Postal Service to Reduce Deliveries from 2015
With more people emailing their correspondence rather than popping it in the mailbox, New Zealand Post will deliver mail as infrequently as three days a week to most customers from June 2015. The…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Happiness: Voting With Your Feet
New Zealand, allegedly, is the third happiest place on earth. Happiness is a subjective subject. Couples, for instance, routinely report higher relationship satisfaction when they are able to favourably compare themselves to other less…
NZ Pinot Beats Burgundy
A wine-tasting of international Pinot Noir – 18 wines from six different regions, including Burgundy – by more than 100 experts has seen New Zealand deemed best by value. Influential business magazine Forbes positively…
Sweeping Seismic Building Review Surpasses US Attempts
After the deadly Christchurch 6.3 magnitude earthquake, city officials responded with the most sweeping seismic review of concrete buildings ever attempted, far surpassing anything achieved in California. Post-earthquake, residents were stunned to learn that two-thirds…
Our Islands Formally and Bilingually Named
15 October 2013 – New Zealand has formally adopted names in English and Maori for the North Island and the South Island; the English already in use but which had not been officially designated. In…
Helen Clark Tackles Digital Discrimination
Digital gender inequality – women’s access to technology is less than men’s – is being tackled by the United Nations in a new report unveiled by Helen Clark, administrator of the UN Development Programme….
RBS Appoints Kiwi to “Toughest Job in Banking”
Talk about taking the hot seat. New Zealand banker Ross McEwan is taking charge at the troubled Royal Bank of Scotland, following five turbulent years under Stephen Hester, who replaced the disgraced Fred Goodwin…
Big Visions for UNDP’s Leading Woman
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, currently administrator of the United Nations Development Program, features in CNN’s monthly column, “Leading Women”, which connects readers to “extraordinary women of our time.” Almost a decade before…
In Memory of an Advocate for Women
Wellington-born Jill McLean Taylor’s memory is being kept alive by her three sons with a scholarship they began shortly after McLean Taylor’s death in the United States in 2010. He Also Had…
Storyteller Keeps Visitors Enthralled at Opera House
Former radio announcer and television reporter New Zealander Bruce Barnett, 62, is now a tour guide at the Sydney Opera House, and this week his job features in the WA Today column, “On the…
V8 Supercar Driver Promotes Safety on the Road
Twenty-year-old V8 Supercar rookie and Fujitsu Racing GRM driver, New Zealander Scott McLaughlin recently visited Maroochydore State High School in Queensland to spread the road safety message. Christchurch-born McLaughlin made his V8 Supercar debut at…
Social Media Carrier for Mass Contagion
Robert Bartholomew, a sociologist in New Zealand and expert in mass hysteria, is warning how Facebook and Twitter have the potential to act as global carriers of mass hysteria. The most famous instance of…
Winter Warmest since Records Began
Scientists says New Zealand has had its warmest winter since record-keeping began in 1909. The average nationwide temperature was 9.5C for June, July and August, about 1.2C above average, the National Institute of Water…
Hope for Help from British Construction Workers
An innovative live webcast run by Immigration New Zealand and the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT) hopes to encourage British civil construction and engineering workers to consider a move to earthquake-ravaged…
Prince George Gets His Own NZ Post Stamp
For the first time in its 170-year history, New Zealand Post is issuing a stamp to celebrate a Royal birth, that of Prince George of Cambridge. While Royal children have featured on several New…
New Zealand’s First Same-Sex Marriages Occur Across the Country
Just hours after same-sex marriage laws came into force, New Zealand’s first gay marriages began taking place across the country. 31 couples plan on tying the knot today, but the number is likely to…
Why You Should Retire in New Zealand
The benefits of retiring in New Zealand are extolled by Catey Hill of MarketWatch, as she explains why the country is a great place to retire for active baby boomers. The “dramatic natural landscape…
Invaluable Volunteer Helps out in Arundel
New Zealander Andrew Wood, 26, who has been in the UK for the past 18 months, has been “the stalwart” of Arundel’s annual nine-day festival, “proving an invaluable volunteer”. Originally from Christchurch where…
