Jacinda Ardern: Five key moments as New Zealand PM

This video frame grab from TVNZ via AFPTV taken on January 19, 2023 shows New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announcing she will resign from her post next month, in Wellington. (AFP/TVNZ)
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Updated 19 January 2023
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Jacinda Ardern: Five key moments as New Zealand PM

  • Jacinda Ardern announced her shock resignation as New Zealand’s premier on Thursday
  • Ardern won plaudits for showing solidarity with Muslims after Christchurch attacks

Wellington: New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is quitting after a tumultuous five years that shot her to global stardom as a progressive leader but left her ground down by the challenges at home.

Here are five moments that marked the leadership of the 42-year-old Ardern, who declared Thursday: “I know that I no longer have enough in the tank.”

Ardern won accolades in September 2018 when she was photographed kissing and bouncing her then three-month-old daughter, Neve, inside the hall of the United Nations General Assembly — the first such appearance by a baby in the organization’s history.

She was only the second prime minister to give birth while in office after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto in 1990.

“I want to normalize it,” Ardern told CNN. “By being more open it might create a path for other women.”

Ardern won widespread praise for her response to the March 2019 Christchurch attacks, when a white supremacist gunman targeted two mosques during Friday prayers, killing 51 and seriously injuring another 40.

When she donned a headscarf and comforted victims’ families after the shooting, it resonated globally. She would later describe it as a spontaneous gesture of respect to the Muslim community.

She also won plaudits for swiftly enacting gun law reforms and pushing social media giants to address online hate speech.

Ardern found herself again comforting a shocked nation nine months later when a volcanic eruption at White Island, also known as Whakaari, killed 21 people and left dozens more with horrific burns.

Ardern won a second term by a landslide in October 2020, snatching a clear parliamentary majority as she rode a wave of “Jacindamania” popularity underpinned by her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ardern, who cobbled together a coalition government in 2017, dubbed her second win “the Covid election.”

She campaigned on her government’s success in eliminating community transmission of the coronavirus, which at the time had claimed 25 lives in a population of five million.

New Zealand only fully reopened its borders in August last year. The total number of deaths attributed to Covid has now climbed to 2,437.

Two years after winning her second term, a small but vocal segment of New Zealand’s population turned against Ardern’s handling of the pandemic.

Across four weeks, starting in February last year, hundreds of demonstrators occupied the lawn in front of the distinctive Beehive parliament building in the capital Wellington.

Ardern refused to meet the protesters — many of them espousing anti-vaccine conspiracy theories — and said they were using “intimidation and harassment” to get their point across.

The demonstrations ended in a flurry of violence, with some people ripping up paving stones and hurling them at riot squad police who were attempting to clear the camp.

More than 100 people were eventually arrested, with Ardern later describing the situation as “incredibly difficult” and “challenging.”

Ardern’s popularity waned as she battled declining trust in government, a deteriorating economic situation, and a resurgent conservative opposition.

Recent polls put the center-right coalition ahead, with elections to be held on October 14.

The stress has been evident in recent months — Ardern showed a rare lapse of poise when she was unwittingly caught on microphone calling an opposition politician an “arrogant pri*k.”


Pakistan test fires ballistic missile as tensions with India spike after Kashmir gun massacre

Updated 59 min 33 sec ago
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Pakistan test fires ballistic missile as tensions with India spike after Kashmir gun massacre

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan test-fired Saturday a ballistic missile as tensions with India spiked over last week’s deadly attack on tourists in the disputed Kashmir region.
The surface-to-surface missile has a range of 450 kilometers (about 280 miles), the Pakistani military said.
The launch of the Abdali Weapon System was aimed at ensuring the “operational readiness of troops and validating key technical parameters,” including the missile’s advanced navigation system and enhanced manoeuvrability features, according to a statement from the military.
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif congratulated the scientists, engineers and those behind the successful missile test.


Russia declares state of emergency at port after Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk

Updated 03 May 2025
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Russia declares state of emergency at port after Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk

  • There was no immediate comment from Ukraine

MOSCOW: The mayor of the Russian port city of Novorossiysk declared a state of emergency on Saturday after he said a Ukrainian drone attack had damaged residential buildings and injured at least five people, including two children.
Andrei Kravchenko, the mayor, announced his decision on his official Telegram account which showed him inspecting the damage to apartment buildings and giving orders to officials.
Kravchenko said one of the injured people, a woman, was in hospital in a serious situation.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, whose air force said Russia had attacked Ukraine overnight with 183 drones and two ballistic missiles.


