The Wire with Castor

Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to a Signal group chat with top United States security officials who were discussing military plans for strikes on Yemen.

The group chat discussed operational details, and officials, including the Vice President JD Vance, seemed unaware of Goldberg’s presence. 

Jeffrey Goldberg initially left out some of these sensitive details in his article on the group chat but has released more specific information after the Trump administration downplayed the situation and said no classified information was shared.

For International Desk, Wire Host Caeden spoke to Andre Fa’aoso from the Yale Daily News about this issue.

The free school lunch program has been in the headlines here in Aotearoa for several weeks after facing significant impacts to their quality and delivery following a complete restructure of the program led by associate education minister David Seymour.

Many schools have reported late deliveries of meals beyond the lunch period, plastic packaging melting into the food and one student even experiencing burns from the packaging that required medical attention.

This, of course, has the greatest impact on the more than 150,000 Tamariki living in severe poverty, who relied on programs like Ka Ora Ka Ako to receive daily meals.

In response, the Child poverty action group has made a call to senior government ministers and Finance Minister Nicola Willis to restore the funding that was cut from the school lunches program so that schools across the motu could receive meals from local community suppliers.

Oto spoke to Rich Greissman - Deputy Chair of the Child Poverty Action Group's Governing Committee, to discuss the group’s call and why it’s important for the government to ensure the provision of healthy school lunches to Tamariki.

A new government proposal would see maternity hospital stay periods extended from 48 to 72 hours. The change would reduce stress on parents and allow more time to adjust with hospital support.

To discuss the change and other support for new parents, Wire host Castor spoke to senior lecturer at the University of Auckland, Dr. Charlotte Oyston, about this proposal to increase the maternity hospital stay period.

This week on the Monday Wire...

For our weekly catch up with Te Pāti Māori’s Takutai Kemp, News and Editorial Director and Monday Wire Host, Joel, spoke to her about the Winston Peters meeting with his US counterpart, Marco Rubio, the recent Ipsos Issues Monitor Survey findings, and the recent developments in Israel’s war on Gaza.

For our weekly catch up Producer Evie spoke to the ACT Party’s Simon Court about the ACT party entering candidates into local elections, ACT MP Mark Cameron criticising National’s approach to rural communities, as well as David Seymour failing to inform the Education Minister that a key school lunch provider was going into liquidation.

Evie also spoke to Geopolitical Analyst at the University of Otago, Geoffrey Miller about Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters recent trip to the US, and what outcomes this achieved for US New Zealand relations.

Joel spoke to the Political Marketing Expert from the University of Auckland Edward Elder about the most recent Ipsos Issues Monitor Survey, which recorded the government as having the lowest score since the survey started collecting data in mid-2017.

And Global Innovator, Matt Hart, joins us in studio today to discuss the new tv series ‘Adolescence’, and how this relates to creativity and innovation.

Whakarongo mai!