Speed Demon Wins In US
New Zealand Paralympic skier Adam Hall, 25, was at Copper Mountain, Colorado for the 2012-13 IPC Nor-Am Cup, where he won two silver medals in the men’s standing competition. Dunedin-born Hall says he likes…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Not Just Any Caravan
New Zealand architectural and interior design firm W2 have designed a fold-out luxury caravan “unlike anything we’ve come across before,” Gizmag’s Loz Blain writes. “The Romotow looks a bit like a high-tech…
Big Ears Of The Insect World
The iconic New Zealand weta has ears similar to those of a whale, researchers at the University of Auckland have found. The ears of this 8cm-long Auckland tree weta are the white disks that…
Woman Alone
“A mythic quest involving fellowship and solitude; the startling beauty, by turns lush and austere, of a wild land: if you now have visions of The Hobbit floating in your heads, please banish them,”…
Retro Ads Bank On Paradise
Five vintage New Zealand travel advertisements feature in Jaunted this week. Among them the ‘Fly TEAL’ ad, which “pushes the airline’s popular Coral Route, which once flew passengers to the tropical South Pacific Islands…
Bond Gets Nastier
Researchers from the University of Otago have analysed 22 James Bond films and discovered that violent acts in the films have more than doubled since Dr No in 1962. In the first 007 film,…
Lord of the Rings was Perfect
“The Lord of the Rings was the work of a filmmaker perfectly in tune with his source material. Its too-muchness — the encyclopedic detail, the pseudoscholarly exposition, the soaring allegory, the punishing length —…
Get Out The Velvet
Fashion blogger New Zealander Laura Allard-Fleischl’s take on velvet makes her one of MTV Style’s ‘Bloggers of the Week’. “, is getting back to velvet’s roots in her dark…
Discerning Types
Melanie Lynskey, 35, is one of ten Indie actors on the verge of mainstream, according to Loren DiBlasi writing for Highbrow Magazine. “In 1994, the New Zealand native won raves for her performance alongside…
Long Line Of Macs
New Zealander John McIntosh can trace his family lineage to the inventor of the raincoat, Charles MacKintosh and to John Mackintosh, the inventor of Mackintosh’s Toffee. McIntosh is now following the path of McIntoshes…
Home On The Range
A Queenstown detached home with “views of the mountains, deer roaming nearby, and hills that change colour with the seasons,” is the Wall Street Journal’s ‘House of the Day’. On the market for NZ$4.35…
Made From Milk Honey
Broken Shed vodka, which is distilled from whey, is “vodka for the vodka haters”, according to one of the Huffington Post’s editors. “When we caught wind of a vodka being made from…
Distinguished Man Of Figures
Wellington-born applied mathematician Professor Bruce Morton has died in Melbourne aged 86. Under his leadership, Monash, where he worked for 25 years, became the leading university for its atmospheric science program in Australia. Professor…
Strange Volcanic Goings-On
A peculiar lava spine between 20 and 30m across has appeared in the crater of White Island. Wired’s Eric Klemetti is “not even sure how to describe it.” “The lava forming it has to…
Holding It In For A World Record
Free divers, like New Zealander William Trubridge, 32, are taking extreme sports to new depths, while ever mindful of not being shark bait, reports The Sydney Morning Herald’s Emma Partridge. Trubridge continues to hold…
Improvising Love In NY
New Zealand filmmaker Florian Habicht, 30, lets the people direct his tale of romance in the Big Apple. In New York he fell in love every few minutes, Habicht says. “Like with life, with…
Knock Out For Life
New Zealand All Black and kickboxer, Hastings-born Hika Elliot, 26, unbeaten in 62 fights, will square off against Australian league player Paul Gallen in the Fight For Life boxing charity event in Auckland on…
Where Do We Come From
A two-year study, called “The longest journey — from Africa to Aotearoa”, could provide a snapshot of the lineage of all human history, according to biological anthropologist Lisa Matisoo-Smith, who is leading the research…
Cooking Stones With The Force
Hangi rocks could reveal the magnetic history of the Earth going back hundreds of years, new research from Victoria University suggests. The findings, which were presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical…
