Luxon said this would create up to about 1000 jobs and “it’s almost about an $11 billion boost to our GDP”. Read...

Sporting legend on juggling odd jobs, financial struggle and her refusal to complain while wearing the silver fern. Read...

Wellington’s Taiawa Tech Hub has boosted the economy by NZD $11.9 million GDP and created 127 jobs in its first year, supporting 20 startups and innovation. Read...

The government says the agreement will support thousands of jobs, including more than 2,000 in Scotland. Read...

Home Office minister Seema Malhotra has called on the contractor to remove the jobs at the immigration removal centre. Read...

Combined with cuts last year, the restructure is said to save $12 million per year. Read...

New Zealand’s infrastructure pipeline has grown by more than $30 billion over the past quarter, with more than 9200 projects now either planned or under way. The Government is crowing about the increase, saying it is “great news for the construction sector and the wider economy”. It follows concerns from the industry about future workload and activity currently being at a six-year low. “The pipeline now contains over 9200 projects that are under way or being planned, helping New Zealand’s infrastructure construction sector plan ahead for major upcoming projects and hire and retain key staff in the right locations,” said Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop. The National Infrastructure Pipeline is updated quarterly and brings together different infrastructure projects from Government agencies, councils and private sector entities. It’s managed by the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission. The total value of projects in the pipeline as of the June update is now $237.1b, which is up $30.2b from the March quarter. More than 2500 initiatives, about $53b in expected cost, are reported as being under construction. In the pipeline, there’s about $125b of initiatives under way or planned that are reported as being funded, part-funded or with a funding source confirmed. That’s increased $13.5b over the past quarter. A substantial part of that increase comes from maintenance activity for the country’s state highway network for 2024-2034 being added to the pipeline, along with Christchurch Men’s Prison and Hawke’s Bay prison redevelopment initiatives. The Government is crowing about the increase in the pipeline value. Photo / Sylvie Whinray Bishop said projections showed there is at least $17.5b in projected potential spend across 2025, which is about 4% of GDP. “The commission continues to work with infrastructure providers to improve the transparency and quality of information that is available,” Bishop said. “A more complete pipeline improves the effectiveness and value that we can gain from this tool. I recently wrote to all councils reminding them of the importance of contributing and updating their pipeline data, and I expect the same engagement from our central government agencies too.” He said it was encouraging the number of infrastructure providers contributing to the pipeline has grown every quarter since the Government was formed, with 121 organisations now contributing. “The commission is currently collecting data for the September quarter. This will inform the final version of the National Infrastructure Plan, which will be delivered in December. “I encourage the remaining councils and any infrastructure provider who is not yet contributing to reach out to the commission, because a strong pipeline of infrastructure projects means a growing economy with more jobs and more opportunities for Kiwis.” The latest pipeline update comes after several reports highlighted issues with the construction industry. One found activity was at the lowest level since 2019, with 16,000 fewer jobs in the sector compared with June 2023. A survey commissioned by accountants and business adviser BDO in June found 59% of construction businesses don’t have more than a year’s forward workloads. Jamie Ensor is a political reporter in the NZ Herald press gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. In 2025, he was a finalist for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards. Read...

