Dave

The Treaty of Waitangi settlement for Taranaki Maunga passed its second and third reading in Parliament on Thursday.

Around 400 people from the eight iwi of Taranaki - Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi, Ngāruahine, Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngāti Tama, Taranaki iwi and Te Ātiawa - were at Parliament to see the settlement become law.

The Crown profoundly apologised for its confiscation of Taranaki Maunga and almost half a million hectares (1.2 million acres) of Taranaki lands in 1865.

As part of the settlement Mt Egmont will cease to be an official geographic name. The name of the national park, currently called Egmont National Park, will become Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki (meaning the highly regarded and treasured lands of Taranaki), while the highest peak will be Taranaki Maunga.

The park and its contents will be vested as a legal person, its peaks will be named Te Kāhui Tupua - so the park will effectively own itself. But Te Tōpuni Kōkōrangi, a collective of both iwi and Crown representatives, will manage the park and develop plans which will be approved by the Conservation Minister.

Another major exhibition at Wellington's $180 million convention centre has failed to break even, with the council refusing to say exactly how many people visited it.

Last July RNZ reported the first two major exhibitions at Tākina, Jurassic World by Brickman and Marvel: Earth's Mightiest Exhibition failed to either break even or reach their target visitor numbers.

The Doctor Who Worlds of Wonder ran from 1 June to 28 October and featured props from the BBC sci-fi show which first aired in 1963.

Reversals on blanket speed limit reductions will begin on Wednesday night, starting with State Highway 2 in the Wairarapa, and will be complete by 1 July.

The National and Act coalition agreement committed to reversing the reductions implemented under the previous Labour government.

In total 38 sections of the state highway network will be reversed back to their previous higher speed limits by NZTA over the next five months.

The state highway speed limit changes will take effect across the country in Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Hawke's Bay, Manawatu-Whanganui, Greater Wellington, Canterbury, and the top of the South Island.

A former car dealer with a history of sending explicit pictures to disgruntled customers has now been caught sending photos of genitalia to a woman attempting to recoup money from his company.

Trees are down and there are widespread power outages after a tornado in Northland's Mangawhai.

Hato Hone St John transported two patients from Mangawhai in a serious condition. One was transported to Auckland Hospital by helicopter, while the other was transported to North Shore hospital by road.

Northpower's outage map showed three "widespread" outages covering Mangawhai, Mangawhai Heads and Langs Beach.

The power went out just before 3am Sunday.

"We have a widespread outage affecting all of our network due to a TORNADO damaging property and power lines in the wider Mangawhai Area," Northpower's website said.

Last weeks thread here

Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!

This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.

It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:

• Something interesting that happened to you
• Something humourous that happened to you
• Something frustrating that happened to you
• A quick question
• A request for recommendations
• Pictures of your pet
• A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
• Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)

So how’s it going?

Mystery and intrigue is rippling through a Lower Hutt community, where random letterboxes have been stuffed with romantic literature over the past week.

Erotica and romance - or smut - has been soaring in popularity amongst Generation Z, but the books being delivered to letterboxes from Eastbourne to Lowry Bay are no modern reads.

They mostly appear to be tales from the 1980s, like Lovestorm by Barbara Benedict, in which the protagonist is "stripped of her pride by a dashing rogue" and learns "the sweet fury of passion's tempest".

Auckland Council's co-governance and co-management representative says they have been told by fire crews the blaze on Māngere mountain at the weekend was intentionally lit.

Te Waka Tai-ranga Whenua kaiwhakahaere Joe Hammon told RNZ they spoke with Fire and Emergency on Sunday.

"They explained it to be intentionally lit from the top centre of the crater," he said.

"The fire has then spread evenly downwards towards the bottom of the crater, both left and right of the crater, and as you can see in the photos in media, the whole wall of the crater right down to the bottom has been burnt to charcoal."

An Auckland ferry cruised through the SailGP course last week, and near several catamarans out on the water.

"Not even a flying F50 was stopping this ferry," SailGP said on its official Instagram account.

An Auckland Transport spokesperson says the Bayswater ferry's skipper was called through by the race marshal on Thursday during a SailGP practice session.

There's a 30s video of it. Apparently they were given the go ahead but I bet the skipper was a bit nervous as those boats approached at speed as a swarm.

A grass fire that broke out on Māngere Mountain in Auckland on Saturday night has now been contained by firefighters.

Crews were called to the scene, near Domain Road, just before 9:30pm.

Nineteen crews fought the blaze, with firefighters also standing guard at the entrance to the road and turning away people who were trying to get a closer look at the flames.

The fire grew to more than three hectares, Fire and Emergency said.

Clinical trials are underway for a neural implant to monitor brain pressure in those living with hydrocephalus.

The condition causes fluid to build up in the brain which, if untreated, can be fatal.

Patients can be born with hydrocephalus or develop it later in life.

It is typically treated with a small tube, called a shunt, implanted under the skin which drains fluid from the brain into the stomach.

However, shunts had a 50 percent chance of failure in the first two years.

To tackle this, researchers at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute and Kitea Health developed an implant to measure pressure in the brain using an external, wireless wand.

The implant is only two by three millimetres, and weighs 0.3 of a gram.

Clinical trials in adults are about 50 percent complete, and trials on children have begun.

It is a world first, the smallest brain implant ever developed, as well as the first implantable medical device developed in New Zealand.