Serena Solomon

GISBORNE, New Zealand — Horehore Station, a sheep and cattle ranch, sprawls across 4,000 acres on New Zealand’s North Island, its jagged expanse of uneven hills and steep gullies blanketed in lush green grass.

It is good, productive farmland, despite the rugged landscape. But it soon won’t be a farm anymore.

The land’s owner, John Hindrup, who bought it in 2013 for 1.8 million New Zealand dollars, sold it this year for 13 million, or $8.2 million. His windfall came courtesy of a newly lucrative industry in New Zealand: Forestry investors will cover the property in trees, making money not from their timber, but from the carbon the trees will suck from the atmosphere.

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AUCKLAND, New Zealand — It’s a question many parents of children with dwarfism have contemplated: If a medication could make them taller, would they give it to them?

Now, that possibility is becoming less hypothetical. A study published this weekend in the journal The Lancet found that an experimental drug called vosoritide increased growth in children with the most common form of dwarfism to nearly the same rate as in children without the condition.

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[Photo credit: Christina Simons for The New York Times]

AUCKLAND, New Zealand — As the executive director of a marine trades organization, Peter Busfield makes it his business to know which superyachts are sailing to New Zealand because of their high value to his members and their businesses.

But last fall, months before the country was set to host races in the America’s Cup, he began to notice a disheartening pattern.

Global-positioning data — tracked in real-time by multiple websites and apps — showed dozens of the multimillion-dollar yachts headed to New Zealand for the event turning around and heading for home. By October, it was well known that the country’s borders were closed as part of the government’s strict response to the coronavirus pandemic. Other than a few exceptions, New Zealand had informed the world that its drawbridge would only come down for citizens and residents.

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AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Leo Mulipola found a lifeline in a load of fish heads.

Mr. Mulipola, 49, has struggled to find even an entry-level job at a gas station during the coronavirus pandemic and is now unemployed. So, with a household of six to feed, he jumped at the chance to pick up donated snapper and bluenose heads at a Maori community hall in Auckland, New Zealand.

The hall, known as a marae in the Maori language, has been distributing two tons of fish a week — the parts often discarded in commercial and recreational fishing — to families affected by New Zealand’s sputtering economy.

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AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Rawiri Waititi doesn’t need to go far for evidence of how Māori, New Zealand’s indigenous people, fared during a previous pandemic.

Within his iwi, or tribe, in New Zealand’s North Island are mass graves with the remains of dozens of his ancestors. Their cause of death: the Spanish flu in 1918.

“There were cemeteries created just for children,” said Waititi, an iwi leader and church elder in the Ringatū church, a Christian faith that draws heavily on Māori tradition.

It’s why he announced on March 20 the closure of his iwi’s borders due to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Outsiders, such as tourists, were turned away by two 24-hour roadblocks run by volunteers from the 1,000 strong iwi. More than 200 are elderly and like Māori nationwide, conditions such as diabetes are common, making them more vulnerable to the disease.

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As advocates reevaluate the value of offender registries, a women-led support line vows to offer help to those who feel shunned by their communities. [Click here to keep reading]

AUCKLAND, New Zealand — The main attraction for spectators and television viewers at the America’s Cup will always be the AC75s, the sleek racing yachts that can fly above the water on hydrofoils at speeds as high as 60 miles an hour.

The event’s scene-stealer this week, though, may be the supporting actor that has been racing them: the helicopter filming the races between Emirates Team New Zealand and Italy’s Luna Rossa for international television broadcasts. Its nail-biting maneuvers, almost always at high speed and sometimes only a few feet above the water, have brought the sheen of a big-budget action movie to what can often be a relatively straightforward sprint.

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Pablo Picasso probably wasn’t thinking about macular degeneration when he remarked: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist as we grow up.”

But the statement has more than a grain of truth in it for Serge Hollerbach, 94, a Russian-born artist in Manhattan. Mr. Hollerbach painted throughout every aspect of his vision loss caused by macular degeneration, a disease that affects 10 million Americans, often in their twilight years — typically depleting their central vision and leaving most legally blind, but with some remnant of sight. [To keep reading, click here]

One afternoon last summer, a team of prosthetic technicians hovered around Adam Taylor as if he were a racecar in for a pit stop.

