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An investigation into the collapse of a power pylon in Northland that cut power to most of the region has found contractor error was to blame. Omexom was carrying out routine maintenance to the baseplate of Tower 130, a Transpower transmission tower servicing 100,000 properties, when the pylon fell on 20 June. The report, released on Thursday morning, said a relatively inexperienced and inadequately supervised worker removed nuts from three of the four legs of the pylon, compromising its stability and causing it to rupture and fall. And it was not the first time nuts and washers were removed from more than one leg of a pylon at once, which did not align with the contractor's own standard practice. At the time the government called it "completely unacceptable" with the cost of the widesprea...

A large power pylon has come down. Photo: Supplied / Top Energy A full investigation into how a Northland power pylon fell over causing widespread electricity outages has confirmed insufficient supervision of an inexperience worker resulted in too many bolts being removed. There have been calls for compensation following the June outage which one economist predicted cost the Northland economy $60m. Initial reports found too many nuts were removed from bolts during routine maintenance by Omexom on the transmission tower and its baseplate near Glorit, north of Auckland. An independent investigation, released Thursday morning, concluded that was the case. "Standard practice, taught to its civil works field staff, was to remove all nuts from only one tower foundation leg at a time," it said...

Banks use test rates to make sure that home loan applicants could cope with movements in interest rates. Photo: RNZ Banks are lowering the test rates they use to check whether borrowers can afford home loans, and brokers expect more cuts to follow. Banks use test rates to make sure that home loan applicants could cope with movements in interest rates. They are set higher than the rates currently being charged. They had been about 8.95 percent, but this week two main banks cut by about 20 basis points and 25 basis points. It comes as wholesale rates fall on the expectation that the Reserve Bank will begin cutting the official cash rate towards the end of this year. Mortgage broker David Windler said he would expect other banks to follow. "The impact of that depends on how much debt you'r...

The reports began shortly before 8.30am on Thursday. Photo: AFP / Gerard Julien Microsoft says it is looking into reports some of its services are down around New Zealand. Products such as Outlook, Azure cloud computing and Teams were affected. There were thousands of reports of Microsoft failures across the country, according to DownDetector, a site which monitors internet outages. Parliamentary Services said the Parliament precinct was experiencing problems, suggesting a downed server might be to blame. It came a day after Microsoft services including Outlook and Minecraft were subject to a cyber-attack, and nearly two weeks after a botched software rollout by a third party took down millions of computers running Microsoft Windows. The reports began shortly before 8.30am on Thursday. ...