Review: Disney on Ice in Wellington

Disney on Ice TSB Bank Arena, Wellington, May 15 Standing in a queue at the TSB Bank Arena for ice creams before opening night for Disney on Ice I overheard a frazzled-looking gentleman in front of me joke out loud in desperation: ‘‘I’ll have six beers please’’. It summed up the contrast between many of the children – unrestrained excitement, some of the girls in Disney princess costumes – and foreboding by parents that it would be another show where they would be bored and try to surreptitiously browse the internet on their smart phones until it was over.

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Fast Five Carjacks the Box Office with a Furious $83.6 Million

What did it take to wake up the Rip Van Winkle box office, asleep for the past 20 or more weeks? Just some fast cars, faster women, a bank vault dragged through the streets of Rio de Janeiro, more wasting of fuel than in the BP oil spill and two bald giants — Vin Diesel and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson — kicking the crap out of each other.

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Why Japan’s Latest Attempt to Boost its Economy Won’t Work

After weeks of calls by the Japanese government to do something about deflation and the fast appreciating yen, the Bank of Japan held an emergency meeting Tuesday — and decided what the world’s second largest economy needs is more money. Central bank governor Masaaki Shirakawa announced steps to step up monetary easing by injecting 10 trillion yen into Japan’s financial system.

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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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