Daily Archives: September 24, 2021

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) The father of three young girls who were killed last week in New Zealand said Thursday his precious angels had been ripped away from him in a loss he would carry for the rest of his life.

But orthopedic surgeon Graham Dickason also said hed already forgiven his wife Lauren and urged others to do the same. He said she, too, was a victim in the tragedy.

Dickason wrote his thoughts in a letter that was read aloud by a reverend during a candlelight vigil that was attended by hundreds of people outside the familys home in the South Island town of Timaru.

Lauren Dickason, 40, has been charged with murder in the deaths of her twin 2-year-old girls Maya and Karla, and their 6-year-old sister Liane, in a crime that has shocked New Zealand. She is being kept at a psychiatric facility ahead of her next scheduled court appearance on Oct. 5.

The Dickason family moved into housing for medical professionals near the Timaru Hospital in New Zealand less than a week before the killings. Before that, as new arrivals from South Africa, they were required to spend two weeks in a coronavirus quarantine hotel run by the military.

Graham Dickason returned home just before 10 p.m. last Thursday and found the bodies of his daughters, according to reports. Emergency services said that when they responded, they found Lauren Dickason, who was hospitalized in stable condition and later charged by police.

Neighbors called police when they heard a man screaming and crying.

A judge has suppressed the details of the alleged crime.

At the vigil, Graham Dickason said in his letter that parents of young children should remember to let them play wildly and to laugh.

The family had just moved to New Zealand from South Africa, where former neighbors and others who knew them laid wreaths and flowers later Thursday outside the estate where they used to live. Colorful wreaths lay next to a white cross at the housing estates entrance in the South African capital, Pretoria.

Christine Wright, who said she had been a patient of Graham Dickasons, was one of those to bring flowers. She said she and her husband had seen news of the killings in South Africa, where it has gained media attention.

We couldnt believe it at first. I mean, it was just such a shock to us, she said. We had to read it twice to actually realize that it was our doctor.

Wrights husband, Allan, said Dickasons wife had assisted in some surgeries and she seemed like a very nice person.

Nothing on Lauren Dickasons social media pages over recent months when she was living in Pretoria indicated anything was amiss.

She posted pictures of her family and of bakery treats, and wrote about the virus, urging people to get vaccinated. In May, she marked the couples wedding anniversary on Facebook.

Happy 15th wedding anniversary Graham Dickason. What an adventure. We have truly created a beautiful family and had many good times together, she wrote. May the next years be more blessed, more happy and may the kids let us sleep.

Her Facebook page says she went to high school in Pretoria and studied medicine in Cape Town.

Mandy Sibanyoni, who worked as a childminder for the Dickasons in South Africa, described them as an awesome family with wonderful kids and no obvious problems.

She said the only sign of stress she saw from Lauren Dickason was as a result of one of her daughters being born with a lip disfigurement, which needed surgical interventions. But both parents loved their kids like nobodys business, she said.

Im torn apart, a part of mine is gone, Sibanyoni said in an interview with The Associated Press last week. And its like those kids, they are my kids too because I raised them.

I dont know what to do about this because the only question that Ive got now is, what happened? What went wrong? Because Lauren cared for her kids.

___

Associated Press writer Mogomotsi Magome in Pretoria, South Africa contributed to this report.

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Dad of 3 girls killed in New Zealand says he's forgiven wife

After nearly five weeks in lockdown Auckland will move out of the highest setting, New Zealands prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has said, adding she was confident there was no undetected transmission of the Delta variant in the community.

New Zealand recorded 22 new cases of coronavirus in the community including three cases outside Auckland on Monday which some had feared could put the brakes on the easing of restrictions.

Level 4 has done what we needed to do it has helped us contain the outbreak. Level 3 helps us keep up that important work, Ardern said.

We are not stepping out of level 4 because the job is done, but nor are we moving because we dont think we can achieve the goal of stamping out Covid-19 we are moving because level 3 still provides a cautious approach while we continue to stamp out Covid-19, she said.

