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New Zealanders in Vietnam Thrive Despite Covid

New Zealanders in Vietnam Thrive Despite Covid

As Covid continues to cut a disruptive swath through Asia, expatriate communities have been hit hard. In the unique situation of living far from home in Vietnam, a trio…

2-Metre Peter Poster Makes London Museum

2-Metre Peter Poster Makes London Museum

Two years ago Christchurch medical radiation technologist Peter Dooley loaned his 2-metre body to a Covid-19 social-distancing campaign, Cecile Meier reports for Stuff. Now the posters – featuring him…

Geoff Andrews, Kiwi Connector in the Big Apple

Geoff Andrews, Kiwi Connector in the Big Apple

Geoff Andrews, a leader and organizer of the New Zealand community in New York City, died on December 30, 2021, at his home in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, aged…

Commentator Niki Bezzant Writes on Menopause

Commentator Niki Bezzant Writes on Menopause

An edited extract from New Zealander Niki Bezzant’s book This Changes Everything: The Honest Guide to Menopause and Perimenopause, was recently published in The Guardian.

“For centuries the symptoms of…

Revival for Moriori Pushed Close to Cultural Death

Revival for Moriori Pushed Close to Cultural Death

On the windswept coast of Chatham Island stands a statue of a thick-jowled, cheerful man, his gaze fixed on the endless sea stretched before him, Pete McKenzie writes for…

Booker Prize Winner Keri Hulme Always a Storyteller

Booker Prize Winner Keri Hulme Always a Storyteller

Keri Hulme, the New Zealander whose 1984 novel The Bone People won the Man Booker Prize, has died at her home in Waimate, South Canterbury. She was 74. Hulme…

Newsreader Oriini Kaipara Presents World-First

Newsreader Oriini Kaipara Presents World-First

Newshub broadcaster Oriini Kaipara has made the headlines herself in Britain with the Evening Standard reporting the Whakatane-born journalist is the first person to present a prime time news…

Predator Free 2050 a Force for Nature

Predator Free 2050 a Force for Nature

“Across the world conservation groups, researchers and volunteers are working to combat the key drivers of biodiversity loss identified by scientists,” Max Benato writes for The Guardian in a…

On the Hunt for Lost South Island Kōkako

On the Hunt for Lost South Island Kōkako

Birdwatchers around the world are being called on to turn detective and help in a search for some of the rarest birds on Earth, including New Zealand’s South Island…

Should the World Follow NZ in Banning Tobacco?

Should the World Follow NZ in Banning Tobacco?

“If you’re a smoker who wants to indulge your habit while gazing over the mountains of the South Pacific, you’d do well to move fast. New Zealand has announced…

Political Activist Rewi Alley Remembered

Political Activist Rewi Alley Remembered

The 124th anniversary of the birth of Rewi Alley was marked on 2 December, a New Zealand man who first stepped foot on China’s mainland nearly 100 years ago….

Civil Liberties in the Covid Age Discussed

Civil Liberties in the Covid Age Discussed

“Vaccines, their mandates and certificates have ignited heated debate about civil liberties in New Zealand. Add MIQ, climate change, the government’s Three Waters policy and proposed hate speech legislation,…

Haast’s Eagle’s Hunting and Eating Habits Examined

Haast’s Eagle’s Hunting and Eating Habits Examined

For more than a century, scientists have wondered whether New Zealand’s huge carnivorous Haast’s eagle, that went extinct around 600 years ago, was more of a predatory eagle or…

Antarctic Explorers’ Logbook Found at MetService

Antarctic Explorers’ Logbook Found at MetService

“Priceless” artefacts linked to Antarctic explorers Ernest Shackleton and Captain Robert Falcon Scott have been unearthed in a surprise discovery within a dark storage room of New Zealand’s meteorological…

Naming NZ Aotearoa Meaningful Step for Travellers

Naming NZ Aotearoa Meaningful Step for Travellers

The Māori Party has launched a petition to revert to the country’s original name of Aotearoa. In an opinion piece for Condé Nast Traveler, Māori authors Stacey and Scotty…

Rare Sea Lions Are Back and Crashing Sports Games

Rare Sea Lions Are Back and Crashing Sports Games

After their populations were decimated by hunters, New Zealand’s sea lions are returning to the coasts – sometimes surprising locals by turning up in unexpected places, Charlotte Graham-McLay reports…

How New Zealand Used Humour to Reform Police

How New Zealand Used Humour to Reform Police

“Every year, American police officers kill roughly 1000 people. By comparison, New Zealand police officers kill, on average, about eight people per decade. Even if you adjust for the…

Victory for Bat in Bird of the Year Competition

Victory for Bat in Bird of the Year Competition

The winner of New Zealand’s Bird of the Year 2021 contest has been announced and it’s the country’s only native land mammal – the pekapeka-tou-roa long-tailed bat. The UK’s…

