The New Zealand Herald
중도 성향
기타
Bay of Plenty vehicle fire: State Highway 30 blocked at Te Teko
Motorists are being diverted through alternate routes and warned of delays.
"PLENTY" · 총 75건
필터 보기현재 지수
50.3
0 = 부정 우세
50 = 중립
100 = 긍정 우세
최근 7일 기준 84,177건을 분석한 결과, 뉴스 심리지수는 50.3(균형)입니다. 긍정 4,242건(5.0%)·중립 77,945건(92.6%)·부정 1,990건(2.4%)이며, 중립 비중이 뚜렷하게 높습니다. 성향 지수는 종합 14.9(중도 균형)입니다.
Motorists are being diverted through alternate routes and warned of delays.
Defense does matter, and the Liberty have plenty of size, length and versatility to excel on that end of the floor.
Officers thanked the public for sharing their post on social media.
Uttar Pradesh's real estate regulator has countered claims of a supply shortage, revealing over 1.15 lakh residential and commercial units are available for sale across the state. UP RERA cautioned buyers against rushed decisions, emphasizing ample options and advising thorough due diligence before investing.
There are plenty of ways to jump into the generative-AI hardware infrastructure expansion beyond the familiar chip makers and hyperscalers.
As geopolitical headwinds make it tougher for equity investors to make money, Dalal Street’s top voice Nilesh Shah, managing director of Kotak Mahindra Asset Management, told a gathering of HNI investors at the ET Alpha Wealth Summit on Thursday that there are four specific investment structures which deserve a place in most portfolios right now.Shah’s first recommendation was the Special Investment Fund, or SIF, a structure that marks a meaningful shift in what is available to Indian investors. Shah noted that the mutual fund industry has, until now, been a long-only business but the SIF changes that. These are long-short, absolute return-oriented funds, designed to generate returns regardless of market direction rather than simply riding the equity tide.The second vehicle Shah flagged is performing credit AIFs. His reasoning was grounded in a simple supply-demand observation that for corporate settlements today, capital is not available from banks, mutual funds, or insurance companies.As institutional lenders have stepped back, borrowers are plenty and lenders very few. Amid this imbalance, Shah said the need is real and returns are attractive. Performing credit AIFs, which lend into this gap, are positioned to benefit directly from the scarcity of competing capital.https://youtube.com/shorts/Xa4AcXFg8hA?feature=shareThe third idea was REITs, and here Shah introduced a timing element. Over the last three years, REITs have delivered index-level returns of around 13.5%. But with interest rates rising, he suggested that the next six to nine months may present an opportunity to enter at better prices. Rising rates typically compress REIT valuations in the near term, and Shah framed any such correction as a potential entry point rather than a risk to avoid. Beyond the return potential, he positioned REITs as a portfolio diversification tool as the asset class behaves differently from equities and fixed income, and that is still underrepresented in most Indian investor portfolios.The fourth recommendation addressed global diversification but came with an important caveat. Mutual fund industry limits for overseas investment are currently full, which means the conventional route for Indian investors to access global markets through domestic mutual funds is closed. Shah pointed to Gift City as the workaround. Structures domiciled there allow investment under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, and in his view, these Gift City-based LRS products are the practical path for investors who want global exposure while the mutual fund window remains shut.Across all four — the SIF, performing credit AIFs, REITs, and Gift City products — Shah's underlying argument was the same: in a volatile period, the portfolio needs instruments that can generate positive returns through means other than a rising equity market.(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views, and opinions given by experts are their own. These do not represent the views of the Economic Times)
President Donald Trump fired off a Truth Social broadside on Thursday, accusing California Democrats of stealing the state’s gubernatorial primary — and given the Golden State’s long, sordid history of electoral shenanigans, he’s got plenty of reason to be suspicious. “There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” Trump posted. “Votes are all tied up. ...
When Spencer Pratt advanced through the primary, plenty of political insiders and even the mainstream media rolled their eyes. They shouldn’t have. Reality television may be one of the most underrated training grounds for modern political leadership. Long before social media turned every American into a content creator, reality television was teaching people how to ...
