Sixties renewal
Auckland-based fashion designer Kate Sylvester and her partner Wayne Conway chose New Zealand architect Belinda George to design the renovations to their 1960s Westmere home, remaining true to that decade’s form, combining new with…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Making more milk
New Zealand scientists at AgResearch have discovered some keys to dramatically increasing milk production in the country’s cows. Researchers investigated the potential of epigenetic regulation, or changes in gene expression caused by chemical changes…
Height Of Fashion
Kate Sylvester is approaching this year’s Australian Fashion Week with bold and colourful designs based on the lives of adventurers called, Take a Hike. Last year’s collection Royally Screwed caused a stir angering ANZACS…
Pass the Wallaby
The increasingly ubiquitous wallaby may be the newest presence on the New Zealand dinner table, as municipalities around the country are being encouraged to consider different strategies to control their booming populations. The Australian marsupials…
Painting Piha
Tauranga-raised Lancôme artistic director Aaron De Mey, who featured in the October edition of Mindfood magazine and whose past clients include Winona Ryder, Keira Knightly and Kate Moss, has released his debut colour collection…
Designing the Future
British-born, Hawkes Bay-based designer David Trubridge, takes part in a Q&A for the latest issue of Dwell, where he quizzed about number of things like his ideal working environment, what music keeps him…
Rugby’s Return
Rugby Sevens might be only seven years off when it comes to the Olympics, thanks to an effort to reinstate the sport spearheaded by the Oceania National Olympic Committee. During a recent committee meeting…
Home sweet home
“The time has come to learn from Down Under,” where homes have sustainable features “light years ahead of the curve,” are “modestly scaled and unpretentious, employ an original aesthetic language, and without fail, offer…
Island Choreography
Dance troupe Black Grace are in Guam performing a series of workshops in local schools and at the Sheraton Laguna Guam Resort for an audience at a gala dinner. Black Grace was founded in…
Shocking and pleasing
Palmerston North teenager Levi Sherwood, 17, has shocked the freestyle motocross world (FMX) by winning the first event of the 2009 Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour in Mexico on debut, in front of 43,000…
Dark Past Revisited
New Zealand-born Zak Feaunati, a former Samoan international rugby player, has been selected to play All Black legend Jonah Lomu in the upcoming film The Human Factor. The film includes the Springboks’ victory over…
Writing from abroad
New Zealand-born, Bryan Gould’s latest column for The Guardian Newspaper identifies governments as the only organisations in a position to take the necessary long-term approach needed to stimulate the global economy and counter the…
Slave-driven
Former Xena: Warrior Princess star Lucy Lawless has been cast in the new action series Spartacus: Blood and Sand as Lucretia, who with her husband Batiatus own a gladiator camp called the Ludus. The…
Universal access
High-speed broadband Internet access is coming to over three quarters of the country over the next decade, in a 3 billion dollar project jointly funded by the private and public sectors. “This model aims…
Rating a medical return
American Doctor Jackie Underwood seems to prefer the American medical system, after spending a year spent practicing at a rural New Zealand hospital. Having recently returned to her home in Newark New Jersey, Underwood…
Advocating radical change
A “ground-breaking” report has been developed by the United Kingdom’s Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), an expert watchdog group chaired by Jonathan Porritt, the son of New Zealand Olympian and 11th Governor General Arthur…
Musiq Makers Win
R&B group Nesian Mystik have won the “Best Kiwi” category at the Australian MTV Awards on March 27. The four other New Zealand acts nominated were: Ladyhawke, Cut Off Your Hands, P-Money and Goodnight…
Auckland Calling
New Zealand could be one of the world’s last havens as climate change fundamentally changes the planet according to the scientist and creator of the Gaia theory James Lovelock, and for this reason, on…
Switched Off for Change
New Zealand was one of the first countries to switch of its power for this year’s Earth Hour event aimed at highlighting environmental problems caused by excessive use of energy. Forty-four New Zealand cities,…
Particles in Motion
