New head of Middle East & Africa Division

Former Los Angeles-based diplomat Darryl Dunn has taken up a new position as Director of the Middle East and Africa Division of the Ministry in Wellington, Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade Simon Murdoch said today.

Mr Dunn, an Arabic speaker, is a career diplomat who has served in the Middle East, Europe, the South Pacific and North America. He was posted to the New Zealand Embassy in Baghdad 1979-82. He was Consul-General in Los Angeles from 2000 until 2004.

New Zealand's representation in the Middle East and Africa centres on posts in Ankara, Pretoria, Riyadh and Teheran. Prime Minister Helen Clark recently announced that New Zealand would open an Embassy in Cairo in 2006.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>