US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings

Updated 03 May 2025
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US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration sent termination notices late on Friday to employees of a worker health and safety agency that provides research and services for coal miners, firefighters and others, despite appeals by a lawmaker from Trump’s Republican Party to preserve its programs.
Employees of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health received reduction-in-force notices that said the job losses were necessary to reshape the workforce of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a copy of the notices reviewed by Reuters.
Nearly all NIOSH employees were placed on administrative leave in February but around 40 who worked on coal-mining and firefighter safety were asked to return temporarily to work several days ago, the union for the agency’s employees said. At least two of those employees have now been notified of termination.
US Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, had lobbied Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to restore the programs, including the coal-focused work of its Morgantown, West Virginia, office.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIOSH, did not immediately respond to a request for comment after regular business hours. A spokesperson earlier this week said NIOSH’s functions would join the new Administration for a Healthy America, alongside multiple agencies. It was not clear whether any of the terminated employees would be transferred elsewhere.
Reuters reported last month that the halting of NIOSH’s key services ended vital health and safety programs for coal miners, such as mobile health and lung screenings, and a program to relocate miners afflicted with black lung disease to less dusty parts of a mine.
There has been a resurgence of black lung disease in the last decade, including among young coal miners. At the same time, President Donald Trump has led a high-profile campaign to revive coal mining and use, which had been declining in the US. 


Lives on hold in India’s border villages with Pakistan

Updated 03 May 2025
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Lives on hold in India’s border villages with Pakistan

  • Relations between the neighbors have plummeted after India accused Pakistan of backing an attack in disputed Kashmir region
  • Islamabad has rejected the charge of aiding gunmen who killed 26 people, with both countries since exchanging diplomatic barbs

SAINTH: On India’s heavily fortified border with arch-rival Pakistan, residents of farming villages have sent families back from the frontier, recalling the terror of the last major conflict between the rival armies.
Those who remain in the farming settlement of Sainth, home to some 1,500 people along the banks of the broad Chenab river, stare across the natural division between the nuclear-armed rivals fearing the future.
“Our people can’t plan too far ahead,” said Sukhdev Kumar, 60, the village’s elected headman.
“Most villagers here don’t invest beyond a very basic house,” he added.
“For who knows when a misdirected shell may fall from the other side and ruin everything?”
Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors have plummeted after India accused Pakistan of backing the worst attack on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir in years.
Indian police have issued wanted posters for three men accused of carrying out the April 22 attack at Pahalgam — two Pakistanis and an Indian — who they say are members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, a UN-designated terrorist organization.
Islamabad has rejected the charge of aiding gunmen who killed 26 people, with both countries since exchanging diplomatic barbs including expelling each other’s citizens.
India’s army said Saturday its troops had exchanged gunfire with Pakistani soldiers overnight along the de facto border with contested Kashmir — which it says has taken place every night since April 24.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, with both governing part of the disputed territory separately and claiming it in its entirety.
Sainth, with its open and lush green fields, is in the Hindu-majority part of Indian-run Jammu and Kashmir.
Security is omnipresent.
Large military camps dot the main road, with watchtowers among thick bushes.
Kumar said most families had saved up for a home “elsewhere as a backup,” saying that only around a third of those with fields remained in the village.
“Most others have moved,” he said.
The region was hit hard during the last major conflict with Pakistan, when the two sides clashed in 1999 in the high-altitude Himalayan mountains further north at Kargil.
Vikram Singh, 40, who runs a local school, was a teenager at the time.
He remembers the “intense mortar shelling” that flew over their heads in the village — with some exploding close by.
“It was tense then, and it is tense now,” Singh told AFP.
“There is a lot to worry since the attack at Pahalgam... The children are scared, the elderly are scared — everyone is living in fear.”
International pressure has been piled on both New Delhi and Islamabad to settle their differences through talks.
The United States has called for leaders to “de-escalate tensions,” neighboring China urged “restraint,” with the European Union warning Friday that the situation was “alarming.
On the ground, Singh seemed resigned that there would be some fighting.
“At times, we feel that war must break out now because, for us, it is already an everyday reality,” he said.
“We anyways live under the constant threat of shelling, so, maybe if it happens, we’d get to live peacefully for a decade or two afterwards.”
There has been a flurry of activity in Trewa, another small frontier village in Jammu.
“So far, the situation is calm — the last cross-border firing episode was in 2023,” said Balbir Kaur, 36, the former village head.
But the villagers are preparing, clearing out concrete shelters ready for use, just in case.
“There were several casualties due to mortar shelling from Pakistan in the past,” she said.
“We’ve spent the last few days checking our bunkers, conducting drills, and going over our emergency protocols, in case the situation worsens,” she added.
Kaur said she backed New Delhi’s stand, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowing “to punish every terrorist and their backer” and to “pursue them to the ends of the Earth.”
Dwarka Das, 65, a farmer and the head of a seven-member family, has lived through multiple India-Pakistan conflicts.
“We’re used to such a situation,” Das said.
“During the earlier conflicts, we fled to school shelters and nearby cities. It won’t be any different for us now.”


Woman dies when a bomb she is carrying explodes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police say

Updated 03 May 2025
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Woman dies when a bomb she is carrying explodes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police say

ATHENS: A woman was killed early Saturday in the northern Greek city of Thessaoloniki when a bomb she was carrying exploded in her hands, police said.
The 38-year-old woman was apparently was carrying the bomb to place it outside a nearby bank around 5 a.m., police said.
Several storefronts and vehicles were damaged by the explosion.
The woman was known to authorities after taking part in several past robberies, according to police, who said they are investigating her possible ties to extreme leftist groups.