of China (RoC), and Peoples Republic of China (PRC). (I once watched a story on TV3 News involving some Beijing-Chinese people in New Zealand. TV3 mistakenly showed pictures of a China Airlinesaircraft, when it should have been Air China.)
The BBC’s two-country optics are neat and tidy (compared to the one-territory two-regime reality), but is negated by the presence of two Taiwanese counties in the territory of Fujian province, PRC; Kinmen and Lienchiang (although Kinmen is sometimes called Jinmen or Quemoy, and in China Lienchiang is spelt ‘Lianjiang’). At its closest point, Kinmen (Taiwan) is 4km from the large Chinese city of Xiamen (and 190 km from the Taiwanese mainland); indeed Kinmen is located in Xiamen harbour, just as Rangitoto Island is in Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour. (Xiamen has the same population size as New Zealand, just over five million people.) Lienchieng is the Taiwanese portion of Lianjiang county, a subdivision of Fujian. (We note that Taiwan still uses the ‘postal’ style of anglicisation of Chinese names that was generally used before the 1970s; eg Peking instead of the Pinyin form, Beijing.)
From the inception of the United nations in 1945, until 1971, China-Taipei (aka Taiwan) held a permanent seat on the Security Council, with the right of veto). This only changed in 1971 after US President Nixon, committing to reality over narrative, moved towards rapprochement towards China (although the United States was not ready for the UN recognition switch in 1971); while at the same time fudging the issue of the status of Taiwan. That fudge remains the official status quo in the international ‘rules-based-order’.
We should also note that Taiwan (RoC) withdrew from the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games, due to its erosion of status as a recognised nation-state, with particular note that Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada, had led the realpolitik move, recognising China in 1970.
This map correctly shows all of Taiwan, noting the black dashed lines. And this shows Taiwanese Fujian. This huge geopolitical boundary between West and East passes through the Chinese province of Fujian.
Geopolitical Implications
Presumably the people in these counties, for the most part, prefer the status quo and hope that it can be maintained indefinitely, and without military hostilities.
If there was a push for Taipei to repudiate its constitutional claim to all of China – for example as a means to de jureindependence as its own sovereign state – it is difficult to see how this could happen without Taipei ceding Kinmen and Lienchiang counties to Beijing. That would indeed be the minimum price Taipei would have to pay for Beijing to abandon its claim over all of Taiwan.
In effect, these two counties are hostages to both regimes. If the United States or any other United States’ aligned nation-state invaded China, then it would be realistic to expect that Kinmen and Lienchiang would be snaffled-up by Beijing; maybe one county immediately and, for leverage, the other staying on as a hostage.
On the other hand, if the United States was to escalate its optical war against Beijing into a fully-fledged ‘cold war’, it might install threatening military equipment into Kinmen or Lienchiang, much as the Soviet Union did in Cuba in 1962. Thus these counties represent leverage of Taipei (acting as a proxy for the United States) over China.
It would be hard to see China not-responding to such provocation. Further, in such a hostile context, China would be tempted to activate its claim over the whole of Taiwan, and not just the two counties in Fujian.
So, the untidy one-country two-regime status quo should be simply left as it is. Speculative political rhetoric against Beijing or Taipei should be treated by the international community as tantamount to diplomatic ‘hate-speech’. And simplistic media stories which represent Taiwan only as an island 100 kilometres away from China, should be corrected. Responsible media – unlike the BBC or the Daily Telegraph – do not distort the known truth.
We don’t want to end up in a major geopolitical conflict as a result of politicians and political journalists not even knowing or understanding the location of the China/Taiwan border. The border anomalies result from the pragmatic settlement of a military conflict between the two Chinese regimes; a conflict that took place in the decade after 1949.
