Waterborne Cars Are Go
16 November 2008 – New Zealand entrepreneur Alan Gibbs, 69, has opened an amphibious vehicle engineering and research centre for his firm, Gibbs Technologies in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Gibbs previewed two of his company’s…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
In all honesty
“The curry-scented streets of Pip Brown’s east-London neighbourhood Brick Lane are a far cry from her beginnings in New Zealand,” writes The Independent on Sunday’s Luiza Sauma in a frank interview with Brown, now…
Mail Man Has Role in US
Former New Zealand Post CEO and Royal Mail executive deputy chairman Elmar Toime has been appointed to American online postal service Earth Class Mail Corporation’s board of advisors. Toime – who also led the…
The siege of Helengrad
Antony Green, election analyst with the Australian Broadcasting Commission, summed up Election 08 thus (abridged): “Whether New Zealanders wanted change or just a change of government is the mandate question that John Key will…
Celebrating Two Decades
For over 20 years, since A.J Hackett and Henry Van Asch’s first tandem leap of faith in 1988, bungee jumping has poured more than $1 billion into the New Zealand economy. On November 12,…
Music to his ears
Associate professor in instrumental and vocal composition at The New Zealand School of Music Jack Body’s latest cross-cultural composition is a production called ‘The Seven Ages of Man’, which is a “multimedia music theatre”…
One Visitor at a Time
New Zealand has been judged to have the most responsible tourism practises on the planet at the Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards in London. The judges declared New Zealand the overall winner of 2008…
Fame from the field
Wellington-born Singer Will Martin, 24, is one of a number of classical crossover performers who, writes the Times Online, made their “big break” singing the national anthem at a sporting event. Martin first performed…
Rugby’s Poster Boy
All Black fly-half Dan Carter, who recently made number 11 on American network E! Entertainment channel’s list of the 25 Sexiest Men of the World, this week also featured in CNN’s Talk Asia series….
Key In Clark Out
8 November 2008 – National Party leader John Key, 47, has ousted Labour’s Helen Clark from office and a nine-year term, with a mantra of change. Prime Minister Helen Clark conceded defeat. Clark, 58,…
Legendary Cricketer
Former test-cricketer and left-arm spinner Aucklander Hedley Howarth has died, aged 64. Howarth claimed 86 wickets in 30 tests for New Zealand between 1969 and 1974, retiring from test cricket in 1977. He was…
Home with Benefits
New Zealand is the favoured country for British expatriates to live because of its low property prices, mild weather and favourable tax rates. Having the lowest average property price at £105,750, low fuel, food…
Awarded for Imagination
New Zealand mineral chemist Dr Alan Reid, 77, has won the Ian Wark Medal in acknowledgement for his outstanding contribution to Australia’s prosperity through the advancement of scientific knowledge. One of a number of…
Tidal promotion
Christchurch singer-songwriter Anika Moa’s third studio album ‘In Swings the Tide’ has been released in Australia, and with the release Moa, 28, will perform several promotional concerts in Melbourne ahead of shows supporting Crowded…
Rethinking Polar Power
Later this month, Meridian Energy will begin work on the most southernmost wind farm in the world, on Crater Hill, Ross Island in Antarctica. The turbines will provide renewable energy to New Zealand’s Scott…
Lakeside Hedonism
Blanket Bay luxury lodge on the shores of Lake Wakatipu is the starting point for any adventure a guest can imagine, but it is also home to some very fine cuisine, according to The…
Southpaw Inducted
Carterton-born golfer Sir Bob Charles, 72, has been inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in the veterans category – the Hall of Fame’s first New Zealander, and its first left-hander. Charles won…
R.I.P Harry
Henry William Bourne Palin, British actor Michael Palin’s uncle, was a farmhand in New Zealand who at the outbreak of war in 1914 enlisted in the 1st battalion of the Canterbury Regiment of the…
