World
New Zealand queen ascends to Māori throne at age 27
- New Zealand’s Māori king, Tūheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII, 69, has died. His daughter, Ngā wai hono i te po, 27, is the new queen.
- Ngā wai hono i te po is the second woman to become Māori monarch in a tradition dating back to 1858.
- King Tūheitia’s funeral was attended not only by Māori tribes, but by leaders of all political parties, past prime ministers, leaders of Pacific Island nations, diplomats and representatives of the British crown.
They came in their thousands in the freezing dawn, parking cars far away and winding down rural roads on foot, children riding on their shoulders. They arrived in mourning black with crowns of ferns and kawakawa leaves, bone carvings or wedges of deep green pounamu — New Zealand jade — resting on their chests.
The mourners came to the North Island town of Ngāruawāhia on Thursday to pay final respects to New Zealand’s Māori king, Tūheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII, who died six days earlier, and witness the ascension to the throne of his daughter, Ngā wai hono i te po. The new queen, 27, is the second woman to become Māori monarch in a tradition dating back to 1858.
As she was escorted onto Tūrangawaewae marae — an ancestral meeting place — where her father’s casket lay draped in feathered cloaks, cheers rang out among thousands crowded around TV screens outside and waiting along the wide, flat banks of the Waikato River to glimpse Kīngi Tūheitia’s funeral procession. After her ascension, Ngā wai hono i te po accompanied the late king in a flotilla of traditional canoes along the river as he was guided by Māori warriors to his final resting place.
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The events marked the end of a weeklong tangihanga — funeral rite — for Kīngi Tūheitia, 69, a leader who had in recent months rallied New Zealand’s Indigenous people to unity in the face of a more racially divisive political culture than before. His daughter’s ascension represents the rise of a new generation of Māori leaders in New Zealand — one which grew up steeped in a resurging language that had once almost died out.
Kīngi Tūheitia died last Friday after undergoing heart surgery, just days after celebrations marking his 18th anniversary on the throne. He became king after his mother’s death in 2006 and on Thursday was buried alongside her in an unmarked grave on Taupiri Maunga, a mountain of spiritual significance to his iwi, or tribe.
The Kīngitanga, or Māori royalty movement, is not a constitutional monarchy and King Charles III of Britain is New Zealand’s head of state. It has a ceremonial mandate rather than a legal one and was formed in the years after British colonization of New Zealand to unite Māori tribes in resistance to forced sales of Indigenous land and the loss of the Māori language and culture.
The coffin with the body of New Zealand’s Maori King, Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII, is carried up Taupiri Mountain for burial in Ngaruawahia, New Zealand, on Sept. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Alan Gibson)
Monarchs have traditionally wielded politics lightly and Tūheitia was remembered this week as a quiet and humble man. But in recent months, his voice had become louder.
After a center-right government took power in New Zealand last November and began to enact policies reversing recognition of Māori language, people and customs, Tūheitia took the unusual step in January of calling a national meeting of tribes which was attended by 10,000 people.
“The best protest we can make right now is being Māori. Be who we are. Live our values. Speak our reo,” he told them, using the Māori word for language. “Just be Māori. Be Māori all day, every day. We are here. We are strong.”
Tūheitia urged New Zealanders to embrace the concept of kotahitanga — unity of purpose — in a cause that he said had “room for everyone.”
His words were echoed throughout the days of his funeral, including by political leaders whose plans he had rallied to oppose. In a reflection of the place that Māori language and customs have grown to hold in New Zealand’s public life in recent decades, his funeral was attended not only by Māori tribes but by leaders of all political parties, past prime ministers, leaders of Pacific Island nations, diplomats and representatives of the British crown.
Tens of thousands of ordinary people also flocked there. Many spoke to each other in Māori, a language which had steadily waned after colonization until activists in the 1970s provoked its renaissance. Among their initiatives was the establishment of Māori language pre-schools, the first graduates of which are now young adults.
Tūheitia’s daughter was among them; while her father hailed from a generation in which many were discouraged from speaking Māori, she was steeped in it, attending Māori immersion schools. Ngā wai hono i te po holds a degree in Māori customs and is an accomplished performer of kapa haka, an Indigenous performance art.
The late king, a truck driver before he took the throne, was a surprise appointment to the monarchy, which is chosen by a council and is not required to be hereditary. But the new queen was groomed for the role and had accompanied her father in his work during recent years.
Her ascension comes at a fraught political moment. Since 1858, the Kīngitanga has championed Māori sovereignty and the other promises of modern New Zealand’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 between the Crown and Māori tribes. In the years since, translation issues and attempts to reinterpret the treaty have at times provoked conflict, which has in recent months flared again.
“The treaty provides a foundation for us all to work together. Let’s not change it, that would harm us,” Tūheitia said at the event marking his coronation days before his death. While New Zealand was facing a storm as Māori rights were rolled back, “there’s no need to worry. In this storm, we are stronger together,” he said.