Lessons for the Ukraine-Russia conflict
The present military boundary between Ukraine and Russia passes inside three recognised provincial boundaries of Ukraine: Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. (The provinces of Luhansk and Crimea should be off the negotiating table; the world has to accept that they are now, for better or worse, de facto or de jure, territories of Russia; albeit unrecognised in the same way that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are Russian territories unrecognised by the United Nations. (And Northern Cyprus for that matter, as an unrecognised Turkish territory inside the European Union nation of Cyprus; a territory which untidily passes through the Cyprus’s capital, Nicosia.)
Successful negotiations to end wars have to take account of military realities. China’s 1950s’ concessions to Taiwan over Kinmen and Lienchiang show that such splits need not impede a long-lasting and workable peace. What does impede a transition to peace is the insistence on substantial one-sided deviations from the military reality at the time of a ‘cease-fire’; certainly, the side that is at a military disadvantage should not be demanding one-sided concessions from the other side.
Lessons for Palestine-Israel conflict
In 1967 and 1973, there were major wars between, in essence, Israel and Egypt. The lands most under contention were those that we call ‘Occupied Palestine’ (and ‘Occupied East Jerusalem’) today; though other lands were captured (especially the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria). The 1967 War was started by Israel under the pretext that Egypt was about to invade Israel. Israel unambiguously won this war. (In 1967, Israel even attacked – deliberately – an American naval vessel: USS Liberty.)
Israel had not thought-through the strategic consequences of its annexation (from Egypt and Jordan) of Gaza and the West Bank. Israel was working towards an acceptable way of incorporating Palestinian Israelis into the ‘Jewish State’. Now, all of a sudden, they found themselves with an enlarged country with a majority (or near-majority) Palestinian population. A legal fiction – replacing the language of ‘annexation’ with that of ‘occupation’ – enabled the non-Jewish populations of the ‘occupied territories’ to be treated as, at best, third -class citizens.
The 1973 War – started by Egypt, principally to regain its Sinai territory – triggered changes to the global architecture of capitalism. After the advantage switched from Egypt to Israel, Israeli troops crossed the Suez Canal and were heading towards Cairo when the cease-fire was called. Subsequent negotiations, over six years, saw Israel’s military successes eroded into something like the present situation in which Palestinians living in Palestine are citizens of nowhere.
After two military victories, through the 1978 Camp David Accords, Israel found that it had forfeited almost all its military gains; for Israel it felt like they had won the war but lost the peace. The result of the process was a substantial and unfortunate switch to the Right in Israeli politics. Since then, especially since the 1990s, Israel has been looking for ways to annex a Palestine free of Palestinians; to cleanse Palestine of Palestinians as part of an unapologetic annexation process undertaken with the full blessing of its geopolitical patron.
Proxy Warfare
Most wars today, including ‘civil wars’, are proxy-wars funded (on one side at least) by external patrons. While Ukraine has been a proxy of the United States for most of this century, Ukraine is now morphing into a proxy of Brussels and London; of the barely-elected Starmer (one-third of the vote in a low turn-out election) and an unelected Ursula von de Leyen (a bureaucrat who’s not even a Member of the European Parliament).
On Al Jazeera News (6am New Zealand summer time, 18 March 2025), it was reported that Donald Trump posted this message on his favoured social-media platform: “Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!” (See this quote on U.S. Air Campaign Against Houthis Continues Into Third Day, TWZ, The War Zone.)
This is a clear statement that the United States President, at least, believes that the patrons of proxies are the real antagonists, and should be deemed responsible – indeed ‘criminally responsible’ for misdeeds of aggression – for acts performed by their proxies. It should be quite easy to apply this dictum, at least allegorically, to the big hot wars of the moment: Ukraine and Palestine.
Conclusion
We can avoid most wars by finding pragmatic solutions to geopolitical conflicts, accepting realities as they stand, and avoiding inflammatory rhetoric towards others. We have avoided violent conflict in and around the Fujian geopolitical faultline by not, so far, trying to find and impose final tidy solutions.
Likewise, to find peace in the world’s current military hotspots, we have to accept and negotiate around the current realities of those situations. Most importantly, we follow the ‘first law of holes’: ‘if you are in a hole, stop digging’. Inflaming sensitive situations through speculative assertions about the other side’s escalating malevolence are unhelpful.
