Holiday Breakfast

Following two hours of talkback on Newstalk ZB, where dozens of listeners called in sharing their trouble and complaints with Black Caps matches now being streamed.
Head of Spark Sport Jeff Latch joined Tim Beveridge to answer common questions from those who are struggling using the service to watch the Black Caps summer of cricket.
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Our summer road trip reaches Thorndon in Wellington this morning, at Katherine Mansfield House and Garden.
It's the birthplace and first home of Katherine Mansfield.
Cherie Jacobson is the director of Katherine Mansfield House and Garden.
She joined Tim Dower to talk about the visit of the attraction, and why you should take a visit next time you're in the area!
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Debt, when it's manageable, when it's planned and when you can service it, can be a useful tool in life.
But when the demands for payment start to exceed your ability to meet them, things go south pretty quickly.
In 2020 a lot of people will have ramped up debt, incomes suddenly down sharply, but outgoings no different.
How do you get out of a hole than can quickly be tens of thousands of dollars deep?
Auckland woman Sandra has been there. And with help, not a Lotto win or a handout, she got free.
She's bravely agreed to tell us her story.
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The end of New Zealand's holiday road toll period reveals a sad reality.
Since 4pm on Christmas Eve until 6am this morning, 11 people died in car accidents.
That's compared to four, 12 months earlier.
The AA's Barney Irvine told Tim Dower 11 has been the average number of deaths for the past five or six years.
“That's not to imply we should normalise this - but rather, it shows the numbers are heading stubbornly in the wrong direction.”
Irvine says the road toll had been coming down for decades, until about 2013.
He says since then it's been trending upwards, leaving everybody scratching their heads and worrying about how to fix it.
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President Donald Trump pressured Georgia's Republican secretary of state to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden's win in the state's presidential election, repeatedly citing disproven claims of fraud and raising the prospect of a “criminal offense" if officials did not change the vote count, according to a recording of the conversation.
The phone call with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Saturday was the latest step in an unprecedented effort by a sitting president to press a state official to reverse the outcome of a free and fair election that he lost. The Republican president, who has refused to accept his loss to Democratic President-elect Biden, repeatedly argued that Raffensperger could change the certified results.
“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have," Trump said. "Because we won the state."
Georgia counted its votes three times before certifying Biden's win by a 11,779-vote margin, Raffensperger noted.
“President Trump, we’ve had several lawsuits, and we’ve had to respond in court to the lawsuits and the contentions," he said on the call. "We don’t agree that you have won."
Audio snippets of the conversation were first posted online by The Washington Post. The Associated Press obtained the full audio of Trump’s conversation with Georgia officials from a person on the call. The AP has a policy of not amplifying disinformation and unproven allegations. The AP plans to post the full audio as it annotates a transcript with fact check material.
Trump's renewed intervention and the persistent and unfounded claims of fraud came nearly two weeks before he leaves office and two days before twin runoff elections in Georgia that will determine political control of the U.S. Senate.
It also added a level of further intrigue to Trump's rally in Georgia on Monday night — likely the last of his term — in which he is supposed to boost the two Republican candidates. In a rage after the Raffensperger call, Trump floated the idea of pulling out of the rally, which would have potentially devastated the GOP chances in what is expected to be a pair of razor-thin races.
But Trump was persuaded to go ahead with the rally as a stage from which to reiterate his claims of election fraud and to present, as he tweeted Monday, the “real numbers” from the race. Republicans, though, were wary as to whether Trump would focus only on himself and potentially depress turnout by undermining faith in the runoff elections and not promoting the two GOP candidates.
The president used Saturday's hourlong phone conversation to tick through a list of claims about the election in Georgia, including that hundreds of thousands of ballots mysteriously appeared in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta. Officials have said there is no evidence of that happening.
The Georgia officials on the call are heard repeatedly pushing back against the president’s assertions, telling him that he’s relying on debunked theories and, in one case, selectively edited video.
“It was pretty obvious pretty early on that we’d debunked every one of those theories early on,” Raffensperger told ABC's “Good Morning America” on Monday, “but President Trump continues to believe them.”
Also during the conversation, Trump appeared to threaten Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s legal counsel, by suggesting both could be criminally liable if they failed to find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County had been illegally destroyed. There is no evidence to support Trump’s claim.
“That’s a criminal offense,” Trump says. “And you can’t let that happen."
Others on the call included Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and attorneys assisting Trump, including Washington lawyer Cleta Mitchell. Trump lost the Electoral College to Biden by 74 votes, and even if Georgia, with its 16 votes, were to end up in his column, it would have no impact on the result of...

