Simon Hartley

Large swaths of Otago and Southland have been pulled aside from mineral prospecting by Government permitting agency NZ Petroleum & Minerals for multimillion-dollar airborne aeromagnetic surveys.

A Queenstown waterfront site of almost 5500sq m on Frankton Rd is on the market for $4.75million, with existing consent for an up to 99-unit motel.

Port of Tauranga dredging work is set to start, which will allow the port to accommodate larger ships.

The weakening New Zealand dollar is beginning to offer some reprieve to manufacturing exporters; it is now down 24% on its US counterpart and forecast to head further south.

A pause to the week's rout of China's share market prompted a turnaround in other markets, with all eyes returning to the Greek debt predicament this weekend.

The fallout from the Chinese sharemarket rout on Wednesday has spread through to the United States, with American sharemarkets slumping sharply, while billions of dollars were stripped off the value of shares in companies linked to Australian commodities.

Retail electronic card spending in June was up more than $200million compared with a year ago, but spending has shown increasing signs of softening during the past three months.

A Chinese stock market slump prompted about 1300 companies on China's Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges to stop trading in an unprecedented move yesterday, following plunges of nearly 7% and 4% respectively in the main bourses' morning trading.

Tens of billions of dollars have been lost from the values of stock exchanges worldwide, but sharemarkets' reactions to Greece's ''no'' vote on Sunday were more subdued than expected.

The latest instalment of cutting edge sports technology by Dunedin's Animation Research is being boxed up for delivery to Europe in time for the next round of the America's Cup World Series.

Greece will remain at the forefront of concerns for global markets this week, following the resounding ''no'' vote in the people's referendum on Sunday.

All eyes are focusing on lowering predictions of New Zealand's gross domestic product (GDP) output and the implications for inflation, as the dairy downturn continues to bite.

Kathmandu's chairman, David Kirk, is confident of turning around the company's flagging trading fortunes as it steels itself to deal with the hostile $362 million takeover from Briscoes majority owner Rod Duke.

The Highlanders and All Blacks are both being picked for wins by a former Dunedin university student - but both teams will have to work for success.

Alarm Bells will be ringing for the Reserve Bank after May delivered a ''whopping'' $1.5billion growth in mortgage lending, with total New Zealand home lending now topping $202 billion.