New Zealand intelligence expert Upper Hutt resident Major Rory McGregor was among 25 New Zealand Defence Force personnel to receive US military medals from visiting Major General Peter Talleri, the Okinawa, Japan-based commander of…
New Zealand firefighters Rob Holah and Donny Butters recently travelled to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to compete in the 20th annual Firefighter Combat Challenge World Challenge. Holah said camaraderie is one of the biggest…
New Zealanders and Australians once flocked to the UK for the opportunity to gain experience and return home with some valuable pounds, but the booming Australian economy and a sharp appreciation in the New…
A new study undertaken by global network Kea claims that encouraging expatriate New Zealanders to invest in their home country is the best way to “achieve improved prosperity.” The research was based on interviews…
An ethereal South Island landscape is captured by German photographer Steffen Schrägle for an Intelligent Life photo essay called, ‘A World of Mist’. Schrägle, who took the photograph in June 2009, said…
Manukura the six-month-old white kiwi “appears to have regained her mojo after a heart scare during surgery to remove a stone from her gizzard.” “You try to grab her and she kind of karate…
“Newly uncovered details about the earthquake that rocked Christchurch in February may offer grim lessons regarding the potential threat of fault lines running through urban centres,” Our Amazing Planet contributor Charles Choi writes. “Much…
New Zealand Business Roundtable leader Roger Kerr, once described by Sir Douglas Myers as a “national treasure”, has died. He was 66. Kerr was born in Nelson in 1945 and spent his childhood on…
Christchurch’s most famous landmark, the 19th-century ChristChurch Cathedral, is to be deconsecrated and partially demolished after February’s devastating 6.3 magnitude earthquake toppled the steeple. Church and government representatives have announced that sections of the…
Te Papa scientist Vincent Zintzen and colleagues have been studying the hunting behaviour of the hagfish — or snot-eel — a blind sea creature partway between fish and worm, with a spinal cord but…
A New Zealand Transport Authority advertisement, created by Clemenger BBDO Wellington, is using humour to get the drink-driving message across to its young audience. Rather than rely on the shock tactics and graphic images…
New Zealand-born psychoanalyst Joyce McDougall, who made significant contributions to the understanding of perversions, psychosomatic symptoms, female sexuality, creativity and addictions, has died aged 91. Her clinical insights, theoretical originality, open-mindedness and lack of…
United Nations Development Program (UNDP) administrator Helen Clark has said that China can play a rebalancing role in the current global financial crisis to combat future global poverty and that one of the greatest…
The Liberian-flagged container ship MV Rena, which struck the Astrolabe Reef 5 October on its way to Tauranga, continues to spill oil into the ocean. A total of 90 tons of oil have so…
Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard says New Zealand’s reconstruction of the earthquake-devastated city of Christchurch will boost growth and inflation pressures and may mean an increase in interest rates. Bollard is among Asia-Pacific central…
Opera singer, sports administrator and Southern Opera founder Chris Doig has died in Christchurch, aged 62. Former New Zealand Cricket (NZC) chief executive and member of the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) board, Doig…
Christchurch war historian Dr Frank Glen is searching for letters, documents and medals from the war fought by Bendigo volunteer soldiers between 1860 and 1872 across the Tasman against Maori tribesmen. Glen — who…
Hamilton student Ashley Magumise, 19, has won the Miss September round in the ongoing Face of Zimbabwe competition and will go on to battle for the title in December against 11 other beauties. Magumise’s…
President of the Mongrel Mob’s Napier chapter Rex Timu is one of a number of gang leaders rejecting violence and urging members to embrace mainstream values. Speaking over a hot chocolate in the cafeteria…
New Zealand’s Hector’s dolphin population has fallen from 30,000 to around 7000 since nylon gillnets came into use in the 1970s while subspecies Maui’s dolphin is seriously threatened with numbers falling to fewer than…
France will return some 20 mummified heads of Maori warriors still held by its museums back to New Zealand at a ceremony in January. The restitution follows a four-year political struggle which ended in…
DNA evidence has confirmed that the tiny New Zealand storm petrel bird, thought to be extinct for more than 150 years, is still alive, meaning its comeback eclipses that of other “extinct” birds like…
Aucklander Donna Thompson (right) has been writing to Wyoming woman Peg Scott since she was 12-years-old. The pen pals finally met 46 years later over breakfast at Sherrie’s Place in Casper, Wyoming. At school…
“Kaikoura is not a name that trips off the tongue when you list those lucky places that offer encounters with nature and a touch of luxury,” The Independent’s Jonathan Lorie reports. “But this township…
A sniper cell from New Zealand was one of 27 teams taking part in the annual Canadian International Sniper Concentration at Canadian Forces Base in Gagetown. Captain John Bourgeois, the officer in charge of…
Happy Feet, the “lost” emperor penguin which washed up on the Kapiti Coast, has been returned to the ocean; a BBC article examines how he and other animals are released back into the wild….
