At exactly 7pm, Kim Dotcom and allies – Laila Harre (leader of the Internet-Mana party), Glenn Greenwald (American lawyer and adversarial journalist) and Bob Amsterdam (Dotcom’s lawyer) – took the stage at the Auckland Town Hall, to raucous applause. Adding to the atmosphere was Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden via videolink. They had come for Dotcom’s …

The New Zealand dollar gained amid mixed US data as investors await the outcome of the Federal Reserve’s two-day meeting starting today. The kiwi rose to 81.72 US cents from 81.26 cents yesterday. The trade-weighted index advanced to 78.51 from 78.07 yesterday. US data overnight presented a mixed picture of the state of the world’s largest economy, as the New York Fed’s …

Wall Street fell while US Treasuries rose after a report showed a surprise decline in US industrial production a day before Federal Reserve policy makers begin their two-day meeting, which may offer new clues on the timing of an interest rate increase. The focus is on whether the Federal Open Market Committee will change its language with regards to interest …