Sports diplomacy is part of the Fijian government`s efforts to ensure Fijians in Aotearoa have opportunities where they can still develop their skills and showcase their talents. Sports diplomacy is... Read...

More than 3500 competitors will face off in a range of sports - from traditional athletics to ballroom dancing and the popular jigsaw puzzle racing. Read...

Did you know the Super Bowl is just around the corner? January sure moved fast, what with society falling apart and all. Well, if you’re planning to watch the big game this year while the world burns outside, you might as well watch it on a proper screen—like TCL’s 65-inch 4K TV that’s on sale for $499.97 (was $699.99). That’s a lovely 29% off! View this Amazon deal For the price, the TCL T7 delivers exceptional visual quality with QLED technology at 4K resolution, which translates to rich and vibrant colors, vivid contrast, and an overall great viewing experience. The native 144Hz refresh rate ensures fluid responsiveness and smooth motion whether you’re watching sports, movies, or gaming. Indeed, it’s a solid option to pair with your Xbox or PlayStation console. As a smart TV, it runs on the Google TV platform. You’ll find content from various streaming apps in a single interface, and it comes with a remote with easy access to the most popular streaming services. You even can tap the microphone button to issue voice commands. This TV integrates with Google Home, Apple HomeKit, and Amazon Alexa, so you can also use the remote to command your other smart home gadgets. If you order today, you’ll be able to get the TCL T7 delivered with plenty of days to spare before the big game. Grab this 65-inch 4K TV for its lowest price yet and elevate your home media experience! Start watching sports in glorious 65-inch 4K without breaking the bankBuy now at Amazon Read...

The mass sports event is hitting Auckland for the second year - and it seems to be all the fitness folks can talk about. Read...

Khadija Ahmadzada was detained for being in `violation` of rules `regarding women`s sports gyms`, a Taliban spokesman said. Read...

Seventeen athletes have been confirmed for next month`s Milano Cortina Winter Olympics - the biggest snow sports contingent that New Zealand has sent to a Winter Olympics. Read...

If you want to avoid cable-like prices for streaming TV, the best way is to aggressively cycle through different subscriptions. A new app called StreamWolf makes that process simpler. StreamWolf provides an overview of all your streaming subscriptions, shows you the total cost, and lets you cancel (or reactivate) individual services with just a button tap. It also offers some watchlist features so you can plan what to pay for at any given time. The app is still a work in progress, but it shows promise and offers some utility even in its early stages. It’s the kind of service that streaming platforms like Roku and Fire TV ought to provide themselves, but won’t. How it works StreamWolf is available for both iPhone and Android. While its creators may eventually charge a fee for its subscription management features (more on that below), the app is currently free to use. After launching the app and creating an account, you’ll be prompted to sign into all your streaming services. StreamWolf doesn’t collect any streaming passwords; it’s merely opening an in-app browser where you log into each service’s website. Jared Newman / Foundry Once you’re logged in, StreamWolf scans the contents of each streaming account page, so it can understand what plan you have and how much it costs. The app then displays the total cost of all your subscriptions, both annually and monthly. The real magic happens when you ask StreamWolf to cancel one of your subscriptions. Instead of just dropping you onto an account page, the app uses some automated browsing tools to handle the cancellation process by itself. This allowed me to cancel (and restart) my Netflix subscription just by tapping a button. Once your subscriptions are connected, StreamWolf provides a centralized way to turn them on or off.Jared Newman / Foundry StreamWolf currently works with Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+, and YouTube. Impressively, it will also recognize add-on subscriptions with those services, such as Amazon’s Prime Channels, YouTube’s Primetime Channels, and Disney’s various bundles. It properly noted, for instance, that my Disney+ subscription is in a bundle with Hulu. While StreamWolf isn’t the only app for managing your streaming subscriptions, I haven’t been impressed with any others. Some require manually inputting subscription details, so they’re barely more functional than a spreadsheet. Others gather that data automatically by connecting to your credit card and bank accounts, which feels overly invasive. (Rocket Money, notably, can share your financial data with advertisers.) By contrast, StreamWolf is focused entirely on streaming, keeps track of your spending without gathering sensitive financial data, and automates the tedium of managing your subscriptions. It’s filling a clear need as the cost of having too many streaming services gets closer to a typical cable bill. What’s not working yet As I mentioned earlier, StreamWolf is far from perfect. While playing around with it this week, I ran into several technical issues and noticed a bunch of ways that the app could be better. The biggest problem is that it didn’t accurately sum up my subscription spending. It lists my Disney+ and Hulu bundle at $11 per month, not the $5 per month Black Friday price I’m paying (or the regular price of $13 per month, for that matter). It’s also overestimating my monthly streaming bill by $34, apparently because it’s counting a couple of expired Amazon Prime add-ons. StreamWolf’s “Discover” section is a bit undercooked as well. You can add movies and shows to a watchlist, but navigation feels slow, and when I added “The Boys” via the search menu, it failed to appear in my watchlist. StreamWolf’s Discover section lets you keep track of what to watch.Jared Newman / Foundry StreamWolf might eventually use your watchlist to suggest the best times to pay for each service; but for now, the payoff of maintaining yet another watchlist isn’t worth the effort. (If the app synced your streaming activity via Younify, like Trakt is doing, that’d be pretty compelling.) StreamWolf could also use support for managing more streaming services. Notable omissions as of now include Apple TV+, Fubo, DirecTV, AMC+, and Starz. What’s next for StreamWolf StreamWolf is the first startup from James Harris and Steve Lewis, a pair of childhood friends from England who got fed up with manually cycling through all their TV subscriptions. They teamed up with Ron Downey, a U.K.-based streaming executive, who now serves as the company’s CEO. (The company is building a team in Columbus, Ohio, where Harris now lives.) In an interview, Harris and Lewis said they plan to eventually charge $3 per month for most StreamWolf features, but for now they’re focused on gathering feedback and improving the app. They also didn’t rule out keeping the app free and making money in other ways, such as through sales commissions when users re-subscribe to a service. Beyond just making the app more reliable, they’re also planning to bring live sports into the watchlist section. This could help users figure out what they need for the teams or leagues they follow—an increasingly complex calculation as sports rights become scattered across different services. If streaming platforms like Roku and Fire TV were actually on your side, they’d offer this kind of service themselves. Instead, they’re more interested in upselling you on extra subscriptions than helping manage what you already have. If StreamWolf can keep streamlining the process of cycling through subscriptions, it’ll be valuable countermeasure against runaway streaming costs. Sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter for more streaming TV advice. Read...

