Tag Archives: BBC

Why Australia Trails Us on Indigenous Journey

Why Australia Trails Us on Indigenous Journey

An exhibition of Australia’s First Peoples art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki has stirred discussion of the two nations’ different Indigenous histories, Frances Mao reports for the BBC. Like Australia, New Zealand is…

Kohutapu Lodge Model for Regenerative Tourism

Kohutapu Lodge Model for Regenerative Tourism

New Zealand is emerging as a global leader in regenerative tourism, thanks in part to Māori tour operators such as the Bay of Plenty’s Kohutapu Lodge, Jessica Wynne Lockhart writes in a travel piece…

Granta Names Eleanor Catton a Best Young Novelist

Granta Names Eleanor Catton a Best Young Novelist

Literary magazine Granta has announced its 20 most significant British novelists aged under 40, which, for the first time, includes international writers who view the UK as home, the BBC’s culture and media…

Our Fabled Shellfish That Nearly Vanished

Our Fabled Shellfish That Nearly Vanished

Mainly found on the North Island, the large clam treasured by Māori coastal communities that nearly became extinct due to exploitation. But now, the toheroa might be on the way back, Norman Miller writes…

Should New Zealand Cats Be Kept Indoors?

Should New Zealand Cats Be Kept Indoors?

New Zealand’s remarkable birdlife evolved on a land without apex predators. Introduced cats have decimated their numbers. New Zealanders may have to change the way they keep cats, Stephen Dowling reports for the BBC. New…

Former All Black Campbell Johnstone Speaks Out

Former All Black Campbell Johnstone Speaks Out

In January, former All Black Campbell Johnstone, 43, made headlines around the world by speaking publicly about his sexuality for the first time. It was a watershed moment for the game and a deeply…

Supreme Court Rules Voting Age of 18 is Discriminatory

Supreme Court Rules Voting Age of 18 is Discriminatory

New Zealand’s Supreme Court has ruled that the country’s current voting age of 18 is discriminatory, meaning parliament must discuss whether it should be lowered, Alys Davies reports for the BBC. The case was brought…

PM Jacinda Ardern Recalls Queen’s Good Advice

PM Jacinda Ardern Recalls Queen’s Good Advice

In a September interview with the BBC, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the Queen told her she had to “just get on with it” when asked for advice about being both a leader and…

How the World’s Most Spongy City Tackles Floods

How the World’s Most Spongy City Tackles Floods

Auckland was recently named the most spongy global city in a report by multinational architecture and design firm Arup, thanks to its geography, soil type, and urban design – but experts warn it may…

Working with Assertive China a Must, Says PM

Working with Assertive China a Must, Says PM

New Zealand has been aware for some time now of a “growing assertiveness” and a “growing interest” in its region – explicitly from China, according to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Karishma Vaswani writes for…

Tate Modern Surrealism Show Features Len Lye

Tate Modern Surrealism Show Features Len Lye

An exhibition on Surrealism, co-curated by Tate Modern and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, explores the movement’s previously unacknowledged multi-culturalism. Artworks from six continents, including Oceania, explain how, says the BBC’s Matt Wilson. Surrealism…

1922 – A Year of Katherine Mansfield and Other Great Modernists

1922 – A Year of Katherine Mansfield and Other Great Modernists

“James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land are rightly hailed as masterpieces – but they unfairly overshadow 1922’s other great books,” writes John Self in a feature for the BBC, which explores…

Fabled Terraces the Birthplace of NZ Tourism

Fabled Terraces the Birthplace of NZ Tourism

“Although New Zealand’s Pink and White Terraces were destroyed in a volcanic eruption in 1886, travellers can still explore this bubbling, boiling landscape today,” Dani Wright reports for the BBC in a series called,…

Webtoon Creator Rachel Smythe Busy and Paid

Webtoon Creator Rachel Smythe Busy and Paid

When graphic design graduate, Rachel Smythe, 35, tried to get a foot in the door of New Zealand’s creative industry in 2008, she was rejected at every turn. But in 2016, the BBC’s Mary-Ann…