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Aucklanders looking to take advantage of today's fine weather are being warned to stay away from over 50 of the city's swimming spots.
Bathers heading in for a dip could be putting themselves at "high risk of illness" according to Auckland Council.
The warnings are displayed on the council's Safeswim website, which shows a map covered with the red alert warnings.
Twelve of those spots also include a long-term alert, where swimming is not advised with sampling showing water quality consistently fails to meet national guidelines.
In the north of Auckland, most of the Hibiscus Coast has been marked as off-limits, as has the holiday hot-spot of Long Bay.
In the city, Mission Bay receives a big tick but nearby St Heliers and Kohimarama carry warnings.
Further south and east, Eastern Beach, Cockle Bay, and Kawakawa Bay were deemed high-risk swimming spots.
The red alert classification is triggered by a direct measure of faecal indicator bacteria, Enterococci, in the water.
It denotes a greater than 2 per cent chance of getting sick from swimming at a beach.
A black alert - which there are none of currently - indicates a "very high risk" of illness from swimming and means the water was directly contaminated by human faeces, and not just the Enterococci bacteria that could be from the gut of any animal.
The map is covered in warnings. Photo / SafeSwim
National's Environment spokesperson Scott Simpson has called for a formal investigation into the state of Auckland's beaches.
"It's an appalling state of affairs that has only got worse in the past three years. In many cases this pollution flows directly into the already compromised Hauraki Gulf," Simpson said.
"The fact that as many as one in ten people swimming at popular Auckland beaches are likely to become ill highlights the just how polluted those beaches are.
"The sad thing is, people are missing out on their chance to swim during the peak summer holiday season yet again."
According to the Safeswim website, their water quality forecasts take account of rainfall, wind, tide, sunlight and beach type.
They are made using high-frequency targeted sampling on top of historical monitoring results, and are underpinned by the best available meteorological data, including readings from rain radar and an extensive network of rain gauges.
Safeswim's forecasts are automatically overridden if sensors detect unpredicted events – like a wastewater overflow in dry weather – that are likely to cause a public health risk.
Safeswim is overseen by an independent panel of public health and water quality experts and is required to meet performance standards adopted from the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

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France’s cautious approach to rolling out a coronavirus vaccination program appears to have backfired, leaving barely 500 people inoculated in the first week and rekindling anger over the government’s handling of the pandemic.
Amid public outcry, the health minister vowed Monday to step up the pace, and made a belated public plea on behalf of the vaccine, saying it offers a “chance” for France and the world to vanquish a pandemic that has killed more than 1.8 million people. President Emmanuel Macron was holding a special meeting with top government officials Monday to address the vaccine strategy and other virus developments.
The slow rollout of the vaccine made by Pfizer and the German firm BioNTech was blamed on mismanagement, staffing shortages during holiday vacations and a complex French consent policy designed to accommodate unusually broad vaccine skepticism among the French public.
Doctors, mayors and opposition politicians pleaded Monday for speedier access to vaccines.
“It’s a state scandal,” said Jean Rottner, president of the Grand-Est region of eastern France, where infections are surging and some hospitals are over capacity.
“Getting vaccinated is becoming more complicated than buying a car,” he said on France-2 television.
In France, a country of 67 million people, only 516 people were vaccinated in the first six days, according to the French Health Ministry. Health Minister Olivier Veran promised that by the end of Monday, “several thousand” people will have been vaccinated, with the tempo picking up through the week — but that still leaves France well behind its neighbors.
Germany’s first-week total surpassed 200,000 and Italy’s was over 100,000 — and even those countries are under fire for being too slow to protect the public from a pandemic that has killed more than 1.8 million people worldwide.
The U.S. and China, meanwhile, have vaccinated millions. Britain on Monday became the first nation in the world to start giving people shots of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, so the U.K. now has two approved vaccines to use.
France started its vaccination campaign on Dec. 27 in nursing homes, because so many elderly people have died with the virus. But facing fears that people with cognitive problems would be vaccinated against their will, the government devised a time-consuming screening process before the vaccines can be ordered and administered.
Macron's government is also keen not to appear that it is forcing vaccines on anyone.
Though France has lost more lives to the virus than most countries — over 65,000 — polls suggest the French are unusually wary of vaccines. They remember past French drug scandals, worry about how quickly these new vaccines were developed and their long-term impact, and wonder about the profits they bring to big pharmaceutical companies.
But many other French people are eager to vaccinated and have been frustrated by the surprisingly slow rollout.
“We are doing anything we can to motivate people to get vaccinated,” said Frederic Leyret, director of the St. Vincent Hospital in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, whose geriatric rehabilitation facility started vaccinations Monday.
He lamented a mixed message from leading French officials, which he sums up as: “Go get vaccinated, but we will go slowly because it could be dangerous.”
Now that millions of people in multiple countries are getting injected, he said attitudes are starting to shift. The French government adjusted its policies over the weekend to allow immediate vaccinations for medical workers over 50, alongside nursing home residents. Vaccines will gradually be made available to others.
On Monday, French authorities reported 378 new deaths from the virus and said numbers of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in intensive care units — more than 2,600 people — remained stable.
Similar troubles have surfaced around Europe.
Spain saw...

