July 2010 Archives

Walker Makes Podium

Walker Makes Podium

Whakatane-born Sarah Walker, 22, has won silver at the UCI BMX World Championship in Peitermaritzburg, South Africa. Racing in the elite women’s category, Walker, the 29 world champion, took second place after a hard…

All Blacks dominate

All Blacks dominate

“Dan Carter inspires as freewheeling New Zealand crush Australia,” headlines the Guardian. “The All Blacks gained their third successive five-pointer in the tournament at a sandy Etihad Stadium in Melbourne beating the Wallabies 49-28…

Our pick for ICC

Our pick for ICC

Chairman of New Zealand Cricket Alan Isaac, 58, has trumped former Australian Prime Minister John Howard as the region’s nominee to take the ICC’s vice-presidency, which after a two-year term leads to the top…

First-rate funny man

First-rate funny man

Wellington actor Jemaine Clement, 36, “steals every scene he’s in” in the Steve Carrell comedy Dinner for Schmucks, according to Peninsula Clarion reviewer Chris Jenness. Clement, who plays a narcissistic artist with an animal…

WW2 Pilot Laid to Rest

WW2 Pilot Laid to Rest

The puzzle of New Zealand pilot officer W. Stuart Beattie who was killed 69 years ago has finally been laid to rest. Torquay Royal British Legion secretary Ena Pethick turned supersleuth to find out…

Broadening horizons

Broadening horizons

A 13,6-kilometre sub-sea fibre-optic cable linking New Zealand, Australia and the US will be ready for service in 213. The US$4 million Pacific Fibre cable will be laid jointly by Pacific Fibre and Asian…

Wartimes’ yarns touching

Wartimes’ yarns touching

The Gaylene Preston-directed film Home by Christmas is a “touching memoir” based on interviews which Preston “conducted with her now-deceased father” and “not only re-creates those conversations and their evocation of wartime yarns, but…

Sell-out in Soweto

Sell-out in Soweto

The All Blacks’ historic test against the Springboks in Soweto at Johannesburg’s famed Soccer City — now called the National Stadium — has sold out, with nearly 9, fans to attend the match on…

Gold stars for Lam

Gold stars for Lam

Bay of Plenty baker Patrick Lam has won the national Supreme Pie Award for the fourth time in the competition’s 14-year history. His bacon-and-egg special was named the best of a record 4336 entries…

Craving more bleu

Craving more bleu

Former sheep farmer New Zealander Alistair MacKenzie moved to Canada 11 years ago with his French-Canadian wife, Karien Piché and made a career change, purchasing a small artisan cheese-making and sheep farming business called…

Record for Rocket Man

Record for Rocket Man

All Blacks star Joe Rokocoko, 27, is the team’s most-capped winger surpassing national treasures John Kirwan and Jonah Lomu. “It’s a huge honour for myself considering the players who have gone before me — it’s…

No sweat merino

No sweat merino

Wellington-based merino wool pioneer for the outdoors, Icebreaker, recently launched its new range of technical knits for runners, the GT Run range, at a product show in Friedrichshafen on the shores of Lake Constance…

Progress Continues

Progress Continues

The New Zealand Government’s recent endorsement of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has been welcomed by UN indigenous human rights expert Professor James Anaya, who says good progress is being…

Copper’s collection

Copper’s collection

The Public Trust Building on Dannevirke’s main street has been transformed by former Hamilton Senior Sergeant Bruce Lyon and wife Maureen from a brothel into The International Police Museum. The Museum also serves as…

Citrus solutions

Citrus solutions

The University of Otago’s Free Radical Research Group claim vitamin C can help curb the growth of cancer cells. “Our results offer a promising and simple intervention to help in our fight against cancer…

Rules Are Rules

Rules Are Rules

New Zealand IndyCar driver Scott Dixon has won the Honda Edmonton Indy, the second win of the year for the 3-year-old racer with the Target Chip Ganassi team. This latest victory however was somewhat…

Kitchen for hot shots

Kitchen for hot shots

One thousand young chefs will compete in the 18th Annual New Zealand Culinary Fare at the ASB Showgrounds in Auckland on August 22-24. The three-day ‘hot kitchen’ competition is the largest of its kind…

Obama in multigrain

Obama in multigrain

Paeroa-born artist Maurice Bennett, famous throughout New Zealand for portraits made from toast, has recently unveiled his latest piece. Bennett’s Barack Obama portrait required over 12 pieces of toast, including white, whole wheat, and…