Boyens’ Cinematic Adventure
Asked one day in 1997 if, as a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, she might have any interest in helping out friends and fellow New Zealanders Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh adapt The Lord of…
Hong Kong’s Fashion Heroine
New Zealand-born fashion writer Jasmine Webster, 29, who is based in Hong Kong and is the face of Dress Me blog, talks to the South China Morning Post about her obsession with dressing up…
Everyday Finery
Designer Karen Walker caught up with Vogue Australia to talk about her new Diamond jewellery collection. “The inspiration behind all our jewellery designs is jewellery for modern occasions,” Walker said. “Karen Walker Jewellery…
Capital Freebie Tourism Activities
“Whether you’re a fan making a pilgrimage to the city where the films were made, or you have no interest whatsoever in dwarfs and goblins, there’s plenty to do in Wellington. For free,”…
Super Plan Most Innovative
The New Zealand Superannuation Fund has been named the world’s most innovative sovereign fund, winning the prestigious Sovereign Wealth Fund category in the 2012 aiCIO Industry Innovation Awards in New York. Chairman Gavin…
Canines Take To The Wheel
Dogs rescued by the SPCA are being taught to drive in a campaign to show how intelligent canines, and even those abandoned, really are. Astonishingly, it took three dogs just eight weeks to master…
Player Of The Year
All Black Dan Carter has been named player of the year in London at the 2012 International Rugby Board (IRB) awards, with Steve Hansen winning coach of the year and the All Blacks the…
Very Clean At The Helm
New Zealand is the least corrupt country on earth, says Germany-based Transparency International. Overall, the top spots are occupied mostly by European countries, with the exception of New Zealand, Singapore at No 5…
Balance In The Workplace
“YWCA Auckland and DDB New Zealand lay out the ridiculousness of the gender pay gap reality with a straightforward TV spot that shows you how absurd it is for people to be treated differently,…
Neighbours Row On Whereabouts
If a New Zealander is called an Australian, is it a racial insult, ponders The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf. “As an outsider, I won’t pretend a sophisticated understanding of the cultural relationship between Australia and…
Jackson Our Resident Wonka
“With his first of three Hobbit films, An Unexpected Journey, Peter Jackson daringly attempts the same manoeuvre , aspiring to capture the essence of his…
Jackson’s Capital Effect
“No part of New Zealand has been more changed by Jackson’s movies, and by the growing film-production industry they sparked here, than the city of Wellington,” Michael Joseph Gross writes in the December…
It’s About Flying People
Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe is one of 20 people profiled in this month’s Monocle, in a feature which explores who “would be ideal collaborators.” “Make sure you know who to call…
Foiled By Fourth Best
New Zealand, the world’s No 1-ranked side, was defeated by England 38-21 at Twickenham, bringing the All Blacks’ unbeaten run of 20 back-to-back wins to an end. It was England’s first win over New…
Banking on Dancing Colours
Christchurch-born Len Lye’s “deliriously jazzy 1930s animation for the Post Office Savings Bank shows public information films needn’t be dull,” Judith Mackrell writes for the Guardian. “The colours might look late-60s-psychedelic; some of the…
Collected Stories of Our Time
Auckland University has launched the first anthology of New Zealand literature bringing together fiction and non-fiction, poetry and prose into one volume. The 1184-page Anthology of New Zealand Literature was edited by Jane Stafford…
Nebraska’s Prize Prospect
Huskers point guard prospect New Zealander Tai Webster is considered the prize of Nebraska coach Tim Miles’ first recruiting class. ESPN.com rates Webster as a four-star recruit with the following summation: “Webster is a…
Coral Sea Island Undiscovered
Pictorial librarian at Auckland Museum Shaun Higgins has identified the origin of a cartographic error, as a 19th-century whaling ship, which first ‘spotted’ the non-existent Sandy Island in 1876. It was a remarkable story:…
Activist Paddling
New Zealand-born Billabong surfer Dave “Rasta” Rastovich, 32, has paddled 350km from Taranaki to Piha to raise awareness about seabed mining off New Zealand’s coast. Rastovich, who lives in Australia, has been drumming up…