The Delhi Gymkhana Club was born in 1913, raised for British officers and the colonial set, and was later inherited by bureaucrats, politicians, and the comfortably connected. None of that pedigree could save it, however, from the law. Last week India told it to vacate the land by June 5. The government read a single clause from the club’s own lease, named a public purpose, and issued the notice. The land returns to the state as do the buildings on it. The club says it will fight the decision in court, and it may. But the order is out and the clock has started. In Pakistan, the Lahore Gymkhana was born in the same year, is grander than Delhi’s and also sits on land worth a king’s ransom. But no notice to vacate has been issued. These are the facts from the government documents that explain why. India has ordered the Delhi Gymkhana Club to vacate its premises by June 5 — Credits: BBC 38 paisas a kanal The Lahore Gymkhana sits on state land ringed by The Mall, Jail Road, and Zafar Ali Road. There is no pricier address in the province. Its 1913 lease stretches back to the Raj, and has been repeatedly extended in 1921, 1960, and, in haste in 1996, five years before its expiry. This time it was extended for 50 years to cover the years 2000 to 2050. The gymkhana estate sprawls over 112 acres and the club holds three kanal and 16 marlas more than the record of rights allows — a tiny trespass that nobody thought to note until now. But that is not all. Inside Lawrence Gardens (Bagh-e-Jinnah), the Gymkhana keeps an exclusive cricket ground on three-and-a-half acres of the Agriculture Department. This was never part of the lease, there is no grant for it and no rent is paid. No paper explains how a public garden was fenced off for a private game. For the main estate, the club pays Rs5000 a year in rent. Not per kanal. In total. That comes to Rs417 a month, or under fifty paisas per kanal, for some of the most valuable earth in Pakistan. How little is Rs5000? Consider it against the government’s upper commercial rate. Total land 1,091 kanals 21,820 marla Market value 1,091 × Rs200 million/kanal Rs218.2 billion Fair annual rent 21,820 marla × Rs200,000/marla Rs4.364 billion The land is worth Rs218 billion so fair rent would be about Rs4.36 billion a year. Under the government’s 2023 policy, clubs can pay a tenth of market rent, but this would still come to Rs400 million a year. The club pays Rs5000. For years, the land’s real value sat behind a nominal colonial rent. It became visible when market figures were placed on the record. The admissions of guilt The club filed its defence with the Assembly admitting the buildings came after the lease, which said the government had to approve construction. Over the decades the club built its clubhouse, golf clubhouse, pool, two guest blocks, health club, administration block, mosque and a café in 2012. The Board of Revenue searched for permissions but none were on record. The club has not even paid its token Rs5,000 rent. The Additional Deputy Commissioner’s office sent a notice, dated 26 August 2020, saying that rent had not bee paid since 2011. Then the money. The club swears no public funds reach it but then lists them in the next breath: Rs2 million from President Zia in 1985, Rs2 million from PM Nawaz Sharif the same year, Rs50 million from CM Pervaiz Elahi in 2006, Rs10 million from CM Shehbaz Sharif in 2014. Four heads of government, four gifts from the public purse, to a private club. And who is the club for? Its rulebook answers. Every civil servant of Grade 18 and above may join for a token fee, and so may every commissioned officer of the armed forces. The other way to become a member is to inherit membership. The capture is not an accident of history. It is written into the founding charter. The roll of ordinary members, meanwhile, the club guards as confidential as if it were a list belonging to a Freemason Lodge. The instinct to maintain secrecy runs deep. When citizens used the Right to Information law to ask for the lease and the donor records, the club refused, and carried its refusal to the Lahore High Court, pleading, without blushing, that as a public limited company it was no “public body” and owed the public nothing. In January 2023, the court dismissed the plea. The land belongs to the state, the judge held. Handing over land worth billions of rupees almost free was an enormous benefit and rent of Rs5,000 a year “cannot be even termed as any rate whatsoever.” The same shrug was then offered to the Assembly when it asked who the club’s members were. Lahore Gymkhana — Credits: Express Tribune Institutionalising the giveaway The Gymkhana is no aberration. It is the template: in May 2023 the state made the template law. That month, a caretaker government in Punjab, an unelected stopgap whose only charge was to hold an election, approved a sweeping new policy. It had no mandate to make long-term land decisions but it made one anyway. On May 10 2023, the Colonies Department opened the door to hand prime state land to gymkhana clubs across the province, and fixed their rent at a tenth of market