The Wire with Oto

Kiwis battling the deadliest form of breast cancer, are a step closer to gaining access to life-saving treatment. There are currently no funded treatment options for triple-negative breast cancer, but hope is on the horizon with Pharmac recommending funding for drug, Keytruda. Producer Jasmine Gray spoke to Breast Cancer Foundation Chief Executive, Ah-Leen Rayner, about the path to rollout for patients in Aotearoa. 

Climate change is a problem that hangs perpetually over the head of humankind.

In an effort to find a solution to this existential issue, some scientists have proposed using geoengineering to “hack” the climate.

Possible geoengineering proposals include injecting sea salt into clouds to increase their brightness and using giant space parasols to block the sun.

However, geoengineering has its critics. 

Dr Kevin E Trenberth discussed the pitfalls of geoengineering in his recent newsroom article Hacking planet Earth will not save us from ourselves 

In the article Dr Trenberth uses this fable to display ethical problems around who gets to control a hacked climate.

“Once upon a time in an idyllic country, near a small town and a farming community, a rope hung out of the sky. One pull on the rope changed the weather from fine and sunny to cloudy and rainy, and the next pull changed it back. For many years the people cooperated; the farmers used the rains to help grow crops, and the townspeople enjoyed the sunny periods. But there came a time when the townspeople protested the rain and wanted more sunshine. The farmers were concerned about their crops. And so arguments broke out, with a person from the town pulling on the rope, followed quickly by a farmer pulling it again, and they pulled and pulled and . . . broke the rope.”

Nicholas spoke to Dr Trenberth about his article and the implications of pursuing geoengineering as a solution to climate change

In August 2021, New Zealand’s intelligence agency was hit with a cyberattack carried out by a group allegedly backed by the government of China, part of a series of attacks that also hit government offices in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

However, the parliament data breach wasn’t the only cyberattack to happen here in Aotearoa. More than 100 staff members were the victim of cybercrime in 2023 alone, disrupting the operations of more than than a third of businesses nationwide. The repeated string of cyberattacks across the country has created discourse surrounding the vulnerability of cybersecurity systems in New Zealand.

Oto spoke to Professor Giovanni Russello, the head of the school of computer science at the University of Auckland and a lecturer in cybersecurity, to discuss the state of cybersecurity in Aotearoa, and possible steps that can be taken to improve it.

Social work students in Aotearoa along with many other countries undergo 120 hours of unpaid placement work as part of their qualifications. 

During this time, many students experience financial and material hardship, juggling placement work with paid work or other commitments.

In a recently published paper, social workers discuss the conditions and offer possible solutions. Wire host Castor spoke to one of the paper’s authors, the University of Auckland’s professor Liz Beddoe, about the paper and how these issues affect social work students.