The Wild Edge
New Zealand’s dramatic scenery is the backdrop for an 11-day “fall” fashion shoot in the latest issue of National Geographic Adventure, which takes the writer/photographer and his models from Auckland to Te Anau. “This…
Blondes make blog
Auckland singer Gin Wigmore, 21, and Wellington’s Ladyhawke are both plugged in Perez Hilton’s Hollywood gossip blog, who enthuses that if you are blonde and from New Zealand, he is: “LOVING you this week.”…
Better Late Than Never
30 October 2008 – For the first time in approximately two hundred years, a tuatara has been discovered nesting on the New Zealand mainland. The event happened at Wellington’s Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, where four…
Green Light District
New Zealand’s “liberalisation” of the world’s oldest profession is, according to the Economist, a success story, where in 2003 the magazine writes, “that country decriminalised the sex trade with a boldness that exceeded that…
Clay’s Reading Gift
New Zealand-developed remedial programme Reading Recovery, devised by the late educationalist Dame Marie Clay, is proving successful in the UK with 30,000 British children a year expected to take part by 21. Under the…
Craved in Canada
Kathmandu founder and owner of design store Nood, or “New Objects of Desire”, Jan Cameron has opened four stores in British Columbia. Nood carries a range of household and personal products, including designer furniture…
With eyes for art
New Zealander Jennifer Flay, artistic director of Fiac (Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain), is heading a break-through at the contemporary Parisian art fair, a role she was appointed to in 2003. “While location is one…
With Comforts, Without Pack
Opened in 1992, the 71km Queen Charlotte Track is located between Queen Charlotte and Kenepuru Sound, and Los Angles Times’s reporter Amanda Jones ó who considers herself “an outdoorswoman” but for who the “appeal…
Newspaper Half Mast
A homage to Sir Edmund Hillary has won this year’s best newspaper advertisement at the 2008 Caxton Awards in Australia picking up the top prize, the Quinlivan Black Award. The Saatchi & Saatchi Australia…
KR on Argentinean Edge
27 October 2008 – Saatchi & Saatchi CEO and Lovemarks instigator Kevin Roberts keynoted HSM’s Buenos Aires management conference alongside Harvard U strategy guru Michael Porter, Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz (Economics) and Muhammad Yunus…
Winning Ways
Former All Black captain Sean Fitzpatrick has been asked to take part in a one-on-one mentoring initiative with a group of young Scotland players. Fitzpatrick will be linked with Ross Ford, the present Scotland…
Fonterra’s Melamine Nightmare
Criminal contamination of the milk supply chain in China embroiled New Zealandís largest commercial organization Fonterra in a crisis that left four babies dead and 3,000 still in hospital. An estimated 54,000 children were…
Trumps in Mexico
Whangarei triathlete Sam Warriner, 37, took gold at the Huatulco BG World Cup in Mexico and with the win becomes the 2008 BG Triathlon World Cup series champion. Warriner was victorious in a time…
In the Hot-seat
New Zealander Geoff Vuleta, co-founder and chief executive of New York-based innovation consultancy company Fahrenheit 212, commutes between the US city, and home to Auckland every 8 weeks. Vuleta discusses his frequent-flyer lifestyle, and…
Tough Gets Going
Sportswear apparel maker Canterbury of New Zealand, which produces the shirts worn by the Scottish Rugby Union team, will this week open its first retail outlet in Europe. Canterbury, which also supplies Glasgow Warriors,…
Everyman in the lens
Northland photographer Ross T. Smith exhibits images of subject Hemi Tuwharerangi Paraha at the Visual Arts Gallery of the University of Alabama through November 1. The images are powerfully elemental. He becomes…
Influence from the inside
New Zealand filmmaker Justin Pemberton has won the world’s longest running environmental film festival, Cinemambiente for his feature-length documentary Nuclear Comeback, parts of which were filmed in Chernobyl’s abandoned radioactive control room and core….