Déjà Vu for California-based Royal Biographer
New Zealand writer Susan Maxwell Skinner, who lives in Charmichael, California, “knows much about the doings of England’s royal family”, writes The Sacramento Bee’s Bill Lindelof. As a young writer, Skinner moved to England…
At Home on the Banks of the Mekong
The home of New Zealand doctor Andrew Thomson, who works for the United Nations in Cambodia, features in The New York Times’ section “Great Homes and Destinations” this week. “It was more of a…
Mayor Gives Residents a Sense of What Auckland Could Be
Auckland sits at No 10 on Monocle magazine’s annual “Top 25 liveable cities” list, with Copenhagen at No 1, followed by Melbourne at No 2. “Auckland’s mayor Len Brown talks of making his city…
Canada Should Consider NZ’s Sex Work Rights
Catherine Healy, a member of the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective, and Sandra Ka Hon Chu of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, discuss “New Zealand’s model of sex work respects rights and the “Swedish model,”…
New Zealand’s Oldest Driver Has No Plans to Give Up
Born before the first Model T rolled out of Henry Ford’s factory in Detroit, Northland man Bob Edwards, 105, is New Zealand’s oldest licensed driver – and one of the oldest in the…
Life Behind Many Doors in a Vintage Ho Chi Minh Home
New Zealand engineer Rick Stockley and his wife Rosie Pollard, 30, a choreographer, were not planning to move in October 2011, but a surprise offer prompted them to reconsider. Some acquaintances were going to…
Rugged Coast a Place of Refuge for Hillary
Sir Edmund Hillary’s daughter, Sarah reflects on the area in New Zealand – along the wild coast of the Waitakere Ranges – where the mountaineer found refuge, from the attention that followed his conquest…
Leave the Hillary Step Ladderless Urges American Mountaineer
“Sixty years ago this week, as Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay approached the summit of the world’s highest mountain, they were stopped by a 40-foot wall of rock and ice,” American mountaineer Ed Viesturs…
NZ’s WWII Polish Orphans Impress and Inspire Pulitzer Prize Winner
Anne Applebaum is an American journalist and historian. She is a Pulitzer Prize winner for Gulag: A History, a remarkable and eye-opening account of the horrors and madness of the Soviet penal system. Recently,…
Former Press Editor Wins ‘Friend of NZ Award’
Andrew Holden, former Christchurch Press and now Age editor-in-chief, was honoured with the prestigious 2013 Friend of New Zealand award for his ‘brave efforts’ in ensuring the people of Christchurch received vital information during…
New Zealand in Midst of Year-long Earthquake
For the past five months a magnitude 7 earthquake, centred near Wellington, has been slowly rocking the country. It’s the strongest earthquake to hit the region in 150 years says The New Zealand Herald,…
Royal NZ Navy Revisits Shanghai
The Royal New Zealand Navy frigate Te Mana, commanded by Commander Andel, visited China on a goodwill visit for five days in May, according to The Peoples Daily. The visit began at the Yangtze…
Sir Don McKinnon is 2013’s Supreme World Class New Zealander
Sir Don McKinnon is the Supreme Award winner of the 2013 World Class New Zealand Awards, says scoop.co.nz. The annual award, made by Kea New Zealand on behalf of NZ Trade and Enterprise, recognises…
Girl on Film All Year in Chicago
New Zealand architect Emily Oakley has documented 365 days of her stay in Chicago one video clip at a time. In her first post of the series on 23 January 2012, Oakley…
Auckland City Lets You be the Planner
Scientific American recently featured an article, from Fast Company, on the Auckland City Council’s Shape Auckland Housing Simulator. The simulator helps residents engage with Auckland’s Unitary Plan, a blueprint for the cities…
Ceremony Honours Remains of Chinese Goldminers
“When the steamer SS Ventnor sank off the in 1902, a Wellington newspaper listed its lost cargo in the language of the time as ‘5347 tons of coal consigned to the Admiralty…
All That and Everest Too
The British expedition to the summit of Mount Everest in 1953, led by New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary, was one memorable event of that year, “a summer sixty years ago when all seemed possible,”…
No Justice nor Kings Permitted
New Zealand’s Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages has released an updated list of banned newborn names. In the past 12 years, the agency has had to turn down not one, not two, but…
NZ Faces Climate Change Disasters Influx
