Sport NZ board member and former police office on RUNIT craze
sport health 24 minutes ago
Ryan Satterthwaite suffered a catastrophic head injury and died on Monday after playing a version of the game where competitors plough into each other at full speed with no protective gear. At an official Run-it Championship trials event in Auckland at the weekend two competitors were knocked unconcious. There's a $200,000 cash prize for the winner of the finals. The Minister for Sport has asked for urgent advice from Sport New Zealand on the issue. Fauono Ken Laban former police officer, league player and coach and board member of Sport NZ spoke to Lisa Owen.
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RNZ News
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- RNZ News
Samoa, Oceania teams in tough World Cup pools
The winning Samoa under-16 women's soccer team that has qualified for the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in 2025. Photo: OFC/Phototek Photo: Oceania football will feature in three junior World Cup football events being held this year. Draws held over the last week have also revealed the Oceania teams will not have easy runs at their respective events, with the best of the world in the different age-groups coming together to compete. In women's football, Samoa will compete for the first time in any FIFA World Cup, having qualified for the Under-17 Women's World Cup in Rabat, Morocco. The side finished second to New Zealand at the Oceania Under-16 qualifiers, and won the right to play amongst and against the world's best. The Samoans have been drawn in group D alongside Canada, France, and Nigeria. Oceania Football said it is an exciting and challenging assignment for the Pacific Island nation in their debut appearance on the world stage. Oceania winners New Zealand have been drawn in group F and will play Japan, Paraguay, and Zambia. The draw, held at the Mohammed VI Football Academy, revealed the group-stage matchups for the 24 qualified nations taking part in the tournament, which will run from 17 October to 8 November in the Moroccan capital. OFC said this year's edition of the tournament marks the first time the FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup will feature 24 teams, up from 16, and it is also the first-ever FIFA women's tournament to be held on African soil. FIFA chief women's football officer, Sarai Bareman, who has Samoan roots and once captained the Samoa national women's team, featured in the draw ceremony. The tournament now presents an unprecedented opportunity for the young Samoan squad to represent their country, region, and culture on the global stage. The Samoa team were in Dallas, USA in April and competed at the Dallas Cup event, becoming the first-ever Pacific Island team to reach the semi-finals at the tournament. Head coach Juan Chang Urrea told the Samoa Observer then that taking part at the Dallas Cup was part of their preparation for the Under-17 World Cup. "This level of preparation is unheard of in the Pacific Islands," Chang Urrea told the newspaper. "We are all working together in the federation to give our team the best preparation possible to make our country and the Oceania region proud at the World Cup." They are scheduled for another camp in the States this June, with more warm up matches planned, before they move to Morocco. New Caledonia and New Zealand will feature in the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in Chile. OFC champions New Zealand will face hosts Chile, Japan and Egypt in group A. New Caledonia, also making their tournament debut, is pitted against USA, France and South Africa in group E. The tournament will be staged from 27 September to 19 October, across four host cities: Santiago, Valparaíso, Rancagua and Talca. This year's FIFA Under-20 World Cup will be the 24th edition of the tournament and will feature 52 matches. Photo: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony Fiji, New Caledonia and New Zealand are all in the FIFA under-17 men's World Cup, to be played in Qatar in November. OFC champions New Zealand have been drawn in group L alongside Mali, Austria, and Saudi Arabia. Martin Bullock's side defeated Fiji in the final of the OFC under-16 Men's Championship in Tahiti last year. Fiji, coached by Sunil Kumar, has been handed a difficult draw, which see them pitted against South American powerhouse Argentina, European giants Belgium and north African side Tunisia in group D. New Caledonia, who finished third at the Oceania qualifiers, are in group B, alongside Asian giants Japan, Morocco and European starlets Portugal. OFC said the tournament has been expanded to 48 teams with 12 groups of four. The top two teams in each group, along with the eight best third-placed sides, will qualify for the round of 32. From the round of 32 onwards, the tournament will be played in a knockout format. The tournament runs from 3-27 November.
