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Anger over plans to abolish New Zealand’s dedicated environment ministry

New Zealand’s government is seeking to abolish its dedicated environment ministry to cut down on bureaucracy, a move critics say could dilute environmental protections. Under the plan, the department would be folded into a new “mega-ministry” that will cover housing, urban development, transport, local government and the environment. The environment ministry was created by statute in 1986 to be the country’s lead adviser over the environment and climate. On 19 February, the coalition government introduced a bill to parliament to disestablish the ministry. The government aims to have the new ministry running by 1 July. Chris Bishop, the minister for resource management reform, said when announcing the proposal in December: “The system is too fragmented and too uncoordinated.” Bishop said public servants were “often as frustrated, as ministers are by the duplication, overlapping responsibilities and lack of coordination” between the existing ministries. The new ministry would “combine the key levers that shape growth and productivity”, he said. The environment minister, Penny Simmonds, said in February the merger would protect the environment while lifting prosperity for communities. “Environmental functions remain a core part of the new ministry’s work,” she said. New Zealand promotes itself to the world as “100% pure” and “clean, green”, while for many living in the country, a deep connection to nature is regularly cited as being an important part of personal and collective identities. However, its species are in worrying decline, with a high proportion threatened, or at risk of extinction – one of the highest amid the global biodiversity crisis – and many of the country’s fresh waterways are in a dire state, because of nutrient pollution and sewage overflows. Experts and opposition parties say scrapping the dedicated environment ministry is another blow to protections. Dr Bronwyn Hayward, a political science professor at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, and a specialist in climate and democracy, said she was “very concerned” about the changes. “There is a real risk that in the merger we simply lose the threads of accountability, the skill, and cohesive delivery of effective policy, of which delivers a better environment for all, and one that supports our economy and wellbeing,” she said. Since taking office in 2023, the rightwing coalition government has faced widespread criticism for its environment and climate policy agenda. It has promised to restart offshore oil and has set aside $200m of its budget to invest in gas exploration. It plans to boost mineral exports to $3bn by 2035, at the same time it has slashed funding to conservation and climate initiatives. A new fast-track law that is pushing through major infrastructure projects, including mining, has been described as “egregiously damaging” for the environment and risks destabilising a path towards a greener future. In 2025, a group of environment lawyers sued the government over its “dangerously inadequate” emissions reduction scheme. Rachel Brooking, the opposition Labour’s spokesperson for the environment, said the plan to axe the environment ministry was “emblematic of this government’s approach to the environment and nature, which is to enable more pollution and cut programs that were there to improve nature and the environment.” “We’re concerned that all of the monitoring and environmental protection work that the ministry has been involved in … will go by the wayside.” The Green party’s environment spokesperson, Lan Pham, said the move sent a “clear signal that the environment comes last for this government”. The ministry exists because in 1986 New Zealanders decided the natural world needed “a dedicated voice at the heart of government”, Pham said. “At a time when climate change is flooding our communities week after week, costing billions of dollars, lives, and livelihoods, this government’s response is to dismantle the ministry responsible for environmental protection.” Simmonds declined to respond to the criticisms raised about environmental protection and the disestablishment of her ministry. The Guardian has contacted Bishop for comment.

Spanish engineer reports flaw in ‘smart’ vacuums after gaining control of 7,000 devices

