New Zealand has more small-leaved, tangled shrubs than anywhere else in the world. Some experts think the plants evolved like this to deter the now-extinct moa from making them dinner, but Canterbury University ecologist Dave Kelly doesn’t…
Feisty Kiwi actress Rena Owen (Once Were Warriors, What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted), sat on the jury of the of the Montreal Film Festival. The jury awarded the festival’s major award, the…
Sir Richard Hadlee, former New Zealand pace bowler, awarded the trophies at the Buchi Babu tournament in Chennai earlier this month. He railed against international match fixing, but had congratulatory words for the players in the tournament. Hadlee…
“Temping” is a phase in the life of many young Kiwis, but some, like Tracey Ward who is profiled in this article, are beginning to see it as a flexible, stimulating career in itself….
Michael King spoke about his authorised and hugely successful biography of Janet Frame at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. Frame a recluse: she writes under her own name, but lives under a pseudonym. Other Kiwi…
Hundertwasser, the Austrian architect who lived out his last years in New Zealand and designed the famous toilets in Kawakawa, also left his mark in the curving lines of Bad Blumau, a spa…
What does New Zealand have in common with Argentina, Russia and Alaska? No, not an “a” in the name – they’re all “flyfishing glamour spots”. Thomas McGuane chronicles his time standing thigh-deep in glamorous rivers in his new…
“To watch the sheer brilliance of New Zealand’s opening passage of play against the Wallabies, and then to have that followed by the marvellous fightback which took Australia to level pegging—and for that quality to be sustained…
British energy companies are looking at the Stirling engine produced by NZ company WhisperTech. By 2025, 13m households in Britain could have their own little power station installed with this technology.
In a tough call, trust your instincts, says cognitive psychologists Gary Klein. “The best decision makers that Klein has seen are wildland firefighters … They fight fires 12 months a year – in western…
Dean Barker, Team New Zealand skipper, had ten minutes to make up his mind to take the hottest seat in sailing.
Tattoos have become increasing popular among the men and women who chase the massive waves of the Pacific. For many, a tattoo is an important way of recognising their Polynesian heritage.
”I discovered at an early age that I had something special,” says championship contender David Tua. ”It’s a God-given talent I have to knock people out.” It is a gift rewarded only in one place. Only…
Holly Hunter, who played a mute Scottish widow in Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993), muses on the unexpected success of the movies. “It was a $5 million movie in New Zealand, and it ended…
The Piano secured Jane Campion as a major director and catapulted her from the art-house to the multiplex, but the Oxford Companion to Australian Film recently cast doubt over the originality of the screenplay for…
The ad took nine days to film at Bethell’s Beach on the west coast of New Zealand.
Fletcher Construction was the managing partner in the construction of the world’s tallest hotel, the hyper-luxury Burj Al Arab Hotel in the United Arab Emirates. The facade, designed like a giant sail represents an…
“Ta moko exposes more than the revival of a tradition – it reveals the beauty of Maori past and the promise of Maori future.” – photographer Hans Neleman in Moko-Maori Tattoo.
Studies at the Cawthorn Institute in Nelson have revealed that trout learn from experience. Fish that have been caught and returned to the water stay out of sight next time. The trout are also smart enough to…
“It’s difficult to pin down Kerry Fox. For every film-goer who knows her as the murderous medical student in Shallow Grave, there’s another who remembers her as the dumpy author Janet Frame in An Angel…
Xena Princess Warrior has launched a real-life crusade against child abuse in New Zealand. Using her profile, Lucy Lawless has begun a national campaign to raise money for child protection agencies.
Moira Rayner has been appointed Director of the newly formed Office of Children’s Right’s Commissioner for London. She is a New Zealand lawyer with international experience in the field of children’s right’s.
New Zealand actress Giarna Te Kanawa in New York plays all five parts in “Verbatim” by William Brandt and Miranda Harcourt, which played in the New York Fringe Festival. “Verbatim” is based on interviews…
New Zealander Christopher Small’s books have been paradigm-changing events. His latest “Musicking” focuses on what Small believes is music’s ultimate function: “to provide insight into relationships: between and among notes and chords and rhythms…
Genie Systems’ OrderWare is now running in 10 US Babies ‘R’ Us stores, and is set to fully installed by next year. “Australasian software businesses have a unique style of software, and therefore I think there are many…
39 year-old Stuart Grimshaw used to put his body on the line for New Zealand, playing hockey at top international level. These days, as the new CEO of the Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks, his eyes are firmly…
The Sunday Times garden columnist, Dan Pearson, gets all excited about Phorium tenax: New Zealand flax, or Harakeke. He’s found its adaptation to New Zealand’s harsh coasts makes it the perfect windbreak for a seaside garden…
Nevada’s Burning Man festival will have a distinct Kiwi heat. Flaming poi, dubbed an ‘emerging trend’ by Time, will feature in complicated and spectacular night-time routines.
