Not Much on Television
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…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Needing Fiction Like Water
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…
Something to be said
“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…
What a German Thinks
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…
Weekend reflections
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…
First in Columbia
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…
Celebrating women
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,…
Dunedin’s Sound
“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…
Adieu to a Comedienne
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…
Great Balls of Fire
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…
Rotten Rants on Butter
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…
Flight of fancy
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…
For a Worthy Cause
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…
Island fortunes
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…
Seattle Calling
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….
War stories recounted
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…
Don’t Look Down
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…
Bloody Snappy Shades
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…
Influenza Expert
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…
Sauvignon’s Secret Scent
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…
Contemporary Christchurch
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…
An Amazing Bike Ride
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…
To Osaka and Kintetsu
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…
Park’s Plinth Secured
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….
Art with Love
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…
Production lift-off
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,…
Sound stunts
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…
Fatter But Happier
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…
Surprising Fruit
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…
Pinot Popular in US
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…
Leap of faith
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…
Gold ‘Neath the Swingbridge
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…
Snapping Up Sauvignon
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…
Bumper season nears
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…
No Bones About It
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…
Hartley Gets Wings
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,…
Together for more
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…
Spanish Coup For Kim
New Zealand fashion designer Jaeha-Alex Kim, 23, was one of 10 finalists at the second El Boton-MANGO Fashion Awards held in Barcelona and though not the winner, Kim’s collection has been selected to be…
Icy Developments
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…
Webby Award Success
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…
Love bites
“Anna Paquin is about to catapult into a rare form of superstardom, the kind in which a television actress becomes an A-list fixture (á la Sarah Jessica Parker)”, writes Cristina Greevan Cuomo for the…
Learning With Light
Hawkes Bay-based designer David Trubridge’s The Three Baskets of Knowledge features in a Los Angeles Times photo gallery with an image of “pendulous lighting fixtures that look like giant water droplets suspended in baskets…
Be Seen In Wickstead
Twenty-five-year-old Auckland-born fashion designer Emilia Wickstead’s “elegantly demure collection of refined, pretty silk separates is already being seen at some of London’s most fashionable locales,” writes Julia Neel for British Vogue “as the well-heeled…
During on NZ best
New Zealander, private arts advisor and curator, Helen Klisser During, who is based in New York and Connecticut, talks to the NYArtsmagazine.com’s D. Dominick Lombardi about New Zealand art. When asked to put New…
Ladyhawke’s in Vogue
Pip Brown aka Ladyhawke, the former-Wellingtonian and undisputed queen of the synthpop revival, is profiled in the April issue of Teen Vogue, as one of “five musical acts who will be in heavy rotate…
Urban Trampers
Kate Sylvester’s great-outdoors inspired Take a Hike collection took to the runway at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week with models parading shorts, gaiters and anorak-style dresses. Sylvester told Grazia about the inspiration behind the collection:…
Snowed In
Some of New Zealand’s top ski spots are reviewed by worldwide online ski site On the Snow, including “the quirky ski field that is home to Burton’s The Stash, a natural terrain run with…
Couplets at the Globe
Hokianga-born actor Rawiri Paratene, well-known for his role as Koro Apirana in Niki Caro’s Whale Rider, is Friar Lawrence in a London Shakespeare’s Globe presentation of Romeo and Juliet, the first New Zealander…
Upritchard’s new work
London-based New Zealand artist, Francis Upritchard, 32, launched her new book Every Colour By Itself last week, at a reception held at New Zealand House in London by High Commissioner Derek Leask, hosted by…
Something Gained
Defending IndyCar Series champion New Zealander Scott Dixon, 28, has won the Road Runner Turbo Indy 3000 at Kansas Speedway. “We needed something,” Dixon said. “You know, even a sniff of something. Because so…
Transformed in Sydney
Auckland-based artist Lisa Reihana will consider “what it means to transform the self into another persona”, at an upcoming exhibition entitled Double Take on at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from May…
Mothers make green
Ecostore founder Malcolm Rands has been touring American hypermarket chain Meijer promoting his environmentally friendly household cleaning products, the stores the exclusive retailer of his products. A well-known environmentalist in New Zealand, Rands is…
Merino magic
For the fourth year running South Canterbury merino farmers Barrie and Yvonne Payne, owners of Visulea Farm in Maungati, have won the Loro Piana Record Bale Award for the highest price paid for a…
Tree Gods Unite
A ceremony to form a “sister-tree relationship” between Waipoua Forest’s Tane Mahuta and an ancient Japanese cedar tree located on Yakushima Island, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was held this month at the base…
Man of the match
Captain of the Black Caps and Delhi Daredevils player Daniel Vettori, 30, is interviewed by the Hindustan Times about his role as spinner in T20 and his adjustment to the Indian Premier League. “You have to…
Painted loneliness
Christchurch-born painter Euan Macleod has won the 2009 Gallipoli Art Prize, a prize valued at $20,000 for Smoke/Pinklandscape/Shovel which portrays the muddy trenches of World War I. Competition judge John McDonald said: “This year,…
