Research indicates that up to 40% of small companies in Christchurch could eventually fold following the earthquake on 22 February; Research into the benefits of airline air-points programmes in the United States has concluded that it's difficult to redeem the air miles and to understand the"ins and outs"of each airline's scheme.
A UN report warns today that the world is running out of time to make sure there is enough food, water and energy, The Government says residents forced to sell up and leave their earthquake-damaged houses in the red zones of Christchurch can't expect to be told when their former homes will be demolished. A big story in the current Atlantic Monthly concludes, after looking at many studies, that cellphone use isn't harmful to your brain.
A new council report into Wellington's resilience has found the city's economy would take a $37 billion hit if it experienced an event like the Christchurch earthquake. Old people stand accused of displacing more than 40,000 teenagers from jobs over the past five years, as more of them choose to stay in the workforce and employers choose experience over youth.
Exactly 75 years ago today, Superman made his debut in "Action Comics" No. 1. Campaigners for the restoration of the Christchurch Cathedral are "thrilled" that rebuilding the earthquake-damaged church remains on the table. The Press reports Christchurch's hotel shortage is so critical that at times visitor centre staff have had to put tourists up in their own homes.
Topics - The Mayor of Christchurch says he's confident the city council will speed up the processing of building consents and won't lose its authority to grant them. Are Christchurch's frustrations with the Earthquake Commission a result of some kind of misunderstanding. Media hype's being blamed for skyrocketing house prices in parts of Auckland.
Topics - Hundreds of people have lost their lives in Egypt overnight, and it's expected the death toll will continue to rise. This comes after the military over threw the democratically elected leader last month, and has now forcibly closed down protester camps. Power company Orion - owned by Christchurch City Council and Selwyn District Council - is looking to hike its prices until 2019, to help recover revenue lost because of the Canterbury earthquakes.
Topics - Would you like a pay rise of $10,000 a year? That's what the lowest paid Auckland Council staff will get if a plan to implement a minimum wage of $18.40 an hour goes through. The Insurance Council has received a briefing today after a report revealed hundreds of properties on Christchurch's Port Hills are on unsafe land. The GNS Science report released yesterday shows a major rain or snow storm could cause land already loosened by the earthquakes to move.
Topics - The Gettysburg address, the short speech given by Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago today, the finest short speech in the English language, and one of the great political utterances of all time. A strong earthquake that hit Christchurch last night has been upgraded by GNS Science to a magnitude 4.6. It was also shallower than first believed, with GNS reporting it was 8km deep rather than 11km. Wallabies rugby coach Ewen McKenzie has made no apologies for suspending six of his players in what's been described as "a hard-line move designed to set the standards required to win the 2015 World Cup".
Topics - Katy Perry opened the ceremony in Los Angeles with a Japanese-themed performance of Unconditionally, dressed as a Geisha. Within minutes, fans and viewers were accusing her of racism. A citizens initiated referendum on the sale of state assets is in full swing. The referendum isn't binding on the Government, in fact the Government has already promised to ignore it. Newly published research shows that the Canterbury earthquakes were even more unusual than first thought, with such a sequence unlikely to occur anywhere else in the world. The research, published this week in Nature Geoscience, challenges the common assumption that the strength of the Earth's crust is constant.
Topics - Twelve charges laid against the former Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall in relation to the 2010 disaster at the mine have been dropped. In a shock development in the Christchurch District Court today, the Crown said that after an extensive review it was "not appropriate to continue with the prosecution against Mr Whittall''. More than half of the 2.15 million KiwiSaver members are either not contributing to the retirement scheme or not saving enough to collect the $521 annual tax credit from the Government, according to the Inland Revenue Department. The number of people with dire needs on Housing New Zealand's waiting list has tripled since the Christchurch earthquakes.
Topics - A big study from Harvard and UC Berkeley has looked back into family trees, over centuries, to determine how social mobility has changed. The "Moon man" has used his claimed Christchurch earthquake predictions to defeat an Advertising Standards Authority complaint over his weather forecasting website. The Prime Minister John Key says Labour's flat performance in recent polls is because it's focusing on the wrong issues.
Topics - Emergency services are at the scene of a cliff collapse at the Port of Lyttelton that has damaged fuel storage tanks. Police say evacuations are underway from Brittan Terrace and Cressy Terrace, with people being taken to Lyttelton Main School. Meanwhile - University of Canterbury researchers have confirmed that Christchurch is now experiencing more frequent and severe flooding due to the impact of the earthquakes.
Topics - A Christchurch resident says he just wants to get on with his life after his house was flooded for the ninth time since the 2011 earthquake. Fairfax newspapers today feature the story of an elderly gentleman who has been burgled so many times he's afraid to sleep in his own home. In Southland - A 72-year old woman has had her 30-year church membership revoked because she is living in a de facto relationship.
A photograph of a partially demolished section of the Cranmer Centre. A panel from the roof has just been removed. To the right, two men are standing on a platform raised by a crane.
A photograph of a wooden panel with fairy lights strung over it for Tunnel House Supper Club - a pop-up restaurant located at Agropolis. The restaurant existed for one night only, during FESTA 2014.
About 700 people packed Christchurch's Cardboard Cathedral last night to hear from a panel of experts on why, four years after the big earthquake, they're still waiting for their homes to be rebuilt.
