News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Creative King of Berlin

Creative King of Berlin

Paul Snowden – a New Zealand creative director and designer based in Berlin – has just completed the visual identity and overall design for the 59th Berlin International Film Festival, Berlinale. The Berlinale…

Unlimited Potential

Unlimited Potential

After the multi-blockbuster book The Learning Revolution, Gordon Dryden returns with his latest book Unlimited: The New Learning Revolution and The Seven Keys to Unlock It. The new book, according to Dryden – whose…

In the Manner of a Woman

In the Manner of a Woman

Having spent the year taking the art world by storm, New Zealand resident and south-pacific artist Shigejuki Kihara is one of artasiapacific’s “five artists for 2009”. Kihara, a Japanese Samoan made a name for…

Helli Vacation

Helli Vacation

Jean-Michel Jefferson heads Ahipara Luxury Travel, offering personalised helicopter tours of New Zealand, custom-fitted to a ‘”clients’ interests, tastes, and aspirations.” The tours typically start at the Cavalli Island Retreat and Spa, in the…

A Creative New Zealand

A Creative New Zealand

New Zealand’s contemporary art scene “boasts established institutions, a healthy commercial scene, and a flourishing network of artist-run spaces,” as catalogued in this year’s artasiapacific Almanac. The Arts Council, Te Waka Toi, and the…

Divine Dwellings

Divine Dwellings

Nelson’s Lodge at Paratiho Farms is on the market for $14,500,000 and features alongside a $16,000,000 Coromandel property, both properties included as part of a New Zealand promotion in the autumn edition of Century…

An Honourable Year

An Honourable Year

New Zealand’s 2008 Beijing contingent was well represented in the New Year’s Honours list and included Christchurch Paralympics swimmer Sophie Pascoe, 16, board sailor Tom Ashley and shot putter Valerie Vili. In total, seven…

Lodge One of the Top

Lodge One of the Top

Five New Zealand hotels and resorts have been included in Travel and Leisure’s list of 500 World’s Best Hotels for 2009 with Rotorua’s Treetops Lodge and Estate the highest rated. “This is the list…

Flying High

Flying High

Air New Zealand has made a bold move into the world of sustainability, becoming the first commercial airline to fly using an alternative fuel made from the jatropha plant. The airline recently conducted a…

Fondly Remembered

Fondly Remembered

Sir Edmund Hillary is one of 45 individuals remembered in Time magazine’s 2008 ‘Fond Farewell’ tributes. “On May 29, 1953, Hillary, with the help of his Sherpa guide, became the first person to reach…

Drilling For Knowledge

Drilling For Knowledge

Victoria University’s Tim Naish is one of a hundred scientists from 40 different countries working on a map of climate change. The Antarctic Geological Drilling Program (ANDRILL) is digging deep below the Ross Ice Shelf to determine…

Better off before

Better off before

New Zealand historian David Thomson was one of the first people to write about the “phenomenon” of the “lucky generation” born during the period from the late 1920s through the 1930s according to The…

Aiding an Avian Identity

Aiding an Avian Identity

Though the battle to save New Zealand’s famous national symbol the kiwi is “conceded unwinnable on some fronts”; the bird’s existence is mounting with the help of Zealandia, Wellington’s Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, which expects…

Coastal reflections

Coastal reflections

On March 1910 Katherine Mansfield arrived at the English seaside town of Rottingdean in Sussex where she took a room above the local grocer. While Mansfield craved library books “the sun shone and the…

Zoë the turncoat

Zoë the turncoat

Auckland stuntwoman and actress Zoë Bell, 30, stars in American web action series Angel of Death alongside fellow New Zealander, Lucy Lawless. Bell plays a mafia assassin who suffers a catastrophic head wound and…

In love in Fiji

In love in Fiji

Hamilton-born Shortland Street star Ben Mitchell, 27, has been in Fiji for the premiere of his latest project, the film Love Has No Language in which he stars opposite Bollywood actress Celina Jaitley….

