NZEDGE News — New Zealand through the eyes of the world's media

R.I.P Harry

Henry William Bourne Palin, British actor Michael Palin’s uncle, was a farmhand in New Zealand who at the outbreak of war in 1914 enlisted in the 1st battalion of the Canterbury Regiment of the…

30 October 2008 – For the first time in approximately two hundred years, a tuatara has been discovered nesting on the New Zealand mainland. The event happened at Wellington’s Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, where four…

Green Light District

New Zealand’s “liberalisation” of the world’s oldest profession is, according to the Economist, a success story, where in 2003 the magazine writes, “that country decriminalised the sex trade with a boldness that exceeded that…

Clay’s Reading Gift

New Zealand-developed remedial programme Reading Recovery, devised by the late educationalist Dame Marie Clay, is proving successful in the UK with 30,000 British children a year expected to take part by 21. Under the…

Craved in Canada

Kathmandu founder and owner of design store Nood, or “New Objects of Desire”, Jan Cameron has opened four stores in British Columbia. Nood carries a range of household and personal products, including designer furniture…

With eyes for art

New Zealander Jennifer Flay, artistic director of Fiac (Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain), is heading a break-through at the contemporary Parisian art fair, a role she was appointed to in 2003. “While location is one…

With Comforts, Without Pack

Opened in 1992, the 71km Queen Charlotte Track is located between Queen Charlotte and Kenepuru Sound, and Los Angles Times’s reporter Amanda Jones ó who considers herself “an outdoorswoman” but for who the “appeal…

Newspaper Half Mast

A homage to Sir Edmund Hillary has won this year’s best newspaper advertisement at the 2008 Caxton Awards in Australia picking up the top prize, the Quinlivan Black Award. The Saatchi & Saatchi Australia…

KR on Argentinean Edge

27 October 2008 – Saatchi & Saatchi CEO and Lovemarks instigator Kevin Roberts keynoted HSM’s Buenos Aires management conference alongside Harvard U strategy guru Michael Porter, Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz (Economics) and Muhammad Yunus…

Winning Ways

Former All Black captain Sean Fitzpatrick has been asked to take part in a one-on-one mentoring initiative with a group of young Scotland players. Fitzpatrick will be linked with Ross Ford, the present Scotland…

Fonterra’s Melamine Nightmare

Criminal contamination of the milk supply chain in China embroiled New Zealandís largest commercial organization Fonterra in a crisis that left four babies dead and 3,000 still in hospital. An estimated 54,000 children were…

In the Hot-seat

New Zealander Geoff Vuleta, co-founder and chief executive of New York-based innovation consultancy company Fahrenheit 212, commutes between the US city, and home to Auckland every 8 weeks. Vuleta discusses his frequent-flyer lifestyle, and…

Trumps in Mexico

Whangarei triathlete Sam Warriner, 37, took gold at the Huatulco BG World Cup in Mexico and with the win becomes the 2008 BG Triathlon World Cup series champion. Warriner was victorious in a time…

Tough Gets Going

Sportswear apparel maker Canterbury of New Zealand, which produces the shirts worn by the Scottish Rugby Union team, will this week open its first retail outlet in Europe. Canterbury, which also supplies Glasgow Warriors,…

Everyman in the lens

Northland photographer Ross T. Smith exhibits images of subject Hemi Tuwharerangi Paraha at the Visual Arts Gallery of the University of Alabama through November 1. The images are powerfully elemental. He becomes…

Let Cones Be Licked

Chief judge for the New Zealand Ice Cream Awards and sensory scientist at Massey University Kay McMath has proved the dessert tastes better when licked from a cone. McMath said that the flavour in…

Influence from the inside

New Zealand filmmaker Justin Pemberton has won the world’s longest running environmental film festival, Cinemambiente for his feature-length documentary Nuclear Comeback, parts of which were filmed in Chernobyl’s abandoned radioactive control room and core….

Rite of Pastry Passage

Mince, steak, chicken and potato top pies are amongst a few of the popular pastry to be sampled in a two-week tasting marathon undertaken by Vancouver Courier reporter Michael Kissinger. According to a 2005…

Pig Cell Go-ahead

New Zealand’s Living Cell Technologies, a company founded by Aucklander Professor Bob Elliott, who has pioneered research in the treatment of type-1 diabetes, has been given approval to trial the transplantation of insulin-producing pig…

Elias on Equality

New Zealand’s first female Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias, and presiding judge of the country’s Supreme Court, recently gave a lecture at the University of New Mexico School of Law on indigenous rights entitled,…

Sailing Event Makes NZ

Lake Rotorua will host the 2009 IFDS World Blind Sailing Championships from 12-21 March. Organizing committee chairman Don McGowan says the goal is to provide a world class regatta, combined with a true New…

Relaxed in the South

There is more to Queenstown that diving off bridges and screaming down slopes on snowboards. There is, according to the Irish Independent’s Mary O’Sullivan, a “super holiday destination” leaving the visitor “perpetually awestruck.” Queenstown…

Through Cloud and Snow

From Wellington Railway Station – “a symphony of towering columns, vaulted ceilings and marble terrazzo floors” – travelling by train north up the west coast “the track squeezes between wild, rocky shoreline and precipitous…

