Te Ao Maori | Minnesota Public Radio
27 May 2009
Richard Nunns, an authority on Maori traditional instruments or taonga puoro, performed the Gillian Whitehead composed “Hineputehue” at Luther College, Minnesota with the New Zealand String Quartet last month. Dunedin based Whitehead wrote “Hineputehue”…
Business | ft.com
26 May 2009
Fisher & Paykel has signed a US$50 million deal with Chinese appliance maker Haier, which will see the Qingdao-based manufacturer take a 20 per cent stake in the New Zealand company. Haier has signed…
War & Peace | UN.org
26 May 2009
Royal New Zealand Navy Lieutenant Commander Pip Gibbons was one of four UN peacekeepers featured on a poster to promote the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers on May 29. Lt Cdr Gibbons recently…
Design | National Post
26 May 2009
New Zealander Richard Gow has built a house in Canada made entirely from recycled and salvaged materials, including a deck built from wood out of a dumpster. Gow, a home renovator with a degree…
Z-Files | News.com.au
26 May 2009
Palmerston North City Council has removed the number 13 from its street addresses, jumping from 11 to 15 so triskaidekaphobics, or those who fear the number 13, will still buy homes at that number….
Film & TV | jam! Showbiz
25 May 2009
Wellington writers and directors, Sticky Pictures’ Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland’s short film Six Dollar Fifty Man was awarded a special distinction at the Cannes Film Festival. The pair’s 2007 short film Run was…
Music | Las Vegas Sun
24 May 2009
The Flight of the Conchords near the end of their 2009 Spring US tour with a pit stop in Las Vegas, playing at The Joint and reviewed by the local paper, which says the…
Cricket | Sunday Star Times | Times of India
24 May 2009
Cricket umpire Billy Bowden has backed cricket’s review system by which players will be able to refer umpires’ decisions to a television official for review. The system will be implemented in all Test matches from October….
New Zealand | New Yorker
23 May 2009
Three senior writers from The New Yorker have been posting rave reviews about New Zealand in blogs on the magazine’s website. Chief political commentator Hendrik Hertzberg, along with colleagues Judith Thurman, Rhonda Sherman, and…
Nature | Age (The)
23 May 2009
Kaikoura is the first place in New Zealand, and the second in the world, to be Green Globe benchmarked, an international benchmarking and certification program developed for the travel industry in 1992. Kaikoura was…
Writers | wowowow
23 May 2009
Wellington author and high school teacher Bernard Beckett’s novel Genesis is recommended by American bookseller Roxanne J. Coady on the Women On The Web site, which also includes an excerpt from the first chapter…
Wine | Financial Times
22 May 2009
Martinborough is home to Kusuda Wines, a vineyard owned by Japanese former diplomat Hiroyuki Kusuda and opened in 2001. Kusuda came to New Zealand to work as an assistant to his friend Kai Schubert,…
Adrenalin | Toronto Star
22 May 2009
“If the volcano erupts, don’t try to outrun the lava,” a guide casually instructs Toronto Star freelancer Teresa Pitman who is on a tour of White Island. “Your best bet is to find something…
Z-Files | Guardian (The)
22 May 2009
Stanmore Bay three-year-old Pipi Quinlan purchased a full-size excavating digger on auction site TradeMe for $20,000 while the rest of his family slept. “The first I knew of it was when I came down…
Film & TV | BBC News | Guardian (The)
21 May 2009
Visual effects producer Marie Jones, formerly of Invercargill, has won a Bafta for her special effects work on BBC1’s sci-fi drama Doctor Who in an episode called Fires of Pompeii, as part of London…
Business | Wall Street Journal (The)
20 May 2009
New Zealand-born businessman, David Thodey, 54, has been appointed the new chief executive of Australia’s Telstra Corporation, taking over the role from controversial out-going head, Solomon Trujillo. Thodey, who has been with Telstra since…
Film & TV | Guardian (The)
20 May 2009
From this year’s Cannes Film Festival, director Jane Campion urged her female counterparts — which number only 6 per cent — to “put on their coats of armour” and take on the “old boys’…
Politics and Economics | Earth Times
19 May 2009
Birth rates in New Zealand are the highest since 1991 with the average number per woman at 2.2 births. In the 12 months to March 31 this year, 64,160 babies were born Statistics New…
Business | New Yorker
18 May 2009
“What’s curious about the relative health of the New Zealand banking system is that it’s dominated by four big Australian banks,” writes The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki. “This seems to complicate the oft-floated argument…
Writers | Salon.com
18 May 2009
Brian Boyd, a distinguished professor of English at the University of Auckland, defends fiction in his new book On the Origin of Stories, which offers an overview and defense of Darwinian literary criticism, though…
New Zealand | Droemer Knaur
18 May 2009
A new book on New Zealand by German journalist Ingo Petz Kiwi Paradise takes the author to Palmerston North and the Caitlins, tells the story of a game of ping-pong with poet Sam…
Writers | New York Times (The)
17 May 2009