The length of Mr. Taylor’s new right leg was off, so a technician rushed away to shorten it at a pipe cutter. An additional fabric liner was added to Mr. Taylor’s residual limb. But it was too tight, so the additional liner was removed to allow better suction for the prosthesis. Another technician knelt on the floor, fiddling with the alignment of the new foot.

When Mr. Taylor’s leg was fitted and he had on a new pair of Nikes, Chris Kort, the owner of Prosthetics in Motion, based in Manhattan, pointed him to a wheelchair for the 60-foot trip to a parallel bar walkway. (Click here to keep reading.)

AUCKLAND, New Zealand — The oblong object, 75 feet long with a pointed nose, looks more like a downed spacecraft than a sleek racing yacht.

Hoisted in the air and surrounded by scaffolding, the object’s two appendages stick out and run down its sides like the long, slender legs of a praying mantis. But this is not a spaceship, or even an oversize insect: It is Patriot, the yacht of a team, American Magic, that hopes to reclaim the America’s Cup, sailing’s most prestigious trophy, for the United States.

And Patriot has a big problem.

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A few weeks ago, Deb Williams saw another dead kangaroo lying in the middle of the Stuart Highway, a strip of road almost 2,000 miles long that runs north-south through Australia’s center.

So she did what she normally does. She slowed her car down from 70 miles an hour and pulled over to drag the lifeless animal off the road. As a nurse, Ms. Williams, 50, has seen firsthand the effects that hitting kangaroos has on drivers. From the smell and site of the carcass, she estimated it had been there for a few days, all life long gone. Or so she thought. (Click here to keep reading.)

It was midnight when David woke up to find two large men standing over his bed. Without any explanation, they told him to get up, get dressed, and come with them. Still in the confusion of sleep, but also petrified out of his 12-year-old mind, David complied. Plus, the restraint of a large arm meant he couldn't bolt. (Click here to keep reading)

Any woman who has ever carried and birthed a child, in whatever fashion, deserves her own ESPN highlight reel — blood, sweat, tears and the eventual triumph of holding her newborn baby. To be clear, childbirth isn’t a game. You can’t plead with the referee when you don’t like a call or leave the field when you’re tired.

Still, as a lifelong athlete, I saw childbirth, especially an unmedicated one, as the ultimate challenge of physical endurance, mental stamina and my ability to handle pain. [To keep reading click here]

Warning: This story contains images and discussion of self-injury.

"I didn't realize how much it meant to me until you started asking," said Cait, her voice quivering, as she told me about the moment last December when a tattoo artist covered up her most visible collection of self-harm scars. He had pulled her in front of the mirror, the stencil already drawn on her arm, and was asking for her final approval before making it permanent. She knew that would be the last time she would see her scars. (Click here to keep reading)

Michael Tracy’s art isn’t his only legacy. He is restoring the Spanish colonial heritage of tiny San Ygnacio. So why don’t they love him there? (To keep reading click here)

A church in Minneapolis is making a scripture-centered fight against displacement the core of its neighborhood mission. (To keep reading click here).

Ink’s ingredients are usually closely held secrets, but one artist shows how you can make it with items found all across the city, from soggy walnuts to rusty bedsprings. [To keep reading, click here]

In the coming months, Jenny* will be extra vigilant at checking her mailbox before her husband and daughter do. The holiday season is the time of year the letters tend to come. Most likely the return address will be the state penitentiaries in Angola or Dixon, Louisiana. Often what is written follows a pattern. The letters will start off telling Jenny how the inmate saw her picture and that she looks lovely and he doesn't judge her for what she did. Then things go downhill.

"I want you to teach me so bad..." read one letter dated April 3, 2016, and written on lined paper with a blue pen. "Your my fantasy. I wish I blessed to touch your body [sic]"

Jenny, who is in her early 40s, said more than 100 sexually grotesque letters, some five or six pages long, have landed in her mailbox in her three years on Louisiana's sex offender registry. (Click here to keep reading. Image courtesy of Untouchable documentary)

COOBER PEDY, Australia — For anyone driving through South Australia’s outback, it does not take long to see why patrol officers like Alan Walton are needed to keep the country’s 3,500-mile-long dingo fence in order.

