Serious crash near Rotorua
Rotorua's Reg Stag speeds to victory at 2025 Red Bull Trolley Grand Prix. Video / Red Bull
Smoke from the Rotorua Recycling Centre fire blanketed the surrounding area. Video / Supplied
Amelia Branson is going to America for surgery and radiation for her brain tumour, which costs about $550,000. Video / Megan Wilson
Thousands attend official Waitangi Day event in Rotorua. Video / Kelly Makiha
Locals feared they looked like container homes when they first arrived, but today they had a chance to look through the finished product. Video / Kelly Makiha
Security footage of a ram raid at Westbrook Liquor Centre in Rotorua. Video / Supplied
Vaishali McNeill, 15, died in a 2023 head-on crash with a truck. Parents Sarb Mann and David McNeill want harsher penalties for impaired drivers. Video / Andrew Warner, Supplied
Twelve fire crews joined the battle to contain a scrub fire in the Tahorakuri Forest area between Rotorua and Taupō on Wednesday. Video / Supplied
Rotorua Māori ward councillor Rawiri Waru at the final meeting for the year. Video / Laura Smith
Salvation Army's choice model supermarket empowers those in need. Video / Andrew Warner
The Hits Rotorua 97.5FM presenter Paul Hickey announces the final tally for Fill the Bus 2024.
The Hits Rotorua 97.5FM's Fill the Bus fundraiser is part of the six-week annual Rotorua Daily Post Christmas Appeal for the foodbank.
Video of the fire showed large flames and black smoke coming from an address on Ngongotahā Rd at the time. Video / Out There Industries
Thousands of protesters marching up Fenton St in Rotorua
Hīkoi mō te Tiriti protesters in Rotorua.
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NZ Herald
6 days ago
- NZ Herald
Privacy commissioner inquiry finds supermarket facial recognition tech's use is justified
'These issues become particularly critical when people need to access essential services such as supermarkets. FRT [facial recognition technology] will only be acceptable if the use is necessary and the privacy risks are successfully managed,' Webster said. The Foodstuffs trial ended last September and ran in 25 supermarkets. The commissioner found the live technology model used in the trial was compliant with the Privacy Act. About 226 million faces were scanned during the trial, including multiple scans of the same person, and 99.999% of those were deleted within one minute. The trial raised 1742 alerts, 1208 were confirmed matches to store watchlists – databases made from images of people of interest to a store. In December 2024, a woman took her case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal after she was wrongly kicked out of a Rotorua supermarket, claiming the technology was discriminatory. There were nine instances of someone being approached by staff, but misidentified as the wrong person during the trial. In two cases, the shopper was asked to leave. All nine instances were attributable to human error, and were outweighed by the benefits of using facial recognition, justifying its use. The inquiry found while the level of intrusion to customers' privacy was high because every visitor's face was collected, the safeguards used in the trial reduced the intrusion to an acceptable level. Webster said there was still work needed to improve the safety and efficiency of facial recognition software for New Zealand, as it had been developed overseas and not trained on a local population. He said the commission could not be completely confident the technology had addressed issues on technical bias, and that it had the potential to negatively impact Māori and Pacific people. 'This means the technology must only be used with the right processes in place, including human checks that an alert is accurate before acting on it. 'I also expect that Foodstuffs North Island will put in place monitoring and review to allow it to evaluate the impact of skin tone on identification accuracy and store response, and to provide confidence to the regulator and customers that key privacy safeguards remain in place,' Webster said. The safeguards included immediately deleting images that did not match with a store's watchlist, setting up the system to only identify those whose behaviour was seriously harmful, like violent offending, not allowing staff to add images of people under 18 or those thought to be vulnerable to the watchlist and not sharing watchlist information between stores. Match alerts were verified by two trained staff members to make sure a human decision was part of the process, the inquiry report said, and access to the facial recognition system and its information was restricted to authorised staff. Images collected were not permitted to be used for training data purposes, the report said. Foodstuffs responds General counsel for Foodstuffs North Island Julian Benefield said the goal behind the FRT trial was to understand whether it could reduce harm while respecting people's privacy, saying it had succeeded in doing so. 'Retail crime remains a serious and complex problem across New Zealand,' he said. 'Our people continue to be assaulted, threatened and verbally abused, and we're committed to doing all we can to create safer retail environments.' Benefield said privacy was at the heart of the trial. He said an independent evaluator found the trial prevented more than 100 cases of serious harm, including assaults. 