Fonterra’s latest foray into “smart” water “Whole”, is advertised in a continuous 650-frame shot leaping and transforming from brains to bridges to bananas and was created as a joint project by Auckland-based animation studio…
Win on Lake Rotorua
Chairman of Blind Sailing New Zealand Dick Lancaster won a silver medal in a 25-foot yacht at the 2009 World Championships held on Lake Rotorua in March. Lancaster told CNN that sailing for the…
Money in bank
Billionaire investor and philanthropist Richard Chandler, who heads Singapore-based investment fund Orient Global, has bought a 3 per cent stake in Russian commercial bank Sberbank for $430 million, reports The Guardian. Chandler’s Sovereign Global…
Stormy Outlook Ahead
New Zealand’s economy contracted in the fourth quarter at its fastest pace in 16 years as the global turmoil worsened a domestic slump, putting interest rate cuts back on the agenda. The Reserve Bank…
Clark’s UN role confirmed
26 March 2009 – Helen Clark’s nomination to lead the United Nations Development Program has been officially announced by Michele Montas, spokeswoman for the UN secretary general, in New York today. As the former…
Hot competition
Blenheim-based company Carbonscape — one of only five companies to make the shortlist in the Financial Times global Climate Change Challenge — makes charcoal from biomass for the sequestration of carbon using industrial microwaves….
Beauty Reigns
National MP Korean-born Melissa Lee has been voted one of “the most beautiful women in politics in the world” by Spanish newspaper 20 Minutos, a poll which also included Hillary Clinton. Photos of 60…
Reserved for the Solomons
Last year, New Zealand Territorial Forces machine gunner Private Adam Friend, 33, left the Marlborough Museum where he had been putting together an exhibition on the history of grape growing in the region, to…
On the Cheap
Rotorua hotpool Kerosene Creek, Rangitoto Island, Waitomo Caves, the Tongariro Crossing and Te Papa are the “five best freebies” on offer for tourists “with strained budgets” writes journalist Xavier La Canna who has lived…
Sirens Call from Russell
Luxury 70-acre retreat Eagles Nest, located on the Tapeka tip of the Russell peninsula, is one of Paradizo’s “emerging hotspots”, which writes that “the team behind Eagles Nest works around the clock making sure…
The power of the pedal
New Zealand is considering building a 3, km bike path winding through the country in an attempt to stimulate tourism and maintain an industry central to the country’s economy. The project would cost around…
Tramp of all Tramps
New Zealand boasts more “swoon-worthy tramps per square mile than anywhere else in the world,” according to Backpacker magazine, and the notorious Milford Track is at the top of the list. “From Glade House…
Electric Rules
“In New Zealand, an idea has been floated to convert up to 60 per cent of the country’s automobile fleet to electric vehicles, which would be e charged with wind power,” writes daily trade…
Catch Him if you Can
Whitianga self-confessed hacker Owen Thor Walker, 19, who was alleged to have been involved with a criminal network which infiltrated more than 1 million computers worldwide, has been hired by TelstaClear as a cyber…
Clark First Choice for UN Role
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has been tipped to head the United Nations Development Programme, according to an unnamed UN official. If confirmed in this posting, Clark will be responsible for the…
Love, Hope and Light
Whangarei-born, country music superstar Keith Urban, 41, is interviewed by The New York Times’ Alan Light about his latest album, ‘Defying Gravity’ — his first since his admission to the Betty Ford Center. Urban,…
Top Honours for Bell
New Zealand dancer Rodney Bell earned an ‘Izzie’ at the 23rd Isadora Duncan Dance Awards in San Francisco last week, for his part in the Axis Dance Company’s ensemble performance ‘To Color Me…
Cold Comparisons
Ladyhawke, who this month made her New York debut at the Bowery Ballroom and Studio B, said in an interview with The Village Voice, that New Zealand “is like being in Iceland, or something. …
Golf enhanced
The “scenic but challenging” Cape Kidnappers course is played by Golf Digest’s Max Adler who describes in an online diary that “unlike a lot of courses that encompass improbable geography, Kidnappers is laid out…
Cold omparisons
Ladyhawke, who this month made her New York debut at the Bowery Ballroom and Studio B, said in an interview with The Village Voice, that New Zealand “is like being in Iceland, or something….
