New Zealand Financial News

Goan crime being foiled. Thieves broke into the premises of a maker of chouriço, Goa’s spicy pork sausages. Local dogs, probably lusting after the sausages themselves, raised an alarm and the owner trapped the two thieves in the smoking room. Did the thieves eat the sausages as they waited for arrest? Food theft is one of the oldest crimes. In Christopher J Garcia’s entertaining book Food & Crime, he writes that the oldest legal texts, like the Codes of Ur-Nammu and Hammurabi include food related proscriptions. He also notes it is one of the broadest crimes: “It starts with piddly little pilfering, such as walking off with a pack of gum from the checkout line, then continues through to the highjacking of entire convoys of shellfish.” Garcia suggests that food theft works on CRAVED principles: “Concealable, Removable, Available, Valuable, Enjoyable and Disposable.” Cheese fits most of these parameters. Garcia notes that “the Centre for Retail Research estimates that four per cent of all cheese produced is stolen”. This is almost a million tonnes of stolen cheese. It is easily melted or cut into different forms and can be worth a lot, especially artisanal European cheeses made with unpasteurised milk, which are banned in the US.

SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France – Canada’s Brooke Henderson stood by the side of the 14th green at Le Golf National on Saturday and practised her putting motion several times before walking to the next hole.She never did regain her touch on the greens after a 67 a day earlier gave her an outside shot at a medal.Henderson threatened midway through the final round after reeling off three straight birdies, but her putter didn’t co-operate when she needed it.“I gave myself a lot of good opportunities,” Henderson said. “I feel like if I had made two or three different putts throughout the round then I feel like the momentum would have been more in my favour.“It might be a different story standing here.

Public employees in Australia's most populous state have been told to end remote working in a directive from the premier of New South Wales as he seeks to reverse work-from-home habits established during the pandemic

Olympics 2024 and they have inched a step closer to an Olympic medal, with an eye on the gold. Having beaten Great Britain in a thrilling quarterfinal clash, Harmanpreet and Co have dodged a bullet and will face 2023 World Champions, Germany on Tuesday. But the field is not clear for the Indian men as they do not have defender Amit Rohidas on their side for the penultimate clash as he has a one match ban in place by the International Hockey Federation.

MONTREAL – Soccer fans in Montreal were left heartbroken after the Canadian women’s soccer team lost to Germany in the quarterfinal of the Paris Olympics on Saturday. But fans said they still have plenty of reasons to cheer.

PARIS – Canada’s team in Paris was on pace for a record Olympic Games at halftime after a mortifying soccer scandal that began before the eco-flame was even lit in Jardin des Tuileries.

chatbots were tested for their political inclination, most of them revealed a left-of-centre stance, a study has revealed. However, when the chatbots, including ChatGPT and Gemini, were tested after being «taught» a certain political inclination — left, right or centre — they produced responses in alignment with their «training,» or «fine tuning,» David Rozado, a researcher from Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand, found. This shows that chatbots can be «steered» towards desired locations on the political spectrum, using modest amounts of politically aligned data, the author said in the study published in the journal PLoS ONE. Chatbots are AI-based large language models (LLMs), which are trained on massive amounts of textual data and are, therefore, capable of responding to requests framed in the natural language (prompts).

Indian Men's Hockey Team will lock horns with Great Britain in the quarterfinals of the ongoing Paris Olympics 2024 on Sunday. The Indian men's hockey team bounced back in the men's competition with a 3-2 win over Australia in their last Pool B match on Friday. It is their first victory against Australia in the Olympics since 1972 Munich games. India bounced back from a 1-2 loss to the defending champions, Belgium, in their previous game. With this victory, India finished second and will now face Great Britain in the quarterfinals of the ongoing marquee event.

The ride sharing giant Uber and Chinese automaker BYD say they have agreed on a partnership to introduce 100,000 BYD model EVs on the Uber platform in Europe and Latin America

PARIS : France spent $1.5 billion to turn the Seine, the famously filthy river that flows through the heart of Paris, into a body of water that human beings could enter without contracting illness. Olympic organizers envisioned a postcard scene, with athletes swimming in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and the golden dome of Les Invalides. Now, after years of debate, countless E.

Air New Zealand has scrapped its 2030 carbon emissions reduction targets, citing lags in producing new planes, a lack of alternative fuel and “challenging” regulatory and policy settings

Before Olympic surfers actually see the Teahupo’o wave arrive, in those final pristine moments of calm before all hell breaks loose, they will hear it coming. Cries rise from the flotilla of boats carrying spectators and rescue teams as they spot the mountain of water rolling towards them roughly 500 yards off the coast of Tahiti. When it arrives, a thick slab of ocean will suddenly surge into the air and fold over on itself.

Paris Olympics women’s soccer tournament and banned three coaches for one year each on Saturday in a drone spying scandal.The stunning swath of punishments include a 200,000 Swiss francs ($226,000) fine for the Canadian soccer federation in a case that has spiralled at the Summer Games.Two assistant coaches were caught using drones to spy on opponent New Zealand’s practices before their opening game last Wednesday.Head coach Bev Priestman, who led Canada to the Olympic title in Tokyo in 2021, already was suspended by the national soccer federation then removed from the Olympic tournament.

HSBC Australia recently told customers it will stop processing payments to crypto exchanges starting July 24. This decision is attributed to customer protection concerns, emails circulated on X showed.

England batter Joe Root moved seven points closer to top-ranked batter Kane Williamson in the latest ICC Test Rankings among batters issued on Wednesday.

currencies touched multi-week lows on Wednesday tracking weakness in Chinese demand, while the yen has surged as short-sellers bail out ahead of a central bank meeting. Purchasing managers' index figures will be particularly watched in Europe later in the session to see whether they support bets on two European rate cuts by the end of January.

China on Monday surprised markets by cutting major short and long-term interest rates in its first such broad move since last August, signalling intent to boost growth in the world's second-largest economy.

Much of the world faced online disarray Friday as a widespread technology outage affected companies and services across industries — grounding flights, knocking banks and hospital systems offline and media outlets off air

A grocery code of conduct could stabilize food prices in the future and encourage more investment in the Canadian food industry, according to the president of Kraft Heinz Canada.

A global technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks and hospital systems offline and media outlets off air on Friday in a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers.

Microsoft users worldwide, including banks, reported widespread outages on Friday, hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing an issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services. News outlets in Australia reported that bank services were disrupted as they lost access to computer systems. Some New Zealand banks said they were also offline. Australia's largest bank, Commonwealth Bank said some customers had been unable to transfer money due to the service outage.