Judgement day

Judgement day

Wellington-born actor Karl Urban, 38, who played Dr Leonard “Bones” McCoy in last year’s Star Trek, will soon play the sci-fi law enforcer Judge Dredd. “Yes, there is a lot of truth to that…

Visual Poetics

Visual Poetics

In the Fall 21 issue of the Kehrer catalogue, New Zealander Harvey Benge is featured for his recent work in All the Places I’ve Ever Known. Kehrer, based in Heidelberg and Berlin, specialises in…

Holy Smoke He’s Good

Holy Smoke He’s Good

Takapuna Grammar student Jacko Gill, 15, has astonished the athletics world with his shot put ability winning gold at the World Junior Championships in Canada. Gill threw the 6kg ball 20.76m winning by more…

Thawing an icy tipple

Thawing an icy tipple

Canterbury Museum is slowly thawing out a crate of Scotch whisky which was found in Antarctica earlier this year beneath the floor of a hut built by British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. The New…

Justice argued

Justice argued

Rob Hamill — whose 28-year-old brother Kerry fell into the hands of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime when his yacht was captured in Cambodian waters in 1978 — was in Cambodia for the sentencing…

Battle of Wool

Battle of Wool

Te Kuiti’s David Fagan, 48, and Cam Ferguson, 26, from Waipawa have won the teams machine shearing title at the 14th Golden Shears World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships in Wales, with Ferguson taking out…

Tourists keep coming

Tourists keep coming

Statistics New Zealand has released figures which show the number of overseas visitors arriving in New Zealand for short term stays has topped 2.5 million for the first time in the past 12 months….

Discovering Mansfield’s poetry

Discovering Mansfield’s poetry

Katherine Mansfield’s poem The Candle is the Guardian’s ‘Poem of the Week’. “Mansfield is rightly praised for her short stories,” Carol Rumens. “As a poet, however, she is virtually forgotten — ignored even —…

Educational Benefits

Educational Benefits

New Zealand is suggested as a good choice for international students by Nepalese newspaper República because the country has a Code of Practice that provides a framework for looking after foreign students. This system…

UAE presence strengthens

UAE presence strengthens

New Zealand will open an embassy in Abu Dhabi, its first in the UAE and second in the Gulf region, where it is located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully…

Changing family units

Changing family units

Couple without children in New Zealand are expected to surpass two-parent families as the most common household formation by next year, according to Statistics New Zealand figures. National Family and Household Projections released on…

All Blacks start afresh

All Blacks start afresh

“New Zealand is revolutionising rugby,” according to The Independent’s Peter Bills. “For those with a brain to think, a mind to rationalise, what the All Blacks are doing right now in world rugby terms…

Off with the polar fleece

Off with the polar fleece

Top local fashion designers will soon be represented in the centre of the French capital at a concept store owned by Paris-based New Zealander Catherine McMahon. Koko, which will stock Trelise Cooper, Karen Walker,…

Kiwis Relocate to US

Kiwis Relocate to US

New Zealand Ambassador Roy Ferguson officially presented America’s National Zoo with a pair of rare kiwi. The handover took place in Front Royal, Virginia at the Zoo’s Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. The Zoo will…

Sedimentary Strata Studied

Sedimentary Strata Studied

Waipaoa River was recently visited by a team of international scientists gathering data for research into how materials from land are moved through and accumulated in the ocean and, in particular, how floods carry…

Rex means possibility

Rex means possibility

New Zealander Hayden Allen, 23, is learning to walk again with the aid of a pair of robot legs after a debilitating car accident five years ago. The device, dubbed “Rex”, is the work…

Dream team celebrated

Dream team celebrated

The New Zealand Olympic Committee has decided to pay tribute to the world’s most famous mountaineering duo by naming the country’s Commonwealth Games logo “2928 Hillary and Tenzing”. The Games will be held in…

NZ’s own Moss shines

NZ’s own Moss shines

Eighteen-year-old Remuera-raised model Georgia Fowler, who featured in June’s Harper’s Bazaar cover story titled “The Rise of The Australian Supermodel”, has generated interest from Calvin Klein, YSL, Top Shop and Armani. Represented in New…

Hammering out beauty

Hammering out beauty

Metalsmith and jewellery designer New Zealander Amy Bixby, who is based in Seattle, “grew up on a sheep station with parents who instilled the value of making things from scratch”, freelance writer Kathy Schultz…