Early into a recent workday, Mr. Walton watched as a kangaroo — perhaps driven by the potential for greener pastures or a mate on the other side — slammed full-throttle into the fence, bouncing off like a boxer hitting the ropes.

(Click here to keep reading. Image by Adam Ferguson)

It was neither awkward nor sensual — more like a group of mechanics huddled over an engine, discussing its capabilities and how it works. In this analogy, Mana Hashimoto, a blind professional dancer and choreographer, was the head mechanic, and her body was the engine.

At a workshop on a recent Saturday, Ms. Hashimoto was surrounded by four students from the Filomen M. D’Agostino Greenberg Music School, a community school for the blind and visually impaired that’s near Lincoln Center. They followed her movements with their hands: One touched her belly. Another had a hand on Ms. Hashimoto’s head, and still another ran fingers along Ms. Hashimoto’s outstretched arm as she began a long, low backbend. (Click here to keep reading. Image by Julieta Cervantes.)

Pacific Island governments and others are working to modernize cultivation of kava, hoping that the drink’s popularity can be sustained. (Click here to keep reading. Image by Lam Yik Fei.)

As the 40ft (12m) drill rattles down through the red dirt, miner Craig Stutley makes a statement that sounds a lot like what he said 30 minutes ago.

"This is the hole," says the 45-year-old.

Mr Stutley's mining partner, Richard Saunders, who seems eternally caked in dusty soil, mumbles in agreement.

The two men are standing in the middle of the sun-bleached South Australian outback, hunting for opals, the rare gemstones that can sparkle with a rainbow of different colours.

They sift through the earth that the test drill pulls up, searching for signs of opals that could potentially make them a fortune.

With the largest, best-quality Australian opals worth more than £600,000 thanks to soaring demand from jewelers around the world, there is a vast amount of money to be - potentially - made. [To keep reading click here. Photo credit: Serena Solomon]

NEW YORK CITY — Stephanie Wilson was reaching for a receipt inside a paper shopping bag from Saks Fifth Avenue when she found a letter pleading, "HELP HELP HELP."

The message, written in blue ink on white lined paper, appeared to be a desperate cry from a man who said he made the bag while being unfairly held in a Chinese prison factory more than 7,000 miles away.

"We are ill-treated and work like slaves for 13 hours every day producing these bags in bulk in the prison factory," continued the letter, which was tucked into the bottom of the bag. It ended, "Thanks and sorry to bother you."

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Photo: Courtesy of Stephanie Wilson

THE FIRST CLUE THAT YOU shouldn’t mess with Eroni Matatia when it comes to Fiji’s reptiles is found on his Facebook page. In his profile picture, Matatia is holding baby turtles, arms crossed out front like a gangsta posing with wads of cash. The second clue comes from his heritage. Matatia is a third-generation crested iguana ranger and one of the few paid wildlife rangers in Fiji to guard against poachers picking off the island nation’s numerous endemic species. [To keep reading click here. Photo Credit: Serena Solomon

Pita Qarau pulled his boat next to a turtle, which was trying desperately to flee the buzz of the boat’s noisy engine. The turtle, a female hawksbill, was surprisingly fast, capable of a top speed of about 15 miles per hour.

But Mr. Qarau knew he could win the sprint. He lost the turtle momentarily, then circled back. Finally, as the turtle slowed down, he positioned the boat near the fatigued animal. He threw his engine into neutral and dived into the water.

Seconds later, he re-emerged, holding on to a chaotic mess of flapping flippers. (Click here to keep reading. Image by Lam Yik Fei)

As one of the largest ever winter storms rolled out of New York City in late January, Albert Weaver’s surf expedition went something like this. Dig car out: one hour. Car battery is dead. Charge it: one hour. Plow truck buries car. Dig it out again: one hour. Drive to Rockaway, New York City’s only surf beach: one hour.

For Weaver, an entire morning doing battle with the city instantly became worth it when he made it to the sand. The storm had given him the gift of near perfect barreling waves. The larger sets coming in were overhead, at about seven feet. (Click here to keep reading)

Tucked inside a dark shopping plaza in this otherwise enchanting city in the South Pacific is Henry’s Pawn Shop. Inside, Joseph Baivatu, 29, prepares to make the next payment on a layaway for something very special: a large sperm whale tooth. Known as a tabua in Fiji, a sperm whale’s tooth is often given by a groom and his family to the parents of the man’s (hopefully) future bride when he asks permission to marry her.

