Midday Edition: 18 July 2024

The Midday Edition of News Fix for 18 July 2024, straight from the Newstalk ZB newsroom - bringing you everything you need to know in news, politics, business, entertainment and sport.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Good afternoon. I'm Malcolm Jordan and this is your midday
NEWSFACS for Thursday, the eighteenth of July. Helicopters, fire trucks
and hot or Honis and john vehicles have flocked to
two separate single bus crashes in the Mackenzie Basin near
Lake Techopol on State Highway eight. Two people have been
flown to Dunedin and Timuru hospitals, each in a serious condition,

(00:26):
and two more patients have moderate and minor injuries. The
roads expected to be closed between Techopol and the intersection
with State Highway eighty for hours, with no diversion available.
US President Joe Biden has COVID. He was due to
speak at an annual UNIDOS conference in Las Vegas, courting

(00:46):
Latino voters, but organizers have just told the crowd he
won't be appearing.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Events as we all know, and he just tested positive
for COVID.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
CNN's Anna Navarro says, with about two thousand attendees, the
event is one of the US's largest Latino gatherings.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
They flooded the ballroom when the door's opened at eleven am,
so people have been waiting for over three hours. There
was a lot of excitement to hear them.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Sky City is taking a surprise step towards righting a
wrong and closing the casino for five days. A customer
had complained to the Department of Internal Affairs they had
gambled continuously at the casino on twenty three occasions without
it being noticed. Sky City's admitted breaching harm reduction obligations
and has formally apologized. The heralds and Gibson says the

(01:39):
company is assuring it's taken measures so this doesn't happen again.
This is exactly why the Department of Internal Affairs takes
prosecution of this nature to ensure that the business is
complying with the law. All eyes are on interest rates
after yesterday's CPI drop. Overall inflation has dropped to three
point three percent in the year to June, and non

(02:02):
tradable inflation was down to five point four percent. A
n Z has followed Westpac in cutting advertised home loan
rates as more economists begin to forecast a cut to
the official cash rate in November, but former Finance Minister
Stephen Joyce told Mike Hosking the Reserve Bank and banks
will be wary about what comes next.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
The's still on a n if edge, right. They see
all the data and it's just about there, and then
they look the other side and they look at the
real economy, and the real economy is really struggling, and
it's a real risk that they overshoot.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Police in Palmerston North are investigating a suspected homicide after
emergency services couldn't revive a woman last night at a
house in Rosalin. The Defense Force will be opening a
voluntary redundancy scheme to tackle a multimillion dollar budget shortfall.
The NZDF has told staff it started a process to
rapidly reprioritize its budget. It expects to reduce its civilian

(02:57):
workforce and has asked for expressions of interest in voluntary
redundancy to sport. The All Blacks have named six debutants
in their twenty three to face Fiji in San Diego
on the weekend. Billy Proctor starts at center with five
more uncapped players on the bench, George Bell, Pasilio Tossi,

(03:17):
Sam Dowry, Wallace Stiti and Noah Hotham. Ten players have
been charged from last night's State of Origin match, eight
of them for the first half MELA in New South
Wales's series sealing win and nineteen ninety Commonwealth Games super
heavyweight boxing gold medalist Michael Kenny has died. He was sixty.

(03:39):
I'm Malcolm Jordan. That's your latest news fix. We'll be
back with the next update at five pm from the
newstalk zb newsroom