Order out of chaos

the island nation had had enough of it. In 1987, New Zealand finally buried its forest service, one of its most enduring symbols of bureaucratic bungling; an unlikely alliance of environmentalists, economists and reformist politicians played the role of executioners. Out of the ashes emerged the department of conservation ( d o c ), charged solely with protecting native forests.

Another leak

Indian intransigence at WTO negotiations irked New Zealand to the extent that it became a trenchant critic of the Indo-US nuclear deal, suggests a WikiLeaks cable.

Phoney dance

A New Zealand tour operator is in trouble. Instead of employing Maori, the tour company Discovery Heritage Group based in the northern New Zealand city of Tauranga, paid backpackers visiting from France and Israel to dress up in feathered robes, draw tattoos in pen on their faces and go aboard cruise ships when they pulled into the port city of Tauranga.

News Snippets

>> Waiau in New Zea-land was forced to cancel one of the annual highlights on its social calendar: a dead rabbit- throwing contest. 400 people live in this rural town in South Island. The event was off after New Zealands chapter on the international non-profit Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals got wind of it. >> Journalists in Uganda are demanding a law to protect them from being compelled to reveal their sources of information. Under the law Uganda scribes have to reveal their sources if the state calls for it.

Me likes what me likes

Anaemic people might not get what they need from folic acid supplements

Smoking trees

WHILE we are yet to ascertain whether aerosols are warming or cooling our planet, a scientific team has traced a new source: deciduous trees. These are plants that shed their leaves seasonally. So far aerosols were described as particles of pollutants like sulphur dioxide, black carbon (soot) and sea salt that remain suspended in the air. Deciduous plants release around

Inconvenience regretted

Mangroves should not be used as sewage disposal sites. It is killing them mangroves grow in highly saline, coastal waters, representing a very unique ecosystem. According to an estimate,

Summons from net

Legally-embattled Facebook has found an unexpected ally in a New Zealand judge. Wellington High Court judge David Glendall has approved the use of the social-networking site to serve court papers. Glendall approved the serving of legal papers on Craig Axe, who is alleged to have taken NZ $ 241,000 (US $ 126,300) from his family's commercial garden's account.

Power factor

There are two forms of power. One is real power that can be translated into actual work typically measured in watts. Another is reactive power that is consumed by a device but does not produce any useful work. The sum of both forms of power is the power supplied by a utility. Power factor of an AC device like CFL ranges from 0 to 1. Closer the power factor of a machine is to 1 the lesser is the distortion in power.

Ranbaxy barred

After the US, New Zealand alert indian drug manufacturer Ranbaxy Laboratories' distributors in New Zealand have voluntarily agreed to quarantine three of its drugs. New Zealand's health ministry said the drugs will not be released for distribution till further tests.