In May 1941, a Fairey Battle bomber crashed in remote Iceland. New Zealand Flying Officer Arthur Round’s body, and the bodies of the three other casualties, have just been retrieved from the glacier and returned to England…
The arts festival running concurrently with the games in Sydney features Vaughan William’s Sinfonia Antarctica performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, with narration by Sir Edmund Hillary.
Rumours of New Zealand-based terrorist cells targeting the games in Sydney have been around for a while. Last week New Zealand police discovered a lounge in Auckland piled high with maps of Sydney and…
Katherine Mansfield’s intricate and beautiful stories continue to resonante around the world. “The New Zealand-born Mansfield, who died in 1923 at 34, was a peerless observer of the tiny spaces between joy and…
Women currently fill the highest offices in New Zealand. Some people find this rather incongruous. “…this progress might be thought a bit of a shock for a country famous for beefy rugby players, not…
Canadian-born, New Zealand-raised Anna Paquin is studying English literature of Columbia University and starring in two hot movies X-Men and Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. Winning the Oscar was “pretty much the flukiest cool…
Rex Lopez died late last month, ending an illustrious career as a journalist and critic. Lopez spent much of his life in Australia, but legendary Kiwi journalist, radio commentator, war correspondent, novelist and television personality Eric Baume…
Dame Ann Hercus represented New Zealand on a special panel formed to examine the UN’s peace-keeping resources. “While stopping short of calling for a permanent U.N. army, the panel appealed to United Nations members to prepare…
Not aliens brought back by pathfinder, but an exhibition by New Zealand artist Zoe Calder at the Museum of Natural Science in Houston. Proteaceae are a large family of spectacular plants native to the…
Jim Cuddy, one of the starring acts at the upcoming Ottawa Folk Festival, praises the depth of folk talent in New Zealand, but claims we’re not sufficiently proud of our “roots music”.
“I didn’t want a conventional actor, and Richard O’Brien is in some ways very close, in our day, to what Farinelli was in his – a cult hero whom everyone loves,” says Robert Shaw,…
“The hide is in Melbourne, the heart in Canberra. The bones are in Wellington, the big delicate skeleton of a horse who used to mean business.” (from ‘Phar Lap’, by Bill Manhire)
New Zealand designer Therese Hollingsworth has won the Textile category of the Country Road Design Awards. Her piece, felted was strongly influenced by the “simplicity and symmetry of Japanese design”.
The wedding of Mr and Mrs Ram in Brent County, UK will be broadcast live on the web. Inspired by a NZ couple efforts to share their wedding with friends and family: “this couple wanted their…
Kiwi ingenuity presents the solution to your sunlight problems: turn the house around! Don Dunick spent fifteen years designing and building the world’s first fully revolving house.
Does Bill Bryson bring Russell Crowe to mind? For some book reviewers, anything south of the equator can be connected with the Edge’s hunkiest export.
“A computer programmer from St Petersburg has cloned a New Zealand law firm’s website and changed its details to make it appear Russian. Patent attorney A J Park’s website was plagarised down to the last detail:…
In the US they run to escape the pressures of work. In the UK they find running leaves the mind time to think about sex. Kiwis, on the other hand, think about the pain they’re putting themselves…
Sir Peter Platt was born in Sheffield but spent a lifetime merging the music of the edges in the antipodes: he regarded an understanding of the music of the regions as crucial and guided his students…
A expectant grand-daughter ponders generational attitudes to child-rearing, musing on her grandmother’s strict training under New Zealander Truby King”: ” is the Aunt Sally for almost all post-war child-rearing books … His doctrines were adopted across the…
Representatives of 15 countries have urged Japan, the world’s largest consumer of whale meat, to halt its research whaling. New Zealand and Australia, along with anti-whaling groups and conservationists have been at the forefront of efforts to…
Rolling Stone praises Chris Knox’s latest effort: “You can always count on a rock eccentric to make you scratch your head – but touch your heart? That’s usually not the province of ordinary weirdos,…
New Zealand researchers led by plastic surgeon Swee Tan have found a gene they believe helps shrink a benign tumour. The gene, they hope, may do the same thing in cancerous tumours. Their research involved investigating…
An Italian monk’s stinging criticism of British mistreatment of Maori has been published in New Zealand for the first time – more than 100 years after it was written. Written by Benedictine monk Dom Felice Vaggioli,…
“He walks with him, laughs with him, listens to him, and knows what to say to him and how to say it.” The New York Time describes Kiwi caddy Steve Williams as a big brother to…
Kiwi author Joy Cowley gets a glowing review for her latest childrens’ book whose story “could be a mix of the ‘X-files’ and ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’… The plot may be hokey, especially to…
Air New Zealand is helping the in-transit global citizen feel more at home by offering amenity kits to make passengers feel fresh as a daisy when they debark. First Class flyers get aromatherapy kits to combat…
A short story by Katherine Mansfield “The Canary” has been adapted for the theatre by Walk About Theatre Company in Chicago.
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