New Zealand's Defence Minister on Thursday publicly criticised online trolling of the female captain of a naval vessel that sunk at the weekend, saying while the cause of the incident was unknown, it had nothing to do with the captain’s gender.The Manawanui, the navy's specialist dive and hydrographic vessel, sank on Sunday on a reef off the coast of Samoa that it was surveying.
Russia said on Monday it had downed nine Ukrainian drones that tried to attack part of the infrastructure of the TurkStream gas pipeline, through which Russian gas flows to Turkey and Europe.The Russian defence ministry said the attack was aimed against a compressor station in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia, but the facility was working normally and there were no casualties.
New Zealand said on Monday it would boost defense spending by NZ$9 billion ($5 billion) over the next four years, and aim to nearly double spending to 2% as a share of GDP in the next eight years, at a time of rapidly growing tension worldwide.The details came in remarks by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who called for more spending on defense to ensure prosperity.