Look after people? Make $15/hr - Look after money? Make $2000/hr - huh? Where has all the sharing gone???

Hannah O'Neill - 20 year old NZ principal dancer with Paris Opera Ballet Company - NZ Dad and Japanese Mum - NZ'er of the year?

The talented Hannah O'Neill has a lifetime contract with the world's pre-eminent academy, the Paris Opera Ballet company. Photo / Bloch

Most New Zealanders have probably never heard the name Hannah O'Neill.

The 20-year-old is one of the brightest young stars in the ballet world, who also happens to be a Kiwi.

Born in Japan to a Kiwi father, Chris, and Japanese mother, Sumie, Ms O'Neill moved to New Zealand when she was 8. She attended Parnell District School and Epsom Girls' Grammar before her talent took her across the Tasman to the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne as a 15-year-old.

Now, a month shy of her 21st birthday, she has a lifetime contract with the world's pre-eminent academy, the Paris Opera Ballet company.

Despite spending only seven years of her life living in New Zealand, Ms O'Neill proudly calls herself a Kiwi.

"I am a Kiwi deep down from the heart," she told the Herald from her Paris apartment, after a gruelling 14-hour day of rehearsals and a performance of The Sleeping Beauty.

"To be able to say I am a New Zealander here in Paris and living my dream and making it come true I am very, very flattered.

"I was a very proud New Zealander not that long ago because I went to the France versus All Blacks game here and even though I was outnumbered by French people, I was dressed in black by myself in my crowd and very proud of my All Blacks team."

She was engaged as a seasonal contract dancer in Paris in 2011, an honour afforded to just three people each year. In July she got her lifetime contract and is among about 2 per cent of performers who are not French.

"I get my athleticism from my father because he was a rugby player, he played professionally in Japan."

While growing up in New Zealand, where Ms O'Neill returns each winter to visit her parents and younger brothers Ben, 19, and Shimon, 18, she danced at the Mt Eden Ballet Academy before being offered an Australian scholarship. Across the ditch, she won the 2009 Prix de Lausanne - considered the ballet Olympics - and took out the Youth America Grand Prix in New York in 2010.

She graduated as dux from the Australian school before being snapped up by the French academy, where she has quickly risen.

"I started dancing when I was 3 in Tokyo and to me, ballet was always the Paris Opera Ballet and it was a dream of mine to be a dancer here.

"For me, now ... it really starts. I am pretty sure I will be staying here for the next 22 years. The retirement age is 42 here ... but it's just the start for me. My aim is to be an etoiles (principal ballerina) at the Paris Opera."

NZ - Guinea Pig for Google and Facebook

Trial balloon: Visitors check out a Google Wi-Fi Internet balloon displayed at Christchurch's Air Force Museum on Sunday. | AFP-JIJI

N.Z. emerges as guinea pig for global tech firms

WELLINGTON – When Google chose New Zealand to unveil secret plans for a balloon-driven Wi-Fi network last weekend, it cemented the country’s reputation as a trial site for global tech companies looking to test their latest innovations.

Industry experts said New Zealand, tucked away deep in the Southern Hemisphere, offers a tech-savvy, English-speaking population where firms such as Google and Facebook can quietly test new products without risking major fallout if anything goes wrong.

“We tend to be early adopters — any technology that reduces the tyranny of distance we’re keen on,” said Malcolm Fraser of the Auckland-based Future Cities Institute. “We’re a small market, which means it doesn’t cost that much to test something here and if anything screws up we’re far enough from major markets for it not to have a spillover effect.”

Facebook has enthusiastically used New Zealanders as guinea pigs, last year testing a project where users could pay to make their posts more prominent on friends’ news feeds. It also first rolled out its timeline feature in New Zealand in 2011, saying at the time: “New Zealand is a good place to start because it’s English-speaking, so we can read the feedback and make improvements quickly.”

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional social network, also tested its endorsement feature in New Zealand last year, but Fraser said the country had been a laboratory for experimental technology since the mid-1980s, when the world’s first electronic payment system was introduced.

In the early 2000s, telecoms giant Vodafone debugged the GPRS network that replaced dial-up Internet connections for Kiwis before releasing it globally.

“It comes down to the fact that (New Zealand) is a perfect microcosm of a global community,” said Candace Kinser from technology industry group NZITC. “Auckland has immigrants as more than 50 percent of its population, from nearly every country in the world (and) Kiwis take up technology rapidly and use it well.”

Fraser said hosting leading-edge projects helped boost New Zealand’s IT sector, which boasts world leaders in sectors such as computer gaming and digital special effects.

“When these organizations come along, they don’t bring their whole R & D department, they just bring one or two key people, along with the new product or technology. So we get quite a lot of benefit from that, in terms of people in our technology getting trained up to fill the void,” he said.

Google’s foray into New Zealand, dubbed Project Loon, is perhaps the most ambitious high-tech test carried out in the country, aiming to bring Internet to the two-thirds of the global population currently without Web access. It involved sending 30 helium-filled balloons to the edge of space above the South Island on Saturday, each carrying transmitters capable of beaming Wi-Fi Internet access down to antennae below.

The ultimate goal is an army of thousands of such balloons creating a network that provides online access anywhere in the world.

The first person to access the Web under the project was dairy farmer Charles Nimmo, who said he appreciated the chance to work with one of the world’s largest companies to push the boundaries of technology.

“It’s been weird,” he told The New Zealand Herald. “But it’s been exciting to be part of something new.
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Honey and Manuka Honey Bees

High Manuka Honey Prices in NZ drive Honey thefts

Honey soars in value as bee numbers plunge and recognition of food's health benefits rise.

EXPAND

Alexi Skvortsov, pictured at his apartment, is accused of stealing honey worth hundreds of dollars. Photo / Herald on Sunday

More than $1100 worth of honey has been stolen from three Auckland supermarkets in the past month as prices soar.

A man the police allege is responsible for the thefts, Alexi Skvortsov, 34, appeared in the Auckland District Court on Tuesday.

He is accused of being the person responsible for the theft of honey from the Countdown stores in LynnMall, Blockhouse Bay and Mt Roskill on the same day - April 24 - and from the LynnMall store sometime between April 4 and 24.

Waitemata Honey director Neil Stuckey said prices for many honey varieties were at their highest following a global decline in bee population and rising customer demand.

The demand is being driven by mounting evidence of health benefits. Australian scientists found that honey made from the pollen of New Zealand's native manuka tree is measurably better for fighting bacteria in wound infections than other honeys.

The University of Technology, Sydney study published in the PLOS ONE science journal in February also found evidence that bacteria do not become resistant to honey as they do to antibiotics.

Some brands of manuka honey are retailing at $25 for 500g and one website has a variety called UMF10+ Manuka for $77.50 per kg.

"I think the prices will stay up," Stuckey said. "There's severe pressure on bees worldwide and there's just not enough honey being produced."

He said there was worldwide demand for manuka honey in particular. In some cases, consumers could be buying cheap honey for inflated prices at roadside stalls.

When the Herald on Sunday asked Skvortsov on Friday about the charges, he said, "I understand that it's interesting," but declined to comment further.

It is not clear where the stolen honey was intended to end up.

A Countdown spokeswoman said the alleged thefts were "isolated" incidents and Skvortsov was not an employee.

He will re-appear on May 20 at the Waitakere District Court for a registrar's list hearing.

He also faces a shoplifting-related charge at the North Shore District Court on May 16.