Roots and culture
Reggae groups The Black Seeds and Katchafire recently played at Whistler’s Garibaldi Lift Co. (GLC) as part of a two-day New Zealand showcase. Both Wellington-based bands are among the most celebrated reggae acts in…
June 2010 Archives
Gender Surprises
Dr David Rowlands, a senior lecturer with the Institute of Food, Nutrition and Human Health at Massey University, has found after exercise women, unlike men, showed no clear benefit from protein during recovery. Several…
Suitcase treasures
New Zealand descendants of a British officer stationed on St Helena, from 1815 to 1821, have sold a number of his collection of Napoleon Bonaparte mementoes at an auction in Auckland, including a lock…
Strings to His Bow
Sonny Bill Williams, 24, who has signed an 18th-month contract with the New Zealand Rugby Union, is considering a return to NRL after the next season or to the ring, “if the boxing bug…
Temple for Story
Prizewinning author Lloyd Jones — whose novel Mister Pip made the Booker shortlist in 27 — has established the Bougainville Library Trust in Arawa, Papua New Guinea, enabling locals to fundraise and build their…
J. Williams Feat. Dane Rumble: Take Me Higher
The video for J Williams hit single, Take Me Higher, featuring Dane Rumble.
Prison fag ban ahead
New Zealand is to ban smoking in prisons from 1 July 211. Corrections Minister Judith Collins said high levels of smoking were a risk to staff and prisoners. Opponents are concerned that violence in…
Mammoth Melt
The effects of a change in global wind patterns which helped to end the last major ice age were first seen on New Zealand glaciers, according to Columbia University scientists. Mountain glaciers in New…
Double Win in Philly
New Zealanders Bevan Docherty, 33, and Nicky Samuels, 27, have taken home the men’s and women’s titles at the sixth annual Philadelphia Triathlon. Due to the disappearance of a 4-year-old male competitor in the…
Inspiring survivor
New Zealand-born Denis Shackel, 68, a professor at the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business and author of Five Seconds At A Time: How Leaders Can Make the Impossible Possible, is…
Own your own town
Remote Southern Alps township Otira, population 44 is for sale. Selling for $1 million, the deal includes a hotel, fire station, town hall and 18 houses. The Otira Hotel, which started life as a…
Whales in Boston
New Zealand’s “Whales Tohora” exhibition continues its North American tour showing at the Museum of Science in Boston through September 14. The Cape Cod Times’ Molly Driscoll explains: “The exhibit focuses on whale behavior…
Back in the Saddle
Michael Walker, 26, has returned to the race course after a life-threatening pig-shooting accident resulted in the Rotorua-born jockey suffering a serious head injury when he fell 7m down a bluff in 28. “As…
Kong is Back
The King Kong attraction at Hollywood park, the first theme park attraction that Peter Jackson’s New Zealand-based f/x shop Weta Digital has created, reopens on July 1 after a devastating fire two years ago….
