Blog Archives

Growing Wave of NZ Firms Set up Shop in Colorado

Growing Wave of NZ Firms Set up Shop in Colorado

More than two dozen New Zealand firms, many start-ups, have set up shop in the Colorado cities of Denver and Boulder in recent years, making the region a launching pad for their American ambitions,…

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 for The Guardian. Scientists have concluded…

France-Based Susan Alemann off to Drive the Sahara

France-Based Susan Alemann off to Drive the Sahara

New Zealander Susan Alemann and Briton Helen Tait Wright, both in their fifties, are competing in an all-women off-road car rally taking place in the Sahara Desert, Morocco, English-language French news site, The Connexion…

Jessica McCormack’s Diamonds Shine at Met Gala

Jessica McCormack’s Diamonds Shine at Met Gala

American actor Zoë Kravitz is a master of the bejewelled bralette, according to British Vogue journalist Alice Newbold. Her Met Gala 2021 moment was a riff on these looks, only with more diamonds with…

Giant of Cinema Jane Campion Wins in Venice

Giant of Cinema Jane Campion Wins in Venice

New Zealand’s Jane Campion has “underlined her status as one of the leading film-makers of her generation, taking home the best director trophy at the Venice Film Festival”, AFP reports. The Power of the Dog,…

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, I was struck by how…

Fashion Store Owner Jan Patu Promotes the Plunge

Fashion Store Owner Jan Patu Promotes the Plunge

The owner of a fashion boutique in Australia’s biggest outback city, Kalgoorlie, New Zealander Jan Patu has urged people dreaming of starting their own business to take the plunge, saying it is worth the…

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”. Apple died on 5 September…

Anita Chhiba Championing S Asian Cool

Anita Chhiba Championing S Asian Cool

In recent years, there has been a rise in Instagram accounts designed to uplift and inspire marginalised communities, and through these online platforms, such as Diet Paratha, British Vogue’s Parveen Narowalia is starting to…

Behind the Blissed-Out Comeback of Lorde

Behind the Blissed-Out Comeback of Lorde

With this year’s release of her third studio album, Solar Power, pop star Lorde, 24, lights up the cover of the October issue of US Vogue, in nothing but a Schiaparelli breastplate. Grammy winner Lorde, who…

ABs Top Rankings with Win over Pumas

ABs Top Rankings with Win over Pumas

New Zealand snatched South Africa’s world No 1 ranking and placed one hand on the Rugby Championship trophy after subjecting Argentina to a second successive heavy defeat in Brisbane, Reuters reported in an article…

Jane Campion Returns to Film with Locally-Shot Western The Power of the Dog

Jane Campion Returns to Film with Locally-Shot Western The Power of the Dog

The Power of the Dog marks a homecoming for Wellington-born Oscar winner Jane Campion – with a career-first twist, David Canfield reports for Vanity Fair. Campion’s last feature was the 2009 romantic drama Bright Star; she…

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, parents and carers are under…

Auckland Creatives Give Condé Nast a City Tour

Auckland Creatives Give Condé Nast a City Tour

Auckland-based designer Lillie Toogood and husband Dirk Paetzold are helping shape the story of New Zealand now for an international audience. The pair were recently interviewed by Condé Nast Traveler for a column called,…

Jordan Bartlett’s YA Fantasy Novel Cover Released

Jordan Bartlett’s YA Fantasy Novel Cover Released

The cover of New Zealand-born author Jordan Bartlett’s young adult fantasy novel, Contest of Queens, has been revealed, Elise Dumpleton reports for entertainment site, The Nerd Daily. Bartlett, a speech language pathologist and certified…

Tokyo Paralympians Return Victorious

Tokyo Paralympians Return Victorious

New Zealand’s Paralympians have returned from Tokyo with a medal count of 12, including six gold. It was the athletics and swimming show for New Zealand, with all of the medals coming from those…

Aoraki Mt Cook Reveals Last Images of a Mountaineer

Aoraki Mt Cook Reveals Last Images of a Mountaineer

Two decades ago Richard Stiles escaped an avalanche on Aoraki Mount Cook, but friend Steve Robinson wasn’t so lucky. Now the mountain has given up some of its secrets, Tory Shepherd writes for The…

An Excerpt From After the Tampa by Abbas Nazari

An Excerpt From After the Tampa by Abbas Nazari

Fulbright winner Abbas Nazari was one of 433 refugees rescued by New Zealand from the Norwegian cargo ship, Tampa, in 2001 after leaving Indonesia in an unseaworthy boat with his Afghan family. Twenty years…

Squash Player Paul Coll Wins Historic British Title

Squash Player Paul Coll Wins Historic British Title

New Zealand’s Paul Coll, 29, is the Allam British Open champion 2021 producing a formidable performance to come from one game down and get his hands on the iconic trophy, the PSA World Tour…