In today’s wars the western ‘liberal democratic’ side is not even close to being the ‘good guys’ in wars framed as good-versus-evil. The conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine demonstrate that these wars – like most past wars – represent the ‘hot’ phases of geopolitical game playing; wars are ‘bad guys’ versus ‘bad guys’, and such wars end through transactional deals. (The antagonists may be different shades of bad; and there are always good victims, though many of these are not ‘perfect victims’.) The ‘bad guys’ include the patrons of the proxies. Further, contemporary warfare targets civilians rather than soldiers.
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
The Chinese economy has maintained good growth momentum, starting the year on a steady note with sound industrial performances and impactful macro policies, official data revealed on Monday.
During January and February 2025, most key indicators saw solid increases, employment remained generally stable, and new quality productive forces continued to grow, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Given the economy’s sound performance in the first two months, China has more favorable conditions to achieve its full-year growth target of around 5 percent for 2025, NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui said at a press conference.
A good start
In the first two months of 2025, China’s value-added industrial output, an important economic indicator, increased 5.9 percent year on year. In February, industrial output grew 0.51 percent from January.
The country’s fixed-asset investment totaled 5.2619 trillion yuan (about 734 billion U.S. dollars) during the January-February period. It increased 4.1 percent year on year and was 0.9 percentage points higher than the full-year growth rate of 2024.
Investment in infrastructure construction rose 5.6 percent from a year ago during the two months, and manufacturing investment increased 9 percent.
An aerial drone photo shows a view of Yangpu International Container Port in the Yangpu Economic Development Zone in Danzhou, south China’s Hainan Province, Jan. 11, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]
The services sector also registered accelerated growth in the period, with its official production index growing 5.6 percent year on year at a rate 0.4 percentage points faster than the 2024 whole-year growth rate.
Retail sales of consumer goods, a major indicator of a country’s consumption strength, climbed 4 percent year on year in the first two months of 2025 to over 8.37 trillion yuan, according to the NBS data.
The country’s overall employment landscape has remained stable, with the average surveyed urban unemployment rate standing at 5.3 percent, level with the January-February period of last year.
Fu attributed the upbeat momentum to the synergistic effects of existing and incremental policies, highlighting the implementation of a more proactive fiscal policy and a moderately loose monetary policy this year.
Job seekers attend a job fair held in Huaibei, east China’s Anhui Province, Jan. 22, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]
Favorable growth conditions
The country’s sound economic performance in the first two months has laid a good foundation for success in meeting its annual growth target, given that the synergistic effects of macro policies have gained momentum, that reform and opening up have been deepened comprehensively, and that confidence has strengthened, Fu said.
Looking ahead, China possesses multiple favorable conditions to maintain stable, healthy economic development, the spokesperson added.
Highlighting its solid industrial foundations and strengthened new growth drivers, Fu said that China is the only country in the world with all industrial categories listed in the United Nations Industrial Classification, and its manufacturing scale has led globally for 15 consecutive years, with “Made in China” products meeting both domestic and global demand.
China’s integration of advanced manufacturing and production services is progressing rapidly, and policies focusing on the improvement of livelihoods have created favorable conditions for consumer services, Fu noted.
Breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence have amplified opportunities for industrial upgrading, the spokesperson said.
This photo taken on March 6, 2025 shows an automated production site at the final assembly workshop of Chang’an Auto Digital Intelligence Factory, in Yubei District of southwest China’s Chongqing. [Photo/Xinhua]
In terms of the market and consumption, Fu said that China’s market offers immense growth potential, with a population of over 1.4 billion and a per capita GDP exceeding 13,000 U.S. dollars. The expansion of new types of consumption such as spending in the green and digital sectors, as well as services consumption in areas such as elderly care and childcare will become a significant driving force for consumption growth.
Reform and opening up remain the lifeblood of China’s progress, according to the spokesperson. Over 300 reform initiatives put forward at the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in July last year will stimulate productivity further and inject vitality into the economy.
