World War Z’s Israeli wall sparks questions

Brad Pitt’s World War Z imagines a world overrun by a zombie pandemic, leading to an unlikely new global power structure. Two of the few countries that have kept the zombies at bay are Israel, which shelters Israelis and Palestinians behind a wall, and North Korea, which has removed the teeth of its citizens to prevent zombie biting

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Review: Madame Butterfly

New Zealand Opera’s production of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly opened in Auckland on Thursday and played to an almost full house at the newly refurbished ASB Theatre in the Aotea Centre. You probably know the story – the philandering Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, US Navy, finding himself in Nagasaki, takes a wife, the completely naive and trusting Butterfly.

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How U.S. Budget Cuts Prolong Global Slavery

Three days before the congressional elections last fall, Hillary Rodham Clinton stood halfway around the world, pledging to young victims of human trafficking at Cambodia’s s Siem Reap Center that they would continue to enjoy the support of the U.S. State Department, which then provided some $336,000 to the shelter.

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Does Obama Have a Plan B for the Middle East?

It’s hardly surprising that President Barack Obama chose to schedule a White House visit by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the dead of night Monday, because right now Obama has little to show for his 10-month effort to revive a Mideast peace process. The Israeli leader’s refusal to abide by Washington’s demand for a complete freeze of settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — and the Palestinian refusal to enter talks without one — has left the Administration’s plans in tatters, with President Mahmoud Abbas threatening to resign and pull the plug on his Palestinian Authority, and the peace process of which it forms part

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