Palatial Pretty in Wickstead
The Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton chose another New Zealand designer to wear this week, stepping out in an Emilia Wickstead pink coat dress for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee lunch at Windsor…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Lake Views To-die-for
A seven-bedroom home with unobstructed views of Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables features in the online property pages of the Wall Street Journal. “They’ve got quite a bit of land, a stream a…
Meet Our Distinguished Worm
New Zealand’s velvet worm shares the title of a new book by British palaeontologist and writer Richard Fortey. Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms describes “the distinguished groups of organisms that are still recognizable and…
Riotously Vibrant at Saatchi Gallery
Former Matangi, Waikato resident and mother of two of New Zealand’s richest men, Ana Tzarev, is exhibiting her riotously colourful large-scale canvases at London’s Saatchi Gallery in conjunction with the…
No Fake Jamaican Accents, Thanks
Wellington eight-piece band The Black Seeds – described by Clash Magazine as, “one of the best live reggae acts on the planet” – play the fourth Perisher Snowy Mountains of…
One Fast Growing Underwater Volcano
Scientists have discovered a submarine volcano in New Zealand waters, 1000km northeast of the North Island, that has undergone the fastest episode of collapse and growth ever recorded in a volcano. The Monowai Cone…
Mountain Biking for the Well-heeled
Queenstown’s Fat Tyre Company is recommended for “those who like riding down and can afford not to pedal up” in the Globe and Mail’s travel pages. “For the well-heeled rider, there’s a…
Funky Cuts for Rolling Stone
“Inventive New Zealand singer-songwriter Kimbra stopped by the Rolling Stone studio to play a few funky cuts off her experimental pop debut LP Vows.” “After impressing with her intense live looping technique, she talked…
Sevens Title Won at Twickenham
New Zealand have retained their Sevens World Series title, ending the season with a third-place spot at the London Sevens to finish on 167 Series points, six ahead of closest rivals Fiji. A record…
Reviewing Safety in a Major Export
“Adventure tourism is one of New Zealand’s biggest drawcards, but sometimes tourists can get far more adventure than they bargained for,” begins a report by Dominque Schwartz for ABC. “This week, the industry made…
Hypnosis as Anaesthetic
Auckland Regional Pain Service pain specialist Dr Bob Large says he expects hypnosis will be used more widely in the future as a form of analgesia and anaesthesia. Large, who was a guest speaker…
Committed to Social Cohesion
Helen Clark, formerly New Zealand prime minister, has just announced that she will be seeking a second term as the first female head of the UN Development Programme. While visiting Brussels, she spoke to…
All Systems Are Go
New Zealand’s largest solar power plant, a 68-kilowatt farm, has opened in Drury, South Auckland and “if – or perhaps when – the world’s natural resources run out, New Zealand will be laughing all…
From a New Perspective
Christchurch-born singer Bic Runga, 36, has released her first album in five years, Belle. Runga, who is currently on tour in Australia, tells the Illawarra Mercury’s Kate Walsh that since her 1997…
One of the Best Places for Mothers
New Zealand has been rated the fourth best place in the world to be a mother, in line after Norway at the top followed by Iceland and Sweden. Just ahead of Mother’s Day, Save…
Cambodian Mountain Discovery
Two researchers from Otago University’s anatomy department are using radiocarbon dating technology to unravel the mysteries of a lost culture that once inhabited the Cardamom Mountains in Cambodia. The researchers have dated samples of…
Owls Resonates Fifty Years On
Janet Frame’s debut novel, Owls Do Cry, released by New Zealand’s Pegasus Press in 1957, is the Frankfurter Allgemeine’s ‘Book of the Week’, reviewed by Sabine Doering. Doering writes that in the novel the…
Living Shrine to Deco
Within two years of Napier’s devastating 1931 earthquake the city, which had chosen to rebuild in the Art deco style, was being dubbed the “most modern town on the globe”. “Much of the innovative…
On Set with One Beautiful Caster
