Morning Report Essentials for Thursday 19 June 2025
Pacific health 10:00 am today
In today's episode, Foreign Minister Winston Peters speaks about plans to evacuate New Zealanders from Israel and Iran. Donald Trump is leaving open the possibility he'll step into the fighting between Israel and Iran. New Zealand has paused its core sector support funding for the Cook Islands after its government signed partnership agreements with China earlier this year. Magic mushroom drug psilocybin will soon be available for patients with treatment-resistant depression. And we cross to Australia for our weekly chat with Kerry-Anne Walsh.
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RNZ News
13 hours ago
- RNZ News
Israel minister says Iran leader 'can no longer exist' after hospital hit
By Alice Chancellor with AFP team Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Photo: AFP / HO / Israel's defence minister warned that Iran's supreme leader "can no longer be allowed to exist" after a hospital was hit in an Iranian missile strike on Thursday, spiking tensions in the week-old war. As President Donald Trump dangled the prospect of US involvement, Soroka Hospital in the southern city of Beersheba was left in flames by a bombardment that Iran said targeted a military and intelligence base. Meanwhile Russia, an Iranian ally, told the United States that joining the conflict would be an "extremely dangerous step". Israel, fearing Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon, launched air strikes against its arch-enemy last week, triggering deadly exchanges . Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran would "pay a heavy price" for the hospital strike, while Defence Minister Israel Katz issued a stark warning for supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "Khamenei openly declares that he wants Israel destroyed - he personally gives the order to fire on hospitals," Katz told reporters. "He considers the destruction of the state of Israel to be a goal. Such a man can no longer be allowed to exist." The latest escalation came on the seventh day of deadly exchanges between the two countries that have plunged the region into a new crisis , 20 months into the Gaza war. Israel Katz. Photo: AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP Hospital director Shlomi Codish said 40 people were injured at the Soroka, where an evacuated surgical building was hit leaving smoke billowing. "Several wards were completely demolished and there is extensive damage across the entire hospital," he told journalists at the site. World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called attacks on health facilities "appalling", while UN rights chief Volker Turk said civilians were being treated as "collateral damage". People fleeing the attacks on Iran described frightening scenes and difficult living conditions, including food shortages and limited internet access. "Those days and nights were very horrifying... hearing sirens, the wailing, the danger of being hit by missiles," University of Tehran student Mohammad Hassan told AFP, after returning to his native Pakistan. "People are really panicking," a 50-year-old Iranian pharmacist who did not want to be named told AFP at the Kapikoy crossing on the Turkish border. "Yesterday the internet stopped and two major banks were hacked so people couldn't access their money. And there's not even enough food." Khamenei has rejected Trump's demand for an "unconditional surrender", despite the president's claim that Iran wants to negotiate. Vehicles await in traffic as people get out of Tehran through an artery in the city's west on June 15, 2025. Photo: AFP/ Atta Kenare Trump has been deliberately vague about joining the conflict, saying on Wednesday: "I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do. "The next week is going to be very big," he added, without further details. Any US involvement would be expected to involve the bombing of a crucial underground Iranian nuclear facility in Fordo, using specially developed bunker-busting bombs. The White House said Trump would receive an intelligence briefing on Thursday, a US holiday. Top US diplomat Marco Rubio is set to meet his British counterpart for talks expected to focus on the conflict. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had told aides on Tuesday he had approved attack plans but was holding off to see if Iran would give up its nuclear programme. The US president had favoured a diplomatic route to end Iran's nuclear programme, seeking a deal to replace the 2015 agreement he tore up in his first term. But since Israel unleashed the campaign against Iran last week, Trump has stood behind the key US ally. In Moscow, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters that any US military intervention would have "truly unpredictable negative consequences". On Thursday, Israel said it had carried out dozens of fresh raids on Iranian targets overnight, including the partially built Arak nuclear reactor and a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. The Israeli military said the Arak site in central Iran had been hit "to prevent the reactor from being restored and used for nuclear weapons development". There was a "near-total national internet blackout" in Iran on Wednesday, a London-based watchdog said, with Iran's Fars news agency confirming tighter internet restrictions after initial curbs imposed last week. An Israeli military official, who asked not to be named, said on Wednesday that Iran had fired around 400 ballistic missiles and 1000 drones since the conflict began last Friday. Iranian strikes have killed at least 24 people and injured hundreds since they began, Netanyahu's office said on Monday. Iran said Sunday that Israeli strikes had killed at least 224 people, including military commanders, nuclear scientists and civilians. Iran had been enriching uranium to 60 percent - far above the 3.67-percent limit set by the 2015 deal, but still short of the 90 percent needed for a nuclear warhead. Israel has maintained ambiguity on its own arsenal, but the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute says it has 90 nuclear warheads. - AFP
RNZ News
a day ago
- RNZ News
Morning Report Essentials for Thursday 19 June 2025
Pacific health 10:00 am today In today's episode, Foreign Minister Winston Peters speaks about plans to evacuate New Zealanders from Israel and Iran. Donald Trump is leaving open the possibility he'll step into the fighting between Israel and Iran. New Zealand has paused its core sector support funding for the Cook Islands after its government signed partnership agreements with China earlier this year. Magic mushroom drug psilocybin will soon be available for patients with treatment-resistant depression. And we cross to Australia for our weekly chat with Kerry-Anne Walsh.