Rose Matafeo Wants More Diversity in Rom-Coms

Rose Matafeo Wants More Diversity in Rom-Coms

While shooting Season 2 of Starstruck, London-based New Zealander Rose Matafeo, 29, spoke to Harper’s Bazaar about its origin story, her dream guests, and how the stereotypes of rom-coms could do with a shake-up. “I…

Vogue 25 List Includes Chef Margot Henderson

Vogue 25 List Includes Chef Margot Henderson

London-based New Zealander Margot Henderson is one of today’s “most lauded chefs”. She joins Vivian Westwood, the Duchess of Cambridge, Nicola Sturgeon, FKA Twigs, and others, on the annual Vogue 25, which celebrates the…

Andrew Dominik on 20 Years of Chopper

Andrew Dominik on 20 Years of Chopper

Few would be unfamiliar with Chopper – both the criminal, and the movie. The former is Mark Brandon Read, the notorious Australian gangster, bestselling author and serial shit-spinner, who committed many crimes and claimed…

Commonwealth Games Chief Named as Katie Sadleir

Commonwealth Games Chief Named as Katie Sadleir

New Zealander Katie Sadleir, currently general manager of women’s rugby at World Rugby, has been appointed the first female chief executive of the Commonwealth Games Federation, the BBC reports. Sadleir, 57, will play a leading…

Journalist Charlotte Bellis Questions Taliban

Journalist Charlotte Bellis Questions Taliban

New Zealander Charlotte Bellis was the only female journalist at the Taliban’s first official press conference in Afghanistan last week and her bold question to the group of armed men who took over the…

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 The Canberra Times. Prime Minister Jacinda…

Lorde’s Latest Album Too Complex to Be Basic

Lorde’s Latest Album Too Complex to Be Basic

“Ever since people started slinging around the word basic as an insult, delights as disparate as pumpkin-spice lattes, the music of Lizzo, and sunsets have gotten a bad rap. The diss refers to pleasure…

Meet Paralympic Cyclist and Adventurer Steve Bate

Meet Paralympic Cyclist and Adventurer Steve Bate

Having become the first person with visual impairment to scale El Capitan, New Zealand-born Steve Bate, 43, is no stranger to adventure. The Tokyo Paralympic Games are but one challenge on his horizon –…

“Genius” Katherine Mansfield’s “frantic creative flourishing” collected in ‘Strange Bliss’

“Genius” Katherine Mansfield’s “frantic creative flourishing” collected in ‘Strange Bliss’

“One of the genuine, if frequently under-recognised, geniuses of 20th-century literature, Katherine Mansfield wrote the majority of her short stories during a frantic creative flourishing between 1920 and 1922 while suffering from the tuberculosis…

Taika Waititi Behind Triumphant Reservation Dogs

Taika Waititi Behind Triumphant Reservation Dogs

Oscar-winning writer-director New Zealander Taika Waititi is co-creator of the “unforgettable (and caper-filled)” television series Reservation Dogs, a “portrait of a modern-day Native American community”, Inkoo Kang reports for The Washington Post. “From the pilot…

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 New York Times, but other…

Allbirds Puts a Label on Fashion’s Climate Impact

Allbirds Puts a Label on Fashion’s Climate Impact

Allbirds’ sustainability lead Hana Kajimura talks to The Guardian’s Nadra Nittle about why the company, founded by New Zealander Tim Brown and American Joey Zwillinger, uses carbon labelling to raise consumer awareness about the…

Xena’s Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor Reunite

Xena’s Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor Reunite

One of the most shipped couples in TV history, Xena and Gabrielle, are finally getting back together, Dominic Corry writes for Entertainment Weekly. New Zealander Lucy Lawless and American Renee O’Connor, who co-starred on…

Pianist Ben Wilcock’s Fond Edinburgh Connections

Pianist Ben Wilcock’s Fond Edinburgh Connections

When Hamilton-born Ben Wilcock signed up for a Fringe run with New Zealand’s Indian Ink Theatre Company in 2003, he had no idea that Edinburgh would play a recurring role in his career as…

Fortress NZ Looks to Open Borders to Vaccinated

Fortress NZ Looks to Open Borders to Vaccinated

New Zealand, one of the last countries successfully pursuing a zero-tolerance approach to the novel coronavirus, has said it could open its borders for quarantine-free travel early next year. But only the vaccinated need…

Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck Living His Space Dream

Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck Living His Space Dream

Rocket Lab’s founder Invercargill-born Peter Beck talks to Al Jazeera about moon shots, deep space exploration and overcoming dream crushers. Beck, who dreamed of launching rockets ever since he was a child, is a major…

Northland and Christchurch on Greatest Places List

Northland and Christchurch on Greatest Places List

Northland and Christchurch both feature on Time magazine’s third annual list of the World’s Greatest Places, “and while it may not be possible to safely visit each place just yet, they’re…

