Turning on the ignition
“You know what you’re going to get with Shihad — punchy hard rock, deep grooves, industrial riffing and Jon Toogood’s hypnotic vocals,” The Border Mail’s writes in a review of the band’s latest album,…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Medals on Wheels
Dunedin cyclist Alison Shanks, 26, claimed New Zealand’s first gold medal in the women’s 3m individual pursuit final at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi earning glory over the strong Australian team. The 29 world…
Urban takes on Willis
Actor Karl Urban, 38, plays the role of a CIA agent in the movie Red, which is based on the comic book limited series of the same name and which was released this month…
Indian on Show
Burt Munro’s world famous Indian Scout motorbike, used to set land-speed records in the 196s, was on display at October’s Oildorado Days Rails to Trails Car Show in Taft, California. In 1967, on the…
One of The Dudes
Singer/songwriter Ian Morris, the frontman of Th’ Dudes has died in Napier, aged 53. Morris formed the band with school friends Peter Urlich and Dave Dobbyn in 1975 but left the group in 1980…
Their Own chapter
Dunedin trio Die! Die! Die! is currently touring Australia and are profiled in The Sydney Morning Herald. “Die! Die! Die! is feeling right at home on seminal record label Flying Nun,” Craig Mathieson writes….
Minnesota Exchange
Wellington teenager Madeleine Kwapisz is on a student exchange student studying at Fulda High School (FHS) in Minnesota and is profiled in the local newspaper. Kwapisz, 16, attends Wellington High School and will have…
Perfect introduction
“If you’ve yet to become acquainted with Janet Frame, one of New Zealand’s finest literary exports, then you are in for a treat,” Eden Carter Wood writes in a review of The Daylight and…
Revenue-neutral process
“Killing the lowly was a painless, revenue-neutral adventure for New Zealand, according to a finance official from that country,” Bryn Weese writes for the Toronto Sun as Canada looks at…
Old Market Memories
New Zealand-born Percy Roche, who owned one of the first shops at Omaha’s Old Market shopping district in Nebraska and who is even credited for naming the area, has died in Nelson, aged 88….
Ivy League purchase
A 4ha dairy farm south of Auckland has been purchased by Harvard University for US$2.7 million. The Cambridge institution best known for churning out top college graduates bought the farm with 6 cows as…
Spirited Win for NZ
The Black Caps have been awarded the Spirit of Cricket Award at the recent LG ICC Awards celebration in Bengaluru, India. In total, this is the third time New Zealand has won this award…
Clean Patience
“Legendary masters of pop” Dunedin band The Clean played Portland’s Holocene in October on the final stop of their seven-date US tour. “For all the waiting we’ve done for the band, the patience finally…
Aggressive and winsome
The Naked and Famous song “Young Blood, which recently became the first by a New Zealand band to reach No 1 in their home country for 2 years, is ecstatic, uplifting, thumping, pumping psych-dazed,…
Shaky Lessons
In the aftermath of the earthquake that rocked Christchurch on September 4, an Arizona State University (ASU) geotechnical engineer says the US should learn from what New Zealanders did to withstand a recent powerful…
Who is the Typical Kiwi?