New Zealand-born actress Alice Englert, the daughter of Academy Award-winning film director Jane Campion, stars in Warner Bros.’ supernatural thriller Beautiful Creatures, a film adapted from the first book of the Caster Chronicles series,…
Counting the Bleat
Principal investigator at New Zealand’s Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre (NZAGRC) in Palmerston North, Peter Janssen hopes that by measuring every belch and bleat of their sheepish subjects they can come up…
Diversity Under the Gold Coast Sun
Controversial New Zealand reality television show The GC, about young Maori living on Australia’s Gold Coast, has prompted comparisons to America’s Jersey Shore, and heated debate about whether the show was seen as a…
Super Image of Cosmic Lunar Event
Auckland photographer Simon Runting captured this once-a-year cosmic event which lit up the New Zealand night sky as the full moon passed at its closest point to Earth, making it appear 14 per cent…
Arrival Delights Korean Audience
Award-winning play, The Arrival, performed by New Zealand’s Red Leap Theatre and based on Shaun Tan’s graphic novel, “fascinated” a Korean audience at the LG Arts Center in Seoul recently. The Arrival,…
Chopper Ride into Cloudless Bliss
“It’s supposed to be ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’”, but when Helen Parker of The Australian visited the North Island’s east coast “there wasn’t a cloud in sight – or people for that…
Introducing a Guardian Fan
New Zealander Roger Cowell, a UK-based freelance writer and registered nurse, features in the Guardian’s reader series, ‘Good to Meet You’. “In 1974, aged 23, I came to the UK from New Zealand and…
Homemakers Reunite in Indiana
Apparently, when a New Zealander makes a promise, it’s a vow to remember – even if it means travelling halfway around the world to attend a birthday party. That’s just what Yvonne Moore (left)…
Dr Bogan No Dimwit
Dave Snell has graduated from Waikato University with a doctoral degree that examined the social habits of bogans, who are typically portrayed as “dimwitted, uncultured, and unworthy of serious academic study,” Snell writes in…
Headrushing Pop Fusion
Ladyhawke’s May concert at the Ruby Lounge in Manchester is reviewed in the Guardian by Dave Simpson who says that “the verdict from the front row is a shouted: ‘This is good…
Top Prize for Robotic Whizz Kids
Onehunga High School has won the VEX High School Robotics World Championships, which were held in Los Angles in late April. The team has qualified for the world championships almost every year since it…
Local Wineries Entice Chinese Market
New Zealand winemakers are preparing for a major push in China this month with their biggest-ever road show taking place in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. The New Zealand government and wine industry are…
Border Control Arguments
New Zealand may be one of the most geographically isolated nations on Earth, but its leaders say the country is not immune to the risks of refugees arriving by boat and have now drafted…
Fashionable Favourites
Wellington band The Black Seeds latest album Dust and Dirt featured at No 4 in Deutsch Vogue’s May Playlist. “Reggae from New Zealand?” the publication questions, “Yes,” mentioning the “airy” title track, sure to…
Fitting Local Tastes
Auckland café and bar The Imperial Lane features in the Travel Edits section of Monocle’s May issue. “Since December last year the cobblestone passage of the historical Imperial Buildings has been home…
We’ve Heard of Her
Former prime minister Helen Clark, who is now administrator for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), has topped a list of 25 women in a Foreign Policy magazine article called, “The most powerful women…
Royal Dons NZ Designer
An indigo tweed skirt suit designed by New Zealander Rebecca Taylor was recently worn by the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton when she stepped out for an event at Goldsmiths’ Hall in London. When…
Art the Lifeblood on Waiheke
“‘There’s something about this stretch of water that changes everything,’ sculptor Chris Bailey says, gesturing towards the Hauraki Gulf. ‘It has an almost cleansing effect.’” “Clambering out of Bailey’s cluttered ute, we…
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…
Ballistic on AFL Boundaries
New Zealand Olympic hopeful Aucklander Veronica Torr, 24, who is on the brink of qualifying for the London Games in the heptathlon, has been head-hunted by the Australian Football League (AFL) as a boundary…