UK Reaches Agreement on New Zealand Trade Deal

UK Reaches Agreement on New Zealand Trade Deal

The UK has brokered a trade agreement with New Zealand that will cut tariffs on clothing, buses and wine, and, it hopes, lay a foundation for joining a trans-Pacific…

Revitalising Te Reo Māori Via Music

Revitalising Te Reo Māori Via Music

When musician and producer Dame Hinewehi Mohi, one of the primary engines behind the musical Māori revival, performed the New Zealand national anthem at the 1999 Rugby World Cup…

Rēnata West Searches US for Spirit of His Ancestors

Rēnata West Searches US for Spirit of His Ancestors

When Rēnata West moved from New Zealand to the US in 2016, he discovered something unexpected: the path of his great grandmother, who had travelled the same route more…

How the Motunui Epa Returned to Rightful Owners

How the Motunui Epa Returned to Rightful Owners

Throughout its reign, the British Empire stole a lot of stuff, Marc Fennell and Simon Leo Brown report for ABC Radio National. Stuff the British Stole podcast is a…

New Zealanders Struggling to Find a Home

New Zealanders Struggling to Find a Home

New rules to curb investment took effect this month, but our Human Rights Commission says successive governments have failed us. Sasha Borissenko spoke to some New Zealanders about their…

New Zealanders Overseas Talk Being Behind Borders

New Zealanders Overseas Talk Being Behind Borders

When Jacinda Ardern closed New Zealand’s borders, chasing a zero-Covid policy, many New Zealanders were effectively locked out of their own country, Molly Codyre writes, having interviewed “those left behind” for…

John Edwards Named UK’s Information Commissioner

John Edwards Named UK’s Information Commissioner

British MPs have approved New Zealander John Edwards as next Information Commissioner for the UK, Jamie Harris reports for the Evening Standard.

Edwards faced questions from the Digital, Culture, Media…

Long-Legged Penguin Fossils Add to Rich Record

Long-Legged Penguin Fossils Add to Rich Record

The discovery of a complete fossilised ancient giant penguin skeleton in the upper Kawhia Harbour, Waikato is helping scientists fill in some gaps in natural history, Sofia Quaglia reports…

RBNZ Turning Heads Around the Globe

RBNZ Turning Heads Around the Globe

“New Zealand is tiny by economic standards, but it’s a giant in central banking circles,” Forbes senior contributor William Pesek writes. “While working in Washington in the mid-to-late 1990s,…

Billy Apple® a Transformative Pop Artist

Billy Apple® a Transformative Pop Artist

Born in Auckland, Barrie George Bates, aka Billy Apple, was “a pioneer in the conceptual art movement whose influence spanned art scenes in London, New York, and New Zealand”….

Koru Kids CEO Says UK Childcare Needs Rethink

Koru Kids CEO Says UK Childcare Needs Rethink

Women have borne the brunt of the pandemic both at work and home. Fact. But now, with spiralling childcare costs and lack of effective government support for childcare services,…

Labour Giant Michael Cullen Committed to NZ

Labour Giant Michael Cullen Committed to NZ

Sir Michael Cullen, Helen Clark’s deputy prime minister and the father of New Zealand superannuation, has died in Whakatāne aged 76, Ben McKay reports for a story published in…

Is NZ the Best Place to Survive Global Collapse?

Is NZ the Best Place to Survive Global Collapse?

Two English researchers have found that New Zealand is best poised to stay up and running as climate change continues to wreak global havoc, Heather Murphy writes for The…

Chunk of Ancient Supercontinent Found Under NZ

Chunk of Ancient Supercontinent Found Under NZ

As the California heat blazed outside in the summer of 2018, Rose Turnbull sat in the cool confines of a windowless basement sorting through grains of fine sand. A…

New Zealand Ships Covid Vaccines to Tokelau

New Zealand Ships Covid Vaccines to Tokelau

Tokelau, one of the most inaccessible atolls in the world, has just received 12 precious boxes of vaccine delivered by the New Zealand Defence Force, Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson writes…

Older New Zealanders Join Climate Change Fight

Older New Zealanders Join Climate Change Fight

On his early morning bike rides to school, David Yockney would deliberately seek out the crunch and splash of the ice-hardened puddles. It was a winter joy he loved,…

Pounamu Jade Aikman Wins Fulbright Award

Pounamu Jade Aikman Wins Fulbright Award

Pounamu Jade Aikman, who finished his PhD on racism and police violence against Ngāi Tūhoe, is this year’s recipient of the Fulbright-Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga Scholar Award and…

England Football Looks to Owen Eastwood

England Football Looks to Owen Eastwood

In a Guardian article, UK-based lawyer turned performance coach New Zealander Owen Eastwood (Ngāi Tahu), who has been working with the England football team, explains his role in building…

Integrating Mātauranga into UNESCO’s Work

Integrating Mātauranga into UNESCO’s Work

“Like many Indigenous peoples around the world, Māori have developed their understanding of their environment through close observation of the landscape and its behaviours over the course of many…

