Today is the last day of the World Food Conference in Rome. New Zealand has sent 11 people to this conference, with Jim Anderton, Minister of Agriculture, as the leader of this group. Along with Jim Anderton are other politicians, a climate scientist

发表于:2019-01-27 / 阅读(57) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

This weekend, parts of New Zealand have experienced some very violent weather. A low pressure system coming from northern Australia hit Northland on Saturday and lasted for about 36 hours. The system moved south east to the Coromandel and the Bay of

发表于:2019-01-27 / 阅读(71) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

MMP may be responsible for a delay in deciding whether National or Labour gets to form the new government. With 120 seats in parliament, the winning party needs 61 to have a majority. After the last elections, Labour had 50 seats while National had 4

发表于:2019-01-27 / 阅读(50) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

Today a new geo-thermal power station was opened in Kawerau, in the eastern Bay of Plenty. Geo means earth and therm means heat. The power station uses hot steam from the earth. Like the geo-thermal power station at Wairakei, which opened in the 1950

发表于:2019-01-27 / 阅读(109) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

The Auckland south-western motorway now goes 13km from the airport to Mt Roskill but on Friday, another 4km to Sandringham Rd will open. This motorway is called State Highway 20 (SH20). The plan is for this motorway to continue further so that it lin

发表于:2019-01-31 / 阅读(95) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

After the jobs conference (see February 27th 2009) the Prime Minister, John Key, was very interested in the idea of cycle tracks from the north of the North Island to the south of the South Island, about 2,000km. As well as being Prime Minister, John

发表于:2019-02-03 / 阅读(54) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

The Prime Minister announced today the name of new Governor-General. He is Lieutenant-General Jerry Mateparae. His job will start in August this year and last for five years. Jerry Mateparae began his career as a soldier in 1972 when he was 18 years

发表于:2019-02-18 / 阅读(51) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

Many houses in New Zealand are cold. Our traditional wooden house had no insulation. If you live in a house like that, you are paying for heat to escape from the ceiling, walls and under the floor. Insulation is made from material like wool or fibreg

发表于:2019-02-18 / 阅读(104) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

The Tax Working Group, which is a group of experts, gave their report this week. They have been looking at our tax laws to see if they are fair to everyone and if they help the economy to grow. The Working Group said that at the moment some rich peop

发表于:2019-02-18 / 阅读(74) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

This story began six months ago and has not finished yet. In May, Leo Gao who had a petrol station in Rotorua, asked Westpac Bank to lend him $100,000 because his business was in financial trouble. A bank employee made a mistake and put $10million in

发表于:2019-02-18 / 阅读(88) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

The most interesting result of the local body elections was the election of the Auckland mayor, Len Brown. He won with 221,000 votes while John Banks got 161,000. Len Brown had been the mayor of Manukau in South Auckland. Now eight councils have beco

发表于:2019-02-18 / 阅读(51) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

It is surprising that Christchurch is still having after-shocks. It is now 4 months since the 7.1 earthquake on Sept 4th. Just as Christchurch people were starting to think that after-shocks had finished, the day after Christmas gave everyone an unpl

发表于:2019-02-18 / 阅读(70) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

About 16,000 high school teachers went on strike today. They did not go to school. Instead they held protest marches, and Wellington teachers took their protest to Parliament. However the teachers in Canterbury did not go on strike because school was

发表于:2019-02-18 / 阅读(80) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

Lonely Planet, the popular travel guide, rate Wellington as the 4th best city in the world to visit. The best city was New York, followed by Tangier in Morocco, Tel Aviv in Israel then Wellington. Wellington seems little because you can walk around t

发表于:2019-02-18 / 阅读(69) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

The earthquake on Wednesday night surprisingly caused very little damage. It was a big earthquake, 7.8 on the Richter scale. This is the biggest earthquake recorded this year anywhere in the world. However, it was in a very isolated part of New Zeala

发表于:2019-02-19 / 阅读(66) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

The governor of the Reserve Bank, Alan Bollard, increased the official cash rate (OCR) from 2.5% to 2.75%. This is the first rise in three years. During the economic recession, Bollard reduced the OCR from 8.25% in July 2007 to 2.5% in April this yea

发表于:2019-02-19 / 阅读(61) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

On Thursday, the Party General Secretary of Vietnam, Nong Duc Manh, visited New Zealand to have talks with our Prime Minister. Mr Manh thanked New Zealand for the support that our country has given, especially in education and training. New Zealand h

发表于:2019-02-25 / 阅读(141) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

Japans Urban Search and Rescue (Usar) team left Christchurch today to help in the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan. They have been working long hours for the last two and a half weeks and are tired. They planned to leave tomorrow but when the

发表于:2019-02-25 / 阅读(160) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

After Saturdays earthquake in the Christchurch area, the main focus was at first on the central city area. There has been a huge amount of damage to older buildings. Many of these were beautiful 100-year old buildings which made the central city attr

发表于:2019-02-26 / 阅读(147) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语

The Feb 22nd earthquake in Christchurch was 6.3 on the Richter scale yet it did much more damage than the 7.1 earthquake on Sept 4th 2010. There are several reasons for this but the main ones are the depth of the epi-centre and the distance from the

发表于:2019-03-09 / 阅读(241) / 评论(0) 分类 新西兰英语