value. The discount was sewn into the rules. The Board of Revenue reports the harvest. The figure that matters is what the clubs actually pay, after the 90 per cent is shaved away: Rs20,000 an acre a year at Dera Ghazi Khan, Mandi Bahauddin, and Chiniot; Rs50,000 at Vehari, Sahiwal, and Dera Ghazi Khan; Rs60,000 at Kamalpur Syedaan in Attock; Rs100,000 at Saddar Gymkhana, Gujranwala; Rs120,000 at Jhang; Rs140,000 at Jhelum and Gujranwala City. An acre of prime city land, for the price of a secondhand motorcycle, every year. And the final irony: this generous policy, the Board says, does not reach the Lahore Gymkhana, because its lease is older. Elite enclaves on public land The Gymkhana is not the only refuge for the officer class in Lahore. Inside the GOR, that broad expanse of prime central land set aside for officialdom, stands the Punjab Civil Officers Mess on Tollington Road. At GOR’s gate stands the colonial Punjab Club. A short walk off, the Lahore Polo Club keeps its grounds and stables inside the Race Course, public parkland surrendered to horses and a handful of players. An exclusive school for the male heirs of the elite, Aitchison College (Chief’s College), spreads over 200 acres. None of these entities bought their land. It is public land, held in trust, enjoyed by the few. Islamabad tells the same story more starkly. The Islamabad Club, sprawled across 352 acres of CDA land, pays about three rupees an acre a month as its gates remain closed to ordinary citizens. The Gun and Country Club rose up on land meant for the Pakistan Sports Board; the Supreme Court declared it illegal in 2018 and ordered the land to be taken back, yet years later auditors could not trace some 38 acres, and the club sat on roughly 37 with no deed, no lease, no licence at all. The court said it aloud: there was no land in Islamabad for a public hospital [for the poor], but there was land aplenty for clubs for the rich. And the hunger has not eased. In Multan, the district administration moves to slice 15 acres off the Central Cotton Research Institute, founded in 1970, the cradle of more than forty cotton varieties, including the region’s first virus-free strain, to feed another gymkhana, while the country’s cotton reserves sit at a record low and we spend hard currency importing the very crop the institute exists to improve. The Pakistan Business Forum has written to the chief minister to stop it. The clubs took the parks. Now they reach into the seed bank. There has been an attempt to quantify this. In 2021, the UNDP put a number on the privileges captured by Pakistan’s elite. Cheap land and capital, tax breaks and soft inputs came to about $17.4 billion a year, which is nearly 6pc of the whole economy. The Gymkhana is merely a place where one may stand and watch the transfer happen: a 112 acres, for Rs5000. When the same hands value, grant, and enjoy the land This mechanism endures not through sloth but through strategy, as the actors make clear. The land belongs to the state. The men who grant it are senior civil servants in the Colonies Department, the Board of Revenue, the office of the Deputy Commissioner. The men who set the value of the land, and thus decide the rent, are with the same revenue service. And the men who enjoy the clubs are, by rule, civil servants of Grade 18 and above and senior officers of the armed forces. The same hands own the land, price the land, rent it, and carry the membership cards. When one cadre handles every aspect of a deal, its low price is no blunder. It is the purpose. No one at that table has any interest in making public land fetch a public price, for all of them gain from the opposite. The officer who would raise the rent, enforce the breach, or cancel the lease must act against his service, his colleagues, and likely his own leisure. That is what makes Sohaib Butt’s report so rare, and so telling. It took a man willing to go against the grain of his service to do the simplest thing: write down what the land is worth. This is the truth worth stating plainly. In Pakistan, real power does not change hands at the ballot box. Governments arrive and depart; the bureaucracy and elites abide. And on the matter of state land for clubs, those who never leave office and those who enjoy the clubs are one and the same. That is why such a file scarcely moves. And it is why it matters so greatly who, in the end, forced it into the open. Nestled within the Bagh-e-Jinnah, is one of the most picturesque cricket arenas of the world — Credits: Dawn archives Two-tiered justice The state can, of course, move on land with great speed if it wants. Take Islamabad, the capital that prides itself on order. For three months its bulldozers have flattened katchi abadis or the informal colonies where the city’s gardeners and nannies, washerwomen and labourers have lived for a generation. Around 25,000 people were driven out of Mulism Colony in Bari Imam alone. Settlements a quarter-century old, Rimsha Colony in H-9 and the largely Christian Allama Iqbal Colony in G-7, were marked for the same fate, along with the ancient villages of