Dining with the Birds

Dining with the Birds

For one month from 9 January until February 2009, in a redwood plantation north of Auckland, between Puhoi and Warkworth, and 10m up a tree, the Yellow House restaurant will serve three-course meals…

Minnie Dean Memorialised

Minnie Dean Memorialised

Infamous Winton baby-farmer Minnie Dean, the first and last woman to be hanged in New Zealand, will soon have a headstone erected on her unmarked grave in the Winton Cemetery. Dean’s Scottish great-great-nephew Martin…

Possums Made Good

Possums Made Good

Founder and CEO of fashion label Untouched World Peri Drysdale – who has an MBE for services to manufacturing and export – began selling garments blended fom possum and merino in 1996, later catching…

Out on a Win

Out on a Win

Champion Taranaki jockey Greg Childs, 46, is retiring from a 30-year career which began in New Zealand in the 1970s as an apprentice and ended with a win in the Bounty Hawk Handicap on…

Steve Enlivens the Game

Steve Enlivens the Game

Wellington-born caddy Steve Williams has “outraged” everyone “in this politically correct world”, but not the writers at the New York Daily News who say rather than offending anyone, Williams has “spiced up a rivalry…

In vogue in Sydney

In vogue in Sydney

18 December 2008 – Auckland songstress Gin Wigmore, 22, has been named one of ten best up-and-coming musical acts in the Metro section of The Sydney Morning Herald. Wigmore is fairly confident she’s the…

Tall Fern Makes UConn

Tall Fern Makes UConn

Auckland basketball player Jessica McCormack, 19, who was the youngest member of the New Zealand team at the Beijing Olympics this year, now plays for the top-ranked University of Connecticut (UConn) as a…

Librarian to the Antibodies

Librarian to the Antibodies

15 December 2008 – New Zealand-born CEO of German biotech firm MorphoSys engineer, Dr Simon Moroney is in charge of a different sort of library, an amazing archive containing some 12 billion human antibodies….

Hold the Cash

Hold the Cash

One alternative form of paper money in New Zealand is the local exchange trading system (LETS) of green dollars, which is a particularly useful means of trade in smaller towns. Swiss national and…

Goodbye to a Good Guy

Goodbye to a Good Guy

Former All Black front rower John Drake has died at his home in Mt Maunganui aged 49. Drake was a tighthead prop in the World Cup-winning All Blacks team of 1987. In recent years…

Revolution in the Wananga

Revolution in the Wananga

Maori educator and chairman of tertiary institution Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi Professor Graham Hingangaroa Smith was a key speaker at the World Indigenous People’s Education Conference in Melbourne held in early December. A…

Networking in California

Networking in California

Scott’s Ferry-raised Victoria Ransom, 32, now based in Silicon Valley, California, has won $450,000 in an international Internet business competition for her design application to be used on social networking site Facebook. Ransom’s company…

Northern Expansion

Northern Expansion

08 December 2008 – Wellington clothing company Icebreaker has engaged a distributor in Germany, Sweden and Norway, having also opened its first Eastern European sales and marketing office in the Czech Republic earlier…

Stellar win for Brettkelly

Stellar win for Brettkelly

Auckland documentary-maker Pietra Brettkelly has won Best Documentary Award for Art Star and the Sudanese Twins at the 2008 Whistler Film Festival. The jury was quoted as saying, “This is a film that…

Via the Red Route

Via the Red Route

Since its opening in 1995, Karori Wildlife Sanctuary – recently renamed Zealandia – has assisted in halting the continued demise of many native bird species, releasing 15 endangered species back into the…

Neill’s canine enactment

Neill’s canine enactment

Sam Neill, 61, plays the title role of Edwardian clergyman the Dean in Paramount Pictures film Dean Spanley, which opens in UK cinemas on December 12. In a Guardian interview Neill discusses…

Car of the Century

Car of the Century

Gibbs Technologies founder and CTO New Zealander Alan Gibbs, 70, is profiled on Michigan Live.com where the entrepreneur discusses the never-seen-before capabilities of his three-seat sportscar Aquada, production of the Quadski and his partnership…

Of Life and Death

Of Life and Death

Christchurch Press photographer John Kirk-Anderson’s image of a helicopter about to rescue Japanese climber Hideaki Nara, 51, from Mt Aoraki’s Empress Plateau, features in the SF Gate’s ‘Day in Pictures’….

Pouhaki Relocated

Pouhaki Relocated

In 1920, Maori carver Tene Waitere gifted Prince Edward an eight-metre pouhaki, or flagpole, carved from a single tree trunk. The Prince then bequeathed the pole to Portsmouth Naval Base, where for the…

Dipping into the Serene

Dipping into the Serene

The Whanganui River Great Walk features in the December issue of online magazine InTheFray, which writer Aaron Richner describes as a “river is so peaceful that can stretch into infinity, and time, a…

Top Spot for Teen

Top Spot for Teen

Oakura surf champion Paige Hareb, 18, has earned herself a spot on the professional $US1 million World Championship Tour, one of only 18 places for the world’s top female surfers. From the 2008 Reef…

Leader for Change

Leader for Change

01 December 2008 – Time calls John Key’s election win “an emphatic triumph”, and in a Q&A, Key notes that “we are 22nd out of 30 countries in the OECD for average income. I…