A Spanish software engineer reportedly contacted a New York-based tech outlet recently to reveal he had remotely taken control of about 7,000 vacuums worldwide, in the process shedding light on a broad vulnerability with smart products, according to a cybersecurity expert. The Verge reported that the situation came to light when Sammy Azdoufal was trying to reverse-engineer his new DJI Romo vacuum so that he could control it with his Playstation 5 gamepad. Azdoufal soon discovered that when his self-styled remote control app started communicating with DJI’s servers, “it wasn’t just one vacuum cleaner that replied. Roughly 7,000 of them, all around the world, began treating Azdoufal like their boss.” Azdoufal found that he could look and listen through the vacuums’ live camera feeds and collected more than 100,000 messages from the devices. He could also use any robot’s internet protocol – or IP – address to determine its approximate location. Azdoufal reportedly said he was not trying to hack into other devices. And, in fact, he contacted the Verge to inform the publication of the vulnerability. DJI reported – and others confirmed – that it has since solved the problem. But Azdoufal, who is listed as the head of artificial intelligence at a property management and travel group in Spain, is not alone in discovering such a flaw among smart products. Other similar episodes illustrate that for some manufacturers of such products, “security is a bit of an afterthought”, said Alan Woodward, a professor of computer science at England’s University of Surrey. “There is this idea that you move fast and break things, and you have got to innovate to be in the market, to be the cheapest, to have new features,” Woodward said in an interview on Tuesday. “But the trouble is, the lesson was learned very early on in software development, that if you do that, you will end up with security vulnerabilities.” The smart device industry has grown significantly in recent years. And the smart home market is projected to hit $139bn by 2032, the research firm MarketsandMarkets reports. While people purchase such devices to make their lives easier, hackers have paradoxically also had an easier time invading people’s privacy. In addition to the vacuums, hackers have been able to control lighting systems, locks, security cameras, a baby monitor and a heating system, according to a study in the Journal of Information Security and Applications. In the case of the vacuums, Azdoufal could gain control of them because the credentials for his device allowed him to access the others. Companies can avoid this issue by forcing consumers to establish their own passwords before using a product for the first time, Woodward said. Manufacturers also need to ensure that people designing, building and writing software are “fully aware of how security can be compromised”, Woodward said. “It’s not just somebody writing one element of the software. “It’s ‘How does the software on, in this case, the vacuum cleaner, interact with the server, interact with your phone?’” Consumers should also consider whether the potential benefits of a smart device outweigh the privacy risks, Woodward said. “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” he said. DJI thanked Azdoufal on X for reporting the vulnerability. “Your responsible feedback is extremely valuable to us,” the company stated. In a misspelled post, Azdoufal also announced on the platform: “You can officially call me ‘the vaccum guy’ you can’t imagine how many free vaccum people offering me. Damn.”

Louvre president resigns as jewellery heist inquiry reveals ‘systemic failures’

The president of the Louvre in Paris has resigned, four months after a gang of thieves broke into the museum’s Apollo gallery and made off with €88m (£76m) of Napoleonic jewellery in France’s most dramatic heist in decades. Laurence des Cars, who had offered to step down in the immediate aftermath of the burglary, tendered her resignation to Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday in what the French president called “an act of responsibility”, the Elysée Palace said. Macron’s office said the world’s largest museum, which has suffered a string of crises in recent months, needed “calm and a strong new impetus to successfully carry out major projects involving security and modernisation”. Police investigating a suspected €10m (£8.7m) ticket fraud scheme detained nine people, including two members of staff and several tour guides, earlier this month, as the museum was still reeling from the brazen daylight heist in October. The gang used a furniture lift to break in through a window, smash display cases and steal the jewellery in seven minutes, before fleeing on scooters. Four men have been arrested and are under investigation, but the jewels have not been recovered. The thieves fled with eight items, including an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave to his second wife, Marie Louise, and a diadem set with 212 pearls and nearly 2,000 diamonds that once belonged to the wife of Napoleon III, Eugénie de Montijo. In recent months trade unions at the Louvre have launched several days of strikes, demanding urgent renovations and staffing increases, and protesting against a rise in ticket prices for most non-EU visitors, including UK, American and Chinese tourists. The resignation came days after a parliamentary inquiry called the Louvre a “state within a state”. The inquiry’s chair, Alexandre Portier, said the burglary had revealed “systemic failures”, “a denial of risk”, and a management that was “currently failing”. Des Cars, 59, who was appointed in 2021, acknowledged a “terrible failure” days after the burglary, admitting that security camera coverage of the museum’s outside walls was “highly inadequate” and adding: “Despite our hard work, we failed.” The head of France’s state auditor last year also described the theft as “a deafening wake-up call” for the “wholly inadequate pace” of security upgrades at the museum, which “must now be implemented without fail”. The report highlighted persistent delays in the deployment of security equipment, saying only 39% of rooms in the vast museum – which had more than 8.7 million visitors last year – had been fitted with CCTV cameras as of 2024. An administrative inquiry into the theft that was completed late last year also highlighted what it called a “chronic, structural underestimation of the risk of intrusion and theft” and “an inadequate level of security measures”.