“The whole of my life I want to be married, so I give my goods and my time,” said Mr. Baivatu, a Vodafone technician in Suva, Fiji’s capital and largest city. “I give the tabua, and that means ‘I love you’ from the inside.”

Mr. Baivatu, who is as soft-spoken as he is tall and broad shouldered, said he had yet to meet the future Mrs. Baivatu, but that detail does not get in the way. He is determined to be ready with tabuas when she turns up. (Click here to keep reading.)

There are the snakes, the sharks and the spiders, but no one told you about the magpies, did they?

In September and October, Australians band together as if motivated by a national war effort. It’s swooping season for the native magpie. This black-and-white bird with beady red-brown eyes can become aggressive, dive bombing and pecking anything, especially humans, that it deems a threat to its chicks. (Click here to keep reading)

In Fiji, flowers can take on a spiritual, magical significance. They are strung together as garlands for ceremonies and festivals or worn as an ornament behind the ear on any given day.

The South Pacific archipelago is home to about 800 species of plants found nowhere else in the world. But the most special is the tagimoucia, a crimson and white flower that hangs down in clusters like a chain of ruby raindrops. Because of its beauty and rarity, it has attained a kind of celebrity status. (Click here to keep reading.)

Daniel Kuettel has vivid memories of the day in 2012 when he renounced his United States citizenship.

A heavy fog hung around the US Embassy in Bern, Switzerland, where he would raise his right hand and swear, "I hereby absolutely and entirely renounce my United States nationality." Right before he entered the embassy, though, Kuettel witnessed a serious car accident right in front of him, which seemed almost like an omen.

"It was really weird, just a really strange day," said Kuettel, 43. "I was sad, happy, scared, relieved, worried, excited, angry, delighted..."

Until that day, Kuettel considered himself both as American as apple pie and as Swiss as an army knife.  [To keep reading click here]

[Image: Fort George G. Meade Public Affairs Office on Flickr]

Finding a fake green card isn't difficult. I know this because after a half hour of looking online, I was already emailing with someone who said he or she could make one for me.

The response came in seconds from a Gmail account. "Yes, we are capable of providing you with the green card, but the cost will depend on how soon you will need the green card." The email described two tiers of service: I could get the counterfeit green card in four days for $180 plus $55 in postage. If I wanted rush service—a two-day guarantee—I'd have to pay $280. (Click here to keep reading. Image: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

Hawthorne Smith doesn't just read the international section of the newspaper to stay up to date on global affairs: He does it in anticipation of who might walk into his office next. A crackdown on protesters in Tibet, a flare up in a West African civil war, and intensifying homophobia almost anywhere in the world—all clues.

"Set your calendars forward a couple of months and we will be seeing people from these conflicts," said Smith, the clinical director and a psychologist at the NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture, one of the only comprehensive torture treatment centers in New York City.

Take an elevator to the seventh floor of Bellevue Hospital in New York City, turn left, and you'll find the program at the end of a hallway. It looks like any other room in the hospital—white walls, gray vinyl floors, a semi-broken water cooler—but the people seated on the blue waiting room chairs aren't typical patients. (Click here to keep reading)

By the time she was 14, Candice (not her real name) knew breast implants were for her. She'd seen the bulging—often fake—breasts of women in porn, and they mesmerized her, creating an artificial normal of the female form. "I guess I always saw women like that and I assumed you grew up and you [got breast implants]," she says.

Last year, in January, Candice, a 23-year-old hairstylist from Arizona. finally took the plunge. The surgical procedure took her from a 32C to a D cup; eventually, they ballooned into a triple D, the biggest size you can find at a Victoria's Secret.

Within a few months she began doubting her decision. (Click here to continue reading)

This October, President Obama announced to much fanfare that America's high school graduation rate has reached an all-time high—83.2 percent for the 2014-2015 school year, the most recent year for which data is available. 

This was the cherry on top of five years of consecutive growth that also includes a big leap forward for minority groups, such a African American students (a 7.6 percent increase) and Native Americans (a 6.6 percent increase). The president took that chance to tout some of his education initiatives such as investing in preschool education and a push to connect classrooms to broadband internet. 