International Success Story
New Zealand filmmaker Anna Cottrell has been filming the story of Ethiopian refugee Terefe Ejigu since he was 16, when newly enrolled at Wellington College he began running. Ejigu’s talent as a runner was…
Spotlight on Adolescent Health
New Zealand has the second highest overall mortality rate and the highest suicide rate in those aged 10-24 years among developed countries, according to recent analysis undertaken by medical journal The Lancet. In the…
Ultimate Legend Remembered
Rugby legend Fred “The Needle” Allen – who at age 92 was the oldest living All Black and one of the rare group of players to have both played in and coached the national…
Making Records Trumps Study
Kimbra started writing songs at the age of 10 as a “natural way to express myself as a kid” she tells Mel Evans of the Sunday Magazine. “It wasn’t until I started listening to…
Gobsmackingly Good Wine
“Martinborough, at the bottom of the North Island, is alter ego: small, intimate, friendly and with gobsmackingly good vino,” Ian Verrender, business columnist, writes in The Age. “Marlborough produces the bulk of New…
Cup Makes Television History
Last year’s Rugby World Cup final, in which the All Blacks beat France, was the most-watched event in New Zealand television history “attracting a 98 per cent audience share,” Rugby World Cup Limited (RWCL)…
Terrifically Exciting Force
When chef and author Robert Oliver was growing up in New Zealand “restaurant culture was just beginning and eating out was considered to be an indulgence, a rare treat.” “Ironic really, considering that, as…
Technologically Outnumbered
Mobile phones in New Zealand outnumber the country’s population, according to a study conducted by global market research firm TNS, which surveyed 48,000 people in 58 countries finding that almost half of New Zealanders…
Short Sequence, Sharp Response
A 10-minute sequence from Peter Jackson’s forthcoming two-part Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit has been shown to conference goers at the annual CinemaCon in Las Vegas. The conference featured a presentation from…
Time to Pause for Thought
An estimated 15,000 flocked to this year’s dawn service ceremony at the War Memorial Museum in Auckland to mark the 97th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli and to remember fallen servicemen and women….
Taking on the World
In the worldwide food shortages that developed at the end of the Second World War, tiny New Zealand grew fabulously rich. New Zealand dairy farmer Thomas Lambie recalls: “ had the second-highest per-capita income in…
Joyfully Optimistic
“New Zealand is an otherworldly mash-up of climates, geologies, adventures, and luxuries. (Oh, the things you can do!)”, writes Condé Nast Traveler’s Susan Hack, who “tries it all in the Southern Hemisphere’s hot zone”,…
Mad for it in Wellington
Wellington’s St James Theatre heaving with a full-capacity crowd features in the Guardian’s ‘24 Hours in Pictures’ as One Direction fans watch the British boy band perform. One Direction’s 2012 tour of New Zealand…
Computer Games Raise Spirits
A computer game designed to lift teenagers out of depression is as effective as one-on-one counselling, researchers at the University of Auckland have found. Researchers tested an interactive 3-D fantasy game called SPARX on…
Trojan War Maori Style
The director of New Zealand’s version of Troilus and Cressida Rachel House explains how she put Maori culture at the heart of Shakespeare’s Trojan tragedy. Thirty-seven theatre companies from around the world are presenting…
Reflections on Survival
Mayor of Wellington Celia Wade-Brown has opened the capital city’s Holocaust Centre on Holocaust Remembrance Day — an “asset for all New Zealanders to reflect on the importance of harmony, diversity, resilience and survival.”…
Emergency Place of Worship
“Christchurch, New Zealand, where an earthquake last year killed 185 people, is still struggling with how to treat another of its casualties, the city’s Anglican cathedral,” Wall Street Journal reporter Eric Felten writes, beginning…
Top of the Pops
New Zealand singer Kimbra, 22, featuring on Belgian-Australian Gotye’s single Somebody That I Used To Know, has made it to the top of the American Billboard top 100. It is the first time a…