The incremental policy packages that China unveiled last year have revitalized market confidence and spurred market vitality, Fu said, adding that 2025 marks the final year of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), and that work to achieve the national growth target of around 5 percent requires arduous efforts.
Fu stressed the importance of seizing the current opportunities in economic recovery, enhancing the implementation of various macroeconomic policies, and deepening comprehensive reform further, among other efforts, to achieve the country’s economic and social development goals.
The State Council Information Office holds a press conference on boosting consumption in Beijing, capital of China, March 17, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]
A new plan to expand consumer spending unveiled on Sunday is expected to encourage consumption and drive economic growth in China. The country has maintained its position as the world’s second-largest consumer market and largest e-commerce market for over a decade.
Data released on Monday shows that retail sales of consumer goods — a major indicator of the country’s consumption strength — climbed 4 percent year on year in the first two months of 2025, 0.5 percentage points higher than the same period in 2024.
Despite the positive data, consumer confidence remains weak due to multiple factors, and it remains imperative that consumption is boosted and domestic demand is expanded, Li Chunlin, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said at a press conference on Monday.
The plan is composed of 30 policies across eight sections, the first seven of which outline specific actions for implementation, including demand-side initiatives such as income enhancement for urban and rural residents, and measures to support consumption capacities.
On the supply side, actions are aimed at improving the quality of services consumption, upgrading bulk consumption and enhancing consumption quality.
The eighth section emphasizes the need to enhance supportive policies related to investment, finance, credit and statistics.
Stock, real estate market stability
For the first time, the consumption support plan emphasizes the need to stabilize the stock and real estate markets.
Previous consumption policies focused primarily on the supply side, emphasizing that supply drives demand creation. However, the latest policies also prioritize the demand side, aiming to boost household incomes and ease financial burdens, Li noted.
He cited measures such as those related to reasonable wage growth and scientifically adjusted minimum wages, both of which are highlighted in the consumption support plan.
To enhance property incomes, the plan calls for a multifaceted approach, including the stabilization of the stock market, strengthened strategic reserves and market stabilization mechanisms, and the accelerated removal of barriers preventing long-term funds — such as commercial insurance funds, the national social security fund and the basic pension insurance fund — from entering the market.
To meet housing consumption needs in an improved manner, efforts will focus on curbing the downturn and restoring the stability of the real estate market, according to the plan.
Financial authorities have been encouraging medium and long-term funds to enter the capital market to stabilize stock performance further.
Since last year, Chinese policymakers have introduced a range of measures, including financial stimuli and regulatory adjustments, to bolster the property sector. These include mortgage rate cuts, decreased down payment requirements, eased purchasing restrictions and financing coordination mechanisms to enhance funding support for developers.
Better consumption, well-being
By connecting consumer spending to broader social goals like elderly care improvement, child care support and work-life balance, the plan embeds consumption growth within China’s broader development objectives, signaling that consumption is being positioned not just as an economic goal but as a means to enhancing quality of life.
Solid investments will continue to be made. For example, ultra-long special treasury bonds totaling 300 billion yuan (41.67 billion U.S. dollars) will be issued to support consumer goods trade-in programs in 2025, doubling the 2024 figure.
The programs, which kicked off last March, drove equipment purchases and investment up by 15.7 percent in 2024, contributing 67.6 percent of overall investment growth, and boosted sales of bulk durable consumer goods by over 1.3 trillion yuan, according to the NDRC.
Following its “employment first” policy, the central government plans to allocate 66.74 billion yuan in employment subsidies in 2025 to support local employment and startup assistance programs, said Fu Jinling, an official of the Ministry of Finance.
China will consider establishing a child care subsidy system. It will guide eligible regions to include rural migrant workers, individuals engaged in flexible employment, and individuals engaged in new forms of employment who are covered by the basic medical insurance for employees, in the country’s childbirth insurance program, according to the plan.