Heroes Return
Though New Zealand drew – to Paraguay in Polokwane, losing out on a spot in the knockout stage, the team’s “defence was airtight, and goalkeeper Mark Paston was solid on the few difficult chances…
Stopping the skim
BNZ fraud initiatives manager Michael Turner’s software-based technology for reducing credit-card fraud has been patented world-wide. The “liquid encryption number” (LEN) technology is used on all BNZ credit and debit cards, and has cut…
Sublime Sale
A single brown and white feather from the extinct huia bird has sold for a record sum at Webb’s Auction House in Auckland for $8. Managing director of Webb’s Neil Campbell said that the…
Double Trouble
Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell continued their formidable lead-up to Athens with a double-sculls gold medal at the World Cup rowing regatta in Munich. The twins beat English pair Sarah Winckless and Elise Laverick by a massive 4.75…
Punk partnership
Independent Auckland advertising agency Special Group’s musical collaboration with punk icon Iggy Pop and eight local musicians has won a Grand Prix Award for direct marketing at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in…
Shock Draw with Champs
The All Whites have astonished the international football fraternity drawing 1-1 with World Cup holders Italy in South Africa. Reuters has put the result in its top 1 World Cup shocks, the only draw…
Titillating Tries
“The true mark of a man is in his swagger, according to Dunedin folk,” writes The Sydney Morning Herald’s Marissa Calligeros. “And there is no better indication of this than rugby played in its…
Dame Kiri’s Red Card
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is the perfect antidote for World Cup football fever according to Guardian reviewer Sam Woollaston. “There isn’t much that can distract me from the World Cup. But Dame Kiri managed…
Artful Carrier
The Dunedin-designed Freeload rack is included in a Los Angeles Times article called “Gear: Better bike accessories”. “These new accessories make on- and off-road touring a breeze, indoor training more realistic, fast rides more…
Gong for West trailer
The New Zealand Book Council’s two-minute stop-motion animated trailer for Whakatane-born Maurice Gee’s 1993 novel Going West has won the Best Big Budget/Big Book House Trailer in the inaugural Moby Awards held by…
Geared-up for Top Show
The story of Hulme Supercars, the company behind the Hulme Can-Am, will feature on cult UK motoring show Top Gear, with the show expected to screen in August or September. Hulme managing director Jock…
Centenary Clash
The New Zealand Maori side has beaten Ireland in Rotorua 31-28, the match part of a series to commemorate the centenary of the formation of the first official Maori rugby team in New Zealand….
Sweetheart sings
Christchurch-born singer Hayley Westenra, 23, is performing with the College Band of the RAF at Blackburn’s King George’s Hall for the Battle of Britain 7th Anniversary Tour on July 12, “furthering her status as…
Peak Design
En-route to Mount Aoraki, India’s Economic Times’ reporter Bidisha Bagchi stops off at Lake Pukaki and, “after admiring the majestic blue of the lake that came from the rock particles in the glaciers —…
Formidable Kicks
Two surfing legends are taking on New Zealand’s most rugged waves off the coast of Fiordland for an episode of the Discovery Channel series Storm Surfers. The Storm Surfers’ — Australians Tom Carroll and…
America’s teen idol
True Blood star New Zealander Anna Paquin, 27, has been nominated for a Teen Choice award. The competition is run by American TV network Fox and recognises teen idols across the high-profile fields of…
Point Taken
The All Whites have earned their first-ever point at a World Cup scoring a last-minute equalising point against Slovakia in Rustenburg, South Africa. Defender Winston Reid, who had been beaten in the air by…
Wwow What a Wwoof
From their wwoofing holiday in Northland, Californian couple Jacob and Kendall Madden describe their time spent working on five organic farms in the region in a guide about what it means to be a…
Maintaining meaning
Each year, Whakatane ta moko artist Rangi Kipa has some 2 clients fly into the country from the UK or Europe eager to make a statement with a unique Maori tattoo. Kipa says the…
Revell’s field day
Te Aroha dairy farmer Richard Revell who has developed a fizzy cola-flavoured milk drink in a can, has met with multinational ire, with Coca Cola banning him from selling the beverage at the annual…
Too Good in Taranaki
The All Blacks have thrashed Ireland 66-28 in New Plymouth. Outscored by nine tries to four, it was a bad night for the Irish who have failed to beat the New Zealanders in 23…
Boy it’s popular
The hit film Boy, directed by Taika Waititi, is reviewed by Hao Ying for the Chinese publication Global Times who writes that the “laughs are frequent and uncontrived”. The film, which has now earned…
Monster Trophies
One of the world’s largest deer, the red stag, was imported into New Zealand from Scotland more than a century ago and has since flourished. Now they are popular game for North American hunters….