It means staying in your bubble, it means contactless transactions and keeping your distance. It means we say thank you to Auckland for their tireless work, and we collectively keep going.

Almost all cases of the last 14 days have either been household or known contacts, and wastewater testing suggests there is no significant undetected transmission.

Ardern said the decision to move down levels is due in part to a couple of observations: there has not been widespread clusters around workplaces, and of the cases where a link has been established, none has resulted from people accessing essential services.

Level 3 allows for people to narrowly expand their bubbles to people who may be isolated and more businesses can provide click-and-collect services or deliveries.

Ardern strongly urged people over 65 years old who had not yet been vaccinated to stay home because of the risk the virus poses.

Auckland will move down settings from midnight Tuesday and stay in level 3 for at least 2 weeks.

A bespoke set of temporary level 4 restrictions will be put in place for the community south of Aucklands border where three household contacts of a remand prisoner with Covid-19 have tested positive for the virus. All three live in the Waikato region, and two are schoolchildren at Mangatangi School. One of those students was symptomatic at school on Thursday.

The rest of the country is at alert level 2 out of lockdown but with restrictions on gatherings and requirements on mask-use. This setting will remain in place as long as Auckland is in level 3 but gatherings will be expanded from 50 to 100 people.

There have now been a total of 1,071 cases in the outbreak, with 337 of those still active. Twelve cases in the last fortnight are yet to be epidemiologically linked to the outbreak, with five of those reported on Monday. There are 16 people in hospital and four in intensive care.

Just over 71% of eligible New Zealanders those aged over 12 have had their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and more than 37% are fully vaccinated.*

Cabinet will review the lockdown settings on 4 October.

*A note on data: the Guardian has begun calculating the percentage of NZs eligible population vaccinated from Statistics New Zealand population data, comparing numbers vaccinated against a total 12+ population of 4,355,300. This may differ slightly from government-generated percentages that use different denominators, such as the Health Service Utilisation Population which measures all those 12+ who are engaged with the health system.

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New Zealand Covid update: Auckland to move out of level 4 ...

New Zealand will ease coronavirus restrictions in Auckland, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday, ending nearly five weeks of the strictest lockdown in the countrys most populous city.

Some businesses, including restaurants and cafes, will be allowed to reopen for takeout and delivery beginning Tuesday night, and as many as 10 people will be permitted to gather in the city for ceremonies including funerals and weddings, Ms. Ardern told reporters. In New Zealands four-tier system of Covid rules, Auckland will now be at Level 3, the second most restrictive. The rest of the country has been under Level 2 for the past two weeks.

The measures have frustrated residents and shuttered businesses, as the country remained one of the few committed to completely eliminating the Delta variant of the coronavirus. There were 22 new cases reported on Monday, down from a peak of 83 during this outbreak. New Zealand began slowly relaxing some of the worlds strictest antivirus measures earlier this month, aiming to reopen borders to foreigners some time next year.

We keep doing the job of stamping out Covid, Ms. Ardern said. We are not stepping out of Level 4 because the job is done. Nor are we moving because we dont think we can achieve the goal of stamping out Covid-19.

Other nations in the Asia Pacific region have begun to reopen despite rising numbers of new cases, acknowledging that strategies that aim to eliminate the virus may be untenable. Australian authorities have said that country will begin to reopen once 70 percent of the eligible population is vaccinated. Singapore has loosened quarantine rules for some travelers. In Vietnam, businesses are reopening, although cases are still high.

Ms. Ardern insisted that the change in rules for Auckland should be considered a cautious step. Across the rest of New Zealand, restrictions at indoor gatherings, including restaurants and bars, will be further eased, allowing 100 people to gather. The new restrictions will remain in place for at least two weeks, and will be reassessed on Oct. 4.

Elsewhere in the world:

Vatican City will require residents, workers and visitors to show that they have immunity against Covid-19 starting Oct. 1, officials announced on Monday. The measure matches the requirement introduced last week in Italy, which surrounds the small state. The Vatican police force will check what are called Green Passes, which show whether the holder has received at least one dose of vaccine, recovered from a coronavirus infection or tested negative recently. The only exception will be for people attending Mass.