Regarding elderly care, the country will increase fiscal subsidies for basic old-age benefits and basic medical insurance for rural and non-working urban residents in 2025. Additionally, basic pension benefits for retirees will be raised appropriately.
The country will work to implement its paid annual leave system, ensuring that workers’ rights to rest and vacation are legally protected. It will also prohibit the unlawful extension of working hours, according to the plan.
German carmaker BMW on Monday said it will work with Chinese tech giant Huawei to develop an in-car digital ecosystem specifically tailored for the Chinese market.
According to the German auto behemoth, this cooperation means a deep integration with Huawei’s HarmonyOS NEXT, the Chinese company’s self-developed operating system that was built independent of the Android architecture.
Built upon the operating system, BMW’s digital key functionality is set to debut later this year, allowing users to unlock, lock and start their vehicles using Huawei smartphones. Additionally, the integration with a Huawei smart interconnection solution will debut in 2026 on BMW’s locally produced next-generation electric models, the “Neue Klasse.”
“In China, nearly a quarter of our mobile application users rely on Huawei devices. By deeply integrating with the HarmonyOS ecosystem, BMW will enhance in-car applications and digital connectivity services for HarmonyOS users, elevating intelligent experiences in high-frequency use scenarios,” said Sean Green, president and CEO of BMW Group Region China.
The German company has approximately 460 local supplier partners in China and is accelerating collaboration with Chinese technology partners, particularly in cutting-edge technologies such as large language models, generative artificial intelligence and intelligent voice interaction.
With research and development (R&D) centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang and Nanjing, BMW has established its largest R&D network outside of Germany in China.
“China has emerged as a global engine of innovation,” said the senior executive. “Through collaboration with leading local technology partners in joint R&D and co-creation, BMW is leveraging its system integration expertise to advance local partnerships.”
Believing in the potential of the Chinese car market, the German company announced a reinvestment to upgrade and modernize its Shenyang production base in 2024, following two decades of rapid expansion in the northeastern Chinese city.
Since 2010, BMW’s total investment in its Shenyang production base has reached 116 billion yuan (about 16.18 billion U.S. dollars), making the city home to BMW’s largest production facility worldwide.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
TCT Asia 2025 kicks off in Shanghai
Updated: March 18, 2025 09:21Xinhua
A 3D-printed component of a fuel storage tank for a carrier rocket is exhibited at TCT Asia 2025 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) in Shanghai, east China, March 17, 2025. TCT Asia 2025, a three-day event featuring industrial 3D printing and additive manufacturing, kicked off here on Monday. [Photo/Xinhua]A 3D-printed exhibit is seen at TCT Asia 2025 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) in Shanghai, east China, March 17, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]People visit TCT Asia 2025 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) in Shanghai, east China, March 17, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]People visit TCT Asia 2025 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) in Shanghai, east China, March 17, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]People visit TCT Asia 2025 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) in Shanghai, east China, March 17, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]A 3D-printed Nezha figurine is displayed at TCT Asia 2025 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) in Shanghai, east China, March 17, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]A 3D-printed Nezha figurine is pictured at TCT Asia 2025 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) in Shanghai, east China, March 17, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
China has introduced a new policy granting significant discounts on railway travel for senior passengers as part of efforts to tap into the market potential of its rapidly growing elderly population, China State Railway Group announced on Monday.
On April 1, the railway operator will expand its loyalty program to offer increased reward points for passengers age 60 and older. While regular members earn points equal to five times the ticket price, senior members will now receive 15 times the fare amount in reward points. The accumulated points can be redeemed for train tickets, effectively providing substantial discounts.
For example, a senior member of the program who spends 1,000 yuan ($138) on train tickets will receive 15,000 points, which can be redeemed for tickets worth 150 yuan. In comparison, regular members will receive 5,000 points, equivalent to 50 yuan for ticket redemption.
The program is open to elderly passengers from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, as well as foreigners with permanent residency in China. The benefits do not extend to international or special tourist trains, but the policy is expected to encourage more elderly individuals to take domestic rail trips.