A photograph of a wooden panel with fairy lights strung over it, ready for Tunnel House Supper Club - a pop-up restaurant located at Agropolis. The restaurant existed for one night only, during FESTA 2014.
Topics - the latest twist in the Kim Dotcom saga is that the police have announced they're investigating the Government Communications Security Bureau's illegal surveillance of the internet mogul. New research has shown that membership of all mainstream Christian denominations has fallen to historic lows - except for Catholicism. New research has uncovered the role underground rock structures played in stopping the September 2010 Christchurch earthquake from linking up with the Port Hills faultline and causing greater damage to Christchurch.
A photograph of a partially demolished section of the Cranmer Centre. To the left, a crane is removing a panel from the roof of the Cranmer Centre. To the right, two men are standing on a platform raised by another crane.
UNESCO panel discussion with Jason Pemberton of the Student Volunteer Army in Christchurch, Qasim Aslam, a young Pakistani entrepreneur who set up systems to cope with the earthquake and floods there, and Muthiah Muthe who was involved with relief efforts in Indonesia.
A photograph of the earthquake damage to the Brannigan's building on the corner of Gloucester Street and Oxford Terrace. Many of the windows down the centre of the building have broken. There are also cracks in the panels beneath many of the windows.
Topics - New Zealanders paid tribute to the victims of the Christchurch earthquake today - with two minutes' silence marking the moment the disaster struck last week. The emergency ambulance service provider, St John, has hit out at hoax callers who have been wasting valuable time and ambulance service resources following Tuesday's earthquake.
A photograph of the entrance of the Crowne Plaza Hotel taken from inside the hotel. The front windows have smashed, the glass scattering across the courtyard and foyer. Sections of the ceiling have collapsed, the panels fallen onto the floor in front of the rotating doors.
As part of a seismic retrofit scheme, surface bonded glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) fabric was applied to two unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings located in Christchurch, New Zealand. The unreinforced stone masonry of Christchurch Girls’ High School (GHS) and the unreinforced clay brick masonry Shirley Community Centre were retrofitted using surface bonded GFRP in 2007 and 2009, respectively. Much of the knowledge on the seismic performance of GFRP retrofitted URM was previously assimilated from laboratory-based experimental studies with controlled environments and loading schemes. The 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence provided a rare opportunity to evaluate the GFRP retrofit applied to two vintage URM buildings and to document its performance when subjected to actual design-level earthquake-induced shaking. Both GFRP retrofits were found to be successful in preserving architectural features within the buildings as well as maintaining the structural integrity of the URM walls. Successful seismic performance was based on comparisons made between the GFRP retrofitted GHS building and the adjacent nonretrofitted Boys’ High School building, as well as on a comparison between the GFRP retrofitted and nonretrofitted walls of the Shirley Community Centre building. Based on detailed postearthquake observations and investigations, the GFRP retrofitted URM walls in the subject buildings exhibited negligible to minor levels of damage without delamination, whereas significant damage was observed in comparable nonretrofitted URM walls AM - Accepted Manuscript
Glass panels with brass surrounds, stacked inside a building. The photographer comments, "These were brass dividers that were brought inside the building two years ago after the Christchurch earthquake. They have been sitting there abandoned in a restaurant that will be either repaired and reopened at a later date or demolished like the many others of its kind".
One right front black Mazda CX7 car door damaged during the 22 February 2011 earthquake. This panel once belonged to a Mazda CX7 car that was crushed by falling rubble during the 22 February 2011 earthquake. Considerably bent out of shape, it demonstrates the potential danger from falling masonry during an earthquake. The spray painted markings...
One right rear black Mazda CX7 car door damaged during the 22 February 2011 earthquake; white USAR spray paint markings 'P/T // CLE[AR]'. This panel once belonged to a Mazda CX7 car that was crushed by falling rubble during the 22 February 2011 earthquake. Considerably bent out of shape, it demonstrates the potential danger from falling masonry...
In the top panel a kiwi reads the newspaper which has headlines reading 'Milk prices', 'BMW limos', 'Dodgy politicians', and 'Foreign despot news' and says 'Let's get this all in perspective'. In the lower panel the kiwi walks among the ruins and the graves of Christchurch and thinks 'Christchurch and Canterbury need our attention and care!!' Context - The very severe Christchurch earthquake of 22 February 2011 in which probably more than 200 people died and an enormous amount of structural damage has been done. The headlines refer to Fonterra putting a freeze on the price of milk, the government buying expensive limos (both of these making headlines because of the state of the economy) and lastly the 'foreign despot' is Gaddafi in Libya. Quantity: 1 digital cartoon(s).
A photograph of a yellow sticker on the window of the Diabetes Centre on Hagley Avenue. The sticker was placed on the building after the 4 September 2010 earthquake, indicating that access to the building was restricted. The engineer who surveyed the building describes the damage to the building as follows: "Panel damaged and displaced at rear - area cordoned off. Loose soffit linings. Damage to ceiling".
A panel with Michael Bell, Steph Walker and Kiri Jarden. It’s almost 13 years since the devastating earthquake of 22 February 2011, which forced 70 percent of the Ōtautahi Christchurch CBD to be demolished. While the rebuild has been a slow and often difficult process in visions meeting reality, there is also much to celebrate in the city taking up the opportunity, through art and design, to remake it as a place for all.