Let Cones Be Licked
Chief judge for the New Zealand Ice Cream Awards and sensory scientist at Massey University Kay McMath has proved the dessert tastes better when licked from a cone. McMath said that the flavour in…
Rite of Pastry Passage
Mince, steak, chicken and potato top pies are amongst a few of the popular pastry to be sampled in a two-week tasting marathon undertaken by Vancouver Courier reporter Michael Kissinger. According to a 2005…
Pig Cell Go-ahead
New Zealand’s Living Cell Technologies, a company founded by Aucklander Professor Bob Elliott, who has pioneered research in the treatment of type-1 diabetes, has been given approval to trial the transplantation of insulin-producing pig…
Elias on Equality
New Zealand’s first female Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias, and presiding judge of the country’s Supreme Court, recently gave a lecture at the University of New Mexico School of Law on indigenous rights entitled,…
Sailing Event Makes NZ
Lake Rotorua will host the 2009 IFDS World Blind Sailing Championships from 12-21 March. Organizing committee chairman Don McGowan says the goal is to provide a world class regatta, combined with a true New…
Relaxed in the South
There is more to Queenstown that diving off bridges and screaming down slopes on snowboards. There is, according to the Irish Independent’s Mary O’Sullivan, a “super holiday destination” leaving the visitor “perpetually awestruck.” Queenstown…
Through Cloud and Snow
From Wellington Railway Station – “a symphony of towering columns, vaulted ceilings and marble terrazzo floors” – travelling by train north up the west coast “the track squeezes between wild, rocky shoreline and precipitous…
Eight Points Up
Wanganui teenage racing driver Earl Bamber has taken a podium finish at China’s Formula 1 Grand Prix meeting in Shanghai, repeating his recent result as part of the A1 New Zealand team in the…
Triumph for the Ferns
The Silver Ferns have won the deciding netball test against England 61-22 in the best of three series final in Palmerston North. Both teams came out firing on Saturday night but it was the…
New Kids Take on NY
16 October 2008 – Four New Zealand bands – The Naked and Famous, Bang! Bang! Eche!, Cut Off Your Hands and The Ruby Suns – “showcase an evening of up-tempo Kiwi-centric jams” at New…
Thinking about art
New Zealand sculptor, London-based Francis Upritchard says she wants to be an old lady making art and that art collectors should buy art for its meaning rather than its market value. Upritchard, 32, who…
Truth from Wood
New Zealand furniture designer David Trubridge and his lighting fixtures feature in a Time photo essay. Trubridge is the antithesis of those rock-star product designers who turn up at “design art” auctions in…
Success on the periphery
Dunedin noise-rock trio Dead C formed in 1987 and over the past two decades has made more of a reputation outside of New Zealand music circles. They’re on the fringe, and they don’t plan…
Guardians surface in DC
Te Papa exhibition ‘Whales | Tohor?’ has opened at Washington DC’s National Geographic Museum. The exhibition features whale specimens including an 18-metre-long male sperm whale skeleton. The cultural significance of whales to the peoples…
Alliance Revisited
New Zealand and the United States fought side by side in both World Wars, in the Korean War, Vietnam and in various Cold War conflicts, but with stringent nuclear policies introduced in New Zealand…
Dixon’s Big Apple Re-run
On 23 October 1983, Nelson-born middle distance runner Rod Dixon raced past UK-emigrant Geoff Smith and won the New York City Marathon raising his hands to the sky in victory. The winning snapshot is…
For the Animals
Since 2005, Auckland-born Briar Simpson has worked in Japan for the Tokyo branch of non-profit organisation Animal Refuge Kansai, where she finds homes for animals and coordinates fundraising and educational programmes for children….
Imagination live
Auckland comedian Rhys Darby — who plays Jim Carrey’s boss Norman in Yes Man, which will be released in the US in December — has launched his first live stand-up DVD, entitled Imagine That….
Holiday on Kauri Coast
On the Coromandel Peninsula Metro UK reporter Kieran Meeke catches the Driving Creek Railway, a narrow-gauge railway line set up by local potter and conservationist Barry Brickell, who over the last 27 years has…
Defender of the Skies
Air New Zealand is aiming to be the cleanest airline on the planet, recently making headlines with fuel-saving and environmentally conscious initiatives including demonstrating a new way of flying an airplane and testing the…
Greenery in Urban London
New Zealand-born James Fraser founded UK landscape firm Avant Gardener in 1990, which continues to operate from a nursery out of Battersea in London. One of Fraser’s latest projects is profiled in the Telegraph,…