Ambassador to Korea Philip Turner Backs Diversity

Ambassador to Korea Philip Turner Backs Diversity

New Zealand Ambassador to Korea Philip Turner, the first openly gay ambassador to Korea whose same-sex spouse is recognised by the Korean government, was interviewed recently by Korea Times…

We Show Australia How to Tackle Housing Dilemmas

We Show Australia How to Tackle Housing Dilemmas

“While the debate about house prices is stuck in a holding pattern in Australia (with governments too scared to do anything too radical for fear of upsetting homeowners, and…

Celebrate Astronomically-Based Matariki

Celebrate Astronomically-Based Matariki

A story about Māori New Year, when the constellation Matariki is first visible in the morning sky, features in Forbes this week. The date of the inaugural Matariki public…

Insect Tracking Drones Boost Rare Bug Conservation

Insect Tracking Drones Boost Rare Bug Conservation

A “swarm” of bug-tracking drones and tiny radars are being developed at the University of Canterbury to help conservation of rare insects in New Zealand, Phil Mercer reports for…

Economist Adulation Has Auckland Residents Puzzled

Economist Adulation Has Auckland Residents Puzzled

It boasts beautiful beaches, a temperate climate and a multicultural population that has fostered an eclectic mix of food, music and arts. But is Auckland, a remote outpost in the…

New Zealanders Flock Home to the Edge

New Zealanders Flock Home to the Edge

More than 50,000 New Zealanders who have returned home during the pandemic, offering the country a rare opportunity to win back some of its best and brightest, Charlotte Graham-McClay…

Study Suggests Māori First to Encounter Antarctica

Study Suggests Māori First to Encounter Antarctica

Māori explorers could have been the first humans to set eyes on Antarctica as far back as the 7th century, a new study suggests, even though for the past…

Zealandia a Nature Reserve with a 500-Year Plan

Zealandia a Nature Reserve with a 500-Year Plan

“In the past 30 years, a wilderness has grown up in the heart of New Zealand’s capital – so successfully its neighbours now complain about the raucous racket of…

He Poroporoaki mo Carl Meredith Bradley. BA. MA Ph.D

He Poroporoaki mo Carl Meredith Bradley. BA. MA Ph.D

Carl Bradley died suddenly last week. Just 52 years of age. He was a friend and colleague. Carl was an Aikido 4th Dan black belt and on an upward…

Jenny McGee Resigns from NHS Citing Disrespect

Jenny McGee Resigns from NHS Citing Disrespect

Invercargill-born nurse Jenny McGee, who cared for Boris Johnson when he was gravely ill with Covid-19, says she has handed in her resignation, such is her disillusionment with the…

PM Tops Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders List

PM Tops Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders List

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, 40, takes the number one spot on Fortune magazine’s annual world’s greatest leaders list.

The magazine’s editors write: “Jacinda Ardern had already sealed her position as a…

Why Billionaires Are Snapping up Second Homes in NZ

Why Billionaires Are Snapping up Second Homes in NZ

While the rest of us may have to wait until 2022 to be allowed in to New Zealand, when the majority of the country has been vaccinated and its…

Biden Backs NZ’s Stance Against Online Extremism

Biden Backs NZ’s Stance Against Online Extremism

The United States “will join the Christchurch Call to Action” to stamp out violent extremism online, the White House has said, two years after the Trump administration declined to…

Ottawa Could Use a Leader like Jacinda Ardern

Ottawa Could Use a Leader like Jacinda Ardern

“Jacinda Ardern just keeps getting it right. Since being elected as New Zealand’s prime minister almost four years ago, the young politician has been leading a progressive policy with…

Drug Testing in New Zealand Without the Penalties

Drug Testing in New Zealand Without the Penalties

New Zealand has enshrined into law a one-year experiment allowing drug users to have illegal substances tested without penalty to ensure their authenticity and to weed out dangerous chemicals,…

New Zealand’s Emphatic Covid-19 Approach

New Zealand’s Emphatic Covid-19 Approach

“In New Zealand, investigators traced an outbreak to a 50-second window of exposure. The case might be a lesson for countries contemplating a future with no Covid-19,” WIRED’s science…

New Zealand Approves Paid Leave After Miscarriage

New Zealand Approves Paid Leave After Miscarriage

New Zealand’s Parliament has unanimously approved legislation that would give couples who suffer a miscarriage or stillbirth three days of paid leave, putting the country in the vanguard of…

New Zealand Renews Laos UXO Response Funding

New Zealand Renews Laos UXO Response Funding

New Zealand will provide an additional four years of funding for the UXO sector in Laos through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) from 2021 to 2024.

New Zealand will…

A Portal Into a Universe Without Covid

A Portal Into a Universe Without Covid

“Concerts, beaches, crowds: Videos of New Zealand enjoying its summer feel like peering into an alternate reality,” Dublin-based New Zealander Brian Ng writes in a story published by The…