Saidpur and Nurpur Shahan.The state’s housing policy counts 60 such settlements in the city, home to between 300,000 and half a million souls; the CDA recognises barely 10 as lawful and brands the rest squatters. And here is the part that should silence the room: a Supreme Court order from 2015 was passed after the merciless clearance of the I-11 settlement left 25,000 people homeless. It stayed the summary evictions altogether. The bulldozers came regardless. The same legal system that cannot dislodge an unpaid colonial lease in 18 months had no trouble dislodging the poor in open defiance of its highest court. Punjab is no kinder about informality. It is just quieter about it. For three decades, it has promised to regularise its katchi abadis, and for three decades that promise has mostly stayed on paper. There is a law to sanction the work done and an agency to get it done but the number of settlements grows faster than the lists of “regularised” ones. Surveys are started and abandoned. Notifications are issued and forgotten. The poor who put up their housing on the edges of Lahore and Faisalabad and Rawalpindi live out their years in limbo, always one bureaucrat’s signature away from eviction. Three decades is a lifetime. A child born in one of these colonies has grown, married, and had children, and the family still cannot say for certain that the ground beneath their feet is legally theirs. Meanwhile, the new law enforcer is punishing and swift. The Punjab government created the Punjab Enforcement and Regulatory Authority (PERA), to clear what it deemed to be encroachments. It is aided by deputy and assistant commissioners and a uniformed force with black Vigos. Through 2025 PERA hired thousands of staff and opened stations across Lahore and beyond, as its drives targeted the small folk. Traders protested its methods: a shop photographed in the evening, sealed the next morning, fined Rs10,000 to Rs25,000, kept shut until the owner paid. Thella wallahs, vendors, kiosks punished for setting up on a footpath. But 112 acres of the city’s finest land, held on a dead lease, built over without leave, exempted by a rule the board invented, is “legitimate possession,” defended for generations. The bulldozer works swiftly for the weak but stalls for the strong. What Rs218 billion could buy instead of membership It is worth listing what Rs218 billion would buy in a place that cannot pay for medicine. In 2025-26, Punjab set aside Rs630.5 billion for its health sector, and proudly announced that for the first time this included Rs79.5 billion for free medicine. And yet Dawn reported that Rawalpindi’s three public hospitals (Holy Family, Benazir Bhutto, and the Teaching Hospital) were given a fraction of Rs4.5 billion they asked for. Their vendors are refusing to deliver stocks until the bills are cleared. The Lahore Gymkhana land, on the other hand, is worth Rs218 billion, or three times the free medicine funding. A single elite golf-and-dining estate, that pays Rs5000 in rent, is worth more than the tab for medicines in a province of 120 million people. The Assembly did its job It took an elected Assembly more than one attempt to set this right. The matter was brought up at the last session but did not move ahead for “mysterious” reasons. The House pressed further. A member moved an adjournment motion and the Speaker called it out: this was elite capture of state land. The Speaker formed a committee and for the first time in history, opened its hearings to the public and TV cameras. The House’s members killed it at the first sitting by placing on the record, all of them, that they sought no membership of the club, only the public interest. In a few weeks they ferreted out from their government two documents that settled everything. The first was the valuation, ADC(R) report (shown above), which turned Rs5,000 into a scandal by comparison. The second document ended the argument. The Law and Parliamentary Affairs Department gave a clean opinion on what the state may do: Clause 6 of the 1996 lease lets the government end the lease at any time, on six months’ notice. Clause 8 says that when it ends, the club is owed nothing for any building it raised. The Board of Revenue added that the state is bound to resume the land when public purpose requires it, or when the lease is broken. India reclaimed its gymkhana land by reading one clause of a lease. Punjab’s lawyers have now confirmed the province holds the same power to take back the Rs218 billion estate, with every building on it, on six months’ notice, and pay nothing. Credit for this denouement goes to the House of elected representatives. What they cannot do alone is sign the order. That pen rests with the executive, which is the same bureaucracy that would rather keep the file shut. Inside Lahore Gymkhana Cricket Museum, the first of its kind in Pakistan — Credits: Dawn archives Options The remedy is not exotic. The simplest one is to cancel the lease. The second option is to take back the land for public use, which is what Delhi did. We don’t need to look far to find precedent. When the Royal Palm