Mexico pledges safety for World Cup after violence erupts from cartel boss’s killing

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has said that there is “no risk” for visitors coming to Fifa World Cup games scheduled to be held in the country, after the death of a top cartel boss triggered a wave of retaliatory violence from gunmen who blocked roads and attacked security forces across the country. The Mexican military attempted to detain “El Mencho”, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, in a dawn raid on Sunday, leading to a firefight in which he was fatally wounded, before dying while being airlifted to hospital. Followers of El Mencho, whose real name is Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, immediately took the streets, blocking almost 100 major roads and attacking national guard bases, particularly in the states of Jalisco and Michoacán. At least 25 soldiers and 34 cartel gunmen died in the fighting. By Monday the violence had largely ebbed – but local media reported episodes of violence in several rural municipalities of Jalisco state over the night on Monday. Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco, is due to host four World Cup games. The tournament, which Mexico is co-hosting with the US and Canada, will also involve games in Monterrey and Mexico City, in the legendary Azteca stadium. Sheinbaum said in her daily press conference on Tuesday that there are “all the guarantees” for the World Cup to be held in Mexico. Guadalajara and the resort city of Puerto Vallarta, which were all but shut down by Sunday’s violence, are gradually reopening this week. “Little by little the situation [in Jalisco] is returning to normal,” said Sheinbaum. Fifa boss Gianni Infantino told the AFP news agency on Tuesday that he was “very reassured” about Mexico’s role as host. “Everything’s good. It’s going to be spectacular,” Infantino said in the Colombian city of Barranquilla. Sheinbaum also said she was considering taking legal action against tech billionaire Elon Musk after he alleged on Monday that she took orders from drug traffickers, echoing Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that Mexico is “run by cartels”. In a post on X after the killing of El Mencho, Musk responded to a 2025 video of Sheinbaum discussing cartel violence by claiming she was “saying what her cartel bosses tell her to say”. In the clip, Sheinbaum said a return to a “war on drugs” was not an option. “The war against the narco is outside of the law,” she said. “Because it is permission to kill without any trial.” In the past, targeting cartel leaders has often led to the splintering of their organisations, as their lieutenants fight to take control. This is widely believed to have helped drive the high homicide rate in Mexico since then president Felipe Calderón began a military offensive against Mexico’s cartels 20 years ago. But Sheinbaum rejected the comparison between the operation that killed El Mencho and the security policies of her predecessor. “A situation arose in which, during the arrest of a member of an organised crime group who had an arrest warrant out against him, members of the army were attacked and responded, and he died during transport,” she said. “We’re looking for peace, not war,” she added. “That is the difference.”