After the new queen was anointed with oils and a service for her father held, mourners flocked behind the hearse as it drove to the banks of the river sacred to his tribe. There, Tūheitia’s casket was accompanied by traditional carved canoes on his journey to the mountain, with mourners, in some places 10 people deep, falling silent and bowing as he passed.
As he was carried to the foot of the mountain under a clear afternoon sky, a roaring haka, or ceremonial chant, rang out from mourners waiting among gravestones dotted up the steep hillside and dozens helped to carry the late king to his burial place at the top.
Many had waited for hours to see the procession pass, including a large number of young families. Commentators said the queen’s ascension represented the culture’s renewal, with the majority of Māori — who account for almost 20% of New Zealand’s population — aged under 40.
Among them on Thursday was Awa Tukiri, 9, whose family had driven nearly two hours from Auckland to watch the canoe carrying the late king pass by.
“It was pretty amazing because all they do on the boat is do haka and waiata on it,” he said, using the words for Māori chants and songs. Tukiri, who attends a kura kaupapa — the immersion schools that are growing in popularity — said the best part of being Māori was “just hanging out and speaking Māori to each other.”
A court of appeal in Kenya on Friday struck down a ruling that had affirmed the right to an abortion, dealing a blow to reproductive rights in a country where thousands of women die each year from unsafe abortions.
The decision, which is likely to be appealed to Kenya’s supreme court, holds that abortions deprive unborn children of the “right to life,” which it said begins at conception. “Abortion is not a fundamental right guaranteed under the Constitution,” the judges wrote in their ruling.
The decision overturned a 2022 ruling, which focused on a teenager who had received emergency medical care after an abortion in 2019. The court ruled then that the arrests of the teenager and her doctor were unconstitutional.
Those criminal proceedings were reinstated by the appeal court’s Friday decision, which said that lower courts had to investigate whether the treatment carried out was indeed a medical emergency.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York-based rights group, called the ruling “deeply disappointing” and a “setback” for reproductive rights in the country, and said it would challenge it in the supreme court.
As part of the overturned 2022 decision, judges instructed Kenya’s Parliament to pass a law protecting access to abortion and clarifying how the country’s 2010 Constitution allows the treatment. The Constitution holds that abortion is prohibited in Kenya, unless a doctor deems it medically necessary or if another statute expands access (for example, allowing abortion in cases like rape).
Judges cited that article of the Constitution in their ruling on Friday in arguing for a narrower interpretation. They wrote that abortion is not an “absolute right,” and that the Constitution is designed to prohibit it except for “limited circumstances when it may be permissible.”
In practice, Kenya’s penal code had not been updated to reflect the 2022 ruling, which sought to make abortions easier to get. A 1963 law continues to criminalize abortion in Kenya, a measure that rights groups say is often used to intimidate women from seeking reproductive care and medical professionals from providing abortions.
“This case forms part of a broader pattern in which individuals seeking or providing reproductive health care face criminal sanction, despite constitutional guarantees of dignity, health, and freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” the Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement.
Every year, at least 2,600 women die from unsafe abortions in Kenya, and 21,000 more are hospitalized because of abortion complications, according to the group. A 2023 study by the African Population and Health Research Center found that over 300,000 women in Kenya had to seek care for post-abortion complications.
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On Saturday, Gazans in Deir al-Balah will go to the polls to elect new local leaders for the first time in 2o years, a move experts warn could allow Hamas room to maintain influence as it refuses to comply with ceasefire disarmament terms.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies Executive Director Jonathan Schanzer told Fox News Digital that “when you hold elections in the Palestinian Authority and the timing’s not right and the circumstances are still dicey, you get Hamas victories.”
Schanzer said the Bush administration’s 2006 decision to advocate for elections “led to Hamas winning, and it led to a standoff which led to a civil war.”
“You’ve got to be really careful when it comes to holding elections with a territory like Gaza in particular, where Hamas has so much control, and where terrorist organizations are still considered to be legitimate players,” Schanzer added.
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Gazan journalists and media personnel continue to be posthumously identified as members of terrorist groups, highlighting the difficulty of distinguishing terror affiliates from civilians.
Election campaign banners showing candidates for the upcoming municipal elections hang on a building in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip April 21, 2026. (Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)
Four parties are contesting the election in Deir al-Balah. To be eligible, candidates were asked to accept the Palestine Liberation Organization and the terms of agreements it has previously made, including recognition of the State of Israel and endorsement of a two-state solution, according to reporting by the Center for Peace Communications.
However, many are concerned that one party, Deir al-Balah Unites Us, is affiliated with Hamas. Two of its candidates have been pictured with Hamas officials or police officers.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, posted on X that “holding elections in Gaza at this time is extremely reckless and irresponsible,” noting that “Gazans are being arrested, jailed, tortured, shot, and killed daily for social media posts and anything they say that’s perceived as being critical of Hamas.