Oceanographer Kerry Black Helps Save India’s Beaches

Oceanographer Kerry Black Helps Save India’s Beaches

Puducherry in India is a seaside city of nearly one million people. This 40km strip of coastline, divided into seven zones, used to be home to some of the country’s most beautiful beaches. But…

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 rare birds. But this is…

Rethinking Tourism Industry’s Climate Impact

Rethinking Tourism Industry’s Climate Impact

New Zealand is hopeful that a recently opened travel bubble with Australia will rekindle its pandemic-battered tourism industry. However, many are also seeing an opportunity to rethink how to make the sector more climate…

Sun Journalist Dan Wootton Heads to GB News

Sun Journalist Dan Wootton Heads to GB News

Lower Hutt-born Dan Wootton, 37, the Sun journalist who broke the story of “Megxit”, is leaving to present a daily show on GB News and write for Mail Online, Amol Rajan reports in a…

Popular Film Baby Done Released in UK

Popular Film Baby Done Released in UK

With New Zealand-made film Baby Done just released on digital platforms throughout the UK, the BBC’s Emma Jones writes about the film’s star, Rose Matafeo, and how the film explores misgivings about motherhood. Matafeo, 28,…

How Our Film Industry Boomed During the Pandemic

How Our Film Industry Boomed During the Pandemic

Thanks to its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, New Zealand is enjoying an unprecedented boom in film production, with directors seeking safe conditions, and that most elusive thing this year – a normal life,…

Siouxsie Wiles Makes BBC List of Inspiring Women

Siouxsie Wiles Makes BBC List of Inspiring Women

Scientist and public health communicator Siouxsie Wiles has been named on this year’s BBC list of 100 Women, a roll call of “inspiring and inspirational women from around the world”. This year, the BBC reports,…

TikTok Opens up a New Music World for Jawsh 685

TikTok Opens up a New Music World for Jawsh 685

TikTok has only been part of our lives for two years, but it’s already had a massive impact on the music business, the BBC reports. South Auckland producer Joshua Nanai, 17, better known as…

Pavlova’s Origins Date Back Two Centuries

Pavlova’s Origins Date Back Two Centuries

New Zealanders and Australians have long argued over who invented the pavlova, but the authors of a new book called, The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets have found the dessert’s origins go back…

Why is New Zealand so Progressive?

Why is New Zealand so Progressive?

She wasn’t the only mother checking in with their whānau that evening. But this woman was Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, and the one who had decided – on expert advice – to…

Capturing Copeisolation on Rakiura/Stewart Island

Capturing Copeisolation on Rakiura/Stewart Island

Originally from Estonia, Laire Purik is documenting the life of the residents of Rakiura “through windows, through the gates” as they cope with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. The BBC reports on her…

New Zealand One of World’s Most Resilient Economies

New Zealand One of World’s Most Resilient Economies

Experts have already begun assessing how a recovery might look once the COVID-19 virus is contained, and which countries stand to bounce back best. According to the 2019 Global Resilience Index, New Zealand sits…

Recognising the Whanganui River’s Legal Voice

Recognising the Whanganui River’s Legal Voice

In 2017, New Zealand granted legal personhood to the Whanganui River. Since then, other nations have followed suit in an effort to protect the environment. The BBC’s Luana Harumi reports, with the river featured…

How Uni Dropout Nick Mowbray Built a Toy Empire

How Uni Dropout Nick Mowbray Built a Toy Empire

The BBC’s weekly ‘The Boss’ series profiles different business leaders from around the world. Last week, the broadcaster’s Virginia Harrison spoke to New Zealander Nick Mowbray, 34, co-founder and co-chief executive of toymaker Zuru. A…

In the Shadow of the Mt Erebus Disaster

In the Shadow of the Mt Erebus Disaster

It remains New Zealand’s worst peacetime disaster. On 28 November 1979, a sightseeing aircraft carrying 257 people crashed head-on into the side of a volcano in Antarctica. The tragedy of flight TE901 was a…