While these initiatives may have helped, education experts are still pondering why the graduation rate has increased. (Click here to keep reading)

You've heard of drunk dialing and drunk Facebooking, but drunk puppy buying?

Inebriated passers-by are falling in love with playful pooches frolicking in the window of a West Village pet store, and the problem has become so bad the owner has banned them from taking the pets home. [Click here to keep reading]

The thick, flowing beards adorning hipsters from Williamsburg to Park Slope are driving follicly-challenged New Yorkers to a little-known but growing field of plastic surgery — facial hair transplants.

Whether they're filling in a few gaps or doing a complete beard construction, New York City doctors who specialize in the procedure said they're seeing a growing number of men paying as much as $7,000 to pump up their beards.

Blink-and-you'll-miss-them brows are a thing of the past at Fashion Week this season and instead, there is a growing trend — literally — for something bigger and bolder. Not only have models with bushy brows sashayed down the runways this week for designers including Jason Wu and Rebecca Minkoff, but those in the seats have been embracing the trend and shunning the tweezers. [Click here to keep reading]

Inga Eiriksdottir, 30, felt devastated at age 22 when she had to transition from being a "straight-size" model to a plus-size model.

Despite dieting and giving up tennis — which added frowned-upon muscle to her frame — the Greenwich Village beauty's healthy weight gain sent her from a size 2 to a size 6, leaving her unmarketable as a conventional model. [Click here to keep reading]

MANHATTAN - Linda Gokey is willing to sacrifice a lot for her annual Tribeca Film Festival marathon — even the baby shower of her friend’s daughter.

"I know I lied about where I had to be," said Gokey, who missed the event one year so that she could sit through movies with marathon comrades Joan Kemnitzer and Ellen Bogart. "I think she figured it out... she certainly knows about Tribeca and me."

"I felt guilty for about 30 seconds."

Each year the three friends, all in their 60s and residents of Long Island, spend hours organizing their viewing schedule for the 10-day festival. This year they're planning to see 13 films. [Click here to keep reading]

In the last few months Kristin Olenik, 26, a leggy model with a 24-inch waist, did something she never thought she would do.

She upped the fat in her diet.

Olenik swapped out zero-fat yogurt for the whole milk version. Instead of rice cakes, she now snacks on nuts. And she doesn't mind eating the skin on her chicken.

"Now, I realize that in order to get food to be fat-free or 2 percent, it undergoes a process to get that way and it is not a natural process," said Olenik, who lives in Chelsea and is a food coach in training.

Olenik is one of many embracing a nutritional philosophy that celebrates the benefits of fat, marking a dramatic shift from dieting rules that have been popular since the 1980s. [Click here to keep reading]

In her teenage years, Alex Rubio, 26, went the "full nine yards" to make her A cup breasts look bigger.

She stuffed her bras with toilet paper and bought others with copious amounts of padding "even if I didn't have anything to put in them," said Rubio, a model and chef-in-training who lives in the East Village.

But in her early 20s Rubio began to shed her shame. She believes she has even booked more modeling jobs because of her shape.

"Small breasts are sexy," Rubio said.

Local lingerie shops and plastic surgeons are getting on board with her notion that less is more when it comes to cleavage.

Gone are bulky, round breast implants and push-up bras. In their place are teardrop-shaped implants and bras with minimalist design. And some women don't seem to mind showing off that other cleavage craze — side-boob — by going bra-less. [Click here to keep reading]

When Stewart Cauley, 50, has enough of New York City’s winter, he doesn’t head to Mexico. He heads to a bathhouse for a steam and cold plunge.

“After cooking yourself in the bath, it makes it that much more tolerable,” he said.

Cauley said he walks in feeling tired and drained, but leaves with “enough energy to make it through the week.” He goes to the baths about once a month for three to six hours.

The extreme temperatures of saunas, steam rooms and cold plunge pools can positively impact the body, from assisting in detoxification and stress-relief according to naturopathic doctors. [Click here to keep reading]

Media headlines and blogs might herald the popularity of online dating, but there are many who keep their love life offline or have returned from the digital world exhausted and burned by smartphone apps and websites that promised a soul mate.

While it is difficult to know how many New Yorkers are keeping their search offline, a 2013 Pew Research Center study found that only 38 percent of single and searching Americans have used an online service. [Click here to keep reading]