Climate change is real, and its impact on small Pacific states will be severe. So severe that New Zealand and Australia need to prepare now for an influx of Pacific Island peoples fleeing from…
Miss Popularity Exceeds Half a Million Likes
Sixteen-year-old Hawkes Bay student Jamie Curry has amassed over 500,000 likes on her Facebook page, Jamie’s World, which she began in July last year. Seven million people a week see videos, photos and status…
Merleen Thomas, Inspirational Airline Engineer
‘One of the most satisfying things about my job is seeing an aircraft that you inspected take off and just seeing it fly in the air,’ Merleen Thomas, Air New Zealand aircraft engineer, told…
New Zealand’s Lamborghini Connection
Bob Wallace, originally from New Zealand, became Lamborghini’s test driver in 1964; he was instrumental in the founding of the Italian car company. For most devoted fans,” The New York Times’ John Lamm writes,…
Hard to Fathom
“Stand humbled” at the exhibition ‘Whales: Giants of the Deep’, a show which originated at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and is now on at the American Museum…
Otara’s Pasifika cultures and Te Aro’s vibe impress
Intrepid Age travel writer Louise Hawson and her daughter, Coco, have just finished a year-long journey around 52 of the world’s suburbs. Auckland’s Otara and Avondale, and Wellington’s Te Aro were on the list,…
Little Bit Ahead of Everyone
Lynda Topp, one half of New Zealand’s beloved comedic country music duo, The Topp Twins, has made history as the first-ever lesbian to appear on the cover of New Zealand’s weekly Woman’s Day magazine….
What’s it Like in Paradise?
“Even this self-consciously egalitarian society, which was first to give women the vote in 1893, is not immune to social and economic inequality,” writes Michael White for the Guardian. “What’s it like in paradise…
Kids TV and Crime Linked
Otago University Professor Bob Hancox has found that the risk of having a criminal conviction in adulthood increases with every hour that children spend watching TV. The New Zealand study followed a group of…
Sheep, Lizards and Hobbits
February 6 is New Zealand’s national day. Known as Waitangi Day, it marks the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 between the British Crown and the Maori, New Zealand’s first peoples. Britain’s…
Remarkable Global Firsts
New Zealand has much more to shout about than just global rugby dominance and hirsute heroes of the big screen, according to Kate Rowan of the Irish Independent. “Taking a look at New Zealand’s…
Students Give Cyclone Relief
New Zealand volunteers “joined hands” with locals and other foreign aid workers to help Fiji get back on its feet after recent Tropical Cyclone Evan, the biggest such storm in 20 years. High School…
Weaving the Threads of Life
New Zealander Cassandra Ellis, a quiltmaker who has settled in London, believes a quilt is a great way to mark an occasion, from a birth to a death to a marriage or…
Freedom At The Edge
New Zealanders enjoy a higher level of human freedom than anyone else, according to a report written by The Canadian Fraser Institute, which evaluated 123 countries to see how each country measures up in…
Librarians Confer
Under a new five-year Arrangement on Cooperation agreement signed by the National Library of New Zealand and the National Library of China, the two institutions will share knowledge and information in joint…
American Deal For Angels
Wellington company Angel Delivery, owned by Becs Cass, has struck a US partnership that will see the four-year-old freshly made meal and treat delivery service enter the New York market. Partnering with…
World Leaders in Arbitration
New Zealand has the perfect conditions to become a seat for international commercial arbitration, world-leading lawyer in the field, American Lucy Reed says. Reed, who leads the arbitration group Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in New…
Landscapes a Drawcard
Foreign buyers are mostly drawn to the Auckland area, or to the lake and mountain views near Queenstown on the South Island, according to The New York Times. Bill Sandston, a real estate lawyer…
Epic Story About Epic Men
A new book about New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s ascent of Mt Everest “is one of courage, perseverance and jingoism”, author Justin Cartwright writes for The Observer. “Mick Conefrey’s moving book…
Honouring the Greats
Prince Charles is greeted with a hongi by Bruce Simpson from the Ngati Ranana London Maori Club during a reception at St James’s Palace for prominent New Zealanders, Australians and Papua New Guineans….
