Inia Te Wiata Here on a Visit Inia Te Wiata, the famous Maori singer from Otaki who lives in London, has just finished a tour of New Zealand, his first trip home since 1958. Since his last tour he has played the leading role on Broadway and in London in the musical ‘The Most Happy Fella’, has been on a concert tour of Russia and, more recently has been engaged at Pinewood Studios in filming Walt Disney's ‘The Castaways’. Some of the scenes in this film are supposedly set in New Zealand, and Inia plays the part of a Maori chief. The film, which has very lavish and expensive sets, will probably reach New Zealand early next year. While he was here, Inia was looking into the possibility of buying land for the time when he and his wife eventually retire to New Zealand. The land, ‘no lower than Tauranga and no higher than Auckland’, will be for the fishing lodge they plan to build one day.

United States research may revolutionise kumara growing in New Zealand. A young Maori from Te Kaha will go to study at the University of Louisiana, which has developed more than 160 strains of sweet potato. Mr D. M. Perry of Opotiki said in announcing this recently that the coastal strip of frost-free land between Opotiki and Cape Runaway could become ‘the bread-basket of New Zealand’. A soil survey was being made of the area and with advances made in sweet potato growing in the United States, productivity could be increased enormously. Mr Perry said he had always thought of New Zealand as the world centre of sweet potato growing—but that was until he visited the University of Louisiana recently. The results obtained there with sweet potatoes had been amazing. ‘It has revolutionised the economy the State of Louisiana’, he said. Many farmers who had previously made a bare living were now driving around in luxury cars and making a lot of money with sweet potato crops. Mr Patrick Wahanga Hohepa, a lecturer in Maori in the anthropology department at Auckland University, has been granted a Ngarimu Scholarship for a year's post-graduate study abroad. He will spend it in America, at the University of Indiana, where he will study for a master's degree in linguistics. Mr Hohepa comes from Waimea, in the Hokianga district. He attended the local Maori primary school, and went to secondary school there. Later he gained a scholarship to study at Auckland University, and subsequently graduated with an honours M.A. degree.

The Cook Islanders are to have a museum and library. A suitable site in Rarotonga has been donated by Makea Nui Ariki, C.B.E., and already a quarter of the target of £12,000 has been collected. In the past many people, including Princess Te Puea, have been interested in the idea of a library and museum in Rarotonga. Further information about the project can be obtained from Mr Gordon F. Russell, 40 Tremewan Street, Linden, Wellington.