Mementoes of Freedom
Auckland-born photographer Paul Nathan’s new book Generation Ink: Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was launched at Saatchi & Saatchi in New York on 29 November. Generation Ink features 55 images of a “generation of 20-somethings…
Murdoch Memorialised
Before taking care of business in Wales, the All Blacks made a pilgrimage to the hotel where one of their own went down fighting before disappearing without trace, the Daily Mail reports. They went…
Fans Flock to Spot the Stars
One hundred thousand Hobbit fans descended on Wellington’s Courtenay Place to catch a glimpse of their favourite Tolkien character strutting the 500m-long red carpet ahead of the world premiere first installment of the trilogy,…
New Zealand: ‘It really is Paradise’ Says Bollywood’s Vidya Balan
Vidya Balan, one of Bollywood’s biggest superstars, rates New Zealand as her favourite place. She spoke to Filmfare, India’s leading film magazine, about her trip and shared some of her New Zealand photos with…
Our Inimitable All Black Captain
Captain “fantastic” Richie McCaw has led the “all-conquering All Blacks” to a 20th successive match without defeat beating Wales 33-10 at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff. No player in world rugby is better in…
Russia Loses A True Champion
“The world of finance offers bigger stages, but none of its actors has so captivated an audience as Jennings did in Russia,” Bernie Sucher of investment bank ATON, writes for The Moscow Times…
Waiting for Nature to Move in
Absolute silence on the meltwater lake at the base of the Tasman Glacier surprises West Australia Today’s Elissa Blake, who notes the lack of birds and trees, on “the rough, rocky shores of the…
We, Family
New Zealand-born director Barnaby Southcombe, 40, has cast his mother, English actress Charlotte Rampling, 66, in the title role of his latest film, I, Anna. The adapted screenplay was written by Southcombe based on…
Directing the Big Guns
Wellington-born director Andrew Dominik, 45, who has lived in Australia most of his life, said it took 45 minutes via text message to hammer out a deal with Brad Pitt to produce their latest…
Metal Work Wins Steel Oscar
Inventors of the world’s first container tilter, New Zealand company A-Ward, have won this year’s Swedish Steel Prize for the MiSlide, a flexible system for compressing and packing metallic scrap in containers….
Film Moving Economy
“For better or worse, Key’s government has taken extreme measures that have linked its fortunes to some of Hollywood’s biggest pictures, making this country of 4.4 million people, slightly more than the city…
Unexpected Tourism Drawcard
The international publicity from recent eruptions at Tongariro’s Te Maari crater may actually be helpful, according to local tourism operators. Te Maari crater erupted for about five minutes last week, emitting a plume of…
Filmmakers Galore
When it comes to supporting fledgling filmmakers, part of New Zealand’s challenge is the sheer number of them. Inspired by Peter Jackson’s success, young people are swarming film schools here. Weta Digital itself is…
Financial Literacy for Kids
New Zealander Lucas Remmerswaal, 52, is in the United States on a mission to increase the financial literacy of children through the lessons of American business magnate Warren Buffett. Remmerswaal is in North America…
Irish Coaching Role for Smith
New Zealander Darren Smith has been named the new Ireland women’s hockey national coach. Napier-born Smith, 39, takes up the role following six years as assistant coach to the New Zealand men’s team who…
Tolkien Enamoured
This month, Telegraph readers named New Zealand as their favourite country in the world. Royd Tolkien, great-grandson of the writer, is equally besotted. “When I was eight I fell in love for the first…
Change At the Top
Former AIA head New Zealander Mark Wilson, 46, has been appointed chief executive of Britain’s second-largest insurer, Aviva. Wilson ran AIA – the Asian arm of US insurer AIG – between 2006 and 2010….
Natives Thrive in California
New Zealand native plants and trees are thriving in San Francisco with both the San Francisco and University of California botanical gardens boasting impressive specimens of rimu, kauri and others. “One has even become…