US ambassador to France vows not to interfere in its domestic affairs

Donald Trump’s envoy to Paris has called France’s foreign minister and pledged not to interfere in the country’s domestic affairs, a day after he was barred from talking to government officials for failing to attend a formal meeting at the ministry. The foreign ministry said on Monday that Charles Kushner would not be permitted to carry out his diplomatic duties until he had explained his refusal to comply with the summons over US comments about the killing of a far-right activist in France. A ministry official said on Tuesday that the ambassador, whose son Jared is married to the US president’s daughter Ivanka, had called the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, who had “reiterated the reasons that led to the summons”. France “cannot accept any form of interference or manipulation of its national public debate by authorities of a third country”, Barrot reportedly told Kushner, who “took note and expressed his willingness not to interfere in our public debate”. The official said the two men had agreed to meet in the coming days to “continue working towards a close bilateral relationship, which celebrates its 250th anniversary this year”. They did not say when Kushner’s diplomatic access would be restored. Kushner failed to show up for a meeting at the ministry at 7pm on Monday to which he had been summoned after the US embassy in Paris reposted state department comments about the killing of far-right activist Quentin Deranque. “When you have the honour of representing your country, the USA, in France, as ambassador, you abide by the most basic customs of diplomacy and respond to summonses from the foreign ministry,” Barrot said on Tuesday morning. “I believe all French people share the same feeling,” the minister told France Info radio. “We do not accept that foreign countries can come and interfere in, then insert themselves into, our national political debate, whatever the circumstances.” Barrot said the incident would “in no way affect the relationship between France and the United States”, which he said had “weathered other storms”, but would “naturally affect [Kushner’s] ability to carry out his mission in our country”. Diplomatic sources told French media that Kushner, a real-estate magnate with an estimated net worth of $3.2bn (£2.4bn), had cited personal commitments as his reason for not attending the meeting, instead sending a senior embassy official. The no-show was Kushner’s second since his appointment to the Paris embassy last May. He also failed to attend after a summons to the ministry in August, after writing an open letter to Emmanuel Macron criticising what he described as a lack of government action to tackle the “dramatic rise of antisemitism in France”. Deranque, died from head injuries after clashes between radical left and far-right supporters on the sidelines of a protest against a politician from the leftwing France Unbowed (LFI) party in Lyon on 12 February. Six men suspected of involvement in Deranque’s death have been charged over the killing, and a parliamentary assistant to an LFI MP has been charged with complicity. The US state department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism posted on social media on Sunday that it was monitoring the case, adding that “violent radical leftism” was on the rise and should be treated as a public safety threat. “We expect to see the perpetrators of violence brought to justice,” it said. The US embassy in France posted a French translation of the comments. Deranque’s killing has also caused a diplomatic feud between France and Italy, whose rightwing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called the death “a wound for all of Europe”. Macron criticised her for speaking about French domestic affairs. Barrot on Sunday denounced any attempts to exploit the killing. “We reject any instrumentalisation of this tragedy, which has plunged a French family into mourning, for political ends,” he said. “We have no lessons to learn, particularly on the issue of violence, from the international reactionary movement.” The spat follows a row between the Belgian government and the US ambassador to Brussels, Bill White, who has demanded Belgium drop a “ridiculous” and “antisemitic” investigation into three Jewish men suspected of performing illegal circumcisions. White called Belgium’s health minister “very rude” in a social media post. Belgium’s foreign minister, Maxime Prévot, said it was “false, offensive and unacceptable” to suggest Belgium was antisemitic, and accused White of violating diplomatic norms. White has since announced that another Belgian socialist politician, Conner Rousseau, has been barred from the US. In 2005, Charles Kushner pleaded guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion, making false statements and witness tampering – including hiring a sex worker to seduce his brother-in-law who was testifying against him. He spent 14 months in prison before being pardoned by Trump in 2020. Three years later he donated $1m to Trump’s Make America Great Again Inc Super Pac.

Son of Norway’s crown princess ‘often’ grabbed former partner by throat, court told