Korean Air says it will buy more than 100 Boeing aircraft in South Korea’s biggest-ever aviation deal, just hours after the country’s President met US President Donald Trump in Washington. “Korean Air announced its intent to purchase 103 next-generation aircraft from Boeing,” the company said in a statement. The company said the purchase, which also includes spare engines from GE Aerospace, was valued at approximately US$50 billion ($85b). The aircraft are scheduled for phased delivery until the end of 2030. The order included 20 widebody twinjet 777-9s, 25 787-10 Dreamliners, 50 narrow-body 737-10s and eight 777-8F freighters, the Seoul-based carrier added. The agreement was signed in Washington earlier this week during a meeting of Korean and US businesses, overseen by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. Trump on the same day held his first meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung to discuss bilateral relations, just weeks after both countries agreed to trade deals involving announcements of huge investments into the United States. Boeing said Korean Air’s commitment was the airline’s largest-ever order and Boeing’s largest widebody order from an Asian carrier. “When finalised, the deal will mark Korean Air’s first order for the 777-8F and will support an estimated 135,000 jobs across the United States,” the manufacturer said. “This agreement with our long-standing partners, Boeing and GE, marks a pivotal moment for Korean Air,” said Walter Cho, Korean Air chief executive and chairman. “Acquiring these next-generation aircraft is the core of our fleet modernisation strategy, delivering significant gains in fuel efficiency and enhancing the passenger experience across our global network,” he added. Cho said the investment was critical for his company’s future as a merged airline with fellow Korean airline Asiana. He said he wanted the combined carrier to be one of the most competitive airlines in the industry. Korean Air had agreed in March to purchase up to 50 Boeing aircraft, a deal valued at around $54.6b, which also involved GE Aerospace. A Boeing 777 production assembly line near Seattle. Photo / Brett Phibbs Last week, Boeing was reportedly in talks to sell up to 500 planes to China. Boeing has been hit by manufacturing backlogs and safety concerns. A total of 241 people on board the London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner were killed when the plane crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad in northwestern India on June 12. A preliminary investigation report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau said fuel to the jet’s engines was cut off moments before impact. After the crash, India and Singapore ordered their airlines to examine fuel switches on several Boeing models. - Agence France-Presse, additional reporting NZ Herald Read...

But some regions and sectors aren`t faring as badly. Read...

