National MP Chester Borrows has presented a petition to Parliament, which will now go through select committee, asking for an amendment to the Care of Children Act. The Labour Party and Family Planning say they will fight the proposed amendment. The petition was prompted by the experience of the Kieft family in Stratford in 2009. Read more
A judge has reserved his decision on whether terminally ill Wellington lawyer Lecretia Seales gets the end she wants to her life. Seales returned to court for the final session of the third day of her court case, in which she seeks to end her life peacefully with the help of her general practitioner. Justice Read more
Josephine was facing a cold, wet winter with no glass in the windows of her home. That was until City Impact Church volunteers heard about her situation. The home the Otara woman shares with her daughter and baby granddaughter has been in the family for decades but was badly in need of repair. Continue reading
Auckland’s third new Hindu temple this year will open in Henderson next month. Community worker Pravin Patel said there were now 17 Hindu temples across Auckland. The city’s Hindu adherents increased by more than any other religion between the 2006 and 2013 censuses, from 45,324 to 61,458, and are now 4.3 per cent of all Read more
The family of Blessie Gotingco began the novena on May 15, timing it so that the final day of prayer would fall last Sunday, the one-year anniversary of Blessie’s death. A man, who has name suppression, was convicted of Gotingco’s rape and murder at the High Court in Auckland on Friday. Gotingco went missing on Read more
Everything changed for Teina Pora after he was baptised by a fellow inmate using water from a prison laundry tub 11 years ago. He says he forgives the police who charged him with the 1992 rape and murder of Susan Burdett. Pora was convicted twice for this offence and spent 21 years in jail. In Read more
Catholics object to mockery of their religion, such as encasing a statue of the Virgin Mary in a condom, but show no signs of resorting to barbarism, said Tim Pankhurst, former editor of the Dominion Post. “The leader of the world’s Roman Catholics makes his point about inequality and injustice by washing poor people’s feet,” Read more
Former Prime Minister, and constitutional lawyer Sir Geoffrey Palmer is supporting Lecretia Seales in her attempt to clarify the law in a way that would allow her GP to help her to die. Palmer was sitting with her family and friends in the jury box when the case began in the High Court in Wellington Read more
New Zealand is the best place on Earth to be a prostitute, says a local sex workers’ advocate. Catherine Healey, New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective national co-ordinator, told an Australian news website New Zealand was the best country to work in the sex industry. She said laws here around sex work were the world’s most effective Read more
Destiny Church is circulating images of wads of cash and the Twitter hashtag “#iwannagive” to followers before its annual conference. Hundreds are expected to attend next weekend’s conference at the church’s “City of God” headquarters in South Auckland. On Friday, Tamaki tweeted to his 3344 followers a photo of wads of freshly minted $100 notes, Read more