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Checkpoint is a drive-time news and current affairs programme on Radio New Zealand National. It broadcasts nationwide every weekday evening for two hours and covers the day’s major national and international stories, as well as business, sport and Māori news. This recording covers the first hour. The following rundown is supplied from the broadcaster’s news system:
Checkpoint FOR WEDNESDAY 30 APRIL 2014
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1700 to 1707 NEWS
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The Government's funding boost to help the victims of sexual violence is being described as the bare-minimum needed to keep the sector afloat. An extra 10-million-dollar over two years will set aside in next month's budget to provide immediate relief to struggling specialist services. Here's our political reporter, Demelza Leslie.
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But for the manager of the Counselling Services Centre in South Auckland, Tania Blomfield, the money is a godsend.
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A woman fought off two men during a violent home invasion on a farm near Palmerston North this morning suffering numerous cuts to her arms and chest. One attacker was armed with a knife but the pair fled when the other man was stabbed in the stomach with a pair of scissors. The assault happened just after half past six at Opiki. Detective Sergeant Dave Thompson says the woman's partner, a farm worker, had left for milking and she discovered the intruders when she went into the living room.
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The Labour Party has dismissed calls to make it easier for foreign investors to buy land and houses in New Zealand. Nor is the Prime Minister, John Key, very keen on the recommendation from the business think tank, the New Zealand Initiative, that barriers to foreign investment are removed. Here's our political editor Brent Edwards.
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1720 TRAILS AND BUSINESS - Kate Gudsell
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The government in Argentina is offering a reward of almost 6-thousand dollars (40,000 pesos -- $NZ5,800) for information leading to the arrest of thieves who murdered a New Zealand tourist.
The Australian-based New Zealander Nicholas Heyward was walking in a park in the city of Mendoza when thieves on a motorcycle tried to grab his bag and shot him when he resisted.
Letizia Leuzzi is from Mendoza, and now lives in Wellington. She says locals know that the park is dangerous.
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17. 30 HEADLINES
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A private company says it has found what it believes is the wreckage of the missing Malaysia Airlines flights in the Bay of Bengal near Bangladesh. But the leaders of the search for the missing flight is dismissing the claim and continues to believe the plane came down in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia. Channel Seven's Andrea Nicolas has the details.
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A man has been sentenced to more than three years jail for attacking an elderly woman while she was alone at home. Manurewa resident Dwayne Lucky Oti, who's 39, was earlier found guilty of burglary, and indecent assault. Our reporter Nicole Pryor was at court.
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Iraqis go to the polls in a few hours in the first national elections since American forces pulled out of the country two and a half years ago. The Shi-ite dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki faces a revived insurgency waged by Sunnis who accuse him of marginalising and persecuting them.
The leader of the political wing of one of the most potent Sunni insurgent groups says a Maliki victory will destroy the country. Matt Brown reports from neighbouring Amman.
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A civil engineer is accusing Christchurch City Council of ignoring years of warnings that by blocking up rivers and neglecting drainage it would make floods worse. The costs of repeated flooding are mounting, with the insurance bill from storms and floods in February and March now put at 20 million dollars. That will only be added to by the toll from yesterday's flooding in Flockton Basin.
The City Council has given a taskforce two weeks to find answers to the repeated flooding, and says a few home owners might have to be helped to shift out entirely. But Christchurch civil engineer Warren Lewis says the council for years has had its priorities on rivers and creeks the wrong way around.
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17. 45 MANU KORIHI - Eru Rerekura
Kia ora mai, good evening,
A collective of Ngāpuhi hapū in Northland is calling for a change in leadership of the hapu alliance Te Kōtahitanga so progress can be made on the iwi's treaty settlement.
The government's agreed to negotiate with the rūnanga board, Tūhoronuku, but it's been in conflict with Te Kōtahitanga.
Te Wakaminenga o ngā hapū Ngāpuhi spokesperson, Bryce Smith says the conclusion of a recent Ngāpuhi Taumata hui was to change the leadership of Te Kōtahitanga so everyone could focus on the treaty claim.
He says Tūhoronuku's shown a willingness to move forward, but Te Kōtahitanga hasn't been willing.
Mr Bryce says that because of this there's been a groundswell of support for a new Te Kōtahitanga leadership to work closely with Tūhoronuku, so all aspects of Ngāpuhi claims are addressed.
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Huntly's Te Wharekura o Rakaumangamanga has won the national secondary schools ki ō rahi tournament.
The kura from north Waikato returns home today from Lower Hutt as the champions of the ancient Māori ball game after spending three days there.
Behind them in second place is Tūranga Tāne - Tūranga Wāhine or Gisborne Girls' and Boys' High Schools combined.
The host school Taitā College came third, and Ūawa Area School from Tolaga Bay on the East Coast made fourth place.
A teacher from Taitā College, Simon Hirini, says although each rohe has their own local rules, the twenty two schools who competed made a great effort to adapt to different regulations.
KIORAHI-ADAPT-TP
IN: WE AS SECONDARY. . .
OUT: . . . HOW VERSTILE THEY ARE.
DUR: 25"
Simon Hirini of Taitā College.
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The scene of a Bay of Plenty battle could become a tourism attraction.
An organiser of the 150th Gate Pa commemoration, Peri Kohu, a board member of Pukehinahina Charitable Trust, wants more and more people to visit the now visible site in Tauranga - along the main Cameron Road, which leads in to the city.
Eight Māori carved posts have been erected there, with two carved tree stumps on top of the Gate Pa/ Pukehinahina hill.
They serve as a reminder of both Māori and Pākehā who fought at the site, and who died there in 1864.
Peri Kohu has aspirations to continue expanding upon what's been started and turning it in to a tourist venture:
GATEPA-TOURIST-TP
IN: IF YOU LOOK AT. . .
OUT: . . . MUST STOP PLACE.
DUR: 22"
Peri Kohu.
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The number of Māori students enrolled at the Manukau Institute of Technology is on the rise.
According to the latest figures, the number has risen from 12 per cent in 2009 to just over 15 per cent in 2013.
This year's also the highest proportion of Māori students graduating since the Institute was set up in 1970.
The numbers show that about a quarter of students are studying hospitality related qualifications and about a third are in creative industries.
That's Te Manu Korihi news, I'll have a further bulletin in an hour.
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More now on the ten million dollar boost for sexual violence victim support services. A portion of that money will for the first time specifically target help for boys and men. Ken Clearwater, from Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse Trust, says that's a huge step forward.
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The International Olympic Committee has criticised Brazil's preparations for the 2016 Summer games in Rio de Janeiro. That's in spite of the millions of dollars already spent on infrastructure.
A leading member of the IOC says preparations for the games are the worst he's ever seen.
John Coates, an IOC vice president, has described the situation as "critical", as Katy Watson reports from Sao Paulo.
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Two weeks on it's still not clear what's happened to around two hundred girls in Nigeria who were abducted from their school in the northeastern state of Borno. Various reports say the girls were seen travelling in buses along roads leading into the neighbouring countries. It's widely believed that they're still being held by the Islamist militant group known as Boko Haram. The BBC's Nigeria correspondent Will Ross, reports from Lagos.
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Presenter: Mary Wilson
Editor: Maree Corbett
Deputy editor: Phil Pennington
Producers: Michael Allan, Daniela Maoate-Cox