Book award winner
Auckland historian Dame Judith Binney’s Encircled Lands has been awarded the New Zealand Post Book of the Year. Encircled Lands explores the history of the Tuhoe people’s journey for autonomy. Dame Binney received $15,…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Speed Queen on Salt
Christchurch-born Miriam MacMillan is the third New Zealander and first New Zealand woman to earn a “2 MPH hat”, which she claimed driving a 2.1 litre Honda CRX at the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah,…
Ride of Your Life
Heli-biking in Queenstown is “an exhilarating experience and a must for anyone visiting” the southern city, recommends the Telegraph’s Tarquin Cooper. “Visit New Zealand for rest, relaxation and rugby; unless, you’re a die-hard who…
Inspired in Jodphur
Author of young adult novel The Bone Tiki, New Zealander David Hair, will launch his latest book Pyre of Queens, published by Penguin Books India, in Bangalore. Hair, who lives in New Dehli with…
Reassuring the fans
Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson is optimistic The Hobbit will still go ahead “sometime soon” and that Warners was “making progress untangling the MGM situation”. In an interview with the Dominion Post, Jackson…
Atom Spy Claims
New Zealand-born DNA pioneer and Nobel Prize recipient Professor Maurice Wilkins was investigated by MI5 as a possible atom spy who had passed US nuclear secrets to the Russians. Security service files recently released…
Ever the cameraman
Christchurch-raised film instructor Ian McIver, currently an adjunct instructor at Solano Community College and Napa Valley College in California, is leading a 12-class film discussion series at the Cameo Cinema in St Helena. The…
She Wants to Go to Chelsea
New Zealand women’s football captain Hayley Moorwood, 26, has joined English club Chelsea FC. Moorwood, who was also attracting interest from Chelsea’s London rivals Arsenal, was thrilled at the signing. “Joining a club like…
Smiling Assassin Woos Investors
John Key, nicknamed “the smiling assassin” during his time at global exchange in London, is now using his trademark beam to woo billionaire immigrants, foreign investors and high-end tourists according to Bloomberg Markets magazine….
Celebrating clumsiness
“Maori get pigeonholed into the idea they’re spiritual and telling stories like Whale Rider and Once were Warriors, quite serious stuff, but we’re pretty funny people and we never really have had an opportunity…
Fascinating portrait
South Auckland-set film Matariki, directed by Reefton-born Michael Bennett, has been selected to screen at the opening weekend of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in the Contemporary World Cinema section on September 11….
Real farms promoted
A large selection of New Zealand farmland, businesses and property will be on display in North Yorkshire in October, as part of a national road show from real estate company, Bayleys Realty Global. Bayleys…
Studying the Drain
New Zealand’s best and brightest expatriates are costing the country US$1, each through foregone tax and costs of government services such as education, according to World Bank research. Though returning New Zealand expats can…
Smeltz to Turkey
New Zealand striker Shane Smeltz, 29, is leaving Australian football team Gold Coast United having signed a two-year deal with Turkish Süper Lig club Gençlerbirligi S.K. The reigning A-League Golden Boot played in United’s…
Death of a genius
Thames-born scientist and obstetrician Sir Graham Collingwood Liggins has died at the age of 84. Liggins was described as one of New Zealand’s greatest scientists who undertook groundbreaking obstetrical research. Known to his friends…
Sneaker tapping tunes
Auckland electro-dance duo Kids of 88 has released their debut album Sugarpills. “Kids of 88 show Flight of the Conchords how to get it done, and done,” Brandon Diaz writes for American music…
Wine for football fans
New Zealand’s Clark Estate in the Awatere Valley has produced an official wine for the Watford Football Club or the Hornets, as they are known in the UK. Lifelong Hornets fan Peter Clark, 61,…
Hero at the crease
“It’s remarkable that a biography had not been written on one of New Zealand’s most distinctive sports figures before now,” writes The New Zealand Herald’s David Leggat after the launch of Richard Boock’s The…
Tri-Nations Clinched