Grace Cleave, the protagonist of Janet Frame’s 1963 novel Towards Another Summer, is critiqued by columnist and author David Gates in The New York Times’ Sunday Book Review. “Except for David Copperfield, few novels…
Sport General | explorehoward.com
17 May 2009
Professional triathlete Aucklander Terenzo Bozzone, 24, has won the 26th annual Columbia Triathlon. In a stirring fight to the finish, Bozzone overtook Andrew Yoder of Columbia, Pennsylvania near the halfway point of the 10km…
Film & TV | New York Times (The)
15 May 2009
Director Jane Campion, 55, the only woman ever to have won the Palm d’Or award at Cannes for her movie The Piano, is returning to the French film capital with her latest, Bright Star,…
Music | Guardian (The) | Pitchfork
15 May 2009
“There’s something about the antipodes that irritates Britain,” reckons Chills’ frontman Martin Phillipps, on the phone from Dunedin to the Guardian’s Martin Aston. Phillipps tries to explain why New Zealand’s 1980s music scene, one…
Obituaries | Australian (The)
15 May 2009
Opera singer Heather Begg, a mezzo-soprano who last month was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, has died in New South Wales, aged 76. Begg was the first person…
Te Ao Maori | Los Angeles Times
14 May 2009
The traditional Maori performance art of poi, now popular with flame on beaches and at festivals throughout the world, is taking off as a form of exercise in Hollywood with classes available at two…
General | Guardian (The)
14 May 2009
Former Sex Pistol John Lydon is reminding British dairy consumers that “Anchor’s From New Zealand!” preferring UK-produced Country Life butter. Lydon is stirring up trouble with his straplines in an advertisement that attacks the…
General | Wilding Foundation
13 May 2009
New Zealand-born actress, director and producer Anna Wilding has launched a new charity that aims to fill an overlooked gap in the charity and not-for-profit marketplace. The Wilding Foundation awards scholarships to those…
Media | Boston Globe
13 May 2009
Air New Zealand has launched a raunchy new ad campaign called ‘Nothing to Hide‘ in which eight staff members, including chief executive Rob Fyfe, appear in just body paint. Amid these tough days…
Business | Forbes
13 May 2009
Fifty-four-year-old Aucklander Graeme Hart is the wealthiest man in Australasia with an estimated net worth of $4.7 billion. For the first time since Forbes Asia started keeping track of global fortunes, a New Zealander…
Watersports | The Daily
12 May 2009
Hamilton-born Simon Taylor is rowing for the University of Washington’s men’s varsity eight, choosing the Seattle University over the likes of Yale, Princeton and Harvard, and America over the 2012 New Zealand Olympic team….
Writers | Reuters
11 May 2009
Bluff-born journalist Peter Arnett was the VIP guest speaker at a recent function to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Caravelle Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). The Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, who filed…
New Zealand | The SKI Channel
11 May 2009
The seven kilometre route to Treble Cone can be unnerving for American travellers accustomed to ample four-lane roads leading to their favourite resort. The gravel road winding up from Wanaka to the ski-field has…
Wine | Australian (The)
10 May 2009
New Zealand’s world-renowned sauvignon blanc is made up of a combination of aromas including sweet, sweaty passionfruit, asparagus, and cat’s pee according to a six-year study conducted by wine scientists. The tests were carried…
Fashion | Cool Hunting
10 May 2009
In Karen Walker’s 29 eyewear range lookbook “celebrate the sun”, models bare vampire-fangs and pose with sunglasses named “Helter Skelter,” “Voodoo” and “Jonestown”. Shot by American photographer Derek Kettela, known for his clean and…
Medicine/Health | Palm Beach Post
10 May 2009
New Zealand virologist Richard Webby has provided an expert perspective on the swine flu outbreak. Now based in Memphis at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Webby is the head of a WHO Collaborating Centre…
New Zealand | Age (The)
9 May 2009
New Zealand’s oldest city Christchurch is more than punting on the Avon and Octagon wizardry, and boasts plenty to do for the intrepid, including tram, Segway and Antarctica tours, a visit to Fred and…
Film & TV | CBS News
8 May 2009
Christchurch-born adventure TV host and producer Phil Keoghan has just completed another ‘Amazing Race’, this time a 3,500 mile coast-to-coast bike ride across the United States to raise funds for Multiple Sclerosis research. He…
Rugby | Guardian (The)
7 May 2009
Crusaders fullback Blenheim-born Leon MacDonald has signed a two-year deal with the Kintetsu Liners Club in Japan. The 31-year-old said he had signed a deal with Kintetsu and will join the Osaka-based club in…
Visual Arts | New York Times (The)
6 May 2009
Auckland Art Gallery has been gifted 15 major works of art, including Picasso’s “Femme à la résille (Woman in a hairnet),” at a total of $115 million, the largest ever donation to an Australasian…
War & Peace | Londonist
6 May 2009
Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park will grace the fourth plinth for six months in London’s Trafalgar Square, after the Westminster City Council agreed to erecting a statue of the Battle of Britain commander….