RNZ News
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MSD to monitor whether stricter rules for accommodation supplement push people into hardship
Social Development Minister Louise Upston. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) will assess requests for hardship assistance to determine whether new, stricter rules for the accommodation supplement are pushing people to seek help elsewhere. From 2 March next year, payments from all boarders will be included in income assessments to determine whether people qualify for accommodation supplements or temporary additional support, and to calculate how much income-related rent people pay in public housing. At the moment, board payments are only included in this calculation when people have three or more boarders, or when it is their main source of income. Work and Income said that could mean people were paid less in housing subsidies or paid higher income-related rents. A spokesperson for MSD said because the policy change would mean a decrease in the rate of assistance received by some people, there could be an increase in applications for other hardship and housing supports. In earlier analysis, it had suggested that the $150 million the government expected to save over four years could be overstated because of this. "We cannot predict how many people will access hardship assistance and housing support products as a result of the change. As part of internal reporting for this initiative, MSD will monitor hardship assistance to see if it is increasing more than forecasted prior to this change. "If MSD identifies significant changes that may require further investigation (such as significant increases in hardship assistance, above what had been forecasted), MSD will investigate those further and provide advice to ministers." It has been estimated that about 13,200 households with boarders will be affected. Ricardo Mendendez-March, Green Party spokesperson for social development, said people who were receiving the accommodation supplement were already facing unaffordable rents. He said the government had not adequately communicated the impact of the bill. "Poverty is a political choice and this government has chosen to leave thousands of low-income families considerably worse off. The changes to the accommodation supplement are unjustified, particularly in a cost of living crisis. The government is trying to pay for their tax cuts by pushing low-income families into debt or to Work and Income to ask for hardship grants to survive. "Being $100 worse off each week may not mean much to wealthy government ministers, but for many families it's the difference between making ends meet or having to access a foodbank. We know that more families will end up needing to access hardship support because of this bill, putting pressure on families and other parts of the system that are already struggling to keep with the growing material hardship families are experiencing." Social Development Minister Louise Upston said there are various forms of assistance that are available to clients who need help with their housing and living costs and who meet the eligibility criteria. "This assistance will continue to be available to those people who are eligible, after 2 March 2026," she said. The minister acknowledges the changes could be unsettling but said they were necessary to make the system more consistent. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Loafers Lodge: Survivors' advocate hopes manslaughter charges bring closure
Fire broke out at the Loafers Lodge building in the early hours of 16 May, 2023, with almost 100 residents inside. Five were killed. Charges have now been laid in connection to the case. Photo: RNZ /Angus Dreaver Wellington's city missioner says three new charges of manslaughter over the fire at Loafers Lodge are a step closer to closure for families and former residents. The blaze just over two years ago killed five of the building's 92 residents. The police said the newly accused - two men, aged 75 and 58, and a 70-year-old woman - each face five charges of manslaughter, and were involved with the management and operation of the building, responsible for aspects of its fire safety. The defendants entered no plea when they appeared in court on Thursday afternoon, and Judge Peter Hobbs remanded the trio on bail to appear in the court later in the month. He included orders for the trio not to have contact with each other, or a fourth individual yet to appear, and granted interim name suppression. Flames seen in the top storey of the Loafers Lodge building in Adelaide Road, Newtown, Wellington. Photo: Supplied / Axel Dann Police said they expect to lay charges against another man in coming days. Murray Edridge from the Wellington City Mission told RNZ he remained in contact with a number of former residents of the lodge, and said people were still suffering from the trauma. "It's clear that there's still significant trauma associated with the fire. It feels like it's an unconcluded process and people are still in pain." He hoped the court process now underway would help people find closure. "So many questions have remained unanswered," he said. "It may be that the accountability that appears to be coming from the newly laid charges will help people get to some point of conclusion with their own trauma." Separately, a 50-year-old man, who has name suppression, has previously been charged with murder and arson, and is due to stand trial in August. Meanwhile, the gutted three-storey building stands virtually unchanged on Adelaide Road and its future remains unclear. Edridge said it was a constant reminder of the pain former residents went through. Loafers Lodge on the night of the blaze. Photo: RNZ / Denise Garland Association of Building Compliance chief executive Trent Fearnley told RNZ these types of charges were the first he had heard of. "Generally speaking, there has been some issues of non-compliance where we have had dangerous buildings that have been acknowledged by the council and Fire Emergency New Zealand, but that's also a rare case." Fearnley said events like the Loafers Lodge fire put a spotlight on building compliance. "We are always constantly improving and this was just a reminder that we need to continue to constantly improve." He said the charges were a reminder of what can happen if people did not do their job responsibly. University of Auckland law professor Julia Tolmie said under the Crimes Act, those who were in control of something that might endanger life had to use reasonable care to avoid danger. Tolmie said if that was breached and it resulted in death that would be culpable homicide or effectively manslaughter. She believed operators of accommodation services would be taking note of the latest charges. Fire and Emergency use a skylift to assess damage to Loafers Lodge following the fatal fire. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver Mayor Tory Whanau told RNZ she was pleased police had undertaken "such a thorough investigation leading to the laying of these charges". "We will await the outcome of the trial," she said. "My heart goes out to the whānau and friends of those who perished in the Loafers Lodge fire, who continue to grieve." The fire triggered a series of inquiries into fire protections . A Wellington City Council audit released in June 2023 found 25 similar buildings in the capital. Twenty-one had a current building warrant of fitness, one never had one and three did, but they were not current. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) launched a probe into 37 similar buildings - that is, boarding houses at least three storeys tall, with no sprinklers - and found more than 100 problems, including smoke detectors not working and unmonitored alarm systems. It also found the boarding houses were on average 60 years old. Most were not built originally to be accommodation and 69 percent had issues with safety systems. At the time of the two-year anniversary, the Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk told RNZ he expected the final report and recommendations to be delivered within weeks, and that it would be made public shortly after. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