Barrier’s best bachs
The improvisational shacks of the Great Barrier Island have inspired a new breed of bachs, collecting rainfall for water treating waste for irrigation, harnessing the sun with solar panels, and generally creating a space…
A bright future
23 March 2009 – New Zealand was breaking its own records for renewable energy production in the final quarter of 2008, creating 74 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Boosted by full lakes,…
Copywronged Righted
New Zealand’s Creative Freedom Foundation, opponents of an amendment to the country’s copyright law, Section 92a, have secured victory with the scrapping of the plan which would have required Internet service providers to implement…
Long Distance Teamwork
Tintin collaborators Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg are in touch across the world via a video-conferencing setup for the first installment of the film, using a custom-made iChat-type system by which Jackson can see…
Passing Through the Idyllic
For three weeks over the summer, private gardens throughout New Zealand opened their gates to a tour group of 28 Arkansas Master Gardeners beginning at Totara Waters, a 2 acre garden owned by Peter…
With glass and steel
David Hovey, the New Zealand-born, award-winning architect who owns Optima Inc. in Arizona says his dream home would be a contemporary home built of steel and glass built near the ocean in New Zealand…
Coup for Longevity
A one-month old tuatara has been discovered at Wellington’s Karori Wildlife Sanctuary Zealandia, the first baby tuatara to be seen on the mainland in two centuries. “We are all absolutely thrilled with this discovery,”…
Advice from two experts
Auckland identical twin sisters Matilda ‘Tilly’ Hanlon and Beryl Baguley recently celebrated their 100th birthday, a rare occasion indeed with the mathematical chance of identical twins reaching the age of 100, one in 700…
The Racing Reverend Rests
Legendary racing announcer Darren Tyquin died in a car crash in Christchurch recently, at 41. Tyquin had been calling races since he was fifteen, when he began covering greyhound and harness meetings for a…
Harbour-side Haven
Hokianga is “the perfect place to build a prototype of a new type of community to model a more visionary idea of how the world can be” writes Kimberley Paterson for The Seoul Times…
Booming Population
The kakapo – star of a recent BBC documentary presented by British actor and raconteur Stephen Fry – is one of the world’s most endangered birds the kakapo, but thanks to the Kakapo Recovery…
One Fine Fishing Boat
New Zealand naval architect and multi-hull specialist Roger Hill has designed the Montebello, a luxury 12.5m planing power catamaran for a group of Gold Coast businessmen who – headed by industry identity Gary Zamparutti…
Prophetic words
Thirty years ago, founder of Montana wines Frank Yukich planted the first commercial vineyard of the modern era in Marlborough introducing the world to the delights of New Zealand sauvignon blanc. A commemorative sculpture…
Where There is Snow
Mt Hutt has acquired three state-of-the-art snow-making snow groomers and new snowmaking compressors to help produce more snow and improve trails for the 2009 season, scheduled to open June 14. Ski area manager Dave…
Tackling Genres
New Zealand band Cut Off Your Hands is interviewed by American indie music publication Sentimentalist Magazine before the four-piece played the United States’ largest music festival, Austin’s South by Southwest (SXSW) 2009. Their debut…
Nabbed online
Wellington High Court judge Justice David Gendall has granted approval for the serving of papers via Facebook, the first time a New Zealand court has allowed such a step. The social networking site became…
Sensitive Subject
Gisborne-born adventurer Graeme Dingle has said British author Jeffrey Archer is “dreaming” after Archer claimed that George Mallory, not Edmund Hillary, was the first to reach the summit of Everest. Archer’s new book Paths…