New Zealand has won the Tri-Nations series beating South Africa 29-22 in Johannesburg. The hosts had led 22-17 up until the 78th minute when All Blacks skipper Richie McCaw scored a controversial try in…
In search of the real deal
“When you’re a New Zealander, or ‘Kiwi’, as they like to call themselves, you seem to take that rite-of-passage world trip for a year or two — sleeping in hostels and living out of…
Stopping the sales
New Zealand group Save Our Farms, who say local farms should not be sold to overseas investors, have launched an advertising campaign to stop foreigners buying up agricultural land. The campaign was rolled out…
In between memories
Auckland-born novelist James McNeish, 78, is returning to the country having been in Berlin for the past year working on a memoir. McNeish will travel home to New Zealand via Australia where he is…
Buckle up team
A number of All Blacks, coach Graham Henry and rugby commentator Tony Johnson feature in Air New Zealand’s latest in-flight safety video. Henry, a former secondary school headmaster, playing the role of captain,…
Laughing at the edge
Director Taika Waititi says the humour in Boy is both colonial-outpost and self-deprecating Maori humour. “You’ve just got to laugh at awkward, crazy, painful stuff when you’ve been banished to the nether regions of…
Soul on the Outside
Award-winning tattooist Te Tangitu Netana, 37, famed for inking UK popstar Robbie Williams, is offering his services to residents of Colchester in Essex until the end of August. Netana is currently in the area…
Hands Like Wings
Lemi Ponifasio’s 29 work Birds with Skymirrors, which was performed by his company MAU at this year’s Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, is awarded four stars by Guardian reviewer Alice Bain. “With Skymirrors, fills…
Song from both worlds
New Zealand singer-songwriter Maisey Rika is currently touring Australia performing songs from her debut album Tohu. Often compared to Indie Arie and Sade, Rika sings in both Maori and English because she was brought…
Whale debate continues
Sea Sheppard anti-whaler Pete Bethune’s Tokyo trial “earlier this year for interfering with Japan’s annual whale hunt dominated New Zealand media, and direct action at sea connects with long-standing cultural currents to do with…
Chaucerian find
University of Otago English lecturer Dr Simone Celine Marshall has discovered a previously unidentified edition of the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, sometimes referred to as the father of English literature, and best known for…
Undead and on cover
True Blood star New Zealand-born actress Anna Paquin, 28, who plays waitress Sookie Stackhouse in the hit show, features on the latest issue of Rolling Stone, bloodied and naked in the arms of co-stars,…
Medals and a Record
Seventeen-year-old swimmer Sophie Pascoe has won four medals at the 21 IPC Swimming World Championships in Eindhoven, Netherlands, with her first gold in the women’s 1m butterfly and in world record time. She knocked…
We Must Talk About It
New Zealand’s chief coroner Judge Neil MacLean has made “an impassioned plea for people to speak more openly about suicide calling for a re-think of laws and self imposed restrictions on what Coroners can…
Olympic gold for Barclay
Southland teenager Aaron Barclay has won gold in the men’s individual triathlon and silver with Australasian team-mate Maddie Dillon in the team race at the first Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. Barclay, 17, who…
Rave reviews for app
Since launching a free iPad application, which went live on July 23, APN News and Media-owned The New Zealand Herald “has earned near-rave reviews, averaging four-star ratings on Apple’s iTunes site,” The Australian’s Lara…
Taking the Sting Out
Gisborne-based Dive Tatapouri is defending the reputation of the short-tailed stingray, offering plucky tourists the opportunity to hand-feed the sea creatures. “They’re incredibly good-natured,” owner Dean Savage says. “It’s extremely rare for them to…
Thrill-seeker Flips
With this “insanely-extended Hart Attack backflip” (above), Palmerston North daredevil Levi Sherwood, 19, won the fifth stop of the Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour, held at Battersea Power Station in London. This is Sherwood’s…
Teenage asthma findings
A team from the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand have found that teenagers who regularly took paracetamol were more than twice as likely to have asthma. A study of more than 3, teenagers,…
Innovators named