The initiative is part of China’s broader strategy to expand its “silver economy”, recognizing the aging population as an economic opportunity rather than solely a social challenge. China had more than 310 million people age 60 and older at the end of last year, accounting for about 22 percent of the total population.
Growing demand for senior-friendly tourism services prompted the government to introduce an action plan for “silver-haired train service” last month. The plan was jointly released by nine government departments, including the Ministry of Commerce and China State Railway Group.
Features of new policy
The initiative aims to stimulate the senior tourism market, boost the silver economy and improve the quality of life for elderly residents. The railway operator has developed a three-year plan to establish more than 100 premium railway tourism routes and 160 tailored trains for senior passengers by 2028. The plan also calls for operating more than 2,500 tourism train services annually by then.
China’s railway sector is also making hardware improvements to accommodate elderly travelers. Tailored trains will feature larger seats, wheelchair-friendly layouts and additional safety features such as handrails and emergency call buttons.
Onboard services will be enhanced with trained staff, medical support and tailored activities, including chess, reading and music events, to create a more engaging travel experience.
On Saturday, a tourism train for seniors departed from Tianjin, picking up travelers from Beijing and Hebei province before heading south toward Jiangxi, Hunan and Guangdong provinces. A total of 452 passengers embarked on a 12-day cross-region journey, visiting several top-tier tourist sites along the route.
“We offer healthy meals onboard, managing salt, sugar and oil intake. High-fiber and high-protein options ensure a balanced diet for passengers with conditions such as hypertension and diabetes,” said Zhao Huaying, a business manager at China Railway Travel Group’s tourism train division. “Dedicated medical support is also provided.”
Onboard medical aid
Each train is staffed with medical personnel capable of handling common health emergencies such as cardiac events or injuries. Medical kits and emergency call buttons are installed for added safety, train conductor Zhang Wenquan said.
The initiative has received widespread praise from elderly travelers who appreciate the added convenience.
“I have used the silver-haired train services three times now, and it makes traveling so much easier,” said a 63-year-old passenger surnamed He, who began her trip on Saturday from Beijing.
“We get off the train for one or two nights during the trip and stay at local hotels. I only need to pack basic toiletries and a few clothes since I can leave my heavy luggage on the train. This saves us elderly travelers a lot of effort,” she said.
“I don’t have to carry my heavy luggage everywhere, and I feel safe knowing medical staff are on board,” she added.
A mainland spokesperson on Monday said that Taiwan’s Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM) has overestimated itself while carrying out cyberattacks against the mainland, warning that such provocations will face a stern punishment. Chen Binhua, a spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, made the remarks in response to a media inquiry after the Ministry of State Security disclosed information about four members of ICEFCOM responsible for cyberattacks against the mainland in an article earlier on Monday. Chen said that following instigation from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities, ICEFCOM serves as an accomplice to “Taiwan independence” separatist forces and spares no effort in launching cyberattacks against or infiltrating the mainland. Chen expressed the hope that Taiwan compatriots can clearly recognize the malicious intent of and grave harm caused by the DPP authorities’ stubborn adherence to their separatist “Taiwan independence” stance, their relentless provocations that aim to seek “independence,” and their acts to escalate cross-Strait confrontation. He added that it is imperative for Taiwan compatriots to resolutely oppose any form of “Taiwan independence” separatist activities, and to genuinely safeguard peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, as well as their own security and well-being.
SINGAPORE, March 18, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — ACT Group welcomes seasoned sustainability professional John Davis as Managing Director for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region to accelerate their growth and deliver measurable climate impact across this rapidly expanding market.
With a career in sustainability solutions spanning 20 years, Davis recently led South Pole as their Interim CEO through a critical restructuring and funding round. Throughout his 10-year tenure there he held various leadership roles, including Global Commercial and Director for APAC, where he successfully expanded the company’s regional operations and drove strategic growth initiatives.
