Nine To Noon

Former Kiwi rugby league star Kevin Iro has gone from sports champion to ocean champion. After an exceptional 14 year professional and international sporting career Iro moved to the Cook Islands where he was alarmed to find once vibrant reefs and lagoons, damaged and depleted.

Europe correspondent Seamus Kearney joins Kathryn to talk about the difficulties facing Italy's coalition of far-right and rightwing parties just weeks after winning elections. The death toll from an attack on a training centre for Russian recruits and a vigil has been held for two men killed in a shooting at a gay bar in Slovakia.

Data from the online job marketplace SEEK suggests employers can boost their chances of locking in the right person for the job by making some simple adjustments to the recruitment process. SEEK NZ Country Manager Rob Clark explains.

If the government's zero emissions target is to be met - we'll need another 1.5m low emission cars on our roads in the next 13 years. So is our charging infrastructure up to the job? Kathryn talks with Acting CEO and ChargeNet Director Damon Birchfield.

It's been a rough weekend for UK Prime Minister Liz Truss. Kathryn speaks with Westminster correspondent Hugo Gye.

Comedians Donna Brookbanks and Irene Pink with some of the lighter stories of the week.

The Black Ferns will be looking to get down to business against Wales this weekend at the Rugby World Cup following the hoopla of the opening of the tournament. Dana talks to Lynn about how women's sport is marketed and whether the emphasis is right. She also discusses the Silver Ferns success over Australia and ponders whether the Ferns selectors got it wrong for the Commonwealth Games?, The T20 World Cup is about to start in Australia, and Jesse Ryder is back playing international cricket - albeit at the men's indoor cricket World Cup.

Gail Pittaway reviews The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li, published by HarperCollins Publishers

Finding a way that allows humans to communicate with whales has become the obsession of wildlife film-maker Tom Mustill. His first encounter with a whale was very nearly his last. In 2015 he was out whale watching off the coast of California, when a humpback breached his kayak, tipping him and his companion into the water. Since then Tom Mustill has wanted to understand whales, if possible to learn how to communication with them. So he went in search of researchers who could help him in this quest and has written about it in How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication.

An historic quinquennial congress of the Chinese Communist party will get underway in Beijing this weekend. Ed talks to Lynn about the congress and why is it so important for the future of China and its leader Xi Jinping, and how China's security forces are preparing for the congress. And Sri Lanka's energy and economic crisis is making it turn to Vladimir Putin's Russia, of all places, for support. There are also more signals from Japan that a big change is coming that will overturn the country's long-standing pacifist policy. Ed White is a correspondent with the Financial Times.