Ryan Sanders of Christchurch-based Haka Tours, Rhythm and Vines’ Hamish Pinkham and Ben Knill of interactive online holiday planner Beek, have been named finalists in this year’s Pacific Asia Travel Association Young Tourism Entrepreneur…
Woolly takeover
Sheep have replaced hobbits at The Shire in Matamata. The rolling green pastures and hobbit houses that provided the backdrop for director Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy were originally going to be…
On Race and Harawira
Senior Lecturer at Victoria University’s School of English Film Theatre and Media Studies Dr Alice Te Punga Somerville discusses Maori party MP Hone Harawira’s recent comments about intermarriage in the Guardian. “Harawira stated to…
Colostrum for all
Taranaki-raised biochemist Dr Andrew Keech is the founding and managing director of Phoenix-based APS BioGroup, which adds bovine colostrum to dietary supplements in order to boost the human immune system. Keech and American Les…
Calm in Victory
Scrabble master Nigel Richards, 43, has won the National Scrabble Championship in Dallas. The Malaysia-based security analyst played 31 games, winning with a 25-6 record. Richards is known for his photographic memory and for…
Search for Sutcliffe
Attempts to find and relocate the ashes of cricketing great Bert Sutcliffe have failed because no-one recorded where they had been buried nine years ago. Sutcliffe’s ashes were buried at the Carisbrook ground in…
In Defence of Milk
New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra Cooperative Group Ltd. is defending products sold to China two years after the 28 milk scandal, in which at least six children died and 3, were sickened from milk…
Wine Search Simplified
New Zealander Martin Brown’s search-engine wine-searcher.com “has done more to transform that commercial landscape than any other, affecting every facet of the way the wine business is conducted, certainly in this country and…
End of an Era
New Zealand businessman and former chairman of Fletcher Challenge, Sir Ronald Ramsay Trotter, who was a vocal advocate of economic deregulation and personified big business in this country for nearly three decades, has died…
World Cup Promotion
Ambassador to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay Darryl Dunn is promoting Rugby World Cup 211 holiday packages in New Zealand. The concept the New Zealand Embassy is trying to instil in the Argentine market is…
Young star shines
With director Taika Waititi’s film Boy opening throughout Australia on August 26, The Age talks to 11-year-old lead James Rolleston about his first ever acting gig. Waititi had already chosen a lead for Boy,…
Pure Advice for Coast
Former CEO of New Zealand Tourism and creator of the 100% Pure New Zealand campaign, George Hickton, was the keynote speaker at a gathering of 3 tourism sector operators making up the new Australian…
Fruit Ban Overturned
Australia’s 89-year ban on imports of New Zealand apples is illegal, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has ruled, ordering Canberra to comply with international commerce law. In a 548-page verdict, the WTO rejected Australia’s…
Recalling Rousseau
New Zealand-made documentary This Way of Life is a “gloriously photographed film” — “a story of a Maori family catapulted beyond mere portraiture and into a realm of metaphysics, melancholia and cosmic doubt”, writes…
Humanitarian career
Wellington doctor Adrick Baker, 69, has devoted a large part of his career to serving thousands of poor villagers for free in northeastern Bangladesh, opening a free health centre in Kailakuri, which has since…
Fighting the Demons
Principal photography has begun in Wellington on World War II horror film, The Devil’s Rock, award-winning director Paul Campion’s debut feature film. Academy Award-winning Weta Workshop (Avatar, District 9, Lord of the Rings, King…
Fear the Cone
“The big daddy of New Zealand’s South Island fields has a reputation for being big, bad and nasty — in a good way,” Rachael Oakes-Ash writes for The Sydney Morning Herald. “Some whisper about…
Relentless Finish
Gisborne surfer Jay Quinn, 27, has taken second place at the ASP Relentless Boardmasters competition in Newquay, England. Quinn said of his placing: “I’m happy because it’s a career best result for myself…
London to Gaza
Six New Zealanders, calling themselves the “Kia Ora Gaza” team, will make up part of an aid convoy taking humanitarian assistance to Gaza departing from London on September 18. Queen’s Service Medal recipient, Aucklander…