An international study on cultural stereotypes, led by the US National Institutes of Health, has concluded that there is no relation between supposed cultural characteristics and the actual traits identified in real…
Complete with diamond
Jeweller Michael Hill is offering a 22-carat princess-cut diamond to the “world’s best couple” in an international competition which will be launched later this month at New York’s Rockefeller Centre. American reality TV performer…
Roundhouse drama
Wellington seven-piece dub/reggae group Fat Freddy’s Drop played a sold-out gig at the Bristol Academy and at Brighton’s Concorde2 in September on their European tour. Their live experience is now available in their latest…
Wild Frontier Music
New Zealand-born author Garth Cartwright’s More Miles Than Money: Journeys Through American Music has been released in the United States. Cartwright describes the inspiration for the book in the Wall Street Journal: “Growing up…
Los Angeles Win
New Zealander Bevan Docherty, 33, has won the 11th annual Los Angeles Triathlon finishing in 1 hour, 5 minutes and 21 seconds, which was 13 seconds ahead of runner-up Javier Gomez of Spain. A…
Return post-change
Crowded House head to South Africa in October performing concerts in Cape Town and Durban before ending their tour in Johannesburg on the 3th. Neil Finn said he and the band have fond memories…
Best of the vintage
Wellington’s vintage clothing store Ziggurat Fashion Emporium on Cuba Street is recommended in the Guardian by readers who name their favourite places to stock up on retro outfits and vintage pieces, in the UK…
To India for milk
New Zealand dairy conglomerate Fonterra is in talks with Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd. to set up a dairy farm in India. The project may cost as much as 1 billion rupees ($225 million)…
On Board Solo
Rob Thomson, 28, a Canterbury University arts graduate from Christchurch, has completed the longest unassisted skateboard journey ever made, travelling for 462 days over 12,000km from Leysin, Switzerland across Europe, North America and China…
Common Goal in Delhi
Gymnast Misha Koudinov, 19, hopes he can help New Zealand take its first ever men’s team medal at the 19th Commonwealth Games in Delhi. “My goal is to make all of my routines as…
2025 and smoke-free
New Zealand has unveiled an ambitious plan to make the country smoke-free by 225, wiping out smoking in all public places. The only other country with a similar policy is Finland, which plans to…
Merino for New Yorkers
Icebreaker will open its first store in Manhattan, New York in early December. The 25-square-foot SoHo store will be Icebreaker’s flagship. The new TOUCH_LAB retail store will showcase the complete Icebreaker line from its…
Wilderness gold
“Just like the safari camp and the ski chalet, the New Zealand lodge is a triumph of reinvention, the transformation of a utilitarian wilderness refuge into tourism gold,” writes The Sydney Morning Herald’s Max…
Edgy roots an asset
Actor Karl Urban, 38, is happy to commute between Auckland and Los Angeles saying that his New Zealand roots are proving to be an asset to his craft. Unlike Hollywood-based actors, those from Australia…
Apprentice Acumen
Paloma Vivanco-Coutts, 29, is the first New Zealander to appear on reality television show The Apprentice UK. Peruvian-born Vivanco-Coutts has been living in London since 2006. She recently married a New Zealander and is…
Woods’ own hill
New Zealand entrepreneur Nick Wood, co-creator of internet service provider iHug, which sold for NZ$82 million in 23, is currently in the United States where he has purchased Teton Pass Ski Resort in Wyoming…
Wooing the shuttle
Auckland badminton player Joe Wu, 24, who currently holds the triple national title holder in the sport, is representing the country at the 21 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Originally born in Taiwan, Joe immigrated…
Eclecticism for Finns
The one-woman band Annabel Alpers aka Bachelorette stopped off in Helsinki, Finland as part of her European tour playing at the city’s Club YK. The Helsinki Times wrote: “The live music scene of Helsinki…
Northern resonance
Northern resonance Musician Tim Finn is playing a “best-of” show in Cairns, his first show in the northern Australian city in nearly 3 years. Finn says he’ll be performing music from his 29 album…
Woods’ Own Hill
New Zealand entrepreneur Nick Wood, co-creator of internet service provider iHug, which sold for NZ$82 million in 23, is currently in the United States where he has purchased Teton Pass Ski Resort in Wyoming…
Winning waves
State science company Wave Energy Technology New Zealand (WET-NZ) has won a grant of more than NZ$2 million from the United States Government to develop a wave power prototype design. WET-NZ has developed a…