Jane Campion’s The Piano No 1 on BBC Poll

Jane Campion’s The Piano No 1 on BBC Poll

New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion’s stunning 1993 classic, The Piano has topped BBC Culture’s poll of 368 critics in 84 countries. The broadcaster’s Hannah Woodhead reveals why it’s a worthy winner. “In 1993, Campion made history…

New Zealand’s Bird of the Year is the Hoiho

New Zealand’s Bird of the Year is the Hoiho

The endangered hoiho (yellow-eyed penguin) won New Zealand’s coveted Bird of the Year competition after two weeks of intense campaigning, the BBC reports. The hoiho saw off many avian rivals to become the first…

Human-Sized Penguin Lived in New Zealand

Human-Sized Penguin Lived in New Zealand

The BBC reports on the findings of the remains of a giant penguin the size of a human that were discovered in Waipara, North Canterbury by amateur palaeontologist Leigh Love in 2018. The fossilised leg…

Rose Matafeo’s Comedic Rise to the BBC

Rose Matafeo’s Comedic Rise to the BBC

New Zealand stand-up Rose Matafeo, 27, talks on-stage confidence, teen crushes and writing her own BBC sitcom with Alice Jones, a journalist for UK newspaper, i. It is almost a year since Matafeo won the…

New Zealand Ramps up Plans to Purge All Pests

New Zealand Ramps up Plans to Purge All Pests

There are strains on New Zealand’s environment. In this corner of the South Pacific, waterways are increasingly polluted and, from the suburbs to the alpine peaks, an untold army of feral pests is running…

Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck at TED in Vancouver

Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck at TED in Vancouver

Peter Beck is a space entrepreneur with a rocket and launch pad in New Zealand that has permission for flights “every 72 hours for the next 30 years”. Beck recently spoke at the TED…

Barbie Releases First-Ever Māori Doll

Barbie Releases First-Ever Māori Doll

Barbie has released its first-ever Māori doll, modelled after New Zealand sports journalist and former rugby player Melodie Robinson. The doll, which has “curly hair and beautiful brown skin”, holds a microphone as part of…

What Can New Zealand Teach the UK about Brexit?

What Can New Zealand Teach the UK about Brexit?

“Brexit is, to put it mildly, an unusual event,” BBC World Service economics correspondent Andrew Walker writes. “But there are precedents for some aspects of it. New Zealand provides one example.” “The country faced a…

Why Are Whales Stranding in New Zealand?

Why Are Whales Stranding in New Zealand?

While whale strandings are not uncommon, they usually involve just a single animal rather than a whole group. The recent flurry of mass strandings on New Zealand beaches has brought…

New Zealand Launches Testicular Cancer Booth Check

New Zealand Launches Testicular Cancer Booth Check

Ever thought of getting a health check but worried about having to? Well, drop your pants. Meet the Testimatic, a booth allowing New Zealand men to have their testicles checked without having to face…

Oceans Apart Doco a Tribute to Māori Determination

Oceans Apart Doco a Tribute to Māori Determination

British art historian James Fox presents Oceans Apart: Art and the Pacific, an “engaging” BBC documentary exploring Māori culture. It is reviewed in The Guardian by Emine Saner. In Oceans Apart, Fox examines artworks that…

ABs Lift Bledisloe Cup for 16th Consecutive Year

ABs Lift Bledisloe Cup for 16th Consecutive Year

New Zealand has won the Bledisloe Cup for a 16th consecutive year with a 40-12 victory over Australia at Eden Park in Auckland. Beauden Barrett scored four tries and kicked five conversions, while Joe Moody…

New Zealanders’ Epic Trips to Isle of Skye

New Zealanders’ Epic Trips to Isle of Skye

New Zealander Dr Hannah Bulloch is in Scotland to research a book she is writing based on trips her grandfather made to the Isle of Skye. The BBC’s Annabel Maclennan caught up with Bulloch…

