NZCity NewsLinks -

All Links

21 May 2025

Search

Man flees during arrest at rural property near Gisborne
Gisborne police are searching for a man who fled from a rural property, with concerns for his welfare.

Police arrest two people after attempted burglary at rural Auckland property
Police said the property had been targeted by burglars four times in recent weeks.

Spain orders Airbnb to take down 66,000 listings as mass tourism backlash returns
The Spanish government calls for the removal of almost 66,000 property listings saying they breach tourism rules.

Gold toilet businessman given suspended sentence
Fred Doe, from Windsor, was found guilty of conspiracy to convert or transfer criminal property.

Threats to property manager lead to family eviction in King Country
'My dad’s going to be real angry, let’s hope he doesn’t do anything.'

MPs’ property portfolios: Christopher Luxon sells investment houses, politicians with overseas interests
Some MPs have interests in overseas property.

One person injured after property fire in Glenwood, Timaru
Crews were called to the blaze on Rimu St around 4.30pm.

Tenancy Tribunal rules against Waihi landlord who failed to address leaky property’s mould issues
Family wanted to leave as mould issues continued but were torn by the home's nostalgia.

Once ‘worst house on the best street’: Bach sells for more than $2m
A modest bach at Tata Beach — once called “the worst house on the best street” — has sold for more than $2 million, highlighting the soaring value of New Zealand’s coastal property. Its former owner reflects on 32 years of memories made at the beach.

Neighbours take opposing sides in Ali Williams, Anna Mowbray's fight to have a helipad
The battle lines have been drawn as the famous couple’s resource consent battle to have a helipad at their Westmere property is paused for two weeks.

Far North news in brief: DoC huts open; mental health talks and property values
News snippets from the Far North.

Gisborne man flees police after being arrested and handcuffed, still on the run
Police in Gisborne are urgently searching for Sonny Kennedy, 36, who fled from a rural property on Wednesday morning after being arrested.

Two people arrested after an attempted burglary in Hunua, Auckland
The property had been targeted four times during the past few weeks.

Residents plagued by 'a million bees' in their road
People, pets and tradespeople are stung as the problem is traced back to beehives at one property.

Auckland Council announces dates it will release property revaluations
Aucklanders will be getting their new valuations for the first time since 2022.

Auckland Council to release new property valuations in early June
The new CVs are due out in the week June 9-13.

Police seek photos and video in relation to Northland homicide
Geoffrey Wayne Ware, 55, was found dead at a rural property in Parakao earlier this month, with investigators seeking sightings of a ute and a man walking along the highway.

Why a near-new social housing property is boarded up, and in need of repair
It’s only 18 months old, but a social housing unit already needs “substantial maintenance” after hosting just one tenant - and it’s not the only one.

The secret marriage that helped a couple defraud OT out of $2m
Neha Sharma appeared to be an honest, hard-working property manager. Her husband ran a construction company. No-one knew they were married.

Divine Connection: The secret marriage that helped a couple defraud Oranga Tamariki out of $2m
Neha Sharma appeared to be an honest, hard-working property manager. Her husband ran a construction company. No-one knew they were married.

Ali Williams’ and Anna Mowbray’s helipad hearing erupts as panel boss threatens to eject Tree Council leader
Dr Mels Barton alleged illegal tree removal on the couple's Westmere property.

Space Marine II is about to go wild with native mod support
Space Marine II now has official mod support baked into the base game, fresh from the devs’ hands to your eyeballs. This is big news, albeit for a very particular kind of fan. Allow me to give you some necessary context. Space Marine II is based in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Which, in terms of pop culture settings, is about as deep as it gets. Starting with a tabletop strategy game that was itself a spinoff, the setting has been going strong since the late 80s, with ten editions of the main game, all with deep accompanying lore; several alternate games (ditto); hundreds of novels; and dozens of video games. All of that is, to a greater or lesser degree, canon to the game’s story. A story that takes place across literally millions of planets and tens of millions of years, dozens of human and alien species, psychic magic, demons, and sci-fi tech, all rolled together in one miserable, glorious heap of grimdark fiction. Focus Entertainment It’s a lot. I think it’s very possible that Warhammer 40K might have the most information and lore of any media property, ever. It is so deep and so wide that it makes Star Trek look like Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys. (What? Exactly.) And here’s the crazy thing: That’s just the official material. As a tabletop war game that also includes building, painting, and customizing your own incredibly delicate, tiny, and expensive army, 40K attracts the kind of fan who loves to literally get their hands dirty. You can spend thousands of hours and a small fortune painstakingly choosing your perfect fighting force, assembling them, and showing off your skills. And a lot of players aren’t content to simply go along with the game’s official story; they’d rather invent their own “chapters” or “factions” of the game’s various sci-fi legions. They do the same with the fiction itself. There are decades of fan content, an entire culture, surrounding this game, its stories and lore, and even its basic mechanics. I’m not exaggerating when I say you could spend the rest of your life obsessed with Warhammer 40,000 and still never see everything there is to see. Here’s one of my favorites, playing off the Ork’s latent psychic powers. 40K’s space Orks aren’t smart enough to make things like cars or spaceships, but because they believe a car-shaped thing should work like a car, it does. They also believe that painting a car red makes it go faster. For them, it actually does. Space Marine II knows this, knows that its most dedicated fans want to dive into all of that headfirst. While a single video game can only encapsulate a fraction of the full breadth of 40K’s official material and can’t even begin to accommodate all the unofficial stuff, it includes an impressive customization tool that lets you equip and “paint” your giant, grimdark supersoldier in an incredible variety of ways. It’s exactly the sort of thing that makes a 40K fan’s heart go pitter-patter. But for the most dedicated 40K fan, that’s still not enough. Which is why the game now has official, native support for player-created mods. It’s a formula that’s worked well for tons of PC games, from Skyrim to Cities Skylines to Baldur’s Gate III. But because of Warhammer 40K’s unique relationship with both its own medium and its fans, it’s inevitable that an explosion of user-generated content is coming. Within the first release of the official Integration Studio, modders will get access to tools for making new levels, new modes, new NPCs and enemy behavior, and even the base game’s logic. But that’s just the bones of what players can make. They can recreate essential moments from 40K fiction, like, say, the Fall of Cadia or the throne room battle of the Horus Heresy. (That would be roughly equivalent to the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the Charge of the Light Brigade, for those not in the know.) They can add in iconic allies and enemies, from an Avatar of Khaine to Ciaphas Cain. They could bring in some Exodite Eldar and play as an alien elf riding a dinosaur, which Games Workshop has yet to give players in the real game. And again, that’s just emulating the stuff from the official fiction. Warhammer 40K fan content goes hard and crazy, often leaning into the setting’s most ridiculous elements or its largely forgotten satirical bent. (The humans and Space Marines are unequivocally and almost universally bad guys, if not necessarily the Bad Guys, something that’s often overlooked in the video games.) I can’t wait to see Buzz Lightyear marines, or the Angry Marines, or the best unofficial chapter: the Space Maids, who go around in pink maid dresses giving aid and comfort to the armies of the Imperium. This is a joke. But also it isn’t. The Space Maids have semi-official lore, as official as fan content can get. They have divisions of their army with documented insignias, and they have a “Primarch” or founder like all the other Space Marine chapters/legions. They’re based on cutesy anime tropes, including lots of catgirls and baked goods. They’re wonderful. Space Maid Marines are coming to Space Marine II. It is inevitable, and it’s going to be glorious.