Articles from ‘elocal magazine’

29 January 1842 · Auckland’s Anniversary Day commemorates the arrival of Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson in the Bay of Islands in 1840. Today it is best known for a regatta on Waitematā Harbour that is possibly the largest such event in the world. · The first regatta on the harbour – an impromptu three-race affair – was held on 18 September 1840, the day an advance party arrived to found the colony’s new capital. · The government chose 29…

If we are to believe that China’s DeepSeek has matched Silicon Valley’s AI giants in breakneck time, on a shoestring and with a tiny fraction of the data and energy use, the world is indeed in convulsion. · This is a geopolitical earthquake of the first order, upstaging Donald Trump's $500bn (£400bn) Stargate bid for supremacy in artificial intelligence (AI) before he has even started. · China's Communist Party could hardly have wished for a…

Over the last few weeks, the Human Metapneumovirus or HMPV has emerged as a significant public health issue. The flu-like viral illness escalated in China in recent months, predominantly affecting children and eliciting fears about its possible spread. · Cases were also documented in India and the UK during seasonal winter patterns characterised by increased respiratory infections that produce flu or cold-like symptoms. India has documented at…

Donald Trump took office for his second term as President of USA with as much aggression as he had promised during his campaign. · While the world was bracing for punishing tariffs as the first decision of the Trump administration, America’s 57th president actually took off from where he left off during his first term. He swiftly signed orders that withdrew the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris Agreement on climate…

28 January 1827 In a feat of navigational daring – and after several attempts – the French explorer Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville sailed the Astrolabe from Tasman Bay through the narrow ‘French Pass’ into Admiralty Bay in the Marlborough Sounds. His officers named the large island they passed in his honour. · D’Urville first visited New Zealand in 1824 as second-in-command to Louis Duperrey. At the Bay of Islands, he heard the Māori…

The author Brian Easton, in In Open Seas: How the New Zealand Labour Government Went Wrong: 2017–2023, warns against extending parliamentary terms to four years without reforms to strengthen accountability. · He describes the government as “an elected dictatorship.” Cabinet ministers overly rely on a public service, which advises them, but manipulates policies behind the scenes. · Parliament’s mechanisms for accountability—questioning…

Cognitive decline is natural: it starts to subtly set in by our 40s, and by your mid-50s it’s perfectly normal to find yourself standing in the middle of a room, scratching your head, saying, “Now why the hell did I come in here?” · While the odd midlife memory lapse is a normal part of the ageing process, a new study has found that there are three distinct peaks, when cognitive decline is more evident in all of us. However, these clear spikes…

Have there been human rights abuses in Xinjiang? Ask ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, and you’ll receive an unambiguous yes. · Put the same question to DeepSeek, a Chinese chatbot, and the answer is very different. “Allegations of human rights abuses are unfounded and politically motivated,” it says. · Its response is not unusual: chatbots are heavily muzzled in China, where AI companies are required to instill the “socialist…

US president-elect Donald Trump has repeated time and again -- both during the presidential election campaign and after his election – that he wants to end the Russia-Ukraine war.  · He has claimed that he wants to end the war even before he assumes office on January 20, 2025. He has even boasted that he will end the war in one day or 24 hours. · Despite Trump’s best intentions and endeavours, including a concrete and actionable peace plan, it…

By Hans-Jürgen Geese  · A few days ago, the media here in New Zealand reported that the price of butter had risen by 50% over the course of a year. In New Zealand, the land of milk and honey. New Zealand is still the second largest butter producer in the world. · The country produces far more butter than its citizens can ever consume. How can prices go up? By 50%! What has happened? Well, nothing really. The cows still give milk, the dairies…