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In an interview with Joel Maxwell about the future of Māori wards, Pera Paniora, a former Māori ward councillor from Kaipara District Council, suggests that high Māori population areas like the Far North might retain their wards, but elsewhere, “it’s a numbers game.” · Paniora predicts that most of the 42 other councils with Māori wards will see them disestablished due to the referendums. · She cites the numerical disadvantage of Māori, who…

International students at Auckland University are being charged up to $5,730 for a compulsory Treaty of Waitangi course. · The course, part of the university’s new ‘Waipapa Taumata Rau’ (WTR) curriculum, is mandatory for all first-year undergraduates and covers particular views on Māori knowledge systems, history, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi. · “It’s no wonder Auckland University is slipping down the international rankings,” said ACT Party…

St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated annually on March 17, the anniversary of his death in the fifth century. St. Patrick’s Day 2025 will take place on Monday, March 17. The Irish have observed this day as a religious holiday for over 1,000 years. On St. Patrick’s Day, which falls during the Christian season of Lent, Irish families would traditionally attend church in the morning and celebrate in the afternoon. Lenten prohibitions against the…

March, the third month in the Gregorian calendar, is well-known for its unpredictable  weather (“in like a lion and out like a lamb”), NCAA basketball (a.k.a. “March Madness”), and, of course, St. Patrick’s Day and Mardi Gras celebrations. But March is also tied to ancient beginnings, historic events and even animal antics. Here’s a closer look. · The Origins of March · The name March comes from the Latin “Martius,” named for Mars, the Roman…

Housing Minister Chris Bishop is pushing a plan to slash housing costs and boost productivity. He observed that New Zealand’s economic performance now resembles nations like Poland and Hungary, which endured decades of communist rule, as opposed to Australia and the US. · Speaking to local government leaders, Bishop blamed restrictive land-use policies and infrastructure funding failures for driving up house prices, which now sit at over six…

Stone Age people might have crossed the Mediterranean on wooden canoes, navigating from island to island by sight.Credit: Sheila Terry/Science Photo Library · Thousands of years before Odysseus crossed the ‘wine-dark sea’ in Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, hunter-gatherers might have island-hopped their way to Africa across the Mediterranean. · The first genomic study of ancient people from the eastern Maghreb region — present-day Tunisia and…

Expressing that we’re in pain is one of the most basic things we can do with language, whether by yelling “ouch” (or something worse) or by attempting to tell someone exactly what’s wrong so we can get help. Public policy scholar Grant Duncan writes that the word “pain” itself has a history that tracks with changes in our understanding of bad feelings. · While the Romance languages derive their most common words for pain from the Latin dolor,…

The trilateral cooperation between Japan, South Korea, and the United States is showing cracks. Already fragile under the previous  US President Joe Biden, the alliance faces further strain under President Donald Trump, whose  role as a mediator between historical antagonists Japan and South Korea is seen as unlikely by both these American allies and the international community. · During his first term from 2017-21, Trump favoured direct,…

The treatment of kidney stones could soon be getting much faster, easier, and safer. Scientists have devised a method of non-invasively tearing the objects apart, using what are known as "acoustic vortex beams." · For several decades now, doctors have utilized a non-surgical technique called extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) to break up kidney stones so they can be passed with the urine. · In a nutshell, the process involves…

Stories, like children whisked away by magical storms, have a habit of wandering. They cross borders, transform, and reshape themselves, becoming new yet familiar. Such is the case with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Few American readers of L. Frank Baum’s novel know that, much like Dorothy herself, his story embarked on its own journey across vast oceans to reinvent itself behind the Iron Curtain that separated the Soviet Union from the West. ·…