How Bisexual Goose Thomas Became an Icon

How Bisexual Goose Thomas Became an Icon

A memorial was recently held for Thomas the goose, a “New Zealander who spent most of his life as a loving partner, caring father and an icon of the LGBT community”, Yvette Tan writes in a…

PM’s Pregnancy Sparks Knitting Movement

PM’s Pregnancy Sparks Knitting Movement

New Zealander Heather McCracken, who is based in the United States, has kicked off the knitting movement #KnitForJacinda inspired by the news that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is pregnant. Ardern recently announced that she and…

Former MP Maurice Williamson a Gay Icon in Japan

Former MP Maurice Williamson a Gay Icon in Japan

Former MP Maurice Williamson’s rising popularity as a gay icon among many Japanese people is thanks to a video of a speech he made during the third reading and vote on the Marriage Equality…

Toro Rosso Retain Brendon Hartley for 2018 F1 season

Toro Rosso Retain Brendon Hartley for 2018 F1 season

“Toro Rosso have confirmed they will retain Brendon Hartley for the 2018 Formula 1 season,” as reported in an article on BBC. “It’s very satisfying to have converted an opportunity that…

Rainbow Youth Ad Challenges Casual Homophobia

Rainbow Youth Ad Challenges Casual Homophobia

An advert released by LGBTIQ rights charity Rainbow Youth is calling out New Zealanders over the negative use of the word “gay” through the medium of a dropped pie. The video was created to draw…

Kiri Te Kanawa Sings Her Last Public Note

Kiri Te Kanawa Sings Her Last Public Note

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, one of opera’s most celebrated stars, has told the BBC she will never sing in public again. Te Kanawa, 73, said she stopped performing a year ago, but had not…

Crawford Falconer UK’s Top Trade Negotiator

Crawford Falconer UK’s Top Trade Negotiator

The New Zealander in charge of negotiating the UK’s trade deals once Brexit is finalised, has begun his tenure. Crawford Falconer has taken up the post of chief trade negotiation adviser at the Department…

New Zealand Thrash Australia in Sydney

New Zealand Thrash Australia in Sydney

New Zealand “hammered” Australia 54-34 in their 2017 Investec Rugby Championship opener. According to the BBC, the All Blacks “were exceptional in the first half in Sydney and, with the help of three tries…

Para-Athlete Liam Malone Vows to Out Do Usain Bolt

Para-Athlete Liam Malone Vows to Out Do Usain Bolt

Nelson-born double para-athelete champion, Liam Malone, 23, says he will use technology to run faster than Olympic legend Usain Bolt within the next three years. Double-leg amputee Malone won gold in the T44 200m and…

New Zealand Poets Taking on the World

New Zealand Poets Taking on the World

If poetry makes you think of stuffy classrooms and impenetrable verse, think again. The BBC’s Holly Williams takes a look at the female poets revolutionising the art form, including New Zealand-based Lang Leav and…

Alan Walmsley Digs Up Historical Narratives

Alan Walmsley Digs Up Historical Narratives

At a recent conference in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, archaeologists – including New Zealander Alan Walmsley – working in over 14 Islamic countries around the world participated in a first of its kind…

Andrew Nicholson Wins Badminton Horse Trials

Andrew Nicholson Wins Badminton Horse Trials

“New Zealand’s Andrew Nicholson has won the Badminton Horse Trials at the 36th attempt, two years after suffering a serious neck injury,” as reported in an article on BBC. “It is…

Whanganui River First In The World To Be Given Legal Human Status

Whanganui River First In The World To Be Given Legal Human Status

Whanganui River “in New Zealand has become the first in the world to be granted the same legal rights as a person”, as reported on the BBC. “Long revered by New Zealand’s Maori…

Parris Goebel Was Born to Dance

Parris Goebel Was Born to Dance

Parris Goebel’s father tells the BBC that his daughter, “a blessing”, was dropped off by a space ship. And it’s a good thing it did. The 24-year-old choreographer from Manurewa, South Auckland is changing…