Peak Performance
New Zealand has paid tribute to Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay with their Commonwealth Games logo and unique team-identifier, ‘2928 Hillary and Tenzing’, the figure being the height of Mt Everest. “It’s…
Pleasingly solid week
New Zealand Fashion Week may have lacked in sponsor capital, but it was pleasingly solid in terms of creativity,” The Australian’s fashion editor Georgina Safe writes. “Most of the designers who were in the…
On the Small Screen
Filmmaker Jane Campion has been commissioned by the BBC to work on a television series thriller set in New Zealand called Top of the Lake. The series will follow the disappearance of a five…
Safety indoors
The legislative changes introduced in New Zealand de-criminalising adult prostitution have been a model for Canadian judges to do the same, with courts recently ruling Canada’s adult prostitution laws unconstitutional. Justice Susan Himel considered…
Cool but not too cool
The Flight of the Conchords appeared as camp counsellors in the premiere episode of season 22 of The Simpsons which went to air in the US in September. In the episode, titled…
Tasman trounce
New Zealanders have done it again, bemoans Huon Hooke writing for The Sydney Morning Herald. “They have trounced us in the Tri Nations,” Hooke continues. “Not at rugby but wine. It’s becoming…
Lifetime achiever
Jeweller Doug Erkkila, 83, has won the inaugural Jewellers Association of New Zealand’s (JANZ) Hall of Fame and Lifetime Member Award. When accepting the award, the jovial and popular Erkkila was, unusually, lost for…
Compressed innovation
Fisher & Paykel Appliances (FPA) has claimed a technology breakthrough that will boost the energy efficiency of home refrigerators by 3 per cent and increase their storage capacity. The company has designed a revolutionary…
Land Purchase Backlash
New Zealand plans to tighten controls on foreign land purchases amid fears that the Chinese acquisition of local farms may not be in the country’s strategic interests, in particular after a fierce public backlash…
Seeing the small
University of Otago scientists have made a “major physics breakthrough”, developing a technique to capture the image of a single atom, the Rubidium 85. The process takes a matter of seconds, starting by dramatically…
Icy southern beauty
“New Zealand is the land of all things possible,” Josh Green writes in a travel piece for the San Jose Mercury News. “It’s one of those places where you would like to take a…
Coup for the shweeb
Internet giant Google is granting Rotorua-based company Shweeb Holdings a sum of $1 million to develop a pedal-system monorail for use in “traffic-clogged, skyscraper-strewn cities”. The company has been operating a monorail at an…
Picnic in Boulder
New Zealand dance troupe EyeSoar Performance opened the second day of the weekend Boulder Fall Festival in Colorado with a 3-minute modern-day circus act called, “A Delightful Show”. Shown entirely through a narrative dance,…
Scented feathers
Canterbury University associate professor Jim Briskie is hoping to develop a deodorant for New Zealand’s native birds to stop them falling prey to introduced predators. Briskie says it appears New Zealand birds suffer from…
Calling All Hobbits
An advertisement in Wellington’s Dominion Post has called for diminutive actors to audition for the parts of Middle Earth hobbits in Peter Jackson’s prequel to the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy. Roles for…
On Loan to Barnsley
Eighteen-year-old Aucklander Chris Wood has signed with South Yorkshire’s Barnsley Football Club on a three-month emergency deal. The 6ft 2ins tall New Zealand international, who is a striker for West Bromwich Albion, played in…
Black in the sky
Air New Zealand’s chief executive Rob Fyfe revealed images of the company’s design for a black domestic jet aircraft in Sydney this month. Fyfe said: “In celebration of Air New Zealand’s long running support…
Future Focus
The “All Blacks looking good, and that’s a problem” headlines a New York Times story profiling the team ahead of the 211 Rugby World Cup. Despite all the team’s previous upsets, New Zealand…
Exciting Appointment
Huntly-born rugby league half-back Jeremy Smith, 29, who currently plays for the UK team Salford City Reds, has signed a one-year contract with another British club, the Wakefield Trinity Wildcats. Smith, who can play…
Centenary Spread
Marmite is celebrating its 1th year in New Zealand with a competition for New Zealanders living overseas to win one of 1 one-way flights home from anywhere in the world this December. Hayley…
