Top Stories for Friday 19 May 2017
"This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!" It's been a brutal week for Donald Trump. Our correspondent Simon Marks says it seems the storm clouds over his Presidency won't be going away. One woman is dead and more than 20 injured after a speeding car ploughed into pedestrians in New York's Times square. Our New York correspondent Lorna Shaddick says the driver ploughed into a very crowded part of the square - but the crash was not terror related. Methamphetamine use by parents is now the number one reason they're losing custody of their children. Both the Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki - and the Grandparents raising Grandchildren Trust say the P epidemic is behind almost all family breakdowns. Our reporter Lois Williams has been looking into how meth is damaging Northland families. Prison investigators have found Mt Eden guards left Benjamin Lightbody, a severely injured inmate, lying unattended in his cell for 20 minutes while they did office filing and ate sandwiches. Phil Pennington says the prison inpector's investigation lists a "stack of failures". The lawyer for the family of Stephen Dudley will ask the Solicitor General to lay manslaughter charges against the two schoolmates who attacked him on a rugby pitch in 2013. The Opportunities Party leader Gareth Morgan claims he can dry up the multimillion dollar cannabis black-market overnight by regulating the drug and ploughing the proceeds into drug education and addiction treatment. He says young people are very frustrated by the current policy.