ChatGPT is rapidly changing the world. The process is already happening, and it’s only going to accelerate as the technology improves, as more people gain access to it, and as more learn how to use it. What’s shocking is just how many tasks ChatGPT is already capable of managing for you. While the naysayers may still look down their noses at the potential of AI assistants, I’ve been using it to handle all kinds of menial tasks for me. Here are my favorite examples. Write your emails for you Dave Parrack / Foundry We’ve all been faced with the tricky task of writing an email—whether personal or professional—but not knowing quite how to word it. ChatGPT can do the heavy lifting for you, penning the (hopefully) perfect email based on whatever information you feed it. Let’s assume the email you need to write is of a professional nature, and wording it poorly could negatively affect your career. By directing ChatGPT to write the email with a particular structure, content, and tone of voice, you can give yourself a huge head start. A winning tip for this is to never accept ChatGPT’s first attempt. Always read through it and look for areas of improvement, then request tweaks to ensure you get the best possible email. You can (and should) also rewrite the email in your own voice. Learn more about how ChatGPT coached my colleague to write better emails. Generate itineraries and schedules Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’re going on a trip but you’re the type of person who hates planning trips, then you should utilize ChatGPT’s ability to generate trip itineraries. The results can be customized to the nth degree depending on how much detail and instruction you’re willing to provide. As someone who likes to get away at least once a year but also wants to make the most of every trip, leaning on ChatGPT for an itinerary is essential for me. I’ll provide the location and the kinds of things I want to see and do, then let it handle the rest. Instead of spending days researching everything myself, ChatGPT does 80 percent of it for me. As with all of these tasks, you don’t need to accept ChatGPT’s first effort. Use different prompts to force the AI chatbot to shape the itinerary closer to what you want. You’d be surprised at how many cool ideas you’ll encounter this way—simply nix the ones you don’t like. Break down difficult concepts Dave Parrack / Foundry One of the best tasks to assign to ChatGPT is the explanation of difficult concepts. Ask ChatGPT to explain any concept you can think of and it will deliver more often than not. You can tailor the level of explanation you need, and even have it include visual elements. Let’s say, for example, that a higher-up at work regularly lectures everyone about the importance of networking. But maybe they never go into detail about what they mean, just constantly pushing the why without explaining the what. Well, just ask ChatGPT to explain networking! Okay, most of us know what “networking” is and the concept isn’t very hard to grasp. But you can do this with anything. Ask ChatGPT to explain augmented reality, multi-threaded processing, blockchain, large language models, what have you. It will provide you with a clear and simple breakdown, maybe even with analogies and images. Analyze and make tough decisions Dave Parrack / Foundry We all face tough decisions every so often. The next time you find yourself wrestling with a particularly tough one—and you just can’t decide one way or the other—try asking ChatGPT for guidance and advice. It may sound strange to trust any kind of decision to artificial intelligence, let alone an important one that has you stumped, but doing so actually makes a lot of sense. While human judgment can be clouded by emotions, AI can set that aside and prioritize logic. It should go without saying: you don’t have to accept ChatGPT’s answers. Use the AI to weigh the pros and cons, to help you understand what’s most important to you, and to suggest a direction. Who knows? If you find yourself not liking the answer given, that in itself might clarify what you actually want—and the right answer for you. This is the kind of stuff ChatGPT can do to improve your life. Plan complex projects and strategies Dave Parrack / Foundry Most jobs come with some level of project planning and management. Even I, as a freelance writer, need to plan tasks to get projects completed on time. And that’s where ChatGPT can prove invaluable, breaking projects up into smaller, more manageable parts. ChatGPT needs to know the nature of the project, the end goal, any constraints you may have, and what you have done so far. With that information, it can then break the project up with a step-by-step plan, and break it down further into phases (if required). If ChatGPT doesn’t initially split your project up in a way that suits you, try again. Change up the prompts and make the AI chatbot tune in to exactly what you’re looking for. It takes a bit of back and forth, but it can shorten your planning time from hours to mere minutes. Compile research notes Dave Parrack / Foundry If you need to research a given topic of interest, ChatGPT can save you the hassle of compiling that research. For example, ahead of a trip to Croatia, I wanted to know more about the Croatian War of Independence, so I asked ChatGPT to provide me with a brief summary of the conflict with bullet points to help me understand how it happened. After absorbing all that information, I asked ChatGPT to add a timeline of the major events, further helping me to understand how the conflict played out. ChatGPT then offered to provide me with battle maps and/or summaries, plus profiles of the main players. You can go even deeper with ChatGPT’s Deep Research feature, which is now available to free users, up to 5 Deep Research tasks per month. With Deep Research, ChatGPT conducts multi-step research to generate comprehensive reports (with citations!) based on large amounts of information across the internet. A Deep Research task can take up to 30 minutes to complete, but it’ll save you hours or even days. Summarize articles, meetings, and more Dave Parrack / Foundry There are only so many hours in the day, yet so many new articles published on the web day in and day out. When you come across extra-long reads, it can be helpful to run them through ChatGPT for a quick summary. Then, if the summary is lacking in any way, you can go back and plow through the article proper. As an example, I ran one of my own PCWorld articles (where I compared Bluesky and Threads as alternatives to X) through ChatGPT, which provided a brief summary of my points and broke down the best X alternative based on my reasons given. Interestingly, it also pulled elements from other articles. (Hmph.) If you don’t want that, you can tell ChatGPT to limit its summary to the contents of the link. This is a great trick to use for other long-form, text-heavy content that you just don’t have the time to crunch through. Think transcripts for interviews, lectures, videos, and Zoom meetings. The only caveat is to never share private details with ChatGPT, like company-specific data that’s protected by NDAs and the like. Create Q&A flashcards for learning Dave Parrack / Foundry Flashcards can be extremely useful for drilling a lot of information into your brain, such as when studying for an exam, onboarding in a new role, prepping for an interview, etc. And with ChatGPT, you no longer have to painstakingly create those flashcards yourself. All you have to do is tell the AI the details of what you’re studying. You can specify the format (such as Q&A or multiple choice), as well as various other elements. You can also choose to keep things broad or target specific sub-topics or concepts you want to focus on. You can even upload your own notes for ChatGPT to reference. You can also use Google’s NotebookLM app in a similar way. Provide interview practice Dave Parrack / Foundry Whether you’re a first-time jobseeker or have plenty of experience under your belt, it’s always a good idea to practice for your interviews when making career moves. Years ago, you might’ve had to ask a friend or family member to act as your mock interviewer. These days, ChatGPT can do it for you—and do it more effectively. Inform ChatGPT of the job title, industry, and level of position you’re interviewing for, what kind of interview it’ll be (e.g., screener, technical assessment, group/panel, one-on-one with CEO), and anything else you want it to take into consideration. ChatGPT will then conduct a mock interview with you, providing feedback along the way. When I tried this out myself, I was shocked by how capable ChatGPT can be at pretending to be a human in this context. And the feedback it provides for each answer you give is invaluable for knocking off your rough edges and improving your chances of success when you’re interviewed by a real hiring manager. Further reading: 9 creative ways to use ChatGPT that you probably haven’t tried yet Read...