'We have worked closely with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and listened to their feedback. 'We welcome the OPC's feedback on areas for improvement and will carefully consider their recommendations, including the need to monitor accuracy, before we make any decisions about future permanent use.' Retail NZ chief executive Carolyn Young said the trial showed the technology had made a measurable impact in reducing harm and improving safety in stores. She said retailers across the country had been watching the trial with interest and a number were investigating FRT for their own operations in the near future. 'Retailers are crying out for proactive solutions that prevent crime and enhance the safety of their staff and customers. Our members continue to face high rates of violence and crime, putting both their employees and the public at risk, as well as threatening the financial sustainability of retail businesses.' - RNZ
Otago Daily Times
7 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Tenancy terminated over assault threats
A man who threw plastic chairs at his frightened neighbours, before letting off a gas bottle in the shared hallway and shouting "boom, boom, you can all die", has lost his Salvation Army flat. Quinton Rihari could not be reached for the Tenancy Tribunal's hearing, where the Salvation Army sought to terminate the tenancy on his central Dunedin flat, saying he had threatened to assault other tenants in the complex. According to the tribunal's recently released decision, Rihari received written warnings about his behaviour at his Thomas Burns St flat on three occasions. The first was on December 27 last year, when he broke a painting in the corridor during a fight. It began at 3.30am and lasted for an hour and a half. Then, in February, he verbally abused tenants when they asked him to turn his music down. Two months later, on April 14, the Salvation Army says Rihari became angry and threw plastic chairs off a shared balcony, frightening other tenants. After returning to his room, Rihari let off a 9kg LPG bottle in the hallway, yelling "boom, boom, you can all die". Police were called and took Rihari away, but he returned and begin yelling at the other tenants, calling them "narks". Later that day, he told another tenant he was going to "punch her head in". Again, police were called and Rihari was taken away. Under the Residential Tenancies Act, the tribunal can terminate a tenancy if it's satisfied a tenant has engaged in antisocial behaviour on three separate occasions during a 90-day period and received written notice on each occasion. The decision found that while Rihari received separate notices for each incident, the three incidents spanned 108 days, outside the 90-day period. Despite this, as the tribunal found Rihari had threatened to harm his neighbours, it agreed to terminate Rihari's tenancy. By Catherine Hutton
RNZ News
7 days ago
- RNZ News
Quinton Rihari loses Dunedin flat after threatening neighbours
By Catherine Hutton, Open Justice reporter of Photo: 123rf A man who threw plastic chairs at his frightened neighbours before letting off a gas bottle in the shared hallway and shouting "Boom, boom, you can all die", has lost his Salvation Army flat. Quinton Rihari couldn't be reached for the Tenancy Tribunal's hearing, where the Salvation Army sought to terminate the tenancy on his central Dunedin flat, saying he'd threatened to assault other tenants in the complex. According to the tribunal's recently released decision, Rihari received written warnings about his behaviour at his Thomas Burns Street flat on three occasions. The first was on 27 December last year, when he broke a painting in the corridor during a fight outside his room. It began at 3.30am and lasted for an hour and a half. Then, in February, he verbally abused tenants when they asked him to turn his music down. Two months later, on 14 April, the Salvation Army says Rihari became angry and threw plastic chairs off a shared balcony, frightening other tenants. After returning to his room, Rihari let off a 9kg LPG bottle in the hallway, yelling, "Boom, boom, you can all die". Police were called and took Rihari away, only for him to return and begin yelling at the other tenants, calling them "narks". Later that day, he told another tenant he was going to "punch her head in". Again, police were called and Rihari was taken away. Under the Residential Tenancies Act, the tribunal can terminate a tenancy if it's satisfied a tenant has engaged in antisocial behaviour on three separate occasions during a 90-day period and received written notice on each occasion. Antisocial behaviour includes harassment or any act (whether intentional or not) that reasonably causes significant alarm, distress or nuisance. The decision found that while Rihari received separate notices for each incident, the three incidents spanned 108 days, outside the 90-day period. Despite this, the tribunal found Rihari had threatened to harm his neighbours over the gas cylinder incident and threatened to assault another neighbour. As a result, it agreed to terminate Rihari's tenancy. When the Salvation Army was approached for comment late Tuesday afternoon, its media officer Kai Sanders said no one was available for comment, adding this wasn't something the organisation would usually comment on because of its strict rules around privacy. * This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald .
