New Zealand's next Ambassador to Indonesia will be career diplomat David Taylor, Foreign Minister Murray McCully said.

Catch critically-acclaimed international comic Deb Filler in her first New Zealand appearance in three years, March 17-20 at The PumpHouse Theatre, Takapuna.

On Christmas Day, the world was stunned to learn of the latest attempt to blow up a jet airliner over the US. The attempt by Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate a liquid explosive on Northwestern Airlines flight 253 to Detroit shows that the war on terrorism is failing.

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In part one of this series I looked at how Soviet style socialism was constructed in a centralised and hierarchical manner and as to how this lent itself to authoritarianism. Marxism-Leninism became the central tenet of Soviet and, after 1945, Eastern European socialism.

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Dame Edna Everage is a megastar, advisor to the rich and famous and the Queen's best friend.

17 June 2009 - Triathlon New Zealand has today confirmed two teams for the inaugural ITU World Team Triathlon Championships, to be raced at Des Moines, Iowa, USA on June 29th (NZT).

19 March 2009 - New Zealand's next Ambassador to Russia will be career diplomat Ian Hill, Foreign Minister Murray McCully announced today.

Mr Hill will also be accredited to Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.