“These elections should be halted and prevented from proceeding, for they are meddling with the transition process that the Board of Peace, [National Council for the Administration of Gaza], and the international community have planned for Gaza, with Hamas’s disarmament and relinquishment of power being the first necessary step.”
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Disarmament of Hamas, a key demand within the second phase of President Donald Trump’s ceasefire agreement, has yet to be completed. Reports indicate that Hamas has increased its hold in Gaza as of March, continuing to tax locals, building education system and placing police throughout the territory it holds.
Hamas terrorists stand guard in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip Feb. 22, 2025, during the handover of hostages as part of a ceasefire and hostage-prisoner swap deal with Israel. (Hatem Khaled/Reuters)
Schanzer said Hamas is unlikely to hand over its arms. If it were to do so, he said that they “will try to make distinctions between weapons,” possibly offering to give up heavy weapons like RPGs while maintaining a large arsenal of automatic weapons.
Hamas appears to have made a partial disarmament offer. The New York Times reported April 19 that two Hamas officials said they would hand over thousands of weapons from their police force and other security institutions. The officials “did not provide a clear answer” when asked if weapons from Hamas’ so-called military wing would be included.
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President Donald Trump holds up a signed agreement during a world leaders summit focused on ending the Gaza war in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Oct. 13. (Suzanne Plunkett/Getty Images)
Schanzer pushed back on claims that Hamas’ political and military wings operate separately.
“That is a fiction. The idea that they are separate in any way or that there is a firewall between them is asinine.” He said that this is “a distinction that has been made up by the West in order to be able to have political relations with Hamas, or to justify elections. It’s a mistake to buy into that fiction.”
Schanzer said weakening Iran could be key to minimizing Hamas’ influence.
“The psychological impact of their top patron being defeated on the battlefield, I can’t overstate how important that event could be,” he said. “It would be a gut punch to Hamas.”
An election campaign starts in the city of Deir al-Balah, Gaza on April 12, 2026, as part of the local elections scheduled for April 25. (Mohammed Eslayeh/Anadolu via Getty Images)
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With Israel controlling about 53% of the Gaza Strip and Hamas the remaining 47%, Schanzer said, “We could continue to see the erosion of Hamas control” amid the “slow and steady process of Israel winning on the ground.”
He said patience, though, is necessary, adding that “the enemies of the United States and Israel and the West have a very different timeline. They want to wait out everybody because they know that we’d like to move on.”
The Trump administration did not respond to Fox News Digital’s questions about whether a partial disarmament would satisfy its ceasefire terms or if it would take action to stall elections until there’s more stability in Gaza
Anticorruption police gathered material from the homes of election officials including former office leader Piero Corvetto.
Published On 24 Apr 2026
Police in the Peruvian capital of Lima have raided a home belonging to the former head of its national election agency, amid growing frustration in the aftermath of the country’s presidential election.
As of Friday, results still had not been finalised for the presidential race, which took place on April 12.
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Delays in ballot deliveries forced the voting in some areas to be extended by an extra day, and the slow vote count has led to accusations of wrongdoing. But the European Union’s election mission to Peru found no indication of fraud.
Law enforcement was seen entering the home of Piero Corvetto, the former head of Peru’s National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), on Friday as part of a judicial warrant.
The officers with the local anticorruption police unit were tasked with removing mobile phones, laptops and documents, according to local broadcaster RPP.
The homes of five other officials were also targeted by police raids, as were offices belonging to Galaga, a private company that transports election ballots.
Corvetto resigned on Tuesday, though he denied any wrongdoing or irregularities in the election process. In a statement, he said he hoped his departure would boost public confidence.
On Friday, his lawyer, Ricardo Sanchez Carranza, told the news agency Reuters that a judge authorised the raid but denied prosecutors’ request to put Corvetto in preliminary detention.
But one of the leading presidential candidates, Lima’s former far-right mayor, Rafael Lopez Aliaga, has accused Corvetto of being a “criminal” and pledging to pursue him “until he dies”.
Lopez Aliaga is currently in a narrow race for second place in the presidential election.
With 95 percent of the ballots tallied, right-wing candidate and former First Lady Keiko Fujimori is in first place with 17 percent of the vote. She is all but assured of proceeding to the run-off on June 7.
Lopez Aliaga, meanwhile, is in third place with 11.9 percent, behind left-wing Congress member Roberto Sanchez at 12.03 percent.
Roughly 20,000 votes separate Sanchez from Lopez Aliaga, who has increasingly denounced the election as illegitimate, though he has yet to provide evidence to support that claim. Still, he has called the vote tally an “electoral fraud unique in the world”.
The final results are expected on May 15.
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