Laptops felt different at CES 2026. I mean, literally. While new hardware from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm stole the show, advances in laptop materials flew under the radar. Forget plastic versus metal. PC makers are now competing on physical feel—and there’s a whole new world of different metals and alloys to choose from. Laptop chassis materials are something else these days. I recently wrote about how plastic laptops are underrated—plastic isn’t a bad material for laptops these days, with well-made plastic laptops sporting a comfortable rubbery touch that doesn’t creak like they once did. In a world where spec sheets have less and less to differentiate them, this is the next path for PC makers who want to stand out. Different makers, different philosophies At CES 2026, I found myself touching a lot of Asus laptops with Asus’ new lightweight material called “ceraluminum.” Laptops like the Zenbook A14 aren’t just incredibly lightweight—Asus wants you to know that ceraluminum (i.e., ceramic-coated aluminum) is more durable than a typical aluminum chassis while also weighing less. The Asus Zenbook A14 sports the company’s new “ceraluminum” material.Michael Crider/Foundry Later, I was holding the HP OmniBook Ultra 14 while an HP representative explained that it was made of forge-stamped metal for a solid, heavy feel. Consumers tend to regard thin-and-light laptops as fragile, so HP made this laptop out of forge-stamped metal—”like a sword”—so that it would feel more durable and inspire confidence. While both companies were showing off new laptops with new hardware and their own approaches to marketing, one thing was clear: each went above and beyond the typical aluminum chassis laptop. Not all metal laptops are the same People tend to lump laptops into two categories: metal and plastic. But some of the strongest and lightest laptops are made of carbon fiber, like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon. And even within the metal laptop market, not all metal laptops are made from the same type of metal. Many metal laptops are made from aluminum, while others are made from magnesium alloys. Other laptops are even made from magnesium-aluminum alloys. The HP OmniBook 7 Aero has a premium magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis.Michael Crider / Foundry Aluminum laptops are less expensive to produce and heavier than magnesium, while magnesium alloys are more expensive and lighter than aluminum. But magnesium scratches more easily and isn’t as robust. That’s why some premium laptops have magnesium-aluminum alloys that are lighter than aluminum and stronger than magnesium, but these laptops tend to be more expensive. Asus’ ceraluminum isn’t pure metal but more of a hybrid material: a ceramic material that’s bonded to aluminum. It’s incredibly lightweight and doesn’t feel like metal—your fingers are touching the ceramic coating—but Asus says it’s stronger than aluminum. There are also different ways of manufacturing the metal body of the laptop. Most aluminum laptops are made with CNC milling where a machine precisely cuts from a sheet of metal. HP’s forge-stamping is a different approach. As HP explains: “You heat it up, you fold it over, you tamp it down—you make it stronger.” Carbon fiber is still underrated Carbon fiber is an even better laptop material than metal and alloys. It’s stronger and lighter—there’s a reason why this material is used in spacecrafts and sports cars. You don’t see it as much in laptops because it’s expensive compared to both metal and plastic. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 Aura Edition has a carbon-fiber chassis.Matt Smith / Foundry At CES 2026, Lenovo showed off the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 Aura Edition, which starts at just 2.2 pounds thanks to that carbon fiber. The high-end Asus ROG Flow Z13-KJP, made in partnership with Kojima Productions, also features carbon-fiber elements. If money was no object, I’d skip metal and get a machine with a strong and lightweight carbon-fiber body. That’s my professional opinion as a laptop reviewer, despite the fact so many believe a “metal laptop” is more premium. (That’ll change when they discover carbon fiber!) Recycled materials are huge once again When I speak to PC manufacturers, they’re always eager to explain how much of their laptops are made from recycled materials. Many are made from “ocean-bound plastic” (i.e., waste plastic that might’ve ended up in the ocean if it wasn’t recycled). But recyclying and eco-conscious messaging includes metal and carbon-fiber machines, too. I took a look at Lenovo’s spec sheet for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14, where the “Responsible Design” section proudly advertises that the carbon-fiber plate is made from 100% biological materials and that the frame incorporates recycled carbon-fiber materials. Joel Lee / Foundry Elsewhere, the laptop’s metal components feature recycled magnesium and aluminum with specific percentages. Laptop manufacturers are increasingly competing on those percentages and on how much of their laptops’ bodies are made from recycled materials. Laptop marketing blurbs often advertise that a machine was made with recycled materials. It doesn’t make a difference in how a material feels, but manufacturers are increasingly using the providence of their materials as part of their overall sales strategies. Don’t underestimate chassis materials when you buy a laptop I enjoy using all sorts of laptops. Some of my happiest computing moments happened on creaky plastic laptops decades ago. You don’t need a fancy laptop material to be happy—and even the average plastic laptop in 2026 feels surprisingly nice. But a laptop’s material does make an undeniably huge difference in the day-to-day experience. Different materials can have significant impacts on weight, durability, and tactile pleasure. A smooth-and-shiny aluminum laptop feels very different from a matte-surfaced magnesium laptop although they’re both “metal laptops.” So, don’t underestimate chassis materials! If you can afford it, you should definitely consider a laptop’s materials when choosing a winner. With pretty much all laptops having Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm parts, this is one way PC makers are really starting to make themselves stand out. Chris Hoffman is always thinking about PCs. Sign up for his free newsletter, The Windows ReadMe, for more thoughts from a real human. Read...