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New Zealand Will Ease Covid Lockdown in Auckland - The New ...

Ongoing COVID-19 viral pandemic in New Zealand

6+ cases per million people

35.9 cases

22.9 cases

11.9 cases

00.9 cases

300+ confirmed cases

200299 confirmed cases

100199 confirmed cases

1099 confirmed cases

19 confirmed cases

10+ confirmed deaths

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Deaths

The COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand is part of the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first case of the disease in New Zealand was reported on 28 February 2020. As of 24September2021[update], the country has had a total of 4,144 cases (3,788 confirmed and 356 probable[b]). 27 people have died from the virus, with cases recorded in all twenty district health board (DHB) areas.[1] The pandemic peaked in early April 2020, with 89 new cases recorded per day and 929 active cases. A total of 1,852,557[2] COVID tests have been carried out as of 22 March 2021.

All borders and entry ports of New Zealand were closed to non-residents on 19 March 2020, with returning citizens and residents being required to self-isolate. From 10 April 2020, all people arriving by air had to go into two weeks of managed isolation in adapted commercial hotels. A two-way travel bubble with Australia opened up from 19 April 2021, and with the Cook Islands on 19 May, although both have since been suspended. Quarantine free travel is currently only possible one-way from either Cook Islands or Niue.[3]

A four-tier alert level system was introduced on 21 March 2020 to manage the outbreak within New Zealand. Since then, after a nationwide lockdown from March to May 2020, regionalised alert level changes have been used, where the Auckland Region has entered lockdown twice, in AugustSeptember 2020 and FebruaryMarch 2021. The country then went for several months without any community transmission, with all cases restricted to the managed isolation system. As of 18 August 2021, New Zealand is under nationwide lockdown due to a case of community transmission in Auckland of the Delta variant, with subsequent community cases in Auckland and Wellington. This will last for at least ten days nationwide, and fourteen days in Auckland.

On 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was the cause of a respiratory illness (coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19), found in a cluster of people in Wuhan, Hubei, People's Republic of China, which had been reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019.[4][5]

The case fatality ratio for COVID-19 has been much lower than SARS of 2003,[6][7]but the transmission has reportedly been significantly greater, according to a statement by Prof. Azra Ghani from MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, Imperial College of London, a World Health Organization collaborating centre.[8][6]

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COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand - Wikipedia

Their chickens came home to roost.

Two men have been accused of fowl play after being caught trying to enter New Zealands largest city with a huge stash of KFC in the trunk of their car in violation of strict COVID-19 lockdown rules, the Guardian reported.

Police were on patrol Sunday on the outskirts of Auckland when they noticed a suspicious-looking vehicle traveling on a gravel road, and upon seeing the police car, the vehicle did a U-turn and sped off trying to evade police, a spokesman said.

The vehicle was searched and police located the cash, alongside empty ounce bags and a large amount of takeaways, added the police official, who said over NZ$100,000, or $70,000, was found.

Police images show at least three buckets of chicken, several containers of coleslaw and an undisclosed quantity of fries.

The finger-lickin suspects were traveling from Hamilton, about 75 miles south of the city, police said.

Under Aucklands Level 4 lockdown rules the strictest in the country restaurants, including takeout services, remain closed and everyone must stay home, according to CNN.

The rest of the country is at Level 2, with eateries, cafes, bars and nightclubs open.

The suspects, aged 23 and 30, will appear in court on charges of breaching the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act. They face up to six months in the slammer or a fine of up to NZ$4,000, or $2,800, according to the Guardian.

On Tuesday, Auckland will move to Alert Level 3, under which travel is only allowed for permitted movement like commuting to work or school.

The country of about 5 million residents has reported more than 4,800 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 27 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

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New Zealand men arrested for trying to smuggle KFC into Auckland

New Zealand has become the prime destination for the worlds wealthy elite. Their relocation could be to do with the countrys famous scenery and quality of life but it could also be that the pandemic has renewed peoples interest in New Zealand as supposedly the best place in the world to survive global societal collapse.

