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Soana Aholelei | Reporter / Director “It goes back to 1881, when Rotuma ceded to Great Britain.  There was some internal strife back in the day and Rotuma turned to Great Britain for help” – Bruce Tizard-Varcoe Rotumans from all over the United Kingdom and abroad celebrated a unique anniversary recently – the ceding of the tiny nation to the British 145 years ago. Celebrated as Rotuma Day by its people around the world, those of its citizens in the UK chose to hold their celebrations at the Oak’s Golf Course Centre, in Carlshalton Surrey, last month. Rotuma is a political dependency of Fiji, but its people are ethnically Polynesians and are fiercely proud of their cultural heritage.  At the celebration in Surrey, Rotumans and Fijians dressed to impress in their best and floral Pacific Islands attire. For community...

A rare working copy of Alcoholics Anonymous , the basic text of the 12-step program, also known as “the Big Book,” is coming to auction at Christies New York on July 1 at its Rockefeller Center salesroom. It comes from the collection of the late billionaire Jim Irsay. Bearing extensive handwritten notations and edits by the authors, it is estimated to sell for between $1 and $2 million. The proceeds will go to philanthropic causes that were important to Irsay. The manuscript has sold for various prices over the years; the next buyer may get it at a discount relative to its last outing. Irsay bought the manuscript in 2018 from auction house Profiles in History for $2.4 million, per ESPN ; it had previously come to auction twice at Sotheby’s, ESPN reports: in 2004, when it went for $1.6 million, and in 2007, when it fetched $992,000. “Our dad understood the struggles countless people everywhere face every day and wanted so badly to bring hope and relief to ...

By Steven White Almost half of all first round Premier Swindale Shield club rugby matches have an interclub trophy on the line, many involving Old Boys University, such as this Saturday’s Jack Lamason Trophy match against Marist St Pat’s. The OBU club social teams have also contested the Ruru Shield amongst each other continuously since...

The American South will have a new and expanded museum to visit come December 6, when Tennessee’s Memphis Art Museum (formerly the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art) reopens. The 123,500-square-foot cultural campus, designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architects Herzog & de Meuron, expands the institution’s gallery space by half and, per the museum, offers “six times more art-filled free public space.”  The new facility was initially tagged at $180 million, reported a local news outlet in November, adding that the actual cost is expected to be higher. The City of Memphis contributed $30 million, while the State of Tennessee gave $12 million toward the expansion. Residents of Shelby County, which includes Memphis, will receive free admission.  The two-acre campus is structured around a reconstructed bluff on the Mississippi River, known locally as the promenade. It will offer a 10,000-square-foot courtyard, a 50,000-square-foot rooftop art garden, an outdoo...

Cam Stewart was Marist’s first-five and playmaker and vice-captain of the side that won or shared the Jubilee Cup in 1960, 1962, 1963 and 1964. He also played for the Wellington representative team over several seasons and played in many of their big matches at the time. He later played for Manawatu after moving to...

President Donald Trump’s proposed “National Garden of American Heroes” has hit another setback as a coalition of Washington-era preservation and cultural groups sues to halt its construction. The lawsuit, filed Monday, argues that the statuary garden—featuring roughly 250 Americans and planned for West Potomac Park—cannot proceed without congressional approval. The filing seeks to halt the project, which is already underway on a tract connected to the National Mall, as statues are commissioned and funding is secured. The sculpture garden was first mentioned by Trump in July 2020, during his first term. “Congress put clear laws in place to safeguard the National Mall from new construction and to ensure the public has a meaningful voice in decisions about landscapes that belong to them, as space open to all,” Tiernan Sittenfeld, president and CEO for the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement, as first reported by the Washington Post ...