Nine To Noon RNZ Radio

Sports commentator Glen Larmer.

Elspeth Kerr was a prominent nurse in the Auckland suburb of Devonport in the 1930s and faced three trials over the poisoning of her foster daughter Betty. Betty lived, but as police investigated they found cause to exhume the bodies of her husband Charles - who had died just a few months before Betty became sick - and another patient called Emma Day. At the time, the case was sensational, but over time was lost to history - until a skeleton was unearthed under a Devonport house in 1992. Investigative author Scott Bainbridge has written The Trials of Nurse Kerr: The anatomy of a secret poisoner. It's his ninth book, he's also written Without a Trace and Still Missing. Nine to Noon last spoke to him about his book The Fix, which looked at one of New Zealand's biggest swindles.

Rebecca discusses the arrest of Michael Chai, the director of a New Zealand-based company Blackwell Global Holdings. He was taken into custody trying to board a plane in the Philippines, bound for Hong Kong, and is wanted for alleged fraud in China. And Being AI (BAI) has debuted on the New Zealand stock exchange, but got off to a rocky start. Rebecca Stevenson is a senior journalist at BusinessDesk.

For decades, the classic Kiwi sock brand Norsewear has provided relief from the big freeze - and economic survival for the small North Island village of Norsewood, near Napier. It now as now has a high-profile new owner, Tim Deane who is a former Fonterra managing director. Hawke's Bay Today's "Cyclone Gabrielle: Special Free Edition" has won the Best Use of Print award at the International News Media Association's 2024 global awards in London.And noise restrictions in the Hastings city centre have prompted the closure of a popular live music venue's outdoor stage after a complaint by guests at a nearby hotel. Common Room has announced it can no longer run its outdoor music events.

Ralph McAllister reviews My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand published by Century.

Best-selling author and Stanford University medical school professor Abraham Verghese has a new novel - a sweeping epic following three generations of a family in South West India across the 20th Century. The Covenant of Water will delight fans of his 2012 novel Cutting for Stone, which sold over 1 million copies and remained on the New York Times best-seller list for over two years. The story centres on a young Christian girl in Kerala, who is married to a 40 year old widower, and follows as she become matriarch of the family over decades in which India changes enormously. Abraham Verghese was born and grew up in Ethiopia - the son of expatriate Indian parents. He began medical school in Ethiopia, but his studies were interrupted by the civil war in 1974, and he continued in India before moving to the United States. He will appear live at the Auckland Writers Festival next month.