Nine News Legend Brian Henderson Will Live On

Nine News Legend Brian Henderson Will Live On

Television and radio pioneer Dunedin-born Brian Henderson, who presented Nine’s evening news in Sydney for 46 years, has died, aged 89. Nicole Douglas, of Daily Mail Australia, looks back on his illustrious career. Karl Stefanovic…

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 geologist based at New Zealand’s…

All Blacks Seal Series Win in Bled-Bath

All Blacks Seal Series Win in Bled-Bath

“The Wallabies admit they ‘didn’t respect the ball’ enough against a potent All Blacks outfit that scored more points than ever before against Australia and only increased its aura in a one-sided Bledisloe II…

Wool Plus Aid Plus Big Investors Equals Expansion

Wool Plus Aid Plus Big Investors Equals Expansion

Early on in Lucas Smith’s researching, patenting and manufacturing of merino Wool+Aid bandages, Stuff’s Marta Steeman reports, a local lawyer told him there was no other product in the world like it. But the…

Brothers Ravenhall Swim Whirlpool with Whisky

Brothers Ravenhall Swim Whirlpool with Whisky

Two New Zealand-born UK-based brothers, Alex and Nick Ravenhall, have just completed a crossing of the world’s third largest whirlpool, The Corryvreckan in Scotland, as part of a bid to raise awareness of the…

Connan Mockasin and His Dad Make an Album Together

Connan Mockasin and His Dad Make an Album Together

“New Zealand psych rocker Connan Mockasin’s collaborative album with his dad, Ade, has bad jokes, stream-of-consciousness poetry, and an odd, undeniable appeal,” Pitchfork Raphael Helfand writes in a review of, It’s Just Wind. “It only…

New Zealand Olympians Triumph in Tokyo

New Zealand Olympians Triumph in Tokyo

New Zealand is basking in the glow of its greatest ever Olympic medal haul, departing Tokyo with 20 medals – seven gold, six silver and seven bronze, and a new champion, Lisa Carrington, who…

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 for The Guardian. Inside the boxes…

4-Day Week Spurs Productivity

4-Day Week Spurs Productivity

In 2018, New Zealand company Perpetual Guardian gave each of its 230 employees a day off each week. After the eight-week trial, it reported a 20 per cent jump in productivity and made a…

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, and one he took for…

Deep Dive into Peter Jackson’s Beatles Doco

Deep Dive into Peter Jackson’s Beatles Doco

“It’s the Beatles as none would ever see or hear them again – their last live performance as a group, 30 January 1969. It’s also the Beatles as none of us, 52 years on,…

Mayonaize x Indian Collab Tattoo-Inspired

Mayonaize x Indian Collab Tattoo-Inspired

The first of three in an Indian x No Regrets collaboration, New Zealand-born Melbourne-based tattoo artist Mayonaize’s handiwork has come to life on the Indian Motorcycle Chief, Alex Strange reports for UK motorcycle website, Visordown. Known…

Super Choice NZ-Style Ice Cream Hits Boston

Super Choice NZ-Style Ice Cream Hits Boston

When American August Radbill visited New Zealand for the first time a few years ago, he became enamoured with our real fruit ice cream, “a simple, ultra-creamy style that swirls together a scoop of…

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 will spend five months at…

Conductor Gemma New Returns in Demand to US

Conductor Gemma New Returns in Demand to US

New Zealand-born conductor Gemma New and Malaysian pianist Tengku Irfan, “among the leading young lights in the international classical music world”, worked together in July as guest artists at the Aspen Music Festival. Irfan performed…

HUM Ups Visibility of New Zealand Artists Abroad

HUM Ups Visibility of New Zealand Artists Abroad

New Zealand doesn’t have a dedicated cultural diplomacy wing like the British Council or the Goethe-Institut. To help amplify New Zealand visual art on the global stage, Pauline Autet established online platform Contemporary HUM….

NZ Speed Flyers Swoop in Extreme Sport Doco

NZ Speed Flyers Swoop in Extreme Sport Doco

New Zealand speed flyers Jamie Lee and Malachi Templeton are two extreme-sports thrill-seekers who feature in the documentary, Reset, which is directed by Frenchman Thierry Donard, considered “the Fellini of adventure film-making”. “Speed flying,” according to…

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 a sense of belonging and…

See-Level Harnesses the Power of VR for the Seasick

See-Level Harnesses the Power of VR for the Seasick

Christchurch-based start-up See-Level may have found a seasickness cure using virtual reality to provide relief for sufferers. Yachting World’s Will Bruton reports on the innovation. See-Level founder Dudley Jackson, originally from the Isle of…

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 generations,” Vogue Business sustainability editor…