Its true, as a recent study observes, that New Zealand is a set of isolated islands with renewable energy resources and a temperate climate. However, there is also a long history, intertwined with the countrys colonisation, of New Zealand being seen as a blank slate or empty land, open for the taking. That false image served to justify colonial settlement in the past. Its now being used again to prepare the ground for further settlement by the super-wealthy.

Prior to European colonisation, Mori had been living in the country for at least 800 years. In 1839, the colonial office instructed the first British governor of New Zealand, William Hobson, to establish a system to secure unsettled lands. The next year Hobson claimed sovereignty over the North Island on the basis of a treaty, the Treaty of Waitangi. But he claimed sovereignty over the South Island on the basis of terra nullius, a Latin term meaning nobodys land. The South Island was far from empty, and had been long occupied by Mori.

In the early 1870s, British writer Samuel Butler wrote the novel Erewhon (the word nowhere backwards), based in part on his years working in New Zealand. In the first chapter, Waste lands, Butler describes the colony as previously uninhabited.

This was a persistent idea. In 1877 a New Zealand court ruled that the Treaty of Waitangi itself had no legal force, because all of New Zealand was legally empty prior to European arrival. It claimed Indigenous peoples had no settled system of law at the time of the foundation of the colony. The decision was overruled by New Zealand courts, and there is widespread evidence of longstanding legal traditions developed in Mori communities prior to European colonisation.

Together these colonial ideas formed part of a doctrine of discovery, which applied across settler-colonial states like Canada and the United States of America. This legal framework claimed that colonisers could lay claim to land because they supposedly discovered it. As Tina Ngata and Jacinta Ruru and others have pointed out, that doctrine is not a bygone historical relic it still influences thinking today.

This doctrine of discovery has shaped not just New Zealand but also the entire Pacific region, including Australia. It has shaped the actions of France, which carried out nuclear weapon testing on and around Pacific islands from the 1960s to the 1990s. (France has compensated 63 of the 110,000 people contaminated by nuclear testing in Mohi Nui, islands still controlled by France, despite renewed calls this year for reparations and independence.)

A straight line can be drawn from colonial descriptions of New Zealand as an empty land demographically and legally through to the rash of commentary viewing the country as the best place to be when society collapses. They both see the land as there for the taking.

The super-wealthy may also be attracted by the prospect of being an economic nobody in the country. New Zealands laws insulate wealth from scrutiny and redistribution. There is no public register of trusts in New Zealand, which are extensively used to shelter wealth and property. New Zealand has no taxes on capital gains or inheritance, and it doesnt tax existing wealth or financial transactions. There is little public scrutiny of company ownership of property. Tax authorities only last year accepted the need for more scrutiny of cryptocurrency holdings.

New Zealand governments have taken steps in recent years to enhance financial transparency. In 2018, the Labour-led government banned ownership of property by non-residents. Anti-money laundering laws have been tightened since 2009.

But New Zealand laws still cover the tracks of the wealthy. So its understandable that the super-rich encouraged by the New Zealand governments border exemptions for investors would identify the country as a prime destination to avoid attention and accountability. One crypto investor even said last year he chose New Zealand after doing billionaire hunting to figure out where all the other Silicon Valley people would be.

New Zealand isnt a blank slate, empty land, or off grid and never has been. New Zealand does not sit apart from the ills of the world, as much as people may like to construct an image of the country as a source of hope in bleak times.

Its a country that is, because of colonisation, well-integrated into global circuits of capital, imperialism, and power. Visa exemptions for wealthy investors are designed to draw in capital. New Zealand remains a member of Five Eyes, the security and intelligence network comprising the UK and three other white-majority settler-colonial states: Australia, Canada, and the US.

Going off the grid may seem like a way for individuals to avoid the crises we face as a globe. But the only way to overcome these crises collectively is to change the grid the same grid of colonial capitalism that has shaped the idea of New Zealand as a safe haven from the apocalypse.

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New Zealand is no off-grid safe haven from the apocalypse - The Guardian