Round Versus Oval
“All Whites manager, Ricki Herbert, believes football has overtaken rugby in the popularity stakes in New Zealand, as it briefly did 28 years ago when the team’s Spanish sojourn coincided with a disenchantment with…
Tracing her roots
Each year, New Zealand Genealogical Society head Aucklander Jan Gow, 7, travels to Salt Lake City to browse ribbons of microfilm and endless volumes of maps, cemetery and property records tucked inside the Utah…
Current choreography
New Zealand-based theatre-artist and choreographer Lemi Ponifasio and his troupe MAU have taken Tempest: Without a Body to this year’s Venice contemporary dance festival. Guardian reviewer Judith Mackrell called the performance “an intensely crafted…
Share of the pie
The business activities of this placid South Pacific nation of four million, just west of the international date line, barely register elsewhere: America is logging off for the day, Europe is heading to bed…
Peace reigns supreme
New Zealand has been named the most peaceful nation for the second year running in the fourth annual Global Peace Index (GPI). Compiled by global think tank Institute for Economics and Peace, the report…
Working class knight
Wellington-born Peter Leitch, known to his fans as the “Mad Butcher”, has received a knighthood in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours. Leitch, a butcher, former gravedigger and avid rugby league fan, says…
Developing film ties
New Zealand and China have further strengthened their relations with a film agreement to host more Chinese-produced films in New Zealand. The agreement, made between the two nations in Shanghai and led by a…
Kaikoura Ethnohydrology
Writing from Blenheim, Arizona State University student Marie Manning, a global health major, describes her time spent on a Kaikoura wild dolphin encounter and the research she is undertaking in New Zealand for an…
Spinnakered Win
Emirates Team New Zealand has won its third consecutive Louis Vuitton Trophy in La Maddalenna, Sardinia, in Italy, beating the Russian syndicate Synergy 3—2. The day began with the Russians holding a 1
Anything but the Bungy
Lyttelton-based Joe Bennett, author of Hello Dubai: Skiing, Sand and Shopping in the World’s Weirdest City, tells the Telegraph why Queenstown is his kind of town. “It’s the main visitor town of New Zealand’s…
Splitting Cells
“New Zealand has found a cheap and quick way to build its prisons by converting used shipping containers into cells to deal with a record high number of inmates,” writes Philippa McDonald for the…
Mucking In
The Olivenhain garden of New Zealanders Maury and Heather Callaghan in Southern Californian is an “expanse of lawn and beds of perennials” with a tall, fragrant banana shrub and burgundy-leaved smoke tree “creat a…
Commission Speculation
Former Labour Prime Minister and maritime law expert Sir Geoffrey Palmer, 68, is UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s preferred choice to head a planned international enquiry into Israel’s raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla, according…
Healthy advice for kids
Entrepreneur Dr Kate Hersov “was working as a paediatric doctor in her home country New Zealand when she and business partner Dr Kim Chilman-Blair struck the million pound idea,” Kate Lockyer writes in an…
Thrills and Spills
Justin Marshall has ended his rugby career playing for Saracens in the Guinness Premiership final against the Leicester Tigers. The 36-year-old, capped 88 times by his country, describes his last match, unable to hide…
Predicting sadness
New Zealander Professor Michael King, psychiatrist and Head of the Research Department of Mental Health Sciences at University College London (UCL), says reducing the prevalence of depression in the world is a major public…
Realm of the Karearea
The documentary Karearea: The Pine Falcon, an audience favourite at the 29 Tallahassee Film Festival, is screening as part of the Tallahassee Film Society’s annual “bird movie” Saturday at the All Saints Cinema this…
Steep Creek Cracker
New Zealand kayaker Sam Sutton, 21, has won the men’s division of the inaugural steep creek event at the 21 Teva Mountain Games in Red Cliff, Denver, while fellow New Zealander Nikki Kelly placed…
Sizing Up Pacific Atolls
Professor Paul Kench of Auckland University’s environment school and coastal process expert Dr Arthur Webb of the Fiji-based South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission have found that despite rising sea levels some Pacific Island coral…
