This month marks 150 years of business for a Wairarapa store that's been in the hands of one family for four generations. Martinborough's Pain and Kershaw traces its origins to the late 19th century with a hawker who travelled the region on horseback. At the turn of the 20th century, Pain was joined by John Kershaw. John's great-grandson Conor Kershaw runs it today.

The BBC's chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet is reporting in Southern Isreal, close to the Gaza-Israeli border in Ashkelon, which is coming under fire from Hamas. Doucet says the Israel Gaza war is "a situation Israel has never confronted before", and that the shock and anger in Israel in reflected in a sense of now doing whatever it takes, including going in on the ground.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ian Urbina's latest investigations into the Chinese distant-water fishing fleet has uncovered human rights and labour abuses. The Chinese foreign fishing fleet is an armada of over 4,600 vessels, including in the Pacific, accounting for 14 percent of worldwide marine catch, by value. For this investigation, Urbina has boarded Chinese vessels and exchanged messages in bottles with crew. Ian Urbina heads The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C. focusing on reporting environmental and human rights crimes at sea.

Civilians are fleeing northern Gaza in anticipation of an Israeli ground offensive, following retaliatory air strikes. Palestinian militant group Hamas launched surprise attacks an Israel on Saturday, including on a music festival near the Gaza Strip, where 260 people were killed and over a hundred hostages were taken into Gaza. Robin Wright is a long-time writer for The New Yorker covering political and military dynamics in the Middle East. As a journalist she reported from more than 140 countries. She was a fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and is currently a distinguished fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Wright is the author of several books, including the widely acclaimed Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World.

Frustrated by the lack of decent roles for middle-aged women, actor Robyn Malcolm and veteran screenwriter Dianne Taylor decided to do something about it. The pair put their heads together to create After the Party a six-part drama series set in Wellington which premieres on TVNZ at the end of the month. Its main character, played by Malcolm, is a woman in her 50s whose world implodes when she accuses her husband of a sex crime and nobody believes her. After the Party will premiere on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+, October 29 at 8.30pm.

Pistachio nuts have become a popular snack around the world but a new documentary about where they come from and how they're farmed might make pistachio lovers think again before shelling their next nut. Dunedin film-maker Rowan Wernham has teamed up with US journalist Yasha Levine to tell the story of a bitter battle being waged in California where 90 percent of the world's pistachios are produced. Pistachio Wars is an investigative documentary into billionaire pistachio farmers and water barons Stewart and Lynda Resnick, who it's alleged are fragrantly bending the parched state's political system and privatising water to feed their vast farming empire in the desert.

Professor Jochen Mannhart is a physicist whose scientific work could prove to be a conservation game changer. Every year tens of thousands of African elephants continue to be hunted down and killed by poachers for their ivory tusks. Working to find ivory alternatives, Professor Mannhart and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Germany have reproduced the chemistry of a real ivory tusk, opening a potential new market in synthetic ivory and help save an endangered species ... or at least that was the hope.

US writer Kim Stanley Robinson spends a lot of time imagining the future. The author of more than 20 novels, including his best-selling The Mars Trilogy, he's considered one of the greatest writers of contemporary science fiction of our time. More recently the committed environmentalist has turned his attention back on Earth, putting his mind and imagination to climate change in his acclaimed book The Ministry for the Future. It lays out what's been described as a chilling yet hopeful vision of how the next few decades on Earth might unfold.

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One of the world's most respected contemporary choreographers, award-winning British dancer of Bangladeshi-descent Akram Khan is bringing a retelling of Rudyard Kipling's much-loved classic to New Zealand in February in the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts. State-of-the-art animation, narration and music bring the jungle and city to life in Jungle Book reimagined; about connecting with and respecting our natural world, and of humans' need to belong. The Akram Khan Company is recognised as one of the world's foremost innovative dance companies - its roots are in Indian kathak form and contemporary dance. A highlight of Khan's career was the creation of an acclaimed section of the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.