Eight Points Up

Wanganui teenage racing driver Earl Bamber has taken a podium finish at China’s Formula 1 Grand Prix meeting in Shanghai, repeating his recent result as part of the A1 New Zealand team in the…

Triumph for the Ferns

The Silver Ferns have won the deciding netball test against England 61-22 in the best of three series final in Palmerston North. Both teams came out firing on Saturday night but it was the…

New Kids Take on NY

16 October 2008 – Four New Zealand bands – The Naked and Famous, Bang! Bang! Eche!, Cut Off Your Hands and The Ruby Suns – “showcase an evening of up-tempo Kiwi-centric jams” at New…

Truth from Wood

New Zealand furniture designer David Trubridge and his lighting fixtures feature in a Time photo essay. Trubridge is the antithesis of those rock-star product designers who turn up at “design art” auctions in…

Thinking about art

New Zealand sculptor, London-based Francis Upritchard says she wants to be an old lady making art and that art collectors should buy art for its meaning rather than its market value. Upritchard, 32, who…

Success on the periphery

Dunedin noise-rock trio Dead C formed in 1987 and over the past two decades has made more of a reputation outside of New Zealand music circles. They’re on the fringe, and they don’t plan…

Guardians surface in DC

Te Papa exhibition ‘Whales | Tohor?’ has opened at Washington DC’s National Geographic Museum. The exhibition features whale specimens including an 18-metre-long male sperm whale skeleton. The cultural significance of whales to the peoples…

Alliance Revisited

New Zealand and the United States fought side by side in both World Wars, in the Korean War, Vietnam and in various Cold War conflicts, but with stringent nuclear policies introduced in New Zealand…

Dixon’s Big Apple Re-run

On 23 October 1983, Nelson-born middle distance runner Rod Dixon raced past UK-emigrant Geoff Smith and won the New York City Marathon raising his hands to the sky in victory. The winning snapshot is…

Imagination live

Auckland comedian Rhys Darby — who plays Jim Carrey’s boss Norman in Yes Man, which will be released in the US in December — has launched his first live stand-up DVD, entitled Imagine That….

For the Animals

Since 2005, Auckland-born Briar Simpson has worked in Japan for the Tokyo branch of non-profit organisation Animal Refuge Kansai, where she finds homes for animals and coordinates fundraising and educational programmes for children….

Holiday on Kauri Coast

On the Coromandel Peninsula Metro UK reporter Kieran Meeke catches the Driving Creek Railway, a narrow-gauge railway line set up by local potter and conservationist Barry Brickell, who over the last 27 years has…

Defender of the Skies

Air New Zealand is aiming to be the cleanest airline on the planet, recently making headlines with fuel-saving and environmentally conscious initiatives including demonstrating a new way of flying an airplane and testing the…

Greenery in Urban London

New Zealand-born James Fraser founded UK landscape firm Avant Gardener in 1990, which continues to operate from a nursery out of Battersea in London. One of Fraser’s latest projects is profiled in the Telegraph,…

Flight from the Top

New Zealand world and Guinness record skydiver Wendy Smith was one of three daredevils to leap from an aircraft at a record height of 9000m in the skies above Mount Everest, free-falling for one minute…

Fleecing the Competition

New Zealand took home four of the six titles at the 13th Golden Shears World Championships held in Bjerkrheim, Norway, with Stratford farmer Paul Avery, 41 and Napier shearer John Kirkpatrick, 38, coming first…

UK Role for Sinclair

Former Auckland Airport chief financial officer Robert Sinclair has been appointed chief executive at Bristol International Airport. In Auckland, Sinclair oversaw a four-year investment programme in expansion, including runways, terminals, car parks and roads….

Big Red Excitement

Queenstown’s Shotover Jet is described by Washington Post reporter Barbara Bradlyn Morris, as one of a number of thrilling tourism activities available for kicks in the “Home of Extreme Sports and Hearty Sun-Bronzed Young…

Beyer Receives Iconic Status

Former mayor of Carterton and Labour MP Georgina Beyer – the world’s first transsexual to hold such positions – is interviewed by Boston publication Windy City Times about her recent selection as one of…

Amateur Golfer Impresses

New Zealand geologist David Pocknall, 55, who is now based in the United States, is also an avid golfer winning a Texan club championship six times and now looking to claim the 2008 Men’s…

Wazza’s Gallic Reinvention

Toulouse No 9, Byron Kelleher says that moving to France was the best thing he ever did and though he misses the All Blacks, he has opened another chapter in his life. After 10…

One Beloved Phantom

Much venerated entertainer Rob Guest, 58, who was awarded an OBE for his services to the New Zealand entertainment industry in 1994, has died in Melbourne. Guest had been starring in the musical Wicked….

Flights of Fancy

Chief executive of New Zealand-based Air Sports Peter Newport is the brains behind virtual game Sky Challenge which saw two pilots and a gamer race planes through hoops in the clouds above Spain….

Ditching the Dot-matrix

New Zealand’s second annual eDay saw more than 15,000 carloads of electronic waste dropped off at 32 centres throughout the country. The event was organised by the Computer Access New Zealand Trust (CANZ). Most…

Rhombus Nices It Up

Wellington-based musical collective Rhombus headline at Mullumbimby’s Mullum Music Festival in late November, having this month released their third full-length self-titled album. Initiated in 2001, Rhombus presents a seamless blend of hip-hop, soul, funk,…