Rebecca Singh, the first Indian woman to front mainstream news on New Zealand television, is going niche. She is leaving TV3 to report and present on TV2's gay lifestyle programme Queer Nation.
Singh said her departure was amicable, but Queer Nation was an opportunity to "commit to something that served the
purposes of a community which I was a strong part of".
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Clan New Zealand has its own tartan, a wee plaid unveiled by Helen Clark this week and described as "kakapo-coloured". It is speckled with green for the land, blue for the ocean, brown for Maori, black for sports and red for the (sunburned) early European settlers. It's all thanks to the New Zealand Piping and Dancing Association, who consulted Maori before having the tartan made in Scotland. Perhaps we could get wee jackets made to keep our kakapo warm in winter.
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Lest you get depressed that New Zealand's sheep population has dwindled to 10 per person, there is good news on the cow front. Rural statistics show dairy cow numbers have risen by a fifth in the past three years to 5.3 million (one plus most of a leg each), and there are also more beef cattle, 4.5 million.
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Cambridge University scientists James Watson and Francis Crick have been well remembered for their discovery of DNA 50 years ago. The pair got the Nobel Prize (for physiology or medicine, not for peace as TV3 said this week). Overlooked have been New Zealand scientist Maurice Wilkins who, with colleague Rosalind Franklin at London's Kings College, paved the way for the discovery with ground-breaking x-ray data. Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize with Crick and Watson in 1962. The unfortunate Franklin died in 1958 and did not get Nobel recognition because the awards are not given posthumously.
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