Igniting efficient burn

Igniting efficient burn

Four hundred and fifty tons of New Zealand lignite has been successfully dried in a southwestern Dakota coal drying plant’s first commercial test of the process, which removed 65 per cent of water from…

Do the Dracula

Do the Dracula

Otago University researchers from the Wellington campus conducted a trial in the capital at the tail end of the swine flu pandemic last August which has found that the majority of people still don’t…

Gifted with melody

Gifted with melody

Wellington jazz vocalist Tessa Quayle’s self-produced album Whisper Not — a selection of ten jazz and American Songbook standards — is reviewed by US music site All About Jazz, which describes Quayle as a…

Mega mobile sale

Mega mobile sale

The New Zealand-based mobile marketing company Hyperfactory, whose clients include Coca-Cola, BlackBerry, Disney, Kraft, L’Oreal and Vodafone, has been bought by Iowa-based media group Meredith Corporation, publisher of Family Circle and Successful Farming, for…

Te Kano released

Te Kano released

On New Zealand’s National Pavilion Day at the World Expo 21 in Shanghai a 1-meter long, three-meter wide canoe made of 35-year-old kauri was gifted to China. At the ceremony, a spiritual leader from…

Second wave cohesion

Second wave cohesion

Crowded House performed with Lawrence Arabia July 13 at Montreal’s Metropolis as part of the band’s North American tour promoting Intriguer, the second album of the “second wave”. Frontman Neil Finn says the band’s…

Anniversary of sinking

Anniversary of sinking

Twenty-five years ago two French agents coordinated the bombing of the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior in Waitemata Harbour, a tragedy in which Portuguese-Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira drowned. The attack on the ship was remembered…

More than family

More than family

In an article entitled ‘In Praise of Whanau’, the Herald Scotland’s Catriona Stewart writes that “for someone who can count blood relations on her fingers and still have digits to spare, the whanau is…

Control on the Park

Control on the Park

The All Blacks have beaten the Springboks in their opening Tri-Nations match 32-12 at Eden Park “with a superbly controlled and aggressive performance”. The All Blacks, who had lost their three previous encounters against…

Where the locals go

Where the locals go

“Sometimes in New Zealand the differences between us and them become much greater than a few murky vowel sounds and divided rugby and cricket loyalties,” The Australian’s Nicole Jeffery writes. Driving SUVs in snow…

Mellow and Beautiful

Mellow and Beautiful

The South Island of New Zealand may appear insignificant on a globe for those who can find it at all,” Karen Baker writes for Oregon Live. “But the island boasts natural grandeur that leaves…

NZ Takeover in US

NZ Takeover in US

New Zealanders Joanne Kiesanowski, 31, and Catherine Cheatley, 27, who represented New Zealand at the 28 Olympics in Beijing, finished first and second, respectively, in the 1-lap Senior Women’s Category 1-2 event at the…

Good as gold

Good as gold

Waiheke Island is a prime growing spot for olive trees and each year, in November, the Waiheke Olive Festival takes place on the estate of one of the local producers. Toronto Star freelance travel…

Mourning Moko

Mourning Moko

Tauranga’s favourite dolphin Moko has been found dead on an island off the coast of the port city. Department of Conservation area manager Andrew Baucke said Moko’s death was a sad loss. “The way…

Tokyo Strategies

Tokyo Strategies

Anti-whaling activist Pete Bethune, 45, has been convicted by a Tokyo court of assault and obstruction of Japanese whaling ships in the Antarctic Ocean, receiving a suspended two-year prison sentence. Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd…

One Great Ride

One Great Ride

The first legs of the 3km New Zealand Cycle Trail have been opened between Ruapehu and Whanganui. This 242km section of the trail will take four to six days to ride, with varying levels…

Zest for News

Zest for News

BBC current affairs TV producer and executive New Zealand-born Janine Thomason has died aged 63. She was born to Lesley and Jack, her father being director of marketing and technical support at the New…

Undersea utterances

Undersea utterances

Researcher Shahriman Ghazali of Auckland University has discovered that fish communicate with each other in a secret language of grunts, growls, chirps and pops. Predators may even hunt out prey by intercepting fish talk,…

Against the grain

Against the grain

“An act of real political courage by the National Party would be to increase its commitment in the dangerous areas of Afghanistan and to announce that New Zealand was rejoining the ANZUS Alliance, which…