Welcome to Today in Business - Powered by Spark for Business, an experimental AI podcast by the New Zealand Herald. Each weekday, we bring you five stories, the best of the New Zealand Herald business journalism, summarised and delivered by an AI voice as an easily digestible recap. It's Monday, August 11, 2025, and here are five stories you should know about. A $130 million luxury resort is being developed in Queenstown by Coherent Hotel, backed by Japanese and Hong Kong investors. Named Noctis by Kamana, it will feature 10 villas, including a 10-bedroom, 1200-square-metre penthouse. Designs are by Hallion Architects, Y-6 Design and 3Eyes Construction Group. The 1.2-hectare site near Lake Wakatipu will offer 37 bedrooms, wellness facilities, a restaurant, conference space for 120 guests, and uninterrupted lake and mountain views. Coherent Hotel also owns Kamana Lakehouse and the Nest restaurant. The investment was approved under the Overseas Investment Act in April 2024, with an opening planned for late 2027. Meanwhile, Foodstuffs North Island has begun building a $70 million chilled and frozen food distribution centre at The Landing business park in Auckland Airport. The 28,000-square-metre facility is leased for 25 years and will replace the Wiri hub, moving around 250 staff to Māngere. Features include two temperature zones, racking for more than 27,000 pallets, 27 loading docks, parking for 30 trucks, and a 1.96 megawatt rooftop solar array. The hub will service 182 supermarkets across the upper North Island. Macrennie Construction is the builder, and Auckland Airport is partnering on the development, which opens in 2028. In other news, Parliament is considering the Climate Change Response Amendment Bill to restrict exotic forestry entry into the Emissions Trading Scheme on high-value farmland. The bill limits ETS registrations on Land Use Capability class 6 land to 15,000 hectares annually via ballot, and allows up to 25% of a farm into the ETS. Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says the changes will protect food production and rural jobs. Federated Farmers supports tighter rules, while forestry groups raise concerns over uncertainty. Ministry data shows exotic forestry peaked at 1.827 million hectares in 2003, with current levels around 1.7 to 1.8 million hectares. On the aviation front, the Civil Aviation Authority reports 310 laser pointer attacks on aircraft in 2023, up from 291 in 2022 and 207 in 2021. This year, 198 incidents have already been recorded. Customs intercepted 13 high-power laser pointers last year, compared with 10 in 2022. The CAA says laser strikes endanger pilots and passengers, working with police to investigate. Lasers above 1 milliwatt require import consent and seller authorisation. Possession without reasonable excuse carries penalties of up to three months' jail or a $2,000 fine, while endangering transport can mean up to 14 years' imprisonment. In overseas news, the New York Times reports sealed US court records reveal Uber received more than 400 thousand reports of sexual assault or misconduct between 2017 and 2022, averaging one every eight minutes. The company had previously disclosed 12,522 serious assault cases for that period. Internal documents show Uber tested safety tools such as predictive algorithms, cameras, and female passenger-driver matching, but delayed or limited implementation. About 75% of reported cases involved less severe conduct. Litigation against Uber includes over 3000 lawsuits from passengers. Uber has settled some claims while defending others, and recently announced plans to pilot a women-matching option in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit. That was Today in Business - Powered by Spark for Business - your NZ Herald daily business summary. For the best in business, subscribe to Herald Premium at nzherald.co.nz.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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