RNZ: Saturday Morning

Australia has completed the world's largest cat-proof fence to protect its endangered marsupials from feral cats. The 44km fence surrounds Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary, a former cattle station that has been bought by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) and which is home to endangered species such as the bilby, the burrowing bettong and the rufous hare-wallaby, or mala. Feral cats kill an estimated one million native birds every night and have caused the extinction of 20 native species. Atticus Fleming is the AWC chief executive.

Australian duo, This Way North, comprises drummer/vocalist Cat Leahy and guitarist/vocalist Leisha Jungalwalla. They kick off their NZ tour in Auckland on June 7, teaming up with the crew running Some Feminist Club Nights at the city's Wine Cellar for 'Sass the Patriarchy' - an event the duo has been running in Australia to celebrate and empower women in music and discuss strategies to improve equality in the industry. This Way North is about to release its new EP, Vol 2. In 2017 the duo played over 120 live shows across Australia, New Zealand and Canada including the Dawson City Music Festival in the Yukon, just 200km south of the Arctic Circle, and the Wide Open Space festival in Australia's Northern Territory desert.

Kath Irvine is a permaculture designer and has been designing and managing edible gardens since the late 1990s. She runs a series of workshops from her permaculture home garden, called Edible Backyard, giving people the opportunity to learn organic gardening and garden planning and design from her Levin premises. Irvine has recently released her second book called Pruning Fruit Trees: A Beginner's Guide.

It's an illness that seems to respect Sweden's borders - occuring only within that country, and only to the children of refugees and asylum seekers. The victims of Resignation Syndrome withdraw from life - they don't eat, walk, talk, or open their eyes. Those who are most vulnerable have witnessed, and fled, extreme violence. Dr Karl Sallin is a paediatrician at the Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital, part of Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, who is researching Resignation Syndrome.

Former Labour leader David Shearer is into his second year leading the United Nations' mission in civil war-ravaged South Sudan from his base in the country's capital, Juba. The world's newest country, formed after independence in 2011, has not only been home to constant internecine conflict but also to extreme famine, the combined effect of which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced an estimated 4 million. Aid agencies are now warning that South Sudan is on the brink of another devastating famine.

Marama Mullen (Ngatiawa ki Kapiti) contracted HIV from Peter Mwai in 1993. She was part of the case against him and had a long road to recovery in the wake of the trial and her diagnosis. Mullen co-founded INA - the Maori, Indigenous & South Pacific HIV & AIDS Foundation which provides advocacy and support for indigenous people in Aotearoa and around the world. She has spoken at the UN and the World Health Organisation and is a board member of the International Council of AIDS Service Organisations. She has received an ONZM for services to HIV. Mullen has three children and lives in the Waikato town of Tirau. Her story is the first in a new television series, I Am, which premieres on TVNZ 1 on June 12.

When English rugby sevens coach Ben Ryan took a job with the Fijian team in 2013 he wondered at first whether he'd made the worst mistake of his life. He tells Kim Hill why it turned out to be the best decision he'd ever made.

Kate Camp is the author of six collections of poetry published by Victoria University Press, the most recent of which is The internet of things (2017). She's won the New Zealand Book Award for The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls, and the Best First Book Award for Unfamiliar Legends of the Stars. Camp held the Creative New Zealand Berlin writers residency in 2011, and the Katherine Mansfield Menton fellowship in 2017. She has reviewed classic literature on Saturday Morning since 2001; today, she refreshes the collective memory of the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey.

Coronation Street fans were shocked at this week's news that next month the soap watched by generations of Kiwis is taking a great leap forward - a leap of 18 months in fact, so viewers in Aotearoa will see episodes screened here only a week after they go to air in the UK. Catch-up episodes on TVNZ will screen at 1pm Monday to Friday for viewers who want to follow the existing 2016 storylines. A fervent fan of Coro, Simon Morris, (RNZ film reviewer and presenter of At the Movies, and Standing Room Only producer) isn't best pleased.

Sculptor Fred Graham (Ngati Koroki Kahukura, Tainui), aged 89, has gained another prestigious prize, being named this week as a recipient of an Arts Foundation Icon Award. Many of his works can be found around Auckland - on the wall outside Auckland Art Gallery, in the courtyard of the High Court, in the Auckland Domain, the botanic gardens, Mission Bay, and where Shortland St meets Queen St. His sculptures are held in major art galleries in Aotearoa and in international collections. Graham, a former Maori All Black, belonged to a group of artists including Ralph Hotere and Cliff Whiting who, from the late 1950s, developed a new form of modern Maori art. Graham was named an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Years Honours List 2018 for his services to Maori art, and won Te Tohu mo Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu Exemplary/Supreme Award in last year's Te Waka Toi Awards. He is still working in his studio in Waipu where he lives with his wife of 60 years, Norma.

Emma Jameson is an assistant curator of historic international and New Zealand Art at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. She has curated the exhibition 'First Impressions: 19th-century watercolours of the Auckland Region', which features watercolours by amateur and professional artists from the era 1840-1890. The exhibition explores how early European artists aimed to capture the light and vast horizons of Aotearoa, and portray their vision of an idyllic landscape. Jameson has interned at the Peggy Guggenheim Collezione in Venice and has twice worked as a summer research scholar at the University of Auckland, assisting Professor Dr Erin Griffey in researching the inventories of Charles I and Charles II. In 2015 she completed the three-month Marylyn Mayo research internship at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, during which time she researched and ascribed dates to over 700 works in the gallery's collection.

Director Håvard Bustnes is a award-winning director and producer. He holds a degree in directing for television from the College of Film and TV at Lillehammer, Norway. His films have been selected to more than 70 festivals all over the world, and two have had theatrical release in Norway, Denmark, Taiwan and South Korea. His new film Golden Dawn Girls, about the women of Greece's neo-Nazi party, premiers at the 13th International Documentary Film Festival in Wellington tonight (May 12).

Monique Fiso's mission is to elevate Māori cuisine. After the success of Hiakai – her series of pop-up tent restaurants – Monique's first permanent restaurant opens in Wellington this year.

Arjan van der Boon suspected something was up ahead of the opening of the Abel Tasman exhibition at Foxton's Dutch Museum - so he got himself ready in a jacket and tie. It was still a huge surprise to receive a knighthood by the Netherlands from the Dutch ambassador, presented beneath the full scale replica of the 17th-century Dutch windmill that stands next to the museum. Receiving the honour was the culmination of 12 years of working to establish Te Awahou Nieuwe Stroom, a multicultural centre in the Horowhenua town that houses the museum. Van der Boon is a marketing lecturer at Manukau Institute of Technology.

At the age of 76, US author and activist Barbara Ehrenreich questions whether death can, in fact, be postponed if we just work out, eat the right things and get enough tests done.