Film & TV | Variety Magazine
6 May 2009
The New Zealand film industry is booming with “local helmers poised to soar again”. Whale Rider director Niki Caro’s The Vintners Luck, in which she reteams with her young Whale Rider star Keisha Castle-Hughes,…
Music | Bearded (magazine) | Kansas City Star
6 May 2009
Cambridge-formed rockers The Datsuns have released their fourth album ‘Head Stunts’, an anagram of the group’s name, in the United States where they are currently on tour. Writer Hannah John wrote at the online…
Politics and Economics | Time Magazine
6 May 2009
New Zealand men are a little shorter than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development average and New Zealand women are quite a bit shorter according to the latest report from the Organization, a report…
Z-Files | ABC News
5 May 2009
A feijoa shaped like New Zealand’s national bird, the kiwi has been bought by a Christchurch businessman for $1000 who says he will preserve the quirky fruit. Auckland woman Shavon Green found the freak-of-nature…
Wine | Mercury News
4 May 2009
New Zealand pinot noirs from all over the country featured at the recent World of Pinot Noir seminar in California, with winemaker Clive Jones of Nautilus Estate representing the Marlborough region. New Zealand has…
New Zealand | Commodity Online
4 May 2009
The Buller River, New Zealand’s longest river at 170km, is proving popular with gold panners from around the globe. “Before you get to the area where gold flakes are found you have to cross…
Adrenalin | Victoria Advocate
4 May 2009
Paragliding in Queenstown is, for Victoria Advocate reporter Aprill Brandon, “like jumping out of a plane with only a fourth of your parachute … and in New Zealand where there are no such silly…
Wine | Guardian (The)
3 May 2009
New Zealand wines are in high demand in the UK and at low prices are preferable to their EU equivalents. The greater value for money of New Zealand wines has created a stir in…
Adrenalin | Ski Rebel
3 May 2009
Queenstown is looking at its best ever season this year with record online bookings, cheap airfares and a weak New Zealand dollar promising a booming 2009. NZSki Ltd CEO James Coddington suggested that “the…
Film & TV | Examiner (The)
2 May 2009
Wellington-born actor Karl Urban, 36, is Dr Leonard “Bones” McCoy in director J.J Abrams’ Star Trek and for Urban, “the elephant in the room was to embody DeForest Kelley’s character without falling victim…
Business | Webby Award
1 May 2009
Wellington-based online accounting software provider Xero and Auckland-based mobile advertising agency The Hyperfactory won eight awards at the 13th Annual Webby Awards in New York. The Hyperfactory dominated the mobile advertising category with six…
General | Labor Notes
1 May 2009
Unite is New Zealand’s newest union representing young service sector employees in the fast-food industry, call centres, hotels and the postal service. The Unite union’s barnstorming approach has organised thousands of them, led strikes…
Nature | ABC News
1 May 2009
Victoria University glaciologist Dr Andrew Mackintosh has released findings of a study which shows that southern hemisphere glaciers evolve quite differently to those in the north. “Don’t assume that warming will be uniform over…
Motorsports | Guardian (The) | Red Bull
1 May 2009
New Zealander Brendon Hartley, 19, has been granted his motor racing super-licence and will join Red Bull as a reserve driver, the Formula One team said. The former Palmerston North Boys’ High School student,…