New Zealand unveiled plans Monday to allow its foreign intelligence agency to spy on local residents, to fill a loophole exposed when Internet tycoon Kim Dotcom was illegally snooped upon. Prime Minister John Key said the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) needed additional powers…
New Zealand politician welcomes ‘gay onslaught’ after legalizing same sex marriage
On Wednesday, New Zealand’s Parliament voted to legalize same sex marriage, making the country the world’s 13th to allow same sex couples to marry and enjoy all of the same privileges as married heterosexuals. Minister of Parliament Maurice Williamson (Pakuranga) addressed the chamber,…
New Zealand poised to legalize same sex marriage
New Zealand is poised to legalise same-sex marriage in a parliamentary vote that gay rights advocates Tuesday said will represent a milestone in the struggle for equality. A bill that amends the 1955 Marriage Act to describe marriage as “a union of two people regardless of their sex, sexual…
Massive seafloor craters found in waters off New Zealand
The craters were part of a much larger field of thousands of smaller pockmarks that extended eastward along the Chatham Rise for several hundred kilometers. … Read More
It Can Happen Here: The Bank Confiscation Scheme for US and UK Depositors
In the U.S., the new equity would become capital in one or more newly formed operating entities. In the U.K., the same approach could be used, or the equity could be used to recapitalize the failing financial company itself … Read More
“Top of the Lake”: Like the best crime series, it’s about much more than crime-solving
In ‘Top of the Lake,” Jane Campion’s extraordinary new crime series, beginning tonight on the Sundance Channel, Holly Hunter plays GJ, a plainspoken spiritual guru, tending to a flock of lost middle-aged women — among them, a sex addict, a woman reeling from the loss of her beloved chimpanzee — with minimal spiritual mumbo jumbo, maximum hard truths. She wears her hair long and white, her shirts buttoned up to the collar, looking like an impatient Mexican gangster lost in the New Zealand bush (or as Emily Nussbaum points out in her review of the series, something like Jane Campion). I’m going to channel GJ’s particular harsh bluntness here, because “Top of the Lake,” gorgeous and ambiguous and gripping like a hallucination, deserves it: Watch it. Do it now.Continue Reading… … Read More
‘Happy Feet Jr.’ found stranded 1,250 miles from home in New Zealand
A penguin dubbed Happy Feet junior has been found stranded 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) from home in New Zealand, reviving memories of another wayward penguin that washed up in 2011. The latest wandering stray was discovered close to death on the coast south of Wellington over the weekend and…