“We are delighted to welcome John to ACT in this crucial role to accelerate the growth of our business in APAC,” said Colin Crooks, CEO of ACT. “His extensive experience, including leadership positions at South Pole, has equipped him with a profound understanding of the sustainability landscape. John has years of experience in carbon finance and emissions trading and is a superb leader. His vision aligns perfectly with ACT’s mission to provide innovative environmental solutions and empower our clients to achieve their sustainability goals efficiently and transparently.”
Prior to South Pole, Davis held senior trading and origination roles at CF Partners and Spectron Group, executing high-value carbon and energy market transactions.
Expressing his enthusiasm about joining ACT, Davis shared, “I am incredibly excited to be joining ACT, and moving with my family from Sydney to Singapore, a city we love. The Asia-Pacific region is central to global energy sector decarbonization and the world’s transition to Net Zero, and Singapore is a key player in this movement, continually pushing the boundaries of innovation. I am eager to collaborate with the exceptional team at ACT across the region to make a meaningful impact in the various jurisdictions that are striving to decarbonize their economies over the next five years and beyond.”
Reflecting on his decision to leave South Pole, Davis said, “It was tough, but it was the natural end of an entrepreneurial cycle that I was incredibly proud to be part of. After some time out of the market to reflect, it was clear that the journey ACT is embarking on, in its next global growth chapter under Colin’s leadership, is an incredible opportunity.”
Davis succeeds Federico Di Credico, who established ACT’s Singapore office in 2022 as Managing Director. Di Credico now serves as ACT’s Global Chief Sustainability and Innovation Officer.
Davis’s hiring comes as ACT continues to enhance its ability to serve clients as the global one-stop-shop for decarbonization and environmental solutions. In 2024, ACT opened a seventh global office in Tokyo, joining locations in Amsterdam, New York, Paris, London, Shanghai, and Singapore, as it continues to enhance its capabilities through strategic acquisitions and bolster its position as a global leader in environmental solutions.
As part of ACT Government’s ‘One Government, One Voice’ program, we are transitioning this website across to our . You can access everything you need through this website while it’s happening.
Released 17/03/2025
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the ACT School Volunteer Program, through which hundreds of individuals have volunteered as mentors to ACT public school students in our primary and secondary schools.
So many Canberrans have benefited from the generous contribution of these volunteers, who provide an extra tier of support for students through their conversation and connection.
In 2024 alone, more than 135 mentors volunteered across 40 schools. The volunteers typically meet weekly with their mentees, engaging with them through one-on-one activities to support literacy and numeracy, or by collaborating with them on craft, cooking, Meccano or Lego projects.
The Program recruits, trains and manages the volunteers in partnership with the ACT Education Directorate, with the latter providing facilities and support at the Headley Beare Centre for Teaching and Learning for training of mentors and committee members.
The volunteers share insights gained through their own lives and boost confidence and attitudes to learning through conversation and connection.
Some mentors have been with the Program since it began, returning each year to continue this invaluable work.
I thank all of the volunteers, including past and present committee members, for their contribution to the success of the Program.
I also acknowledge Directorate staff who have provided training and advice to the volunteer mentors to support the enrichment opportunities they offer our students.
Quotes attributable to Ms Nola Shoring, President of the School Volunteer Program ACT:
“I’m delighted the Governor General, Her Excellency the Honourable Sam Mostyn, a past ACT public school student herself, will join us for the ACT School Volunteer Program’s anniversary celebrations.
“The then Governor-General, the late Major General Michael Jeffery, officially launched the Program at North Ainslie Primary School in 2005, so it is wonderful and fitting that Her Excellency can join us to celebrate the impact of each of our volunteers over the past two decades.
“I’d like to thank the ACT Education Directorate for its continuing commitment to our close working partnership, and the busy principals and teachers who have made space in their programs for our volunteers – it is at the schools that the magic happens.
“I’d especially like to recognise the students who have embraced the opportunities this very special intergenerational Program has provided.