Club in Lahore defaulted on its lease of Railways land, the state took the land back and pulled down structures. Indeed, members on both benches have said if it can be done to a club on railway land in Lahore, it can be done to a club on nazul (state) land in Lahore. The most durable option is a legal statute to dedicate the gymkhana estate to a fixed public use. And one use should unite the benches. The estate is a manicured, thirsty green in one of the most poisoned cities on earth. Take it back. Grow a native forest on it the fast and thick Miyawaki way and plan a park. Such greenery traps the dust, cools the air, and pushes back against the smog that sends people to our hospitals each winter. A golf course serves a hundred men. A forest would serve millions. We say the law protects everyone alike but we must admit it does not. The thella wallah is presumed to be illegal and is not given time to prove otherwise. The Lahore Gymkhana Club is presumed to be lawful no matter what the file says. Delhi has shown us the way. There was never a question of what the law allowed if elite land had to be taken back. The Assembly has proven this twice and put proof on record. What remains is the will to choose a public forest or park over a private fairway, the many over the few, the medicine over the membership. The House has spoken. The executive has not. For now, the silence belongs to the people holding the pen, and everyone can see why they would rather not sign.
Here are some observations from watching Tuesday’s practice.
I was born and raised in Greece, and now live between Athens and the US. I've seen plenty of tourists make mistakes on trips to my home country.
He stood down as boss of the NT – and threw himself into kayaking, writing and DIY. The veteran director talks about his new start aged 60, mourning his mother – and directing Death of a Salesman in Turkish There were several big endings for Rufus Norris in 2025, all crammed into the same few seismic months last year. Firstly, the close of his tenure as director of the National Theatre after a decade at the helm. That planned ending collided with the loss of his mother, who died three weeks before he left the NT. On top of that, a significant birthday concluding his 50s. So what did Norris do after turning 60, on the other side of the Big Job, alongside the grief of losing a parent? DIY, plenty of kayaking and a house move, it turns out: “It felt important to have a complete break,” he says. “I’m a bit of a workaholic, but I’m also a bird of simple brain so I can as easily lose myself in how to build a shed or do up a place.” Continue reading...
From modern art giants such as Helen Marten to the most exciting up-and-comers, this weekend’s art party showcases the best and brightest the capital has to offer – free of charge With hundreds of world-class galleries, thousands of stunning exhibitions and countless talented artists, London has a serious claim to being the art capital of the world. Sure, it’s also got sky-high rents that make surviving as an artist nigh on impossible; and yes, perilous economic conditions mean that galleries are closing at an unprecedented rate (the brilliant Tiwani Contemporary announced last week that it would soon be shutting for good). But there’s still plenty to celebrate. And that’s where London Gallery Weekend comes in. Now entering its sixth year, the event brings together London’s biggest, brightest and best galleries for a weekend-long art party. There are talks, walk-throughs, performances, poetry readings and gigs taking place across the weekend, with galleries open late throughout – and admission to everything is free. Continue reading...
Terrific acting, especially an intriguingly ambiguous turn by child actor Julianna Layne, ground this twisty little horror debut When Ellie (Jessica Rothe) wakes up in bed in a house she doesn’t recognise, next to a man she doesn’t know, she naturally assumes the worst, in debut feature director BT Meza’s creepy thriller. Understandably, she freaks out, and is even more disconcerted when a little girl calling her mommy appears, distressed that Ellie doesn’t know who she is either. Has she been kidnapped? Why would this girl play along with the kidnapper’s ruse? At this point, Bruce (an excellent performance from Joseph Cross) intervenes, reassuring his daughter and explaining to Ellie that she has memory loss. He is her husband, he says, and Alice (Julianna Layne) is their little girl. If you’ve ever watched a film before, you’ll know there are twists and turns coming. This nifty little movie keeps you guessing and when it eventually shows its hand, there’s still plenty of mileage left in the characters. Layne gives a beautifully calibrated performance as Alice; it’s initially genuinely difficult to work out if she’s an innocent caught up in a terrifying situation or somehow in on whatever is happening – and that’s exactly what this character needs. With a film that wants to tease the viewer as to exactly what genre we’re watching, it’s ideal to see a kid played with a degree of ambiguity. Continue reading...
