Gangs and guns: New police Firearms Investigation Team to crack down on illegal weapons
11 Apr, 2021 05:00 PM
7 minutes to read
An arsenal of 15 illegal firearms in the control of an Auckland drug dealer prompted a Parliamentary inquiry. Police were only able to trace the origins of 5 of the guns. Photo / Supplied
An arsenal of 15 illegal firearms in the control of an Auckland drug dealer prompted a Parliamentary inquiry. Police were only able to trace the origins of 5 of the guns. Photo / Supplied
The police have established a specialist Firearms Investigation Team, modelled on similar squads in Australia, to focus on the time-consuming work of identifying how dangerous weapons are ending up in the hands of criminals.
RBA makes cash rate call for April
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The RBA has announced its official cash rate decision for the month of April.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has held the official cash rate at 0.10 per cent for April, in line with the central bank’s stance on interest rates and market expectations.
In his statement on the monetary policy decision, RBA governor Dr Philip Lowe said that the central bank will continue to monitor trends in housing borrowing “carefully” given that house prices have risen in most markets, adding that “it is important that lending standards are maintained”.
PUTRAJAYA: A total of RM3.5mil cash was discovered at a house belonging to the 47-year-old Datuk, believed to be the ringleader of the project cartel , following a raid on Monday (April 5).
Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) investigators also discovered that the Datuk amassed an extraordinary amount of wealth and assets, including a luxury yacht and two helicopters.
Luxury cars worth RM15.7mil as well as real estate including bungalows, a shop house and an office worth RM29mil were also seized in a series of raid conduct by the graft busters since Monday.
Sources said 644 bank accounts belonging to individuals and companies, estimated at RM100mil were also frozen in the course of the investigation.
COVID has changed you, right? You use less cash, perhaps a lot less.
In the first two months of the pandemic, cash withdrawals from automatic teller machines halved. Even now they are down 20%.
So little-used were the main notes traditionally used for small transactions – $5 and $10 notes – that authorities stopped issuing them in the first half of 2020.
The amount of cash banked by retailers dropped by a third between February and May, and according to a new Reserve Bank study is still much lower than it was.
Only 23% of Australians surveyed in October said they had used cash for their most recent face-to-face purchase, down from more than 30% before.
RBA reveals April cash rate call
By Maja Garaca Djurdjevic
06 April 2021
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1 minute read
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The Reserve Bank of Australia has made its April call on the official cash rate, following its decision to cut the rate to a record low in November.
In line with expectations, the RBA has held the cash rate at a record low of 0.1 of a percentage point.
“At its meeting today, the board decided to maintain the current policy settings, including the targets of 10 basis points for the cash rate and the yield on the three-year Australian government bond, as well as the parameters of the Term Funding Facility and the government bond purchase program,” the RBA said.