“Each one of our mentors has valued the opportunity to help make a difference in these young people’s lives, and has in turn benefited greatly from the interactions they have shared.”
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Released 17/03/2025
Six local emergency service members have been recognised for their contributions to the Canberra community, with each receiving an ACT Community Protection Medal at a ceremony today.
The Community Protection Medal was established in 2002 to acknowledge police and emergency services members who have made sustained and distinguished or outstanding service to the community.
The medals are awarded each year, with Minister for Police, Fire and Emergency Services, Dr Marisa Paterson presenting medals to the recipients during a ceremony at Regatta Point today.
Minister Paterson said that these six recipients embodied the best of our emergency service staff and volunteers.
“I’m deeply impressed by the unwavering dedication of the people in these agencies in ensuring the safety and well-being of our community,” said Dr. Paterson.
“Today’s award recipients are being acknowledged for their excellence in training, response, membership, and health and wellbeing, and they should all should be very proud of their work.”
“They are true examples of the outstanding individuals within our emergency services. In times of crisis, they are the people who step up. We have seen this recently with our personnel heading to Queensland.”
“We also extend our gratitude to the families for their ongoing support. The commitment, the deployments, and the overnight and public holiday shifts is what allows us to live in a safe and secure city.”
“To the six award recipients, on behalf of the ACT community and the ACT Government, we extend our heartfelt congratulations and thank you for your service.”
The six recipients of the 2024 ACT Community Protection Medal are:
Michael Caldwell, ACT Ambulance Service
In recognition of his commitment to the provision and improvement of professional pre-hospital emergency services within the ACT Ambulance Service Communication Centre. During his 14-year career with the Service, Michael has progressed through the Communications Centre as a call taker, to now being the Coordination Officer. His leadership and experience has assisted in building the knowledge of the team around him, ensuring the Canberra community have call-takers who can respond effectively in times of need.
Commander Guy Cassis, ACT Fire and Rescue
In recognition of his distinguished and outstanding contribution to community safety through the awareness and promotion of firefighter health, safety and wellbeing. Throughout his 22-year career, Commander Cassis has dedicated his time, over and above that required of his regular duties, to develop and improve process and procedure around firefighter safety, including being a Peer Support Officer and Health and Safety Representative.
Mr Colin Dawes, ACT Emergency Services Agency
In recognition of his leadership within ESA for almost 20 years. Whether an emergency event or day-to-day operations, Colin consistently provides outstanding service, working tirelessly to deliver aid and support to the Services as they respond and help the community. During the most recent emergency events of fire, smoke, storm, and the pandemic, Colin proved himself to be an adaptable, reliable, competent, and compassionate leader, colleague, and mentor.
Detective Sergeant Lauren Gilliland, ACT Policing
In recognition of her sustained distinguished and outstanding service to the ACT community over the past 15 years as an extremely highly regarded and effective police officer, instructor, mentor, and role model. Detective Sergeant Gilliland’s work has revolutionised the delivery of training and investigations into sexual offences and child abuse in the ACT and is now recognised internationally as best practice. Detective Sergeant Gilliland has had a major positive contribution to the lives of numerous victims in Canberra and is an exemplary police officer in every regard.
Commander Adam Hartnett, ACT State Emergency Service
Adam has significantly increased membership participation and ensured robust ready team for emergency callouts. His active participation in all aspects of the SES, from frontline operations to training and community engagement exemplifies his commitment to service. Adam has fostered a culture of preparedness and resilience, ensuring his team is always ready to provide critical assistance to the ACT community during storms, floods and land searches.
Ms Nicola Lewis, ACT Rural Fire Service
In recognition of her sustained service to training and recruitment across the ACT Rural Fire Service. For the past 15 years Nicola has provided outstanding service to individual and collective training, recruitment, and provided administration and operational support to the Service. During her service, Nicola has served as the Gungahlin Brigade Training Coordinator and has coordinated 10 firefighter courses. She has also been the lead assessor across courses and her knowledge and wisdom will shape the next generation of firefighters within the ACT Community.