A 12-month ban of 43 synthetic cannabis products has come into effect in New Zealand. Some retailers believe that other legal highs will continue to flood a very popular, and lucrative, market. Manager of…
Helen Clark, the first woman to be elected prime minister of New Zealand and now an administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is included in an Intelligent Life special called ‘Inspiring Women’,…
Sailors on the Pacific Voyagers project steered a fleet of seven ocean-voyaging traditional Polynesian sailing canoes or vaka moanas from New Zealand to San Francisco — guided only by the stars that once helped…
Lieutenant General Sir Jerry Mateparae has been sworn in as the 2th Governor General of New Zealand. The 56-year-old was sworn-in to a five-year term in a formal ceremony in front of Parliament. Following…
Some 1700 people turned up at Wellington Zoo to farewell Happy Feet, the emperor penguin who captured New Zealand’s heart after being washed up sick and starving on Kapiti Coast’s Peka Peka beach 3000km…
President of the Tertiary Education Union at Victoria University, senior lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy, Sandra Grey writes that calling for expatriate New Zealanders to put money into the tertiary sector is possibly…
Highly respected veteran journalist Graeme Moody has died while surfing at New South Wale’s famed Angourie Point. He was 60. Wellington’s Newstalk ZB cancelled regular programming the day Moody died, such was the level…
The Wellington Holocaust Research and Education Centre has won a national award from the Human Rights Commission. The Centre, founded in 26, received one of 12 New Zealand Diversity Awards, which recognize projects that…
Acclaimed journalist Dame Christine Cole Catley has passed away at age 88, leaving behind a legacy in New Zealand literature. After making a name for herself as one of the nation’s first prominent female…
No guns were firing when the New Zealand Herald’s Jim Eagles assembled quietly at the bottom of the steep road to the hilltop village of Galatas on the storied island of Crete. “Seventy years…
World-renowned earthquake engineer and inventor of the base isolation technique Dr Bill Robinson has died in Christchurch aged 73. The seismic protection and damping equipment developed by Dr Robinson is used in buildings located…
The tiny South Pacific nation of Niue, population 1311, will soon be accepting Star Wars coins as legal tender. Each coin will be minted with a fully colored image of Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker,…
August saw freezing cold and snow blanketing virtually all of the country, even typically mild cities such as Wellington and Auckland, which last saw accumulated snow 45 and 72 years ago, respectively. “What began…
New Zealand’s Kakapo are the focus of a new book telling the stories of the world’s best cases of predator eradication. Written by William Stolzenburg, Rat Island tells the stories of two heroic rescues…
Former Governor General Sir Paul Reeves has died in Auckland, aged 78. Prime Minister John Key said New Zealand has lost one of its greatest statesmen. “Sir Paul’s contribution to New Zealand did not…
Mt Cook’s South Ridge will be renamed the Hillary Ridge in honour of Sir Edmund Hillary, the Everest conqueror. Announcing the change, Land Information Minister Maurice Williamson said: “Sir Edmund made an enormous contribution…
New Zealand heroine and NZEdge hero Nancy Wake has passed away in England, three weeks shy of her 99th birthday. Born in Wellington in 1912, Wake moved to Australia with…
Wellington-born Beryl Smedley — who was a prominent figure in the Diplomatic Service Wives’ Association over several decades, and author of Partners in Diplomacy, an account of the changing role of British diplomatic wives…
New Zealand has increased its minimum driving age from 15 to 16 in an effort to make its roads safer, as well as banning those under 2 drinking any amount of alcohol and then…
Seventy scientists from around the world will gather in Gisborne from 1-5 August to discuss proposals to study “silent” earthquakes by drilling into the seabed. Silent quakes, also known as slow slip events, occur…
“ city’s charming, walkable neighbourhoods offer distinct architectural styles and settings, from the iconic clock tower at the University of Auckland, to the Victorian houses backing up to lush Albert Park, with its fig…
Sixty-nine years after he survived a fatal landing exercise off Paekakariki Beach, former marine American Frank Zalot plans to travel to New Zealand in 212 for a commemoration of American servicemen stationed here in…
Whetu Trikatene-Sullivan, New Zealand’s longest serving female MP has died in Wellington, aged 79. Trikatene-Sullivan, of Ngai Tahu, was Labour MP for Southern Maori for 29 years, from 1967 till 1996. She famously travelled…
Former Sergeant-Pilot Geoffrey Bryson Fisken, the British Commonwealth’s No. 1 fighter pilot in the Pacific during WW2, has died at age 96 in Rotorua. He had spent much of his postwar years as a…
An expectant silence hangs over the Pukaha Mount Bruce National Wildlife Sanctuary as hundreds of spectators await a glimpse of a rare white kiwi, a bird held sacred by Maori, describes The…
Since joining the Murdoch empire in 1991, native New Zealander Tom Mockridge — former economics editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and now Rebekah Brooks’s replacement as CEO at News International and in charge…
Auckland’s Macleans College was “a world apart” from Westmont Hilltop High School in the US for trainee teacher Leah Fuller who spent seven weeks on an internship at the Bucklands Beach high school. Many…
“The once bustling central business district resembles a wasteland,” Jonathan Hutchison reports for The New York Times. “Office furniture can be seen sitting inside partially collapsed buildings. Piles of bricks and steel lie along…
Happy Feet, the lost emperor penguin who turned up alone on Kapiti Coast’s Peka Peka Beach a month ago, has been eating up to 2kg of high-grade salmon each day — funded through donations…
A selection of “amazingly beautiful” hand-crafted bone carvings from Auckland-based gallery The Bone Art Place feature on American industrial design blog site Core77. “They are soft and warm to the touch yet the finish…
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