Tag Archives: Russia

New Zealand Listed As One Of The Hardest Countries to Invade

New Zealand Listed As One Of The Hardest Countries to Invade

New Zealand, alongside Switzerland and Russia, has been listed as one of the hardest countries in the world to invade. The humorous article in The Independent cited New Zealand’s geographic inaccessibility as the…

Amos Chapple Couldn’t Resist Shooting in the Coldest Place on Earth

Amos Chapple Couldn’t Resist Shooting in the Coldest Place on Earth

New Zealand photographer Amos Chapple says he shoots travel photos aimed at the news sections of papers and which need a headline to hang a story on. It got down to -31 degrees Centigrade…

Chandler Betting Big on Energy in Africa and Asia

Chandler Betting Big on Energy in Africa and Asia

New Zealand-born billionaire Richard Chandler, 55, is counting on gas and oil in far-flung locales from Papua New Guinea to Kenya and Ethiopia, banking on demand from Asia’s growing middle class. Chandler is amassing a…

New Zealand – Sochi Winter Olympics – Freeski

New Zealand – Sochi Winter Olympics – Freeski

Meet Kiwi Winter Olympic hopefuls aiming to qualify for Freeski in Sochi 2014. The Winter Olympics is a major international multi-sport event being held in Sochi, Russia.

AJ Hackett Heads to Russia for Ever Bigger Thrills

AJ Hackett Heads to Russia for Ever Bigger Thrills

New Zealand bungy kingpin AJ Hackett will set multiple records in Russia this year, when the world’s highest swing, the world’s longest pedestrian suspension bridge (550m) and a double-ended flying fox open as part…

AJ Hackett – Adventure Park: Sochi, Russia

AJ Hackett – Adventure Park: Sochi, Russia

New Zealand adrenaline pioneer AJ Hackett is just months from completing AJ Hackett Sochi – a Russian adventure park that will include a multitude of activities including the world’s…

New Zealand Pledges to Continue Fight for Ross Sea

New Zealand Pledges to Continue Fight for Ross Sea

A New Zealand-led proposal for a marine protected area in the Ross Sea has been stymied due to the inability of the 26-member Comission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to…

Russia Loses A True Champion

Russia Loses A True Champion

“The world of finance offers bigger stages, but none of its actors has so captivated an audience as Jennings did in Russia,” Bernie Sucher of investment bank ATON, writes for The Moscow Times…

Banking on Nigeria

Banking on Nigeria

Stephen Jennings, the New Zealand-born founder and chief executive of Moscow-based investment bank Renaissance Capital, is setting up a consumer finance business in Nigeria with hopes to tap the fast-growing economy’s rising…

Out of Africa

Out of Africa

New Zealander Stephen Jennings, industrialist, investment banker and CEO of Moscow-based Renaissance Group, discusses the issues surrounding wealth creation in Russia, and doing business in Africa, on BBC Hardtalk. Jennings contends that Africa is…

Money in bank

Money in bank

Billionaire investor and philanthropist Richard Chandler, who heads Singapore-based investment fund Orient Global, has bought a 3 per cent stake in Russian commercial bank Sberbank for $430 million, reports The Guardian. Chandler’s Sovereign Global…

Tycoon Teece

Tycoon Teece

Berkeley Planet profiles David Teece, the man dubbed an “economics rock star” by the NZ government and one of the world’s top 50 business intellectuals by global management giant Accenture. As well as advising PM Tony Blair…

Talking Turkey

Talking Turkey

Evolutionary biologists at Auckland University have made ivory tower headlines by providing compelling evidence of the origins of the Indo-European language family. Associate Professor Russell Gray and PhD student Quentin Atkinson applied a complex computer program modelled…

Cleaner Greener NZ

Cleaner Greener NZ

The Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions came one step closer to enforcement after its ratification by the NZ and Canadian governments. Although both countries are relatively minor industrial polluters their signatures are vital in making up the…

New Zealand Zeal

New Zealand Zeal

Kiwi beats the Tigers: “Kiwi businesspeople often speak of their country as a cork floating on the sea of the world economy. At least their cork floats; so many other nations have sunk in the past…

“Gale From the Sea” Laid to Rest

“Gale From the Sea” Laid to Rest

More than 6ft tall, handsome and with the build of a rugby lock forward (which he was), John Platts-Mills blew into the English House of Commons as Labour MP in 1945 “like a gale…

ANZUS Shmanzus

ANZUS Shmanzus

“The Chinese are not coming, the Russians are not coming, the Indonesians are not even coming. Time has moved on.” Helen Clark doesn’t miss ANZUS – and doesn’t think she will any time soon.  

Big Breach

Big Breach

Kiwi ex-MI6 operative Richard Tomlinson’s memoirs, The Big Breach hits Russian bookshops and are serialised in the Sunday Times, to the dismay of the secret service establishment in Britain.

Thigh-deep in Flyfishing

Thigh-deep in Flyfishing

What does New Zealand have in common with Argentina, Russia and Alaska? No, not an “a” in the name – they’re all “flyfishing glamour spots”. Thomas McGuane chronicles his time standing thigh-deep in glamorous rivers in his new…

The Cold War is Over, but Rogue Kiwi Spy Wants to Sell Secrets to the Russians

The Cold War is Over, but Rogue Kiwi Spy Wants to Sell Secrets to the Russians

Richard Tomlinson, whose ‘licence to spy’ was revoked by MI6 in 1995 is negotiating with a Russian publisher to disclose details of his experiences as an agent. He claims he was unfairly dismissed. MI6 said he was regarded…

Davids and Goliaths: Coalition Says Nuclear States Fall Short of Goals

Davids and Goliaths: Coalition Says Nuclear States Fall Short of Goals

United Nations: the “New Agenda Coalition”, of which New Zealand is a key member, criticised the ‘big guns’ (US, Russia, France, Britain and China) for making an empty pledge to eliminate nuclear weapons but falling short…