For Sale in Central Otago

For Sale in Central Otago

Queenstown’s 3,000-acre Closeburn Station features in The New York Times international property listings this week. “This six-bedroom three-bath contemporary home has a master suite with views of Cecil Peak. The home’s family wing…

Melbourne’s King Pin

Melbourne’s King Pin

Taranaki-born Ben Shewry, 31, is executive chef at Melbourne restaurant Attica, where he was named Best New Talent at the 2007 Gourmet Traveller Awards, and where he earned this year’s Melbourne Age Good Food…

Made for Manhattan

Made for Manhattan

New Zealand designers are now represented at essenze, a store within a store at the Metropolitan Design Center on Broadway in New York, which opened on November 19. Exporting to the US since 2005,…

Contained Holiday Spots

Contained Holiday Spots

New Zealand-produced port-a-bach, made by Wellington company Atelier Workshop from shipping containers, are reviewed in multi-medium technology magazine Gizmag, which describes the relocatable dwellings as “the perfect home for a disaster situation.” All that…

Masterful to the End

Masterful to the End

Dunedin-born professional chess player and writer Robert Wade has died in London, aged 87, bringing to an end a career which famously included a draw with Bobby Fischer at the Havana tournament in 1965,…

Rugby’s Slam Dunk

Rugby’s Slam Dunk

The All Blacks have won their third Grand Slam and the inaugural Sir Edmund Hillary Shield beating England at Twickenham 32-6. In The Independent Hugh Godwin writes: “The clever clogs who got rid of…

Top Spot for Tahrs

Top Spot for Tahrs

New Zealand is one of the world’s top hunting destinations according to Men’s Vogue, with New Zealand Wildlife Safaris the magazine’s featured tour company. Terry and Glad Pierson have operated Wildlife Safaris since 1978…

Educating the World

Educating the World

New Zealand’s international students industry is flourishing again after a recent downturn in numbers. Smart marketing strategies and the lower New Zealand dollar are luring overseas students back. Compared to offshore competitors, New Zealand…

BC Health Sector Move

BC Health Sector Move

New Zealand health administrator Nigel Murray has been in Canada this past year having taken up the position of CEO for British Columbia’s Fraser Health Authority, which delivers care to 1.5 million people and…

With Loppers at the Ready

With Loppers at the Ready

Conservation Volunteers New Zealand is joined by British gap-year blogger Ruth Holliday who writes about her time spent with the group in the Telegraph, “doing what is best described as heavy gardening in the…

An Astral Heritage

An Astral Heritage

23 November 2008 – Tekapo’s Graeme Murray – director of Earth & Sky at Mt John Observatory – is the driving force behind obtaining UNESCO World Heritage Starlight Reserve status for the pristine skies…

Teaming up for culture

Teaming up for culture

New Zealand and South Korea are forging an artistic alliance with a film co-production treaty signed in September 27 and the forthcoming New Zealand Cultural Diplomacy International Program which will be held over three…

Teaming Up for Culture

Teaming Up for Culture

New Zealand and South Korea are forging an artistic alliance with a film co-production treaty signed in September 2007 and the forthcoming New Zealand Cultural Diplomacy International Program which will be held over three…

Fantasy in Spain

Fantasy in Spain

Auckland Elam School of Fine Arts graduate Hye Rim Lee has just returned to her base in New York after a solo exhibition of ëCrystal Cityí in M·laga, Spain. South Korean-born Lee ó who…

Definitely No Regrets

Definitely No Regrets

The Kiwis dismissed the sceptics and the Kangaroos to win the Rugby League World Cup in Brisbane, beating the Australians 34-20, their first ever World Cup win. Outside of the New Zealand camp, few…

Walking the Wet

Walking the Wet

Fiordland’s Hollyford Track “lacks the traffic of Milford Sound” according to The Sydney Morning Herald’s Jenny Tabakoff who tramps the Valley in a guided tour on a particularly damp three days. Delivered by…

Cambodian Stint Rewarded

Cambodian Stint Rewarded

World aerobics champion Botany Downs local Angela McMillan, 28, has been in Phnom Penh coaching the Cambodian men’s team ahead of December’s Asian Aerobic Gymnastics Championships in Bangkok. McMillan, who claimed the world title…

AB Supporters Take Heed

AB Supporters Take Heed

New Zealander and London-based publisher Martin Moodie was “probably one of only 500 in the 26,000 strong crowd” at Limerick’s Thomond Park when the All Blacks played Munster, “ and was honoured to be…