YouTube TV is typically stingy when it comes to free trials, and significant discounts are even harder to come by outside of seasonal deals. That’s why this new and relatively generous YouTube TV offer grabbed our attention.  Available now and running through mid-March, YouTube TV’s new deal gets you a 10-day free trial for the live TV streaming, more than triple the length of the standard three-day trial.  Once the 10-day free trial is over, you can get two months of YouTube TV for $59.99 a month, a $23-per-month discount versus the usual YouTube TV price of $82.99 a month.  The beauty of the deal is that you don’t have to pay for the two discounted months of YouTube TV if you don’t want to. If you like, you can just grab the 10 days of free access and then cancel before the charges kick in.  There are a couple of caveats to the new YouTube TV deal: you’ll need to enter a payment method even if you only intend on using the 10-day free trial, and you must be a new YouTube TV subscriber.  If you’re interested in grabbing the offer, don’t wait too long; the discount expires on March 17.  The YouTube TV deal gets you access to the YouTube TV Base Plan, which includes your local network TV affiliates as well as such basic-cable mainstays as ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN News, AMC, CNBC, CNN, Bravo, Fox News, IFC, NBC News Now, TNT, and more. In all, more than 140 channels are on tap.  The YouTube TV Base Plan also boasts unlimited DVR storage, plus access to add-on channels such as AMC+, HBO Max, Fox Nation, MGM+, Paramount+ with Showtime, and Starz.  While you can grab the YouTube TV bundle now, we’re still awaiting details on the cheaper “genre-specific” bundles that are slated to arrive later this year.  More than 10 of the so-called “skinny” channel bundles are coming to YouTube TV, including a sports bundle that packs ESPN Unlimited, FS1, and the NBC Sports network.  YouTube TV hasn’t given us many details about its upcoming bundles, but they’re expected to be much cheaper than the standard $82.99-a-month base plan.  Get free YouTube TV for 10 daysView Deal This story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best live TV streaming services. Read...

A round-up of sports news in brief from around the region, including a new CEO for PNG`s NRL team. Read...