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a new national lockdown for England until at least mid-February to combat a fast-spreading new version of the coronavirus.
Johnson said the country is at “a critical moment,” with cases rising rapidly in every part of the country.
Under the new rules, which are set to come into effect as soon as possible, primary and secondary schools and colleges will be closed for face to face learning except for the children of key workers. University students will not be returning until at least mid-February.
All nonessential shops and personal care services like hairdressers will be closed, and restaurants can only operate takeout services.
As of Monday, there were 26,626 COVID patients in hospitals in England, an increase of more than 30% from a week ago. That is 40% above the highest level of the first wave in the spring.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to outline tougher restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19 on Monday, even as Britain ramped up its vaccination program by becoming the first nation to start using the shot developed by Oxford University and drugmaker AstraZeneca.
Johnson, who has said tougher measures are imminent, announced that he would address the nation at 8 p.m. (3 p.m. EST). The U.K. Parliament will be recalled from its holiday recess to sit on Wednesday.
The U.K. has seen a surge in coronavirus cases in recent weeks as public health officials struggle to control the spread of a new variant of COVID-19 that is more contagious than previous variants. Authorities have recorded more than 50,000 new infections a day since passing that milestone for the first time on Dec. 29. On Monday, they reported 407 virus-related deaths to push the confirmed death toll total to 75,431, one of the worst in Europe.
“If you look at the numbers, there’s no question we will have to take tougher measures and we will be announcing those in due course,” Johnson said while visiting some of the people receiving the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine at Chase Farm Hospital in north London.
The U.K.'s chief medical officers warned that without further action, “there is a material risk of the National Health Service in several areas being overwhelmed over the next 21 days.”
Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon also imposed a lockdown in her nation until the end of January.
Beginning Tuesday, people in Scotland will be required to stay at home except for essential reasons, to help ease the pressure on hospitals and intensive care units, Sturgeon said. Under the new rules, people can go out for exercise but can only meet one person from another household. Schools will remain closed until February, except for children of key workers and those in social care.
“I am more concerned about the situation we face now than I have been at any time since March last year,” Sturgeon said in Edinburgh.
Scotland, which controls its own health policy under the U.K.'s system of devolved government, has often imposed stricter coronavirus restrictions than those in England.
The announcements come on the day U.K. health authorities began putting the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine into arms around the country, fueling hopes that life may begin returning to normal by the spring.
Britain has secured the rights to 100 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is cheaper and easier to use than some of its rivals. In particular, it doesn’t require the super-cold storage needed for the Pfizer vaccine.
The new vaccine will be administered at a small number of hospitals for the first few days so authorities can watch out for any adverse reactions. But the NHS said hundreds of new vaccination sites — including local doctors’ offices — will open later this week, joining the more than 700 vaccination sites already in operation.
A “massive ramp-up...

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Kiwi sailor Phil Robertson has urged boaties to think twice after a heartbreaking encounter with a baby dolphin caught in fishing line.
Robertson was foil boarding off Kawau Island with underwater photographer Steve Hathaway at the weekend, when they spotted a young common dolphin on its own.
Upon further inspection, they were alarmed to find it caught up in discarded fishing line.
"We went a bit closer and could see it was tangled in some fishing line and really struggling so [Steve] sort of made a plan that he needed to jump in and grab the dolphin so we could cut all the line free and give it its best chance to live," Robertson told the Herald after filming the rescue.
The sad thing is it probably won't survive but at least we gave it the best chance it could. It lost its pod, so hopefully it has found some friends out there and is living a happy life and recovering."
Robertson said it was a situation all too familiar for Hathaway - who founded the Young Ocean Explorers charity in 2012.
His mission was to inspire and educate children to love the ocean and create generational change by signifying the importance of caring for it and its sea life.
"Steve sees this all the time out there which is quite sad," Robertson said. "It ranges from dolphins all the way up to whales getting caught in the tackle.
"It's not rare but the biggest thing is we need to look after our oceans and make sure we're not ditching anything that could harm our sea life.
"We've got such beautiful ocean and the Hauraki Gulf is something so special and unique to New Zealand and we've got to look after it and love it and the ecosystem that's keeping or land alive as well down there. The fish are slowly depleting which is sad but we've just got to be responsible when it comes to being on the water, fishing and any water activities."
Robertson is a two-time match race World Championship winner and skipper of the China SailGP team.

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An incredible New Zealand sportswoman who's flown under the radar this year is Courtney Duncan.
The 24 year old from Dunedin is a motocross double world champion - she defended her title late last year over in Italy.
It's a huge success after a stop-start year of the sport.
Courtney Duncan joins Tim Dower to talk about her career.
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