Yvette Williams, the Dunedin long jumper who outlasted Fanny Blankers-Koen
Yvette Williams was 23 when she stood on the long jump runway at the Helsinki Olympics on 23 July 1952 with two fouls and a wrenched knee. Her next jump…
Category: Society
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Westpac blocks $75,000 a day in unwanted subscription payments
Westpac New Zealand says it is now stopping more than $75,000 a day in payments to websites that sign shoppers up to recurring charges they did not knowingly agree to,…
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George Nepia, the boy fullback who played all 32 matches and was then left behind
He played every minute of every match on the 1924-25 Invincibles tour and came home a teenage hero. Four years later, the All Blacks left him at home because South…
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Sir Peter Blake, the Bayswater boy who took five Whitbreads to win one
He sailed in the first five Whitbread Round the World Races and only won the last of them. He took the America’s Cup off the Americans in San Diego, defended…
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Kmart is selling $99 camera glasses and privacy experts say the law has not kept up
Kmart is selling camera glasses for $99 and privacy researchers say New Zealand law, written around organisations rather than individuals, has not kept up.
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Dave Dobbyn, the shy West Auckland kid who wrote the songs the country sings to itself
He was the diminutive, freckled, ginger-haired Catholic schoolboy from Glen Innes who got picked on for being small. He wrote Be Mine Tonight, Whaling, Slice of Heaven, Loyal and Welcome…
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Over 55s are now the largest group on New Zealand’s social housing waitlist
Ministry of Social Development figures for June 2026 show 6,201 people aged over 55 waiting for a state house, outnumbering every other age group for the first time in at…
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More than 400 forensic and public health scientists strike over a return to performance pay
Scientists, technicians and support workers at PHF Science stopped work for four hours on Tuesday over a proposal to replace step-based pay with performance pay and a zero percent cost…
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Don McGlashan, the North Shore boy who became the most literate songwriter in the country
Born in Auckland in 1959, Don McGlashan played French horn and percussion in the Auckland Symphonia, was the drummer in Blam Blam Blam when their song became the unofficial anthem…
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Peter Snell, the Ōpunake boy who ran the perfect race in Tokyo and then spent forty years in a Texas exercise lab
On the evening of 21 October 1964 in Tokyo, a 25-year-old former plumber’s apprentice from Taranaki ran the last 200 metres of an Olympic 1500m final faster than any other…
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Dunedin students say their flats are as cold inside as out despite meeting healthy homes rules
Dunedin students are living through the coldest weeks of the year in flats that are no warmer inside than the street outside, and in some cases those flats already meet…
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Rita Angus, the Hastings woman who painted the country we still recognise
She was thirty-eight years old, single, broke, refusing to do war work, and painting a brown-skinned blonde-haired goddess on a wooden chair facing the Tasman Sea. The Manpower Committee fined…
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Hunters turn wild deer into more than 700 meals for Wellington food banks
Six hunters from the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Deerstalkers Association have donated close to 100 kilograms of wild venison to food banks across the region, enough for more…
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Arthur Lydiard, the Auckland shoemaker who taught the world how to run
He had no degree in physiology, no laboratory and no gold-medal running career of his own. From a state house in Mt Roskill, with a clipboard and a stopwatch and…
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Lake Tekapo farmer finds lost 87-year-old fisherman and his dog after police call for help
A lost 87-year-old fisherman and his dog are safe and warm at home after Canterbury Police turned to a local farmer who knew the country in the dark, in a…
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Neil Finn, the Te Awamutu boy who wrote the song you can’t get out of your head
Born in Te Awamutu in 1958, Neil Finn left school at 18 to fly to London and join his older brother’s band. By 27 he had written one of the…
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Forbidden Pharmacy opens in Auckland to show the medicines Pharmac cannot fund
A patient-led installation called the Forbidden Pharmacy opens at Auckland’s Shed 10 on Saturday, lining its walls with shelves of white medicine packets and bottles locked behind doors. Each item…
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Jack Lovelock, the Timaru miler who ran the most beautiful race in Berlin
Jack Lovelock won New Zealand’s first Olympic athletics gold in the 1936 Berlin 1500m, in a world-record 3:47.8 he called an artistic creation. He was 39 when he fell under…
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New privacy law means GPs must tell older drivers when family raise safety concerns
A change to New Zealand’s privacy law is quietly reshaping one of the most delicate conversations a family doctor can have, the one about whether an ageing parent is still…
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Mat and Nick Mowbray, the Cambridge brothers who flew to Guangzhou and built a toy empire
In 2003 two brothers from a lifestyle block outside Cambridge boarded a plane to Hong Kong with a $20,000 loan from their parents and no language, no contacts and no…
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Southland farmer Liz Gill turns gumboot walks into an Ironman scholarship and thousands for her community
An eight-year climb that began with a walk in gumboots on a Southland hill farm has earned Liz Gill a place at Ironman New Zealand and turned her family paddocks…
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Police warn tourists after near-misses at a Mount Taranaki photo spot near New Plymouth
Police in Taranaki are pleading with tourists and keen photographers to stop treating a busy rural road as a photo studio, after a run of near-misses at a spot where…
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Disputes Tribunal orders cat named Moggy returned home after a neighbour moved house and took him
A quarrel over a much loved cat named Moggy has ended in the Disputes Tribunal, with a referee ordering the animal home to the couple who had microchipped and registered…
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Woolf Fisher and Maurice Paykel, the Auckland brothers-in-law who built New Zealand’s most consequential industrial firm
In 1934 two young Auckland brothers-in-law-to-be went into business with their fathers, £40 in cash, a bank loan secured against a second-hand De Soto, and a consignment of American Crosley…
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Auckland Zoo farewells Rukiya, its 25 year old giraffe matriarch and mother of five
Auckland Zoo has said goodbye to one of its best known residents. Rukiya, the matriarch of the zoo’s giraffe herd, was euthanised on Friday after her keepers and vets decided…
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Ashburton community opens its wallet to save the town’s Santa parade
Ashburton looks set to keep its Santa parade after all, with the mid-Canterbury town’s residents digging into their own pockets to rescue an event that appeared dead only 48 hours…
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Len Lye, the Christchurch boy who made motion into art
He grew up in a lighthouse on the Marlborough coast, watched the sea move for a year and decided that motion itself could be a kind of art. By the…
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Pak’nSave apologises for searching a shopper’s bag as experts spell out what stores can and cannot do
A Lower Hutt shopper who had his bag searched at a self-checkout without being asked has been offered an apology by Pak’nSave, in a case that has put a simple…
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Len Southward, the Wellington panelbeater who built a speedboat, a tube mill and a museum
From a Kent Terrace motorcycle shop to a 109-mph speedboat and a 450-vehicle museum at Otaihanga, the long, practical life of Sir Leonard Bingley Southward is one of the great…
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Christchurch flatmates win $2500 after the landlord’s mother kept letting herself into their flat
Five flatmates who shared a rented house in Upper Riccarton, Christchurch, have been awarded $2500 by the Tenancy Tribunal after the property owner’s mother repeatedly let herself into their home…