RNZ News
a day ago
- RNZ News
Private hospitals' use of publicly-funded cancer drugs will widen inequities, warn doctors
Under 'transitional access' private patients won't have to shift to the public system for 12 months. Photo: 123RF A move to allow private patients to access publicly-funded cancer drugs threatens to increase wait times for those in the public system, warn senior doctors. Under "transitional access", which comes into effect on 1 July, private patients who are already receiving treatment - or about to start treatment - with a newly funded medicine will not have to shift to the public system for 12 months. Associate Health Minister David Seymour, who has championed the rule change, said it would lessen stress on private patients by enabling continuity of care, and pressure on the public system which would no longer have to deal with a sudden influx of patients. However, the move has been criticised by opposition politicians as "a subsidy for private insurers", which already cover the cost of medicines newly funded by Pharmac, and of little benefit to patients. The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, which represents 6500 senior hospital doctors and dentists, said its members working in oncology and haematology had "significant concerns" the change would widen inequities for patients. In a letter on June 13 to Pharmac's acting chief executive Brendan Boyle, the union's director of policy and research, Harriet Wild, quoted a briefing to the minister saying the policy change "would not increase volumes of cancer medicines provided in New Zealand, as only the location of treatments will change". "It will simply shift some of the existing capacity to the private system, where patients will need to fund infusion costs out-of-pocket," Wild wrote. "There will be pressure on the public system to ensure a smooth transition in treatment regime, which may mean delaying treatment for other people already waiting on the public list and unable to self-fund to start in private. "This potentially creates a two-tier waiting list and a system where those with more financial resources, will be prioritised for treatment." Furthermore, the shift of resources and inevitable increase in demand was likely to speed up the exodus of staff to the private sector, making public waiting lists even longer. A "back-pocket Q&A" provided to Seymour ahead of a Cabinet meeting on April 7 noted that the current eligibility criteria in the Pharmaceutical Schedule (excluding patients in private settings) was "designed to ensure public funding for medicines was prioritised for those managed in the public health system for cancer treatment, assessed by need, rather than public funding supporting those who chose to access treatment in private facilities. "Often the private treatment is funded from private health insurance that people have paid premiums into." In the same document, the minister said there was no plan to expand the policy to include other types of medicines or treatments "at this stage". "With that said, I've asked the Ministry [of Health] to do further work in this area to explore the possibility of broadening access to all publicly-funded medicines in private facilities - not just newly funded cancer medicines. "I encourage the private health providers and insurance companies to work closely with the ministry to support their understanding of how this might work in practice." Wild said opening access to publicly-funded drugs even wider would pull more staff away from the public system, reducing access for the majority who relied on it. "That would establish a system where a patient's ability to receive timely cancer care would depend on whether they could afford the out-of-pocket infusion costs." The government's 2024 Budget boost to Pharmac to widen access to medicines for patients had not been accompanied by extra resources for Te Whatu Ora to deliver the treatments, when public oncology services were already swamped with demand, Wild said. "Our members are increasingly needing to manage deteriorating patients, who are unable to access chemotherapy infusions in clinically acceptable timeframes. "This is unacceptable and represents a significant failure to invest in a planned and co-ordinated way to enable the public system to meet the needs of cancer patients, including those eligible for newly funded cancer medicines. "Whenever a new cancer drug is funded, it must be accompanied by an increase in the full package of care (staffing, infusion space, pharmacy) so that patients can actually receive the medicines within clinically acceptable timeframes." The Health Minister and David Seymour's office have been approached for comment. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