The former partner of Marius Borg Høiby, the son of Norway’s crown princess, has told a court he punched her in the face during their relationship and “often” grabbed her by the throat. Høiby, 29, Mette-Marit’s son from a relationship before her marriage to Crown Prince Haakon, is on trial accused of 38 crimes, including four rapes and assaults. He has pleaded not guilty to the most serious offences, including the alleged rapes. He faces up to 16 years in prison if convicted. The trial comes at a time of intense scrutiny of the Norwegian royal family, after files released by the US justice department revealed Mette-Marit’s ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Nora Haukland, an influencer and TV personality who was in a relationship with Høiby between 2022 and 2023, is the only named alleged victim to give evidence in the trial at Oslo district court. Høiby is charged with abuse in close relationships against Haukland. He denies the charges. Taking the stand on Tuesday, Haukland, 28, described an incident in which she said Høiby hit her in the jaw and the lip. “I just remember falling to the ground and curling up, then he kicked me in the back and kept shouting,” she added. When an audio recording from that day was played in court, in which Høiby is heard calling her a “fucking lying whore”, Haukland broke down in tears. Asked about an alleged incident in April 2023 when the prosecutor said she was held by the neck and pushed against a refrigerator, she said she did not recall the incident, described to police by a witness. “That he grabbed me by the throat. It happened very often,” said Haukland. Describing their relationship, she said: “He didn’t really want me to do anything. I think he wanted to keep me down to a level where I was more powerless.” She said he tried to control her career choices and what she wore. When she was filming the reality show Girls of Oslo he “got really angry” when they wore bikinis in Ibiza. “It was all about control. I was very afraid of not following what he said. I changed my style completely,” she said. After they split up, Haukland said, she had tried to help him. Describing an incident when Mette-Marit called her because she had not been able to get hold of her son for several days, she said she had agreed to help find him. When they got back to Skaugum, the official royal residence of Mette-Marit and Haakon, she said she had pleaded with them to send him to rehab but they did not. “Marius goes in the shower and I’m standing there with his mother and Haakon and I just break down and say: ‘Now you have to help him, don’t you see that he needs help?’” Taking the stand later on Tuesday, Høiby said he was “no angel” in the relationship. Høiby is due to continue his testimony on Wednesday.

Russia opens criminal case into Telegram founder Pavel Durov

Russia has launched a criminal investigation into the Telegram founder, Pavel Durov, on suspicion of “abetting terrorist activities”, further escalating the Kremlin’s standoff with the widely used messaging app. The state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported on Tuesday that a case had been opened “based on materials from Russia’s federal security service”, which accused the app of being compromised by western and Ukrainian intelligence. Durov, who lives abroad, criticised the investigation against him, describing it as an attempt to “suppress the right to privacy and free speech”. “A sad spectacle of a state afraid of its own people,” he wrote on social media. Earlier this month, Moscow announced it would slow down Telegram’s traffic because of what it said were multiple violations, as the Kremlin attempts to steer tens of millions of Russian users towards a state-controlled alternative, known as MAX. The strategy forms part of the Kremlin’s push to build a “sovereign internet”, an online space tightly controlled by the state. Asked about the investigation into Durov, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said authorities had identified quantities of material on Telegram that could “potentially pose a threat” to Russia. “A large number of violations and the unwillingness of Telegram’s administration to cooperate with our authorities have been recorded,” Peskov said. “Our relevant authorities are taking the measures they deem appropriate.” Rossiyskaya Gazeta, quoting officials, claimed Telegram had been used in 13 alleged Ukrainian plots targeting senior Russian military officers, as well as in tens of thousands of bombings, arson attacks and killings since the start of the war. Despite the pressure, Moscow has stopped short of blocking Telegram outright because of its widespread use among civilians and officials, and its role as a key communication tool on the frontline. Russian officials have indicated they would be willing to allow Telegram to continue operating if it complied with Russian law, which human rights campaigners say would mean granting access to private chats and purging opposition channels. The app’s ultra-libertarian founder has long had a complicated relationship with the Kremlin. Durov, 42, left Russia in 2014 after selling his first company, VK, often described as a Russian version of Facebook, following pressure from the authorities. He established Telegram in Dubai, where he now lives. He holds Emirati and French citizenship. Russian authorities tried but failed to block Telegram in 2018, after which an uneasy accommodation appeared to emerge with Durov. But Moscow’s renewed crackdown on media and online platforms it does not control has once again put Telegram in its sights. Separately, Russia has blocked WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube, prompting a surge in VPN downloads among Russian users. The tech billionaire has also faced scrutiny from western authorities, who have criticised what they said was weak moderation on the app. Last August, he was detained and held for three days in France during an investigation into crimes linked to Telegram, including the circulation of child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking and fraudulent transactions.