Detroit Tigers lefty, Tarik Skubal should return from the Injured List soon. A potential free agent, Skubal should draw plenty of trade interest in the coming weeks.
Researchers in Kazakhstan say Hong Kong's sound financial system, infrastructure and regulatory regime make it an ideal partner and fund-raising hub for green energy projects. Chief Executive John Lee will conclude his duty visit to Kazakhstan on Wednesday night, before continuing his Central Asian tour in Uzbekistan. The visit by the SAR delegation comes as Kazakhstan accelerates its decarbonisation drive, having committed to the Paris climate change treaty and a 2060 carbon neutrality target. "Our government is putting more effort on that. We have a lot of projects going on," said Nurxat Nuraje, head of the renewable energy lab at National Laboratory Astana. With petroleum reserves expected to be depleted within 50 years, he said the Kazakh government is "paying more attention to develop new technology like renewable energy technology". Nuraje, who attended the International Hydrogen Development Symposium in Wan Chai last month, believed there is plenty of room for cooperation. "We learned that Hong Kong has become a very important hub for the development of hydrogen and renewable energy," he said. "Hong Kong has a very good transportation system, also a capital investment system." Fellow researcher Yerbolat Magazov went further, suggesting Hong Kong look into developing a trading mechanism for green hydrogen. "The actual role of Hong Kong as a hub would be to make it not as an energy material, but as a valuable asset," he said. "Special frameworks, taxonomy, legislation — so hydrogen can be traded as a stock material." Their laboratory in the Kazakh capital has already demonstrated the potential of clean energy, after building a system last year that converts solar energy into hydrogen. Mainland company Zhejiang H2-Bank Technology was a key partner, supplying critical components such as electrolysers and hydrogen storage systems. But Magazov acknowledged they need to drive down costs before green hydrogen can really take off. It remains three to five times more expensive than "grey" hydrogen, which is derived from fossil fuels. "The biggest problem is bankability," he said. "Lots of people have lots of money, but they need to be sure that in the future, green hydrogen will be profitable. Right now, if you calculate, it's a non-profitable thing." This, according to Magazov, is where the Hong Kong brand comes into play. "If Hong Kong trusts this country, everyone can also trust. That allows future investors to put money and investments into this particular market," he said. With global energy markets remaining volatile, Magazov felt that Central Asia and China should forge closer ties. "It's better to make allies which are close to each other," he said. "China, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries should bring together. In the future, if something happens, we'll be independent of others." Edited by Raymond Yeung
Trump’s cold reception comes after the GOP killed his ‘slush fund’ and angered plenty in the Senate Republican conference, Eric Garcia writes
Readers strike an encouraging note for those sceptical of the joys of Proust, saying it has plenty to make it worth perservering I read all seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time over a nine-month period. In answer to Mike Bromberg (Letters, 26 May), a great deal happens besides the famous madeleine incident: the advent of electric lighting, motorcars and aeroplanes, not to mention endless romances and social intrigues. My memory is that every hundred pages or so of tedium would yield five to 10 pages of the most revelatory reading that I have ever experienced. Was it worth it? Totally. Would I do it again? Probably not. But I won the bet. Bill Gaver London • Proust is not inaccessible. I read most of it in French on the Métro during my year abroad in Paris. It was the 1960s, and being buried in a book was a good way of deterring unwanted male attention. For anyone who fears that nothing happens, read on – there is a great variety of sex, for example, and plenty of it. Continue reading...
There have been plenty of dramatic story lines in the contest to choose a successor to term-limited California governor Gavin Newsom, from the sudden implosion of Eric Swalwell's once-robust candidacy to the gradually subsiding fear that the very Democratic electorate would be forced to choose between two Republicans in November.
The sales will lock in profits over 100% on both stocks.